What are you feeding your soul?
- elmaddack
- Oct 14, 2024
- 3 min read
I’ve been getting into the practice of eating my food in a specific order to avoid a blood sugar crash. I cannot tell you the number of times my afternoon has been completely ruined because I decided to eat carbs and sugar on an empty stomach and then suffered the consequence of being tired, groggy, and completely useless. Apparently– and I don’t have a source for you here except experience and the words of my sister– apparently the ideal order to eat food in is:
vegetables > protein > fats > carbs/fruits > sugars.
If the last things hit an empty, your blood sugar spikes and then crashes. But if they hit a stomach full of the first things, the body is better able to process them, and will therefore be less susceptible to that dreaded crash. (I’ve been trying it out, and so far it’s done me well!)
I think the same is true for our spiritual diet.
Everything we consume throughout the day has a mental, emotional, and spiritual effect on us. This includes everything from social media, to instructions at work, to conversations with your family or roommates– all of it. For example, social media can leave us feeling anxious and insecure, true crime dramas can make us paranoid, and so on and so forth. This is because of the subconscious messaging we receive from them.
“Everyone has it together except for me.”
“The world is full of terrible things.”
I think the messaging we hear throughout the day is filtered through what we hear first, similar to how what you eat for breakfast impacts your cravings for the day. If you’re starting your day with self-doubt and pessimism, that’s going to bleed into your thought patterns for the rest of the day. If you start your day with truth, the rest of your thoughts will be filtered through truth.
Therapists suggest we start each day with mindfulness and meditation and gratitude for a reason. When we start our days with joy and peace and gratitude, we carry that with us as a sort of armor against whatever else we might hear that day. It’s the vegetables and protein in our spiritual stomachs.
What you meditate on is also important. Meditating on things that are unshakable, infallible truths is going to provide you with a more solid foundation for the rest of your day than meditating on simple mantras that don’t hold up to the test of time.
(Which isn’t to say affirmations and positive statements are bad, per se. I’ve certainly gotten good use out of them. They just shouldn’t be the foundation of your life.)
So what should be?
Well, Scripture, first of all.
I recommend cultivating a diet for reading God’s word, even if it feels boring at first. The repercussions are ultimately more than worth it.
It’s like, if plain grilled chicken is the most nutritious food in the world, but you’re constantly being presented with other rich and sugary foods that will ultimately make you sick or cause a blood sugar crash. When left to our devices, we will almost never choose the plain grilled chicken. (My picky eaters in the house, this might not apply to you, but bear with me.) It takes time and discipline to cultivate your tastes enough to the point where you choose plain grilled chicken every day.
I’m not saying you can only ever eat grilled chicken and other foods are completely secular and off-limits and bad, I’m just saying if you’re only eating those, you’re gonna be missing out on the benefits, and you ultimately won’t feel great. You’ll also feel better if you’re putting grilled chicken in your spiritual stomach before the dopamine-rush sweets of Netflix and Instagram.
Much like how no amount of exercise can overcome a poor diet, no amount of external solutions can overcome a poor spiritual diet.
Receiving your daily bread in the form of God’s word, spending time talking to Him and actively listening for His answer— these are the best medicine for the soul. Reminding yourself of undeniable truths that your life is built on will allow you to silence the anxious thoughts and lies from the Enemy that can be so, so loud.
To help cultivate a healthy thought life, I leave you with Philippians 4:8.
“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
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