Tuesday, March 17, 2009

fitness goals (and some waffle about allergies and diet!)

It has been an interesting week in the diet of the Guest family! My goal this week was to eat only uncooked fruit and vegetables between meals and I achieved this (yay me!) in spite of the fact that peanut butter seems to be my new best friend since I've had to give chocolate milk the boot! Eliminating dairy from my diet has cleared up Anna's excema so it looks like I'm dairy free for a while. I am also taking wheat and dairy out of Christopher's diet. His excema cleared up with medicated cream but flaired up again within 23 hours of us stopping it. So I am weaning him off the medicated cream more slowly and taking him off dairy and wheat and I will reintroduce the wheat and then dairy slowly and we'll see what happens. All this has made cooking and food a bit more time consuming as I work out how to cook for our new diets (previously, I added cheese to pretty much everything!) and we have had new and exciting things like rice cakes, rice pasta and rice milk. If anyone suddenly develops an allergy to rice or beans we're in trouble!

Generally we do have a very balanced diet - balanced between being good steward of our bodies and keeping GOD as our focus rather than a diet or lifestyle choice. I realise that the health of my body will have an impact on my spirituality, in that by keeping my body healthy will honour God and improve my mental capacity to learn and understand and my physical capacity to minister according to HIS calling. But I have seen too many people make their lifestyle choices their idol. I have read many accounts of God restoring health to those kept in circumstances that SHOULD make them ill if not kill them, and I have known at least four people in the last ten years who had an exceptionally healthy lifestyle that died or are currently gravely ill with cancer. We are not made righteous by what we put in our bodies!

All that being said, this overhaul of our diet IS a good thing and it has given me incentive to make some better choices.

My goal for the next week is to stack 3 wheelbarrow loads of wood every day except Sabbath, nothing like having wood delivered to help get a person active again!

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