There is no Substitute

In 2009, I spent a day or two fasting and praying, and then I sat down with my reward snacks to break the fast. I had a bag of fattening treats. I ate some, but I quit early. I just didn’t feel like continuing. After that, for maybe two years, I lost weight and kept it off. My appetite was reduced. Something inside me kept turning down that next doughnut or slice of pizza. I lost weight during months when I worked in a church kitchen, churning out delicious pizzas and garlic rolls.

It wasn’t difficult. I was just a different person. I didn’t have to rely on willpower. I have never had much of that.

I told a friend about it, and he fasted, and then he dropped dozens of pounds. Then one day we went to Sonny’s BBQ together and had the all-you-can-eat ribs. After that, I started eating more, and eventually I lost my deliverance, and the spirits God had been holding back returned. I gained weight.

It seems clear to me that I sold myself back to demons by jamming myself full of ribs. I showed a lack of appreciation for what God had done for me, so I got an appropriate reward. Eating those ribs was like jumping off the temple roof.

I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Why didn’t I know? Because the church has belonged to Satan since, at the latest, 150 AD. He got our forebears to kick the Holy Spirit out. He taught us pride. He made us think “God helps those who helps themselves” was in the Bible. He convinced us the baptism with the Holy Spirit either didn’t exist or was automatic upon receipt of salvation. He told most of us prayer in tongues came from demons. He taught the rest it was only for some people, or that it only counted if we spoke in human languages, or that we were only supposed to do it for a few seconds here and there.

The church belongs to Satan, and it teaches us, basically, spiritual feces. No wonder Paul called his pre-blinding teaching “excrement” (skubalon). Preachers teach us to keep trying really hard in our own strength, and they teach us to swallow their regurgitated sewage uncritically so they can control us and have cushy lives financed by our unscriptural tithes and offerings.

Nobody–not one preacher in my entire life–ever taught me that overeating was caused by demons or that they could be expelled. They never taught me that if I got deliverance from demons of addiction, I had to be careful to keep demons from coming back. They never taught me that the Holy Spirit, not preachers and dried-up, error-filled books, would teach me everything I needed to know. They taught me filth, so I went into battle armed with filth, and Satan won.

It’s unusual for a preacher to tell people gluttony is sinful. Obese preachers are everywhere, and virtually none of them talk about the sinful aspect of overeating. Churches are full of enormous Christians who think they’re doing great.

To understand how weird this is, imagine a preacher who preached while holding pornographic magazines in his hands.

In nearly all churches, gluttony is seen as a cute, harmless habit. One that leads to obesity, ugliness, diabetes, diabetic offspring, obese offspring, blindness, impotence, amputations, arthritis, dementia, heart attacks, strokes, miscarriage, hearing loss, incontinence, kidney failure, cancer, infertility, asthma, gallbladder disease, inability to marry due to a degraded appearance, and a long list of other problems. But go ahead and tell me it’s not a real sin like fornication.

The list of things gluttony causes is worse than the list of things caused by heavy smoking.

Gluttony killed my father and his sister, after destroying their minds. You know people it has killed. But by all means, tell me it’s not a real sin.

Are preachers entirely to blame? Nobody taught them, either.

They’re to blame for persecuting those who tell them the truth. That’s for sure. Modern Christians are no better than the Jews who killed the prophets.

For a long time, I have tried to get God to bring deliverance back, and it looks like it’s here. Over the last few weeks, I have gone down about 12 pounds without work. I’ve also maintained a routine of lifting heavy weights, and my arms and chest (especially the chest) have gotten bigger while I lost weight. That means some of the fat loss is masked by muscle gain. Not much. I would guess three to four pounds. More than enough to notice.

People say you can’t lose fat while adding muscle. I don’t know where they hear these things. Total lie.

I don’t have a disease. I’m not repelled by food. I feel as though there is a restraining hand across my stomach, pushing me back when I consider what I should eat. Something says, “You can’t have that. Here is what you should have instead.”

During the day, I am often a little hungry, and I can feel my body leaning toward ketosis. That shows how much I have cut my intake. I often feel crabby because I haven’t had enough carbohydrate, and when I do, I’ll eat a small item that has a lot of carbs per cubic inch.

When my wife was pregnant, we tried to get protein into her to improve lactation, so I bought big jugs of whey protein powder from Nutricost. They sell it cheap, and it doesn’t have sugar or creepy artificial sweeteners in it. She didn’t finish the protein, so I have been using it from time to time when I just don’t care enough to make proper food. I dump blueberries or half an apple into the Vitamix, and I add whole milk, some cream, protein powder, and maybe some yogurt. I drink it and go on with my life.

I push it down so I will have something inside me to keep my body going.

It’s just like a delicious milkshake. I love it.

No, I don’t! Did you really believe that? It’s borderline gross. Anyone who tells you healthy food tastes just as good as real food is lying or mentally ill. I get so tired of hearing it. “It’s just like a milkshake!” “It’s just like a cookie!” No, it’s not! Stop lying. The concoctions I create don’t taste particularly good, but then as God has told me, I don’t have to like everything I eat.

I started out by trying to reduce foods that have high glycemic loads. Things that make the body pump glucose into the bloodstream (and cells) in a hurry. Not so much a low-carb plan, but one that doesn’t wake the pancreas up after every meal with a blow to the face with a hammer. I’m sticking with it. I don’t want cravings. I don’t want to continue living with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

I want to give my fat pants away instead of storing them in case I need them again.

Maybe some poor family needs curtains.

Sometimes I have something I like. I ate Thanksgiving dinner, and we really did thank God and try to make it about him instead of football and stuffing. The other day, friends visited, and we went to P.F. Chang’s and then had eggnog and homebrew. On weekends, I take the family (God has given me a family) to Costco. We eat Costco pizza, and I let my hair down by drinking a Coke. But I will never say, “I’m not fat any more, so it’s time go to back to gluttony.” Sporadic departures from my lifestyle don’t hurt anything. Thinking the lifestyle is temporary will. It would be like jumping off the temple roof.

I don’t know why God decided to help me again. I hope I have enough information to hold onto deliverance this time.

I couldn’t fix this on my own. Like most overeaters, I can tell you everything about dieting. Calorie restriction. Low-carbing. In the past, I have had many temporary successes. The problem is that I can’t produce lasting success without deliverance and the Holy Spirit.

Because I had been delivered in the past, once I started overeating again, I refused to go back to conventional dieting. I found it preferable to stay fat than to accept an inferior solution, and I couldn’t have won on my own anyway. I made some effort to restrain myself, but not much.

Google AI says the long-term failure rate for fat people who lose weight is estimated at 90-95%. Essentially, that means human effort does not work. For all we know the tiny percentage of winners use drugs (including nicotine) or have other conditions that keep weight off. It may be that virtually no one who gets thin stays that way without crutches. If you lost weight and kept it off, and you smoke cigarettes, you don’t count as a winner. You just traded one demon for another one that is nearly as bad.

Look at what has happened over the last 20 years. We got very excited about bariatric surgery. We’ve seen celebrities lose weight using surgery. Maybe you know friends who’ve had it. I do. The ones I keep up with are fat again. Celebrities get fat again. Al Sharpton is the only one I know of who kept the weight off, and I think he has a health problem, because he is nearly emaciated. I don’t think the surgery went right.

After surgery failed most fat people, we turned to fat drugs, starting with Ozempic. Oprah took it and lied about it while she was dishonestly promoting the ineffective Weight Watchers program. Weight Watchers made her resign, or she resigned as damage control. John Goodman took it. Lots of obese celebrities use it. Whoopi Goldberg. Elon Musk.

Most famous drug users won’t tell us. The ones who resist telling us are so obsessed with admiration, they want us to think they did it on their own simply by being better than we are. They’re like the steroid freaks who claim they don’t use drugs.

Some of them admit they’ve used drugs, and some admit they quit because the side effects were worse than being fat. The side effects include persistent nausea and vomiting. Drugs can cause intestinal blockage, pancreatis, gallbladder disease, kidney damage, and permanent vision loss. Other possible effects include depression and suicidal ideation. The drugs can also make your face and butt shrivel, which may sound good if you weigh 300 pounds, but the degree of fat reduction can make people appear grotesque. They even have terms for it. Ozempic butt. Ozempic face.

Bottom line: nothing but God really works. There are crutches and temporary fixes, but without help directly from God, a fat person will almost certainly die fat. The odds in your favor are so poor they are negligible.

Odds are interesting, because most people don’t consider them as often as they should. Today I found out your odds of dying if you try to go into space are around one in 30. Rich people still buy tickets, however.

Maybe the odds are decreasing now that private industry has taken over. I hope so.

Your odds of overcoming drug or alcohol addiction through a secular program are down around 15%. If you use Teen Challenge, a Christian rehab program, it’s more like 67% or 80%, depending on whom you believe. Why would you bother with a secular program? How many times do you want to go through rehab?

I don’t see Oprah ever beating her addiction. She has stated that she is not a Christian, and she financed an anti-Christian cult. She said she refused to be a Christian because God called himself a jealous God. Jealous like a parent who doesn’t want to see his kids kidnapped and raised by gypsies, but that’s beside the point.

Gluttony is addiction, and like other addictions, it is characterized by looking in the wrong place for something you should be getting from the Holy Spirit. Food gives us comfort, but the Holy Spirit is the comforter. Food acts like a drug. It elevates your mood. It helps you to be cheerful and patient. It mimics the fruit and gifts of the Spirit.

I will keep praying God rids me of the rest of my bad habits, and I will pray he does the same for my wife. She has a severe weight problem for the first time in her life. As a leader, I should always face things and find solutions first, so it is my hope that now that I’m delivered, I can help her to be delivered as well.