Your Body – What is Your “Natural, God-Given Size?”

Your Body – What is Your “Natural, God-Given Size?”

 

PicsArt_06-17-10.01.46

When I was in high school, my mom put me on a diet. I was supposed to drink  nasty tasting shakes for breakfast and lunch and then eat a full meal when I got home from school, which was a full course meal,  including things that I could never manage to stomach. I don’t know if my mom thought I *wanted* to diet or what. I know that, in my memory, I cooperated…even to the point of trying to stomach eating lettuce covered with oil and vinegar. Now, just the thought makes me gag. I can’t stand lettuce and I can actually smell it if it is in food that I order at a restaurant (always requesting NO lettuce).

I was an athlete, but would often cut school to go to my best friend’s–my “eating buddy’s”–house where we often made a pan of brownies and then ate the evidence that we had been home when we were supposed to be at school. Not one crumb of the brownies would be left.

What began in junior high as a response to molestation by a family member developed into a full-blown coping mechanism–a refuge, a comfort, a recreational activity, too! Because I was involved in sports, I often kept ahead of too much extra weight. I do remember weighing myself quite a bit. I remember the numbers, too. I also remember the numbers on the scale during all the diets I went on over the years. I charted my weight on a graph on the wall during one season. Then, there were the diet program weigh-ins. So, I would have NO problem pulling a number out of my mind that seems “reasonable” for what my “natural, God-given size” would be.

BUT…

that would miss the point…

GOD-given, means that it is God given.

It doesn’t mean that Heidi has to grab a hold of it and declare “HERE! This is it! When I reach this number I will  have arrived!”

In fact, I distinctly remember in 2007, after I lost all the extra weight I  carried having actually gone too far so that I could have the accolade of losing ONE HUNDRED pounds, I still hated my rear end…my hips. You see, even when I was really *thin*…I hated my body. Freedom clearly wasn’t in a number for me! There was something in my HEAD that needed to change. I needed to “drop the weight” of a mental image of the ideal body.

So now, I see that “natural, God-given size” means, God has in mind the way my body, fearfully and wonderfully made, hand-crafted by him, will look or be. And it definitely isn’t what this world uses as a standard for beauty. You know what? I think I am beginning (after all this time) not to care what the world says. I want what GOD wants for me. There is FREEDOM there!

And “Natural” means natural.

I don’t have to be fearful about it. It just is. Like naturally curly hair. Or a natural blond. Nothing added. It just is.

Notice Thin Within doesn’t promise you that you will be a “natural, God-given weight.”

In fact, what we really want to do–dare I be so bold–is get rid of the bathroom scale. Instead, focus on getting to know your body and the God-given hunger scale: hunger and satisfaction, 0 and 5. Let’s stand on God’s promises instead of the bathroom scale and the ever-elusive happiness that joy is found in a number. You are MORE than a number!

As you commit (and commit again and again) to eating 0 to 5 or between the parameters of hunger and satisfaction, you will not need any man-made device to tell you if you are succeeding. Success is not defined by the world or by your past. It is defined by God.

Your natural, God-given size is, by definition, the size you land on when you eat according to the way He made your body. Eating according to the cues of hunger and satisfaction will cause you to land on and maintain your God-given size.

This is GREAT news!!!

Aren’t we tired of pursuing a number on the bathroom scale?! Then, assuming we ever land on that number, we live in fear that we won’t *stay* at that number?! That is definitely NOT freedom!

Here is a sound file about this very thing. I hope it is helpful! Again, feel free to download it.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/94321872″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Would it be helpful to you to get off the bathroom scale–to give it away or at least to have a friend or family member hide it for a month (or two or three)? Can you recommit to obeying the God-given signals of the hunger scale–0 and 5–or physical hunger and satisfaction? Will you trust him that he will bring you to the size that you want to be?

What will you stand on? 🙂 Here is a bonus! Good ol’ country rendering of “Standing on the Promises of God!”

Confessions of a Scale Junkie

Image Source: Stock Exchange

Image Source: Stock Exchange

This post is from a lady I met on the Thin Within Accountability page at Facebook. When she posted this piece there earlier this week, I just had to ask her if I could share it with you all!

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I was a scale junkie. I would weigh every day and it would set off what kind of day I would have. If the numbers were high I’d eat because, what’s the point? Since the numbers were usually high, most of my days were what’s the point days.

So when I started this journey I told the Lord I would weigh once a month, on the first day of the month. That first month I could feel in the way my clothes were fitting that I’d lost weight. I was so excited that on the last day of the month I stayed up till midnight and at 12:01 I was on the scale. I was sooooo disappointed! After all my self-righteous ‘obedience’ I had shed 3 lousy little pounds!

I went to bed that night ranting and raving at God. After all, my results on previous diets were historically better in a month. I was outraged! He had told me this was the real thing, so why didn’t it live up to my expectations? How was that fair?

But God…. by this time it had been 22 days … 22 days of experiencing God’s PARDON, God’s PROVISION, God’s PRESENCE, and God’s POWER! As I lay there wallowing in my disappointment over the lousy scale, my Heavenly Daddy reviewed with me my journey so far. The freedom and the breakthroughs that I had experienced in a very short time. Then He said to me, “This has nothing to do with weight. The size of your body is none of your business.”

So I surrendered. The number on the scale is none of my business. God is the foreman of my restoration project. It will happen when it happens in His timing and His power.

My job is to love Him, to seek Him and to draw near. To trust Him and to abide in Him. To depend on Him for everything. To look to him in every trial and every joy. To recognize His gifts in everyday things…like the baby bird feather that floated in the air and landed on my shoe as I walked through the parking lot of my office, all worked up about another difficult day.

That’s my God!! He does what He does, and by His grace, in humble obedience, I’ll do whatever He calls me to do. In every triumph there is joy… In every failure there is grace.

~ LBG ~ Loved by God and Living by Grace

Numbers: Do They Work For or Against Us?

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Why does one of my coaching clients (and friends) say: “I don’t plan to ever weigh myself again.” The answer may surprise you!

Counting Calories

I heard on the radio this morning that obese teenagers are more likely to use calorie information at fast food restaurants than non-obese teenagers  This fact was presented as if it were a good thing, as if counting calories is something that will help obese teenagers to slim down and get healthy. I think that some of the teenagers in this study are obese BECAUSE they are using external signals such as calorie counts offered by fast food restaurants to tell them how much they can/should/will eat, instead of relying on their God-given signals of hunger and satisfaction. The non-obese teens don’t need the calorie counts. They might order the bacon double cheeseburger and eat one third of it, stopping when they are satisfied.  Are calorie counts (masquerading as “nutritional information”) part of the problem or part of the solution? I’m all for nutritionally dense food, but something tells me the teens aren’t checking protein, fiber, and calcium counts. They are focusing on the calorie information. And, I’ll wager, it’s not only not helping them, it’s actively hurting them. It’s getting in the way of their ability to listen to their internal signals.

Pounds

Similar to the perhaps inadvertent problems directly caused by calorie information, are the problems caused by the bathroom (or gym or doctor’s office) scale.

When I was a child and didn’t know about calories and couldn’t have guessed my own weight with any kind of accuracy at all, my eating was fine. But when I started counting things (calories and body weight), my God-given natural appetite regulation system was disrupted and it wasn’t long before I had a bona fide eating disorder. I was trying to externally regulate something that is much better left to the natural, internal regulation system ordained by God. My weight and my appetite take care themselves and run smoothly if I honor and respect them and don’t get in there and try to improve on God’s handiwork.

I don’t plan to ever weigh myself again. Why? Because I am finally convinced that weighing myself is part of the problem, not part of the solution, just like counting calories are, for me, part of the problem, not part of the solution. I’ve heard many times over the years that in order to fully recover from an eating disorder (or disordered eating, or whatever you want to call it), a person should entirely stop weighing herself and trust that God knows what our bodies should weigh, and trust that our doctors will tell us if we gain or lose precipitously. But other people telling me rarely results in me doing whatever is advised. I don’t learn very well from other people’s experiences. Eventually I had my own personal experience of divine intervention that really got my attention.

One morning, I wanted to weigh myself at home. I had the wherewithal to pray and ask God if this was a good idea. I heard very clearly in my head “you weigh X#s.”  “Should I still weigh myself, though?” I wondered, “Probably not,” I thought.
“But I want to.” My brain did this dance for a couple of minutes and then the “I wanna” part of me won out and I weighed myself.  [I weighed] X#s. Not a big surprise. Why had I been so willful? Who knows. Oh well. I’m not perfect. Chalk it up to that. I went on with my day. I went to the gym mid-morning. There’s a scale at the gym. The “I wanna” part of me thought, “I should weigh myself to see if they gym scale and my home scale register the same number.” And then, I heard the voice of wisdom, only this time, with a bit more power clearly say in my head, “If you want to never binge again, you need to never weigh yourself again.” !!! “But, but,” the “I wanna” in me spluttered, and then, as a quick follow up, I heard a powerful, “It may seem like a high price to pay, but it is THE price. “

Wow. Ok. So…I won’t weigh myself. You’ve got my attention, God. It does seem like a high price. But really, is it? I don’t think Jesus got up every morning to check his weight. Nor did any of his apostles. There are still people on earth who probably go their entire lives without even seeing a scale. It’s not like I’m being asked to do something actively unhealthy. There is, as it turns out now that I’ve thought about it, nothing helpful in me knowing my weight. It never stopped me from binge eating. It never made me feel closer to God. It sometimes made me proud and it sometimes made me feel like I could afford to binge, but both of those outcomes are ones that I am much better off without. I am so grateful for this experience because I feel like God tried to show me this in a multitude of ways over years, but I wouldn’t listen. So finally, I had to hear his wise, loving, but scarily clear voice telling me exactly what to do. I can’t complain any more that I’m not sure whether or not I should weigh myself. I’m quite clear that I shouldn’t. And I don’t plan to. Not ever. Thank you, God.

Catherine Wilson Gillespie, Ph.D.
Mary Collier Baker Distinguished Professor
Drake University School of Education
Des Moines, Iowa

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?

Contest Winner Announced

This week’s winner for the drawing is Adriane.

We have only one more week of contest drawings (I think), though I may do it in June as well. 🙂

Remember, if you comment here at the blog, your name gets put in the drawing on Friday for one of three prizes (your choice):

  • Thin Within book
  • Hunger Within book
  • One-on-One Thin Within/Life coaching with me for a week.

How is Day 2 of the “Ditch Your Scale” Challenge going for you? Comments starting now get counted for next Friday’s drawing! 🙂