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The Living Diet

"This is no mere religious self-help book or gimmicky “God wants you to be slim” dietary plan. What Martha Tartarnic has written is better, deeper, and wiser. She has placed our cultural anxieties about food and bodies into a larger theological vision, encouraging us to find the redemptive joys of sharing, nourishment, and community, rather than participating in “a culture that treats food as the enemy rather than a gift.” Savor this book!"

Thomas G. Long, Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching
Candler School of Theology at Emory University

The Living Diet fed me on many levels. This book is a compelling work of eco-feminist prophecy, evoking a Loving Creator God for whom the healing of eating disorders (of all kinds) is central to the work of liberation. At the end, I was at once totally satisfied and hungry for more. Tatarnic's is a powerful of vision of what God, food, and love all mean.

Aidan Johnson

We have an eating disorder.

Businesses channel billions of dollars into convincing us that the secret to health and weight loss can be unlocked if we purchase the right product or adopt the right discipline. Yet, collectively we are getting neither thinner nor happier. We have a big problem—as big as the excess pounds and all of the junk food and junk diets and junk messages that we keep devouring combined. We have a misguided worldview, which on the one hand suggests that our personal food choices are of concern to us alone, and the goal is personal pleasure. On the other hand, we have digested the belief that our bodies are fundamentally a problem to be solved or worse, an enemy to be fought.

Drawing on a rich collection of stories — some of them mine, all of them grounded in the teachings of Jesus — I offer a joyful alternative to this unhealthy relationship with food, and a relatable approach to connecting the wisdom of our Christian tradition to the struggles of ordinary lives.

This book is called the Living Diet because through the teachings and model of Jesus, we are invited to see hunger, our bodies, and the way that we eat in an entirely different way. We are shown how to break out of our own individual spheres of self-concern and into relationship, which is the truest identity of our bodily existence, and which is reaffirmed every time we put food into our mouths. The Living Diet addresses the collective eating disorder that has left us desperate and dissatisfied when we eat and hating what we see when we look in the mirror. The Living Diet reclaims the real joy of eating and the true gift of living this bodily existence.

Available in paperback and kindle editions April 17th:
https://www.amazon.ca/Living-Diet-Christian-Journey-Joyful-ebook/dp/B07PLBQMPJ/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=martha+tatarnic&qid=1552332225&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

The Living Diet Study Guide D O W N L O A D