Gospel of Good Bodies: Listening for the Religious Language in Dieting, Wellness and Fashion

Title: Gospel of Good Bodies: Listening for the Religious Language in Dieting, Wellness and Fashion

Podcast Date: May 19, 2026

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Description 

Are you "being bad" for eating cake or looking for "guilt-free" foods? In this eye-opening episode, Heather Creekmore uncovers how modern diet culture has borrowed religious language—like sin, guilt, and temptation—and transformed eating into a moral battleground. Discover why labels like "clean eating" or "cheat days" aren't just diet lingo but clues to a whole alternate religion we unknowingly follow.

You’ll walk away with a new perspective on the words and rules you’ve absorbed about food and body, and a biblically grounded reminder that God’s table is about grace, not judgment. Don’t miss this liberating conversation that will help you stop comparing and start living with joy and freedom at the dinner table.

Join us as we:

• Break down the roots of food guilt and temptation language
  
  
• Examine what Scripture really says about food, pleasure, and purity
  
  
• Challenge the diet culture religion and reclaim the grace and freedom God intended
  
  

Listen now—you’ll never hear the words "guilty pleasure" the same way again!

This is part one of a brand new series looking at religious language we use around food, body, diets, and even fashion!

References & Resources

• Books referenced:
  
  
• "Health, Money and Love, and Why We Don't Enjoy Them" by Robert Farrar Capon
  
  
• "Seculosity" by David Zahl
  
  
• The 40 Day Body Image Workbook
  Heather Creekmore's book is discussed throughout the series. The next group journey starts Wednesday, June 3rd. More info at improvebodyimage.com.
  
  

Notable Quotes

• "Diet culture is not just like a religion—it literally operates like one, complete with sin and temptation and confession and atonement and a promise of salvation if you can just get all the food and exercise rules right." (04:21)
  
  
• "The Bible says eat with gladness. God has already approved." (32:32)
  
  
• "Clean eating has borrowed its central metaphor, cleanliness, from a religious tradition that...the New Testament has moved on [from]." (27:32)
  
  

Mentions of Other Episodes

• Upcoming in the Series:
  
  
1. Episode 2: Analysis of religious language in diet programs such as Optavia and Gwen Shamblin's Weigh Down Workshop and their impact on true Christian faith.
   
   
2. Episode 3: Discussion on forgiving fashion—why we talk about clothes as "forgiving" and unpacking this language.
   
   

Connect & Learn More

• Join the 40-Day Journey or get more resources: improvebodyimage.com
  
  

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:02]:

Life Audio. Hey, friend, Heather Creekmore here. When's the last time you said you were being bad because you ate a piece of cake? We throw that word around constantly. We're bad, we're guilty, we're sinning, we're tempted. We use all these words around food. But does anyone ever stop and ask why? Why are we using the vocabulary of confession and scripture to describe eating sweets? Hey, we are starting a new series. It's called the Gospel of Good Listening for the Religious Language in dieting, wellness, and even in fashion. And today's episode, I don't know.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:50]:

I was going to call it Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Salad, but today we're talking about the Savior, sacred language we use around food and guilt. Friend, your eyes are going to be open to things maybe you've never seen or wanted to see before. I'm so glad you're here for it. Let's dig in. Okay. There. So if you hang out with women enough, here are some of the things you are going to hear. I was so bad this weekend.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:30]:

Oh, don't tempt me with those cookies. I totally sinned and ate the rest of the ice cream. This is my guilty pleasure. Or maybe it's I need to be good today. You don't know what I did last weekend. I mean, you don't even have to say them out loud. You can read them on our foods. Like the can of Lacroix I'm holding says it's guilt free.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:56]:

Listen just for a second to this list of expressions. Hear how they all borrow from moral or religious language. Why? Because it makes eating feel virtuous or naughty, clean or redemptive. But think about how often you hear our food choices framed with words like single sin, guilt, pure indulgence, temptation, or even words like salvation or worthy. So here's just a few. Okay, there's the sin and temptation language. Maybe you've heard this. Sinfully delicious.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:38]:

Oh, it's so good. It's sinful. Devil's food cake, right? Well, that sounds like it's straight from the pit of hell. But delicious, right? Those warm brownies are tempting. Or maybe you're having a forbidden fruit dessert or smoothie. Maybe you've heard chocolate called heavenly. I think that's what those Dove chocolate little wrappers say. Food is decadent, indulgent, or maybe wicked good if you're in the Northeast.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:09]:

And then think about the guilt and shame language we use, too. Like I said, my Lacroix says it's guilt free. You see that labeled everywhere? Or you see the words zero guilt stamped on a package of high protein, low carb, whatever. Or you can eat this with quote, unquote, no regrets. Or maybe it's the opposite. You deserve this. You deserve to have it your way at Burger King. Or think about this.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:40]:

The whole cheat meal or cheat day concept sounds like you're committing adultery on your regular diet, right? That sounds pretty bad, pretty sinful. Or maybe you've heard something marketed as a better for you indulgence, giving it moral superiority. So here's the question. If an alien landed and only had our food language to work from, what religion would they construct? What would they believe the most important values and principles of our culture are? You see, the thing is, diet culture is not just like a religion. It literally operates like one, complete with sin and temptation and confession and atonement and a promise of salvation if you can just get all the food and exercise rules right. And the place this is most visible is in the ordinary words we use every single day. Now, let me be clear. I am not recording this to shame anyone who's on a diet or has been on a diet.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:59]:

I've been on many. This is really just about examining the cultural system that's quietly colonized our spiritual vocabulary. And it's so, so subtle, we don't even notice it. But as Christians, I think it's time we stop and recognize the difference. Cheating on my food plan is not the same as the sin of adultery or even idolatry where I'm cheating on God. And yet it's really easy to confuse the two. And candidly, my real concern is it's so easy for us to confuse that we become so distracted trying to get the religion of food and body right that, that we backburner true faith. We backburner what God actually asks of us to do.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:56]:

And this hurts a little to say, but we aren't as worried about the ways we're actually sinning against God as we are perhaps about the ways we are sinning in the religion of food and body. And I think, friends, that's the enemy. That's the enemy. Confusing us into believing that my biggest sins are really related to cookies and cake. Instead of pride, unforgiveness, selfish ambition, being unloving towards others. Yikes. Okay, so this whole series, and we're gonna do three episodes in this series, is inspired by one of the days of my book, the 40 Day Body Image Workbook. And in that book, I actually, I take a few days and talk about just food and kind of what we've bought into culturally.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:52]:

And like, what does scripture actually say? I mean, do you know that there's a good chance your food rules aren't in the Bible and yet maybe you've heard them taught at church? Like, seriously, my friend, that's why it's so confusing. I would have almost been sure that they were there, but they're not. And so through this series, we're going to examine this irony. The actual Bible, the actual word of God is the source text for all of this language. And yet scripture has a completely different tone, maybe a surprisingly relaxed and even celebratory tone and relationship with food and body. But diet culture has taken the this church language, this Bible language, and ignored God's actual words and commands and given us this alternate religion that we kind of feel obliged to follow because most of the people we know are following it. And y', all, it's just confusing. So we're gonna try to just set the record straight.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:02]:

And if you're interested in the 40 day body image workbook, it's available wherever books are sold. And we also walk women through this book. It's a six weeks of zoom calls. It's super affordable. Less than bucks a week. And we're going to start the next 40 day journey on Wednesday, June 3rd. It's going to be a daytime event so our friends in the other half of the world can join us if the time works out for you. It's going to be Wednesdays at 12:30 Eastern, 11:30am Central.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:30]:

If you'd like to join us on the 40 Day Journey, you can go to improvebodyimage.com and look for the 40 Day Journey tab. So let's start this adventure by looking at a couple words. We're looking at the word guilty and the word temptation because we know that they're both Bible words, but what do they really mean? So guilt is a legal and moral term. It implies transgression against a law, a judge, or a standard. Right? And so that's why when someone goes to court, they're either rendered guilty or innocent. But when we say guilty pleasure, we're implicitly saying that there is some law I have broken. I knew better than to break that law. So perhaps I am guilty.

Heather Creekmore [00:09:19]:

Now the question is, though, who is the judge? Like really, who is the judge that set that standard, that law, that rule? And sometimes the judge is really easy to identify. It's a diet plan, right? Like, this is the program I signed up to follow. I'm paying for this. These are its rules. And If I break its rules, I am guilty. That follows logically, right? But then sometimes this is like vague cultural norm, maybe even something a doctor said. Sometimes it's our own internalized quote, unquote, best self. Like, I'm the woman who doesn't eat these things.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:03]:

I'm the woman who knows how to eat clean or eat well. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later in this episode. And so I am breaking the laws of being my best self, and I am guilty of that. The word temptation is even richer in Christian theology. Temptation is a solicitation toward sin, right? The enemy tempts you towards sin against God. Something that seems good, maybe even something just from the world, right? Doesn't always have to be the enemy. There's the flesh, the enemy and the world. Something good could pull you away from the righteous path, the path of following God.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:54]:

And so when you say, don't tempt me with that delicious cheese plate, you're making cheese like it's the enemy of your soul. Like cheese becomes the serpent in the garden trying to tempt Eve, not tempt Eve to eat a piece of fruit. That's not what it's about. It's about tempting Eve to disobey God. Because Eve, of course, was specifically told not to eat of the fruit of that specific tree. And so the sin was not in the eating. The sin was in the disobedience. And so here's a scriptural irony.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:33]:

If we're going to borrow the language of sin and temptation from the Bible, it's worth asking, what does the Bible actually say about food? Because the answer may surprise you. The answer isn't what diet culture tells us it is. Go to Ecclesiastes 9, 7. It reads like this. Go eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Now sit with that phrase, God has already approved, not God will approve if you choose the right macros in each meal, or if you only eat clean, or if you, you know, avoid preservatives, not. God approves in moderation. The approval is prior given.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:22]:

It's unconditional. Ecclesiastes, Solomon is telling his readers that eating with gladness, enjoying what you eat, is not a guilty pleasure, but it's a received one. The guilt, according to Solomon, is not in the eating or what you are eating. The guilt would actually be in being joyless about it. So there's an Episcopal priest named Robert Farrar Capone. And y', all, after I wrote My chapter about the religion of diet culture, kind of exposing some of this language. I stumbled upon this book. I don't even know how, but my book was already published.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:04]:

And I was just blown away that this book from the early 70s, I believe it is called Health, Money and Love. Like, he outlined all of the same points. I was like, whoa, I wish I had had this book to quote from. But Capone was an Episcopal priest. Actually, I think he had a fall from grace, but he was passionate about cooking. I think he even had a segment on a morning show at some point. But his argument is that the pleasure of food is itself theological, like delight in eating is for us to be a participant in God's good creation. And this is the spirit of that verse in Ecclesiastes, right? His argument is that if we reduce food to its nutritional utility or its moral danger to us, it strips it of its proper meaning.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:58]:

For Capone to frame food as, like, guilty or tempting was an ingratitude. It was a failure to receive the good gift of food that God gives us. And then there's this whole word pleasure, right? Boy, we're uncomfortable with that word. And yet God delights in giving his children good gifts. There's a lot of pleasure that God delights in us partaking of. And yet somewhere along the line, I don't know, maybe it was the Puritans or something, we adopted this asceticism, this like, if we're serving God, we should not enjoy pleasure kind of theology, which actually isn't in the Bible, Right? There are times when we should fast. Not if you've had an eating disorder, but that's a different episode. There are times when you should abstain from sex inside of marriage, but there's all kinds of things.

Heather Creekmore [00:15:05]:

Like God created our body to experience pleasure. We got a lot of taste buds, so we can enjoy taste. And yet how many of us have felt guilt or shame for taking pleasure in eating, for enjoying the taste of something? Why did we decide that enjoying food was sinful or needed to be earned, or perhaps even something we need to confess and repent of and apologize for? Now, I think it's worth noting that women may have a bigger struggle with this than men. Right? The guilty pleasures, the marketing around that is more applied to women and things that women enjoy. It's also more applied to, like, cheap comfort foods rather than expensive and refined foods. A man eating a steak would rarely say he's being bad, but. But a woman eating a cupcake almost always is. Those are the diet culture rules, okay? So let's dig in a little bit more to this whole being good versus being bad thing.

Heather Creekmore [00:16:14]:

And our core concept here is moral identity does not happen through what we consume through our mouth. Okay? So somewhere along the way, I was good today became synonymous with I didn't eat very much or I ate clean, right? Like, think about that. If someone says, I was good today, you rarely think, oh, you must have been loving to all your neighbors and patient and kind and filled with the fruit of the spirit. No, you know, she's talking about food. And this is a stunning collapse because moral virtue is no longer as important as caloric restraint. Like, again, you weren't confused as to what the woman who said she was good today was talking about. That should scare us a little bit. Now, of course, this isn't brand new, right? Like we talked about, like, the Puritan traditions have been suspect of bodily pleasure.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:17]:

But here's, here's the problem. This secular version of what virtue is like, strips away God, Jesus, the gospel, like true faith theology, like the richness of the word of God, and it just reduces it down to whether or not you ate sugar today, friend. That's not the gospel. David Zahl, incredible author. He wrote this book called Seculocity, and it's really fascinating. And in it, this was another one of those books that I discovered after I wrote my book. But he, he's making some of the same points that I made in the 40 day body image workbook. He's arguing that modern secular people haven't abandoned a need for righteousness.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:10]:

Right? Like, we all internally know there's something not right with us and we need to do something to make ourselves right. It's a thirst for righteousness. But instead of going to God and finding our righteousness through Jesus, we've just relocated our search for righteousness. The anxiety that used to be am I right with God now sounds like, am I doing enough? Am I enough? And food and body are one of the primary areas where we see this play out. We seek righteous eating as a path to listen to this, to self justification, right? So Jesus's death on the cross, his resurrection, what he sacrificed for us is what justifies us, renders us not guilty before God. And now we seek to be not guilty before the God of our current diet, food or exercise plan. By eating in a righteous way. We seek righteous eating as a path to self justification.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:27]:

Do you hear the difference? So Zahl talks about how seculosity, basically, seculosity is his way of looking at all the different religions we've made not just food and body, but he talks about, like, the religion of work and several areas. But he talks about how seculosity, these religions thrive where you can measure them, where there is measurability. Y', all, we love to measure things. And in the dieting religion, you can count calories, you can track macros, you can log miles. And we love measurability because then we know whether or not we are righteous. And it creates this illusion that. That you can work for your own righteousness, that your own righteousness, your own self justification is attainable and achievable through your effort. Have you ever said, I'm staying on track? Friend, think about what a deeply moral phrase that is.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:34]:

You are staying on a path. But what is that path? Is that the narrow path that scripture talks about? Avoiding sin, following Jesus like his slave to your Lord Jesus, with abandonment? Or are you staying on track, meaning you are following the God of your diet plan and staying true to that God's rules? Friends, this is tough stuff. Here's another one. Have you ever had someone say, oh, I totally fell off the wagon this weekend? Well, what does fell off the wagon really mean? Again, that wagon is the righteous path. Falling off of it would be a moral failure. And so when someone says this, they're actually like structuring a confession to you. Like, I have sinned and, and I need repentance, restoration, reconciliation. Maybe another way to say that is absolution.

Heather Creekmore [00:21:41]:

And you respond, well, that's okay. You can start again on Monday. Monday is a day of renewal. Monday is the secular Sabbath Rest Monday you get grace for your fresh start. Who do you get that grace from? Well, not from God, right? His grace is new every morning. But in this case, you're looking for grace from the diet and exercise gods to restore you back to the plan, back to the path of righteousness. Friend, you see how insidious this is? Let's go back to that phrase, cheat day. You can only cheat if there are rules.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:25]:

And rules imply that there's a rule giver. Who gave you those rules? Was it God? Well, let's look. Let's look at what scripture says. Let's look at Romans 14:2,4. It speaks directly to judging others around their food choices. And here's what Paul says. One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith is weak only eats vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:01]:

And the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does. For God has accepted them. And Paul is writing to an actual community that's divided over their food rules. And his answer is striking. He says, judging other people's eating is not your job. God has accepted them. The dinner table is not a courtroom. You are not the judge.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:26]:

And yet diet culture has made the dinner table into exactly that. It's a place of constant mutual and self judgment. Right? You might not be saying it out loud to anyone else, but are you saying it in your head? Are you really going to eat that? You shouldn't eat that. Did you really that much? Why are you eating that? Oh, what are you doing? Oh, you're so bad for eating that. Shame on you. And that's what Paul's forbidding here. We're going to look at some other scriptures around this in just a second, especially as we talk about our next topic, which is clean and unclean eating. You see, we think we've disguised purity, purity of food as nutrition, clean eating.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:12]:

Oh goodness, friends. Like that is the most theologically loaded phrase in all of diet culture. Because clean and unclean is this really ancient concept, right? Like we had this in our Bible in Leviticus. But like the Hindu purity traditions exist. Like every religious system has its purity rules. And to eat clean is to be ritually pure. But clean in diet culture is almost never consistently defined, which makes it confusing. But a lot of times these rules around purity codes are about identity and belonging.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:56]:

They're not actually about hygiene or what's good for you. One unclean food would ruin a clean meal. I think they call that the contamination logic. But like this is magical thinking inside a religious structure. Anthropologist Mary Douglas noted that purity rules are always about ordering the world into categories. Clean versus unclean. And she called dirt matter out of place. But this is where scripture, man, it has to be what we live by.

Heather Creekmore [00:25:39]:

Because the Bible makes explicit, direct, like really a remarkable statement about clean and unclean foods. And it cuts directly against the logic of clean eating is the biblical way to eat. This is the way to be most acceptable as a Christian is eating clean. Matthew 15:11. Jesus speaking to the Pharisees here who've criticized his disciples because they're not following the ritual hand washing laws. And here's what he says. He says what goes into someone's mouth does not defile them. But what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.

Heather Creekmore [00:26:17]:

And this is a radical statement for the time in its original context because Jesus is directly challenging their purity code around food, saying that moral contamination is not a matter of what you eat, but of what you say, your intentions, what you actually do. And the logic of clean eating is that there are certain foods that are morally contaminating, that eating these foods makes you somehow less pure or less good. And that is exactly the logic that Jesus is pushing back against. Romans 14:20 drives home the point even more. Paul says, do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean. All food is clean. This is not nuanced.

Heather Creekmore [00:27:06]:

Paul is not saying most food is fine in moderation. He's making a categorical claim that the clean and unclean distinction as applied to food has been above abolished. Those rules from the Old Testament are no more. And yet diet culture has resurrected that framework. But the New Testament explicitly dismantles it. Friend, the irony here is almost too rich. Clean eating has borrowed its central metaphor, cleanliness, from a religious tradition that even in our own scriptures there is argument that food cannot make you clean or unclean. The moral logic that kale salad is superior like predates the New Testament.

Heather Creekmore [00:27:59]:

The New Testament has moved on. It's not living by those rules anymore. But instead of leaning on Jesus and God's word and scripture, we have a new priest class, nutritionists, wellness influencers, the diet gurus, any influencer you see on Instagram who tells you how to eat and what's clean and what's unclean like, they function as priests who interpret our purity code, tell us our religion, and offer us guidance on how to navigate it well so that we can find righteousness, so that we can justify ourselves. Friend, I'm not saying that any influencer online that tells you how to eat is trying to deceive you or lead you astray. I'm not saying that eating foods that make your body feel good is a bad thing. Don't be black and white thinkers with me around this. I just want you to hear the language. I just want you to be clear in what God asks of us versus what this alternate religion asks of us so you don't confuse the two.

Heather Creekmore [00:29:15]:

Robert Capone, the former Episcopal priest I quoted a minute ago, says this Christianity is not a religion, but rather the proclamation that God has gone ahead on his own and ended religion by accomplishing in Jesus, free of charge, whatever our religions were trying to do. Capone says he has closed the religion shop for good. And what we have to see is that a culture that's really only maybe 100, 150 years old, a culture of dieting and wellness, has reopened the religion shop and given us, like David Zahl Said an opportunity to find righteousness, to track our morality, to be good enough through an alternate relationship. Religion for a God that's not the God of the universe. Capone also says this. He says the table is a place of grace, abundance, pleasure, community. And the moment you turn it into a moral battlefield, you've lost something profound about what eating together means. And isn't that what Jesus exemplified for us in the way he lived and how he wasn't afraid to eat with sinners? He was accused of being a glutton and we know he wasn't.

Heather Creekmore [00:30:40]:

Interesting, right? But here's what I want you to notice. Language shapes our experience. When we habitually describe eating as something moral, we are creating real psychological suffering for ourselves and for others. Like friends. Your kids are hearing this. We create guilt, we create shame, we create anxiety around a basic human need that could and should also give us pleasure. And this isn't just semantics. Studies on the psychology of forbidden foods show that the guilt and restraint cycle get this actually increases consumption.

Heather Creekmore [00:31:25]:

You eat more of it if you feel guilty about it. And it decreases satisfaction because you feel so much shame that you're eating the good thing that you told yourself you weren't going to eat. Friend, like we do this to ourselves in our heads and it's just completely not necessary according to what God asks from us. The religious framing here makes the problem so much worse. In fact, I talk to women every week who are sure God is mad at them because they ate dessert. And they are sure that those condemning, shaming voices that they're hearing in their head, I can't believe you ate that. Why did you eat that? You didn't need to eat that. They're sure that's God.

Heather Creekmore [00:32:07]:

And friend, that's not him. That is the God, little G God of the religion of dieting. The great irony of diet culture is that it has stolen the vocabulary of sin purity from religious tradition while ignoring what our religious tradition actually says and teaches about food. Friend, the Bible says eat with gladness. God has already proved. The Bible says all foods are clean. The Bible says stop judging each other's eating. The Bible says what you put in your mouth does not defile you.

Heather Creekmore [00:32:45]:

But diet culture has taken a form of religious seriousness around food, the guilt, the rules, the judgments, the purity codes. While discarding the actual content of scripture, which is largely freedom, pleasure and non judgment. It has kept the law and thrown away the grace. Back to David Zahl says the tragedy of seculosity is that it takes real human needs, needs for meaning, for belonging for goodness, and it attaches them to things that cannot ultimately deliver. Food cannot make you righteous. A good body, a better body, a thin body, cannot save you. The law of the diet is, like all law, better at producing guilt than it is at producing transformation. As we close up today, I want to read to you just a little snippet from this Health, Money and Love and why We Don't Enjoy Them book by Robert Capone.

Heather Creekmore [00:33:56]:

I said it was from the 70s and I'm wrong. It was copyright 1990. The 70s book is a book called Never Satisfied by Hillel Schwartz, which is a cultural history of diets, fantasies and fat, which has a lot of interesting things about where these food rules, diet rules, conceptions came from, just culturally. But let me read to you from Capone's book because I think it's going to shock you. So again, this was written by Episcopal priest in the late 80s, came out 1990. Which brings us naturally enough to the supremely silly religions of food that are now more popular than almost any others. Not that they haven't always enjoyed great vogue. One of the oldest beliefs of the human race, despite the plain, hard fact that people need food to live and can in reasonable health digest almost anything that grows, walks, flies or swims, is that food will kill you unless it is carefully religionized.

Heather Creekmore [00:34:55]:

Cucumbers, it was once believed, had to have their baleful qualities exorcised off by slicing a heel and rubbing the cut ends together until they foamed. Eggplants had to be soaked in brine to remove their poison. Raw vegetables were bad for you, and raw meat was certain death. In our days, though, that list has grown beyond belief, or more correctly, beyond anything that could be accounted for except by belief. Salt, refined sugar, animal fats, red meat, all meat, hard liquor, but not wine. Hard liquor and wine all have come under the interdict, along with a host of demons with names like calories, cholesterol and nitrosamens. People used to say grace before meals and dig in. Now they must sit down and recite the whole nutritional catechism before nibbling at the unsalted undercooked veggies that are the only doctrinally correct items on the table.

Heather Creekmore [00:36:00]:

And what is the secret that lurks behind all the flannel mouthed religiosity? What is the mystery that these devotees of orthodox eating are guarding? It is that there will be a new mystery along next week, and that the adepts of the cult of nutrition will mindlessly but just as noisily embrace it. As the final article of faith. Olive oil was once as bad for you as bacon grease because it was demon possessed by just as many calories. But then it was discovered to be harboring angels called monounsaturated fats and promptly granted admission into the nutritional pantheon by and by. Some food theologian will probably prove that those angels have fallen and turned into demons again. But through all the revisions of the catechism, the true believers will never once doubt the newest revolution, even if it tells them to eat today what would have killed them yesterday? And remember friend, he wrote this in 1990 when everyone would have been fat free. And just 20 years later everyone was told to eat only fat. So it actually happened.

Heather Creekmore [00:37:17]:

I don't know if he lived long enough to see it, but it happened. The nutritional gods did declare fat from being demon possessed to being angelic. Ah, but let me continue reading because I think this is going to really drive it home for us today. But you say, isn't it true that the eating habits of most Americans are killing them? Again, this was 1990. My answer is no. People die because the human race is mortal. What they eat may cause them to die sooner, much sooner, if they eat strict gene less soon, perhaps bearing a plane crash, if they eat hollandaise sauce. But in any case, sometime before they reach the age of 120, they will die.

Heather Creekmore [00:38:04]:

And no religion of eating, however perfectly obeyed, will make the slightest difference in that. Therefore, the last secret of the cult of nutrition, the mystery to be guarded at all costs, is that the implicit promise of immortality which is the principal selling point of the whole religion, is bunk. Oh friend, oh, heavy words that I hope you'll drink them in. You know, Capone's real theme is that food, pleasure or the table are not moral tests that you pass or fail when you give in to temptation, or that you sin when you eat. But that food is a gift to be received and enjoyed. Eat with gladness, for God has already approved the gladness is the point. There is nothing for you to earn in terms of your actual salvation with how you eat. And so again, my point, friend, is not sit on the couch and eat Cheetos.

Heather Creekmore [00:39:08]:

My point is where have you put your real faith? Where are you really trying to find righteousness in the eyes of God? Is it through the way you eat or don't eat? Or is it through what scripture commands? Have you added rules to his word that just aren't there? And my question for you as we close is this. What would it feel like to eat dinner, eat lunch with co workers, eat breakfast without any of that vocabulary, what would it mean to just eat? Because food is just food. It's not a moral ball of yarn that we have to spend every day untangling. And we have to ride this wild roller coaster of fat is good, fat is bad, carbs are good, carbs are bad. I mean, I'm telling you, friend, carbs are back. We're calling it fiber now, but carbs are back. And I have a feeling that's going to go out of style again. So eat your bacon now.

Heather Creekmore [00:40:14]:

What would it be like to just ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom and direction around how to care for your body and just eat to not make it such a big deal? Friend, I'm so glad you were here. Hey, next time we're going to continue this series, we're actually going to look at religious language used in specific diet programs like Optavia, Gwen Shamblin's Way Down Workshop, which was in churches all over the world and had a huge impact in the religious architecture around, like how we've woven dieting into scripture and Christianity and what we believe. And the results are illuminating and very, very troubling too. And then in episode three, in two weeks, we're going to talk about why do we expect our clothes to forgive us? Maybe you've said it. I'm wearing this because it's very forgiving. Does that dress actually have the power to forgive you? Why do we phrase it like that? That's where going in this series. I hope you'll come back for more. And hey, go to improvebodymitch.com if you need more help.

Heather Creekmore [00:41:24]:

We've got great resources for you there. We want to help you untangle this. Thanks for listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye. Bye. The Compare To Podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio.

Heather Creekmore [00:41:39]:

Com.