First of all I came to understand the immediate causes for my own recent weight gain – over a stone in less than two months. Firstly, we had just returned, prematurely, from a missionary posting in Africa. A crisis had occurred, and with a cloud of disillusionment and disappointment hanging over my head, I had simply eaten to help deaden the pain. Then I had suddenly been presented with an enormous choice of delicious food which had been denied me whilst living overseas. I ate it as if the food would be here today and gone tomorrow. Not only this, but Christmas was looming. What other excuse did I need to over-indulge?! And finally, in early January, we had taken a cheap vacation on a Mediterranean island. The weather was grim, the sights mediocre and the hotel disappointing. The one plus factor, so far as I was concerned, was that I could eat to my hearts content as all the meals were buffet style. I simply had to get my money’s worth…..  Also, having decided to try and diet when I got home, I wanted to have a final fling!

I came to realise just how much I was eating to feed not only my stomach, but also my head and my heart. Throughout 2004 I learnt to submit all of these thoughts and emotions to God and He has renewed my mind so that I was no longer governed by faulty and unhelpful thinking nor was I in need of food in order to cope with life’s stresses.
After thirteen months I had released sixty pounds of surplus fat and, for the first time in my adult life, I had a BMI within the normal range, which has been maintained now for more than two years. I have reduced from being a size 20 to a size 10-12 and have more energy than I ever believed possible for my age. I thank God for opening my eyes to understand the issues behind disordered eating and for letting me experience the joy of living in the body which He had prepared for me all along! It is with gratitude to Him that I now seek to pass on what I have learnt to others.

I now consider that regular diets are something of a curse, demanding from us a performance which it is impossible to maintain. They are based on self-effort, leaving us condemned, ashamed and disappointed time and time again. However, as we submit our wills to God He leads us into truth which ultimately sets us free from the inside out. Thus we are released from our dependency on food, released from external controls and released from patterns of thought and behaviour which make us eat for all the wrong reasons.