Separating the mind, body, and soul never goes well. They were never designed to be separated. The abstract ability of finding your identity in God goes hand in hand with a real-life sustainable and realistic plan to be healthy. Choosing a weight loss goal that makes sense for your body and lifestyle goes hand in hand with serious issues tied up in our souls. “There is a balance between what science tells us about health and what God tells us about health. But God never meant for us to separate the two. Over and over in the Bible, he talks about the mind, body, and soul as a thing together.”
“I'm going to preface it by saying it is kind of a complicated story. I'm going to give you all of it. It is very deep spiritually. And that's why I do it the way I do it.”
The journey began in 2008 with something seemingly non-spiritual and inconvenient: constant stomach pain. When the pain didn't go away, Cara Price finally sought a doctor, but nothing seemed to fix it. One doctor offered a solution to the severe pain but didn’t explain the side effects of the medication and Cara fell asleep while driving her two kids. The next doctor offered a colonoscopy but found no reason for the serious stomach pain, nothing was wrong and she must be making it up. At this point, it had been 1.5 years since the issue began, and no doctor could cure the stomach pain, the joint pain that accompanied it and the total lack of energy. A third doctor theorized it was her daily lunch salad that was causing the pain, cutting out salads lessened the pain, but not by much. Around the 3-year mark since the pain had started, Cara resolved to the fact that she would simply be sick forever.
A friend referred her to yet another doctor and Cara dragged herself to another seemingly pointless appointment. But this doctor listened. He conducted a regular physical exam, checked her reflexes, felt her neck, and concluded, “You have severe food allergies and a thyroid disease.” A blood test and two weeks went by and the result came in: Hashimoto's disease and a serious allergy to milk and eggs. With thyroid medication and a change in diet, the stomach pain, aching joints and lethargy were gone. But more was happening, “there was this work happening within me of God basically putting his identity on me.
With a new diet came a new challenge: learning how to make her own meals, desserts, and snacks that fit into the new guidelines. “I began to realize that when I wanted a sweet or something, I have to make my own homemade stuff. But instead of eating two cookies like a normal person, I would eat 20 cookies. After a few months, I'm like, ‘I have a real problem’. I didn't understand that that was all tied to my heart issue around food.”
With the newfound hurdle of learning how to navigate a restrictive diet and a love for science and medical journals, Cara decided to get a nutrition certification. With the certification came the vocabulary to realize that her eating habits were unhealthy. “It was through my own discovery that God showed me.”
The joy of food and balance easily becomes corrupted, especially today. But then comes the moment when the grace breaks through. “One morning I was reading Romans 8:1. It says, ‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ I had read that verse a thousand times. But that morning it hit me. ‘Why do you feel condemned? I am with you, you have me. So why do you feel condemned?’” Further into Romans 8, Paul writes that freedom from any darkness comes from outside of us, from the Holy Spirit. “God began to show me, ‘Here's a way to eat things you like and have self-control through me. This isn't about your own willpower.’”
As biblical truths took root, Cara was working as a nutrition coach. But the traditional route of counting calories, dieting, and battling the scale didn't seem to work. God spoke to her, Cara repeats, “Stop doing this the world's way.”
“I was talking to the Lord about it. I had been thinking about the process and the steps of how he got me to where I was, ‘How do I teach this to them? What do I do? What do I call this? Because this isn't a diet.’ I can remember the spot where I was, on a walk with my dog where I heard him say, ‘yeah, it's God's Un-diet.’” And that was it.
“I can't think of a single woman who's ever come to me who didn't have some issue with finding her value in her appearance or health.” Today, the dangerous toxins that we fear are in our food are more in our minds than anywhere else. The constant failure to be perfect leaves us with a sense of self-control and restraint completely wrecked. “What I teach,” Cara says, “is this: Maybe you want a cookie. Just stop for a minute and pray, ‘God, what's the best thing for me right now?’ And some days he may say, ‘Have a cookie’, and some days he may say, ‘Have some blueberries’. It goes back to identity. It’s this focus on the momentary that gets us. Finding satisfaction in food or compliments about how you look, is a misplaced identity.”
Losing weight is not the enemy, it never has been, “I don't want people to hear me say, ‘Oh, you should never want to lose weight’. My hope is that I can teach women a plan that will last forever. Let's figure out a way that we don't lose 20 pounds and gain 25, but lose 20, stay there, and be happy with it. I tell people upfront, it's not going to solve all your problems. But we're going to start on this foundation of God's truth.” The power comes from letting Jesus work through you, no amount of willpower or raw self-control can take the place of finding your identity in the Holy Spirit.
“I was so bound by an obsession with my health. When you have discovered freedom, you want everyone to have that. Not because it's my plan, but because it's God's freedom in their life.” The changes that come from learning this? Drastic. Some physical changes, of course, but more than that, Cara says, “heart changes.”
Cara Price is the author and recipe creator of The Nourished Body & Soul. Find Cara on her website (thenourishedbodyandsoul.com) to learn more about her session of God’s Un-diet beginning in January 2024 or to receive the link to her free 5-day Nourishing Wellness Ebook.
"I didn't understand that that was all tied to my heart issue around food.”
