It’s been over a week since I’ve posted anything on this blog, but that lack of posting doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking and pondering about various food fads floating around in our modern society. As I said in my previous short post about the blood-type diet, I had thought that I’d pretty well covered at least the most egregious fads out there, but there’s always something more to be explored in this area.
So, recently I was in charge of teaching a session of our summer women’s Bible study. We’ve been using material that discusses the seven feasts that the ancient Israelites observed and how these occasions are echoed in the Christian New Testament. My lesson had to do with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which took place during the week after Passover. I wanted to start out with some ideas on how we need to understand what the Bible is literally saying in its historical context before we start making spiritual applications, or we’ll have a tendency to impose meanings on the text that aren’t there. Into my head popped the idea of the “Daniel Diet,” and I included a brief explanation of why I think it’s based on an inaccurate understanding of the actual biblical text in my intro to the lesson. But the more I thought about the concept of this diet the madder I got. What a trivialization of the actual story and its meaning for us today! So I’m going to spend several posts dealing with the Daniel phenomenon, both the diet plan and also an earlier iteration called the “Daniel Fast.”
Let me start by making a point that I always try to include in any of my material where I use specific examples drawn from other people’s lives, named or unnamed: that it is not my purpose to condemn anyone personally or to take it upon myself to discern what is in someone’s heart. That’s not up to me. But I certainly can point out the outward issues and problems that I see. Got that? Okay.
Let’s start with the “Daniel Diet” as popularized by Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, one of the largest congregations in America. Back in 2010 he realized a couple of hard truths in the middle of a huge baptismal service (well over 800 people being baptized): “Along about 500 I thought — this is my honest truth, it wasn’t a very spiritual thought — we’re all fat,” Warren told his congregation later. “I know pastors aren’t supposed to be thinking that when they’re baptizing, but that was what I thought: we’re all fat. But I’m fat, and I’m a terrible model of this.” (I’m linking to an article in the New York Times, but you can find this quotation all over the place.) I know I read somewhere that Warren also realized how out of shape he was during this marathon baptism as his arms felt like they were going to fall off. (On the other hand, it’s probably fair to point out that Mr. Universe’s arms would have been pretty tired after dunking that many people.) So he announced to his congregation that he was going to start working on his own health and weight and invited them to join him. By 2013 he had written a book and formed a so-called “panel of experts” to help guide the process. The book took off and the pounds came off. Warren lost 60 after the first year of starting the diet, but I have been unable to find anything on his current weight, so I can’t speak to how long-lasting his results have been, nor have I found any information about how well his congregation is doing now after initially losing over a quarter of a million pounds collectively.
I’m going to take the time to examine thoroughly what the Bible actually says about the “diet” followed in the first chapter of Daniel, but that’s going to come in the next post. Here I want to look in more general terms at the idea of how useful it is to think in terms of a “challenge,” especially one with a time limit, when it comes to eating well. And the answer is,
It isn’t very useful at all.
Am I a killjoy or what? If people want to follow a certain plan for 40 days, or 60 days, or three months, or whatever, and they get results, then who am I to criticize? The problem is that this type of short-term thinking always, always, always leads to failure. While Warren says in chapter one of the book that his readers need to make permanent changes in their eating habits, he unfortunately undercuts that message in the very subtitle of the book: “40 Days to a Healthier Life.” (I’d recommend that you read the first chapter, available as a free download, and skip the rest.) As I’ve said over and over in my own posts, the habits of healthy eating are so simple that you don’t need a book to spell them out. Here’s the article I wrote at the end of last year: “My Boring Principles for Eating Well.”
Ideally (very ideally) you’d start out following a better eating plan by just taking things one meal at a time. Today, right now, for breakfast perhaps, I’ll eat this. Now I’ll put eating on hold until lunch, when I’ll eat this. Then I’ll eat this for dinner. The great advantage of re-making your food choices in this way is that you can start at any time; you don’t have to make some big deal out of it. Now, today, this minute, I’ll do the right thing. And then I’ll keep on doing it, meal after meal, day after day, recognizing that there’s no finish line.
It’s like any other area in life where we tend to struggle. We want (pick any or all of the following):
- Something simple.
- Something dramatic.
- Something that makes big promises.
- Something that has an end point.
- Something that tells us what to do.
You get the point.
I’m limiting myself, as usual to around 1,000 words. Much, much more to come as I live into the waters of modern America Christian diet culture. There’s a ton of good stuff out there, but also a lot of nonsense. So come back next week for more.