Weighing In On High-Fat Diets and God’s High Ways

You’ll have to forgive me: when I heard the prompt for this month was wait, I immediately pictured my bathroom scales.

You see, about two months ago I started a new dietary lifestyle, the ketogenic diet. It’s a low carb and high fat program meant to lure your body away from sugars, giving it a taste for fat so that it will start munching on that pudge around your middle and wing of flab on your arms.

I cut out all grains, starchy vegetables, and anything that contains sugar (even sugar ingredients masquerading as something else, like maltodextrin). I even threw out my bananas and apples and tomatoes (it’s a fruit, after all).

People are unfazed when I tell them I’ve eliminated grains and sugars from my diet.

But when I tell them I’m eating high fat and not eating fruit, they give me the stink eye—like maybe I’m anorexic, like maybe this diet is misguided. And I guess I don’t blame them. It does seem a bit backward.

It’s been an interesting mental transition, walking into the grocery store produce section and not reaching for a kiwi or peach to satisfy my snacking cravings. We’ve been indoctrinated that fruit is a good substitute for cookies and Little Debbies—and it is so far as vitamins are concerned. But in bodies overloaded with sugar (as a vast majority of our bodies are), fruit with its sugar is still a sort of enemy to getting healthy.

I had to take the diet’s word for it.

Actually, I took my sister’s word for it since she had already lost weight and seen other health benefits from being on the diet a few months before me. She claimed that she wasn’t even working out. Weight loss without a gym membership? I just didn’t believe her because, though it sounded great—like salvation by grace alone—it also sounded crazy.

The keto websites all said the same thing: “Eat extra healthy fats. Load up on meats with full fat. Eat chicken with the skin on. Consume heavy whipping cream rather than milk. Cut back on almonds and eat macadamia nuts instead.” When the turkey bacon package boasted that it contained 70% less fat, I ditched it for pork bacon, dripping with grease.

At the height of this fat frenzy were fat bombs, bite-sized portions of high fat food (like cream cheese, coconut butter, avocado, or peanut butter) to obliterate my hunger, kind of like a fat vitamin.

I didn’t understand how eating fat could make me lose fat. For two weeks, I weighed and waited without seeing results. Finally, my body got with the program, and now every morning I look at the scale to see the dwindling number, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. But the point is, the numbers are moving in a downward trajectory. (Don’t get me wrong: I’ve got a way to go, and I’ll admit I’ve stalled once or twice—especially after a batch of almond flour chocolate chip cookies. Beware the almond flour!)

It’s a good reminder that sometimes things sound insane—but they work.

You just have to have faith in the process even when it doesn’t make sense. For instance, when God says, “Spend time with Me,” though your to-do list is already running onto the back of the page. When He says, “Give me your first fruits,” though you hardly have enough to pay the bills.

Jesus told Martha to sit at His feet when she had a houseful of people to serve. He told Nicodemus to be born again. Told us to lose our life to save it.  The Apostle Paul said that it’s more blessed to give than to receive.

There are a lot of head-scratching principles and commandments in the Bible. But, I think you’ll agree, they work—even if we don’t understand.

Conversely, sometimes the things that people tell us are right are really wrong.

Think of some popular philosophies—“Love yourself.” “Follow your heart.” “There is no truth.” We daily must rethink things that we thought we understood, things that sound good that just don’t work.

You don’t have to always understand God’s ways because sometimes, well, you can’t understand God’s ways—He gave us that spoiler in Isaiah 55:8–9. We just have to obey and wait to see how God works things out.

Kind of like this crazy diet. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat a fat bomb.

(By the way, for more information on this ketogenic lifestyle, I suggest starting with the ketovangelist website. As diets go, it’s not bad. I can have cream in my coffee, bacon with my eggs, all the cheese I want, almost all vegetables, and dark chocolate—I even have La Croix for my bubbly fix. I’m living well.)

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Sarah Eshleman

Sarah Eshleman lives in Northern Kentucky with her best friend, Laura, and her dachshund, Dudley. By day she works as a content editor for an apologetics ministry and by evening she contemplates life on her blog The View from Goose Hill. She believes that between the lines, life is poetry, and at the places where life gets knotted up, you’ll find the most beauty and grace.

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