I look ungodly,” we often say, glimpsing ourselves in a passing mirror, overweight and overwrought.
“There but for the grace of God go I,” we may catch ourselves thinking as we pass someone grotesquely oversize.
In both cases, we seldom think that God may literally figure into the equation. It’s just a figure of speech, we tell ourselves—but is it? We may have faith in God, but we seldom have faith that God can and will help us with our overeating. Instead of believing in the power of grace, we believe instead in that dubious something: our willpower. When willpower fails us, we seldom think of turning to God for spiritual help.
“I haven’t got a prayer of losing weight,” Gillian used to say. For five years she was stubbornly overweight despite trying every diet that she came across. To see Gillian now, it is difficult to believe she was ever overweight. She is slim, willowy, and serene. She has lost weight and found a higher power.
“I lost ten pounds the very first month that I began to include God in my weight-loss schemes,” says Gillian. “I had tried so many other things. It never occurred to me to ‘try God’—not until I was genuinely desperate. A friend of mine had gotten sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. I knew that was a spiritually based program. She suggested I try a spiritual solution and I found myself thinking, ‘Well, why not?’”
Why not, indeed? I suggested to Gillian that she make her Morning Pages a time when she formally reached out to God for help with the day she had at hand. “Try turning your day over,” I suggested. “Try to let go and let God.”
Gillian was open-minded enough to try a spiritual solution. She used her Morning Pages to pray, asking for help with the day that lay ahead of her. “Help me to eat clean today,” she prayed. “Help me to use food as it is intended to be used. Please give me emotional sobriety. Help me not to act out.”
Using her journal, Gillian prayed on the page throughout her day. When a Snack Attack struck, she asked for the grace to weather the cravings. As she prayed, she began to feel new power flowing into her. She had hit upon an unsuspected inner resource that she gradually came to call God.
“I found I wanted to know like-minded others,” says Gillian. “A friend—the same one who had gotten sober—suggested that I try Overeaters Anonymous. I found two meetings a week that I liked very much. We had a common problem and we shared a common solution.”
Adrienne, an overweight friend of Gillian’s, found herself balking at the idea of a spiritual solution. “I couldn’t believe God wanted to be bothered with me,” she confesses. “I thought God had bigger fish to fry than whether I ever again made it into a size twelve.”
I urged Adrienne to experiment a little with the God idea. If God’s eye was on the sparrow, might it not also be on her dress size?
“Oh, all right!” fumed Adrienne, and took herself to the page and “turned herself in” to God every morning. “Something’s working,” she announced two weeks into her new regimen. She was no longer overeating.
I thought the “something working” was God. Adrienne chose to remain an agnostic, but every morning she prayed “just in case.” The days of her Clean Eating built up, and her weight slipped down. First she was a size sixteen. Then a fourteen. Then, against her own disbelief, she was once again a twelve. “Maybe God is on my side,” she began to joke.
To the members of Overeaters Anonymous, God is no laughing matter. They have tried the spiritual solution, and they know that for them it works. It works for many people without a formal program affiliation, too, although there is a tremendous bond to be found, as Gillian discovered, in sharing with like-minded others.
TASK
Try the Spiritual Solution
Take pen in hand. Setting aside skepticism, write God a letter asking for help with your weight problem. Be detailed and specific about how bad your overeating makes you feel. Ask for guidance and grace. Ask for strength and courage. Ask for good humor as well.