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Just before Lent began, I started seeing targeted ads for a Catholic exercise ministry called “Hypuro Fit.” I do social media management for several Catholic organizations, so algorithms are generally under the impression that I’m interested in anything Catholic, regardless of what’s being sold.
The brand’s content immediately caught my eye – and raised alarm from a disability theology perspective. Inaccessibility and harmful historical theologies of healing are still latent in many Catholic spaces: It is common to hear preached that bodily difference is a sign of sin or unworthiness, that God’s healing is necessarily literal and complete, and that a person can earn their healing if they simply pray enough, atone enough, or work hard enough. Such beliefs are exclusionary to people who are permanently disabled or chronically ill.
Hypuro Fit takes particular inspiration from Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. In fact, the brand’s slogan – “self-mastery for the sake of self-gift” – first led me to think it was a ministry specifically for people who struggle with sexual addiction, deviant sexual behavior, or perhaps even ‘same sex attraction.’ The Theology of the Body is not about exercise. It’s not about health, illness, or medical treatment. The Theology of the Body – a compilation of dozens of Wednesday Audiences given by Pope John Paul II – is fundamentally about the nuptial relationship, about the origins of man and woman’s intimate and mystical complementarity, and about rightly ordered sexual behaviors. It takes many cues from the Genesis myth, which associates man’s inherent imperfection with the fall.
Disabled persons cannot “self-master” their way to a non-disabled life. Embodied difference is inevitable and natural; it can be found across cultures and times. When it comes to disability, even those lucky to be conventionally fit and strong will eventually be disabled by aging.
To their credit, Hypuro Fit seems conscientious about the realities of aging. Their content, particularly videos geared towards religious men, often speaks about the desire to serve “as long as possible” or “while you still can,” though the moralizing is still present: One guest in a video says, “Fat priests die, and if you die, you can’t help.”
Diet culture profits off of self-hatred and fear, particularly around things like weight and musculature, often relating them to style, longevity, and romantic compatibility. In the last decade or so, diet culture has expanded to encompass “wellness” broadly speaking. Beyond simply peddling the exclusive beauty of thinness for women and bigness for men, wellness culture also sells a sort of prosperity Gospel through supplements, matcha, celery juice, red light therapy, and boutique gyms: If you just do the right things, you too can achieve total mastery over your body. In her book The Gospel of Wellness, Rina Raphael writes,
“Wellness… is an almost aspirational obsession for some and close to religious dogma for others. The average American believes adherence to popularized methods can overcome sickness, unhappiness, and even death. A strict overhaul of diet, movement, and thoughts is hailed as the new messiah. In wellness, it seems, we trust.”
Wellness culture is implicitly theological. Though typically creedless, Catholic ministries have simply assigned a religious creed to the same wellness culture product.
Hypuro Fit’s theology pays special attention to the sins of temperance and sloth, frequently aligning them with habits like eating “bad foods,” avoiding exercise, and even excessive asceticism. Like many other diet organizations, success depends upon trading in theological connections between physical ability, health, size, and moral goodness. The founder suggests that exercise be accompanied by the sacrament of Confession. One video says, “I’m a better person the healthier I am.” Does that mean unhealthy people are worse people?
Some might argue that pursuing health in a normatively able body is inherently different from disability and chronic illness, that different rules apply. In actuality, all bodies exist on a spectrum of health. The same symptoms that impact a disabled person’s ability to work out – like fatigue, stomach upset, cramps, joint pain, infection, mobility challenges, etc. – also impact able-bodied people. Exercise ought to be for every body.
Hypuro Fit seems to agree. They say on their blog,
“For those who struggle with health (whether due to genetics, injury, or illness)… your body’s dignity is not tied to its “performance.” Caring for your health is about offering what you have, in whatever state you are in, to the Lord.”
Yet, they also claim to be for people who “can’t get themselves off the couch.” How might a message like that sound to a person with mobility challenges? Why is it so hard to talk about exercise in a way that dignifies disabled people? Well, because acceptance doesn’t sell. Self-hatred does. And the things we’re taught to hate about our bodies are often implicitly ableist.
Another ministry that comes to mind at this intersection is Reform Wellness. Reform’s mission is to “Reclaim health as the state of your body and soul.” The name itself invokes images of bodily and behavioral modification, sweeping changes to institutions, and again, sins and mistakes.
The word “reclaim” in its mission suggests that normative health is something one is owed, the natural state of a person. In the Catholic context, it invokes a pre-Fall humanity much like Hypuro Fit’s Theology of the Body roots do. In this framework, lack of health is unnatural. Things like disability and chronic illnesses are aberrations that need correcting, and they’re expressly wrapped up with inherited sin and wrongdoing.
Jesus himself, in Scripture, makes it clear that disability and illness are not punishments or inheritance of sin. When he is asked of the blind man, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he be born blind?” Jesus answers, “Neither.” (John 9:1-3)
It is good and important to move your body, and there is, of course, a healthy embodied spirituality compatible with Catholicism and inclusive of bodies of all kinds. Feeling strong while lifting weights, feeling the calming presence of the Spirit during yoga, feeling lit from within while running: All of these are good. Appreciation for creation, for one’s body, and for keeping promises to yourself is accessible to all people, including the disabled, aging, and ill.
Real self-mastery starts with self-acceptance: of the body one has and the truth that there is actually very little a person can do to control and change their own body. A body is no holier for exercising or being a certain strength or size. If we all ate the same foods and did the same workout regimens, we would still all have different body types, shapes, sizes, and abilities. Bodies metabolize fat and build muscle at different rates. It is always worth repeating that fat is not something a person is but something a person has, and different people can be perfectly healthy in larger bodies. God loves all bodies.
You cannot punish your way to normative health. Exercise and eating should come, if not from a place of loving one’s body and wanting to treat it well, then from a place of neutrality. Movement and food are things our bodies need. They are not related to sin and worthiness at all.
The wellness industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that preys on peoples’ deepest insecurities. People, especially young people, have very little control in our current world. Our screens are lit up with war, starvation, bullying, and hate. Social interaction, dating, and “third spaces” are rapidly deteriorating in quality as humans choose the online world over the physical one. When a person can’t control anything else, they’re left with trying to control themselves. We’re seeing this in a different way in the advent of male “looksmaxxing” and the return of plastic surgery to seemingly every woman’s face.
Rather than playing into this trend, Catholic ministries have the opportunity to disrupt it entirely, not by slapping Jesus’ face onto the same logical fallacy, but by deescalating and redirecting this desperation for control. Studies show that the more time a person spends in nature, in community service activities, and in creative expression, the more stress resilience one builds. By thinking less about oneself and one’s body, one becomes more capable to respond with flexibility and hope in the face of anxiety.
Exercise ministries are generally missing this crucial piece of community care. While content frequently references showing up for one’s community – especially the family unit – these organizations offer an individualistic solution: Just work harder and pray more. Instead, we as Catholics might focus our attention on community solutions that would enable large swaths of people to make kinder choices for themselves regardless of ability, like affordable healthcare, nutrient-dense food options, public transportation, accessibility measures.
Christ spends more time with the sick and disabled than he does any other type of person during his time on earth. Time and again, Christ prioritizes the return to community over actual, physical improvement. In the time of Jesus, those with non-normative bodies were outcasts. By healing them, especially on the Sabbath, Jesus makes a bold statement that nothing – no religious ritual, no social norm – is more important than caring for one another and inviting people into belonging. Christ’s healing is community healing.
If physical change was a priority for God, then Jesus would not have resurrected with his wounds. This is what Nancy Eiesland calls “the disabled God.” The life of Jesus shows how much there is to be learned not by mastering one’s bodily into oblivion, but accepting one’s body as crucial to one’s story.
Image: Unsplash/Victor Freitas
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