The End of Dieting
It’s Saturday morning. At 6am my eyes opened and I couldn’t get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. Those are the moments when thinking is best. I’d been pondering something for days. Something that plagued me.
What to eat.
That sounds really silly but it’s true. I don’t feel good and I know I need to change my diet but how? All the dieting advice I’ve been given my whole life has been wrong for me. They say to enjoy your favorite foods—sometimes. Sometimes doesn’t work for me. But the advice is still sound.
I don’t want to give up my favorite foods forever. But I’m not foolish enough to think that I can eat them all the time and feel healthy. And every time I include “sometimes” in my eating plan I end up worse than where I started. I know that’s messed up but it’s called a food disorder for a reason.
So about 6:30am it came to me. I don’t need another diet. What business does anyone have in saying one food is “healthy” and another isn’t? It really depends on the person and the situation. Are you an obese person who is having trouble getting out of the chair or are you an underweight child who is still growing? Eating a little butter would be very different for those two. Do you have a food allergy? Is this your last meal? Is this the only meal you get with your family all year?
Today my breakfast passed the test. Tomorrow it might not. I don’t need a list of “safe” foods. I don’t need to try to define “healthy” and “unhealthy.” What I need is Jesus.
Jesus can help me.
Jesus alone.
So I decided that from now on, nothing will pass my lips until I’ve asked myself three things. This blog post is me writing this all down so I don’t forget it because this is going to be my new mantra. I want to forget about food. I want to enjoy life. I want to be healthy. So now I ask:
Does it take me away from Jesus?
Does it take me away from my life?
Does it take me away from my work?
And if the food I want to eat doesn’t pass that test, I don’t eat it.
If you don’t have a food disorder you may not understand this, but have you ever sat with a big bowl of processed garbage and had difficulty praying over it? I mean, we’re supposed to thank God for our food, right? But what if we know that food is harmful to us? Does it make it harder to pray about? Have you ever prayed that God would keep you from harm in what you’re about to eat? Talk about messed up!
But what is food? It’s something that sustains our life. It’s something that helps us work. Every day we’re making new cells and old ones die off. What do you think those new cells are made from? The food we eat. The food we eat becomes our new cells. Becomes us.
We are what we eat.
When we thank God for our food we’re thanking Him for allowing us to continue because if we can’t make new cells and old ones die daily, eventually we won’t be here. That relationship is sacred. God gives us food each day so we can live. We rely on Him to give us what we need.
“Give us this day, our daily bread.”
Food is life giving. And the foods we eat determine how we live our lives. Do you walk or do you hobble? Myself, I’m starting to hobble. It’s hard for me to walk to the neighbor’s and back. Touching my toes is getting difficult and I now understand that some people truly can’t and I don’t know how or when I got in this shape.
This is not living.
I’ve allowed my body to reproduce its cells using chips and cookies and processed garbage. Now I’m made of garbage. (Certainly feels like it, anyway.)
God doesn’t make garbage. But humans are pretty good at it.
This is not living. This is an assault on God’s design.
I have a job to do. God has given me a family to care for and work that must be done for His glory. And how am I to accomplish that if I can’t even walk without hobbling? If I’m falling asleep in my chair every afternoon at two? I’ve seen people in their 80s with more pep than I have. (I’m in my 40s.) But whose fault is that?
One of these days I’ll stand before God and give an account of how I’ve spent my time. What will I use for an excuse?
Jesus can help me, Jesus alone.
Does this food keep me from Jesus or can I eat it and be truly thankful for the life He’s given me by providing it for me? Will this food help me live a better life or a worse one? And this one should hit home for everyone with important work to do, will this food help me do my work or keep me from it?
I don’t think I need another diet. I think I need Jesus.
Tattie Maggard is the author of several Christian fiction novels, novellas, and short stories, and runs a deals-type blog for Christian Kindle books at www.ChristianBookFinds.com.
She also crochets, volunteers at church, tends the garden, and sometimes cleans the house. Dislikes include spiders, appointments that force her to leave the house, and all things social media. www.TattieMaggard.com
