Article June 23, 2003 Issue

TO EAT—OR NOT TO EAT

Beverly Goldsmith

I remember a time in my mother's life when she was constantly trying new diets. She'd scan magazines for the latest one and rush to test its effectiveness. I well recall her "egg only" and "potato only" diets. Each time she tried a new one, she would say to me, "I wonder if this will do it?" But, each time, the anticipated results failed to appear. Then, she decided to eat less of everything. Period.

Finally she was down to one slice of bread and a little water each day. After a few weeks, she did begin to shed weight. She was thrilled. But a few more weeks of near starvation made her ask, "Am I going to have to keep this up for the rest of my life?" It was not an appealing prospect. At this point, she decided to try a completely different approach — a spiritual one.

My family had been learning about spiritual solutions from reading Science and Health. Its prayer-based approach to health had already healed us of several chronic ailments — migraine headaches, a painful neck, and a throat condition. So each day, my mother studied the Bible and Science and Health for ideas about food, diet, and body, and used these ideas to pray for herself. As a result, she stopped her extreme dieting practices. She traded in her starvation diet for effective spiritual insights into the meaning and importance of balance and proportion.

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