View Food as a Good Gift: Building a Healthy Theology of Eating and Body Image, Ep. 11 Waiting for Weight Loss Series

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey there, welcome to our Waiting for a Weight loss Linton journey. I'm Heather Creek, where I'm so glad that you're watching today or listening on the Compared to You podcast today. Our topic is a food. Okay, the topic. Everyone loves, the topic, everyone hates. Well, we've got to get a good theology of food. If we ever want to have a healthy relationship with our body and a healthy relationship with food, We've got to know what God says about it. How does God really feel about food? We know how those diets we've been on felt about food, and we know how we feel about food sometimes, But what does God say about food? So that's where we're going today. Hate. I'm so glad you're here. I hope you're in our community. The Waiting for Weight Loss community is waiting for you to join. We're having great conversations there. You'll find great conversations with our coaches and with like minded women who are on a similar waiting for weight loss journey trying to keep God at the center. Friend, you can join us for free at Waiting Forweightloss dot com. All we ask for is your name and email address, and then we'll give you instructions as to how to get go ahead and join us there. What are you meaning either? So today our topic is food is a good gift friend. Food is not the problem. Now. If you're like me, I would characterize most of my years of life as having this kind of relationship with food, trying not to eat it, right because food was bad. Food was the thing that was going to make me fat. If I could just somehow figure out how to live on water and iceberg lettuce, then I would not have any kind of weight or health problems. Like food was bad. It was the problem. I needed to get away from food. And what that led to for me was an eating disorder. And I know there's all different like varieties and shades of that, right because it might not have been a full blown eating disorder for you. It might have just been something called disordered eating or maybe like it's not even that you just feel like, man, I've just always never known what to do with food. Like I really like food. I love to eat all the things that my diets tell me I shouldn't eat. I just don't know what to do about it. I don't know how to feel about it. I'm glad you're here today because here's how we need to look at food. Food's not the problem. From the very beginning, Scripture presents food as a gift from God. God's gifts are always good. Does God give us bad gifts? No? Food is a good gift from him. It's a sign of his provision. It's a source of joy. It's something that is meant to sustain our life. Your body only has one choice, and that is to run on the nutrients that come from your food, and so to receive food with gratitude, not with suspicion, not with hate. And for so many of us, though, especially when we want our bodies to change, food becomes the enemy. Food becomes something we fear, We have to tightly control it. We moralize food. There's good foods and there's bad foods. There's on plant foods and there's off plant foods. Or we just dismiss it altogether, right and end up doing restrictive behaviors where we just try not to eat. Like I described, we treat food like it's the one thing standing between us and our dreams of a thinner body. Oh there it is standing in my way. If I could just get through food, I could get to the body that I really want. But here's the truth. We cannot pursue health by rejecting God's good gifts. Body cannot be healthy without food. Did you know that Genesis tells us that God looked at everything he created and he called it good, and then includes the earth and the way he created the earth to produce food, and the way he created our bodies to receive nutrients. Three different macronutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Our bodies run on all three, no matter what popular diets say. Later, scripture reminds us that everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. That's in one Timothy four to four. Friend food is a good gift from God. Can you believe that you see? That means that food isn't meant to rule us. And it's not to say that wisdom around food doesn't matter, of course it does. But when we dismiss food as bad, when we treat enjoying food or feeling satiated as a dangerous thing, that actually works against the kind of peace and stewardship that we're longing for. Right when we see food as the enemy. A few things tend to happen. We eat with anxiety instead of awareness. We swing between restriction and then loss of control. Some call that the binge restrict cycle. Right, I'm not gonna eat all the things. Hah, you know all the things. I'm not gonna eat all the things. Ah, you know the things. And in going through that, we disconnect from our bodies and we disconnect from caring for them. Well, but when food is received and seen as a good gift from God, something can shift. We can have gratitude for the food we're eating. That'll quiet and calm us as we eat. We can actually enjoy the foods we eat, right because we know they're a good gift. We can be free to enjoy these foods without obsessing over every morsel, and that enjoyment makes room for wisdom. Right. I talk about this in my forty Day Body Image workbook. Right. But we've been told in the diet world that satisfaction is bad. If you eat something that tastes good or delicious, or you feel satisfied after you've eaten, perhaps you've done something wrong. You've done something bad. It's this setic kind of principle that we're not supposed to enjoy things, right, But all through Scripture we see verses about how God gave us food as an illustration of how we're supposed to be satisfied in Him, right over and over again. Be satisfied in Him as you are satisfied in these things that He's given us to eat. Right, God's not mad when we're satisfied. And then here's what happens. Right, So, when you eat something truly satisfying, how do you feel? You're like, yeah, that was good. But now, if you've been restricting all the satisfying foods for a season, when you have that, ah, that's good, can you just stop there? No, you often have to be like, I need more, I need more, I need more. So what does it look like to just take that satisfaction, say a deep principle, and apply it every time you eat? Right? Wouldn't that just calm us down? Right? It's not about indulgence, it's certainly not about gluttony, but it's about eating things that actually taste good to you and are enjoyable and give us the nutrients we need. And then every time we eat, we can hah, calm our body, say that was good and make wise decisions because we're not out of control because we've been so deprived. If you want to learn more about that, how that works, and what that looks like, and some of the science behind it, and even more scriptures to again, grab my forty Day Body Image workbook that'll really help you. We'll also be talking about this stopping in the community at Waiting for weight loss this week. But here's the irony. Seeing food is good, seeing food as enjoyable, being satisfied by your food actually supports our weight loss goals much better than fearing it ever could. And I've got a lot in that Body Image Work book about this too. But a body's stressed will not digest. You're not getting the nutrients you need from the food, even good foods, if you're stressed out every time you eat. When food is no longer forbidden or loaded with shame, we're better able to listen to our hunger signals, respect our fullness, and make choices from a position of care, not over control. Freedom doesn't lead to chaos the way fear tells us it will. And I've done podcast episodes on this, like if I don't have tight rules, I'm just gonna go crazy, Heather, you don't know what I do around food. I just I'm an addict. I cannot be controlled. I've done tons of episodes around this. So if you want to dig into this deeper, there's lots of content avail about there. But what actually happens, and it takes a while to reprogram and to let your body know it's safe. But what actually happens is for most of us, healing a relationship with food is going to lead to a steadiness with food that you never thought was possible. You See, God's design was never that we white knuckle our way towards body change or towards health. He invites us to steward our bodies, tending to what He's given us, but in a biblical way, with patience, with reverence, with trust for the signals that He gave us in our bodies to listen to. And so yes, you might want your body to change, and yes you should still honor food as a gift in the process that might help you make change in a way you never thought possible. Is See, enjoyment is not the enemy of health. Shame is the enemy of health. And we receive food with gratitude instead of fear. We often find ourselves making choices that are more supportive, more sustainable, and more aligned with the care that God intends us to give our bodies. Let's pray, God, thank you for the good gift of food for nourishment, for pleasure, for provision. And forgive us for the ways we've let fear and shame rob us of this good gift. For the ways we've disparaged this good gift from you and made our relationship with food heavier and more complicated than you ever intended it to be. Teach us to receive what you give with gratitude. Help us care for our bodies without rejecting your good gift of food that you provided for us to sustain those bodies. Lord, teach us how to eat. Teach us not to fear food. Teach us to see your provision in everything. Where we've lost our way, God, just gently bring us back. You know we want change. Lord, help us to keep that change rooted in freedom and You, and not in our own control. Lord, help us do it our bodies with wisdom, joy and grace. It's in Jesus name. I pray. Amen. Hey, thanks for tuning in today can't wait to be with you again. Join the Waiting for Weight Loss community and we'll be able to interact more about this hot topic of food there. Thanks for watching and listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. You m the Compared to A Podcasts is proud to be part of the Life Audio podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio dot com.