I saw a guy in the airport the other day, and he was wearing Western clothes. From the back he looked like a little bitty guy, but when he turned around - oh boy - in front it was like a crane swinging around. He had a gut, man! I mean, his belly was full! He must've had on jeans with a 30-inch waist, and they were skintight. I don't know how he did it, but he had gotten them on under that belly! He must've had trouble just breathing!
Now, what did he need in his life? A diet? No. Diets don't work. Why? Because they have a terrible name: diet. Die-t. That's not good. The minute you think about going on a diet, your body sends signals to itself that say, "Famine! Famine! Eat! Eat! Eat! Store! Store! Store it in the back where no one can see it! Store! Store! Eat!"
Don't say the word diet. Here's another word your body doesn't want to hear: "Fast." When you think about fasting, your body says, "No! Eat-hurry!" Your body says, "Famine is coming! It's cutting us off!"
That's exactly what your body is saying when you're overeating, because it wonders why you would do that. It sends you a signal when it's had enough. It's called a little burp. Do we listen? No, because we don't eat to get full. We eat because it tastes good.
Is that true? Oh, yeah. But once you regulate it and you give it what it needs, you never have to worry about fat anymore. Yeah, but some of you say, "Oh, I can't do better, Jesse. I've tried all of those diets. You know, my weight problem is in the genes." Yeah, your problem is in your jeans all right, and it's trying to bust out over the sides, too!
But you can't let your body boss you around like that. You've got to tell it what to do, not let it tell you what to do. No, you just say, "Body, you're going to do what I tell you to do!" See, quit being dictated by the flesh, by what the appetite says. I'm not saying it's easy. It's not. If it were easy, everybody would do it, and everybody would be as skinny as they wanted to be.
You can eat all you like if you want, but it's not going to be helpful to you. Listen to what Paul says about that in the Bible: "Everything is permissible for me," but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me," but I will not be mastered by anything (1 Cor. 6:12 NIV).
This principle can be applied to eating as well as other appetites we have. The very next thing Paul says is about food and the stomach. He's telling us that we should keep our appetites under control so we don't have to go on a diet or, worse yet, "hide" all that fat up above our jeans.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers