Today I want to tell you about this very curious story, the story of a woman who lost a lot of weight after having tried it all after reflecting on some passages from the Bible: the news, which the newspapers have treated as a “diet of faith” (such as : if you believe in God and pray then you will lose weight) does not concern the Bible itself, nor the religious faith of the protagonist.
Things actually went like this: one Carole Holliday, Disney animator who has been suffering from obesity since she was a young girl, who in the past had tried all the best-known methods and programs to lose weight in America, from the Atkins diet to Weight Watchers, lost weight after becoming a Christian in the 1980s. What happened? There is no hand of God in Miss Holliday’s slimming journey, but the reading of the Bible. Reading it, Carole realized that greed, or being too gluttonous (one of the seven deadly sins, under the name of gluttony) was considered a grave sin in the biblical text.

This thing made Carole think for a long time. That even when she went on a diet, she had to keep hunger at bay: in short, Carole was a big eater. And where the scales were not enough, it was enough to reflect on the meaning she gave to that greed: eating too much food is actually wasting food, she told herself, and being too greedy ends up being a sin not only for ourselves, a kind of selfishness that we pay for in health, but also towards others. If you think about it, we live in an era of strong consumerism, but rarely, for example only during the holidays, do we realize what consumerism really means.: putting too many dishes on the table, or spending too much for food. While it is nice and rewarding to have a full fridge, how many of us can’t do without a pantry with too many alternatives? Who, at the weekend, has the pantry really empty? And how many of us, despite having one or two packs of cookies at home, buy a different third by going to the grocery store? And the offers? What do we do with all the extra food we buy to take advantage of the super discount? What do we do with five or six packs of pasta at home?
You see how, even if the question is a trifle, Carole’s idea offers an important food for thought for all of us. She, who has written a book on the matter, explains that to lose weight she was enough to remember that gluttony is a serious sin, and to do three things:
– eat until you are satisfied, but not until your belly feels too full.
– reduce portions, but also shopping, food purchased
– exercise and other activities
Clearly, her weight loss was slow: in seven years she lost about 65 kilos. But if you think about it, learning what it means to stay at the table can be so important that we avoid the weight loss diet.