The Prayer Diet | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: The Prayer Diet | Previous Challenge Entry
By LeslieJean Anderson
02/11/16
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My anxiety increased as we got ready for the dinner party. I dreaded the event. Just looking at a menu in a public place could bring on a panic attack. Don’t think about it. Focus on the people. The conversation. When I was animated enough, nobody seemed to notice that I didn’t eat much at those events. Or at all.

“Do you have your tummy pills, Honey?” asked my patient husband.

“Yes,” I said as I checked my purse. Little good they did me. Sometimes they worked, but more often they did not. The only cure for my hyper-sensitive stomach problem was to eat at home, where I could control the ingredients.

The doctors could not figure it out. My eating habits and digestion had been normal until I’d had a routine operation in my mid-forties. Right after that I’d developed severe pain and distress after eating. At first the doctors said that it would go away. When it did not, they wanted me to submit to some very invasive testing.

Against medical advice I said no. Something told me to wait for a little while and “listen” to my body. Not everything I ate bothered me. I decided to seek guidance from the Creator of the body I lived in. I would go on a Prayer Diet and make God my partner as I searched for answers. But I promised my worried husband that if I was still suffering after a year, I would re-visit the testing.

During that year, I recorded every bite I ate, and treated my stomach like a cranky baby. I started out with simple foods, gradually adding new items to my meals. But most of all I asked God to be my constant companion at the dining table.

After several months of trial and error I found a pattern. I discovered safe foods and even some safe restaurants. My husband and I were overjoyed because we had a social life again! No more panic attacks when I read the menu at my new favorite places.

During that year I also read everything I could find about eating problems like mine. There really wasn’t much information for the average person back then. But I was making progress on my own and a year later I was ready to go back to the doctor.

When I showed him my list of “safe” foods and preparation methods, his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“This is the perfect heart-healthy diet,” he said. “I should be on this diet. If this is working for you, then I see no reason to change it. Have you lost weight?”

“Yes,” I said. “Some. But I am never hungry. I’ve stabilized at a normal healthy weight.” I smiled with satisfaction because all my clothes fit at last. This had been an unexpected side effect of my problems with food.

The doctor ran some blood tests which all came back normal, so I continued with my personal eating program for the next twenty years. I came to love the taste and natural flavors in unprocessed fruits and vegetables. I shunned sugar in all its forms, choosing honey as an occasional sweetener. I selected only the freshest fish and meats and cooked them immediately. And I gave God the glory for each and every one of the meals that nourished my body safely and painlessly.

No more health problems surfaced in the years after I adopted my new eating habits, but I noticed that many more books were being published about modern food processing and declining health. I continued to learn and study about the body’s reactions to fast foods, additives and preservatives.

I also learned about a connection between ethnicity and dietary needs. So I tried to figure out what foods sustained my ancestors. Physically I resembled my Swedish grandmother who lived well into her nineties. I also remembered her rather limited dietary habits. Maybe there had been a reason. I noticed a similarity between my program and her simple diet of fresh meals carefully prepared three times a day. To others these meals seemed simple and bland. But to me they were delicious.

We never figured out what exactly had originally triggered my eating distress. But that time of suffering had become a blessing when God used it to show me a permanent lifelong path of healthy eating. Today I see each and every meal I enjoy as a Prayer Diet miracle.

740 words based on a true story

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