This Changes Everything!

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There are times when I feel such frustration with myself—the struggle that Paul shares in Romans 7 about the very thing he doesn’t want to do is that which he keeps on doing and the good that he wants to do he doesn’t. There are times when I am frustrated by others or my circumstances. Times when I feel despair and such a lack of hope. At times like these, I wonder how I will ever see my way clear. Hope is elusive!

It is times like these when one thing…and one thing alone…changes EVERYTHING for me.

In fact, the biggest changes in my life—my eating, my other stronghold struggles, my relationships—have happened when I have integrated this one thing into my life.

It’s praise.

I believe that so often those of us who struggle with eating and eating disorders have an extreme case of self-focus. I know I do when I am left to my own devices. Dieting definitely contributed to me being this way…and sometimes, over the years, I have turned Thin Within into being less about honoring GOD and exalting him in all I do into being .all about me, my food, my hunger, my body, me me me, my my my.

This doesn’t result in anything but more despair and struggle.

When I move my focus from ME to the Lord, it is amazing what happens.

We were created to worship him, to exalt him. When I am doing what I was created to do, my spirit soars, hope floods even the darkest parts of my mind and heart and I experience a change…now. There is something wildly wonderful about exalting my Creator, my God, my King.

This week, I have been struggling with some circumstances in my life and I was reminded ever so lovingly by my Heavenly Father that I hadn’t been praising as much. So, I recommitted to this as a daily practice. In fact, as part of the “Set Your Timer” Challenge, I praise! How awesome is it to praise God—even if ever so briefly—for a moment every hour!

I recorded one of my praisefests in case it can encourage you as you do your own. As I listened to it, I realized that you can actually tell that I am experiencing a lifting of my spirit as I go farther on.

Here it is for you:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/115926097″ iframe=”true” /]

How About You?

Can you develop or add to a God List (this post at my other blog tells you about it if you haven’t seen me talk about it before) and then use it for your own praisefest? If not this, then how about opening to a favorite psalm and giving it a shot? 🙂 Just ask the question, “What is God like and what does He do for people?” and then say back to God what you find!

I’m HOPEless and EMOTIONAL and I JUST WANT TO EAT!!!!

(Week 10 Summer 2013 Renewing of the Mind Bible Study)

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Since January 11th, I have been going through a tough trial. It is taking me deeper and making me more desperate for God than ever. This has affected my eating. I feel like I am FIGHTING to do the right thing so often. And sometimes I just stop fighting…until I start fighting again…until I stop fighting again…until I…well, you get the gist, I bet.

I know that God peels back layer upon layer of stuff in my life…like the layers of an onion. Like Eustace in CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Aslan had to tear off the reptilian skin from Dragon-Eustace, ripping him clean of his scales…the pain of it all was necessary for him to be free of what bound him. Having gone through the transformation, though there may have been a grieving, there was also relief.

I feel a bit like Eustace. Will I welcome God’s new thing that he is doing, even in this? Or will I tenaciously cling to food as if by going through a hardship, being so sad, beaten up emotionally, etc., I deserve “this one vice?”

So, this week’s topic of emotional eating, coupled with hopeless eating, is something that is near and dear to my heart. Please don’t for one minute assume that what I share with you here is theoretical in my life. Far from it. Chances are, I have been in or AM in the trenches along with you. Or BOTH. Like with this week’s study topics, it is both. I have seen the truth of living these principles, but I need to be reminded.

 Monday

Do you ever feel driven to eat? You give in and you are still driven to eat? And does it go on until you are just too miserable to keep going or all the food is gone? What causes this? For many of us, it is overwhelming emotions. I think sometimes we are trying to literally make ourselves so miserable physically so that we can’t FEEL our emotions any more. Or maybe we are trying to punish ourselves for something…like for “being so weak” that we feel hurt, or sadness, or pain, or anguish or guilt. Using food for these reasons won’t solve the problems. We know that with our heads, but we keep eating anyhow.

  1. Visit Barb Raveling’s Emotional Eating Bible Study page. What does Barb say is true in her blurb before the “Journal” section?
  2. Can you add to your truth cards anything from this preliminary section?
  3. Can you journal about the situation that is causing you to want to eat? Right now, take a few minutes to think back to the last time you ate out of emotion. What was going on? How did you feel? What did you do in response to the situation? If you ate, what did you eat? How did you feel as you ate? How did you feel after you ate? Did eating help?
  4. Consider using some of Barb’s renewing of the mind tools if you aren’t already.
  5. Read the “Journal About the Situation — Not the Food” and add any truths to your truth cards. NOTE: I love Barb’s material, including her Freedom From Emotional Eating workbook, but it *does* have dieting vocabulary in it. Please be aware of that if you decide to purchase it!
  6. If you didn’t already, visit Barb’s other site at this link and go ahead and do the activities on that page. It is very helpful in moving through emotions that might lead you to eat outside of 0 and 5 boundaries.
  7. If appropriate, add more truths to your truth cards.

Tuesday

  1. Visit Barb’s Emotional Eating page again.
  2. Complete the Bible Study questions.

Wednesday

  1. Visit Barb’s Emotional Eating page again.
  2. Complete her emotional eating questions at the bottom of the page with an experience you had recently with emotional eating in mind.
  3. Add anything to your truth cards that you glean.

Thursday

I love what Barb says. This is NOT hopeless as long as we keep fighting lies with truth. That is KEY! We have to be willing to do the hard work!

  1. Visit Barb’s hopeless eating bible study page. Consider that Barb would write in her journal even after she had broken her boundaries. She shared with us in our first class that even doing this afterwards, she found it transformed her! Are you willing?
  2. Complete her Hopeless Bible Study eating questions.
  3. Can you add any truth cards to your deck?

Friday

  1. Visit Barb’s hopeless eating bible study page again.
  2. Complete her Hopeless Eating questions for your journal at the bottom of that page.
  3. Can you add any truth cards to your deck?
  4. Recap this week: What are you learning about emotions and how to take command over them instead of allowing them to lead you to food?

WLBS Review: Hopeless Eating, Good Food Eating, and Bad Scale Eating

Week 04 - Assignment Thin Within Book

Hopeless Eating – Do you struggle with the thought that I will never conquer this challenge? Do you feel like  eating and weight will always be a struggle for me? Barb shares in her study that truth journaling about this is crucial! Reason with me for a moment: Who is it you serve? What does HE say about your struggle? What does he say about YOU? By way of review (or new information if you haven’t yet seen it), I urge you to download, print out and speak out loud each day Who I Am in Christ. <– Click that link and you will see a pdf document that is filled with wonderful truth about who you are in Christ! It is so very difficult to speak this truth over your own life and to remain hopeless. Christ blew the LID off the grave so that hope might be victorious forevermore! If you like, review the video where I speak about hopelessness. It is here. Also, Truth Journaling is an invaluable tool to fight the lies with truth when we struggle to experience hope. We CAN get to the other side of the feeling of hopelessness. Let’s fight our way through it. Besides, will eating make it any better? It never has before. In fact, eating feeds the very hopelessness we want to combat!

What are some truths that can feed and fuel hope when it wanes for you? Share here so we can all benefit from one another!

Good Food – or Yummy Food – Eating – Do you struggle with thinking if it is there and I want it, I must eat it?  This is the mentality that just says there isn’t any deep hidden meaning going on here right now in my desire. I just want the food and there it is so I will eat it. To not give in to yummy food eating we can be proactive. If we know we are going to be in a situation where we will have opportunities for eating food that tastes good when we aren’t hungry, we can plan for victory! Some of Barb’s questions are so helpful to me personally. In fact, I think I have started thinking sort of like her! LOL! (In a good way!) Will eating this right now break a boundary? Will I have to learn to say no to my temptation to break boundaries? If I don’t learn that, what do I know is likely to happen? Given my history, do I have the ability to eat whatever I want whenever I want in the quantities I want for the reasons I want without it coming at extreme cost? In light of the TRUTHFUL answers to these questions, what will I choose right now?

How about you? What are some questions you can ask yourself in the moment when the food is there and you, simply, just WANT it!?

Bad Scale Eating We just completed a “Ditch Your Scale” Challenge. Why not start your own challenge? Can you not get on the scale for a week? Do you feel like the scale has too much power over you? Do you feel like one person posted, “Sure, I will give up my scale as soon as someone pries my fingers off of it!” Many of us feel that way. We have an unhealthy relationship with that device that is meant to be a tool, but we can’t seem to drum up the willingness to grow through this. We continue to seek approval of the bathroom scale. Let’s pray that God will help us to stand on His Word and on His promises. Let’s do what one person here at the blog said and choose to stand on the promises of God found in Scripture that says he who began a good work will carry it on to completion. She said she would choose NOT to “check on his progress” by stepping on the scale for two weeks. Does weighing yourself cause you to celebrate by eating? Does it cause you to comfort yourself by eating? Then it might be a good thing to evaluate if you should have a friend or family member take the scale for a couple of weeks and pray you through this.

What does God call you to do relative to the bathroom scale? If you are able to use it as a tool and not allow it to define what you will do next, then you may have a wonderfully healthy relationship with it. If, however, you give it the power to make you feel like a success or a failure, consider doing something radical! 🙂 What will it be?

How to *Prevent* “Preventative Eating”

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What IS preventative eating?

Well, it’s what you do when you are preparing to go into a situation where you know you won’t be able to have food: a courtroom, a class, a seminar, church service, classroom situation, doctor’s appointment, DMV line, etc. Since you know you will not be able to have food for an hour or two (or longer) and you are concerned you will get hungry and not be able to eat, preventative eating is stocking up ahead of time–eating when you aren’t at a 0 or eating beyond 5 in preparation for the situation that may be ahead. It is eating so you won’t get hungry when you don’t think you will be around food.

There are some obvious problems with this. 🙂 Like there is nothing about it that respects the 0 and 5 boundary that God has asked us to respect!

We also have no idea if we will get hungry then or not. Not for certain!

This video explains a bit of what I am talking about. (If you are an email subscriber, please visit the blog if the video isn’t viewable.)

We often discover that if we are careful to give ourselves permission to eat to prevent hunger, it often leads to “I have broken my boundaries once already, so I may as well break them the rest of the day” sort of eating. Or “I have blown my boundaries” or what Barb Raveling calls “Failure Eating.”

As I shared in the video, there are a couple of ways of handling a situation like this.

  1. Plan your hunger so that you are at a 0 with time before the event to have a meal that will be likely to sustain you for the period of time you won’t have access to food.
  2. Carry a small bag of nuts with you to “shave the edge” off the 0 if you do land there during your class, appointment, or flight. A few cashews or almonds can go a long way and then you will have the pleasure of enjoying a meal at 0 after your class, appointment or flight.
  3. Renew your mind about being hungry before you actually are and then allow yourself to pray your way through “0” to the “other side” and enjoy that while you are hungry, your body is likely using its very efficient stores to fuel you!

When you are tempted to stock up and eat before you head off to a situation where you may not have access to food for a few hours, consider using these questions:

Preventative Eating Questions

1. Why do you feel like you should eat now?

2. Would you break your boundaries if you chose to eat now?

3. Are you willing not to eat right now?

If yes, consider what God’s solution might be to this situation. What do you think HE wants you to do?

If no, consider doing the justification or entitlement questions. It sounds like this is more about having an excuse to eat than it is about a legitimate concern to eat.

3. Should this be an exception to your 0 to 5 eating boundaries?

Yes – Why?

If the answer is YES, then how will you know when you are justifying eating and when you have a legitimate reason to eat? What will be the standard?

Given what you know about yourself and your history, do you think you can trust yourself to be honest about breaking a boundary?

No, if not, then do you really need to consider this option any further? What options are available to you instead? Are you willing to do one of them?

4.  Are you afraid of being hungry? Why?

Where does fear come from?

What would God want you to do to deal with this situation?

5. What options can you consider to avoid being hungry during the class, appointment, or seminar without breaking your 0 to 5 boundaries?

6. Is avoiding hunger during your appointment, flight or class a need or a desire?

If a need then what possible solutions are there that you can use while respecting your boundaries?

If a desire, consider doing the justification or entitlement questions.

  1. Are you willing to experience discomfort if doing so means honoring the boundaries that God has established for you?
  2. Is alleviating your hunger or the possibility of being hungry worth the spiritual, emotional, and physical consequences that you will face if you break your boundary and eat to prevent hunger?

FEAR BIBLE STUDY

Much of my “preventative” eating has been rooted in fear. Maybe you can relate! We may be afraid of being uncomfortable …hungry… and not able to get to food. When we dismantle this fear and evaluate it, it really helps to diffuse the emotional volatility that is a part of it.

For me, I feared being hungry and without food because of abuse related to my childhood.

God wanted me to allow myself to get hungry…and to experience his presence in the midst of my fear and my physical hunger. He wanted me to see that there was nothing to fear. That my fear was rooted in lies that I believed.

Renewing my mind about this was vital to break free from “preventative eating” and so I have to review truths such as these when I am tempted to eat to prevent hunger ahead of time:

  1. Being hungry is not so painful that I can’t manage it.
  2. When I am hungry there is nothing terrible that will happen to me.
  3. It is TRUE that I will have food sometime relatively soon.
  4. The comfort that I need and that I sometimes turn to food to give me is only found in the Lord (and he sometimes uses people).
  5. No alleviating of my potential discomfort is worth the violating of my boundaries.
  6. Who knows? Maybe I won’t even BE hungry before the event is over with. I just don’t know!
  7. Food will be available when the event is over. If I am at a 0 I will be free to get food.
  8. If I am hungry for a while, I will be ok.

Look up the following bible verses and write down what you learn about the need for preventative eating:

  1. Psalm 37:25
  2. Psalm 81:10
  3. Psalm 73:23-26
  4. Isaiah 41:10, 13

Can you find any others? If so, share them with me so I can add them to this list.

What blessings are in store for you if you stand against the temptation for “preventative eating?”

Do you have any events this week, any appointments, errands to run, meetings to attend where you might be likely to engage in “preventative eating?” What strategy will you prayerfully employ so that you don’t break your boundaries?

Hopeless Eating

hopeless

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This week, we look at Barb Ravelings Day 12 – Hopeless Eating.

Here are some thoughts about hope and hopelessness and how it affects our eating. If you are an email subscriber, please be sure to visit the blog site, as the emails don’t include the videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpmy3APQLSc?rel=0&w=640&h=480

It is important when we are struggling with a sense of hopelessness to take our thoughts captive and replace them with truth. I strongly recommend truth journaling. It is a powerful means of learning to think differently.

What will you do today to conquer the subtle (or bold) influence of hopelessness that the enemy tries to settle on your life? What will you do to respect your boundaries when hope wanes?