Believe it or not, 75 percent of Americans will be overweight by the year 2015. Seventy-five percent! And more than 40 percent will be considered obese. Further estimations reveal that 24 percent of American children and adolescents will be overweight or obese—an alarming trend with far-reaching health implications.

While there are many reasons for this growing public health crisis, it seems that pointless eating is one of the main culprits.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Rex Russell, author of What the Bible Says About Healthy Living. Dr. Russell has personally experienced the FCA ministry in many ways since his first encounter in 1959 at an FCA conference. At that conference, the theme was “Be a Witness,” and it encouraged those in attendance to use everything in their lives to testify to God’s grace. That conference changed the way Russell approached sports and life.

In America, we believe that we can make everything better. In fact, we relentlessly pursue improvement. And this can often be a good thing! It can make us examine our hearts and actions and get right with God and others. It can bring new advances in medicine, travel, industry and the environment. It can even help us discover and understand God in new and deeper ways.

But many times our efforts to improve on God’s design give us a far inferior result.

Last year, Americans spent nearly $12 billion on cosmetic procedures to change their outward appearances. And all of that during one of the worst economic downturns our nation has ever seen.

It absolutely amazes me what we are willing to do in order to look outwardly younger, skinnier or even happier. But the reality is that, if the inside is ugly and our hearts are troubled, nothing we do to cover it up will change our inner reality.

While most of us may not resort to surgery to improve our appearances, we have all "put on a happy face" or said all the right things even when we were miserable on the inside. But please hear me on this: Lasting change always happens from the inside out.