Thank you for your sincere, honest, straightforward, inspirational book! I am a 36-year-old, single woman living in California. I was severely bulimic for 6 years, and for another 6 years after that, I struggled with non-purging bulimia (bingeing and restriction). I also developed alcoholism during those years. I wasn't raised to believe in God, but I always knew my eating disorder was a form of sin and dated back to my early experiences with lying and petty theft as a pre-teen.
I accepted Christ in 2007, much to the dismay of my family. I now work as a professor, teaching about the sociology of addiction. I also mentor women struggling to recover from eating disorders. I was very excited to find your book, because I think it will be a huge help for one of my mentees in particular, named Laura. She will go several weeks without bingeing and then get mentally tripped up about the boundaries of abstinence. She knows it's not wise to eat trigger foods, but she's also wary about making them off-limits because it perpetuates food rules. I'm going to suggest she try your advice to make certain foods off-limits for 6 to 8 weeks and then pray to seek further guidance.
Your advice and insight is spot-on, based on my own experiences and observations. I've seen a lot of bulimics (including my own sister) and a lot of spiritual and nutritional approaches to ending the habit, and everything you wrote rings true.
Eating disorders are crippling. Yes, they are triggered by family and environmental situations, but I also believe they are a serious site of spiritual warfare. Sometimes I think people who come from non-believing families are particularly targeted by the enemy, because he knows how many opportunities we have to help lead people to Christ.
I am so grateful to know you are out there! Please pray for my mentees and let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.
In Christ,
K
