food fight

Are we, or are we not obsessed with food? I like the movie Over the Hedge. I particularly like the monologue about the humans' relationship with food. It is on the nose! From a raccoon's perspective, the phone is the instrument we use to summon food, the car is for transporting food, the door is the portal for food, the treadmill is so we can eat more food, etc. And then all the leftovers get put into shiny silver cans.

I have my own food issues. More than I would like to have!! I used to live for food. If you were to tell me I had won a trip to Italy, my very first thought would be about the food I could eat there! When planning a trip to the State Fair, I wasn't thinking about the exhibits I could visit, but about the food vendors I would visit!

"First, a handmade corndog and onion rings, then later a candy apple. I have to get some Cotton Candy; can't go to the Fair and not get COTTON CANDY! And it's always SO HOT! I will need a snow cone. OH, and the Indian Frybread! We will stay long enough so I can have an Indian Frybread Taco for dinner. Then I'll need dessert, of course."

That may sound exaggerated, but sadly it's not. Fortunately the prices at the Fair prohibited my fulfilling these greedy fantasies!

Anyway, you get the point! I was an overeater and food had a tight hold on me!

One day, I got sick. Not the first time I had ever been sick, but this was different and just got worse. I would be so nauseated in the evenings that I didn't eat supper, (not such a bad thing, really). But one day I got Really sick and the doctor told me it was probably my Gallbladder. The tests were inconclusive, however.
Now, as much as I loved food, my fear and loathing of surgery was even greater! So the Lord just happened to introduce me to a woman who had been through the same thing. She had treated herself naturally with diet changes and she was very helpful in showing me what to do. So, rather than have a possibly sick, possibly not, gallbladder removed, I changed my diet.

Ha! Easier said than done! I will never forget the day she said to me that I had to cut out fat; almost ALL fat. Other than taking some nutritious oil, like fish oil, I was to have no fat. And then she said, “You can never eat fried foods again." I went home and I cried as if someone had died. I argued with God. I told Him I couldn't do that. "I CAN NOT LIVE without fried foods!" But after much weeping and time on my knees, I almost physically felt something break. I said something like, "Ok, God, if this is what it takes to be obedient to you. If I have to give up fried foods, I will. The fact that this is so difficult proves to me that I HAVE to give this up. My love for food is beyond love, it is sin." So something in me broke that day...The hold that food had on me.

Now just because it is broken doesn't mean it is gone!! But it is weak and I am able to keep it under submission.

Since that time I have given up many different foods for various health reasons. You don't even want to know the things I can't eat! But on the bright side, I can, and do eat fried foods!! They just have to be properly prepared.

But I still have a problem. I am still obsessed with food!! It is more practical, and it is from a different perspective, but it still causes me to think about food more than I would like. I have to always be thinking about whether or not I should eat this or that. Does this have that ingredient in it? And when I go to a restaurant...Oh Brother!! Talk about high maintenance women! LOL
This constant thinking of food that I do now, does not reek of idolatry the way my old obsession did. But still, it takes up brain space that I would rather use for something else!

But, praise the Lord, I still have my gallbladder! I have lost and kept off 50 pounds! And food? I can take it or leave it! You put a fudge covered brownie in front of me, and I can actually say "no, thank you"! If I choose to.

Because God is good!