The Fat Parts of Me

I feel a certain weariness knocking on my door. It’s a feeling I’ve felt many times in my life, particularly during seasons of high stress and busyness. When I feel this way, I like to quiet myself and think through the basics of my life, going through the fundamentals of my spirit, soul, and body, and checking whether each is healthy. A sample of this exercise is asking the following questions:

• Spirit:
  • Am I meditating on the Bible consistently?
  • Am I praying unceasingly?
  • Am I fellowshipping with Christ-followers?
  • Am I sharing the Gospel with others?
• Soul:
  • Mind:
    • Am I thinking clearly?
    • Am I considering openly?
    • Am I discovering new things?
  • Will:
    • Am I practicing wisdom?
    • Am I developing the right things?
  • Emotions:
    • How is my relationship with God?
    • Are my core relationships healthy?
    • Are my work relationships healthy?
• Body:
  • Am I eating for nourishment?
  • Am I exercising for functionality?
  • Am I resting and recovering?

I have never once gotten a perfect score on the questions above. Most of the time, I have to admit a greater need for discipline, for focus, for help, and for accountability. But this process of reflection is like looking at a mirror, it is where we get the idea of reflection after all. We look at a clear surface to see an accurate picture of who we are, not as we wish we are, but how we actually are. I don’t always like what I see, but I’m better off knowing the truth, even the ugly truth, especially the ugly truth.

Here’s what my reflections have been telling me: You’ve become fat David.

You’re spiritually fat, soul-fully fat (mentally fat, willfully fat, and emotionally fat), and finally physically (body) fat.

Ouch.

But it’s true.

My body fat is the easiest to prove. I just checked my body fat percentage and I went from 18% in December, to 15.2% at the end of January (after a lot of discipline), and back to 17.8% as of yesterday. This body fat battle isn’t easy. It requires adherence not just to caloric deficits but proper macro-nutrition and intense workout. While I’m relatively fit and healthy, knowing that the average is person not close to being healthy, I don’t want to benchmark with average. I want to achieve a physical level that will help me enjoy as much time with my family and be physically able to continue to be productive and creative. The biggest enemy of my physical goals is my diet. The composition of my diet, the volume of what I eat, and the timing of my meals have not been optimal. If I want to achieve my goals, and I do, I need to address those things. I read somewhere that man is more likely to die from “over-nutrition” than starve from hunger. Diseases like diabetes, heart attack, and cancer, as well as fatigue, headaches, and other ailments are linked mostly to eating too much than too little – especially too much of the wrong things, like sugar. The point is this: my physical goals aren’t suffering because I don’t have a good gym, don’t have the right workout clothes, or am missing the newest workout craze. I’m missing my goals because I am, frankly, overfed. The problem with being fat is not that it doesn’t look attractive. The problem with being fat is that it chokes your organs and causes them to work over time (leading to tiredness) or even fail (leading to all sorts of issues, even death).

It’s not too different in the area of my soul.

Our soul is made up of our mind, will, and emotions. Even in these areas I can easily find I’m also fat.

Mentally, I read at least 50 books a year. This year, I’ve read at least one book a week. I also read a lot of magazines and articles, as well as listen to audio courses and podcasts. Every day, my brain is crunching through thousands of pieces of data. If we think of information as mental nutrition, like food for the mind, but don’t accompany this mental nutrition with exercise, with serious verification, validation, critical thinking, and wise application, we end up with a mentally fat mind, full of information but actually too choked-up to be useful. I find a lot of people, particularly young people are mentally fat. They have so much information but do not have the ability to do something as basic as move out and be independent. We know so much but can do so little relative to the greater information we have.

Emotionally, social media has been like soda fountain, pouring emotional stimulation through targeted posts, likes, and shares. While I have so many social connections, I can’t say I am at an emotionally better place. In fact, I find that social media has made me socially fat and can choke-up time meant for my core relationships. This is why I have been removing people from Facebook, unfollowing people from Instagram and Twitter, and being stricter about my network. I simply have too many acquaintances, describe as “friends” on social media, but are really people I barely know, have no responsibility over, nor benefit me in any way. They contribute to my emotional fatness with emotional junk. If I want my relationships to be healthy, I need to stop feeding off emotional social media junk and get really good at enjoying the very nutritious relationships of family, of high performing teams, of mentors, and of friends who stick closer than brothers.

Even in the area of my Will, my focus and disciplines have been shaken a lot simply from being too busy. I find myself being late more, being distracted more, and just unable to stick to my schedules as strictly as I have in the past. The reason for this is just simply: doing too much. While running a startup family and business is difficult, there are ways to prioritize, to focus, and to turn-off distractions that will help me. So I’ve been saying “no” more. I’ve been declining speaking engagements, partnership invitations, and meeting requests. It may sound selfish, but it’s simply being wise. I know my priorities and I need to treat them as such.

But the most worrying, for me, is how I am showing signs of being spiritually fat. I guess the best example of spiritually fat people in the Bible were the Pharisees. These were people who knew the law, who even memorized the law, but instead of seeing Jesus, their hearts were choked up. Just as body fat chokes our organs, knowing God’s word, knowing theology, doctrine, and having tradition, without practicing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control will lead to a spiritually fat person. Signs of my own spiritual fatness can be seen when I am not quick to forgive, when I write people off, when I easily give in to temptation, when I lose my patience, when I am harsh or quick to anger, and mostly when I am afraid, which shows that for all my head knowledge of the Bible, I lack faith in Christ’s finished work. All these things clog up my ability to hear from God, to trust in Him, and to obey Him.

As I finish writing this, I review the rest of the things I need to do tonight to prepare for what’s shaping up to be a another busy week. It’s only February, but the amount of things already accomplished, the adversity already lined-up, and the deliverables needed to be accomplished are quite daunting. None of them can be achieved if I am spiritually, soul-fully, and physically fat. But it’s good to know what I want to achieve, and it’s good to admit the gap between what I want and who I am right now, that I am not good enough – yet. Because this way I can identify what I need to do, and then I can line up my schedule, budget, and energy in the right way to bridge that gap. I know what I want, and I want to know what I lack, even if it means seeing an honest reflection of David I don’t like looking at, because it’s the real David.

Behind my titles, behind past achievements, behind blog posts, and fans, it’s easy to seem godly, wise, stable, and fit. But that’s not who we really are. It may be part of us, and sometimes we are fooled to think that’s actually us. I’m reminded of what Aristotle said, ”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

If we are fat, it’s because we repeatedly allowed it. If we are fit, it’s because we repeatedly achieved it. Who we are is what we repeatedly do.

So I erased my schedule to reprioritize. This is going to be a great week.