Food Fighter

As I have transformed my life in order to fight the Standard American Diet, which has not been easy, I have realized that there is something biologically wrong with me that I am so sensitive to sugar, refined foods, unhealthy oils, hormones, artificial additives, and gluten.  I am like the ultra unhealthy food barometer, if it's even slightly not good for you my system reacts.  I can see that my fellow human beings are generally not as fragile, and can handle a lot more than I can without adverse side affects. That has dampened my resolve to fight somewhat--I haven't got all the answers, solutions just are not clear cut when it comes to food, and I am just one small weak person fighting an entire culture of ideas about food.  Where do I go from here?

I am still a food fighter.  This school year I am making my kids lunches.  I get up at 6:00 am so I can make a healthy breakfast and then pack three healthy lunches before 7:30.  No more prayer and scripture in the morning, no more workout in the morning, it must come later because morning is my food-fighting time to keep myself and my children free of the SAD.  I still keep our pantry clear of sugary refined foods and cook from scratch, I still make dinner and rarely go out to eat, I still read food labels.  This next month is emergency preparedness month, I plan to stock my food storage with foods I can tolerate (which limits my options quite a bit because the refined sugary foods are what store well).  I am currently writing a book that tries to simply explain blood sugar regulation so that young people can understand it, and my sister is illustrating it for me.  I am making meals ahead in the freezer for my kids when I leave for my anniversary trip in October. In my arena, I'm still fighting, taking responsibility for what I and my family eat, because I love them and I choose life.

However, my fight has slowed down and turned inward, myself and my children, rather than pushing the family and community boundaries. I don't want to offend, judge, or incur guilt in anyone around me who has not opted to fight this fight, and I still have enough mental and physical problems that I can't claim it's a cure-all. I don't like it when people "should" on me, I don't want to "should" on anyone else. I feel as though I was letting my determination to "let everyone know about food dangers and never touch a single dose of toxic food again" cause damage to my relationships with family members, cause bitterness towards people making these foods available, and cause me to lose focus on other worthy goals spending so much of my focus on the food fight.  In short, my strength was turning into a weakness.  So I have backed off, and now when people ask me about food I try to change the subject unless I sense there is a genuine desire in the person to know more.  My writing on this blog has certainly abated.

I still have a burning ember of desire to write what I feel, even if I don't know everything.  Eating whatever you want has a price tag, small or large, and I will stick to that belief until I die.  I might not have all the answers, and solutions may not be clear cut, but here is what I do know.
1. Some people are weak and need to watch what they eat, some people are strong and don't need to be as selective, and God love and accepts them both.
2. God is proud of me for recognizing my weakness and choosing to be very careful about my food choices and preserve this body he has given me.
3. There is no one right diet for EVERYONE, because all metabolic types differ, within in a culture, a community, and even an immediate family.
4. Sugar and refined processed foods that act as sugar are addictive and cause blood sugar dysregulation and imbalance to the digestive, circulatory, and hormonal systems in the body when ingested in high amounts on a regular basis in ANY human body.
5. No matter how important the cause or how great the truth, if our desire to help becomes judgmental, we aren't helping.

It is important to me that everyone in the world know what I have learned, I wish I could help more, promote awareness more, fight more, but I want to love others more than I want to help them (and risk judging them), so I wait.  Maybe God has an opportunity for me to be a food fighter in an arena other than my own life someday.