Brandice Lardner

Unfortunately, if you’re stuck in the diet mentality, those small, sustainable changes (even the ones that you’re trying to do unto the Lord) can backfire. Before you make any changes to your food (or even start a diet), I’d like you to consider these two important things It’s letting one little slip, one little unwanted bite, or one little unexpected food choice turn into a binge. Even if you start in the small, sustainable change kind of way, one bad weigh-in or one bad body image day will get you into that all-or-nothing thinking.

For example, if you want to lose weight, you may set a behavior goal to eat more vegetables, eat a little bit less at meals, or have more protein. That’s the daily stuff that’s going to lead, hopefully, to those desired outcome goals. And when you’re really feelin’ it, it’s going to get a lot easier to push away in those moments, because making decisions that do not line up with our values feels really icky. And if we cannot in any way tie our outcome goals to our values, then we may need to search for new outcome goals because they may not be that important to us.

So, how do we move forward in these promises when it comes to weight loss, exercise, and body image? When we exercise for weight loss, we’re robbed of the opportunity of experiencing the joy and pleasure that exercise can bring to our bodies. When we rest in God’s love and grace, we will trust Him to take care of our bodies, and we won’t be consumed with thoughts of exercising for weight loss. And, when our hearts line up with God’s Word and will, so will our body image and exercise efforts.

The second principle of intuitive eating teaches us to listen to our body’s hunger cues (not diet rules or even what our own judgment says) and eat when we are hungry. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – When we look at intuitive eating through a biblical lens, it has the potential to heal our relationships with food and reconnect us to our bodies and to God.