Is there a right way to lose weight as a Christian? Whole foods, organic, meatless, carnivore… the options are endless! What if you have food sensitivities or aversions? What if you feel you should avoid certain foods? So many individual approaches on how to eat, but which is the right one? It seems like weight loss can be expensive or require the instruction of a specific nutritionist or trainer to be successful. Can more than one program provide consistent results?

I’ve had a lot of time over my life to debate over these questions, and nothing seemed to resonate with me as a Christian. If God wants us to care for our bodies as temples, surely it wouldn’t require I pay extra money. There had to be a way. Finally, I found something that resonated with me as a Christian. It has worked AMAZINGLY with my family. Surprisingly, it has actually made meal time more simple and easy (which isn’t what I expected). I didn’t realize how I had been overcomplicating things. You can literally eat whatever you want, but its a matter of identifying what amount of food, and what macronutrients your body needs and eating within that range.

Is being intentional about weight loss a sin?

For the sake of balance in my Christian life, macro counting always seemed way too “extra” for me. Is it wrong, or would it excessively stress me out to spend so much time “tracking” my food? This could not be family friendly. As a Christian, could this mean that weight loss is an idol or out of balance in my life? Surely if I was meant to lose weight, it would happen easily (I finally figured out this was what I was actually thinking). Maybe doing all this work wasn’t worth it because at least I was not “obese” and maybe I should just be content with how my body is.

As I’ve leaned into this process over the last year, I’ve demystified all of my these questions in my mind about how I could lose weight as a Christian. Can you believe it all started with a book I bought my husband for Christmas!? As a result, I have been truly blessed by increased health, mental clarity, and emotional wellbeing (less hunger induced mood swings). I’ve discovered more about myself and my body than I anticipated. I won’t lie, it hasn’t been without work and discipline. And it’s a journey, and a process. But I’m so glad I started it and I want to share the things I’ve learned along the way.

How to Lose Weight as a Christian

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Active Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes

How to calculate macronutrients - an actually moderate, flexible, and completely customizable way to lose weight that I found worked with my Christian beliefs and family lifestyle

Tools

Kitchen Scale
MM+ app

Instructions

Find out your custom macros. There are a few online sources for this, I used this one which is associated with this group which will give you some personalized guidance. Alternatively you could use this book for men or this one for women - I was able to request from my library. The numbers may differ slightly depending on the calculator but it will give you a general idea and starting point.
Measure to hold yourself fully accountable with what you are eating. To be accurate, you must measure your food and drink on a food scale.
Calculate nutrition facts. These are readily available online. USDA has a database for food data and another great one is Nutritionx which I usually look up most things.
Track to see how what you are eating compares to what you should be consuming in a day. Using an app like this ($3 one-time fee), a journal like this or even a regular notebook.
Keep on going and refining your process. This is a lot of work and a new habit to form but it is worth it to learning how to fuel your body properly to FINALLY feel in control of your body and its physical outcomes, and be more in tune with yourself and your needs. Time is going to go by anyways! Might as well work at it 🙂

Additional Thoughts

The numbers you receive from the calculator are scientifically verified numbers and despite the fact you may need some tweaks or you may have individual challenges, it is simple “in and out”. You must burn more energy than you consume to burn off some of your stored energy (fat) resulting in weight loss.

Once you have a few days of data, if you are in any way like me, you will be shocked at your over consumption in some areas and your under consumption in others. As i’ve gotten older I’ve desired protein less and less, and now that I’ve increased to the healthy range for my body, I FEEL so much better, not even considering weight loss.

Although weighing all my food seemed crazy, anyone who has baked with a scale knows this is actually a lot easier than we think. It does seem intense, but if you actually want accountability and to know how much you are consuming this is the best way to do it. As Christians we understand the importance of accountability! Why would eating be any different?

Calculating macros for homemade items was also concerning to me, since I am a homemaker and love to cook and bake from scratch and I make a lot of my own fermented foods and drinks. The tracking process is a little different, but especially with an app like www.getmymacros.com it can be quite easy! I will cover that process in another blog post. Believe it or not, homemade sourdough bread is quite easy to calculate macros because of its simple ingredients. And believe it or not, it’s “macro friendly” 😉

An Emotional Process

This process will surely make you feel uncomfortable, angry, confronted. It’s a lot to “wake up” to where you’ve been at and what these “arbitrary” guidelines are recommending to you. You may think this is bogus, or it’s too much work. But all my feelings aside over the last year, I knew this was a learning process worth leaning into. And I still feel that way.

I hope this offered some insight on how you can lose weight as a Christian. May God bless you in your health journey towards eating to feel better and may you have better control over your weight and health!

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to know more about me click here