We live in the 21st century and a lot is no longer a secret. We know a lot about diseases and some things about the causes. For example, it has long been known that unhealthy food is not good for us. But the fact that unhealthy food actually makes you ill is often doubted.

I recently had to make a major change in my diet in my life. My physical symptoms were

• Joint pain, foot pain
• muscle and tendon pain
• exhaustion
• persistent nausea and indigestion
• drowsiness and dizziness
• dry eyes and oral mucosa
• stomach pain
• cycle discomfort

This all started around 2011 and slowly increased, with more and more complaints in everyday life. In 2021 it got more extreme, so that physical work was more and more tedious and I felt reasonably good about 4 days out of 31 days a month.

I felt physically very old at the age of 40. Getting up from the sofa was exhausting. I couldn't even wear heels for an hour because my feet were so sore. Insoles and "grandma shoes" (that's what I call them now😂) were the suggested therapy. Dancing was difficult because my joints felt like they were about to break.

The bed seemed to me more and more to be the place of my destiny: “This is my calling! Lying in bed!”

Shopping, cooking, cleaning up... everything was exhausting and so I dragged myself through the days. How glad I am that Jesus is in my life! He gave me so much peace and joy even when I was physically unwell. Without him I don't even want to know what my heart would have looked like!

The big change that changed everything!

Unfortunately, the doctors were of no help to me in this situation, but simply made quick diagnoses: “You have 4 children? Ages 10-16? Oh, then it's clear: it's simply a depression of exhaustion. Antidepressants will also help with the pain.”

In February 2022, after an unsuccessful laparoscopy, I decided to radically avoid sugar, wheat, animal products and alcohol to find out if one or more of these foods were causing me the problems.

This is how I finally found out where most of my problems came from:

• of gluten
• dairy products
• Sugar
• too much animal products (egg and meat)

How to start feeding your body and soul healthy!

During this time I noticed endless parallels between our body and our inner life - the soul - which I find very helpful. So today I want to make a comparison between physical and spiritual unhealthy eating.

Because with healthy "food" for my soul I can make a huge difference for my feelings, thoughts and emotions.

I know so many others are probably diagnosed every day too: it's just depression. And of course it can often be the case that it is true.

But I am convinced that it is often simply the "wrong" food that causes problems for a person - be it the real food that we eat or the food that our soul needs to be or become healthy .

What are mental symptoms that you and I can suffer from?

I think a lot of people, like me, suffer from inexplicable physical symptoms that can disappear or at least become weaker with a changed diet. That alone is a huge success.

But the focus today should be on what is happening in your soul and what you can learn from your body.

What can happen if you feed your body and soul healthy!

It has become a liberation for me to give up certain foods because I'm finally feeling better again. I've noticed a huge difference in my body after not knowing what's going on for a long time.

Just like food for the body, what I feed my inner being every day is gradually becoming noticeable.

It is often extremely time-delayed and without apparent connection. But since I recognized connections, it's easier for me to choose healthy food.

It has become a huge liberation for me to do without certain unhealthy spiritual “food”. Because even in mental events I know the confusing uncertainty of what is actually going on inside. And I also know the difference that God makes in my everyday life when I give Him really meet For a common image that Jesus uses of himself is to be like eating and drinking.

But in everyday life there are reasons that keep me from this spiritually healthy diet. And this also applies to physical nutrition.

I found 6 reasons:

1st reason: I don't want to restrict myself, because restriction is bad.

This might sound like a huge restriction: No flour foods, no dairy products, little meat/eggs and hardly any sugar! But the truth for me is very different:

If I renounce these things I have a big limitation, that's true. But a major restriction in my life has disappeared: I have strength again, no more unnatural exhaustion, nausea and pain. I can do physical work and sport without joint pain and excessive muscle soreness, which then lasts for 2-3 days.

So sometimes the question is not:

Do I want restrictions?
Rather: Which restriction do I want?

So it helps to ask: What am I losing by continuing to eat unhealthily? What am I risking in 10 years?

Mentally, this truth is much more underestimated than physically.

Am I aware that
what I feed my soul with today
make me a different person tomorrow?

Do I feed myself with gossip and gossip? This will be the person I am tomorrow. Are fears and bad news on my menu? In a year, fear will have much more space than it already has today. Am I unfaithful and nurturing fantasies? Guess what I can slip into over the next few months.

Do I like to lie and a lot? In a few years my whole inner being will be a tangle of lies - the worst of it will be that everyone else will notice, just I not.

Can't I just sit for 15 minutes? Tomorrow I might not even manage 5 minutes. And at some point I can no longer find inner peace without medication. 

You are what you eat.

So I have to decide, what limitation do I want to live with? Be my own king and live by my will? Or accept Jesus as king? Jesus says about this:

For what good would it do a man to gain all that this world has to offer but lose or harm himself in the process? Luke 9:25

2nd reason: I don't get enough of it if I eat healthily

At first glance, this could make a mental and physical impression. That's why I think we humans often wait for the point where the level of suffering is high enough.

I've known for a long time that eating healthy is important. But I only changed it radically when I could no longer live like this. Because of course I don't want to abstain for nothing.

From a spiritual point of view, this is often a reason why people limit their time with God, prayer, church services, etc. so little. It doesn't seem to do them much good.

The list of so-called diseases of affluence is long. And gets longer. But mental unhealth is also increasing enormously.  

But who expects after one A good meal to see the pounds drop or symptoms go away would be a fool. What we eat - mentally and physically - changes us very slowly. A decision to try life with God does not bring fruit in life, only when I live a relationship with Him daily.

You don't need a moment of faith, but a mindset (basic attitude) of faith!

But I can invest before it's too late and the damage can only be limited. But even that is better than doing nothing when the damage is already great.

And maybe it's not even about my own damage, but about the people around me. I shape my fellow human beings extremely. Good or bad.

When people have ditched their parents' beliefs but still firmly hold on to the values, the children will probably take the next step and ditch some of the more uncomfortable values. We see that very clearly in our society. YOU make a huge difference! Both positive and negative!

Jesus, your food?!

John 6, 51-56: 51 I myself am the living bread which comes down from the heavenly world. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give him is my own flesh. This is the food from which the whole world draws its life.” 52 When Jesus said this, the Jews quarreled among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus answered them : »I say to you with all emphasis: If you do not accept the flesh of the eternal Son of man as your food and do not drink his blood, then you do not carry the true life within you! 54 But whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has in him eternal, indestructible life, and I will raise him to life at the end of time. 55 For my flesh - myself - is the real food, and my blood is the real drink.

With this comparison, Jesus deliberately chose to eat and drink without which we cannot live. And man, did he irritate the people of his time with this comparison/image! "WHAT? We are supposed to eat his flesh?!” Jesus just loves to use provocative images…

Feeding the soul with fast food?

But mentally, just like when eating, it's easier to satisfy my inner self with fast food for a short time. Just like with food, it seems unnecessary to invite God into my everyday life today, to attend a church service or read the Bible daily. "It doesn't make much of a difference," you might think too often.

Jesus answers: 63 It is the Spirit of God that gives true life. Humans cannot do this by their own human effort. My words are just that: Spirit of God and true life. 64 But here are some of you who have no real faith." "The book"

Because that is the unbelief on this point: God's contribution makes no difference here anyway. But the truth is this: God wants to make my inner being strong and crisis-proof through his presence.

So I make room in my life for the source of His power. Our body will definitely run out in one day. There is no way around it. But God is preparing something much greater in you and me. This is the real jackpot.

Helpful questions for you:

• Am I waiting too long to change something?
• How can I make room for God in my everyday life so that my soul finally has enough?

3rd reason: If I eat healthy, I can still get sick.

Even with good nutrition you get sick. That's correct. One of our daughters gets neurodermatitis from sugar consumption. But she doesn't always respond. However, when she's struggling with an illness and her immune system is down, the problem becomes much more pronounced. It is even more important to relieve your body through good nutrition. 

Even with good spiritual nourishment I experience crises. But the way my soul deals with life's onslaught is like day and night.

When these fruits that Jesus gives me are alive in me, instead of fear, despair, worry, hate, stress or irritation, I will experience His hope, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. This is who he is and what he wants to give me.

I really want to go through my crises like this. And again and again I have to practice that I invite Jesus in the middle of the storm to be my bread and my water.

Helpful questions for you:

• How is my mental immune system doing?
• Where do I have to start to protect my soul and thoughts?
• How do I train to believe God's truths more?

4th reason: A bit of poison never hurt anyone

I think we humans have a longing to be part of something special. In this contrast, everyday life seems downright banal and meaningless. A bit of fast food. A bit of pork knuckle.

But in a movie it looks very different because we have a bird's eye view. We see James Bond drinking the poisoned martini and we think: Man, why is he drinking that and not paying attention anymore!?! We watch these crucial moments and know: It's all or nothing. But in everyday life?

What if you and I took a bird's eye view and looked at our lives from afar: How would I feel about the choices I'm making 10 years from now?

Thinking from the end

Another great exercise is to think from the end: What will I say about myself when I die? What will others say? What does my life look like from the perspective of eternity?

Why should you eat healthy? Because you love your body - because you love your soul.

If I simply eat unhealthily all the time, it shows a relatively indifferent distance to my body. As if he and I weren't necessarily dependent on each other to our last breath. Or I underestimate the negative impact of unhealthy foods.

It's the same with my insides. Am I underestimating the impact negative spiritual nourishment has on me?

The underestimated influence of bad, mental food!

dr Jack Haskins, a professor at the University of Tennessee, spent 12 years researching the effects of media and how people think. One of his studies attempted to determine the effects of a five-minute radio show filled with negative news:

“17 children blown up on bus”, “earthquake kills thousands”, “riots in city streets” and so on . One group listened to negative shows like this daily, while a control group listened to more positive and uplifting messages.

After evaluating listeners who were exposed to five minutes of bad news a day, Haskins found four discernible effects on them:

• They were more depressed than before;
• They believed the world was a negative place;
• They were less likely to help others; and
• They began to believe that what they had heard would soon happen to them too.

Simply by receiving and reflecting on the information from the radio program, their perception of the world and their outlook on life was affected. What they believed to be true changed with the spiritual nourishment they ingested.

What is unhealthy spiritual food?

Negative food looks very different. A bit of envy, or worries and fears. It's true that the dose makes the poison. I don't have to walk around as an ascetic. But becoming an ascetic of that which destroys myself and others, I can become calm. And that includes sin and worry.

My mental immune system is not the same strength at all times. When I felt physically very bad, I often felt that the news, which in terms of its structure is actually only focused on evil, robbed me of even more strength. Then it is all the more important to reduce this influence and look more to God. This is what saved me through crises and still saves me.

Your soul, a helpless child in your duty of care

So I want to treat my soul and body well. How I would take care of a helpless child. Because that's exactly what both are: completely helpless at my mercy like a child and dependent on my love.

And not emotional, felt love, but love that gets up, tackles and protects the weak, that stands in the kitchen and prepares a good meal.

Or the self-love that withdraws into a quiet room and offers my soul to God, or in the screams of the children (or grandchildren, if you have any) turning on music that invites me into a conversation with God and pulls me away from my fears. Or going to God after a fight and honestly asking for his opinion.

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty again. John 6:35

Helpful questions for you:

• Am I underestimating the impact negative spiritual nourishment has on me?
• How can I make room for God in my everyday life so that my soul finally has enough?
• Which of my thoughts should I urgently renew with God? Romans 12:2
• How would I feel about the decisions I am making 10 years from now?
• What will I and others say about me when I die?
• What does my life look like from the perspective of eternity?

5th reason: I don't have the strength to eat healthily! Life is stressful enough as it is

I know how exhausting it is to change your diet. It really takes a lot of time and attention. And not just in one day, but every day. 

But if I ask the question: "Do I have the strength to eat healthy?", and my answer is no, I have to ask the second question here too: "Do I have the strength to eat unhealthy?"

Because the strength that I need for healthy eating is out of proportion to the strength that I would need if I were to continue to eat harmful to me. So against the needs of my body.

"Do I have strength to live without God?"

Spiritually the question is the same: “Do I have power to focus on Jesus? No, my life is so exhausting.” Then ask the second question: “Do I have the strength to renounce Jesus?!” The main reason why life is so exhausting is when I don't focus on Jesus.

So the first step is to recognize: I need strength for both, only one brings good fruit. The other stress.

The second step is to come to God's table and ask him, “Be the strength within me, I can't do it alone. Give me self-control to feed myself mentally healthier..."

For he is the source of strength: self-control is a fruit of his spirit within us. Some have more self-control than others. But in the end I have to admit that the self-control I have has come from God. If I haven't learned how to say thank you to him by then, things are looking bleak...

Helpful questions for you:

• Do I have the strength to go on living like this? Where do I want to consciously use my energy to get relief for my soul or my body?
• Am I aware that God himself wants to help me to change something? How can I remember?

Reason 6: I don't have time for healthy eating. It's a luxury I can't afford

It really takes time to eat healthy. But I save a lot of the time I lose by having fewer doctors and crisis talks later. Physically, I personally struggle with infections for much less time. The strength that is missing in everyday life also takes up a lot of time, or in my case led to the fact that I could only move through the fast everyday life in slow motion. That was really annoying.

That's why I really often have to ask myself in my everyday life: what is it time for now? I've noticed that if I don't organize my family's and my nutrition first, the whole day is kind of chaotic.

Are you also responsible for the family food? Other people can't even imagine how much work it means when you can just sit down at the laid table!

That's why I have to take the time for our diet. And then everyday life can come, but the basis is there.

Relationships cannot be “quickly done”!

Cultivating my relationship with God also requires space and time. Just like every other relationship I have. Relationships are extremely time consuming. Here are some questions I can ask myself:

• What do I need to have time for right now?
• What are my priorities?
  • I only have 24 hours a day. Organizing better so that I can get everything done is not the solution in the 21st century! What has to go?
• How do I learn to say no?
  • Who am I asking today to ask me weekly if I've gotten 1 % better at saying no?

In fact, food has the ability to bind toxins and toxins and help the body get rid of them. And instead of the pollutants, good food provides healing and building substances.

Interestingly, that's pretty much what God wants of you and me as human beings. He wants to come into your life, to fill your whole body and mind (who you are). Then he wants to free you from your guilt and your injuries and heal them, since they poison you. So you give him your guilt and shame, in return he gives you his forgiveness, peace, glory and the fruits that describe his holy spirit.

His act of liberation for YOU on the cross

About 700 years before Jesus died in about AD 30. dies on the cross, the prophet Isaiah wrote down the following words:

He was despised and rejected by men - a man of pain, familiar with sickness, someone to hide one's face from. He was despised and meant nothing to us.
Still, He took our sicknesses and bore our pains. And we thought he was outlawed, beaten and humiliated by God!
But because of our transgressions he was pierced, crushed because of our transgressions. He was punished so that we may have peace. By his wounds we were healed!
We all went astray like sheep. Everyone went their own way. But the LORD made him guilty of all of us.
Isaiah 53:3-6

Today is your day!

You can pray and invite Jesus the Healer to do what He has prepared. That's such an important realization for me: I'll never have control over what he does, only the possibility to invite him.

What will happen if you do this? No idea! But like changing your diet, it's worth inviting. Even if everything is not healed or is immediately well again. At worst, he just comes with his peace, his joy, his power and changes your inner state and shows you the hope that is waiting for you.

I also pray for you that you experience all this as reality and not just theory!

Anita