Toni Gatlin

This post is part of a series dis­cussing Every Body Mat­ters by Gary Thomas. Click here to see other posts in this series.

From a stew­ard­ship per­spec­tive, how impor­tant is it to con­sider how exer­cise can help us avoid or delay frailty? Is this end goal wor­thy of the amount of time con­sumed exercising?

If I con­sider this in the same way I do other large invest­ments, it’s very impor­tant. We try to sched­ule reg­u­lar main­te­nance on our cars and homes in order to pre­vent minor issues from becom­ing major ones. It would be irre­spon­si­ble (and expen­sive and dan­ger­ous!) to ignore a damp ceil­ing until the leaky tub from upstairs falls through it.

In the same way, tak­ing good care of our bod­ies to main­tain, and even improve, our health can head off dis­as­trous events down the road. I don’t want my home to wear out any faster than it must, so why would I resign myself to early phys­i­cal decline either?

Is it a proper moti­va­tion for Chris­tians to pur­sue fit­ness because it makes them “feel bet­ter”? Why or why not?

God is glo­ri­fied as Cre­ator and Father when our bod­ies func­tion in ways way he designed. I’m grate­ful that he was kind enough to make health feel pretty darn good. My enjoy­ing the vital­ity avail­able to me makes much of his gifts, not less.

Dr. Van Lue deals with cer­tain issues, such as a con­tentious rela­tion­ship between a father and son, not just from the per­spec­tive of sin but also the per­spec­tive of phys­i­ol­ogy. Should pas­tors and church lead­ers get involved in this? Is it appro­pri­ate for Chris­tians to con­sider exer­cise and weight loss to help treat the symp­toms of depres­sion, rage, stress, and the like?

This is a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject. Neu­ro­science has revealed so much about human behav­ior and choices that has a chem­i­cal basis, and I’ve seen some strik­ing exam­ples myself. For instance, there are myr­iad con­nec­tions between ADHD and food sen­si­tiv­i­ties; remove cer­tain ingre­di­ents from a child’s diet and sud­denly he can con­cen­trate, inter­act socially, and read clearly with fewer mistakes.

Was he lack­ing in self-control before? Per­haps, but that’s often too sim­ple an answer. Just putting him in time out every time he mis­be­haves won’t get to the root of the issue. If nutri­tion or fit­ness can aid in low­er­ing the bar to make it eas­ier to do the right thing– mak­ing using respect­ful words more like a chal­leng­ing hike than an enor­mous, com­pletely insur­mount­able peak– then why not enable suc­cess with all sup­ports avail­able? Why not remove as many obsta­cles to the nat­ural over­flow of spir­i­tual fruit as pos­si­ble? If poor health habits are quench­ing the expe­ri­ence of love, joy, and peace in your life, it’s time to make some changes. (And to help oth­ers make changes, too.)

Gary talks about “being kind to our bod­ies” by giv­ing them suf­fi­cient exer­cise and bet­ter foods. How kind are you toward your body? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being down­right cruel and 10 being as con­sci­en­tious as a per­son can be, how would you rate yourself?

I’d rate myself at 8, most days. Even though some­times I do have to make myself do it, the right thing gets done most of the time. Many con­scious, delib­er­ate health-supporting lifestyle changes are adding up and I’m get­ting a taste of some of the rewards. I still have far to go, but I trust that just like in every other area of life, small, repeated choices have a cumu­la­tive effect on my health and vital­ity. Hope­fully I am just begin­ning to see the results of bet­ter food and exercise.

Favorite quotes:

… peo­ple who are fit tend to have a much more lim­ited period of senil­ity and dimin­ished capac­ity. Such indi­vid­u­als tend to be highly func­tion­ing and rel­a­tively inde­pen­dent until they die rather sud­denly. The “unfit” often live for years with lim­ited capac­ity and slow dete­ri­o­ra­tion, in a sense “crawl­ing” toward death with greater mis­ery and frustration.

Yes, in one sense it costs time and money to get in shape. Stay­ing unfit, how­ever, brings its own costs and pains. The renowned Puri­tan Ralph Ven­ning once wrote, “They who avoid suf­fer­ing by sin­ning, sin them­selves into worse suf­fer­ing.” If I give in to every food desire, if I col­lapse in lazi­ness every time I don’t feel like exer­cis­ing, I end up sin­ning myself into worse suf­fer­ing than I would feel from hunger pangs or momen­tary exercise.

What do you think? Join the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments or over in the Face­book group.

This post is part of a series dis­cussing Every Body Mat­ters by Gary Thomas. Click here to see other posts in this series.

Gary writes, “Neglect and lazi­ness kill the best things in life.” Could you list any casu­al­ties in your per­sonal his­tory– things and rela­tion­ships that have been harmed by sloth? If you could go back in time, what would you tell your­self, know­ing what you know now?

Neglect kills rela­tion­ships; there are friend­ships I’ve allowed to go by the way­side when life got intense and have just never gone back to pick up where we left off. I regret that loss very much.

What area of your life is most char­ac­ter­ized by lazi­ness or neglect? How is it man­i­fest­ing itself?

Prob­a­bly house­work. There are mul­ti­ple fac­tors involved, and one of them is indeed lazi­ness. It man­i­fests in the obvi­ous ways: laun­dry piled up, dishes in the sink, scram­bling for sup­per at 5pm…

What kind of spir­i­tual work has God called you to do in this sea­son of your life? Do you expect it to be easy? Do you resent it when it gets hard? How do you rec­on­cile this with Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28 telling us that he will give us rest?

Many years ago, I was part of a pro­gram that required weekly fast­ing. I was com­plain­ing one day to my room­mate that while I didn’t mind the idea of fast­ing, it was just so dif­fi­cult, and it seemed harder for me than for oth­ers, and I just didn’t see how I could move through the light-headedness, and on and on I whined about how fast­ing just didn’t work for me. Her response stopped me in my tracks: “So you’re good with fast­ing as long as you don’t actu­ally have to feel hungry?”

Um, yes, I guess I am! I think some­times, even almost 20 years later, I still have that same atti­tude of want­ing the ben­e­fit but not want­ing to put in the effort. Gee, I’d love the ben­e­fits of being a marathoner, but wow, that means I have to run, right? And to have a clean, orderly home, I have to invest energy in reg­u­lar upkeep? (Oh the human­ity!) I’m sad to say that there have been many areas of my life where the effort involved before receiv­ing the ben­e­fit has come as a huge sur­prise to me. (This is where you slap your fore­head and say, Wel­come to being an adult, Toni. And you’re absolutely right.) Thank­fully I have made the con­nec­tion, late though it may be, and have accepted how life seems to oper­ate: you plant and you reap, you work and you earn, you carry heavy things and you grow stronger.

The bal­ance is that there is indeed a place for rest. (In fact, I am con­sid­er­ing that topic for my next book study.) Just as there are cycles of sow­ing and reap­ing, there are also cycles of rest and recov­ery. The rest referred to in Mt. 11:28 is of a spir­i­tual nature, and sig­ni­fies that mankind no longer has to work con­stantly to stay in God’s good favor but can rest in Christ’s fin­ished work on our behalf. There’s still phys­i­cal work to do; becom­ing a Christ-follower doesn’t mean that I don’t have to lift a fin­ger for my own care any­more. As we’ve seen in this chap­ter, we are actu­ally exhorted to work, and work hard.

Read 2 Tim­o­thy 2:6. What com­par­isons can you make between farm­ing and Chris­t­ian matu­rity? Are there any lessons to learn and apply to your life?

The per­son who’s put out the effort ought to be able to enjoy the rewards of the har­vest! Just as a tiny seed must lay dor­mant under the soil until the time is right to sprout, grow, and bear fruit, Chris­t­ian sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is a lengthy process of learn­ing what it means to allow the life of Christ to flow through. Thank­fully, some of those spir­i­tual rewards can be har­vested in this life­time, and oth­ers may not be expe­ri­enced until glory.

Read 2 Tim­o­thy 2:15. Have you con­sid­ered your­self a Chris­t­ian “worker”? What does this verse tell you about how the apos­tle Paul views discipleship?

Every­one Christ-follower is a Chris­t­ian worker, no mat­ter their voca­tion or pro­fes­sion. Paul’s view seems to indi­cate that it’s pos­si­ble to present one­self to God as a poor worker who has mis­han­dled the Word, God-given tal­ents, and resources, and that study and dili­gence can play a major role in avoid­ing that fate.

Favorite quotes:

Much of a farmer’s work– unlike, say, that of an ath­lete, sol­dier, or politi­cian– is done behind the scenes, with­out any glory, applause or excite­ment. Ancient farm­ing, par­tic­u­larly in the days before mech­a­nized har­vest­ing, was gru­el­ing work based largely on per­se­ver­ance and con­sis­tent effort. That’s the metaphor Paul uses to describe the hard, often anony­mous work of a Chris­t­ian as he or she pur­sues God and is used of God.  …  Phys­i­cal fit­ness is like farm­ing. Much of the work that pro­duces it is unseen. No on is applaud­ing or even rec­og­niz­ing our efforts. But the life it cre­ates can be used of God to bless and serve many. The “plant­ing” is gru­el­ing; the har­vest can be great.

The ancient writ­ers of the Chris­t­ian clas­sics viewed the spir­i­tual life as either an upward pro­gres­sion or a down­ward spi­ral. To them, there was no plateau. We are either grow­ing or dying.

Reminds me of the line from It Starts with Food:  “There is no food neu­tral; there is no food Switzer­land– every sin­gle thing you put in your mouth is either mak­ing you more healthy or less healthy.” (empha­sis mine)

What do you think? Join the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments or over in the Face­book group.

This post is part of a series dis­cussing Every Body Mat­ters by Gary Thomas. Click here to see other posts in this series.

Whew, sorry for the two-week gap in post­ing… life is crazy. Let’s get back on track!

Have you ever expe­ri­enced the influ­ence of “social con­ta­gion”– either to encour­age you to lose weight or to feel com­fort­able gain­ing it? What kind of envi­ron­ment would you say you’re in now?

“Oh go ahead and have more cake… you’re skinny, you can do it!” Yeah, that’s not help­ful at all. Thank­fully now I’ve designed an envi­ron­ment for myself that mostly sup­ports health­ful food choices and doesn’t actively seek to change my body. (I’m not count­ing mass media’s con­stant onslaught of manip­u­la­tive mes­sages; that’s more or less out of my influ­ence, but I can cer­tainly con­trol my own level of sales resistance.)

On a per­sonal level, have you ever “dec­o­rated your chains” instead of con­fronting your under­ly­ing issues? Is there a phys­i­cal health issue that new habits might affect, but you’ve just accepted it instead? What do you think might help you take action?

I’ve some­times known that I would feel bet­ter, have more energy, etc. if I made dif­fer­ent choices, but occa­sion­ally those choices were incon­ve­nient enough to keep me from chang­ing paths. A few times, this was due to real lazi­ness and delib­er­ate choice on my part. There were also times that I truly felt too crummy to put new habits into prac­tice; when you’re hang­ing on by a thread, the thought of a health­ful, bal­anced din­ner made from scratch becomes just another thing that’s too hard to do. Instead of gut­ting it out, you default to a pat­tern and just order a pizza or scram­ble some eggs. I don’t know that it’s so much “dec­o­rat­ing chains” as it is just being too weak to even think about break­ing free of them.

I have a lot of sym­pa­thy for peo­ple who already have com­pro­mised health (me!) sim­ply because, even though it is that much more impor­tant for them (me!) to make good choices, it’s also that much harder and takes that much more sup­port and plan­ning to actu­ally get it done. It’s so impor­tant to under­stand, though, that action is cru­cial, and it does not have to hap­pen all at once. Yes, through long, care­ful plan­ning, I was able to rad­i­cally alter my lifestyle all at once (and am reap­ing the health ben­e­fits!), but if I hadn’t had that option, I would have made small, cumu­la­tive choices. Change out one bad food habit at a time; take even a 10-minute walk after din­ner; go to bed ear­lier instead of stay­ing up play­ing with my phone…

Are you pri­mar­ily sur­rounded by peo­ple who merely accept you or by peo­ple who inspire you? Do you think you need to build a dif­fer­ent base of sup­port? How can Chris­tians learn to both accept and inspire each other?

I think I have both; there are some folks out there who are my health heroes and truly inspire and moti­vate me. Mostly though I think peo­ple just accept me and my appear­ance as I am. How­ever, I’m height-weight pro­por­tion­ate, and I won­der if that sup­port base would change if I weren’t.

Dis­cuss some ways that Chris­tians can build health-reinforcing com­mu­ni­ties of faith. What would church look like? How might small groups spend their time dif­fer­ently? What kind of activ­i­ties would take place?

I’ve shared my ideas on this before… We could plan health­ful potlucks, or skip the food alto­gether if we’re not gath­er­ing at a meal­time. (A meet­ing held at 10am or 7:30pm does not need food. Period.) Seek ways to encour­age group or buddy-style exer­cise… walk­ing, run­ning, gar­den­ing, doing any­thing out­doors… there’s no short­age of oppor­tu­nity to be con­ta­gious about health.

Favorite quotes from Chap­ter 7:

My own physi­cian recently told me of a patient who was, among other things, con­sid­er­ably over­weight and still gain­ing. Every sta­tis­ti­cal indi­ca­tor of health was get­ting steadily worse. My doc­tor told him, “You need to get seri­ous about los­ing some weight. You need to stop smok­ing, and it wouldn’t hurt to cut down on the drinking.”

The man replied, “But doc­tor, I’ve got to have my nightly cigar and bowl of ice cream, and what’s an evening with­out a nightcap?”

The doc­tor replied, “Then you need to pre­pare to die, and you should ask your­self, Are those things more impor­tant to me that future years?– because that’s the trade you’re making.”

If you were over­weight and I could mirac­u­lously remove fifty pounds from you for one hour, you would feel the dif­fer­ence and be highly moti­vated to do what­ever it would take to make this be your nor­mal state. But the prob­lem is that we don’t gain or lose weight that way. Los­ing one or two pounds doesn’t feel much dif­fer­ent to you on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis; gain­ing three pounds back is hardly notice­able. This phe­nom­e­non encour­ages slow weight gain, even as it dis­cour­ages steady weight loss. Because the neg­a­tive impact doesn’t feel much worse and the pos­i­tive impact doesn’t feel much bet­ter, we’re sim­ply not moti­vated to get to the place where, long term, the dif­fer­ence can be tremen­dous. (bold empha­sis mine)

What do you think? Join the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments or over in the Face­book group.