Food addiction, like all other addictions, is a double-edged sword.  You yearn to be free of its deadly grip, yet the pleasure you crave holds a measure of reward your flesh can’t resist.  How could a believer in Jesus fall prey to life’s deadliest vices? Any Christian will tell you, sins come after us all. Addictive sin is an equal opportunist, and every race, creed, and color is fair game!  My shameful confession was I was addicted to food with no desire to give it up— not even for my God!

I don’t mean addicted as in I like rich gourmet meals here and there.  I was a slave to food.  It summoned me day or night, and I would indulge on command.  Some days I ate until I physically hurt from the volume of too much food.  And worst still, I was unable to choose my life, my health, over hyper-consumption.  Friends and family members worried about me.  Doctors warned me.  And still, I couldn’t stop.  I knew food was slowly killing me, so I made peace with my fate.  I knowingly became another statistical blip on the obesity charts of life. 

1999 was the year it all changed. I lost the weight and the addiction.  My story is a strange one in that I never expected salvation to come from mere words on a page.  What did those words hold that a good diet and exercise plan couldn’t fix? What a strange concept that addiction could be eradicated and made subject to words on a page. The weirdest part is that I lost the first 50 pounds and didn’t change what I was eating.  Of course, I eventually learned how to fuel my body with healthy foods, but that came later, decades later.   If you think I’m trying to be elusive or mysterious with my explanation, then you couldn’t be further from the truth.  It’s quite the opposite.  I’m trying to frame my story in a way that makes sense and is embedded in honesty.  I guess there is no turn of phrase I could use that would make my explanation more believable and palatable for the masses, so I’ll just lay it out as plain as possible.  Here are the words that changed the tide of my food addiction:  

For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Do you see it?  That simple, unassuming phrase turned my life upside down.  When I first read it, I scoffed at it.  I sneered because I believed it to be some ancient biblical verbiage that was only true for the time it was written and for less complex people.  They didn’t have greasy fast food on every block, and warm tasty doughnuts churned at the speed of light. So yeah—I scoffed! And to be honest, I knew plenty of Christian just like me.  Addicted to lust or food or money.  Most of them were leaders in the church.  If they couldn’t overcome their issues, what chance did a less mature, barely able to quote a verse in the bible kind of woman like me have?

But something about that verse intrigued me.  So, I wrote it down and taped it to my bathroom mirror.  I saw it every day for months.  And for months, I watched my weight climb.  I read that verse as I brushed the evidence of my failure from my teeth each night.  I read it so much that it became the one verse I knew by heart other than “Jesus wept.”  

I can’t pinpoint when or how things started to change.  Was it a particular hour or minute that freedom began to bud?  Who knows?  What I can tell you is that scripture taped to my mirror bothered me so much that I confronted God about it.  I angrily asked him what it meant at the top of my lungs and whether it was true.  With tears and mucus streaming down both overstuffed cheeks, I breathlessly asked Jesus if he could make it true for me.  I never heard his audible reply.  But sometime during a random day, I sat down to eat, and partway through the meal, I felt the word “Stop” rise up in earth-shaking silence.  I don’t know where or how I heard it, but I did.  It didn’t just happen once.  It started happening at every meal.  And I gave in to what I thought I was sensing.  It’s weird because I never had the power to walk away from food until that point.  Where was this newfound willpower coming from, and could I bottle it up for my loved ones?

It turns out I didn’t need to bottle it up.  Jesus had already given it freely.  His spirit was the source of that silent rising.  I did wonder why more Christians don’t know about this fantastic resource.  If a food-addicted child abuse survivor could stumble into it, you can too.  Should you ever become desperate enough to slip into the presence of God, know he will be moved with compassion for you and help you too.  He didn’t even put me on a diet before agreeing to help me.  I grew up with this image that you had to complete all 12 steps and be clean and sober before calling on God.  It turns out some of his favorite people are slum dwellers, murders, sex-addicted broken beings with nothing to offer him but filthy hands in need of holding. 

My weight loss story is just that— a tale of one undesirable food-addicted girl who dared to believe in a word that changed EVERYTHING!

By Kim Jagwe, Author of God’s Perfect Size Revised Edition

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