Fitness

Dean Gunther is a tattoo artist currently residing in Manchester, England. And when a recent client came to him with a bold idea, he was so stoked about the idea that he did it for free.

The client was a friend who hates working out, but wanted to have the look of well-toned, “six-pack” abdominal muscles. So, he asked Gunther to tattoo the look onto his stomach. Gunther said, “I had seen really bad ones attempted before. Because I specialize in color realism, I wanted to give it a go.” Of course, it wasn’t only the technical challenge that got him on board. He also had an additional motivation. "I thought it would be funny."

Once they completed the two-day project, they took a video and shared it on TikTok to verify the rapidly spreading rumor of the six-pack-tat, which looks impressive from a distance. Gunther’s followers responded with a combination of disbelief and bemused congratulation. One user summed up the approach with a simple aphorism: “if you can’t tone it, tat it.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We shouldn't be satisfied with only an appearance of goodness or righteousness. Without spiritual discipline and the holiness that results, it is nothing but empty posturing.

A 2012 Pew study tracked the rise of a new religious group: the “nones,” or the religiously unaffiliated. One-fifth of Americans—and a full third of adults under 30—say they belong to no religion at all.

Yet, argues Casper ter Kuile, a researcher at Harvard Divinity School, this group is still looking for elements of religious experience. His later study explores ways modern millennials seek out meaning, community, and ritual in the absence of organized religion.

The study started by profiling organizations they deemed particularly formative in the lives of their students. One of the most striking spaces? Fitness classes. Institutions like CrossFit and SoulCycle are offering their students more than just a chance to lose weight or tone up. They function, ter Kuile argues, like religions.

“People come because they want to lose weight or gain muscle strength, but they stay for the community,” he said. “It’s really the relationships that keep them coming back.” We heard people say, “Well, Crossfit is my church,” or, “Soulcycle is like my cult,” in a good way.

“Once that religious perspective had been opened in our eyes, so many things came out. Whether it’s the flag [on display] in every CrossFit [gym]; the way that the space is set up; or how you could follow a kind of liturgy in a SoulCycle class, especially through their use of light and sound. So it’s really an emotional and spiritual experience as well as a physical one.”

Possible Preaching Angles: Church; Body of Christ; Meaning of life; Relationship - Young people are searching for self-actualization, fulfillment and a ‘spiritual’ connection. The role of the church is to show them that what they are searching for comes through a deep relationship with the living God and His people. If you want a workout, find a gym. If you want meaning, come to Jesus.

How much does it cost Americans to stay fit? Here are some stats to prove that we often go all out to keep our bodies in shape:

• 69 million Americans have a gym membership.
• Health clubs rake in $30.6 billion per year in revenues.
• The average cost per person for a membership is $58.
• Among gym users, 16.8 percent (ages 18-34), 26.2 percent (ages 35-44), 28 percent (ages 45-54) use personal trainers, and the total income for personal trainers was $3.3 billion in 2021 (latest figures available).
• Americans also spend upwards of $87.8 billion a year on athletic apparel.

Editor’s Note: These statistics were the best available as of 11/2024.

Possible Preaching Angles: Spiritual disciplines; Spiritual growth; Spiritual formation—In contrast, how much do we pay and how much effort do we put into our spiritual fitness?

The Week magazine runs a column called "What's Next?," a regular contest based on current events. In a recent issue they asked readers to submit answers to the following question:

The late TV chef Anthony Bourdain advised: "Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride." What would be a good name for a theme park ride based on the typical American's body?

Here were some of the best answers:

• Sedentary Mountain
• Cholester-Roll
• Plumper Cars
• Tunnel of Love Handles
• The Tragic Kingdom
• The Expanding Universe
• SORRY—ride closed due to poor maintenance

Author Diana Spechler launched a website that gives people the chance to anonymously confess their true feelings about their bodies. So far, thousands of people (mostly women) from all over the world have responded. The following quotes represent some of the posts that have received the most "been there" clicks:

• I hate everything about my body and often feel guilty because I should be thankful I even have a [healthy] body …. I have no missing limbs, no diseases, no Actual faults. I'm tired and exhausted of hating my blessed body!
• I constantly compare myself to other women.
• I eat when I'm depressed, and then I get more depressed.
• Sometimes when I see a woman fatter than me, I'm glad she's making me look better.
• I want to lock myself up until I'm thin again.
• I constantly compare myself to other women. Weight, skin, hair, clothes. More often than not, I find myself lacking in most areas.
• I continually base my worth on what other people look like …. I don't know how to feel comfortable in my own skin.
• I love food for how it makes me feel. I hate food for how it makes me feel.
• I am incredibly jealous of all those people who eat whatever they want and never gain a pound.
• I just want to look in the mirror and feel happy.

In an article for Psychology Today magazine, Hara Marano writes about the constant pressure girls face concerning their image. Deprived of an internal compass, girls compete to be "hottest," turning colleges into incubators for eating disorders and numerous unrealistic, self-imposed expectations.

But why?

Marano cites Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. Martin believes the chief problem is that young women think they have to be everything: overachievers in academics, successful in their chosen career, and the life of the party. Adding to the mounting pressure, today's girls are told they can look any way they want. Over time, they "compose the self as perfect, with a perfect résumé and a perfect body."

New York psychotherapist Steven Levenkron has been treating young women with eating disorders for three decades. He contends that peer pressure is by far the number one reason girls work hard to be extremely thin. "Those who aren't mentored by parents are not inoculated against peer pressure. They wind up turning to their peers and to the media, to the outside society, for guidance on how to appeal to men." Hollywood, in turn, ends up giving them unrealistic messages about femininity.

Richard Hersh, former director of Harvard's Center for Moral Education, blames a girl's image obsession on the culture of neglect—kids raising kids. Parents and teachers have allowed children to be nurtured by television, the Internet, and their peers. Parents and teachers have abdicated mentoring and overly shelter them from life experiences to avoid pain and failure. They enter college "socially and emotionally fragile." The all-too-common results are anorexia and bulimia, depression, drinking and drug use, and attempts at suicide. Data shows that about 40 percent of college-age women have experienced an eating disorder.

In the article Marano shares the testimony of 17-year-old Chloe:

Dieting made me feel I was in control of something. It was one thing I knew I could change on my own. I would diet and get positive feedback and feel really good. So I wouldn't eat for a few days at a time. …

You compare yourself to other people. Each of my friends was vying to be better than the other. I was in a restaurant with my boyfriend and a girl walked in who was really pretty and much thinner than me. I saw him glance at her. I went into the bathroom and cried. …

[Boys are] constantly comparing women to each other: 'That girl is really hot; she's so much hotter than her friends.' So we compete to be the hotter friend. Some days it makes you feel fat. On particularly bad days, I can look at children and think that when I'm older, that little 3-year-old girl is going to steal my husband.