What If You Weren't Meant to Be Thin?

Mamaw didn't mind looking her age, and neither do I

I’m currently actively trying to lose weight. I’ve known that it was needed. I entered perimenopause a few years back and along with hormonal headaches, insomnia, and thinning hair, I found that my body—which had always tended towards the “well fed peasant storing up in fear of famine” aesthetic—was suddenly in line with the ideal Ruben’s woman. But it was realizing that my genes (and love of food) had caught up with me in the form of a Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis at the end of August 2024 that shook me out of complacency and put me on the road to getting healthier.

But here’s the rub: I don’t want to be “thin.” I don’t want to look like the world says women—regardless of age— should look these days: low body fat, narrow hips and waist, high, tight buttocks. I don’t want well defined muscles, and I don’t want to erase the soft belly that birthing seven of my children has given me. I want to look like an older woman, a mother, a grandmother. Because I am.

“for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”—1 Timothy 4:8

First of all, can we do away with the idea that there’s even an ideal standard body type for women? No, I’m not arguing that obesity is in anyone’s best interest. But not a single woman in the long line of my family history had dainty feet and a thin waist— especially not after she entered motherhood. I am cut from the cloth of tall, strong women. Mamaw was 5’9”. In 1960, the average woman was 5’3”. I am (you guessed it) 5’9”, but the average is closing the gap. It’s 5’4” now. That doesn’t really help my daughters, though. All but the youngest is taller than me. We are big women, in more ways than one. We have thick thighs. We have wide shoulders. We have butts that require an ample chair. But there’s a pro to this: like my Mamaw, my girls and I can handle a 50 lb. feed bag without blinking. My 14-inch cast iron skillet weighs 11.48 lbs. empty, and I load it into the oven or pull it from the cabinet easily. My 14 year-old daughter can pin and hold a year-old heifer when the need arises. Half of our strength is our size. I wouldn’t change that to fit into more stylish dress cuts.

I also don’t want to look like I’m 30. I’m not. I have enjoyed and yes, endured, an additional 20 years of life in this shell. I’m not offended that it dares to look like it’s been used. I have laugh lines and the skin on my neck is slowly developing that looser look that comes on as we round the corner past our prime. My ample breasts are this soft because they nourished my children. What is embarrassing or regretful about that? I don’t mind my c-section scars, or the half-dollar sized constellation of spider veins just above my right ankle. I’m not interested in creams or supplements or surgeries to “heal” the process of aging that my body is undergoing. There is no cure for aging except death, and that means entering the presence of my Savior. Why should I long to delay that?

I am trying to lose weight because I was unhealthy. No because I wasn’t thin, but because I had gone too far past what was my body’s ideal. Even now, when I look up the recommended weight for my height and consult the BMI charts, I shake my head. I do not aspire to reach the goal the modern health industry would set for me. How they calculated these numbers, I don’t know. But I do know that they were made without actually consulting a large sample of real, live, healthy women. Specifically, they never spoke with me. If they had, I could have told them beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not meant to be one of those women whose body fat is on the far end of minimal. Not when I was 25, and certainly not at 50.

A woman’s body is not simply a biological organism. Forgetting this is exactly how we’ve come to a place with such distorted standards. How much weight gain is healthy in pregnancy? Can we really nail that down for everyone? What’s the ideal muscle mass of a 35 year-old woman? Well, who is the woman and what is her calling? Doctors and researchers have asked questions for decades and come up with answers for us, answers that we apply with a broad brush and allow to give us comfort or (more commonly) to shame us. But what if the questions were inherently flawed?

What if the questions weren’t rooted in God’s view of us? What if the questions forgot to take into account that the Lord gave us Mamaws to hold us on our hardest days, and that soft, wide bosom was his gift to that grandchild who needs the memory of warm love to carry her through a whole lot of hurt? What if the questions don’t address that this woman’s body— for reasons known only to the Lord— needs a greater fat reserve than normal to nourish a breastfeeding toddler? What if the questions can’t fathom that loading hay behind a tractor builds the kind of muscle (and appetite) that shapes a woman’s body into something that most magazines wouldn’t feature?

What if being a woman, in a natural body, serving your family and loving the Lord, means being soft and curvy and carrying around a handful of extra pounds in most seasons?

I’m not doing a good job of hiding my bias here. Clearly, I think the answer is YES. I think that with the rare exception, most modern women lean towards bodies that are, as Mamaw said, slightly “fluffy.” I think that’s God’s design, and that it’s beautiful. Our bodies are not are own, we know this. We should not be abusing them, as I was, by not tending them appropriately. Excess weight isn’t God-glorifying. I’m not hinting that it is. In my own case, it was the public display of the sins of both gluttony and laziness. The very first step in losing that weight was to admit this, and repent, and earnestly seek God’s help in turning from my behaviors and seeking His will for me. It has not been easy, because the habit of sin is seductive.

But the flip side of these sins are the sins of vanity and idolatry, and the very rejection of God’s purpose for us as women, uniquely made to fulfill a very specific role in the Kingdom. We don’t have to be young, thin, and stylish to be godly. We can be. But we can also be older, softer grandmothers with stained aprons. We can also be heavy-set 30-somethings fighting to reign in our appetites and being honest about our struggles. We can even be 45 year-olds mourning our last days of fertility and watching what the world called our beauty fade into middle age. Whatever the age, whatever the season, whatever the body type, God can and will be glorified in the woman who looks to Him for a reply to something as simple as, “am I stewarding the body you’ve given me well, Lord?” He is the Great Physician, after all. I trust His answers above those the world gives. How about you?

In Christ,

Heather