As a person who spent the first 29 years of her existence in active food addiction, I can honestly share that I have eaten an enormous amount of grub in my lifetime. That said, I cannot say that I truly tasted any of it. Most of what I was doing in those days was shoving food into my mouth in great quantities, trying to stifle the pain of living. Sure, I pretended to enjoy what I was eating, and sometimes I did (a little bit), but the truth is that I was using food to try to fill a hole in my soul.

What I have discovered over the last 17+ years in recovery from this addiction is that God’s food tastes really good. Specifically, His sweet stuff is beyond compare. Prior to recovery, I was dumping so much artificial crap into my body that I didn’t even know what “sweet” was supposed to taste like. I thought a candy bar or ice cream was the ultimate treat. Maybe it is a treat for the person who eats just one candy bar or only two scoops of ice cream. However, for me, one candy bar was never enough and two scoops of ice cream was a serving for a baby. Once I started eating those things, I could not stop eating them until they were completely gone from my sight. Furthermore, after the first bite of any of it, tasting went out the window and it was all about getting more, more, more. When I ate back then, it was about my mind, not my taste buds. It was about feeding the demon that lived inside, not about appreciating the gift of a succulent piece of fruit.

Just about every day since I started my program of recovery from food addiction, I have had an orange as the fruit portion of my breakfast. I have always liked oranges, but as my addiction intensified, they took a back seat to the crap mentioned in the previous paragraph. Even in the enjoyment of oranges during my eating days, I never really experienced what I believe God meant to be experienced when He created the orange. Until my body was free of all those other toxins for several years, that would be impossible.

It was somewhere along my third or fourth year of abstinence from compulsive overeating, when I actually tasted what sweet was. I remember being completely surprised by how utterly amazing that breakfast orange tasted. I felt like a blind person who sees for the first time must feel. All those years, chasing after the binge and thinking I was getting what I wanted was for naught. None of that stuff ever tasted as good as that orange. The flavor, the sweetness, the juiciness, and the fulfillment was everything I could have ever asked for – and it was enough.

Those of you reading this who are not addicted to food may believe me to be a tad dramatic right now. What you don’t understand is that when a person lives in the prison of food addiction, there is no choice when it comes to food. Whether bingeing my brains out, starving myself in hopes of losing weight, or compulsively exercising to be able to eat more and more, food was always my master. And, when food is the master, it does not give anything back. It only takes and takes and takes until the slave is robbed of all enjoyment – from food and in life.

Today, when I eat my meals, I savor all of the flavors. The items provided within my plan satisfy me. For someone who could never get enough to eat, this is a gift beyond words. To be content at the end of a meal, instead of still starving or stuffed to the point of nausea, is freedom. To have tasted and appreciated what I have eaten is my ongoing praise.

Joyfully, my ongoing praise starts every morning with one of God’s perfectly sweet and delicious oranges.