When Food Wins; You Lose!

Food is fuel. Pure and simple.

Anything beyond that leads us into the realm of temptation. The temptation is to either partake (a) too much or (b) too little.

Food can and will become your master if you are not disciplined and honest.

Food is a hard master. It will either push you away saying you ‘can’t have’ to keep you held to a false image or pull you in saying ‘indulge’ by constructing you into false image of a different sort. One image can never be “thin” enough, the other can always handle one more helping.

Eve, I believe, saw in the forbidden fruit, her image. An image she was tempted to view wrongly. She was made in God’s image, not the image of the world and the food of the world. For she saw, “…that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise…” (Genesis 3:6).

She saw the power, the allure of making her own image. The vehicle of temptation was food.

I own a restaurant. I can eat whatever I want when I want. I could put gravy on everything and icedream on everything and…too my shame, I have. In fact, my father told me that when I grew up I could do this very thing. And I did, to the tune of becoming a glutton (+/- 250 lbs).

Interestingly enough, when Daniel and his friends were taken to Babylon, one of the first temptations they faced was to partake of delicacies from the king’s own table. Daniel 1:8 says,

“But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank.”

Food in the wrong allotment of kind and portion will defile you. Just as, food without proper allotment will destroy you. If you do not give your appetite to God, then you are a prime candidate for allowing Satan and the images of the world to both defile and destroy you.

But, these four courageous, disciplined men were willing to take an early stand against this temptation to be made into the image of an earthly king receiving the applause and attention of the world. But rather, they saw their image not in the world, but in the audience of a Heavenly King.

We have the story of Eve, lacking no indulgence but yielding the one thing she shouldn’t have. And we have Daniel and friends, lacking no indulgence, yet, resisting until they receive the one thing that set them apart. Eve failed. Daniel and friends succeeded.

You’ve forgotten you have a choice. Every day you have a choice.

Let’s say you are loosing this battle of choice, I mean you’ve been beaten for a long time. Where do you start?

1. Admit you are a slave and you have a master and its name is food and or image. You are not your body’s master.

2. Surrender. Give up. Ask Jesus Christ to help you see that you are a new creation: 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

3. Find a group to mark and measure. I needed the pain of accountability and truth spoken into my life by others. Two specific, painful statements were spoken to me:

Our good college-distance runner friend, “Alex, we know what you eat…you will never have a runner’s body!” Truth-zinger it hurt, but it was said in love and timely.

Then, our truth-telling daughter who has Asperger’s Syndrome, “Dad, I recognized you across the parking lot,” she said. “How?” I asked. “By your shape,” she replied and she drew my pumpkin shape in the air with her hands…ouch! Truth!

I was living in the illusion of a lie. The man I had let myself become, was not the man God intended me to be.

So, I began a slow journey. Back and forth. No real ground gained. I loved food. Thought about food, snacks, desserts and more food. Back and forth. I would starve myself. I called it fasting, but, in reality I would drop 12 lbs one week; only by the next weekend to have gained 14 back! The cycle depressed me.

I needed a life-style change and discipline.

Then, I discovered a measurement tool: a calorie tracker app cal MyfitnessPal. For the first time in my life I began to measure my intake on everything–discovery! I was eating 2-3 days of calories in 1 day! The beauty of the app is that if you are not eating enough it will show you that you need to eat more and obviously, if you are consuming too much.

Here’s the truth: you will never have a perfect body. To believe such goes against the entire course of human history. Only Adam and Eve had perfect bodies. Once they sinned they brought imperfection to the genetic code of all humanity. Stop trying to have a “perfect” body, it’s impossible. Work on a healthy and fit body to the best of your ability.

God can and will fill up what you are lacking for only “in Christ are we made complete” (Colossians 2:10).

The choice is yours. Start choosing well today. You can do it. You can keep doing it.

I love hearing from you. Send me questions I can answer in future posts.