New Decisions

New Decisions

 

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I’ve never known that, when you do wrong, it breeds more wrong-doing. After all of the progress I’ve had, I overate early this morning and completely fell off the rails.

Just one misstep, and I was back wanting to do wrong today. I want to eat everything in sight.

Now this is where the choice comes in. What are my choices? I have two:

  • One is to turn off of the TV and reset myself by getting into the Word as much as I can all day. Today will turn out to be a great day if I do that.
  • My other choice is to eat all day, receiving condemnation from the enemy. He’ll be accusing me and telling me that nothing has changed. He’ll taunt me saying “It’s no use doing Thin Within! I told you, you haven’t changed! It really doesn’t matter. Mind renewal is just hogwash! Just go ahead and eat!” 

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But I want to tell you the outcome of the day!

I finished well today!

I did not let the enemy get the best of me!

What a huge victory for me. Yes, I fell off of the rails, but only for a short while.

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This time was different from all of the other times! I finished by eating a modest portion only two meals after I had blown it!

Had I had this fall in my bingeing days, it would have been a disaster!

But guess what? The mind renewal is working! It’s actually changing me from the inside out!

There are a few words that I have now banned from my thinking vocabulary.   These are:

I’ll start tomorrow.

You might as well.

More. 

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The word less is good; not more.

I still use the word tomorrow, but it has a new meaning and use…

Instead of saying “Well, you’ve blown it, so you might as well go ahead and eat now and just start tomorrow,” I tell myself “You can have that food tomorrow, if you want.” 

Next time I will not get tripped up with just one bite. But I’m glad that at least I learned a lot from that trip!

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Wanda Walker

(See her bio below.)

How to Step Out of the Prison of Addictive Eating ~ Guest Post – Adriane

addiction

Image courtesy of Naypong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Eating is the main issue in my life that I have to be very heavily reliant on God with because of the struggle I have had with food. I have to rely on God for strength to overcome these issues. The key is surrender and to keep renewing my mind.

I have to be honest and say that when I “want” to and when I “choose” to be out of control with my eating, I back off from my relationship with God. YIKES! That is scary. That causes serious issues with complacency in my walk with God.

Food is the issue that I need His help the most with, but when I am not willing to change, I try to keep it hidden from God which is completely crazy! My track record shows that to be the case though. It reminds me of Adam and Eve covering their nakedness from God when they had eaten the forbidden fruit.

Genesis 3: 10 (NIV) He answered,

“I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

YEP that’s me to a tee…hiding from God when I choose to be out of boundaries with my food. (Out of boundaries for me is out of control, eating what I want when I want it and you can’t tell me NO or I might just throw a grown up temper tantrum! And of course binge eating…yuck..sad but true).

Have you seen this paragraph from Thin Within Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Series, page B-4?

“Our God is unchanging. He has always dealt with His people with mercy and grace. Even in the garden when Adam and Eve were given only one directive, which they broke, God Himself provided the first ‘sacrifice’ by slaying the animals for the skins which their clothing would be made.”

So basically this tells me that I need to STOP! Go to God! He is not mean!!! (Note: Making a God List will really help you see God the way He should be seen.)

I am ready for a LIFELONG CHANGE!

This is what I want:

  • INTIMACY WITH GOD & Peace with Food and my body (His temple), and to be at my natural God-given intended size;
  • To see God for who He is (absolutely awesome!) and to see myself how He sees me. 

When I stay in 0 to 5, hunger to satisfaction, eating and spend/invest time in prayer and renewing my mind with the Word and various, reputable resources (i.e. Soundcloud, here at the blog, Thin Within materials, Barb Raveling’s “I Deserve a Donut” and “Taste for Truth”), I feel like a person who has been set free from prison or captivity.

I knew how to do this 0 to 5 thing. I knew exactly how to do it and had fantastic intentions for this past year, BUT I just couldn’t bring myself to follow through, to renew my mind or to stay between hunger and satisfaction. I even knew, based on my past experiences, that I had the key to remove the shackles, but I just could not/would not do it! Why? It reminds me of Romans 7:15 that states:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

I really wanted change, but not badly enough to put any REAL, LASTING effort into it. I wasn’t ready to lay my lover of food down. Boy does that sound bad! It reminds me of Hosea.

When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him,

“Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her,

for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”

Hosea 1:2

I was promiscuous with my idol of food and I didn’t really want to let it go even though I knew that I would feel better, look better, and ultimately have the peace and joy that comes from eating that way and drawing close to God. But look at this. God is my Redeemer!

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels[a] of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.  Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” Hosea 3:1-3

Thank God for being my Redeemer. I didn’t feel worth redeeming, but do you think Hosea’s wife was “worthy” of being redeemed or that she felt worthy? Maybe it is hard for us to understand, but God sees us so differently than we see ourselves.

Hosea 14: 4 says “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely,

for my anger has turned away from them.”

In the Thin Within Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Series, page B-5, it says:

“As we cease from running and respond to God’s outstretched arms, we experience the joy of His presence as we choose to say yes to His will for us. He brings the captive out of captivity and restores us to a “land” of hope and promise. We are transformed from within by the renewing of our mind according to the Word of God.”

DO YOU WANT THE MAJOR KEY TO LASTING CHANGE?

Here it is.

RENEW YOUR MIND!

It is so vital to renew your mind. Not only should 0 to 5 eating be our weight release/maintenance tool, but renewing of the mind should be our maintenance tool too.

Hosea 13:6 says “When I fed them, they were satisfied;

when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”

God is satisfying me with 0 to 5, but I don’t want to get prideful or cocky about that. I have before! I stopped renewing my mind before and the end result was not a good one. BUT THERE IS HOPE! God is doing a new thing. I have laid the shackles down. I feel so free! I have over 100 lbs to get rid of, but I am not focused on that. I long for intimacy with God and to be restored to a healthy relationship with food and my body.

SURRENDER – that was my 1st step. Will you surrender today? Trust me…it’s worth it!

What About You?

Do you ever struggle with being willing to change? Are you ready to make a lifelong commitment to not only 0 to 5 eating, but also to renewing your mind? If not, what is stopping you? Have you surrendered to God instead of using your own strength? Let’s start today walking out a life of surrender to God, committing to eating 0 to 5, and renewing your mind. We can do this!

profileAdriane lives in NC with her husband, Shawn, and 3 kids, Marissa (10), Allie (8) and Judah (2). Adriane is involved in children’s ministry and also loves to co-lead worship with her husband.

“Weighing In” – How A Naturally Thin Eater Thinks About the Scale & Eating

My Sister, Andrea, Breezy (notice his tongue), and me!

My Sister, Andrea, Breezy (notice his tongue), and me!

Another post about the scale? 🙂 Yes. It seems to be something we need encouragement about!

In 2001, I had the joy of getting to be the collaborator with the Hallidays on the writing of the Thin Within book. Something that not many people know is that, in writing the book, I got to share stories from my own life throughout. (Don’t tell anyone!)

So the part about the Naturally Thin Eater at the top of page 136 was about my sister, Andrea. We changed the names of those whose testimonies we included, so I am “Teri.” 🙂

A Thin Within participant, Teri, tells of her sister’s eating habits: “She always eats small amounts, making a huge deal out of each bite, moving the food around in her mouth. I never could understand it before. Also, she is quite happy taking a single bite of someone else’s chocolate mousse pie instead of ordering her own. She eats strange things at odd hours. She always leaves food on her plate. It seems like she never eats much of anything at a sitting, but you can tell she really enjoys whatever she eats. When I asked her about when she likes to eat, she looked at me like I had a third eyeball and stated, ‘When I’m hungry.’ She’s been living and using the Keys to Conscious Eating all her life. I wish she had clued me in.” Thin Within, p. 136

That section of the book was written 13 years ago. Andrea visited last week and I had the chance to learn a bit more about her eating habits. We went out to a wonderful dinner and she ate what seemed to me like an enormous quantity of food given my prior claims. 🙂 I never noticed her do that before. I didn’t say anything of course. 🙂 The next day, we were talking about a dinner out with her friends one night. They expressed incredulity that she could eat such a big meal and not be larger than she is. She pointed out that she doesn’t eat that way all the time. An “occasional” meal where she eats that much is followed by eating the modest portions she almost always does. It doesn’t lead to another meal large meal, and another and another. And it also doesn’t lead to condemnation. She has found a rhythm in her life that works well for her to be a healthy size.

I shared with Andrea that the most popular post *ever* on my blog was last week’s post: Your Body – What is Your Natural God-Given Size?  I told her that I think people are eager to be convinced that getting rid of the scale is a good idea and that life won’t fall apart if we do it. She shared with me that now, at age 62, she has never had a bathroom scale her entire adult life.  Whenever she has had an occasion to see her weight (annual physical exams), she has been the same weight since she was sixteen years old. She gets on the scale and, PRESTO! there it is again…the same number that the scale has told her for 46 years! Without doing anything differently. (She sheepishly mentioned that, even with a regular Yoga session, she finds the weight has “redistributed,” but she is still the same number on the doctor’s scale.)

She eats when she is hungry. She typically doesn’t eat when she isn’t hungry–or, if she does, it is a bite (literally…one tiny taste) of this or that. Occasionally, she enjoys a large meal and then gets back to eating modest portions again after that. That’s it. No strangle-hold on her scale or on calorie counting or some other approach. She is free.

Note: She doesn’t know Jesus. I would love for her to know that freedom. Could you  pray for her real quick just now?

Have you experienced freedom from the bathroom scale and discovered that you are approaching or found your natural God-given size and maintained it? How did you deal with the doubts and questions of “Shouldn’t I be weighing?”