God had healed by Richard Roberts

And at that point, I remember standing in front of the mirror at 15 years old and taking off all my clothes except for my undergarments, and I said, “You are so fat.  You are so ugly,” and started to berate myself.  And then I started to diet at that point.  At that point at 15, I started not to have seconds, not have desert.  And I had been an athlete all my life and had an injury and I had gained weight.  And I said, “Cut back the food,” and immediately I got my father’s approval.  My dad said, “Goodjob.  You look good.  You’ve lost the weight.”

So at 15 years old, I drew the parallel, “If I’m fine, I deserve love.  If I’m fat, I don’t.”  And I began to go ahead, and through all of my high school years and all of my college years, I was never thin enough.  I kept losing weight and losing weight, until I was at one time 103 pounds.  And I’m five foot seven and that is way too small.

And then I became a Christian.  And when I became a Christian, you know, if you’ve had an excessive thing in your life, becoming a Christian, you’ve got to renew your mind. You’ve got to change those habits.  And that habit was still in me.  And Christians don’t starve themselves, but a lot of times they overeat.  So I began to overeat, and I ate so much that I got overweight.

And I was engaged to John, and I felt very bad about myself.  I didn’t want to witness to anybody because I was overweight. And I had gone through all this stuff where I had totally destroyed my metabolism with diuretics and laxatives and throwing up.  And I had been hospitalized because I had begun to poison my own body, because when you do that, you have no way to eliminate things in your body toxins.  And I was 21 years old and had destroyed my metabolism already. And I just was getting ready to get married to John, and I had been eating, but I had still had been diagnosed with irritable bowel and lactose intolerance and everything.  And God had healed me on our very first date.  John shared with me that salvation meant whole, spirit, soul, and body.  And I’d gotten healed of the lactose intolerance, but everything else was still so messed up in my body, my metabolism.