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A little shocked by that image? Yeah, I debated whether I should put it there. But why aren’t we shocked by this image?

Diet addiction is a conspiracy straight from the pit of hell. There, I said it! And if we believe that, shouldn’t we look at every image like this with a little more discernment?

Here’s what I believe: Satan has an army of demons that pose as idols because they want to take the worship that’s rightfully God’s and make it theirs. Each of these idols is tailor-made for people’s weaknesses, generational sin, and environmental shaping.

Women are especially prone to diet idolatry. Here are some stats to support this view from livestrong.com.

• Up to 50 percent of women are on a diet at any given time.
• 35 percent of people who start by dieting occasionally become addicted to dieting.
• As of 1990, the average dieting age for girls was 8 years old. That’s down from 14 in 1970.

For women, diet idols lure us to follow them for weightloss, beauty, thinness…They appeal to our desire to fit the culture’s definition of outward beauty. They lurk to capture our hearts, our attention, our money, our worship. And some of us–at least 35% of us–get hooked, addicted, in bondage to dieting.

And these idols go back for centuries. In Jeremiah 7, God dealt with His people’s idolatry, telling them they could dwell in His house if they did not “walk after other gods to your own ruin.”

In particular, the people were worshipping a female idol. God said, “They gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods to spite Me.” (Jeremiah 7:18)

The women made cakes for the queen of heaven. Children gathered wood. Husbands kindled the fire. Women kneaded dough which takes lots of time and attention. The husbands were part of it, the children saw it modeled, and the women gave their focus to this idol.

So…here’s a little history.

According to the Ryrie Study Bible, “The flat cakes were probably in the shape of the goddess, the queen of heaven. The Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ishtar.” In fact, Jeremiah 44:19 says, “we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her.”

Ishtar was the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. Demons don’t die. Ishtar still lives under a different name.

These idols are still here among us, shifting and shaping to capture our worship. Hasn’t this Ishtar idol transformed herself into a diet goddess who promises beauty and attraction which leads to love and sex? Don’t we gather in our “temples” and pay our homage to this diet goddess? Don’t we give our money, time, attention to her? Don’t we place our hopes in the promises of deliverance–that in truth, only God can provide?

We obsess over calories and points and grams. We obsess over burning calories. We obsess over the next great diet that’ll finally work. And we worship at the altar of false gods. Diet addiction is idolatry!

Why do we continue looking to anyone or anything other than God? Take a look at these verses in Jeremiah 44:15-18 after God confronts His people for their idolatry.

“Then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by, as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah, saying, “As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you! But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.” 

Why do we continue to look to anyone but God? Because we’re focused on weightloss results and we don’t believe God can deliver! In essence, the people in Jeremiah 44 were saying, “We don’t get the same results we do from You, God, that we do from this idol so we’re sticking with her!”

I believe it grieves God’s heart when we look to manmade diets to save us instead of looking to Him!

Oh, and just in case, you’re a man reading this…the women threw their husbands under the bus in Jeremiah 44:19: “And,” said the women, “when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?” (So if God is revealing truth to you regarding these issues, dear man, you have a part in helping your wife follow what God wants.)

This diet idolatry is not what God wants for His daughters (or sons). Once you begin to see these things, you’ll never be able to watch another diet commercial without sensing that it’s part of an evil system to steal away our hearts from the only true and living God.

As you can tell, I feel very strongly about this. I lived for 40 years, walking after these false gods and becoming more and more in bondage to them.

“You shall not make other gods besides Me;
gods of silver or gods of gold,
gods of paper,
or gods of book,
gods of websites or apps,
gods of meetings,
or gods of programs.”
Exodus 20:23
(CYJ version)