As someone who weighed 185 pounds after I graduated high school, nutrition has become near and dear to my heart.
We’ve all enjoyed a meal from a fast-food restaurant. It’s good, right? It’s quick, easy and pretty cheap, usually.
Ever enjoyed something sweet? Okay, so we can relate even more. Cookies, cupcakes, a Starbucks Frappuccino … I’m sure all of us like some sugar.
There are a ton of foods out there that you can easily obtain that require little-to-no effort to prepare. I’m probably not going out on too much of a limb by feeling that nearly every one of us likes, or may even crave, those types of foods.
It’s interesting though, because those foods often offer little nutrition, if any. They often have unwanted side effects such as sapping your energy and causing your skin to break out in addition to the most dreaded side effect in our culture: weight gain.
Yet, many of us tend to eat these foods pretty frequently because of their convenience. There’s seemingly a fast-food restaurant at every intersection.
Sugar is interesting if you ever take the time to do a little background check on it. The way it interacts with your brain is pretty cool.
You may have learned about this in science class at some point, or maybe you were asleep that day like I was. When you eat sugar, it releases endorphins in your brain. Endorphins are your built in feel-good drug. This is why drugs are also addicting. Both sugar and drugs release endorphins into your system. You feel happy and great, euphoric enough to belt out a line or two from the song, ‘Happy.’
But your sugar high will eventually run out. When that occurs, those endorphins vanish and you instantly hit your crash.
Your body is an amazing machine. Your body will change and adapt to what’s around it, and it will also change and adapt to the fuel you put inside of it.
If you ever take the time to read the ingredient labels on your packaged foods at home, I’d be willing to bet that 99% of those packaged products list some type of sugar as an ingredient, whether it’s honey, cane syrup or stevia.
Sugar is sugar. It all effects your brain the same way, triggering a release of your little endorphin buddies that float around and make you happy – until the sugar-high crash.
However, your body adapts to the fuel you give it.
When you were a little kid, sugar was awesome. Your parents probably didn’t let you have a whole lot of it, because your little system would just go crazy. As you grew up and your body got used to being fed sugar all day, it stopped affecting you the same way. It still triggered your brain to release the endorphins, but now the endorphins don’t do as much.
This becomes your body’s new normal. So instead of noticing a difference when you have sugar, you only notice a difference when you don’t have sugar. You may not necessarily realize that it’s the sugar causing this reaction because sugar is hidden in so many things, even things it has no business being in like bacon.
Me, Whole30 & my bacon meltdown
My husband and I have a nine-month-old baby – yeah, he’s a cute little stud if I may say so myself – but during my pregnancy I gained some weight. I’ve been working on getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight and athletic ability.
It’s been really hard.
I found this healthy eating program called the Whole30. It has done awesome things for a ton of people around the world – reversing diabetes, improving skin conditions and guiding people to the path of healthy living.
Since Whole30 is not something that requires a financial commitment, I gave the program a shot. It challenges you to completely cut out processed foods and added sugars for a full 30 days.
I got halfway through my first attempt when I went to the grocery store to buy my fancy six slices of bacon for seven bucks that I’d been eating. I guess the first time I bought it I didn’t read the label on the bacon. This particular time I did, and I realized it had sugar in it.
I checked every other brand of bacon that day in the grocery store and sure enough each one included sugar as an ingredient.
Sugar in bacon?! Really?!
I was so upset and frustrated, thinking ‘Why is this happening?’
I went home and cried, which seems silly but I was seriously that upset. I was thinking that I’m doing so great and I’m being healthy and I’m breaking out of my sugar habit, only to discover I’ve been eating it the whole time.
If you’ve ever tried to cut sugar out of your life before, you know how hard it is. If you haven’t, trust me, it’s very hard.
So there I was, 21years old with a beautiful family and yet I’m standing in the bacon aisle at the grocery store having a meltdown.
Despite my disappointed emotions over my personal bacon-gate, I’ve since reattempted my Whole30 program.
As of last month, I had lost 12 pounds and 10 inches. I’m also sleeping better at night, my skin is clearer and I am running a consistent nine-minute mile – which is one minute away from my goal for this year.
That’s pretty good, if I’m allowed to say so.
But getting to this point has been hard, and I’m not even done yet. I’m not even at my goals but I have been pounding the pavement, hitting the gym and ignoring the cookies every single day.
I’ve had some really bad days and several meltdowns. My husband thought I had gone crazy for about a week or so, I kid you not.
It is hard to stick to a healthy diet in today’s society of convenience and the whatever-makes-you-feel-good mentality that is so prevalent.
Spiritual nutrition even more important
Physical intake of food and beverages is not the only way to nourish yourself.
There is more to you than your physical body. You have thoughts, emotions, ideas, hopes and dreams. All of these intangible things are not bound to your physical body.
Just as you nourish your body with food, you also nourish the other parts of your being with the things you allow into your daily life
The Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 8:3, “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
During Jesus’ time here on earth he quotes this same verse to Satan. Jesus had been fasting in the desert for 40 days – 40 entire days without any food. Satan comes along to tempt him while his body is weak.
Matthew 4:3 states that “The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’”
When Jesus responded with Deuteronomy 8:3, of course he got it right. He is God.
But what you have to understand is that Jesus came to earth to give us an example of how to live.
If you call yourself a Christian, you are literally calling yourself Christ-like. In order to be like Christ, we have to know what he did. We have to know how he lived, otherwise how can we ever live like him?
Jesus nourished himself every single day, not with food and water but with the Word of God.
Your response might be, “Oh, but he is God so how can he nourish himself with his own Word?”
For us, of course!
Jesus was in the temple courts as often as he could be. He was teaching, he was preaching, he was healing. He was nourishing people there and everywhere else he went. He was changing peoples’ lives and he was equipping his disciples for battle.
Ephesians 6:12 tells us, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
All of us have struggled or may be currently struggling in some aspect of life. So Ephesians 6:12 applies to each of us.
A marathon runner does not wake up on race day and go check in at the start line and run without eating breakfast. If you go out to do any intense activity and you don’t prepare yourself, then you’re going to fail every single time.
The struggles we face in life are no different. You have to nourish your soul too. You are not a body. You are a soul, and you have a body.
And since we all know now that our struggles are not against flesh and blood – in other words they’re not against the people and tangible things of this world – then we need to be properly nourishing ourselves to fight back against those struggles. We can’t do that if we’re only feeding our souls on things that are from this world.
It’s hard. I know, I’ve been there done that, rolled my eyes at people that told me the same stuff I’m now blogging. But it’s worth it. It’s the right thing to do.
The challenge
Think of something you’ve been feeding on each day that may not be of the highest nutritional content for your soul. You’re probably thinking about how you don’t want to give it up, how it’s not hurting you, how it doesn’t really matter.
It’s just a song, just a TV show, just a video game, just a hobby. It’s not reality. It can’t possibly be hurting you. But just like that hidden sugar in so many foods that has no business being in, there’s probably something affecting you in a negative way that you’ve accepted as normal for your life.
Here is my challenge: Make a commitment to yourself and to God to cut that thing out of your life. Don’t just cut back on it, give it up completely. Do it for a week or two or a month, whatever time period you think God is speaking to your heart. Cut it out of your life and just see how you feel.
When I gave my life to God, I gave up my favorite TV show. I’m telling you I was so addicted to this show that I would unplug the phone in my house every week when it was on. I had the first three or four seasons on DVD, and I literally broke the discs and threw them in the trashcan. I deleted every single secular song and artist off my iPod. Those were things that were holding me back from what God wanted me to be.
Understand this is personal, this is something that’s between you and God. Cut it out. Replace it with God’s Word – the ultimate nourishment for your life.
If you don’t have a Bible, get one. If you can’t buy one, you can download the free Bible app.
I’m encouraging you to give God ten minutes every day of reading his Word and through prayer. See how you feel about that thing you’re attempting to cut out of your life after two weeks
If you want to be better prepared for the struggles you deal with in life, you need better nourishment. There’s no better intake than time with God through his Word and prayer.
It’s that simple.
Inside Look @ Our Featured Blogger:
Karissa Stratton and her husband, Stephen, along with their baby son, Samuel, first attended Calvary Grace in January of this year. They are a military family from Florida and took no time to fit in with our church. By March, Karissa and Stephen became integral parts of our new REVIVE Kids program, teaching regularly on Sundays in the 3-6 and 7-10-year-old classes. Karissa also has a huge passion for youth ministry given her relationship with God took off in her Florida youth group as a teenager. She is a young adult leader in our REVIVE Youth program, spearheading prayer groups and taking an active role in the Wednesday services.
