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Bad Roots 

In my life, my most consistent insecurity has always been my body. 

Since I was a toddler, I remember hearing family members on both sides of my family commenting in some way or another about my weight.

“You sho’l like to eat,” my mother’s, skinny athletic side of the family would say before I would even put food on my plate.

“Are they feeding you over there?” My dad’s chubby family would say any time I would walk in the room. 

So I always got the sense that I was “average” in looks; never overweight but also never at what I thought the world viewed as a “beautiful” size. 

“You’re not fat, you’re just big-boned,” my mom would often say when I told her that a cousin teased me for how I looked. 

“What does big-boned mean mama?” I would ask. 

“It just means that your bones are a little bit thicker than everybody else baby, so one piece of chicken in your body looks like you ate two.” 

My mom continued to explain that I had a body type like my dad, who along with the majority of his immediate family, happens to be excessively overweight.

It wasn’t something that was bad, but it was something that I was going to have to accept because it was genetic, in my DNA—this was the body God had designed for me to live in.

As my mom noticed that I was growing more concerned over my weight, she tried to settle my nerves by advising me to be mindful of what I ate and understand that I couldn’t eat the same as everyone else. 

So because of these words that I heard from a young age about who I was, throughout my school years, I gained such an unhealthy obsession with watching my weight, that my weight and how I looked became my identity. 

I took so much pride in who I was based on the numbers that were written on the scale.

I reasoned that all my wants, desires, and goals could be achieved if I looked a certain way and so I spent years in high school yo-yo dieting, never seeing any results. 

I started counting calories and whenever I went over my limit, I would binge eat the next day beating myself up with the thought that I could never lose weight because I was just meant to be an unathletic, chubby girl for the rest of my life. 

I would check the scale almost daily to make sure I was losing weight and if I gained even half a pound I was stressed out and discouraged. 

I was so discouraged that I would wear black most of the time to hide my chubby curves. On top of this, the acne and eczema that I suffered from dampened my confidence even more, and I often thought my arms and my legs were too ugly to show in public, so even in the hot Georgia summers I would be caught wearing dark-colored, long-sleeved cardigans and shirts.

Eventually, I stopped these eating and dressing habits, because even though I gained a better understanding of nutrition and health, the real change came when I changed my diet from the word of men to the Word of God.

New Woman, New Diet 

Through my walk with Christ, I have learned something very important: because I am not like the rest of the world, I can’t afford to act like the rest of the world. 

God has called me, and all believers, to be set apart from the world; this is our new nature in Christ. 

Many of the things that we see happening to our physical bodies actually occur within our spiritual bodies first. For example, when we digest a lie, it can give us spiritual indigestion, that if left in our system can impact all the other things we eat. 

That is why it is very important to take care of our spiritual health first and foremost. 

Just like an elephant cannot eat a lion’s diet, a Christian cannot eat a worldly diet. 

If an elephant tries to eat a lion’s diet, he will experience some significant digestion issues; and the same thing will happen to the lion who decides to switch its heavy meat diet to an omnivorous diet. 

In a similar way, many Christians are experiencing spiritual constipation simply because we are eating foods that go against what we were designed to ingest.

So what exactly is the Christian meant to ingest?

As Christians, we are designed to be nourished by the fruit of Christ, not the fruit of this world or the fruit of our own lusts and desires. 

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” –  Galatians 5:22-23

The Lord has created for us the best possible diet. In the very beginning, in the garden, God set aside so many good things and good fruits for Adam and Eve to eat. 

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” – Genesis 2:15-17

But they still desired something more.

When we start seeking fruit we aren’t meant to eat, we are stepping away from God’s table to a ground littered with rotten fruit such as anxiety, doubt, and fear.

We are spending too much time eating fruit that we were never meant to eat. 

We must embrace the fact that we are different and set apart, or else we will constantly be sickening our bodies by feeding it the wrong foods. 

If we continue to identify with the nature of the fleshly man, which is corruptible, we will continue to pursue the cravings of the flesh and reap the fruits of those cravings which ultimately lead to death (1 Corinthians 15). The foods of the flesh are anything that is contrary to God’s Word.

When you decide to follow Christ, He changes your nature into one that is incorruptible, holy and rooted in Him. 

Our new incorruptible, righteous nature needs the Word of God, hours of joyful songs, encouragement from fellow believers, and time in prayer and fasting to produce the everlasting fruits that we were created to produce. 

It is only the Word of God, the presence of God, and the things of God that the Christian nature can thrive in. 

Paul talks about how we fight against our flesh for control, but through the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to overcome fleshly desires. 

The incredible part about Jesus’ sanctification is that we don’t keep those desires, but we are given a new palate and a new craving for peace and patience and goodness and self-control.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” – Galatians 5:16-17

We are not just flesh and bone, we also have a soul and the Spirit, and if we don’t take care of our body in its wholeness we are only going to notice that some of the symptoms have gone away but the root is still very much rotting. 

You can’t treat a sick elephant with lion food, and you can’t treat a dehydrated fish by putting him in a birdcage.

Likewise, you can’t care for a sick daughter of God simply with self-care, mindfulness, and the like. You need to put the fish back in the water and put the child of God back in her Shepherd’s hand.

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Nutritious Thinking

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace,” – Romans 8:5-6 

I grew up professing Christianity, but it wasn’t apparent until college when I started to change my spiritual diet, that the fruits of my born-again nature could be seen. 

During this season, I stopped seeking what was in God’s hands and started seeking His face. 

I craved to simply know Him and stopped caring about the things I could receive from Him.

This desire was prompted simply because I heard a pastor say in a sermon that if you knock, God will answer. 

I suddenly began to realize that God was accessible, and I wanted to be in God’s house. It blew my mind to think that this great God of the universe was willing to open His door up to me. 

This hunger to know God put me on a daily meal plan of the Bible. I ingested the Bible day and night and any questions that I had I would write them down in a journal with expectancy that if God wanted me to know Him, He would answer the questions I had about His Word. 

And through the Holy Spirit, God did answer my questions, God did talk to me, and I did get closer to Him. 

It was because of this intimacy that my insecurities about my body image and other self-identity issues started to minimize in my heart. 

I started seeing something bigger than a number on the scale—I saw a God who loved me.

But there have been up and downs, or what I like to call “yo-yo faith”. 

I have noticed that whenever I start feeling discouraged about things like my body image, my relationship status, my gifting, my calling and my purpose in life, I’m usually not spending time with God. 

Likewise, I have noticed that every time that I am encouraged, motivated, and overflowing with creative ideas, it has always been a moment in my week or month that I am heavily feeding on the Word. 

Knowing my nature in Christ helped me better understand not only my identity and purpose in life but also the actions I needed to take to pursue that calling. 

And one of those actions has been to limit my media consumption. 

The more that I’ve limited my media consumption and replaced it with time spent reading the Word, watching sermons, and singing worship songs—the more that I’ve received revelation of Scripture, grew bolder in my faith and identity, and worried less about my insecurities. 

And although I still have a desire to look a certain way physically, my weight is no longer something that worries me, nor is it something that I place my identity and self-worth in.

The difference is that I stopped chewing on the words of my family, and have been eating a hardy plate of John, Romans, and Hebrews. 

It was through the Holy Spirit that I started to actually see the things that made me beautiful! 

I discovered that my worth is not defined by the world, but that I am defined by God’s Word alone. At the end of the day, I am who He says I am, and He says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  

“For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.” – Psalm 139:13-14

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