New Year’s Nutrition Evaluation
Photo courtesy of Freepik
Evaluating our relationship with food is like evaluating our relationships with anything else; at the end of the day, most of us know we’re not doing what we think we should be doing. This tends to invite shame to take a seat at the table with us at every meal. Much like when Jesus encounters the woman at the well in the Bible’s Gospel of John chapter 4, whether in screams or whispers, shame communicates to us that we are worthless, inadequate, and fundamentally flawed. It is the intense “ick” that leads us to withdraw, hide, and manipulate the truth we share with others and ourselves. But I’d like to suggest, friends, in this season of new beginnings, that we take a different route, a courageous route, and look at our eating habits with curiosity and reflection rather than the route of shame that keeps so many of us stuck.
A Unique Relationship
Our relationship with food is unique among other relationships in that God designed our bodies to need food multiple times a day, every single day in order to function well. (He could have created us to eat one time and never again, which would be pretty boring.) As such, our need for food provides opportunities for us to do many things: to pause multiple times per day from our other activities, to notice God’s provision and give thanks for it, to express joy-giving creativity in our choices of sustenance, just to name a few. But like anything else in life, we must be watchful of our relationship with food as it can quickly and sneakily become a source of unbalanced and obsessive comfort, avoidance, control, and unnecessary restriction.
The Purpose of Food
One factor to acknowledge is that food is deeply emotional for many of us. Memories and emotions can be intricately intertwined with eating or lack of eating. Food is often the center of gatherings and celebrations, and for many of us it is what we turn to when we are feeling unpleasant emotions, often without even realizing it. Yet when we think about food in the most general sense, it is not meant to be a salve for sadness or a fidget to occupy our hands when we’re bored, food is meant to be fuel for sustenance. And not all sustenance is created equal. In fact, if we pay attention enough to notice, we feel different emotionally, spiritually, and physically when we eat various types of foods. We feel different in these ways as well when we make a meal with our own hands, express gratitude for it, and eat slowly and without distraction. It is these sorts of practices that help our relationship with food stay in its rightful place, as a relationship that serves God instead of replacing God. On some level, all of us struggle to honor God with our bodies consistently in this way. But since we cannot simply decide to “give up” eating, let’s take an honest look at where we are at. Instead of making a “resolution to do better”—a resolution we may not even keep through this week—let’s consider ways forward that go beyond resolutions.
Assessing Your Food Relationship
At the end of the day, our wellness journeys should always be aimed towards progress rather than perfection. This shift may seem subtle or sappy at first glance, but it is radically important. With that in mind, here are some ways to reflect on the subject of food in your own life:
Take a step back and ask yourself what a day of eating generally looks like for you. Not with shame, but with genuine curiosity.
Reflect on how you feel emotionally and physically before, during, and after each time you eat.
Try to nail down a simple yet powerful “why” statement that motivates you to eat well and is in line with your personal values.
Like he did with the woman at the well, Jesus invites us into his loving presence to evaluate ourselves with the honesty and clarity we desperately need to grow. Eating well, whatever that might look like for you, has to matter to you personally before any true changes will be able to be made. The goal is to have a healthy lifestyle, one that is connected to feeling good, functioning at our best, and enjoying closeness with God through eating as he designed it.
