THE JOURNEY

I love reading. I love knowledge. And I love thinking deeply about why we were born, why we are here, what our main purpose is, how we can step into who we really are.

Now, that sounds really good, but my main issue: food. Throughout my 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, I ate all the things, felt terrible, always gained weight, then tried a million ways to lose that weight.

That process made me feel inadequate. Insecure. Inferior.

Like most women, I wanted to feel good about my body, yes, but more than that, I just wanted to feel good.

FOR YEARS, THIS WAS ME:

Bloated. Inflamed. Tired. Cold. Crabby. Overweight. Learning how to eat is not just about doing a program such as The FASTer Way. We also have to incorporate the whole person into it.

So let’s go on a spiritual journey, shall we?

I want to take you into the three stages that we all go through (without even knowing about it) when we succumb to diet culture. And it aligns to our walk with God the Father.

• Stage One: the Journey from God (from self)

• Stage Two: the Journey to God (to self)

• Stage Three: the Journey in God. (this is where we end the search for more and better, but understand we have it all IN HIM)

Stage One: Neil T. Anderson enjoys asking people, “Who are you?” Most people respond with their name or what they do. If fact, in “The Journey from God”, you believe you are what you do. So you work hard to produce. To be the best. The thinnest. The most popular. It’s great when you are doing well and have achieved material greatness or spiritual elitism, but a star performance plus accomplishments don’t truly make us whole. And since everyone, even the famous, rich and popular, must die, the journey FROM God ends in bitter disappointment every time.

In the food version of this first stage, which can be called The Journey FROM SELF, you basically spend your entire existence trying to achieve wholeness, trying to fix yourself, and you do it through dieting, bingeing, obsessing. The end goal: to reach that ultimate place, Your Ideal Weight, knowing that then, and only then, will you free yourself and become who you really are.

“Since the relationship with food is only a microcosm for your relationship with the rest of your life…any attempts to change the food part without also engaging in the beliefs it represents, will…end in disappointment 100 percent of the time” (Roth 199).

In Stage Two, which is about the journey to God, is where St. Paul describes the fleshly person: you know your body is a temple, but you cannot quite present your body as a living sacrifice. At least not yet. Maybe one day, but not now.

You know everything you can and should do, but knowing something doesn’t actually create change. This is where you sort of give up on your dreams of self-mastery. You like the sound of life in the Spirit, but oddly, keeping the weight on and the drama going is almost comforting. So you settle and disengage from your truest self, declaring that life is okay as it is.

In the final stage, the JOURNEY IN GOD, you step into this knowledge: I have been rescued from sin. At my baptism, I was transferred into the KINGDOM of His Beloved Son. I don’t have to be a slave. Liberation is truly my birthright. My mind has been (and will continue to be) renewed.

The truth of the matter: I am already whole. I am IN HIM. I am in the promised land and can operate from THAT PLACE. I don’t have to prove something. I don’t have to try to do it on your own. I AM IN HIM and HE IS TO BE TRUSTED. I am already beautiful, saved, redeemed, adored, cherished.

How that relates to the food journey: you have already arrived at who you really are. You don’t need a scale to be the one to tell you so. You.Are.Whole.Now.

Why this is important: we live in a culture that says we are what we do. And when we don’t quite have the eating/exercising part down, we can feel inferior, moving us to the second stage of disillusionment and disengagement. But we were made for more. For all of this to make more sense, please go through my online course, Inside Out. I created it because once I understood how much I was loved, I was able to step into my life. And eating whole foods became easy. Sounds crazy, but it is true. I didn’t have to pretend. I didn’t have to opt out. I could live in peace. It’s a journey worth taking.