"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." Deuteronomy 30:19

I love spring! It’s the time of the year when the sun shines and flowers bloom and it allows me to appreciate all the astounding gifts God has given us to sustain life.  He gave us everything we need to flourish here on earth, but over time man has drifted so far from that abundant living that God wants for us by making bad choices.  Over the last few years, God has been calling me to do a better job of living according to His divine plan of health and wellness and to make lifestyle choices that would allow me and my family to thrive in better health.  After all He did say in II John Verse 2. "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth."

As a medical sales specialist, I learned a lot about what poor diet could lead to.  I sold everything from insulin for diabetics to the tools needed to perform gastric bypass surgeries.  While I would watch surgeons operate on their patients to try and restore their health, it occurred to me that most of these diseases and health maladies could be avoided if we would just heed to the warnings laid out for us in the Word and CHOOSE LIFE. In most cases, these operations would be moderately successful in temporarily addressing symptoms, but rarely provide a cure to the underlying problem.  In some cases, the patient would end up worse than before. Science is ALWAYS several steps behind God. So my quest to better living started out with searching for knowledge and understanding about Gods divine health plan.  I came across several readings, one of which is by Dr. Rex Russell who wrote What the Bible Says about Healthy Living.  His recommendation is that we keep the dietary guidelines of the Mosaic Law. Even as a physician, he was chronically run down and plagued with chronic illnesses – diabetes, arthritis, deterioration of his eyesight, cavities, among others. Even though he is a doctor, and was following the recommended treatments, he wasn’t getting much better. He tried other nontraditional treatments, like eating a fistful of vitamins every day, to no avail. Then he had the epiphany to give the Mosaic dietary laws a try. He found that in his own family and eventually in his patients that tried the same approach that many of these chronic conditions and others went away or diminished.

He distills the Levitical lists of eats and don’t-eats into three principles:

• Eat only the foods that God created for human food – No scavengers like pork, shellfish, fish with skin not scales, birds without a gizzard, etc. These are nature’s trash collectors, full of toxins. Eat all the fruits, veggies, whole grains, seeds, and nuts you want.
• Don’t alter God’s design – Eat whole, unprocessed foods as much as possible. Drink water. Avoid meats that have been pumped full of antibiotics and hormones (which, because of price constraints and the minimal amount of meat your body really needs, means greatly reducing the amount of meat you eat). The food and drink that have been chemically altered, stripped, enriched, colored, preserved, hydrogenated, and fortified lose their nutritional qualities and fill you up with chemicals that have bad or unknown effects on your health.
• Don’t let any food or drink become your god – Practice fasting to give your body its needed rest and to break any food addictions, like sugar and, ahem, caffeine.

Living according to these guidelines isn’t the easiest mission, especially if you’re like me and grew up in a home where cost and convenience influenced the diet program.  Instead of making any giant leaps let’s start with baby steps and make smarter choices while grocery shopping.

I’m far from having the ideal diet, and yes I still get occasional cravings for a Snickers, but now I try to limit those indulgences to once in a while instead of making it a regular occurrence. Like my 89 year old grandmother would always tell me, ‘eat in moderation’.  Please don’t read this and think you can never enjoy your favorite foods, but simply be aware of the guidelines that are in place to help us live prosperous lives. God's dietary rules written in Leviticus were not created to restrict us, but to keep us healthy. When you embrace eating God's way, your body is able to restore itself with foods that heal, instead of being torn down by foods that kill.

Kalilah Balogun