fasting with ED

I hate when God tells me to write things I don’t want to talk about. The things I keep close because I know they invite judgement.

Do it for the one He tells me.

“But God, what about all the others?! The ones who don’t understand and won’t understand and will use this against me?!”

Forget em.

(God actually says a different word in my own head because I like God a little saucy but that is very much Kristin’s interpretation of the sense I get, not an audible cussing word from our Lord and Savior. Just to be clear.)

“Don’t be afraid. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven.”
Daniel 10:12

Our church is in the middle of a fast. We are fasting and praying for 21 days to intentionally create the habit in our lives of drawing near to God. To hear His voice. To lean on His wisdom. To know His direction. Because we believe that when we pray, God does in fact listen. I’ve known this fast was coming for a while because I’m on staff and very involved with service planning. Still, it was hard for me to figure out what to fast. If I’m being honest, we’re 5 days in and I’m still trying to finalize what it is. And isn’t.

Let me explain.

Typically when you think of fasting in the Christian realm, it’s not eating. You may skip a meal for a few days or fast entirely for one day. It’s often associated with a prayer request or seeking God’s wisdom for a particular thing. Since we’re fasting and praying for 21 days - purposely training ourselves in the habit of spending time daily with God - not eating isn’t an option. Some people may still fast a meal for each of the 21 days or decide not to eat before/after a certain time of day for the time period. That’s a very common option and is easy to stick with.

But it’s not healthy…for me.

Here’s the part I don’t talk about often: For me, fasting a meal feels too much like disordered eating. Which is something that I already struggle with. I say disordered eating instead of an eating disorder because it’s something I have more of a tendency toward as opposed to a restriction that I can’t get out from under. I’ve never had to fight so hard that I’ve fallen into a category of anorexia, bulimia or another diagnosable disorder.

But I have chosen not to eat when I was hungry. I have chosen not to eat because of what I wanted to wear. I have chosen not to eat because I ate too much or the wrong thing the day or the meal before. I have worked my body too hard to make up for something I ate. I have beat myself up mentally because of something I ate. I have deprived myself of food for such long periods that I could feel it in my body through headache or brain fog or low energy but felt power instead of recognizing the physical need to eat. I have also gone the other way and overeaten when I wasn’t hungry at all, because I had a craving I couldn’t fill. A need, a hole, a depravity so desperate within me that I ate until I was sick trying to make it go away.

Generally, I have a healthy balance. I’ve done the work, gone to therapy and figured out the why behind both my eating and my exercise. I’ve paid attention to what foods make me feel certain ways and can recognize when I grab for a food or drink out of emotion instead of physical need. I’ve learned to workout for mental release and don’t treat my body as a constant failure, no matter how hard it works or what it looks like. I am in the healthiest place I have ever been, both in my intake and my output.

But still.

I know myself. I know my tendencies. I know what I can get caught up in. Even though I never got caught up in diets or weight loss fads, the voice of diet culture, the fear of certain foods, the need to look a certain way is certainly still very much embedded in my core.

I knew that fasting entire meals or willingly walking into long periods of time without eating would lead me to habits that would be a lot harder to break than create. So, I had to choose certain foods to fast instead. “Easy! I got this, God! I’m past all that now, let’s do it.” …I started in my best, naive, well intentioned Kimmy Schmidt attitude. But then this was the conversation I had with myself for an embarrassing number of days:

I’ll give up cheese. It takes out pizza and queso which are my most favorite things. Maybe I should give up all dairy. But not my coffee creamer because I only use a little bit and it’s not real dairy anyway since it’s made from nuts. But that’s the only exception, I won’t get lattes even though that’s not really dairy either. Okay, dairy too. It’s gone, God! But that’s not enough. Should I give up chocolate or peanut butter? Definitely chocolate. I will miss my daily handful of peanut butter M&Ms after a meal. But that’s not enough. All sweets. Candy too. Ice cream? Sure. No desserts or treats or sweets because I love them but I love you more, God! Since I’m not really going to feel hunger pangs from giving up a meal, I needed to do more. Peanut butter. That’s next. Yeah, that too. Peanut butter on a spoon is a daily snack for me. Ok, it’s gone! Unless I put it on celery because that’s literally the only way to eat celery and it will be forcing me to intake more vegetables. Maybe that’s the rule, anything that feels like comfort food is out. Anything that I emotionally eat or that tastes good is out. No fun with food here! Look at me, God, I’m winning at this fasting thing. Aren’t you proud of me?! All my sacrifices? I’m great at this. I’m succeeding because I’m doing so much.

And then He kindly but sternly interjected “You’re out here doing too much. And you’re completely missing it.”

I went from a very healthy place of knowing what my physical body could handle to an incredibly unhealthy mental place of trying to impress God with my sacrifices. No wonder my poor husband couldn’t figure out what I was and wasn’t allowed to eat. It was constantly changing as I tried to one-up myself and make God proud. And this morning I felt like He reminded me that fasting isn’t about eating at all. It’s about our attitude, our heart and making the sacrifice - not to be the best at sacrificing - but to be closer to Him. I really felt like God told me “I genuinely don’t care what you eat. But if figuring it out is getting in the way of you spending time with me then give up the giving up.”

Instead of telling myself that I’m a failure once again, I’m resetting and going back to my original decision. No cheese & no chocolate. As soon as I made that choice within myself and said “that is enough” God said “and so are you.” And it reset my spirit for this entire thing.

So since we stand surrounded by all those who have gone before, an enormous cloud of witnesses, let us drop every extra weight, every sin that clings to us and slackens our pace, and let us run with endurance the long race set before us.
Hebrews 12:1 The Voice

If you want to fast, there is a way for you to do it without throwing yourself back into unhealthy habits. And it doesn’t make you less than or mean you’re cheating at the fast. So many people have gone before us and they are cheering us on. I am cheering you on. Let’s drop the weight of the “shoulds”, the weight of the voices coming from our heads, the mirrors and the cabinets. God has bigger plans for your life after this time of fasting and this is just one blip in the stretch of your life with Him. Let’s not get stuck in legalistic technicalities of something that is only meant to draw us closer to Him.

If you want to fast, it can be something else. Technology, social media, whatever it is that you find yourself turning toward instead of spending time with Him. I have resources I can point you to. That asinine web of tangled thoughts I had to navigate through to finally find my answer is not the way to go. But if you, too, find yourself struggling with fasting due to body image, disordered eating or the voices of diet culture from your past, please reach out. If I can’t help, I know wiser people who can. There is a way for your spirit to fast and pray and draw nearer to God regardless of what you do or don’t eat.

Because you are already enough. God just wants you closer so you can hear Him say that even more clearly.