Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author

As seen on CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox, Wired, Yahoo!, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal
It looks like you're new. Click here to learn more.

Don’t go to church if you want to stay fit

photo-Fat-BuddhaHallelujah, fatty! Your religious beliefs may give you greater peace of mind and self-worth. But it might also be blinding your ability to detect love-handles.

Says a new study by Northwestern University, “Young adults who frequently attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age as young adults with no religious involvement.” A thirteen year-old study by Purdue said the same thing: “Religious people are more likely to be overweight than are nonreligious people.”

Not only that, but Mormons tend to be five pounds pudgier than other believers. The reason? Religious folk are more accepting of their bodies and tend to be more content with their lives. Therefore, they’re more likely to overlook gluttony, summarizes the Mormon Times. As for Mormons being more obese than other devotees, Mormons are asked to abstain from even more stuff than most. With food being one of the exceptions, they engorde on it, said a BYU professor in 2006.

Ironically, the Northwestern study also supported the long-held belief that religious folks tend to live longer, largely because they don’t indulge as often in alcohol, drugs, and smoking. Go figure.