The Battle for Your Appetite Part 2
“Until all of us attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to full maturity, as measured by the full stature of Christ.”
– Ephesians 4:13
What if your constant desire for sugar isn’t simply a lack of willpower, but a battle involving your appetite, your brain, your hormones, and your habits? In Part 2 of How Sugar Steals Our God-Given Appetite, we go deeper into the fascinating research surrounding fructose, insulin resistance, leptin resistance, and what Dr. Richard Johnson calls the ancient “foraging response.” Our bodies were beautifully designed by God for survival, but our modern environment of constant access to sugar, white flour, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods can make it increasingly difficult to recognize true hunger and choose the greater good.
In this episode, I explore research discussed by Dr. Richard Johnson and Dr. Robert Lustig on fructose metabolism, mitochondrial energy, inflammation, brain insulin resistance, and the developing hypothesis connecting metabolic dysfunction with Alzheimer’s disease. We also look at how fructose may encourage food-seeking behavior and why a person can have plenty of stored energy and still feel driven to eat. When insulin, leptin, reward pathways, habits, stress, and highly processed food are all sending powerful messages at once, our God-given appetite can become increasingly difficult to interpret—and the simple advice to “just eat less” doesn’t address the whole battle.
This is exactly where Delay and Pray® spiritual fasting becomes so powerful. We talk about identifying runaway foods, learning the difference between ordered and disordered desire, eating nourishing real meals, allowing genuine hunger to return, and creating enough distance from sugar, flour, and alcohol for the intellect and will to participate in our choices again. Through temperance, prudence, fortitude, justice, prayer, community, and the grace of Jesus Christ, we can begin rebuilding freedom around food and remembering the deeper truth behind this entire journey: every desire does not deserve obedience, and the deepest appetite of the human heart can only be satisfied by God.
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Resources in Today’s Show:
Is Fructose a Driver of Alzheimer’s Disease? | Dr. Richard Johnson & Dr. Robert Lustig
Sugar Bomb in your Brain Book by Bitten Jonsson, RN
Delay and Pray® Links:
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