In fact, diets make the entire “pyramid” about food or food and exercise…well, about SELF:
As you can see, this isn’t a very stable image. When the beneficial food choices are what life is all about, life topples easily. That is why we can’t keep it up! But when the pyramid is laid out like the HEAL pyramid is, with God as the foundation, there IS a stability for our entire lives!
Diets tell us what to eat, when, and how much (most of the time). Many of us come to this stage of our life with a wealth of experience with diets. Some of us have lost a truckload of weight. Most of us have gained it right back. The diet doesn’t last forever. For some of us, what does seem to last forever is the obsession that dieting can trigger. Obsession with our appearance, with nutrition content in our food, labels, points, blocks, grams, calories and exercise mania.
For many of us, we have to try to walk far afield of graphs, charts, nutrition information and so forth for a season..maybe even a long season…so that we can truly get our bearings with the Lord’s direction and experience the freedom from obsession that he desires for us.
For me, the most recent chapter of this experience of freedom for me has come by not using a bathroom scale. I can’t pretend that I have this figured out yet, but CAN say that I am feeling a lot more freedom than I have ever known now that the scale doesn’t greet me each time I go into the bathroom…beckoning to me:
“Hop on and see… …just go ahead and check… …come on…you want to… …you know you do…”
Only to have me get on that piece of metal and instantly be puffed up with pride at my “accomplishment” or condemned because of my “failure.” (Really, most bathroom scales are NOT accurate to within 2 pounds, so how can I “celebrate” that as a success or bemoan it as a failure? And what about cyclic fluid retention and a million other reasons that a person can vacillate in their weight even by 5 pounds in a single day? Goodness…the hot fudge sundae I ate the night before, does NOT show up as fat weight overnight! Why do we accept these lies as truths worthy of condemning us?)
All of this to say…as soon as we begin to talk about “Beneficial Food Choices” some might say, “I knew it! I knew this was a diet like any other!”
This isn’t the case. There is a huge difference! Let’s look again at the HEAL pyramid! Open your books to have a look at it.
We are doing this so that, as we hit the fourth level, that of selecting beneficial food choices, we can see that this is NOT a diet. So, let’s review a bit…
First – The pyramid is set up the way it is so that the foundation is God. He is the basis for everything and runs through everything. The other “levels” of the pyramid will fall unless the Lord sustains and flows through the others.
Secondly, the second level of the pyramid deals with the tendency we have of looking to food OR dieting OR eating “healthy” food as a means of feeling better about myself, about life, about anything. If I blame food for my condition, if I “hate” food and resent that I have to eat it (for instance), then I do not yet have a healthy relationship with food. Diets usually blow right past this concern. We are taught to hate certain foods and that other foods are almost capable of imparting “righteousness” and virtue to us if we eat them. In fact, there is even an eating disorder that has been recognized in recent years. It is called orthorexia nervosa and is “health food obsession” in a nutshell. The HEAL book challenges us not to go there…but to allow God’s Spirit to heal and soothe what is the true ache in our hearts. Only God can satisfy our need for heart satisfaction and, by Jesus’ blood, make us righteous. Only the Lord can enable us to forgive ourselves for the many years we have abused our bodies or tormented ourselves…not eaten when we were hungry, forced ourselves to eat tasteless foods that were supposed to be good for us, or thrown food down our throats when we weren’t hungry…and all the motives behind all that we did. The LORD HEALS!
As we invite the Lord to deal with this in us, we begin to test the waters of 0 to 5 eating–eating what we desire between the parameters of physical hunger and satisfaction. That is the third level of the pyramid. I hope we can see why these levels do need to be addressed in this order!
We may experience a broad plethora of emotions as we begin to eat only to satisfy physical need and stop eating for the many reasons we have been previously. This takes us back to level 2…dealing with our relationship with food…and back to level 1…allowing the Lord alone to be for us what we have turned to food to be… (See how these levels are interconnected?).
As these levels begin to be more a part of our lives, we sense the Lord calling us to a greater sense of responsibility for the body he has entrusted to us. We begin to discern that we feel physically better in response to some foods than others. This almost seems like an incidental awareness that may emerge slowly as the obsessions fade. We may feel like garbage when we start the day with a quick bowl of cereal, finding we crash and burn within an hour. Or we may realize just how energized we are for half a morning after having some other foods. This is the insight we carry with us into this fourth level of the HEAL pyramid. We may discover that some of the information we learned during our dieting experiences, can actually be “sanctified”–used by the Lord in a beneficial way. But all the while we remain aware that the heart can be deceived…we can wander back into our obsessions if we aren’t alert!
Over time…and it may take a long time for some…we begin to be able to use nutrition information to begin to select foods that are more beneficial than those we chose when we began this process. Not for righteousness’ sake…as we remain steadfast that only the Lord can truly impart virtue into our lives…but because with discernment and a sense of responsibility, we want to feel better and operate at our best. This is a slow change. We also choose foods that the Lord gives us an appreciation for…including the taste!
I learned from my exposure to the “ZONE Diet” years ago that I really feel much better when I have protein with each eating occasion. When I am at a 0 and eat something without protein, I will experience a lack of energy much sooner than when I am sure to have protein as well.
So, then, level 4 is that place we arrive not where we try to revert back to a diet…no, we continue to allow the other three levels of the HEAL pyramid to undergird this top layer. The fact that this layer is smaller than the others indicates it isn’t supposed to be a focus.
You see, so often, we flip the pyramid on its head…we try to make eating beneficial foods where we start AND where we end. We ignore the rest of the pyramid. That is certainly what diets do!
So…with this all said (sorry that this was so long!), let’s look at our goal for this level. Please remember to give yourself time to get there. This isn’t a “do it today” sort of goal. You may not find yourself emotionally ready to exercise this type of discernment until you have rested in the freedom of the other three levels for a long while (like a year!). All the Lord to lead you.
We move to a spiritually mature approach to nutrition when our spirit of vanity and perfectionism is replaced by a spirit of gratitude and a genuine desire to honor God…this comes only from a heart of change–when we really realize who we are and who we belong to–that our lives, our beauty, our bodies are not our own (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). HEAL book, page 47
Level 4:Beneficial Food Choices (Journal your responses if you don’t have the HEAL book…and share them here if you like!)
My goal: To be able and willing to delight in beneficial foods more frequently. Not to consider myself more virtuous for doing so.
Action Steps: To have fresh salsa available all the time (this is one of the few beneficial foods that I enjoy…so I may as well have that as a snack instead of cookies!). To select grilled chicken instead of fried at least sometimes. 🙂
For me, this has to be babysteps!
Tomorrow, I will post the next assignment and some thoughts about it, too. 🙂 Hope you are still hanging in there! 🙂
Still hanging out in the living room together for our group study! 🙂
Moving on, then, to level 3. We will do level 4 tomorrow. If you want, to, you can move on to lesson three, but I don’t think I will post that assignment until Tuesday. I want to take as long as we need to cover the material. 🙂 This little book offers a lot to think and pray over!
Level 3: Hunger-Fullness Eating I am persnickety about labels. For me, “fullness” is too much food. So I prefer to have my goal be to eat to “physical satisfaction.” This is basically when hunger is no longer present. Since, scientifically speaking, there is a delay of about 10 minutes between the time my stomach is no longer empty and the time my brain registers this fact, I know that once I feel like I am no longer hungry, I am definitely good…filled with fuel for my body. To continue eating past that point will be too much food. In fact, 10 minutes after I stop is the real sensation…and it is definitely a fuller sensation than the one I stop for.
In the HEAL book, the authors have a different hunger scale than in the Thin Within materials. -5 (negative 5) to -1 (negative 1) is undereating. 0 to 5 is healthy eating…from stomach hunger to a comfortable place in the stomach. and 6-10 is overeating.
This stage is about abandoning any tendency to either overeat or undereat while learning to rely on the internal hunger and fullness cues God has given you. (HEAL, page 45)
Many of us don’t know what true physiological hunger feels like. We are so used to ignoring those either because we are on a diet and have had our allotment of points, carbs, or calories for the day (so we have to ignore our body’s legitimate call for more food) or because we want food and don’t care if we are hungry or not and dive in! So waiting for true physiological hunger seems foreign to many of us.
Add to that the fact that we are used to eating the amounts we are told, either by our diets (a half cup of this or a quarter cup of that) or by our “Full Meal Deals” at fast food restaurants or even the nice places we may choose to dine. Everyone seems to want to tell us how much we need to eat.
The truth is, only our bodies can tell us what we need and God has made us fearfully and wonderfully. He will use our physical hunger and satisfaction cues to direct us in our eating if we allow him to do so!
If you have never tried adjusting your eating to eat only between 0 and 5 (phyiscal hunger and satisfaction), this may rock your world! It makes a huge difference in everything. Without obsessing about what you put in your mouth, if you prayerfully seek to learn what your body feels like when it is hungry and what it feels like when it is satisfied physically, and commit to the Lord to allow these boundaries to direct you when you will eat, you will release weight and develop your dependence on the Lord, too.
When we stop eating for all the many reasons that we think we need to (sad, happy, celebrate, stressed, depressed, etc., etc…) we find that a lot of emotions go unanesthetized…and we need the grace of God to help us get through. We find that we have come to rely on food in more ways than we can imagine. But as we persevere and allow the Lord to get us through, not only do we release physical weight, but we experience the healing of our hearts and minds through the only One who can truly satisfy what ails us.
Here is my level 3 goal.
Level 3 Goal: To eat only when at a 0 and to stop at or before a 5. Action Steps: To slow down, to be aware. To allow myself to take sips of a beverage between bites and put the food or fork down. I have been distracted while eating and I think this has caused my portions sizes to be larger. Also, for now, I will take half of what I have been normally. I will wait 10 minutes before getting another serving to see if I am still really hungry or not.
Your turn! 🙂 For Level 3, write your goal in your journal if you don’t have the HEAL book and/or share it with us here at the blog if you want added accountability.
Don’t forget that our relationship with God is the foundation and is to permeate everything else. Once the focus shifts to 0 to 5 eating, some of us may struggle with leaving God out of it. Be aware of this tendency and the tendency to hop on the scale repeatedly through the day. Again, I urge you to toss the bathroom scale out or to, at least, send it to a girlfriend’s house for a couple of months and see if God and you can do this thing without that tool. 🙂
Tomorrow, level 4. Remember that we may not “accomplish” these levels in succession. We definitely will have to continue to work on level 1 all our lives long! 🙂
Allie and Judy have done a great thing in this lesson. I really like this group study. They ask us to discuss the HEAL pyramid and then to take time individually to create personal HEAL goals for each level of it. They want us to list practical, action-oriented steps that will help us to reach those goals. We are encouraged to remember that the Lord is not concerned with our outer appearance but with the motives of our hearts. I LOVE that they remind us of this!
So how about it? Let’s take some time to do this. I may post a Part 3 of this tomorrow so that we can really take some time with this. If you don’t have the HEAL book, I want to give you enough information here to be able to participate. Feel free to post questions if there isn’t enough information for you to benefit, too.
You may want to open the book to the HEAL pyramid to have it in front of you. We will go level by level through it here.
Level 1:Relationship with God. Given that we are called by God to enjoy Him, to depend on Him, to call on Him, to serve and worship Him, to allow Him to be the only thing we worship, given our tendency as human beings to put something else in place of Him at almost every turn…maybe especially when we are concerned about our bodies, appearance, and food, what is a very real goal that you can establish for yourself in this area? Prayerfully consider what God is asking you in this? Goal: _________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Action Steps: ___________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ You may want to have a journal that you write these things in.
I am not sure I like the way I worded my goal, but here it is without editing:
Level 1 Goal: To invite God into everything, including my eating. To obey Him in ALL things, completely. (I figure if I don’t shoot for ALL things, then I will definitely NOT be obedient. If ALL is my goal, then maybe I am more likely to obey Him more frequently.) I also want to add that this is my goal NOT because I believe I can win his approval this way. In Christ, I HAVE his complete approval. My desire to obey him is motivated out of a heart of love for him. So, I guess my goal would be best stated “To love God more!” 🙂
Level 1 Action Steps: Continue to have the timer on my watch go off every 15 minutes. When it beeps, I will stop and look to God consciously and intentionally for a moment. I will pray, “THIS, I do unto you, Lord.” This will be my prayer.
For some months now, I have had my timer go off incrementally. Sometimes only every hour, but in the past couple of months, I have it set to go off every 15 minutes. It is a reminder to reconnect with God since I am prone to wander so much. This has transformed my life in so many ways. (Even now, it is going off…LOL!)
In the past few days since I included this in my “action steps” with the prayer being “THIS I do unto YOU, Lord…” oh wow…has that ever changed things! It has been incredible to see how God has used that simple, almost *rote*, prayer to stop me dead in my tracks. When I say a word to another, when I drive, when I eat…whatever it may be…saying, “THIS I do unto you…”…yikes. I can’t pray that if it isn’t true. So I adjust what I am doing (most of the time) so that I *can* say it honestly…
Anyhow, this has been really helping me with eating, drinking and other things!
Level 2:Relationship with Food. I have included “and Beverages” in my goal setting. This level of the pyramid is about how I feel about food, do I use it for meeting emotional and spiritual needs or do I truly keep food in the appropriate place, eating to live, rather than living to eat? Do I run to food to do anything for me other than nourish my body? In the HEAL book, other eating disorders are included, too, such as anorexia. In fact, on page 45, we are asked to take some time to reflect on the difference between our spiritual and physical needs. We can so often get them mixed up.
Level 2 Goal: I wrote in my HEAL book, “To relate to food as nourishment–physical fuel–instead of something to fuel my joy.
Level 2 Action Steps: This is one I am prayerfully working through. I know I need some boundaries for a while. Boundaries that I would rather not post here, as I am concerned they might be misinterpreted. If we were sitting around a living room together, I would have the benefit of explaining what the boundaries are and why, and answer questions. Since I don’t have that, I won’t post the details here, but it is clear that I need to have boundaries in effect.
Please don’t skip this. Even if you don’t want to write anything down, you can prayerfully ask the Lord–even as you read this entry–what might be your Level 1 and Level 2 goals? What action steps can you plan to take so that the goals aren’t just somewhere out there? I encourage you to do this activity prayerfully. God’s goals and actions steps are NOT a yoke of heaviness for us. They bring delight and freedom!
Pull up a chair and get something you enjoy to drink…fresh water works, too, if you aren’t hungry! 🙂 Let’s put up our feet and, if it is cool in the part of the world where you live right now, get a comfy blanket to snuggle up in.
I have just done these very things. It is a beautiful morning in Cool, California (yes, I live in a place called “Cool!”) With the windows thrown open wide, the sunshine is pouring in, but so is the cool air (it is about 56 degrees!). So, I have my throw, my mug of yummy white chocolate caramel cappucino. In my living room, I can easily imagine sitting around with my cyber-space girlfriends. I wish we could all be together in real space and time! 🙂 Lord, please guide and direct this “group” study of the second lesson in the HEAL book. Most of all, I pray that we might catch a glimpse of what you want for each of us individually. What an author calls “Basics” may be challenging to me, Lord. I ask that you help me not to embrace a burden of condemnation–likewise, I pray that you would keep me from making excuses. Maybe you are calling me to take a larger step forward than I have been willing to make in a long while. Lord, help me to believe you for what you want to do in my life. Help me to follow you…if you want me to take a big leap, help me to do so and to trust you to catch me. If you want me to take a baby step forward, I pray that I would do that. Help me not to condemn myself using the words of others (including an author of a book I read or study), but to allow you to challenge me to experience the new thing you say you are doing even now! In the Name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
If you have the HEAL book, I am on page 51. We are asked by the authors if anything in the lesson resonated with us. What did God teach you through lesson 2? If those of you who completed the lesson respond here, God may use your words to encourage even those who don’t have the HEAL book. PLEASE respond here! 🙂
Other questions we are asked include:
Have you ever dieted? If so, what was that experience like?
How is your previous concept of “healthy eating” similar or different from HEAL?
When do you engage in all-or-nothing thinking?
What lies about yourself have you believed?
How have your accountability moments been going?
What phase of the HEAL pyramid do you need to grow in the most at this point on your journey?
Wow! There is so much here in just these questions alone! I want to give you all a chance to respond to these without my own commentary about each question.
I will share this, though (of course!)…I think one of the things that struck me was how controlled I am (even still!) by my dieting past. No, not in the same way, but controlled in an opposite sort of way. I don’t want to be obsessive about “healthy foods” like I did in the past. I don’t want to fixate on calorie content, fat grams, carbs, and proteins and labels. So, I swing way to the other extreme…where I don’t even allow myself to consider these things as tools that God can use in my journey. Sure, sometimes, I sort of do…but generally I don’t.
I think it boils down to being controlled by a spirit of fear. I am so fearful of allowing myself to be obsessive again with exercise (logging minutes, miles, repetitions, sets, etc., etc.) and with food that I throw out (almost) all intelligent thought about these things. Truth is, this is being controlled just as much as I was before–when I obsessed. God wants me to be free from this fear so that I can walk in knowledge and in peace. He can use information about food content to encourage my heart, my health, and my life so that I can glorify him. Will I dare to grow in this? Yikes!
Oh dear! There it is again! That call for balance! I don’t trust myself to handle it well, I guess!
Or…hhmmm… even as I type that, I wonder…am I making excuses again for indulging my flesh? Hmmm….I have a lot to pray through!
Hi, everyone. I am still in chapter 2 of the H.E.A.L. book. I really love the fresh presentation of familiar material that Allie and Judy have put together. If you are familiar with Thin Within, I hope you are enjoying it as well. And if you aren’t familiar with Thin Within, I hope you are enjoying it! LOL!
One big difference between the way Thin Within and HEAL present similar material is found on page 42. The “HEAL Pyramid” is a concept that I know that Judy Halliday has long felt strongly about, but it hasn’t made it into the Thin Within materials in a concrete way. Here is the pyramid so those of you without the HEAL book can see what I am talking about:
One thing I would like to really comment on is the fact that actually, these aren’t layers that go from one to the other, leaving the previous layer behind. Our “Relationship With God” is foundational, but also actually runs through all the other layers. We don’t “check it off our list” as something that we have “been there and done that.” So technically, all of these layers blend into the others.
What this pyramid DOES show is that the focus is to be my relationship with God, first and foremost! I have found that, as I get comfortable and faithful, for instance, with hunger-fullness eating, it is all too easy for my focus and foundation to shift…The TW book *does* address this, but there isn’t a visual like the pyramid that so spells it out. It can shift to being about the food, about the “technique” of eating between 0 and 5 instead of remaining focused on the Lord and dependent on Him. All along the way this has to remain being about the LORD. He cares little about my physical body in comparison with my heart. This is what I mean: What I am trying to show above is that my relationship with God must remain in and through everything I do…be it the emotional things I discover I use food for (that one is more obvious), or the awareness of physical hunger and satisfaction…and on into my beginning to exercise more and more discernment regarding which foods make my body operate at its maximum efficiency!
All along the way, the Lord will affect what I do, say, think, desire.
Allie points this out on page 43:
God is the rock we must cling to. He made us and knows us intimately, so it follows that he would know what’s best for our bodies and how they’ve been designed to function.
After further discussion about this, we are asked: “What can you do specifically to make sure God is the foundation of your life as well as your HEAL Journey?
I would love to know what you think. Feel free to comment here.
To me, this is probably the most important question we can answer as we proceed. If we gloss over this or blow by it because it seems irrelevant, we will miss it. 🙂
If you have been reading here at the blog, please dive in…take time to respond here with your thoughts about this. What can YOU do, practically, to ensure that you keep your focus on the LORD! 🙂
Epiphany! Revelation! A Blinding Flash of the Obvious!
A realization hit me following a late dinner. I had a meeting at church last night. I got home very late and was famished–truly at a 0. As I debriefed the meeting with my husband, I suddenly realized that the little steak I was eating was gone. I hadn’t taken the time to enjoy it. I hadn’t focused on the explosion of flavors from having marinaded the steak for 2 days. 🙂 Hubby had carefully and perfectly barbequed this little “Omaha Steak” and it was incredible. Tender and cooked to perfection. Yet, somehow, I had missed it…AND eaten it all! Sucked the thing right down.
And, in the past, that little steak would have lasted a couple of meals. Even if if IS tiny. :-/
Not only that, but I chased it with dessert–inhaled….
As I fell asleep last night, I thought over what I had eaten during the very busy day. I realized that all day yesterday, my meals involved more food than in the past. If I were to compare yesterday with a year ago, I bet I had eaten twice as much. NOT ok!
I think I will have to cut my portions in half again and see where I go with that.
Wow! I wonder what else I am blind to in my life? I bet a lot. :-/
Psalm 139:23…Search me O God and know my heart…
The light went on today and I discovered that greed has returned.
And, sadly, I tuned out the voice of God. I heard his whisper to my heart and turned my back. How often have I done that! 🙁
This brings home to me that food isn’t the problem. But in this case my eating says a lot about my heart. I have allowed attitudes to re-emerge that have caused physical boundaries to weaken. My focus has shifted again…subtly and I see it clearly as I look at yesterday. Wow. I turned my “deaf ear” to the Lord. Didn’t feel rebellious..just felt hurried. :-/
Hmm…Reality check time.
I am redefining my stopping point for my meals today. “0” or “satisfied” will be when I no longer am hungry. (This is what it used to be!)
Lord, please be my portion today. Be my satisfaction. Help me to see the truth about myself and about you. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
