Does God care what size we are? According to Christine B. Whelan in this morning’s USA Today, The answer is certainly not! But how can she be so certain? If there really is a God (I believe that there is) and if He/She/It geuninely cares about us (something which I also want to believe), then there is nothing outlandish about that God caring what size we are.
Having struggled with weight pretty much my entire life (have you seen my picture?), I appreciate how painful and guilt inducing this issue can be. But experiencing a measure of pain and guilt over not doing all that we can to care for the gift of the bodies we have been given is not so bad. Please note that I wrote pain or guilt, not shame.
The God in whom I believe does not love us any less or see us as any less beautiful because we may not be as healthy as we can be. And we should give ourselves the same due. We, as God, can love the lumpy bumpy bodies that we have, even if it pains us that they are not as healthy as we would like. But we should also accept a degree of responsibility for the condition of our physical bodies just as we do for our spiritual selves.
The Hebrew Bible commands it readers to “choose life” and to “guard our lives”.
These are sacred obligations no less important than keeping the Sabbath or honoring our parents. Somehow though, abstaining from pork (for Jews and Muslims, at least) became more important than abstaining from high-fat and high-cholesterol foods. Why that happened is for another post. But it has to do with faiths that honor old realities over new facts and have a hard time admitting that those practices not unique to a particular group could be as sacred as those that are.
The real issue here is that most of us confuse divine love with divine approval. We fear feeling guilty about anything because we worry about a God who withholds love and support when we are less thab perfect. Not my God!
It is precisely because I believe in One who loves beyond all measure and stands with us no matter what, as the prophets teach, in the midst of our challenges, that I am ready to to feel the guilt that comes from not succeeding at being healthier. And being less healthy is something about which to feel bad.
The less healthy we are, the further we are from the ideals which God teaches us to pursue. But no matter how short we may fall of those ideals, we are never far from God. So go ahead, allow yourself a little guilt. But never be ashamed of who you are.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
posted November 25, 2008 at 6:41 am
You are right when you say we seek approval as a (the only?) sign of love, whether it is from G-d or one’s partner. Problems with your weight have little to do with one’s lovability.
That said, if we don’t accept and love ourselves, we can’t begin to take care of the body G-d gave us. It is our vehicle on this plane. And some of us get rotten mileage out of it.
I work in a weight loss group for men. I know some of them more than I thought I would and definitely more than I want to in some cases. We (I include myself) have a love/hate/victimhood relationship with ourselves and food and health. Until you give up on the hate and victim mindset, it is impossible to take proper care of your body.
We lose out in family interaction, job satisfaction (and job improvement), and general quality of life by our obesity and its resulting side effects.
“Choose Life” is a good starting point for looking at your quality of life. A lot of us have neglected our fitness at the altar of business and work and money. My father’s aphorism was ‘a millionaire is poor if he/she doesn’t have good health.’
Even Maimonides said ‘teach your children to swim.’
Of course Maimonides didn’t contemplate the some of the crap we now ingest and still dare to call food.
posted November 25, 2008 at 11:22 am
A prophecy: The only people that will survive the next biblical flood will be the floating ones… lol
posted November 25, 2008 at 1:49 pm
To write about THE ALMIGHTY and refer to HIM as a he/she or it is wrong. You write to please people. You are wrong.
posted November 25, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Rabbi, I couldn’t object more. We Americans waste more moral energy on issues of body size than we can afford. When was the last time you heard the words “guilt,” “sin,” “vice,” and “virtue” in any context other than diet and exercise? When was the last time you heard anybody make a New Year’s resolution about anything else? Enough already.
posted July 27, 2010 at 6:46 am
I don’t think that god minds if we are overweight, however I think he does mind if this is because we take more than we need.
You see tribes in Africa who live off the land but the land is still perfect because they never take more than they need – they are never overweight either. I think this is what god wants us to be like – get rid of the greed.
posted August 19, 2010 at 3:47 am
Well, I won’t write comments against GOD… But it is not a sin if you are working for something you were dreaming for yourself as long as you are doing it right and without harming anyone including yourself.
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posted October 12, 2010 at 11:27 am
I don’t believe that God loves you more or less because of your weight. I do believe that we are to take care of our bodies to the best of our abilities, just like we shouldn’t drink ourselves into oblivion we should not eat the same way. We should do our best to stay away from the foods that aren’t good for you and concentrate on the foods that are good.
posted October 27, 2011 at 10:20 am
We should use our bodies the way god designed them.