Are We Skinny Fat?

Not so long ago, Allure magazine published an article about skinny fat women. Seems like a contradiction of those two terms, right? Well, not necessarily. What the article was talking about were those women who so desire to be a size double-zero or to maintain a particular weight that they focus in on that size or weight, often to the peril of their health. These women were referred to as skinny fat because, though they appeared to be skinny (often underweight by healthy standards), they actually had very high percentages of body fat. Their eating and workout habits were unhealthy, so the women, in turn, were unhealthy.

I thought about that last night as I went on my first run in...well...quite a while. I would never, ever put myself in the category of skinny, but I'd done a pretty good job of losing and keeping off some weight with healthy diet and exercise. I know, what a concept! But, then I got lazy and stopped exercising. Isn't that how it always happens? So, I looked to the scale as a guide, and according to the scale I was doing just fine. My weight hadn't really moved in either direction, so I felt pretty good about myself. Even when I could tell that the muscle tone was fading and my endurance was lessening, I stuck to the idea that I was fine because the scale said so.

And then it happened. Ten pounds jumped right on me. Without warning. Okay, the fact that I was desperately addicted to burritos might have been a warning. Afterall, we're all familiar with the following truth:

(giant burrito) + (no exercise) = TEN POUNDS JUMPING ON YOUR BODY!

Yes, ten yucky pounds of squish. Sorry to be graphic, but gain of fat, unlike gain of muscle, is not a pretty thing. Believe me, I felt all of that weight while I was running last night, and, as I ran, I could remember a time when running, because my body was disciplined to it, was much easier. It was easier to breathe, to stretch my legs, to push for just one more lap. This isn't to say that any Olympic records were in danger of being broken by me, but it is to say that there was a time when the work I put into my running was noticeable in how comfortable I was doing it and how much a part of my life it had become.

This morning, as I frowned about my aching muscles and listened to the radio, I heard a woman discussing how we can become spiritually malnourished. She was discussing this spiritual malnourishment as analogous to malnourishment of the body, and this analogy made a lot of sense, really. I thought about those skinny fat women and how they deny their bodies health in order to maintain a particular weight or size that they (and probably society as well) have decided is perfect, despite the fact that this "perfect" body type goes against what their bodies actually need. Though it can't be easy to maintain that weight, it does present some sort of comfort to fit into a mold they are being told or imagining they must fit. In some ways, they are fulfilling an obligation to be so thin but risking their well-being by doing so.

I started to wonder if we may, at times, be skinny fat in a spiritual sense. Perhaps there are ways that we get out of shape while still fitting into the mold we are told we must fill. It's very hard to get out there and run; it's hot and uncomfortable and sweaty. And it hurts. Likewise, spiritually it's difficult to commit to actually believing, to actually following, to actually making God a part of our lives. But that's exactly the kind of work that must happen in order to keep ourselves nourished, in order to keep ourselves spiritually in shape. In the book Spiritual Arts, Jill Briscoe writes:

"As the Holy Spirit does his transforming work within us, we must cooperate. We must give way to the Spirit's prompting, give in to his plans for our lives, and embrace the work he has for us to do. We need to work out what he is working in" (9).

In this way, we can't be content to be passive receivers of blessings, just like we can't expect to be fed by someone else or have someone else doing our running for us. Surely those things would be nice, albeit a little weird. But, we must be both open to what we are supposed to do and willing to actually do it. It is real work and takes real dedication, just as it takes real dedication to run a few miles, which I'm hopefully working towards!

However, it does seem that the rewards for this type of dedication to spiritual fitness and nourishment are tremendous. And, in reality, wouldn't we all prefer to be healthy and in shape rather than just skinny fat?