Weight Control - God's Plan for Eating

Excerpted from
Eat and Stay Thin: Simple, Spiritual, Satisfaction Weight Control
By Joyce Meyer

Most diets fail because they are built on the starvation principle. They deny the body the nourishment it needs to maintain health and vitality. Whenever the body is deprived of its basic requirements, sooner or later it begins to rebel and demand what it needs to perform properly. The result is often the feast and famine cycle - which is why any weight lost is quickly regained.

That is not God's plan.

Do It God's Way!

Teach me Your way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain and even path.... - Psalm 27:11

God has a plan for everything in life, and that plan works whether the person who follows it is saved or unsaved. For example, the principle of sowing and reaping, ... For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap (Galatians 6:7), works for the unbeliever as well as for the believer.

The same is true for eating. If we really want to maintain proper weight and reap the benefits of good health that go with it, we must eat according to God's plan. There is no other permanent solution, there are only temporary "fixes" that often end in misery and frustration.

I know of many people who spend large amounts of time and money following various fad diets in a desperate attempt to lose excess weight. Although they may lose for a while, invariably they gain back what they have lost - and often even more. It is a vicious cycle.

I know of one lady who went on a liquid diet and over a period of time lost sixty or seventy pounds. Sometime later I ran into her out shopping, and she had gained back every bit of the weight she had lost.

Why did that happen? It happened because in all her dieting she had not really learned good eating habits. She was not nourishing her body properly. By denying her body what it needed for health and energy, she was literally starving it. As soon as she quit starving and started back eating, she gained back everything she had lost. As so often happens, soon she was right back out of control in her eating.

That is the usual dieting cycle: starvation to lack of control. That is not only frustrating, it is also dangerous. It is not God's way.

Listen Before Eating

And your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way; walk in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left. - Isaiah 30:21

Whether we eat the wrong things or overeat because we are out of control, or because we have some kind of emotional fear of going hungry, or because of some other psychological or spiritual problem, the underlying reason is still the same. We have been programmed wrong when it comes to eating. We need to be reprogrammed according to God's plan and will for us.

The way we reprogram ourselves in this area is by spending time with God before each meal and listening to Him before we start eating. By that I don't mean we have to go off somewhere and get down on our knees and pray before we put anything in our mouth. But we do need to be mindful of the Holy Spirit within us and learn to communicate with Him about what and how much we are to eat.

Dealing with Temptation

In our modern food-conscious society, there is no way to avoid food or the temptation that often comes with it. Jesus has told us that in this world temptation must come. (John 16:33.) That's why He also told us to pray that we enter not into temptation. (Luke 22:40,46.) He knew that although our spirit may be willing to resist the temptation of wrong eating, our flesh is weak in this area. (Matthew 26:41.)

If you are tired of being in bondage, resist the temptation to following the rules and regulations of diets and the desires of the flesh, which are often to eat what you don't even want! Learn to depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit within you to help you resist the ordinary impulses of your carnal nature so that you can choose what your body really wants and needs.

God wants to set us free from our self-imposed bondage, but He has to wait until we reach the point of truly listening to Him. Now that I have been set free, I am able to help many others who are going through the same things I endured for so long.

The lesson we all need to learn is that depriving ourselves is not the answer. It only leads to temptation - and all the misery that goes with it.