Episode 29 Transcript
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Abbie: Welcome to your daily bread with co hosts, Abbie Stasior and Hannah Calhoun. We're here to be your weekly source of spiritual nourishment, guiding you to find food freedom in a deeper connection with Christ.
Hannah: As we explore the intersection of faith and nutrition, these bite sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food and your body through practical advice, biblical wisdom, and heartfelt encouragement.
Abbie: And as a disclaimer, we are not pastors, but passionate registered dietitians and sisters in Christ, offering our insights to support you on this faith filled journey to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Join us by taking a seat at our table as we break bread and allow God in to break the chains of diet culture.
Hello, hello. All right, today we're going to be talking about what the Bible says about calorie counting. And heads up, the Bible does not explicitly say the words calorie counting, uh, if you can believe it. So we are going to be starting off in James 1. 5 that will hopefully give us some wisdom into what the Bible, what God could say about if it's okay to calorie count or So it says If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask a God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double minded and unstable in all they do. Sorry. Unstable. Yes. Same, every tweet. Um, literally though, James ate and left no crumbs with that.
How did you know I was unstable, James? Now, this is actually very typical for the book of James. We actually just finished going through James in my weekly Bible study. And he is, to the point, it's one of the shorter books in the Bible. And he is like, Just says it as it is. Exactly. If you want to be convicted, read the book of James.
Um, now a lot of people read through the book of James and are like, Oh, this is very simple. It's like, oh no, James is very deep. I mean, there's only five chapters. We went through it in, like, four months. Like, it took us forever. Wild. Anyway, so there's a lot in James. But I really, we wanted to start with James 1 5, um, because Is calorie counting okay?
You know, this is so individual. And like, praise God that we are all individuals and God knows us so intentionally, so individually. He sees you. He knows every hair in your head. He's had more thoughts about you than there are grains of sand. He knit you together intentionally in the womb. He loved you before he created you.
Like, he could, he loved you before you could even love, right? So, we know that this is the truth. So, of course, God is going to help you steward your body, especially because it's the temple of the Holy Spirit. So, God knows your health situation. He knows what you need. He knows how to steward your body. You do not.
So we need to ask the creator, ask the one with the answers to give you that wisdom. And what the scripture is saying is that when you ask for wisdom, God is like, yeah, I just hear like, you know, I have been like, we've been waiting for this one. Like, thank you. God has been waiting, waiting to download this information to you.
So, um, yeah, like, oh, what's that other scripture, like, ask and you shall receive? Honestly, people take that out of context, and I don't know the context off the top of my head, so, um, but basically ask for wisdom.
Hannah: Yeah, it's not like ask for a Maserati and you shall receive type of thing. But like, if you're asking, God, like, give me wisdom.
Give me the ability to connect with you. Give me the strength to hear what it is you're telling me. Like, you know, or Jesus, like, you know, please come into my heart. Like, if we're asking for those things, like, we will receive it. We will receive it. He's right there. He's waiting for us to run into his arms, but he's there with open arms, and he's willing to give us Wisdom he's willing to give us peace.
He's willing to give us understanding. He's willing to give us strength. We just have to ask for it and Believe that we will receive
Abbie: it Yes. And that's what the scripture is saying too. Like once you receive that answer, trust, trust that and trust God. Um, so calorie counting overall can be a slippery slope.
Now, in some instances, yes, it can be very helpful. When I was calorie counting, I can just speak from my personal experience. Um, at first I gained a lot of nutrition education and some general knowledge like, oh, wow, like I didn't know that peanut butter was a better fat source than it was a protein source.
Now there is some protein in it, but I was like, oh, wow, this is more of a healthy fat. So in that sense, yes, it gave me some education. Now, this is where calorie counting becomes a slippery slope. If you are so about the numbers and living by those rules and these external measures for when, how much and what to eat so much so that you're denying the natural biological cues from your body, from God's design, this is where it's a problem.
So where Han and I we see this, um, come up when it comes to calorie counting. There's a lot of people will be hungry, but choose not to eat because they don't have any calories left for the day or enough carbs left for the day or whatever it is. And then we also see the flip side where people are full, but then they will keep eating, forcing themselves to eat, overriding their fullness cues to hit a protein goal.
And I don't know if y'all have seen those talks. I feel like this comes up on my for you page. Like Literally once or twice a week where someone will be in their kitchen. They have the timestamp on there. It's like 11 o'clock at night and they're making like a protein pudding or protein ice cream or making a protein shake just to hit their protein goal.
But they're like, I'm so full. And it's like, they do the, um, the filter where it's like the fake crying and it looks like they're sobbing or like the crying sound. And I'm just like, Oh my gosh, why are you being so harsh to the body? Your body is clearly telling you that it's full. Why are we overriding that just to hit?
an arbitrary man made number of calories. Like even if you've done a calorie estimation of how many calories you need per day, all of those are estimations of estimations of estimations. And that's not necessarily what you need. These are all arbitrary numbers made by man. Why don't we put more trust in your creator, in God?
You can trust the cues that you're getting from your body because God designed your body. And we have a good God. You can trust your body because God designed it and he's a good God. And, greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world, because you have God dwelling in you, because you have the Holy Spirit, you can trust your body and the signals that, that you're getting.
Hannah: Hmm. Yeah, Abbey and I were talking about this before we started recording, and You know, in school, when we were in dietetic nutrition school, we learned about the hormones that we have in our body to tell us, hey, you're hungry. Hey, you're full. And, you know, why do we as adults struggle with, am I hungry? Am I not hungry?
I'm not hungry in the morning or overriding our fullness. We talked about this before in the episode where we talk about being like children, being childlike. And Casey also mentioned this, our guest, um, a couple episodes ago, when she said we are, we said we are born intuitive eaters, and she said we're also born intuitive movers.
So when we are children, You know, like think about an infant breastfeeding or, or feeding from the bottle, like they know when they need to feed, they know when they're full, nobody has to tell them, and so when we grow up, we start to, to get in the way of these things. This ability that God has designed us with because, you know, we're at a birthday party and our friend is eating a bunch of popcorn and we're like, oh, I want popcorn and then, you know, we just like these learned behaviors of overeating or under eating or like, you know, we're going through puberty and our mom thinks that we're getting fat, but we're actually just, you know, going through the necessary process right before we start to grow up and become adults and we put on a little weight and then all of a sudden we're at Weight Watchers and we're learning about weight loss.
Oh, we need to, you know, not eat or I only have this many points left, you know, whether it's like we see our friends overeating or our parents are putting us on a diet or our coach says something like things happen throughout our life that, that make us learn to either deny our hunger cues or deny our fullness cues.
But God literally designed us. Um, and it's a way to help us with hormones in our body that tell us you are hungry and you are full.
Abbie: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people will say, and this just comes from, you know, maybe a lack of nutrition education, which I think is, it's important for everyone to be working with the dietician.
But a lot of people will say, well, I'm intuitively eating. I'm not hungry in the morning. So I'm not going to eat. Well, that's because you've trained your body to not expect or accept food at that time. And you might be actually under fueling. And so at that point, you know, it takes. energy. It takes calories to send you these cues and to get your hormones working.
So if your body is not getting enough fuel, it's like, that's one of the first things to shut down to conserve energy. So yeah, you're not going to get cues in the morning because your body doesn't have enough energy to be able to send you those. But that doesn't mean that you don't need to eat. You've been fasting all night while you're sleeping.
So you definitely need food when you wake up. And that actually lowers cortisol, actually lowers blood sugar in the morning so it can help your hormones and give you energy in the beginning of the day. So yeah, like I think. There it's important to get this nutrition education in this wisdom and also trust your body.
And I think the more that you learn about God's original design and how he designed the body, the more that you're, you're going to be able to be able to trust it. And I think when we put more trust in these external things, like, you know, macros or calories and these apps and different programs like Weight Watchers or Noom, anything like that.
We put such a stronger emphasis on these external things, manmade things, and less on and less on God. You're making that an idol, and God's not first in that equation, so it's not bad, but we need to reorder this. The the order is off. And then I would also question too, like what is your motivation behind calorie counting?
Is it to lose weight? Is it to be striving for thinness? Is it to be, you know, bodybuilding or. Changing your physique in that way and just making your physique the focus versus how do I steward my body well and honor my health and honor God, right? So, um, I think it's important to go back to 1 Timothy 4, 8, which we've talked about several times.
And also, uh, first Samuel 16, seven. Um, we've talked about those two verses several times on the show. It's really important that you're not making your physique an idol because God looks at matters of the heart. Your faith in godliness is so much more important to God. Um, and. Your physical body has some value.
Physical training has some value, but godliness is value of above all things. Um, yeah, so overall I think it's, it's a slippery slope and not all knowledge is good knowledge, but when you ask God for wisdom, God will give the, give you the wisdom that you need to steward your body best. And that might include calorie counting for a time.
It might just be for a season and it might not at all, and what Hannah and I would definitely recommend is that you turn inward and lean into intuitive eating, learn how your body works, and partner with the Holy Spirit because when you do that, the burden will be light. A lot of people that we talk to that are so obsessed and consumed with calorie counting, food is all consuming and it's very hard.
Eating is strained and stressful, and there's a lot of pressure. God didn't intend for us to have anxiety or guilt or, um, feeling like, like the burden is heavy when it, especially when it comes to eating, but anything in our lives. So if it feels that way, you might not be partnering with God on that. And that's just an invitation to turn to God.
Hannah: Absolutely.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of your daily bread. We hope you found inspiration and practical guidance to nourish your body and soul. Remember the journey to a healthier relationship with food and a deeper connection with Christ is ongoing and we're here to support you every step of the way.
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As we conclude today's episode, we encourage you to take what resonated with you into your quiet time with God, allow God to reveal to you any changes that you can make for his glory, trusting that you are fearfully and wonderfully made in his image. Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll continue to explore how God's word helps us heal our relationship with food in our bodies Until then may you find both physical and spiritual nourishment and may you be filled with his peace and joy.
God bless
