by Heidi Bylsma | Feb 4, 2013 | Blog
For years, I have been asked if I will “mentor” or coach others through the process of releasing weight. This is a journey we are on and sometimes it is helpful to walk with someone else who has been on the path before.
Until August of 2012, my focus involved kids living at home and our homeschooling endeavors. I didn’t feel that I had the freedom to offer coaching.
The nest is now empty so it is with great joy that I now offer weight-loss/life coaching. While I can’t do this for free–college tuition is expensive!–I hope to make it as affordable as possible.
My introductory price is four one-hour coaching phone sessions for $100. These can be scheduled in a way that suits you, though, I recommend weekly and it includes additional time in email. I am offering an initial half-hour consultation for free. So, basically:
1 – Email exchange prior to free consult
1 – 30 minute free consultation via telephone
4 – 60 minute phone consultations
Email exchanges (between phone visits).
For $100
Isolating “weight loss” from the rest of life is counter productive, in my opinion, so that is why I consider this more an offer to do life coaching with an emphasis in getting a grip on the weight challenges.
NOTE: If what you want is coaching to help you with dieting, I am not the right choice. If you are trying to apply yourself to a Christian, non-diet approach to weight loss and maintenance, then I think I can help. Let’s talk!
If you are interested, please email me at heidi@heidibylsma.com. Tell me a bit of your story and provide me with your contact information. I want to find a balance between helping others just because I love to do that and my need to give time to earning an income for our family.
I hope to hear from you soon!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 31, 2013 | Blog
Hope you don’t mind my putting up a 5 minute (just over that) video here inviting you to join me at my other blog. The reasons are compelling! Hope you will watch! (It ain’t purty, but *I* think it is compelling!) LOL!
Come over there to see what I mean.
Hugs! Heidi
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 30, 2013 | Blog
What can we do to be satisfied? What can we do to experience full souls that don’t end up gravitating to food when we are faced with a challenge? I have written about that here. I hope you will come on over!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 29, 2013 | Blog
Hey, everyone. You do NOT want to miss this blog post at my other blog. I am sharing about a wonderful app that is HUGELY helpful in overcoming emotional eating. Please pop over there and have a look! It can revolutionize the way you process emotions–it can revolutionize your eating and even your processing anything that happens in life!
I hope to see you there!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 27, 2013 | Blog
I haven’t been writing as much at this blog, but I have been writing at two others I have.
The first, my 1000 Blessings Blog, is something I like to add to as part of what I learned in Thin Within. Gratitude really does transform my life. For quite some time now, I have been adding to it bit by bit. Recently, I have felt a call to open my eyes more frequently, be still with more regularity and record the many gifts that are all around me. When I do, it radically transforms my heart…which is what I need if I am to live in freedom from the sin of gluttony.
The second is at my recently revamped website. My focus has broadened a bit to “Living Life on the Path of Praise” and, more specifically, “Moving from Fear to Faith on the Path of Praise.” I have been doing a series even as I walk through a very challenging trial. There, I share with the readers of the blog, strategies I am using to navigate the churning waters that threaten to consume me if I am not proactive. This definitely is related to Thin Within since many times in my life I have processed my heartaches with food. This time, I have determined to honor the Lord with my response. I hope you will come to my new blog and even subscribe! Join in or create a conversation. Let’s support one another. The first post in the series is found here.
I don’t intend to “abandon” this blog at all, but I did want the readers and visitors of this blog to know that my ruminating about life has been happening at other places, too, in case you might find either of the other two blogs encouraging. I hope you will join me there as well!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 25, 2013 | Blog
I have been married 28 years to the same man.
Nevertheless, one day a couple of months ago, I woke up next to a dieter for the first time in my life.
My husband had suddenly transformed–for the first time in my 30 years with him–into a calorie-counting, exercise-obsessed, dieting fanatic.
Ok, maybe that isn’t quite fair. 🙂
I have to tell you…this is a challenge for me! I came out of all of that. I was rescued from an unhealthy obsession. The same one I now see consuming him. If I had any doubt, I knew he had contracted the disease when one day he went to the gym, came home and watched football, plowed through a boatload of bean dip and chips and returned to the gym for a “two-fer.” Back in my dieting obsessed days, he called that “Bingeing and Purging” by using exercising for purging.
So how is this affecting me?
I am struggling!
We can be in the middle of enjoying a meal and he throws out numbers about the calories he is ingesting and the calories that the elliptical trainer at the gym reassured him he was burning. I remember this math madness that consumed me each meal.
Sure, I am thankful he is concerned about his health. He was at his heaviest ever and has now lost about 20 pounds.
When you put together his obsession with the fact that I am facing a difficult trial right now, I must admit…I am being sucked back in as well…I have been on a scale more in the past 2 weeks than in the five years previous! I, too, have lost weight. As great as that sounds:
I know this isn’t healthy.
Something is wrong. But my stomach hurts most of the time. I know it is anxiety. But my diet-obsessed husband (who has never dieted in his life, but has lost weight using the Thin Within approach) continues to affirm my weight loss. Don’t get me wrong–I haven’t been particularly overweight, really. Just at the higher end of what is reasonable for me. I am healthy, playing tennis multiple times each week and doing other aerobic activity a couple of times each week.
I remember those days…where losing weight–changing the outside–was so important that I didn’t pay attention to what it was costing my soul, my spirit, my mind…
So I press on. Asking God to help me find balance…find a way to live with a dieter without being sucked in…to rescue me again.
Do you have any thoughts about this? I would love to hear from you. How do you stay free from obsession when people you are with and care about are dieting obsessed?
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 12, 2013 | Blog
This is a great mini-bible study by my friend Barb. In fact, it is the beginning of a series that I think can have a wonderful impact on anyone struggling with habitual sin! Let me (and Barb) know what you think!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 4, 2013 | Blog
When we first begin Thin Within or similar approach of eating between the parameters of hunger and satisfaction—we are thrilled that we are free to eat whatever we wish. We delight in what God teaches us about freedom in Christ. Breaking the bondage that diets have held us in for so many years is reason to rejoice!
But, for most, after three weeks or so, the honeymoon ends. We may come to a crashing halt, in fact. We may feel angry, dissatisfied, and/or resentful.
This is when it is vital to remember, we are called to fight for what is right. Jesus calls us to forsake sin and to give thanks in all circumstances. Contentment—in any circumstance—is our calling. We have desires. We are lured or urged to do, say, eat, think something that isn’t in line with our godly goals. It is at those moments when “suffering” is defined as denying ourselves. We say NO. “Not this time.” “Not now.” We fight against our flesh.
God tells us in Titus that the same grace that brings salvation teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions.
We have to make costly choices. We have to be willing to deny ourselves.
We are called by our Savior to live a crucified life. In this way we share in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. We experience intimacy with God. We count everything else as rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ.
He laid down his life. He shed His blood. He forsook His kingship in Heaven and perfect fellowship with the Spirit and the Father to take on the flesh of man that He might share in our flesh and blood and experience humanity…ultimately dying as a servant for sinful man. He went through so much and all he is asking of us is to say NO to our fleshly desires outside of godly parameters.
Hebrews 12:1-4 reads:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
I complain so readily, but *I* haven’t yet resisted to the point of shedding my blood…not even close!
When I think of how much I have grumbled, how apathetic I have been toward sin, how I have allowed food to regain more and more focus in my life…how I have not been vigilant against the enemy who has a will for my life…It MUST stop! The enemy’s will for my life (and yours) is to regain all the weight, experience defeat, failure, and become impotent in our testimony. It is to be a blight on the name of Christ.
I WILL CHOOSE TO REJECT SATAN’s WILL FOR MY LIFE. I am renewing my commitment to reject that will…RIGHT now. I want to ask you…will you join me? Will you reject the Enemy’s will for your life? Will you embrace God’s will? He who knew no sin became sin for us…and suffered accordingly…we are called to identify with him in his death…and say no to our flesh…
He waits. He receives us! There is NO condemnation in Christ!!!! If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of ALL unrighteousness!
Let us arise from the dust. Let us let him trade our sorrows for his joy!
Will you fight?
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 2, 2013 | Blog
Instead, of a resolution this year, I joined in the My One Word campaign. I wrote about it at my new blog at my newly designed website.
My word for the year is: ENOUGH.
It is somewhere between NOT ENOUGH and TOO MUCH. LOL!
I have invited God to do whatever he wishes in my life. Here are two ways, He is using ENOUGH in my life to simplify things:
1.) There are many things I take to excess. He is challenging me to stop at “enough.” This can be eating, driving fast, talking, spending, etc. I also don’t do ENOUGH of some things, like organizing my home, praying, loving other people and serving. This side of my ENOUGH coin is very challenging for me, and there is much work to be done! I will let him show me and strengthen me as the year unfolds.
2.) The second side to my ENOUGH “coin”is: To experience the reality that God is ENOUGH for all my needs. God is ENOUGH when I am lonely. God is ENOUGH when I am hurting, when I am agitated, confused, delighted, angry, thrilled, disappointed…etc. etc. This side of the ENOUGH coin lets me ENJOY my God and experience him as my sufficiency and portion.
Practically, so far, I have seen great changes in my eating (which had gotten really slip-shod with a number of trials over the past year). God is driving home to me again what “enough” looks like. I am free to eat whatever I desire, but God’s Spirit whispered “Enough” to me after I had eaten a few french fries during a meal. He also whispered “ENOUGH” to me when I started to reach for a second helping at breakfast. Obedience seems simpler to me with this approach. I love it!
There is such freedom for me in this!
- I am not obsessing about my current hunger number. This simplifies the process considerably and invites God to use a single word that I pray each morning (and throughout the day) I will live according to.
- My family is in on this. They know when I say “I have had enough” that it means I am done and I am obeying God in this moment–don’t mess with me over this. 🙂
- This affects which foods I choose to eat when hungry. Sometimes, to be honest, because I am a sweet-a-holic, it is literally true, “That is ENOUGH cookies for the day.” It is true. I don’t need any more cookies to experience freedom!
- It also helps me to make wiser choices… “I haven’t had ENOUGH protein today…I am hungry, so will have some grilled chicken.” There is nothing virtuous about grilled chicken as opposed to fried, but in my case, I have had ENOUGH fried foods since I eat them so often. God is using ENOUGH to simplify so much!
Could this help you? Could using a single word through which to view this new year help simplify things–such as your struggles to eat more mindfully–for you?
ENOUGH has already been making changes in me. I am thankful that the Lord has given me a word that is so concrete and so life-altering!
How are you doing as this new year begins? How could you simplify things?
