Mama Z, photographed in 2019 as Mrs. Georgia and a Mrs. America finalist, at 40 years old after five pregnancies. Pageantry has been her chosen accountability since her early twenties.
It is her tool. It is not a measure for anyone else.
The question this article asks is not whether every woman should look like Mama Z did on a pageant stage. The question is deeper.
Why is the body God gave us so often the last thing Christians think about until it starts breaking down? And what would change if we finally told the truth?
A Bible Health Manifesto on the Christian Body
This is the manifesto the Church needed sixty years ago. The hard truth is that too many believers are trying to fight a spiritual, chemical, metabolic, and environmental battle with willpower alone, even though willpower matters, discipline matters, and self-control is fruit of the Spirit.
When the kitchen, the body care drawer, the home air, the sleep debt, and the daily routines are all working against the body every single day, willpower eventually wears out, and that is exactly why the pulpit’s silence on these inputs has become the problem we wrote this article to break.
You could call this our “Bible Health Statement of Faith” when it comes to your weight issues and metabolism.
We reject the lie that weight is only a willpower problem, because most Christian families are trying to fight a metabolic war the modern world has been waging against the human body for sixty years, and they have been losing it without knowing why.
We reject the lie that chronic disease is just aging, just genetics, or just God’s will, because much of the chronic disease in this country is shaped by lifestyle and environment, which means it is not simply destiny.
We reject the spiritual bypass that says pray more and ignore the body, because Galatians 6:7 says a man reaps what he sows, and the harvest is happening in Christian kitchens every night of the week.
We reject the gluttony we have agreed to look away from, the moderation that has become an excuse, and the confusion peddled by every health guru contradicting the next one with the devil as the master maestro of it all.
We believe the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and our toxic bucket fills faster than most families can drain it.
We believe God gave the Church a seven-step path back to abundant life, which is Repent, Renew, Remove, Replenish, Rest, Restore, and Revive, in that exact order.
We believe the Three Non-Negotiables (avoiding sugar as much as possible, cutting inflammatory foods, and breaking up with our addiction with artificial fragrances) are the first front of the metabolic war for every Christian family who wants to live the John 10:10 abundant life Jesus actually promised.
And we believe the body is not lying, because the inputs are, which means the first act of Bible Health is not buying something, it is telling the truth.
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” — Proverbs 4:23
DISCLAIMER: as you can probably tell from the tone of this article, we are not messing around with this post. So pull up your bootstraps and buckle up because this one is going to convict you if you allow it.
:)
This Is Not Condemnation. It Is an Invitation Back to Freedom.
Before we go any further, hear this clearly: if you are tired, overweight, discouraged, inflamed, addicted to sugar, overwhelmed by health advice, or quietly ashamed of how your body feels right now, this is not condemnation.
Jesus does not expose bondage to shame His people. He exposes it to set them free.
For many Christians, the weight battle has become a private place of grief. You have prayed about it.
You have tried harder. You have started over on Monday more times than you can count.
You have wondered why discipline seems to work for everyone else but not for you.
But what if the problem was never that you did not love God enough?
What if your body has been carrying the consequences of inputs you were never taught to question?
Truth is, the modern world has discipled our bodies for decades. The good news is that God designed the body to respond when the inputs change.
That is why this matters. Because repentance is not shame.
Repentance is the mercy of God showing us where we have agreed with the wrong kingdom, so we can turn around and walk in truth again.
And we need to say this carefully: not every overweight Christian is simply living in gluttony. Some are metabolically damaged. Some are exhausted. Some are grieving. Some are insulin resistant. Some are carrying decades of diet trauma, stress, endocrine disruption, and confusion.
But compassion does not require silence. The Church can tell the truth about gluttony without reducing every struggling person to that one sin.
We can name bondage without shaming the bound. We can call people to repentance while helping them understand the biological and environmental traps that have made obedience harder than it should be.
And with that, let’s begin by starting a conversation few are willing to begin…
The GLP-1 Conversation Nobody Is Having Honestly
We need to start where the rest of the Christian internet is afraid to start. GLP-1 receptor agonists are the fastest-growing class of prescription drugs in America, the questions are landing in our inbox, and we are not telling anyone to stop a medication their doctor prescribed.
We are saying the honest conversation about these drugs is being skipped in many doctor’s offices and silenced in most churches.
One friend in his early sixties is not even obese. He went to the doctor for something unrelated.
Every visit since, his doctor has pushed GLP-1s on him. Every visit.
He came up to us and said, “How much do these doctors make pushing these drugs? Every time I go in there, they are trying to get me on them.”
Wow, that is a question we never thought we’d hear from him.
A 2022 study in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism found that participants who discontinued semaglutide regained two-thirds of their lost weight within one year. That fits what obesity researchers have long described: the biological response to weight loss, including increased appetite and reduced energy expenditure, persists even after pharmacological intervention.
The body fights you back. The drug stops fighting it for you the day you stop the drug.
This is not an anti-medication rant. There are legitimate medical uses for GLP-1 drugs, particularly for type 2 diabetics with severe insulin resistance.
What concerns us is the normalization of pharmaceutical weight loss as a first-line solution in a culture that refuses to address the root causes. Especially from a Biblical perspective.
Romans 12 says be transformed, not follow every piece of health advice you see online.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. — Romans 12:1-2
Here’s the problem that most Christians experience after getting on the weight loss drug bandwagon: GLP-1s don’t remove the spiritual habits that got you into trouble in the first place. It doesn’t remove the white processed sugar, the ultra-processed foods, the obesogens in their body care, the sleep debt, the stress, or the spiritual confusion that filled the bucket in the first place, which means appetite suppression is not Biblical transformation.
The pulpit has been silent about the food, the fragrance, and the chemical environment Christian families have been raising their children inside, and now the pulpit is silent about the drugs being prescribed to fix what the silence helped create. The full bucket teaching underneath this manifesto lives inside The Toxic Bucket.
“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.” — 1 Corinthians 6:12
When Woman’s World Magazine Called About Essential Oils and Weight Loss
We have been teaching for years that essential oils play a real, evidence-based role in supporting healthy weight management. Not as a magic bullet.
Not as a replacement for nutrition and movement. As a real tool that works with your body’s own chemistry to support metabolism, reduce cravings, and promote fat burning.
And then Woman’s World Magazine ran the story.
Anita Lesko, a Woman’s World reader from Florida, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and set out to find natural ways to get better. Then she discovered essential oils as part of a broader lifestyle overhaul.
She lost 98 pounds. Woman’s World featured her transformation and cited our book The Essential Oil Apothecary in the same article.
They quoted us directly on the science of how essential oils support metabolic health.
Here is what the article highlighted. Grapefruit essential oil has been shown in animal studies to activate enzymes that help break down body fat.
Peppermint oil may reduce appetite and cravings. Cinnamon bark oil supports a healthy blood sugar response.
Lemon oil supports detoxification pathways in the liver, which matters because the liver cannot burn fat efficiently when it is overloaded with synthetic chemicals.
Anita’s story is not about essential oils alone. It is about what happens when you stop treating symptoms and start addressing root causes.
She changed her food. She changed her products.
She added targeted essential oils. Her body responded the way God designed it to.
“I’m grateful to be here, receiving encouragement, recipes, and whole-body transformation. Even after trying times, I trust you and Mama Z. The spiritual aspect completes the system: body, soul, and spirit.”
— Ellen D.
What the Food, Fragrance, and Chemical Industries Will Not Tell You
The Christian body is not breaking because Christians stopped trying. The Christian body is breaking because the food industry, the fragrance industry, and the chemical industry have been quietly rewiring the daily environment of every American family for sixty years, and the metabolic damage is showing up everywhere except the Sunday sermon.
Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Gov. You choose the ‘Big’ you want to blame.
And, if this sounds a little bit like a conspiracy theory, we’re not apologizing, because we know the truth of what’s happening and who is behind it…
We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. — 1 John 5:19
A 2019 NIH-funded inpatient feeding trial published in Cell Metabolism by Kevin Hall and colleagues handed participants either an ultra-processed diet or a whole-food diet matched for calories, sugar, fat, fiber, and macronutrients, and the ultra-processed group ate about 500 more calories per day on average. The food itself was the variable, not the willpower of the people eating it.
Synthetic fragrance is not just a smell, it is chemical exposure that adds to the total burden the body has to process, and many are linked to obesity (they are referred to as ‘obesogens’). Sadly, most fragrance ingredients are not disclosed on the label because federal cosmetic rules allow manufacturers to hide them as trade secrets.
The Endocrine Society has published for years on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and the obesogen evidence linking them to metabolism and hormone signaling, and an EWG body burden study detected an average of 200 industrial chemicals in the cord blood of every newborn tested. The body is not lying, the inputs are, and the inputs were designed by people who do not love your family.
“A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” — Galatians 5:9
The Five Lies the Pulpit Won’t Preach Against
We have walked this list with hundreds of thousands of Christian families now, and every single one of them recognized at least one of these lies in their own kitchen the moment we named it.
Lie #1 is everything in moderation, which is the most quoted Christian health proverb and does not actually say what people think it says. The Greek word in Philippians 4:5 is epieikes, which means gentleness or forbearance, not eating toxic things in measured portions.
Galatians 5:9 gives the actual rule, which is that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, and the Bible does not hand us Biblical permission to eat poison in small doses.
Lie #2 is that gluttony is the acceptable sin, the one sin the Church has agreed to look away from, even though Philippians 3:19 plainly calls out the people whose god is their belly. We have stopped preaching against the sin that sidelines more believers than most of the sins that do make the sermon rotation.
Lie #3 is the confusion trap, which is the noise from every health guru contradicting the next one on purpose, whether that voice is selling keto, carnivore, vegan, Mediterranean, paleo, plant-based, intermittent fasting, all-meat, or no-meat, because the information is overwhelming by design, and 1 Corinthians 14:33 says God is not a God of confusion but of peace.
Lie #4 is the spiritual bypass, which is the teaching that says pray more and ignore the body, because Galatians 6:7 plainly says a man reaps what he sows. Prayer does not override what we put in our mouths, and the harvest is showing up in Christian doctor’s offices every Tuesday morning.
Lie #5 is the one that lets us off the hook entirely, which is the lie that chronic disease is just aging, just genetics, or just God’s will. Much of the chronic disease in this country is shaped by lifestyle and environment, and the body responds when the inputs change.
“For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” — Matthew 24:24
The Christian Body Is Breaking, and the Data Says So
Sixteen years ago, Dr. Z was twenty-nine years old, three months out of a six-figure desk job, sitting in a chiropractic college lecture hall in Georgia, broke enough to qualify for food stamps and stressed enough that the Monday fast he had kept for years quietly disappeared. And going to the gym was luxury not a regular habit anymore.
One morning, Dr. Z’s pants stopped fitting, and the family budget could not absorb new ones, so he packed up every pair he owned and took them to the dry cleaner, where every pair had to be let out two inches. We called them ‘fat pants,’ and we suspect that sentence sounds familiar to many of the families reading this article right now.
Because we have seen the same story everywhere since. We have stood in church sanctuaries from one end of this country to the other and watched congregations of believers fight the same losing war, and these are believers who love God, give faithfully, serve their churches, and still cannot figure out why they feel terrible inside their own bodies.
The data backs the field observation.
Young adults who attend religious services weekly are 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age than peers with no religious involvement, according to the 18-year CARDIA study published by Northwestern Medicine.
Baptists carry the highest obesity prevalence among Christian denominations at roughly 30 percent.
The CDC reports that about 60 percent of US adults have at least one chronic disease, and faith affiliation has not produced a clear population-level health advantage on weight or chronic disease over the last sixty years.
Christians are getting sick alongside everyone else, and the pulpit has been silent about it for a generation.
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” — Galatians 6:7
“Thank you so much for everything you all do, and especially today for the Scriptures. I really needed those today.”
— Mary G.
The Path Out Is the Seven R’s, in That Exact Order
God did not leave the family of faith without a path.
The path is the seven R’s: Repent, Renew, Remove, Replenish, Rest, Restore, and Revive, in that exact order, because most Christian families try to change the pantry before they change the mind, and the pantry never stays changed when the mind has not changed first.
The full step-by-step walk-through of the seven R’s lives inside Christians Are Drowning in Health Trends, and we walk all seven alongside other Christian families inside our 41-day discipleship group series for Founding & Inner Circle Members.
The Three Non-Negotiables Are the First Front of the Metabolic War
That is why we are starting with our 3 Non-Negotiables: avoid white processed sugar as much as possible, cut inflammatory foods, and break up with your love affair with artificial fragrances. We soften the language on purpose, because the families who hear cut everything forever close the article and never come back.
;)
Non-Negotiable #1
Avoid white processed sugar in every form as much as possible, including the artificial sugars that have replaced it on most labels, because the body responds to sugar the way it responds to a drug. The CDC’s most recent data shows the average adult man consuming about 19 teaspoons of added sugar per day and the average adult woman about 15.
Non-Negotiable #2
Cut inflammatory foods, which is the umbrella term we use in our home and in every cohort, because three peer items sit underneath it in canonical order: conventional dairy, conventional grains, and refined seed oils. Industrial dairy is not the same food your great-grandparents knew, conventional grains have been processed beyond recognition and sprayed with glyphosate, and refined seed oils travel with the ultra-processed snacks, fried food, cheap salad dressings, and the casseroles at the church potluck.
Grace does not mean pretending consequences disappeared, and you cannot sow inflammatory inputs for years and then call the harvest just aging.
Non-Negotiable #3
Break up with your love affair with artificial fragrances, because synthetic fragrance is not just a smell, it is chemical exposure that adds to the total burden the body has to process. The fragrance load shows up in plug-in air fresheners, scented candles, dryer sheets, fragrance beads, scented laundry detergent, perfume-heavy body care, and the bedroom air your children are sleeping inside every night.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” — Galatians 5:22–23
Why People Say We Glow
We are not a picture-perfect Instagram family. We are a real family.
We look normal, or at least we think we do. People tell us we look a lot younger than our age.
People tell us they cannot believe we have seven kids.
The reason is not a filter. The reason is not a regimen most people cannot afford.
The reason is that we look healthy compared to most people, and most people around us, in the church included, are tired, inflamed, and overweight. That is not a judgment.
That is the data. Christians are in no better shape than non-Christians on weight, and that affects everything: energy, mood, marriage, ministry, parenting.
People tell us we glow. We like to think that is the Holy Spirit shining through us.
We believe it is. We also know it is the body responding to inputs God designed it to run on.
Careful skin care. Careful body care.
Careful about what we put on, what we inhale, what we eat. Twenty-three years of those decisions stack up.
You do not need a filter. You need clean inputs.
The body does the rest.
What 41 Days of Walking This Out Actually Looks Like
Forty-one days from now, you are sleeping deeper, waking up with energy that lasts past noon, eating in a way you can actually live on long-term, looking at your own home with sharper eyes, and walking it out alongside other Christian families inside the Bible Health Foundations cohort instead of trying to figure it out alone.
We do not call this a transformation program, we call it the abundant life John 10:10 promised, which is the only thief Jesus told us to fight back against by name.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” — John 10:10
Start Smaller Than Your Shame Wants You To
Shame says, “You have to fix everything now.”
Wisdom says, “Obey God with the next thing.”
Do not overhaul your entire life tonight. Do not throw away your whole pantry in panic.
Do not compare your beginning to someone else’s twenty-year walk.
Start with one act of obedience.
Remove one fragrance.
Replace one dessert.
Take one walk.
Read one label.
Pray one honest prayer.
Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the next surrendered place.
That is how revival begins in a body. Not with panic, but with action because “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26).
And this is how you practically activate your faith: by doing the things you know to do to live a healthier, more abundant life!
A Prayer for You. 🙏
Righteous Father, thank You that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and a gift from You.
Thank You for the invitation to walk in freedom, and give me the courage to take the first small step today.
Give me wisdom to nourish my body with the good foods You created, and strength to walk in self-control.
Fill me with Your joy and peace as I steward this temple for Your glory.
Amen.
Upgrade and learn what God’s Word says about every area of life
and how to live it. That’s what Bible Health is all about.
Walk each 6-week live group study the day it opens.
Get the Blueprint and every weekly Swap.
Follow Jesus, not trends, in every area.
As always, our hope and prayer is that you experience the abundant life.
~ Dr. Z & Mama Z
References
· Hall KD et al. 2019.
Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain. Cell Metabolism. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31105044/
· NIH Research Matters summary of the Hall et al. 2019 ultra-processed feeding trial. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/eating-highly-processed-foods-linked-weight-gain
· CDC 2024 chronic disease prevalence data. https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/about/index.html
· CDC Get the Facts: Added Sugars. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/php/data-research/sugar.html
· Feinstein M et al. 2011.
CARDIA 18-year study (Northwestern Medicine). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22155479/
· Cline KMC, Ferraro KF. 2006.
Religion and obesity in adulthood. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2887745/
· Wilding JPH et al. 2022.
Weight regain after withdrawal of semaglutide: STEP 1 trial extension. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35441470/
· EPA Indoor Air Quality. https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/introduction-indoor-air-quality
· EPA Report to Congress on Indoor Air Quality. https://www.epa.gov/report-environment/indoor-air-quality
· EPA TSCA chemical inventory. https://www.epa.gov/tsca-inventory
· Endocrine Society Scientific Statement on endocrine-disrupting chemicals. https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/36/6/E1/2354691
· EWG Exposures Add Up (168 ingredients on women’s skin). https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/exposures-add
· EWG Body Burden study (chemicals in newborn cord blood). https://www.ewg.org/research/body-burden-pollution-newborns
· Center for Bible Engagement: Scripture engagement threshold research. https://www.centerforbibleengagement.org/research
· PubMed: glyphosate exposure and human health review. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30995895/
· Bible Health: The Toxic Bucket. https://biblehealth.substack.com/p/the-toxic-bucket-how-a-thousand-small
· Bible Health: Christians Are Drowning in Health Trends. https://biblehealth.substack.com/p/the-compass-christians-lost-when
· Bible Health: Why Christians Are As Sick As Everyone Else. https://biblehealth.substack.com/p/why-christians-are-as-sick-as-everyone
· Bible Health: Monday Manna #3 Tyranny of the Urgent. https://biblehealth.substack.com/p/monday-manna-3
· Bible Health: Workshop Day 1 Diagnosis Replay. https://biblehealth.substack.com/p/live-why-christian-families-are-sicker
· Bible Health: 41-Day Bible Health Foundations Metabolic Makeover (cohort landing page). https://biblehealth.substack.com/p/41-day-metabolic-makeover
I had dropped toxic fats years ago & was still gaining weight - in point of fact, until the end of summer of last year, I was losing hope for my health, because no matter what I did, I kept gaining weight & the rest of my health was deteriorating rapidly.
What changed? My son. He had always been a mac & cheese lover. The night we made m&c as a treat for him (after not eating it for near 6 months), he *refused a second m&c helping & asked for more salad*. 🥗 That night, I read how bleached, enriched white flour is an opioid. I decided to toss it all - without the safety net of replacements. Bye bye white flour, white rice, & all vitamins & supplements!
It has almost been a year. I've added in homemade energy shots, healthy salt, more meat, and now keep an array of natural, healthy sweeteners (as little processing as possible) in my kitchen. We use only organic, pesticide-free flour/wheat berries. We make our own mayo with the best quality eggs we can find. The healthy fats reign supreme in our house, right down to using tallow for face wash. I've lost about 90LBs just doing that.
I've now added a simple exercise that is challenging for me (but my kids can do twice or thrice) yet doesn't leave me too tired to move the rest of the day. My health is improving as my weight drops. I no longer need to eat more than once or twice a day (I'm legitimately feeling satisfied for roughly 20 hours - less when I eat less meat). I haven't gone carnivore, but neither am I attempting to reduce animal protein. We don't even drain our meat for most things. That gets mixed right in with the meal when it can handle fat, like chili or a brown rice dish. When it can't, we save it for use in veggies or a later meal.
Maybe this is someone else's answer, too. I recommend having a replacement on hand, for flour, sugar, & rice, though! 😁
I do put Truvia in my morning coffee. Is that also bad? I just can’t drink black coffee. 🤮.