Book Club Questions for Made to Crave

1.Lysa opens with the honest confession that her struggle with food was really a spiritual issue in disguise. Before reading this book, how would you have described your own relationship with food — as a physical habit, an emotional crutch, a spiritual problem, or some combination? What made you pick up this book?

2.The central thesis of Made to Crave is that "God made us to crave — to desire, to want, to long for — and ultimately He made us to crave more of Him." Why do you think God would wire us with cravings rather than simply giving us contentment from the start? What does that design choice reveal about the kind of relationship God wants with us?

3.Lysa distinguishes between the physical desire for food (which is good and God-given) and the pattern of turning to food to meet emotional or spiritual needs that only God can meet. In your honest experience, can you identify moments when food has functioned as a substitute comfort — a way of numbing, rewarding, or soothing yourself rather than turning to God?

1.Lysa describes a pivotal moment when she realized that her desire to be healthy was not just about looking better but about "something more" — a spiritual fullness she had been trying to find elsewhere. Have you ever had a moment of similar clarity, when a physical or surface-level goal suddenly revealed a deeper spiritual need underneath it?

2.In Genesis 3, Satan's temptation of Eve begins with a question: "Did God really say...?" Lysa draws a parallel to how we rationalize our own food choices, subtly asking, "Did God really mean for this to apply to me?" What rationalizations do you find yourself using most often when it comes to food or self-discipline?

3.Lysa makes the memorable statement that we were "made for more" than the empty cycle of craving, indulging, feeling guilty, and starting over. Describe that cycle as honestly as you can from your own experience. Where in the cycle do you tend to get stuck most often?

1.Lysa writes that one of her most important mental shifts was deciding to make choices based on the question "Will this choice honor God?" rather than "How much can I get away with?" How different would your everyday food decisions look if that single question guided them?

2.1 Corinthians 6:19–20 calls the body a "temple of the Holy Spirit" and says we were bought at a price. Lysa doesn't use this passage to pile on guilt but to inspire dignity and gratitude. How does knowing that your body is the dwelling place of the Spirit of God change how you feel about caring for it?

3.Romans 12:1 calls us to offer our bodies as "living sacrifices" — an act of worship. Lysa connects this to the daily, moment-by-moment decisions we make about food and exercise. In what sense is saying "no" to a food craving an act of worship? Does that framing change how it feels to exercise self-control?

1.Lysa is clear that she is not prescribing a specific diet plan, but she does insist that you need a plan — a defined set of boundaries around food. Why do you think having a concrete plan matters so much, even when the plan itself is flexible and personal? What has happened in the past when you tried to "just eat healthier" without specific commitments?

2.Lysa talks about identifying her personal "boundaries" — specific foods or eating behaviors she would commit to changing — and the importance of writing them down. What are one or two specific boundaries you sense God inviting you to establish right now?

3.Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans." How does inviting God into the specifics of a health plan — rather than keeping it purely in the secular self-help category — change both the nature of the plan and your relationship to it?

1.Lysa identifies emotional eating — turning to food in response to stress, boredom, sadness, loneliness, or even celebration — as one of the most powerful and underexamined drivers of our eating habits. On a scale of 1–10, how much of a role do you think emotions play in your relationship with food? What emotions are most reliably connected to eating for you?

2.Isaiah 55:2 asks, "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare." In what ways have you been "spending" your emotional energy on food that doesn't ultimately satisfy the deeper need? What is the deeper need you were trying to meet?

3.Lysa describes the pattern of using food to self-medicate emotional pain — and the vicious cycle that creates, because the guilt that follows often drives more emotional eating. How have you seen that cycle play out in your own life? At what point in the cycle do you feel most hopeless, and why?

1.Lysa is disarmingly honest about her own setbacks — days, weeks, and even seasons when she fell back into old patterns. How has the fear of eventual failure ever caused you to not even start a health journey, or to abandon one once a slip-up happened? What story were you telling yourself in those moments?

2.Galatians 6:9 urges, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." What does it mean to you that the harvest is conditional on continuing — not on perfection? How does that reframe what "success" looks like on a hard day?

3.Lysa distinguishes between a "slip" and a "return to old patterns" — the difference between stumbling on the path and deciding to leave the path entirely. Do you agree that this distinction matters? How do you tell the difference in your own experience between a momentary stumble and a deeper drift?

1.Lysa writes that real victory in this area is not the absence of struggle, but the presence of God in the middle of the struggle. How does that definition of victory differ from how you typically imagined "winning" in this area? Does this definition feel more or less hopeful to you than the idea of never being tempted again?

2.Romans 8:37 says we are "more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Lysa insists this is not wishful thinking but a present-tense reality available to every believer. What would it actually look like in your daily kitchen, at a restaurant, or at a social gathering to live as someone who is "more than a conqueror" in this area?

3.Lysa talks about the power of renewing your mind with truth — of replacing the lies you have believed about yourself, your body, and your capacity for change with what God says. What is one specific lie you have believed about yourself in this area that you now want to replace with a specific truth from Scripture?

1.Hebrews 12:1 calls us to "throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles." Lysa applies this to the specific foods, habits, and thought patterns that most reliably derail us. What is the one thing you most need to "throw off" in this area — and what has made it so hard to let go?

2.Lysa is careful to distinguish between foods that are genuinely problematic for you personally and a spirit of legalism that turns food into a religious rule system. How do you hold those two things in tension — having real boundaries without sliding into a joyless, rule-based relationship with food?

3.James 1:2–4 says that trials produce perseverance, which produces maturity. In what ways has this struggle with food and cravings — as frustrating as it has been — actually been a tool in God's hands to produce something deeper in you? What spiritual muscles have been developed through the fight?

1.Looking back across the entire study, which single chapter, session, or idea had the most impact on you — and why? What was it about that particular concept that broke through in a way others didn't?

2.How has your understanding of cravings — and of your relationship with food — changed since you began this study? Try to articulate the shift as specifically as you can: what did you believe before, and what do you believe now?

3.Lysa's central thesis is that we were made to crave, and that when we redirect our cravings toward God rather than food, both our spiritual and physical lives are transformed. After completing this study, do you find that thesis more convincing, less convincing, or nuanced in ways you didn't expect? Explain.