Evangelium secundum Robertum

Yes, yes, I know, it's getting boring.  Yet another post about the wonders of a low-carb diet.  But if you had good news, wouldn't you want to spread it?  My husband just smiles and rolls his eyes now whenever I start waxing evangelical: "I feel so good!  Look, I can fit into my jeans again!  I'm eating real food!  I have been able to distinguish cravings from hunger!"  And so forth. 

I could go on.  Maybe I should.  Maybe this is too important not to post about over and over and over again.  Because, you see, I have found salvation.  Okay, maybe not in the way that we usually understand the word in English, but you have to forgive me, I'm too used to thinking in Latin.  And in Latin, the word that is typically translated "salvation" (salus) also means "health."  I wonder why?  Oh, right, because in Latin, or, rather, in proper Christian Latin, the salvation of the soul goes hand in hand with the health of the body.  Healing involves, rather, the whole person, not just the spirit or the corpse.

No wonder monks practiced asceticism.  And yet, the last thing that this diet feels like is ascetic.  Instead, it feels like for the first time in my life, I am eating real, health-giving food.  The stuff of life, not of death.  Ironically, since so much of my diet now involves meat.  "This is my body, broken for you."  Bread becomes flesh, wine becomes blood.  Death becomes life.  The body rises again, glorified, to new life.  Not out of pride, but out of love.  Not out of vanity, but out of confidence.  I am no longer punishing, but nourishing myself.  I am no longer afraid to lose the fat because the fat is taking care of me as it should.

Yesterday's lunch--yum!
It feels like, yes, nothing less than a miracle.  And I find that I want to tell everyone about it.  Even though I know that talking about one's diet is right up there with talking about one's baby or dreams or band in the category "things that you love to discuss that no one cares about."  I try not to talk about it, but it just slips out.  And, then, there I am again, wide-eyed, explaining the mysteries of metabolism and how my jeans fit to yet another audience--whom, to be fair, I have usually tried to warn not to ask about why I ordered those sliders at Wendy's without the buns--but there you go; I'm preaching again.

Perhaps, after all, this is what the Apostles felt like after they had been healed.  How can you stay quiet about such an enormous change in your life?  Would you rather I were still complaining about being fat?  Or about how our culture has created an impossible standard of beauty for women?  Because I could be, you know.  I could still believe that French women don't get fat simply because they truly relish their foods, rather than that (as I understand it now) they are culturally inclined to eat the same diet I am eating (lots of meat, leafy green vegetables, cheese, butter, berries, and wine).  I could still believe that slim people are magically able to stop eating when they're satisfied because they don't confuse needing emotional comfort with hunger, rather than that (as I understand it now) some foods (protein, fats, green vegetables) are simply easier to eat more slowly to satiation because they don't trigger the insulin release that others do (sugars and starches, a.k.a. carbs).

Good news?  I have never had such good news in my life, at least not about my eating!  And so, yet again, I end up writing/talking/preaching about it.  Even when I don't want to.  Even when I know it is more than likely going to end up embarrassing me.

I know that there is a lesson in all of this.  What do you think?

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F.B.

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