UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Q & A
Q&A: ‘Biggest Loser’ reports spiritual gains Mary Jacobs, Jan 11, 2010
Julie Hadden
Resolving to lose weight in 2010? You need to take it up with God, according to Julie Hadden. After battling a weight problem most of her life, Ms. Hadden lost nearly 100 lbs. as a contestant on the reality show The Biggest Loser, becoming season four’s “Biggest Female Loser” in 2007.
She shares her story in a new book, Fat Chance: Losing the Weight, Gaining My Worth (Guideposts, 2009.) Ms. Hadden spoke recently with staff writer Mary Jacobs.
Is fat a spiritual issue? Absolutely. The Bible offers very specific guidelines in many different stories about how to treat your body. It’s like any other problem we face. It is something that God told us to do, but we go our own ways.
What does the Bible say about fat? Obviously, the Bible doesn’t say not to eat Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, but back in biblical days, you ate from what you had and you ate from the Earth. If we ate food as it was created to be eaten, we’d be better off. For example, you might think orange juice is healthy. But when you drink it, you’re overloading your body with insulin. There’s an enormous amount of sugar for your body to take in. But if you eat an orange, it’s what I call it God’s 100-calorie pack. It’s the exact amount we need to eat, it’s got fiber and you can metabolize it.
When we take our own man-made things, something can turn bad very quickly just by taking it out of its natural state. Now people are finding out it’s so good to eat almonds and things that are raw. That’s exactly how God intended them to be. That’s how you get the most nutrients. We like to take things and strip them and add fillers and preservatives, but that’s just not the way they were created to be consumed.
You say you became closer to God through the experience. How so? What I realized was that I was worshiping a God that I really didn’t know. I mean, I knew about God, but he became so much more through this process. I thought that God was mad at me because we’re taught as Christians that our body is a temple, and to be perfectly honest, I had treated mine like a fairground.
God truly wasn’t mad at me; he was madly in love with me. He knew the Julie he had created, and I could only see the Julie that I had created. He just wanted the best for me. When I started remembering all the things he said in his Word—that I was precious to him, that I was fearfully and wonderfully made—everything changed.
How so? The Bible says we’re created in God’s image. I can’t think of anything more powerful and beautiful. I started seeing myself in that way and realized I could do this. I could be the Julie that I wanted to be. It was going to take discipline and hard work, but it was worth creating the life that I was created to live.
Many people are making resolutions around this time of year to lose weight. Any advice for making those resolutions stick? The problem is that we make resolutions to ourselves. If we find our source of strength in ourselves—well, for me, I wasn’t very reliable. I think you need to determine the source of your strength and be accountable to God. It is so important to take care of our body, not because you want to look good but because it is the vessel that God uses to show himself and to minister to others. When you take yourself out of the picture, and find out what your purpose is, it’s so much greater than just looking good in a pair of jeans.
Keeping off the weight is often the hardest part for many people who lose weight. What’s your biggest struggle? I think that fighting a sense of entitlement is the hardest part. It was unfair that I knew people who could eat what they wanted and not really exercise and still look amazing. That’s not fair! Meanwhile I have to get up every day and do the same things I did on that ranch two years ago. This is a battle I have to face every day for the rest of my life. It’s not just about diet and exercise. It’s about discipline and how to treat my body.
I’ve learned a lot about obedience throughout this process. We don’t like to be obedient. I expect my children to be obedient and yet in so many ways I’m not. God has taught me so much more than just what I was expecting to learn. In the United Methodist Church, we’re finding that our clergy are experiencing obesity and related problems at rates that are even higher than the general population, and that could very well be true for our lay members, too. What might be behind that? Anybody in the faith really struggles with this because it’s basically a sin that you cannot hide. [Being overweight] is embarrassing and it’s a public struggle. Also, as Christians, one of the things we are taught is to fellowship with one another. We have made it to where we can’t fellowship without food. We pride ourselves on making people happy through what we eat. What I’ve learned through the past two years is it is possible to fellowship without doughnuts and creamy casseroles.
My book is called Fat Chance because here I was a stay-at-home mom, and I didn’t believe I had a chance. I was competing against 250,000 people to be on the show. Who would pick me? Then once I got on the show, I was the smallest contestant in a game full of percentages, so it was a “fat chance” that I would make it to the end. Then I realized, what others see as a “fat chance” may be a second chance for God to use you. For me, it turned out to be the chance of a lifetime. Although I would not have chosen to be the poster child for obesity, it is exactly what God had planned for my life. I mean, who thinks that God will take your greatest weakness and use it to His glory?
Julie Hadden
You say you became closer to God through the experience. How so? 
