I went to church on Sunday for the first time in a while. I went expecting a normal Sunday morning service and to leave refreshed from hearing the Word but relatively unchanged. What happened instead was that I unexpectedly committed to a weeklong fast. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of fasting it is a dedicated time of prayer and spiritual growth in which the participant typically does not eat as a reminder of prayer and dedication. The fast I did was a little different in that I was able to eat but only certain foods; fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts and beans. No meat, no dairy, no bread, no processed foods, no sugar, no coffee. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this was going to be as difficult as it turned out to be.

I entered into this time of fasting for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I felt convicted to do so. Before church that morning my plan for the week had been to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Lean Cuisine meals all week; nothing even close to the kind of foods I ended up buying at the grocery store that afternoon. I’m not sure why, but I felt very strongly that this was something I needed to do once I heard that the church was entering into this time of fasting. The second reason I did it was because it was made clear that this should be a time of prayer and spiritual discipline and there were some things on my heart that I had been needing to deal with for a while and I felt that this was the best way to do it.

While I did deal with the things that had prompted me to fast in the first place, I also learned some things I hadn’t expected to even come up while I was doing this. The first couple of days went fine and the idea of eating vegetables and quinoa for a week still held some novelty. By the fourth day though, I was ready to give up. I missed food, a new experience for me. Total moment of honesty: I like food but eating hasn’t necessarily always been my favorite thing. I love trying new foods and cooking and baking but, what I like to call “maintenance eating” (the everyday sort of eating for sustenance), has been a point of contention for a while now.

Growing up I had some issues with body image and I really think, as hard as I have tried, some of it has stuck with me into adulthood. I know all of the rhetoric, don’t lecture me about confidence or self-talk or the difference between healthy and skinny. I’m the biggest proponent of it all but that doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle with it. Unexpectedly, doing this fast brought up a lot of these issues for me. By restricting the kinds of foods I ate but not the amount I inadvertently discovered a truth I had been battling for a while.

Before, I felt guilty about eating foods that weren’t “healthy” or about eating “too much” of anything. Every time I ate a bowl of ice cream or a pack of Twizzlers or even a second helping of mac and cheese, I would think to myself, “I shouldn’t have done that”. But that’s not what life is about, is it? Through this process I have realized that the way I normally eat is not sinful or wrong or anything to feel guilty about. God made food to be enjoyed, all of it. There is nothing inherently sinful about a bowl of ice cream. The guilt I felt was something I put on myself. I have realized that I have let my body image issues creep back in and hang around my dinner table unnecessarily.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think that my body image or food issues will be gone after one week of fasting but I do intend to set about this week no letting guilt get in the way of enjoyment. The struggle of this past week has given me a new appreciation for food and even the process of eating food. Even though this week was hard I’m really glad that I committed myself to getting through it in order to learn a very valuable lesson. And I can’t wait for my first slice of pizza as an enlightened being!