Anchored

We’ve arrived, food talk! 1/3 of women are on a diet. I don’t intend to discourage you, but you must know, diets are one of the biggest scams of deception that exists right now and are the cause of many weight struggles in society today.

I believe that our over focus on food and the constant flood of new diets claiming to provide you with your best life is the most destructive thing to the world regarding health, mental clarity and increased lack of purpose driven people.

Going all the way back to the low-fat movement in the 80’s we have been perpetually falling for fad diets. We allow ourselves to be deceived by food labels and health claims that are causing us to be over fed and starving to death at the same time. We’ve gone from eating whole foods to foods that are so modified that our bodies have no clue what to do with what’s coming in.

We have been created to eat real food, not food like substances, and today it seems that everything is a food like substance, I mean even our fruit is sprayed with so many different things that we must label it organic vs. nonorganic, really?

Because of the lack of real food in our diets and because of the exhausting distractions we face, convenience is what we reach for. We think that supplements, bars, and highly processed “healthy” food is what will keep us thin and fit.

When we put food like substances in our bodies, our body thinks “what in the world is this?” and so it stores it and says, “nope I need vitamin A and so it keep saying it’s
hungry because on a cellular level, it’s starving. Our immune system is taking a huge hit because of the lack of real food we consume. Instead of choosing real food we are choosing food like substances and our bodies are starving of the nutrients it needs to function fully and fight off sickness. We are inflamed because of the non-stop stress
our bodies are under from distractions, from anxiety, from worry, from poor “food” and instead of using the beauty and amazingness of our body by fueling it how it is designed, we end up treating it like complete crap.

Spending and Eating

We all seem to be on the hunt for the best diet and to know what food to eat and what food not to eat. Well, it’s simple, eat real food – not packaged, not processed and if it has a health claim on it – don’t eat it. Part of being set apart for God is how we fuel our wonderful body, and another is how we steward our money.

In the book “Think and eat yourself smart” by Dr. Caroline Leaf she says that what and how we spend our money on food should reflect what scripture says, by spending our money to support local farmers, by buying only organic, by supporting fair trade – we are saying, I will support those who are living in line with the perfect creation that God
designed.

Taking into consideration how we steward our time, money, resources, energy. Does it reflect God’s plans and design? As I look at the MAD (Modern American diet) it’s
hard to see that we consider anything other than convenience play out with so many diets today. They all claim that calorie counting, or macro counting is the way to go, but we don’t eat in a calorie, carb, fat, protein vacuum. So, living like they do will only leave us chasing a forever changing “eat this way not that diet”.

As we spoke of today, many things play a part in our health and food is only a small piece to the puzzle, but not only that, the biome of real food is so diverse that its perfectly designed to be sued by our bodies in a way that fuels and heals every aspect of us. When we fill our bodies with supplements and try to work out to offset our food –
we will fail. Nothing will offset poor food choices.

Each one of us have been created uniquely and because of that our bodies all require different things. There are so many different directions this food talk can go, and I’d encourage anyone that would like more support in this area to contact me directly. On top of that, as females, our bodies have different needs based on the time of the month.

To get started on your personal journey, I recommend whole and real food – organic preferably is the way to go. The fresher the better and typically, frozen is better than
fresh at many grocery stores because it goes from field to frozen. If you want fresh, go to your local farmers market or join a CSA in your area for the best way to steward your
money and eat fresh whole foods.

The Right food

Your first start on finding the right food is the food of your thoughts. From there your goal is to not eat the M.A.D diet (Modern American Diet). Our food industry is filled with lots of toxic, sugars, fake sugars and ingredients that we can’t even pronouns. By following the MAD (modern American diet) diet, we are putting things into our bodies that aren’t made or raised like God designed. In doing so our bodies don’t know how to process or use much of what goes in. This leads to a high storage of fat and inflammation because of the foreign substances we put in that our body can’t use. Not only that but eating the MAD diet for only 3 month causes a decrease in brain function and memory. After just talking about how important our thought life is, we need to fuel our bodies in the right way so that our mind can be prepared.

I was my daughter’s basketball tournament and couldn’t believe the number of athletes who are tearing up their muscles and working hard burning calories and then turning around and putting in candy, processed meats, and fake cheese. It’s no wonder our society’s increase in obesity in happening within our children more and more, it’s devastating. It’s even more angering than devastating when we realize that our food industry directly targets our kids and banks on their nagging to cause us to give in. They
push sugar over and over like a coke dealer, and that sad truth is that sugar is as addictive as many of the drugs that are illegal. This should be considered child abuse in my opinion and the food industry should answer for it. Since, that’s not going to happen, we have to take a stand in our own life and choose to live set apart, not only in our
actions, but in our food choices and in how we spend our money on food. Your body is what you eat and what your food eats so it is important to fuel your body for the future.

I digress, one of the key reasons that diets and eating diet based foods doesn’t work is because it is filled with calories so your body thinks it’s eating, but your cells aren’t getting the nutrients they need to sustain their jobs to move fat in and out, to provide energy, to heal itself – so they send signal that you’re hungry still so you eat more and more and more to fulfill the needs of your cells – but because our food is lacking in nutrients so much – we are chronically starved for nutrients and completely over fed trying to fill our biological needs. We are overeating and starving to death at the same time!

As a grass-fed beef farmer wife, I find it interesting that when the cows have a choice of mineral and salts to choose from, they small around, take only what they need and walk away. I know that if I was given a load of foods to choose from, I’d eat and eat and eat until I regretted the entire buffet. I can’t help but think that if God created a cow to know what and how much it needs; didn’t He create us much more aware and able?
We are so distracted, friend, by advertisements, by selfshame, by quick and convenient that we are not listening to our bodies cry out for real, whole, and rejuvenating nutrition.

If your attachment to food has put you in a very unhealthy and overweight state, you must do the time and work of changing, but it’s not something you have to do alone!

Our change to the way we deal with food, comfort and weight has to start with our relationship with God and learning to treat our bodies like the amazing creation they are. Making peace with yourself and bringing God into your body-image desires – aligning them with who He says you are and how He made your body is vital to your success in
food, diet, self-acceptance. So we need to stop letting it define our success or failure.
Growth can be a funny thing sometimes. As I sit and edit this section I am in the midst of another battle between truth of my worth and my fleshly shamming for what I’ve been
eating the past few days and my lack of self-control.

I hear the arrows of the enemy shame me for my food choices and as I try to speak truth and scripture into the likes to defend the attack, I end up reading my own words that convict and encourage me to keep on fighting and not fall under the burden of the shame trying to pull me under. I read ³Food is not where anyone will find salvation´ and my eyes go from looking down in shame to looking up and seeing only Jesus.

Starting Line

There are hundreds of diets that will help you lose weight if you stick with them, but, without bringing God into your food, weight, fitness… you’ll almost always end up falling
back into the old patterns of your mind. As I just shared my story about how the battle continues. Without knowing God and applying truth, this will continue to haunt me, but
as I renew my mind, I end up being able to overcome the attacks. With each testing of my renewal I am less and less crushed by the attacks and more and more victorious.

Personally, I believe I’ll always have this as a stumbling block and will continue to have to work on my renewal in this area, but with the right weapons at hand, I’m not afraid of the attack. We need to make the godly route the deeply anchored paths that we resort to.

I wish it was as easy as just telling you what to eat, but I can’t. We are all created uniquely, and our needs are all different. People like to think they’ve found the perfect diet for everyone or for certain body types, but that’s now how we’re designed. I can, however, provide some guidelines and tips to help you get started on finding your personal best foods or we can work together 1:1 but this is a good place to get started.

Here’s some things you should know

• No one can calorie count as accurately as it would take to not gain weight. Being as few as 20 calories over a day every day will cause a 20lb weight gain in 10 years. 20 measly calories… Tracking calories and macros is a waste of your time 80% of the time but can be a good place to start. Finding a professional to work with will help you get the best results though.

• When we are in a state of stress and anxiety on a regular basis our body will not use/digest food as it should – it tends to gets stored as fat and it causes inflammation responses that impacts the health of your cells throughout the whole body. This leads to sickness such as autoimmune disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and even some cancers.

• Mind Renewal and focusing on truth will heal your body, mind, and spirit. It will allow your body to reduce inflammation, heal chronic stress, give you courage, joy, peace… We’re called to live about fear, anxiety, body-image. It takes work, but I hope you’re up or the challenge

In conclusion, when we allow our lives to be ruled under condemnation instead of conviction and place all our worth on how we look we completely miss opportunities for the kingdom work that is set before us. We miss the chances to use our God-given gifts to impact the world around us, to see how we’ve been blessed and to bless others. We must step into conviction to be transformed but not fall under condemnation and be crushed. We must look at life as the product of growth and transformation not of good and bad moments.

It’s time we mediate on what is honorable, true, right and pure. focus on the our µfood for thought instead of our food for skinny´ because that’s where true health is found. Living with a kingdom perspective not a worldly one.

We are a miracle, the way our body functions and works together is something worth treating with great value and living within that great truth.

Scripture to help your Renewal

Psalm 139:14 – I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

1 Peter 3:3-4 – Do not let your adorning be external – the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear – but let your adorning be the hidden person
of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quite spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God with your body.

1 Timothy 4:8 – for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

Colossians 3:2 – Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.