catholic-diet

5 Signs You’re Treating Lent Like a Diet

Catholic? Asking yourself, “What should I give up for Lent?” It might not be food. Here are five signs you might be treating Lent like a diet.


1: You binge big-time on Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday/Fastnacht Day/Pancake Day/Whatever because that’s the only way to gear up for fasting on Ash Wednesday

If the lead-up to Lent is an exercise in gluttony because you’ll “be good tomorrow,” you’re losing sight of the fact that you’re already good. Fasting doesn’t make you better.

2: Your penances are mostly if not all food-related

If you focus your Lenten penances on “making my food good” or “eating better” or “fixing my relationship with food” to the exclusion of penances that help you grow in self-control (rather than food-control), you might be treating Lent like a 40-day fix-it program.

3: You’re relying on the scale to evaluate whether or not you’re being “good”

If your Lenten penances are about making yourself weigh a certain number and not about God’s redemptive power to save, you might be missing the point of these 40 days.

4: When you slip on your Lenten penance, you go overboard, thinking, “Well, I’ve already messed up. I might as well enjoy myself.”

This is a big one, and it’s common. It’s also the spiritual equivalent of, “Well, I’ve broken one of my bones. I may as well go break the rest of them.” If all your slips become slides, you might be treating Lent like a diet.

5: You try to “balance” your slips with even more restriction, which is even more difficult, so you slip again, so you try to “balance,” so you slip again…

There’s balance, and then there’s putting ourselves on a roller coaster. We may climb aboard that roller coaster unconsciously or compulsively, but it’s still intentionally. The intention is to make space in our lives for gluttony rather than making space in our hearts and souls for relationship with God and with God through other persons.

Did I skip any?

If you are sick to death of this cycle, there is hope. One option: a free download of my webinar, “Fast Food: Finding Food Freedom for Lent and Beyond.”

In this talk, I go into ways to identify unhealthy patterns disguised as “penance,” and I offer tools to and alternatives to use Lent less as a diet and more as an invitation into deeper relationship with the God of our restoration.

Get your download of “Fast Food” here!

That download access also includes a $40 discount on my 6-week Catholic food freedom course Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts . That discount expires at midnight on the First Sunday of Lent 2023, so:

  • Act fast! A webinar cohort is forming to start with the free intro webinar on Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 12noon Eastern. This might be your time!
  • If you missed that deadline, check out the Filled with Good free intro and automatically get on the list to receive other discounts as they come along.

What is Filled with Good?

Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts provides Catholic Diet Tools for the spiritual and emotional side of your weight loss program.

If you’ve been searching for a:

  • Catholic diet plan
  • Catholic spiritual weight loss program
  • Relief from emotional eating
  • Break from compulsive overeating

and you want to lean on your Catholic faith as your path to a new way of eating?

Check out the free intro to

Filled with Good:

Theology of the Body for Food Addicts

Theology of the Body for Food Addicts Course for Catholic Weight Loss Emotional Eating Healing

What is (and isn’t) Catholic self-care?

Three Types of Self-care for Catholics

Self-care is so badly explained, especially in Catholic circles.

Our secular culture tells us that self-care is mani-pedis, lush meals, expensive vacations.

Our Catholic faith tells us not to be greedy or gluttonous or neglect the poor.

Real self-care is less about self-indulgence and more about self-preservation. It’s the bare minimum of stuff we do and don’t do to keep ourselves functioning virtuously.

My experience tells me that authentic Catholic self-care manifests in three ways.

[Disclosure: This is a super-fast summary of a webinar I gave for the members of Catholic in Recovery+ in November of 2022.]

#1: Inclusive Self-care

Inclusive self-care is the stuff we do to keep ourselves living in virtue: hygiene, nourishing ourselves with food rather than numbing, regular reception of the sacraments, exercise not to punish ourselves but to live fully in the bodies God gave us.

#2: Exclusive Self-care

Exclusive self-care is the stuff we avoid in order to keep ourselves living in virtue: overindulgence, self-destructive thoughts, people who treat us badly and show no sign of repentence.

#3 Trinitarian Self-care

Trinitarian self-care is the stuff we do to cultivate nourishing relationships in our lives. God is a Trinity. God is infinite relationship. If we are made in God’s image and likeness, we can only thrive in thriving relationships. Pope Saint John Paul II put it best when he said, “Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”

Which of these types of self-care is most difficult for you?

If you’ve been searching for a Catholic diet plan, Catholic spiritual weight loss program, or just been growing increasingly desperate for relief from emotional eating and compulsive food behaviors and want to lean on your Catholic faith as your path to a new way of eating with peace and joy, check out my course Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts.

Can prayer before meals help you lose weight?

Can Catholic prayer before meals help you lose weight?

It helped me lose 100 pounds… but maybe not prayer in the way that you think.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts,” right?

Well, it was a little more than that

It also was a little simpler. A little more interactive. A little more conversational between me and God.

It’s called the POUR Tool. It’s the skill I teach at the heart of my course Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts.

Here’s a demo of how this conversational prayer tool works in the moment to derail my cravings for food that isn’t part of God’s plan for my physical reality.

If you’ve been searching for a Catholic diet plan, Catholic spiritual weight loss program, or just been growing increasingly desperate for relief from emotional eating and compulsive food behaviors and want to lean on your Catholic faith as your path to a new way of eating with peace and joy, check out my course Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts.

Theology of the Body for Food Addicts

Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts Provides Catholic Diet Tools, Catholic Weight Loss Program

Searching for a:

  • Catholic diet plan
  • Catholic spiritual weight loss program
  • Relief from emotional eating
  • Break from compulsive overeating

and you want to lean on your Catholic faith as your path to a new way of eating?

Check out the free intro to my course

Filled with Good:

Theology of the Body for Food Addicts.

Theology of the Body for Food Addicts Course for Catholic Weight Loss Emotional Eating Healing

Is there a Catholic prayer to lose weight?

Here’s the Catholic prayer for weight loss that worked for me.

It still works.

Here’s the plain text of “The Get Hungry Prayer” we use in Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts.

Mary, gentle mother, 
you who have known nothing but total communion 
with the God of our beginning, 
our middle, 
and our end, 
we ask you to take us under your mantle. 
We pray the words you said to all of us
 through St. Luke the Evangelist: 

The hungry he has filled with good things. 

Mary, teach us how to be hungry 
as you knew how to be, 
so that we may be filled, 
as you are, with good things.
 In your precious son’s holy name, we pray.

Amen

If you’ve been searching for a Catholic diet plan, Catholic spiritual weight loss program, or just been growing increasingly desperate for relief from emotional eating and compulsive food behaviors and want to lean on your Catholic faith as your path to a new way of eating with peace and joy, check out my course Filled with Good: Theology of the Body for Food Addicts.