Since this isn’t a diet, I don’t want to call this “Basics of H.E.A.L.” and leave it there! Really, this isn’t temporary like a “diet;” this is to be a permanent change. In my eating and in my thinking.

On page 35, the authors state: …healthy eating has less to do with the type of food you eat and more to do with the relationship you have with food and God. Healthy eating in the HEAL sense is having an emotionally healthy approach to food. It means bringing God into the center of your relationship with food and learning to trust and obey the way he made you.

Truthfully, today something went awry. My heart and brain checked out and I didn’t eat what I had planned to eat at 0. I was hungry for breakfast and for my lunch and did ok there…but after that, I didn’t wait for 0. I grabbed greedily at this or that. It wasn’t bingeing…far from that, but it was also far from the positive behavior that I thought had become habitual.

Sometimes I wonder if the Lord allows me to see a day like this so I realize just how dependent I am on him. If he isn’t the center of my relationship with food, I am a mess. Left to my own devices…well, it is pretty pathetic.

Right now is a new moment. I choose to capture this moment for the Lord. I will not wait for tomorrow. To wait is to give in to the old dieting mentality. Instead, I will declare THIS my new moment, my new “day,” my “Monday,” my “fresh start!” Thank you, Lord, that I can do that.

Further down the page, the authors state that diets “…overlook the underlying reasons why we may have an unhealthy relationship with food, our body, exercise, or other aspects of our lives. Diets give food the upper hand and attempt to fix our appearance, but not our heart.”

Colossians 2:20-23 is a powerful scripture for this very thing. I don’t know how I could ever go on another diet…even if I could toss out my experience (which has taught me that I become more obsessed by dieting), I couldn’t toss this scripture aside. I would have to “re-interpret” it. Don’t think that will happen.

I know that this battle has kept me fiddling with trinkets, distracted by the lesser things, with an illusive vapor of some sort…when the Lord has so much more in mind for me. I think there is definitely a new greater thing emerging here. I keep saying this, I realize, but then I catch wind afresh of just how true this is. I am praying that I will hate sin, love obedience to anything the Lord calls me to do or be, and desire to be appropriately active for the sheer joy of moving the body he has given me. I am eager to see how he will answer these prayers in the day ahead!