The Diet-Free Zone

I don't know how many times I will have to, or get to, say this, but the Word of Wisdom does not forbid sugar of any kind - processed, natural, or taken intravenously. And yet, in any given lesson on the Word of Wisdom, somebody will bring it up. We invent health laws for ourselves, and think that God has sanctioned them. It's dangerous.

It's never a bad thing to take care of yourself, but did you know that your brain NEEDS sugar? Too much is probably almost as bad as none at all, but none at all isn't something to aim for. And yet well-meaning, middle-aged singles jump on every fad diet like it's the answer to their prayers of finding a husband. Girls, If he doesn't like your personality BEFORE you diet, it's just going to be more obvious when you're all Zenobia Fromme.

I am a diet-free zone for two reasons: first, I follow the Word of Wisdom as closely as I am able, and that is where the blessings lie, not in "looking beyond the mark" and trying to out-do God's laws for wisdom. It isn't possible, and that kind of tightness in our souls will make us puritanical, and unhealthy mentally. Secondly, I truly believe, from my heart, that good food is one of this life's great blessings. I think if we are sensible about healthy, good-tasting food, our enjoyment of eating increases. Bingeing, junk-food, fast-food, and any forbidden item on the WoW list all decrease our ability to enjoy the foods that really taste good. Have you ever noticed that food in-season tastes better? Or that when you eat a dingdong after several years it just tastes like wax and cellophane (because it probably is?)? Have you noticed that when you eat more slowly you can taste the food better, and that you are full more quickly?

God gave us the Word of Wisdom. It isn't advice: it's a commandment.

I'm going to give you some advice. It isn't a commandment, and not everybody can live this way and be happy (or, you know, skinny); that's why it's advice, and why God will never make it a commandment. Don't let food make you miserable, either by deprivation or gluttony. Do what makes you happiest, so the people around you can be happy too, and every little piece of happy will make the world a better place. But take the LONG VIEW of happiness - what will make you happy in twenty years too, not just what will take your mind off being stood up last night.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

High and Low Horses

 I have not blogged in a LONG TIME and I'm so rusty.  Politics these days, amirite? My little brother pissed me off a few weeks ago in the throes of a political kerfuffle (not reasoned enough to be an argument by either definition). He accused me of posing - I don't remember exactly what he called it, but it was something like "virtue signaling." And very, very rapidly, I was trapped. I could not even attempt to do the right thing without knowing that I was doing exactly what he had just sneered at. I suppose I could go back and carefully analyze the rhetoric of the conversation and delicately unravel exactly what was happening. I am capable of that kind of analysis, but this is a blog, not a school paper, and I'm more interested in the abstractions at play. I'm always more interested in the abstractions. Let's imagine that you have a stick figure in a two-dimensional world. I'd draw it and upload it for you, but somebody stole my reMarkable. Stick fig...
Read more

The Species of my Faith Tree

Image
 Last week I wrote about the space that faith fills in the epistemology of the gospel: specifically that it extends beyond the known, but can be felt and experienced as a sensation as if something is growing inside us. I reiterated and complicated Alma's description of how to tell when a seed is good, and when we should keep watering it. As a metaphor, planting "the word" as a seed is extremely helpful for those who are new to the idea of faith, and those of us who have begun taking it for granted. And yet I find that there is more to say. What exactly is this thing whose tentacles/branches/nerve cells want to invade every part of me? Must I let it grow before I know? What is the nature of the growth? Is it a cancer? A parasite? A symbiote? How much of it is me, and how much of it is not me? Will I birth it like a child, or absorb it into my cells like a protein nutrient? Maybe. . . Maybe a better metaphor is gut biome - it's a thing that biologists haven't quite ...
Read more

The Love-Doctrine Tightrope

Image
 LDS news is abuzz with Elder Holland's address to BYU faculty last week. His comments about gay students was particularly concerning, especially when he lamented how few people were willing to wield a "musket" in defense of eternal marriage doctrine (which doctrine is exclusively heterosexual when it is not a polygynous variation thereof). Perhaps a blunderbuss might have been a more apt weapon. War imagery has always been problematic in religious discussion specifically because humans are the WORST at correctly identifying an enemy. We can't do it. A religious person wielding any kind of projectile weaponry is guaranteed to injure someone they should be protecting. If I may generalize dangerously for a moment, I think that our problem is that in defense of "doctrine" we end up fighting people, and people are never the enemy, no matter what ideas they espouse, and no matter how militant we feel they are.  Some "people are enemies" confusion even c...
Read more