What is your goal for this study? We’ll discuss several self-defeating goals a bit later in this study, but for now let’s consider what a good, sustainable goal would be for this study:

To develop and sustain a satisfying lifestyle
That seeks to honor God by being a good steward of the particular body He gave you
By relating to food in a healthy way
And recognizing that God gave us food to be enjoyable fuel

“We need a new relationship with food altogether, seeing it as an aspect of life but not the reason for life. While food ultimately is fuel for our physical vessel, it is also something we accept as a pleasurable and good gift from God. There is evidence of his care for us and that his provision of food goes beyond necessity to include aspects of his generosity and kindness (p. 53).” Gary Thomas in Every Body Matters: Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul

Notice that in this approach we do not use numbers – ideal weight, desired pant size, pounds to lose-gain per month, etc… We simply want to be a good steward of the body God gave us. That is “success.” We will talk about numbers later, but they merely serve the larger purpose of stewarding our body. When numbers get in the front of our mind and priorities, bad things happen.

This stands in contrast to ways that we often think about changing our eating habits (contrasting with four points above):

We think about short-term fixes that we’ll abdicate in the near future
We try to manipulate or condemn our body to conform to some idealized shape or weight
By relating to food in unhealthy ways or manipulating ourselves with food as a reward or punishment
And trying to use food to distract us from or resolve struggles over which it has no influence

Hopefully, you can begin to see that most people try to change their eating habits by becoming personally abusive. Shame, condemnation, and coercion are their emotional motivators of choice. If they parented their children or treated their co-workers like they related to food, they would be arrested or fired. God wants something better for you.

You can also see that most attempts at changing our relationship to food are self-sabotagingly short-term. Whether it’s someone who over-restricts eating a bit less to get parents off their back, or someone who over-eats “going on a diet,” the dysfunctional relationship with food remains the “norm” from which they commit to temporarily depart. God wants something better for you.

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