The divining the scale exchange concluded with participants making confounding observations about the vagaries of weight loss. Caroline observed “It’s weird that the week I didn’t write the food down I lost a lot of weight. It’s weird.” Tessa seconded the weirdness of weight loss, saying “[. . .] Sometimes I feel the same way. I had a weight loss during a week when I ate the worst in years.” Celeste said, “I did well and gained a pound. I knew I was going to lose a pound this week but I didn’t.” Norma tried to reassure her, replying “Sometimes there’s a delay thing. You might lose three next week.” “Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” Celeste said, “but that won’t do it.”
The pursuit of weight loss is in almost all contexts something akin to evangelical religion. Both are based on a simple philosophy based on perceived common sense and easy-to-apply salvific formulas. Both value and cultivate a perception of the transparency and accessibility of its central authority, scripture or the scale, for those who seek answers there. Both present themselves as straightforward in theory yet are complicated in practice, continually threatened by lived experience which often seems to trump its claims. When it doesn’t all make the sense that it should, sometimes it’s best to simply contemplate the mystery.
The question Christian weight loss programs often poses for scholars of both religion and of dieting culture is similar to the ambiguity in First Place’s purpose: is Christian weight loss essentially a secular venture, luring believers into its programs by adding a spiritual varnish to a worldly practice, or is it merely explicating, marking or making clear the religious concerns that are at the heart of weight loss projects both sacred and secular? This is a question that is important to me and has informed a great deal of my writing about First Place. But First Place members don’t really care. They are much more taken with tension that mounts as the weigh-in progresses and their faithfulness is about to be measured by number. By collectively divining the scale in the wake of that judgment, the tension between godly ideals and bodily realities are eased and the program maintains its plausibility for another week.
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