Diet Culture in the Church: What it Looks Like, Why It’s a Problem, and What Christians Can Do Instead
The church often shows up looking a whole lot like the world in how church leaders and communities talk about diets, weight, and eating.
I have an opinion that some Christians would consider highly unpopular: the church often does more harm than good in talking about health, weight, and eating.
If you were to ask me how long I’ve been a believer, I’d say, “My whole life.” While I accepted Christ as a 5 year old at a backyard vacation bible school, as an adult I can clearly see how Christ has been pursuing my heart and drawing me closer to Him slowly but surely over the years. Because of this and the fact that I’ve moved more times than I want to try to count, I’ve been a part of my fair share of churches.
And unfortunately, that means I’ve seen my fair share of the damage done when the church tries to talk about weight or eating patterns or mental health. The church tends to look a whole lot like the rest of the world in this area, instead of pursuing the calling to be set apart.
The reason I care about spreading awareness around diet culture in the church is that it hurts people. My heart breaks a little every time one of my clients shares a personal experience about how the church’s approach to eating disorders or weight has perpetuated their shame, isolation, or disordered behaviors. In order to create church environments that reduce harm instead of create more of it, we first need to recognize what the problem even looks like. I hope I can be one small voice to ignite more awareness and empathy for eating disorders and disordered eating within the church.
Diet culture shows up in the church in both blatant and subtle ways. Diet culture in the church can look like:
The church leader who makes a joke in the middle of a Sunday morning message about how much they ate or how big their body is
This perpetuates weight stigma and shame for people in larger bodies and reinforces fear of weight gain for people in smaller bodies
The diet or weight loss plan wrapped in a Bible verse to imply that shrinking your body will make it more pleasing to God
The Bible actually says absolutely nothing about what body weight, shape, or size is most honoring to God
The assumption that a Christian in a larger body must be struggling with gluttony or not taking care of their body
God created body diversity and you cannot tell how healthy someone is just by looking at their body
The idea that eating “clean, pure, whole, natural” foods is somehow more honoring to God
The fixation on eating “clean” promotes disorder eating patterns and increases the risk of eating disorders. Food does not have morality.
The women’s Bible study that decides to all go on a diet together
Sanctification of the heart is not correlated to whether or not you lose weight. In fact, fixating on physical appearance or weight loss in the name of “health” can easily become an idol and take our eyes off God and put them right back onto ourselves.
Scripture never tells us what our bodies should look like in order to honor God best. The rules and standards we feel slave to today come from broken humans in a broken world, not from God. Take for example, the way that certain verses are often taken completely out of context to support the idea that we need to hyper-fixate on health or weight in order to honor God:
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” - 1 Corinthians 6:16-20 (ESV)
This passage is often used to push the idea that to honor God by taking care of our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit we need to diet, cut out “unhealthy” foods, and lose the “extra” weight. In reality, the writer, Paul, is urging members of the early church to refrain from sexual immorality since their sexual sin impacts their own bodies and the bigger body of Christ. In context, this verse has nothing to do with eating, weight, or health!
Another reason why I’m passionate about reducing diet culture messages within the Christian church is because of the damage inflicted on people struggling with disordered eating or an eating disorder. Almost 10% of people in the U.S. will have an eating disorder in their lifetime. So consider that, statistically speaking, 1 in 10 people in your church or small group community will severely struggle with their physical and mental health due to an eating disorder at some point. Every time a harmful, untrue statement is made about food, weight, or body size (even in a joking context) a member of you church struggles.
Dieting, food restriction, and intentional weight loss are not only top predictors of the development of an eating disorder, but can also turn into distractions and idols very quickly. The problem with the believer hyper-fixating on weight loss or dieting in the name of “health” is how slippery of a slope it can turn into a hyper-fixation of self.
And yet, our Creator already designed out body’s to manage eating and weight without the “help” from dieting. God designed our bodies with deeply intricate systems to regulate our weight, hunger, fullness, and cravings for food. Yes, living in a broken and sinful world means that our bodies are also broken and chronic health conditions may interfere with our God-given cues. However, every time someone goes on another diet or continues in their eating disorder, their body’s food and weight management system is disrupted. Diet culture, in the world and in the church, distances us from God’s initial design for our bodies and creates distrust for the innate signals He’s placed within us.
So what can a Christian do to honor God with their health and return to a state of trust with their body's divine design?
Stop dieting, give up the food rules, and begin to heal their relationship with food. If someone has struggled with an eating disorder, they will absolutely need support from a treatment team (eating disorder specialized dietitian and therapist, medical doctor, and psychiatrist). For struggles with disordered eating patterns or chronic dieting, Christians will benefit from support from a dietitian and therapist.
Church leaders and communities can tear down diet culture within the church by recognizing that diets do not align with God’s good design for our bodies. Recognize that there will be members of the church who are actively struggling with an eating disorder or their relationship with food, their body, and their weight and what may seem like a lighthearted joke in a sermon can have a profound effect. Approach the conversation of weight and eating with empathy. Recognize that gluttony is first a heart sin, not a sin of the body, and someone may struggle with gluttony no matter what their body shape or size. And leave the nutrition advice to the professionals.
God has always had our best interest in mind for our bodies. He gave us hunger and fullness hormones to regulate our eating and influence weight management. He created food to taste good and gave us a wide variety of foods with which to nourish our bodies. The call to honor God with our health does not need to involve a constant revolt against our bodies. Instead, let us dwell in the goodness of how our earthly bodies are created. Let us take care of our bodies without a preoccupation with food, eating, and weight. And let us look forward to the day we experience our eternal bodies, free of any guilt or shame, free of any stress around food, and free from disordered eating. Amen!
References:
Eating disorder prevalence in the US: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/striped/report-economic-costs-of-eating-disorders/