The Daniel Plan: Nutrition, Preparation, and Fitness
“Dreams—what we hope to accomplish—give birth to our goals, the steps we are willing to take to reach our dreams.”
To what extent do you think does healthy life choices influence spiritual health?
It is week 30 of 52 in the Tim Challies 2020 reading challenge, and this week's task was to read a book about food. I chose The Daniel Plan, written by Pastor Rick Warren, Dr. Daniel Amen, and Dr. Mark Hyman.
The book opens with Pastor Warren being convicted about his own physical health and that of Saddleback Church. While preaching on the Prophet Daniel, Pastor Warren decided to repent of his excessive eating and unhealthy lifestyle and to call the church to a challenge to pursue physical health.
This review will be shorter, as the book is geared toward practical implication. First, I will highlight some excellent points for consideration, and then expose a few flaws in the argumentation between physical health and spiritual health.
The Good
Eat Real, Whole Food – Nutrition
Pastor Warren, Dr. Amen, and Dr. Hyman all agree that just changing your diet can have a profound impact on your physical health.
There are so many different diet fads that have been created in recent years. We have Weight Watchers, Keto, Paleo, Atkins, Intermittent Fasting, and a gambit of other plans and programs to help with weight loss or physical fitness.
The Daniel Plan is somewhat different. The book doesn’t make an argument for a plan as much as it makes an argument for food.
Eat real, whole food.
By simply eliminating factory created or manufactured foods, the authors argue, an individual's whole body will begin to think, feel, and act better.
The authors use the analogy of soda and broccoli. "Let's compare a 20-ounce soda with 240 calories to the equivalent number of calories from broccoli (which is about 7.5 cups)" (p. 84). The argument breaks down a fair conviction. Soda often has roughly 15 teaspoons of sugar, which can lead to osteoporosis, whereas the broccoli has roughly ½ teaspoon of natural sugar, 35 grams of fiber, and key phytonutrients to help prevent the risk of cancer (p. 84).
There are multiple studies regarding different everyday foods, but I think this simple point highlights one critical fact.
We rarely think about the effect of what we are putting into our bodies. So often we are consumed with just satisfying a feeling that we don’t even stop to consider what we are doing.
This leads to the next point, which was my one key takeaway from The Daniel Plan.
Emergency Food Pack – Preparation
“We recommend that everyone create an emergency food pack; it will be your food safety net. Find your favorite things to include; the choices are plentiful” (p. 99).
My curse is the taco food truck, also known as the guy truck, that parks itself outside my office from 1130 to 1200 every workday. Inevitably I will either forget my lunch or eat it by 1000, leaving me craving a California burrito with extra Carne Asada.
The emergency food pack is an excellent idea to maintain eating real, whole foods. The emergency pack can be filled with foods that you enjoy and would want. Even things like dark chocolate. The point is to have moderation, and to choose real whole foods.
Also, as a guy who is emergency minded, everyone should always have a kit of some kind with them for when the unexpected happens. The most convenient place to store this kit is your car. However, if the summer sun poses a problem, you may need to invest in a nice compact Yeti or Artic cooler, or just keep your emergency food pack mobile with you wherever you go.
Regardless, having a healthy emergency snack pack can be the difference between maintaining healthy eating choices and falling off the wagon every day at 1130.
Dream Big – Fitness
“In many ways, dreaming is the first step to accomplishing almost any endeavor. It is no different with fitness. To get moving, we need to begin with your dream” (p. 154).
Working out to workout is rather pointless. The monotony kills motivation and drive. Either you won't last long, or your workouts will be marginal at best.
Physical fitness requires a goal. Whether that be performance in a sport, weight goals, strength feats, or some sort of race or adventure, goals enable measurability and sustain motivation.
When I first decided to run the Chicago Marathon, I had never run 5 consecutive miles. And I only had several weeks to get ready. But having that dream of finishing a Marathon, spurred motivation to push past personal physical boundaries that provided the mental fortitude to push my body to where it needed to be for the race.
Francis Chan spoke one Founders Week at Moody Bible Institute, that we should dream so big that if it happens, God gets the glory and not us. That can be true even in fitness. But that thought begs an excellent question with all of this talk about nutrition, preparation, and fitness.
Why am I doing it?
The Bad
The Daniel Plan has some very practical and helpful suggestions for improving physical health. And while pursuing a healthy lifestyle should absolutely be encouraged, I believe The Daniel Plan has poorly addressed a critical question.
Why should Christians seek physical health?
Pastor Warren seeks to answer this question and does address it extensively in the opening chapters. He provides 5 reasons for pursuing physical health:
1. My Body belongs to God
2. Jesus paid for my body when he died for me on the cross
3. God’s Spirit lives in my body
4. God expects me to take care of my body
5. God will resurrect my body after I die
While these points are in some regards tied to scripture, the next appeal by Pastor Warren for personal motivation isn’t necessarily godliness or God’s glory, but rather simply; personal health. His following point is habits are essential for success. Literally, “that is why the key to long-lasting success is to develop habits—new, positive habits that replace our self-defeating behaviors” (p. 22).
He later addresses the importance of engaging the mind and makes the following statement: “Ask yourself why you must be healthy. Is it to live in God’s will? To have greater health and mental clarity? Or to be a great role model for someone you love?” (p. 44). It seems for Pastor Warren, all these motivations are perfectly fine since they assist with the mental “Focus Essential” to achieve success.
Then, right after Pastor Warren explains the importance of habits, he backpedals and claims that you cannot achieve your goals without God’s power. “The reason we eventually fail at all our good resolutions is because we don’t depend on God… Think about this: What positive changes in your life could happen if you relied on God’s unlimited power instead of your limited willpower?” (p. 51).
While glorifying God by trusting in his power to enable nutrition might preach well, it is a rather silly statement considering the context of keeping resolutions to achieve physical health and fitness. Because every year thousands of disciplined hardworking non-Christian individuals keep their resolutions and achieve their health and fitness goals without ever seeking God’s help.
Not only does Pastor Warren illicit mixed messaging regarding a Christian’s motivation and power for achieving physical health and fitness, but he also fails to explore the context surrounding Daniel’s decision to eat what he did!
When Daniel rejected the King’s food, he was doing so out of obedience to God’s law so that he would not be ceremonially defiled (Dan. 1:8). Daniel was not seeking physical health and fitness as much as he was seeking obedience to God. Not only that, but the vegetables and water that Daniel and his compatriots requested for ten days did not lean them up and show the start of a six-pack. Rather, "At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food” (Dan. 1:15).
Back then, skinny wasn’t in, regardless of how cool your jeans were. And everyone knew that only eating vegetables made you skinny or didn’t help with weight gain. But the miracle is that after 10 days, they were actually better in appearance because they were fatter, not more fit!
I am not trying to say ignore Pastor Warren and get fat like Daniel (to what extent they were “fat” is not fully known, but they were not likely fat by American standards).
What I do want to draw out is that Daniel’s diet was formed out of obedience to God, not physical health or fitness.
If our motivations, reasons, and goals for health and fitness are not sourced in a desire to glorify and honor God than we have to ask the question, what are they motivated by? Perhaps, our reason for health and fitness is a selfish idolatrous motivation that is fueled by shame, self-consciousness, or pride that we need to repent of instead of continuing to fuel.
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Overall, if you choose to read the book, you will be convicted by what you are putting into your body, find wonderful healthy recipes, and get advice for basic fitness. If you go in realizing the biblical argument is not fully articulated and explained, than you may enjoy it and take away some practical suggestions for nutrition and fitness.
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John Owen came from Welsh descent, was educated at Queens College, and became a renowned Puritan theologian, Oxford professor, and passionate pastor who lived from 1616 to 1683. In 1647, he wrote the exhaustive treatise The Death of Death defending Limited or Definite Atonement against the Arminian view of Universal Atonement or Unlimited Atonement.