Moving Toward The Light

Starting tomorrow, I'm doing the stereotypical and sometimes ridiculed ritual of giving up food for Lent.  But it's not just chocolate in particular or coffee or sweets that are on the chopping block.  It's all of those things, to some degree.  I'm uniting my recently faltering attempts to lose weight and to get more active and stronger, with Christ's Lenten journey.  When I think about the story of Jesus standing on the hillside with Satan, overlooking the shining city that he could have had, I think, "That must have looked awfully yummy."  It takes courage and discipline to take a deep breath and stand back and say, "I don't need this."   Overeating is something that I do to avoid boredom or a task that makes me nervous, or requires effort.  Or today, eating with family, I ate at a restaurant a meal that I later learned was unbelievably laden with carbs and fat. Recently I've been thinking about some of the costs of this food addiction, things that go far beyond how one looks.  In a previous post, I alluded to the idea that there's a real case to be made for maintaining a healthy weight to do my part in our nation's health care cost crisis.  We all know that a healthier body requires fewer doctor's visits and the cost therein.  Let's save those health care dollars for our brethren who really need them!  Last week, for the radio program I host, I interviewed a writer about the Endangered Species Act.  He mentioned that one of the ways to take care of our habitat for the animals God has created is to reduce consumption.  He didn't literally mean just food consumption.  But it's a good place to start.  When we reduce or eliminate our meat intake, we eat foods that are produced in a way that maintains habitat for animals, that require less energy than, say, the Cadillac of our food pyramid--beef.  When we eat less, we don't need as much fuel to haul ourselves and our groceries around, either.  So with these considerations in mind, I head off into the rest of Lent, without the constant presence of a plate in front of me.