I want to tell you about “the perfect diet” for weight loss, a diet in which you can eat anything you wish of all good things. It is safe and sure, perfect and proven. It is the only diet that works. It costs less, far less than any other, with lasting results. I give it to you freely. If not, I would not have it myself to give.
My uncle egged me on to compete with him in how much we could eat.
I am now nearly fifty-nine. In my seventh year, I was sent to live with my great aunt and uncle to go to a country school that was closer to their place for walking than it was to ours. I was normal in weight, but by the time the year and a half had passed living with them, I ended up nearly twice the weight I should have been. I was the only child, pampered and undisciplined. Everything was delicious, cooked or fried in cream or butter. Cake, cookies, candies, homemade bread, cream, butter, and fruits (those I would have with cream and sugar) were always accessible in abundance.
Food volume was an even greater factor than was richness. For example, by the time my stay ended with them when I was eight, my breakfast consisted of a half grapefruit with sugar, a large bowl of sweetened Shreddies or oatmeal, with milk, cream and sugar, two large slices of homemade bread with butter and jam, and one or two turkey eggs (each at least two to three times larger than chicken eggs). In my lunch pail to school, as a typical example, I would take two or three sandwiches (four to six large slices of homemade bread), well buttered and stocked, a goodly piece of chocolate or banana cake, an apple or banana, and a pint of whole milk.
For supper, I would eat more than at any other meal. I recall, for example, sitting down to a supper of homemade perogies, which are at least twice the size of most commercial ones, served up with sour cream and cranberry sauce, and eating forty-two of them. My uncle was always joking and egging me on to compete with him in how much we could eat. I remember practically rolling off the chair onto a cot in a stupor, and lying there to digest the food. My uncle and I would compete for the succulent bread crusts, larger portions of food, and volume. I took pride in being able to beat him. He and I would compete for first one to the couch after each supper.
When I returned home to a family of at least three other siblings, and to a home where food was not nearly as rich, available, or plentiful, and having to walk three times as far to school, I began to shed the pounds. In about three to four years I was becoming normal. In those years of obesity, I had been teased, ridiculed, shunned, and last to be picked for teams, unable to participate effectively in sports and other activities. I was always ashamed of myself.
I started to gain again in my later teens, and by age twenty-five, I was at least thirty pounds overweight, at one hundred and ninety-three pounds. People were telling me I was getting too heavy but I had a difficult time doing anything about it. I loved my food and alcohol.
God disciplined us to eat properly. I was in shape and happy for it.
Having a skiing accident, the doctor who operated on my leg put me on a twelve hundred calorie diet for my leg’s sake. It had been so damaged that I needed to spare it all the weight I could. I lost twenty-eight pounds in thirty-five days. The weight stayed off until I was about twenty-six, by which time I had gained back all but ten pounds.
It was about this time that I came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and my life took a 180-degree turn. At age twenty-seven, months after believing, I went on Weight Watchers. (God is over Weight Watchers!) In a little over a year, I lost twenty-five pounds or so, bringing me back to an acceptable weight.
Within two years, I had regained close to ten pounds and decided to do Weight Watchers again, this time privately. I lost twenty pounds in two more years, going down lower than I had ever gone before, one hundred and forty-seven pounds. I was very thankful to be so slim and in shape. My wife and I went to Israel around that time, and within a year, I gained back close to fifteen pounds.
Returning to Canada, one day the Lord said to me, “By the next time you see Paul (a brother in Christ whom my wife and I had met in Israel), you’ll be slim and trim.” (God is over time, our plans, visits, friends, our weight, and condition!) Along came a business opportunity knocking at our very door (God is over opportunities), and I got into moving and hauling wherein I became slim once again with some dieting and exercise. I came to be one hundred and fifty-three pounds of slim and trim muscle at age 34.
We had learned some about eating healthily and abstaining from junk foods. God had disciplined us to eat properly (read Christian Physical Diet to see what else He showed us about food). I was in shape and happy for it. I could wear boys’ size 30 jeans at five foot ten. We saw Paul within about three months of the time the Lord had spoken to me. I was indeed slim and trim. His Word was fulfilled.
I remained slim and trim for about a year. Then we ceased our business and headed out on the road in a travel trailer. On that road, shortly after, we stopped at a campground. This was in 1981. There at a concession booth, on a hot summer day, they were selling ice cream products. I was craving ice cream.
We had learned not to eat the garbage sold on the market, including conventional ice cream, with all its additives and processing, and we had been eating homemade ice cream. Having none of our own, and craving ice cream, I went to the concession stand, with guilty conscience, and purchased an ice cream bar. I saw the dark spiritual forces in the faces of those near me, including the lady selling me the ice cream, and they were chuckling.
I had lost a precious and much enjoyed victory over an ice cream bar!
As I opened the wrapper, ready to bite, I heard a voice say, “If you eat that ice cream bar, you will have your weight problem back again.” (God leaves nobody without warning.) It was a stern voice. I did not recall God ever speaking to me in that tone before. Rationalizing, I disregarded it as my imagination, or even as the voice of the Devil, because of the stern tone, and ate the bar. I was guilty, knew I was guilty, and felt the guilt.
By the time nine months had passed, from summer to spring the following year, I was fighting my weight problem again. (God knew.) Added to that, I now had the great regret of what I had lost.
I realized that the day the Lord had spoken to me about being slim and trim, that it had been something established for the long term, provided I did not disobey Him. I had lost a precious and much enjoyed victory over a lifelong, losing battle with my weight because of an ice cream bar! How grievous that was to me! Perhaps only people with a lifelong weight problem could understand.
Add to that the spiritual dimension of disobeying God, having ignored His clear warning, and suffering the consequences. It was indeed a sad and grievous thing to me. From that time forth in 1982, I have had to suffer the general defeat of intemperance with food and resultant excess weight, along with guilt, self-consciousness, and low self-esteem (God is Judge), that is, until December 20, 2004. (God appoints all times.)
Many times over the years, I confessed to God that I was wrong, that I had sinned. I had even thought that the voice, because it was stern, was the Devil’s and not God’s, that he was trying to put me “under condemnation.” I had even said so! Therefore, I had committed the unpardonable sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. When I realized I had done so, I was shaken, ashamed, and very grieved.
While I knew that the Lord had not cast me off – for He spoke to me of many things, revealed many things to me, and provided for our needs abundantly all those years -I knew there was no escaping the consequences of my sins pertaining to that ice cream bar. I begged His forgiveness many times, asking that He would forgive and heal me of this horrible problem. He did not reply, not in word or in deed. I resigned myself to the prospect of having the problem to my grave.
For the next twenty-three years, I was given at least some respite from time to time in that I was able to diet and lose, though I would gain it back again. Many times when I tried to stop overeating, or to go on a diet, I had no power to do so. I recognized, over and over again, that if God was not giving me the will power and the ability to lose weight, that I was helpless to do anything. Whenever He did give me the wherewith to lose, I knew, without doubt, that He was being merciful. (His judgment is tempered with mercy.)
I told them my story of what had happened with the ice cream bar.
Nevertheless, my weight kept creeping upwards until 2001, when He provided us with a device called the Chi Machine, invented by a Japanese medical doctor, which stabilized my weight. With the Chi Machine, I had stopped gaining for over three years, though I was about twenty-five pounds overweight during that time. (God had given a sister in Christ a vision promise of the Chi Machine.)
In March of 2004, Paul, Mark (another brother in Christ), and I traveled to Austria to a Grander technology convention. There, while having supper with about eight or nine other people, I told them my story of what had happened with the ice cream bar. (God provides the circumstance and opportunities.) I had never told this story to strangers before. Why I did it then, I am not sure, except that it was provoked by the circumstances of the enjoyable and delicious foods we were being served, including some European ice cream desserts.
The people listened, and wondered. Some did not agree with my interpretation of what had happened to me, but there it was. I felt thankful to share the sad secret with them. I weighed about one hundred and eighty-six pounds at the time, and had weighed so for years, with some fluctuation.
I had somewhat of a thankfulness for having confessed my “ice cream” tragedy. Then days later, a peculiar thing happened on our flight back to Canada from Austria. After our meal, the flight steward came down the aisle announcing that there was still some ice cream left from dinner, and that we could have more if we wished. Of all the flights I had ever been on, I had never witnessed this extra and repeat offer happen.
Mark was sitting next to me and accepted the offer. Now my inclination had always been to eat when others ate, as though I was missing out if they were eating and I wasn’t. I was inclined to eat if they didn’t eat, but especially if they did. This time, I simply decided to decline the offer.
Highly unusual to my past experience, yet a second time, the steward offered ice cream, saying, “There’s STILL some ice cream left! Who would like more?” If at all encouraged to take something in food, with which I would be tempted, it would often be that I would succumb, though I knew better, especially when it came to ice cream. However, I declined again. (God is the Father of spirits and inclinations.) They also offered beer. I refused, while Mark accepted. I see that Mark had to be there, doing as he did, in my time of trial and temptation, and in God’s demonstration of mercy to me.
The external was contradicting a little promise or hope I had within.
Now this was something for me. I didn’t feel like I was exercising willpower a whole lot. The stance seemed peculiarly easy to me. It felt good to refuse the ice cream. It occurred to me that God was restoring the victory over lack of temperance with food. I thought to myself, “Can this be? Is the Lord going to give me victory over food again, after all these years?” I was excited about the prospect. Something was happening and I was thankful and hopeful.
However, as the days progressed, I found myself in the usual helplessness and defeat. As the weeks and months progressed, I saw that the victory I thought that God might have given me was not a manifest reality. The external was contradicting a little promise or hope I had within.
Then about five months after that plane incident, in taking the counsel of others that one could eat certain fats and even lose weight, I began to gain more weight. However, when I tried to motivate myself to cut back on food, I just did not have it.
One morning, I got out of bed, went on the scale and found myself at the weight I had been at the time of my skiing accident nearly thirty-four years earlier, the highest weight ever… one hundred and ninety-three pounds. I had been feeling awful, somewhat lacking energy, clumsy, dull, weak, unable to enjoy activities with my thirteen-year-old son, whom God had given us in our later years. (God is over the womb, and over children.)
Hanging over my head were also the threats of heart disease, diabetes, and my old knee injury complicating with the weight. Heart disease was prevalent in my father’s family. He died of heart failure at age 68, his father at 72, and two or more of his brothers as well. Furthermore, I suffered as a failure psychologically, self-conscious of my weight, and depressed about my lack of discipline. Perhaps worst of all, naming the Name of Christ, and being in a ministry unto Him, I felt the hypocrite spiritually.
Clothes would not fit, and I was holding off buying any, with the hope that I would lose weight, and with the promise that I would buy a new wardrobe, mine being old or ill fitting. Enough was enough! I had to do something, but what? I knew I could not do it unless the Lord simply gave it to me. (God is over will power.)
I said, “Lord, please! I can’t go on like this! I know You have asked me to serve You with my infirmities, but how can it possibly be right to go on this way?” Then I decided again, hope against hope, to diet.
That was on December 20, 2004.
I keep a journal. Repeatedly, I have seen the TOTAL SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD in His timings, in all affairs, personal and otherwise, small and great, past, present, and future. One day, shortly after starting the diet, in which I thankfully found success, I was perusing my journal, and noticed that the plane incident was March 20, 2004 … nine months to the day I began a successful diet.
Ice cream brought me down, and ice cream was twice offered me.
My diet has now lasted four weeks, and I have lost thirteen pounds. In the past, I have always craved, whether in diet or not. This time, I am not craving … hungry some, not a lot, but not craving. I am enjoying my food, feeling much better, with energy, enthusiasm, thankfulness, and hope. Why hope? Here is what I perceive has happened to me:
1) After about twenty-four years of defeat over the ice cream bar, I was given to frankly share my tragic story of disobedience to God, with a table full of strangers. It was confession of sin.
2) On the heels of that confession, I experienced something special, if only for a few moments, a power to resist temptation to food. (God is the Author of victory.)
3) It was a lust for ice cream that brought me down, and it was ice cream that was unusually twice offered on a plane to me, while someone next to me was accepting the offer, thus further adding to the power of temptation. (God is over the air lines, over the stewards, over their food supplies, and over those sitting next to us.)
4) We were also offered beer. Mark accepted, and I refused. I like to have a drink here and there, though we drink almost nothing.
5) According to the dates, from the time I experienced a taste of victory on March 20, which I hadn’t had since 1981, to the day that victory “kicked in” on December 20, 2004, was exactly nine months, the term for human gestation, from conception to birth. (God is over the times and seasons.)
6) Relating this victory to Paul, he then told me what he had experienced on that plane trip. He was sitting across the aisle, about two or three seats back, and witnessed the event. He said he saw me decline, with victory, without struggle, with peace and contentment. (God provides confirmation and witnesses.)
7) If Paul had been sitting next to me instead of Mark (and he well could have been), he likely would have refused the offers, being temperate in these matters, and thus temptation would have been weaker for me. And he was also able to fulfil the role of an observer and testify to the event.
8) As I have already said, though I am hungry, I am not craving. Craving was a constant problem with me, dieting or no dieting. (God is over our appetites.)
9) As I experienced death on the day that I ate the ice cream bar in 1981, Hell opening its joyous jaws to receive me, so I experienced life on the plane on March 20, 2004 when declining, Heaven opening its welcoming arms to the prodigal returning home. (God is faithful, and merciful.)
10) With the “mote” out of my eye, I have been free to take the “sliver” out of the eyes of others, in mercy and temperance, knowing my frailty and helplessness without the grace and mercy of the Lord. (God gives mercy, then ministers mercy to others by us.)
How can YOU have that victory over food?
Reader, what can I say? Millions have an eating problem. More and more people are overweight and obese, and though many proclaim diets that work, there really is no diet out there that works. Rare is the person who loses the required amount of weight and keeps it off for years to come. That is because God is rarely "figured into the equation."
As you red my story (God is over spelling), you found that I was no more than a maximum of thirty-five pounds over my proper weight. You may have thought: “Big deal! Try three hundred and fifty pounds, or even a hundred! What is he complaining about?” But I know that if God had not had mercy on me in all those years, I would have been as badly off as I was at my aunt’s and uncle’s at age eight, nearly twice my weight and more. Still, the bondage and torment thereof were an ever-present reality.
How did God help me, even in my time of defeat? How can I have total victory now? More interesting for you: How can YOU have that victory over food, or anything else for that matter?
Concerning food, many are the health practitioners, scientists, doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, and merchandisers who will tell you thousands of things you can do or buy in order to eat properly or to achieve and maintain healthy weight levels. However, there are only two problems that God points to specifically in the Bible regarding what and how we should eat. One of the ways He did grant me mercy was that He revealed to us one of the principles of proper eating, and set us on the course to obey that principle for the most part. Here are the two specifics on diet that He mentions:
1) What we should, and what we should not eat, and
2) how much we should eat.
While there is very much said about food and eating in the Bible, those are the only two principles God specifically mentions, of which I am aware, that would affect our weight.
The Bible is clear on what we should and what we should not eat. God speaks of clean and unclean foods. Even science is now discovering the follies of eating those things He commanded His people in the Old Testament not to eat. “The proof is in the pudding.” Going to the Bible, you will know what and what not to eat, in broad terms.
Anybody in his or her right mind should be eating organic food.
The second thing that God condemns, or warns against, is gluttony and drunkenness. I firmly believe that overeating is killing more people than almost anything, if not anything else today, particularly in “the West.” While we have never seen more energy and money being spent on weight loss diets and exercise, we are witnessing pandemic obesity, everywhere, regardless of race, religion, occupation, social status, amount of wealth, marital status, sex, or age. It is a plague, costly and deadly.
There is a third factor involved, which, while God addresses indirectly in the Bible, is not specified. That is the quality of the food that should be eaten. Anybody in his or her right mind, if at all possible, should be eating organic food, free of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, antibiotics, growth hormones, artificial fertilizers, artificial sweeteners, colors and flavoring, preservatives, synthetic vitamins, irradiation, intensive processing, ripening gases, or genetically modified organisms.
The food, when produced, should be watered with good water, or if the water is at all questionable, with Grander Living, or revitalized, water. The soil in which the food is produced should be responsibly replenished, nurtured and revitalized as well. Our organic market farm is Granderized entirely, its soil constantly replenished, and free of all those things previously mentioned. God has graciously given us not only good food for the soul, but also good food for our bodies. (God is over lands, waters and food production.)
It is not only a logical, but also a proven, scientific fact that organic food is superior to conventionally grown food in both taste and nutrition. If the quality of the food is there, one will crave and eat less. Quality affects quantity; of that, make no mistake. Eating less, one will have a lesser problem with being overweight.
Therefore, it is a matter of what one eats (the Bible specifies), how much one eats, and the quality of what one eats.
Most importantly of all, I had sinned against God. Though I had been given what to eat along with the quality, I had no power over how much I ate because I disobeyed on the quality of what I ate, though He had taught me. I fell to lust. I had an attitude problem with food. I was in bondage to food because I was not obeying God, and walking in the light He had given me.
Here then is the answer to a healthy body. Find out what God requires of you, what He blesses and does not bless, what is His will concerning all things in your life, confess your sins to Him, repent of (turn from) them, believe and obey Him, and you will be delivered from the bondage you are in concerning food, or anything else.
Will my victory last? Only if I obey, and only if God wills.
This is not only advice for a healthy body, but also for a healthy mind and spirit. Let there be no doubt; sin has horrendous consequences, as I have amply experienced. Just think: I could have had the joy and freedom of life for nearly twenty-four years, a third of my life, in the department of food and weight, and all things related, had I but heeded God’s warning on that fateful day.
Even a fool-proof diet will not do if you have sin in your life. You can try all the diets you can find, but not one will truly, lastingly avail if you are not in harmony with God, particularly if you call yourself a Christian, because in such a case, you take upon yourself His Name in vain if you walk in disobedience. He says He does not hold one guiltless for that. I know. Even if your dieting were to succeed, so what? “What should it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his soul?” said Jesus.
If you are overweight or obese, God knows why, He knows what you need to do to get right with Him, He knows the time and the place, and when all that is taken care of, He will provide you with the right food, of good and proper quality, with the heart to eat moderately and wisely, and your weight problems will be history. There is no other true, effective, lasting, and satisfying way. This applies to ANY problem.
Will my victory last? Only if I obey, and only if God wills. If I have fallen to temptation before, who can say that it will not happen again? By God’s grace, I am kept and you will be kept.
I have the solution. I have shared it with you. Now the truth is in your hands.
Yours is only to trust and obey Him where you are able, and not where you are not.
I must make some important qualifications, however, that I hope people will not use as an excuse, deceiving themselves and others:
One – I have learned that God leaves infirmities (faults, weaknesses) with people for their good. Here is a very good example of such from His Record:
"And by the surpassing revelations, lest I be made haughty, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be made haughty. For this thing I besought the Lord three times, that it might depart from me. And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may overshadow me. Therefore I am pleased in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am powerful" (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 MKJV).
God has used both my weight problem and my troubling in the night to keep me in line. I know that if everything was going my way, I would be an arrogant, tyrannical jerk. Even Jesus, Who took upon Himself a body of flesh, "learned obedience by the things He suffered" (Hebrews 5:8).
Therefore, it could well be that you have a problem in your life over which you have no complete victory, not because you have sinned, but to keep you from sinning. Yes, He may have brought you that problem as a result of sinning, but His ways are manifold, and He works all things according to His unfathomably complex will. Yours is only to trust and obey Him where you are able, and not where you are not.
Two – If one does not have the grace of God to avoid sin, that person will sin:
Genesis 20:1-7 MKJV
(1) And Abraham moved from there toward the south country, and lived between Kadesh and Shur, and stayed in Gerar.
(2) And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister. And Abimelech the king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.
(3) But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, you are about to die, for the woman whom you have taken; for she is a man’s wife.
(4) But Abimelech had not come near her. And he said, Lord, will You also kill a righteous nation?
(5) Did he not say to me, She is my sister? And she, even she herself said, He is my brother. In the sincerity of my heart and innocency of my hands I have done this.
(6) And God said to him in a dream, Yes, I know that you did this in the sincerity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me. Therefore I did not allow you to touch her.
(7) Now therefore, restore his wife to the man. For he is a prophet, and he shall pray for you, and you shall live. And if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you, and all that are yours.
God prevented Abimelech from sinning against Abraham. Had God not done so, Abimelech likely would have died. God can prevent anyone from sinning, and we would do well to hope He does because without His grace, we are lost; we eventually destroy ourselves.
Three – There are times when a sinner will not be able to do right because he had done wrong. Because Israel sinned in not keeping the sabbaths, it was delivered over to its enemies in a foreign land where it would not be able to keep the sabbaths if it wanted to:
Leviticus 26:41-44 MKJV
(41) I also will walk contrary to them and will bring them into the land of their enemies. If then their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they then pay for their iniquity,
(42) then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham I will remember. And I will remember the land.
(43) The land also shall be forsaken by them, and shall enjoy its sabbaths, while it lies waste without them. And they shall accept the punishment of their iniquities; because, even because they despised My judgments, and because their soul hated My statutes.
(44) And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I hate them, to destroy them utterly and to break My covenant with them. For I am the LORD their God.
While in captivity, Israel was not able to keep the sabbaths or almost any of the ceremonial laws they had been commanded to keep “forever.” Those judging from the side and knowing the Law of God could say, “They are disobeying God – they are not keeping the sabbaths and other laws.” But they could not keep the sabbaths because they had not kept the sabbaths. Isn’t that interesting? Sinner, you may have overstepped your bounds when you sinned, and now are held in that state, locked in that sin, until you have paid every penny of your penalty. That is what happened to me.
Is deliverance from bondage so simple, so quick and easy, as the common nominal, evangelical Christian doctrine goes?: “Confess your sins; God will forgive you, and you can immediately be free of any bondage and consequence.” While often that is true, there are times when it just isn’t that simple. God keeps you in your bondage until you have been chastened sufficiently.
Victor Hafichuk