I love food. I dream about food.  I love everything about food.  Even though part of me desires to have a flat stomach, a much bigger part of me wants to have a bag of greasy tacos from a food truck in Oceanside, California. The admiration of others means very little when compared to the satisfaction I derive from devouring a steaming hot kebab with salty crispy steak chips, covered in fat juices and sauce from one of my favorite bazaar stalls in Istanbul.

The coronavirus has left people around the world locked in their homes for weeks with nothing to do except to eat, and if you are like me, it feels like heaven to be locked away with your favorite foods.

However, a lot of eating and no movement can create problems. Some say that the 19 in Covid-19 stands for the number of pounds you will gain during lock down.

If you are hoping to come out of the coronavirus lock-down still fitting in your clothes then there is GREAT NEWS! You can loose weight by joining an intense Bible study.

That’s right!

Forget starving yourself, drinking crappy chalk-like shakes, exercising to YouTube videos, or making your poor family suffer through another kale-themed dinner, with things that look like meat but taste like reprocessed vomit. Simply joining an intense Bible study will help you lose weight.

It’s true.

Recent research has shown the brain—unlike any other part of the body—runs on sugar glucose and fat. The more strenuous cognitive activities your brain needs to process, the more glucose and fat the brain needs to consume. This is why students have a hard time concentrating on their work during the day if they have not eaten.

“As an energy-consumer, the brain is the most expensive organ we carry around with us,” says Dr. Marcus Raichle, a professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Raichle found that while the brain represents just 2% of a person’s total body weight, it accounts for 20% of the body’s energy use.

That means during a typical day, a person uses about 320 calories just to think. The number of calories required by the brain increases when the amount of stimulation increases.

One person, Rachel McCallion, set out to test this theory using a calorie counter. She found that she burned 1,200 calories, just by sitting in a library all day and doing research!

Think about this – look at all the Christian monks that sat around studying God’s Word every day in caves. They were basically on lock-down 24/7 for decades and many of them are depicted in paintings as being small, frail, emaciated beings. I have only been on self-inflicted lock-down for a few days and I already look like another person might be hiding under my shirt.

In 1984, the World Chess Championship was canceled because Anatoly Karpov, an elite Russian chess player, had lost 22 lbs (10 kilograms) whilst preparing for the event. His frame looked so emaciated that doctors worried for his health. He had to stop thinking about chess strategy long enough for his body to gain weight again.

This is no joke! Elite chess players are known to burn up to 6,000 calories in one day! Compare that to Olympic gold medalist runners who only burn around 100 calories per mile, or 2,500 calories for a marathon.

The brain is an energy guzzler, but in order to burn those calories, you need to challenge it. You need to do something new. You need to explore and study things you have never done before.

If you would like to do something that is good for your mind, body, and spirit – then pick up God’s Word and do a deep dive. Try to map out the locations where the events are taking place and how they match up together. Find a Bible study that can challenge both your intellect and your spirit.

The BTJ Chasing Revival Series was written in the spirit of challenging the reader.  It was not simply written to follow the history of revival. Over the six years that we put it together, we wanted to challenge both ourselves and our readers. We didn’t want to do a Bible study that everyone would agree on. We wanted individuals to challenge the study, challenge the ideas, challenge the authors, and challenge each other – AND THEN – dig deep into God’s Word and explain why they believe what they believe.

This study, the workbook, and nine-part video series are all available now by clicking here.  BUT we are providing this bible study for free every day on our website.  To learn more, click here.

Mental and spiritual stimulation is absolutely essential to our growth, AND NOW it seems it is also good for our bodies.

Unfortunately, if you like to snack while you do Bible studies – like I do – you might be eating away all of your profits.

Truth is, a Bible study might help, but may not be enough to fight back those fat demons. The fat demon might be the kind of demon that Jesus told us about when he said, “an evil spirit of this kind is only driven out by prayer and fasting.” – Matthew 17:21