Was Eve Chubby? by Rayna Pittman

On more than one occasion I have had to tell some man that I was not interested in his valuable opinion about my weight. For some reason more than a few people seem to think the number on the scale weighing an African-American is a big deal. In fact, federal statistics report that four of five African-American women are either overweight or obese. How come?

Now, I know that weight is a matter of perspective. We live in a culture that idolizes a more slender physique. If your goal is to lose weight and keep it off, a recent study of African-American women has found a couple of interesting common factors in women who do. These women: limit their fat intake, eat breakfast, avoid fast food, exercise, and monitor their weight using a scale. Interestingly, the study found that women who kept the weight off said that their religious faith was important to their weight lose success. What’s God got to do with it?

God created the human body. While no one knows how much fat content the bodies had that God created in Genesis 1:27,  we can safely assume that those bodies were fully functional. We may not know the types of fruit and vegetables (they were vegetarians) that were on the trees in the Garden of Eden, including the one Adam and Eve ate that invited sin into the world (Genesis 2:16). But we do know that there were no fast food restaurants and their fat intake was rather limited.

I would also venture to say that television was a thing of the future and back in the Garden there was a lot of hard work…translation, exercise. This is not to say that God has anything against eating meat, fast food restaurants and television, but I encourage you to examine the pattern of your lifestyle. What does God have to do with it? Everything!

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7