Food

I've thought a lot about food in the past 6 months or so--It's impact on society and on individual lives. With my Mom having lots of health issues with food allergies and being on different rotation diets and having to watch so carefully what she eats I've noticed food a lot more. I've noticed more how I feel when I fast. I've noticed how I feel when I'm full. I've noticed how I feel when I eat too many sweets, or too much greasy food, or too much junk food in general (although I think sweet and greasy about covers all junk food...).

I know we all have to eat, but I think as a society as a whole our concept of food is drastically skewed:
The The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) said that up to 24 million people in the United States suffer from an eating disorder. And those numbers are just rising. It is a pervasive plague in our society that you have to be thin, that you have to diet, that you must lose weight. It affects people from a super young age. It can damage someone's self esteem in a terrible way.

At the same time, however, we have record rates of obesity in our nation. According to the CDC, 1/3 of all Americans are obese. Not just overweight, OBESE! People eat junk food all the time, our concept of nutrition is almost null, and eating out is becoming way too common.

In my office I have several co workers who are trying to diet. They watch the calories they eat, they talk often of the things they can't eat anymore, they groan when people put candy in the candy bowl and often eat something they shouldn't and then beat themselves up over it for days. How miserable!

I have been blessed to grow up being taught that my worth is not dependent upon what I look like or how much I weigh. I know that I am a daughter of God and that He doesn't care what size I am. However, I still am affected by this deadly disease of always being conscious of what the scale says, how thin I should be, what my legs should look like, or what I should and shouldn't eat.

And I've wondered and wondered why we have these two extremes. Why is our society so obsessed with food? Either eating too much, too little, or just junk. Here are some of my thoughts and ways I want to change:

One of the problems is how we describe or define people. How many times do you hear a description of someone that involves their weight? 'She's super tall and skinny' or 'He's overweight' or 'She's a little bit bigger.' I hear it all the time. I do it all the time. We have made it a part of how we describe someone. And I wonder if that affects how we feel about ourselves. I want to be known as super tiny or skinny. Does that have a mental and an emotional affect on how I feel about myself?
~I am making a goal to never describe someone by their weight. It doesn't do any good. There are many other ways to describe a person, and maybe looking deeper than outward appearance will help our overall view of others.

A continuation of that is something that everyone talks about and no one seems to know what to do to change it is how pervasive the message is that your appearance gives you your worth. It is infiltrated into everything we see on TV, in movies, in magazines, in ads, in songs, etc. It's awful. You only see bodies that are completely unrealistic and our goal is based on something we can never attain. I don't know how we can change this. But I do know that we need to stop talking about weight, and looks, and weight, and weight...and start emphasizing our real worth.

In one of my classes a teacher began talking about the antique shows. You know the ones where people bring stuff out of their attics to see how much they're worth? He talked about the people that analyze them and kind of guess what they would be worth. He then asked the question, "What really determines an objects worth?" People began throwing out ideas but everyone realized they weren't right, and finally someone said it. People can estimate or guess or bet on how much something is worth, but in the end, the worth of an object is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

Christ has already paid for us completely with His life. That is what determines our worth. And nothing we can do will change it, because the price has already been paid. We are sons and daughters of God and we will always remain that way. That is what really matters. That is where our worth comes from. Not in how we look or how much we weigh or how many cute clothes we have. This needs to be taught to every person in our society. It is so necessary and so important.

~One of my goals is to start focusing on peoples character traits and attributes instead of their outward appearance and base my compliments on that instead of how they look.

Anyways. This was a ramble of a post. But it is something I have thought a lot about.

A penny for your thoughts?