January 20, 2010

Day 19

Weight: 200 lbs

Weight lost: -6 lbs

One more pound burned off and honestly, I don’t know how… I ate three handfuls of M & Ms yesterday too… and a piece of carrot cake, though I did turn down a piece of chocolate cake…

I’m still pondering the wonder of water… In essence, I feel like I’m living on bread and water… turned to wine. Jesus turned water to wine for his first miracle. Perhaps when I take a big glass of water he does the same, turning it to sustenance within me. I don’t know. I’m not all that hungry through the day. I don’t feel deprived even when I don’t stuff my face the way I’m accustomed.

Water does matter. My daughter, Ellie just returned from a year in Africa. She worked in small villages in Zimbabwe with a health care team. She tells me that most of their work involved water. And most of the problems they treated were solved in some way by better, or more, or properly used water… Water, it seems covers a multitude of sins. Many villages have no wells. Most others have poor wells. In ignorance, many people simply don’t drink enough water, or they don’t wash small wounds. Water would fix many of their major health issues. Water, is almost everything.

As I think about my hunger pain I wonder how much is really thirst. Things often aren’t what they seem to be. I wonder too how much is actually something else, something deeper, a deeper hunger for something food can’t satisfy, something water can’t satisfy. I really just need “water… turned to wine.”

That’s what this experiment is all about. Can I lose weight by simply feeding – intentionally – my deeper hunger with the body and blood of Jesus? We’ll see. So far I’m down 6 pounds, and I’m no grumpier for the process.

“The Eucharist Diet” adventure is my six month experiment taking daily communion and tracking and posting the results in my personal life, relationships, health, and body fat percentage.