For Shame

I saw a post this week on Facebook saying that we should fat shame ourselves.  Frankly I was pissed at the time but said nothing.



Shame of any sort is wrong, it just is.


I've lived under self-induced shame because of my weight for far too long and with God's help, I'm done with it.


If you are a thin stud and have never been fat, then you have no idea how it feels to always feel bad about the way you look, to always struggle to lose weight and to always feel like you're less a person when the opposite sex is in the equation.


It's so easy for health nuts to tell overweight people that it's easy to lose weight, but they frankly don't have a clue.


I'm sitting here drinking bottled water, just ate some oat meal, had a healthy breakfast and what? You still think that I'm not doing enough to lose weight?


How about I posted at F3 this morning, worked out (in pain) for forty-five minutes and will lead a workout tomorrow morning, even if I'm still in pain.  So what, forty-five minutes isn't enough?


I say this to share that you should never shame anyone, not even yourself!


Shame creates hatred of yourself. I've hated myself because of my weight for many, many years and I've got a long way to go to stop hating myself but with God I know all things are possible.


Don't ever walk up to an overweight person and tell them they need to lose weight.  Don't post on social media that they should be fat shamed.  Please just stop for a minute and ask yourself, would you like to be talked to that way?  I really doubt it.  And people acting like they are performing an intervention are a joke.  We all have things we are good at and some of us just have our struggles very easily seen, while others can more easily hide theirs.


If you haven't taken the time to sit down and talk with me about my weight, my struggles, my strengths, and what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis, then frankly you have no right to say a word to me about my weight.  Not a word.


Social media seems to have created a bunch of armchair quarterbacks where we think we have a right to our opinion and to spout it out at whoever, whenever without regard to anyone or how it may impact them.


As was beautifully said in Don Henley's new song Words Can Break Your Heart:

Sticks and stones may break your bones
But words can break your heart

Next time you want to go shaming someone, why not stop and think about what shame really means and how you should reconsider before putting someone down.  Also consider that you probably have no idea how much that person struggles, and struggles and struggles. 

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Ephesians 4:32