Counseling always presents challenges, but those involving disordered eating pose unique difficulties for biblical counselors.
Defining Disordered Eating
Disordered eating includes more than just diagnosed eating disorders. It encompasses chronic dieting, weight cycling, preoccupation with food, obsessive calorie counting, unhealthy body image, restrictive diets, and unnatural attempts to achieve a specific body size.
In today’s culture, these behaviors are often normalized, even praised. However, they can profoundly disrupt a person’s relationship with food, their body, and God—often without the individual recognizing the problem.
Let’s explore some unique challenges biblical counselors face when working with those struggling with disordered eating.
Challenge #1: Disordered Eating is Not Recognized as a Problem
One significant challenge is that disordered eating is rarely recognized as problematic. Cultural norms have made these behaviors seem acceptable, making it difficult for individuals to see the need for change. Christians may even equate these restrictive practices with righteousness before God. They need the truth of passages like Mark 7:18-23.
Disordered eaters rarely seek counseling explicitly for issues with food or body image. They may simply consider these issues a normal part of adult life. Instead, they often present with symptoms of anxiety, depression, or spiritual struggles without realizing that these are connected to deeper heart issues that require the light of Christ and His gospel of grace.
Unlike more obvious spiritual struggles, disordered eating doesn’t initially appear to be a biblical concern. Understanding these issues through God’s Word takes significant effort by both counselor and counselee.
Moreover, cultural praise for thinness and restrictive eating can make disordered eating feel like a willpower issue rather than a heart problem that requires spiritual transformation (Colossians 2:20-23). The resulting guilt and shame often lead individuals to manage their struggles in isolation, avoiding discussions about food and weight with their counselor.
Challenge #2: The Relentless Influence of Diet Culture
We live in a society saturated with diet culture, where harmful messages about food and body image often go unnoticed, much like background noise. Diet and “health” messages have been the zeitgeist of the past 40 years.
Because diet culture’s messages do not seem overtly anti-biblical, they are readily accepted without scrutiny (Colossians 2:8). These messages often claim to promote health, which is widely regarded as a virtuous pursuit, but they mask an idolization of the body, self, and approval of others that can be spiritually dangerous.
Diet culture promotes weight loss as a top priority, often regardless of health, and encourages fad diets over sustainable practices. It promotes incorrect nutrition information, assumes that thinness equals health, and moralizes body size. It glorifies the pursuit of health beyond responsible stewardship, creating an unhealthy preoccupation with appearance, control, and perfectionism. This mindset leads to guilt over non-sinful actions, like enjoying a meal or missing a workout (Matthew 6:31-33).
For disordered eaters, recognizing the influence of diet culture can be a slow process. Unraveling these beliefs takes time, as they often seem harmless. Understanding diet culture’s impact is crucial for reclaiming a biblical view of food and body.
Challenge #3: Lack of Support for Edification
A third challenge is the potential lack of support from the church community. Ideally, Christian counseling should encourage greater involvement in the local church for ongoing support and accountability.
As counselors, we recognize that the local fellowship and eldership best provide the needed encouragement, accountability, support, and edification for continued growth. However, many church members may be just as entangled in disordered eating beliefs, unknowingly reinforcing harmful practices rather than helping to correct them (Romans 14:13).
The church can sometimes promote the same messages as the broader culture, assigning moral imperatives to weight loss, food elimination plans, and “clean eating.” There’s an unspoken rule that “healthiness is next to godliness,” overshadowing true sanctification.
As counselors, we must be prepared to navigate these waters, helping counselees understand that striving for health is not the same as being consumed by appearance, food, or a constant focus on dieting. Even the pursuit of health can become an idol masquerading as noble. Yet, true body stewardship is ultimately for serving our great God, and Christian self-discipline is not aimed at fitting worldly beauty standards or gaining the approval of others.
Reclaiming a biblical view of eating and health means recognizing the dangers inherent in imposing moral value on food and fitness beyond what God has said (1 Corinthians 10:30). Instead, we have been freed to honor God with our bodies and minds through a thankful, grace-filled gospel approach.
Challenge #4: Counselor Bias and Self-Examination
Finally, it’s crucial for counselors to examine their own biases regarding food, body image, and health. Living in a diet-obsessed culture means the question we should ask ourselves is not, “Have I been affected by the diet culture?” but “In what ways have I been affected by it?”
You can do future counselees a great service by recognizing your own answers to the following questions (Matthew 7:3-4): Have I adopted beliefs that thinness equates to morality? Do I find myself admiring those who adhere strictly to health and fitness practices? Am I tempted to see disordered eating as merely a physical problem rather than a spiritual one? Do I assume those in larger bodies are lazy, lack willpower, or don’t care to honor God?
We must be careful to apply the gospel to counselees who are struggling with disordered eating, guiding them to see their true value and identity in Christ (Galatians 2:20) rather than in their body size or eating habits. But you must first believe this is true.
It’s not enough to help counselees stop harmful behaviors and try new health habits; we must first help them cultivate a biblical mindset about food, eating, and their body. This requires us to be vigilant against our own susceptibility to diet culture and prioritize spiritual growth over physical benefits, including the pursuit of “health,” which is a temporal goal.
Conclusion
Counseling the disordered eater requires great compassion, patience, discernment, and commitment to biblical truth. The challenges are many: the cultural normalization of disordered eating, the subtle but pervasive influence of diet culture, a potential lack of a supportive Christian community, and even our own biases.
However, with God’s guidance, we can compassionately help counselees see beneath the surface and address the heart issues that drive their struggles (1 Thessalonians 5:14). As we bring biblical truth to bear on these deeply ingrained beliefs, we can help disordered eaters find freedom in Christ and learn to honor God with their whole selves (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Let us continue to prayerfully engage with these issues, challenging such assumptions, educating our churches, supporting the suffering, and holding fast to the hope we have in Christ.
