When Faith and Diet Culture Collide
Every January, the church flyers reappear. “Faith-based wellness.” “Biblical fitness.” And every time, I feel the echo of an old wound I’m still healing from.
Fall is the season when churches begin promoting fitness or wellness programs for the new year—teasers now, sign-ups and devotionals to come. For some, these gatherings are encouraging and life-giving. For others, like me, they stir a complicated mix of memories. My body still remembers what it was like to turn faith into a diet plan, and how easily spiritual language was woven into messages of control, shame, and striving.
One of my biggest hurdles in midlife has been dealing with the fallout of nearly four decades of dieting. I was around twelve when I first started restricting calories. Ironically, that’s when I started menstruating. My body got curves, and I became hyper-aware that my shape, as one of the early bloomers in my class, didn’t match the others.
This is just a little bit of my history:
Joined WW as a college student prepping for my wedding, having purchased my dress a wee bit small off the rack and treating it as an “incentive.”
Did a you-eat-our-food diet as a newlywed after college studies and late-night snacks caught up with me. Lost enough pounds to have my skin flake and my hair start falling out. But got my photo in the newspaper in an ad for the diet center. “Michelle is losing it,” was the caption.
Went back to the packaged-meal program after having baby number one, despite having no real budget for a program. Weigh-ins, like usual, included shaming if the numbers didn’t budge.
Eventually went back to WW, and then the internet was born, and the online version saved me from the scale-shaming.
Switched to checking out all sorts of books at the library and purchasing everything published by The Biggest Loser. (Watching the Netflix documentary recently made me wonder how I got caught up in that.)
Switched directions and tried a faith-based program at church that taught me how to eat like a thin person. Actually, more like a distracted toddler but with Bible verses and language of idolatry and “slavery.” Weigh Down Workshop, anyone?
Discovered My Fitness Pal (MFP) and created challenges with friends. Tracked macros and calories like a “good” perfectionist.
Tried other faith-based programs, friend accountability, more books, more MFP tracking, more, more, more.
By the time I turned fifty, I was fed up. Pun intended. My body was having its last hurrah that ended with a uterine biopsy and a D&C to remove a fibroid. And that was it. Post-menopause achieved.
The crime-scene-style periods ended—at last.
But there I was, holding the wreckage of a warped body image and a lot of diet culture baggage. And the same body I’ve always had.
A “Weigh” Forward
I talked about some of my journey in previous posts and podcast episodes (see links below). Bottom line, I had an awakening that made me realize I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life tied to tracking calories and assigning food into good and bad categories. I also had a realization that, for me, the process had become a form of idolatry. I was too fixated on tracking and analyzing and giving myself gold stars for being “obedient.”
I discovered Intuitive Eating, which helped me neutralize my views on food and body. I threw away the scale. Never tracked another calorie since. And should I be surprised that I actually crave some things less than I ever did before? Or that I’m satisfied with a small bowl of ice cream compared with the weird mock versions of desserts I had tried for so many years?
Spiritualizing Diet and Fitness
When I see those faith-based fitness flyers appear, my stomach knots. It’s not because I’m anti-health or anti-faith; it’s because I carry the scars of diet culture dressed up in spiritual language. My body remembers what it felt like to equate holiness with hunger.
I know I’m not the only one who feels that tension. For some of us, diet programs and devotionals were intertwined. We memorized Scripture while counting calories. We heard sermons that made our weight a moral issue. And we carried the quiet shame that maybe our “failure” to lose weight was also a failure to please God.
That’s why, mixed in with all the methods and diets above, there’s a particular ache tied to the faith-based ones. I’ve heard more sermons than I care to on what people think gluttony means—and the misuse of 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 as a dieting verse. Those messages still echo:
Holiness equals thinness.
Your body size is an indication of your spiritual health.
“Hotness” is holy.
You “honor God with your body” by depriving it of calories.
Obsession with exercise is stewardship. Get moving!
Shaming is acceptable if you’re “out of line.”
A larger body means an unhealthy body.
Rest is slothful. Being sedentary is abusing “the temple.”
Chocolate is sinful.
These are the (wrong) lessons I learned, and they’re still embedded in the spiritual culture around food and fitness today. When holiness is measured by body size, faith becomes performance. When spiritual language is used to control or shame, it crosses into spiritual abuse.
But there’s another way.
Healing for me began with realizing that I’d confused obedience with obsession. My worth wasn’t hanging in the balance of a number on a scale or a plate of “good” food. I had made restriction into a religion. I had given diet culture the reverence that belonged to God.
I learned to listen to my body. To eat without moral labels. To rest without guilt. I threw away the scale. I stopped tracking calories. I learned that my body already knew how to tell me when it was hungry or satisfied. And slowly, I began to believe that my body was not my enemy.
Now, when I feel that familiar sting—when another church flyer promises spiritual victory through a new diet or “biblical” fitness challenge—I remind myself: my body is not a project to manage; it’s a living expression of grace.
If you’ve been hurt by messages that equate faithfulness with thinness, I want you to know this: Your body has never been a problem. You are already loved without needing to earn it. True stewardship isn’t control. God gave you your body as a gift to treat it with care, gratitude, and gentleness.
Places Where I Shared My Story
An interview with Heather Creekmore on the Compared to Who? podcast.
Recommended Listening
I loved the steps Julie and Jenn gave in this podcast episode! Plus, Julie Duffy Dillon is a fellow Substacker. Look for Find Your Food Voice here on Substack.
[Letter] Navigating Midlife and Menopause in Diet Culture with Jenn Huber (423) – Listen Here
In this episode of the Find Your Food Voice podcast, host Julie Duffy Dillon and guest Jenn Salib Huber discuss the complexities of midlife body changes, the impact of diet culture, and the importance of self-compassion and community support during the menopause transition. They explore the emotional aspects of aging, including grief and acceptance, and emphasize the need for a positive relationship with food and body image. Jenn shares insights from her upcoming book, ‘Eat to Thrive During Menopause,’ which combines intuitive eating principles with practical nutrition advice for women navigating menopause.
Thank you so much for your words Michelle! After having breast cancer last year, and starting five years of hormone blockers as a result, I’ve been thrust into a menopausal body almost a decade early. There’s a lot that needs to be untangled in my own head about these things, and the faith connection is definitely one of them.
Thanks, Michelle. Since I was very skinny as a young person, I didn't worry about things then. But as I got older and gained more weight, it was a shaming thing. (I remember my mom at age 90 saying she shouldn't have another cracker with peanut butter because my dad didn't like her gaining weight! [I fixed her another cracker and said that at age 90 she could have whatever she wanted.] But I'm so sorry that she felt that way much of her long life. I'm happy to say that I am much more accepting of my body now.