Today’s post is from a guest blogger. When I ran across this post yesterday, I knew I had to share it with you all! WOW! So with her permission, please meet Amber Benge! To get to know her a bit more, visit her here. ——————–
When I was about 18, I went through a fight with bulemia and the struggle has followed me since then. My weight has gone up and down, but mostly just up as fertility treatments and hormone replacement has caused my body to go nuts. I found a great doctor who finally got things straightened out with my hormones and the weight has started to come off again, but it’s not easy. I recently pulled out the workbook I did back when I was 18 to help me keep my mind in the right place with all of it. It’s a Christian based weight “control” program called “Thin Within”.
The foundational principle of Thin Within is that you live life between a 0 and 5. Let me explain. When you are totally hungry and have that gnawing, completely empty feeling in your stomach, you are at a 0. When you hit a 5, you aren’t full. But at a 5, you aren’t hungry any more either. You are just comfortable. If you go beyond a 5 and keep eating, you can end up at a 10 which is the top of the scale. When you are a 10, you have that stuffed to sickness, can’t breathe, need a nap, after-Thanksgiving kind of feeling.
Thin Within teaches that you need to stay between a 0 and 5 at all times to lose weight. You don’t eat until you are at a 0 and you stop when you are at a 5. It’s as simple as that. You learn moderation by following your body’s signals. If you eat from a 5 to a 10, you are going to gain weight. You will end up with a sick stomach and a larger waist line as a result of your binge fest.
The principles of living between 0 and 5 also apply to the rest of our lives. I’m learning that I need to reject the lifestyle of gorged abundance that we have so readily in America. The dozens of shoes and purses, the big screen television, the clothes I never wear, the clothes I only wear occasionally that someone else might need… these are all areas of my life where I am living beyond a 5. These are more than I need and frankly, I feel like they are weighing me down.
I have an overwhelming urge to simplify my life. I don’t want to leave the 0 to 5 principle in my eating habits only. I want to start applying it to the rest of my life. I want to stop using food and things to fill me beyond my basic needs. When I make it a habit to fill up on these things, I am substituting them for Christ and His role in my life. When I choose to stop gorging myself on all the pleasures we have here in America, I can let the Lord fill me so that I can be used by Him.
Today, I am making a commitment to life between 0 and 5. We’ll see what that looks like in the coming months, but I have a feeling there are others that will do this with me. I have read your comments and your emails. I am so honored that you choose to pour your hearts out to me so openly. It seems that there is a common theme among all of them. We want to live for Christ. We want to give Him our everything. We just don’t know how to get there or where to start. So maybe this step of simplifying is our first move. What do you think?
Please post attributes of God that you are aware of, or that you have learned, or been reminded of. If you want to share with us the source (like scripture verse or page of the book or….?) please do! Today’s encouragement will come from you all as you share the attributes or characteristics of God or ways you have seen that he interacts with people!
Emotions are powerful. In the moment in which I am accosted by powerful feelings, sometimes the last thing I can fathom is to “Be still and know” that He is God.
But this choice in the moment is the hub around which my healing turns.
I can do anything with an act of my will–so can you!
With an act of my will, I can be polite to someone who I am not very pleased with–like the clerk in the check-out line. In fact, I can choose to cheer a smile right on to her face!
With an act of my will, I can move over into the “slow” lane and let the nasty man who is riding my bumper through the canyon have his way, even though I would rather slow down and pump my brakes. 🙂
With an act of my will, I can hug my family member who has allowed his emotions to get the better of him and embrace him in his craziness, resulting in a defusing of a potentially explosive situation–as well as some cherished “cuddle time.”
There are so many things I can do with an act of my will. By the power of God’s Spirit in me, I can choose in this moment what I will do, think, and say. With these choices, often come new feelings.
When my emotions rage, I can choose, with an act of my will NOT to go into the kitchen, but, instead to sit in a special place designated as my “time out” chair, or draw a bath…and I can, instead of allowing my emotions to send me flying into the arms and deception of food eaten when I am not physically hungry, to prayerfully evaluate “What is really going on here?”
I have come to a place of seeing that God calls me to sit in the feeling, in fact. To actually look straight at it and to…well…this may sound bizarre…welcome it. You see, I have a history of decades of running from my emotions, of not bringing them to the Lord, of short-circuiting his intentions in allowing situations in which I will be emotionally needy. Now, I see that he wants me to experience his sufficiency in all these kinds of situations. He is the Holy Way Maker, but in order to know what he desires for me to know by allowing experiences that strap me emotionally, I have to be willing to feel what I feel and wait for him. He will come.
1 “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.
3 Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.”
~ Hosea 6:1-3
Today, when emotions begin to assail me, I will be still and know that he is God. I will choose to recognize the feelings that I have. I will ask the Lord to show me what these emotions are about and I will choose, with an act of my will, to wait on him. I will not go into the kitchen, the refrigerator, the pantry or turn into the drive-through. I will choose, instead, to wait, to acknowledge the Lord and I will remember, with confidence, that “as surely as the sun rises, he will appear.” He will bring refreshment like the rain to a thirsty earth. I will wait on the Lord. I will wait. I will know Him.
How about you? Are you facing an emotionally challenging situation? What practical plans can you make so that you wait on the Lord instead of giving in to emotional eating?
Wow. I found week 4 really incredibly helpful. God is doing a new thing in me right now. I bet he is in you, too! I do feel like our momentum was derailed just a bit by our technical difficulties, but we appear to be back in business! So let’s keep moving! I seriously had a HUGE break-through this week! I am so excited!
This week’s assignment:
1.) Have you been keeping your list of the characteristics of God? How is it going? I would LOVE to see you post a list of what you have so far. I will be posting that as a separate question this week, I think, so please watch for it and chip in with some of yours! Continue to keep a cumulative list of all the characteristics of God and how he treats people.
2.) Enjoy the benefit of getting to know God even more and take the time to go over your list before you start your study time each day. Even if you just take 5 minutes and say back to him his attributes, you will experience his supernatural encouragement. This is the thing…when we lift him up, we get lifted up, too. I don’t get it, but I know it is true. So keep starting your study time with praise by using your attributes list! Has this been helpful for you? Tell us about it!
3.) Read and complete Days 8 and 9 – through page 93. Again, if you aren’t quite there, no worries. You can go any pace God so leads you, just keep on going! 🙂 Post when you get to it. Don’t worry and think you are “too far behind!” That is the enemy trying to get you off track and discouraged. Send him packing!
4.) Continue to add three things to your gratitude journal each day. If you struggle with doing this, ask the Lord to show you things you can be grateful for. This really can be transforming. So 5 minutes of praise (#2 above) and 5 minutes of gratitudes given to God and you have already started your time with ten minutes of the most worthy activities possible! 🙂 How do these activities, practiced regularly, affect you?
5.) We continue to be evaluating our beliefs this week. Have any of you done the truth journaling that we mentioned in our chat from last week? To see the transcript, click this link.In the FIND box, type in “truth journal” or scroll about half way down and you will see it there. Try this in the days ahead and let us know how it goes. Truth Journaling can be used *after* a mess up, but I prefer to use it before. If I do, I can cut off my stray beliefs at the pass beFORE they cause me to eat when I don’t need physical fuel!
6.) On page 78, you are asked about your beliefs about food, weight and eating. If you feel so inclined, please share with us what you discover. Especially as you look over the list on page 78 and 79. Which of those can you identify with?
7.) One of the things I love about chapter 8 is the “Planning for Trials” exercise. Take what you KNOW to be true of yourself and be pro-active! Plan to be different. This is “observe and correct” in action. If you know that you get tense and turn to food more when your cousin comes to visit and she is coming in two weeks, plan NOW. How will you deal with these feelings in a new, different, and godly way? Make a plan and stick with it! Let us know what God leads you to do!
8.) Chapter 9 is part 2 of the same theme. Evaluating the impact of difficult situations on your beliefs and behavior can be incredibly helpful. What do you learn from this chapter? Does the exercise on page 89 help you in any way? If you need some input from others, prayerfully consider sharing with us in the comments.
9.) Consider coming to a chat this week to talk about emotional eating. Or visit another venue and participate. Visit our special God Is Doing A New Thing website to find links to all the venues and other information that might be helpful. This week we will be chatting on Tuesday from 4-5pm Pacific Time and Saturday night from 7-8pm Pacific Time. I hope you can join us!
10.) Are you using any of the TW tools? How is that going? Is it time for you to prayerfully consider leaving one tool behind and trying another one instead? Are you finding your focus is still on my weight, my food, my eating? Or is it on God? 🙂
11.) One more tool that might be helpful to you is the Thin Within e-newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Hey! I am planning for the fall already! I hope you will join me in considering prayerfully what God would have you to do. I am praying about studying through the workbook available at Thin Within. It is my hope that as we study here at the blog, some of you (if not all) will guide live groups through the workbook, too! We can do it together! I am just in the praying phase right now, but thought maybe we could all have live groups and sort of connect here each week about how that is going and to get and give support. Just a thought!
I will be posting a “video review” of the workbook here as well as doing some give-aways in August! You won’t want to miss that! The workbooks are GREAT and come with the “temple toolkit” and a scripture memory resource as well. It is a $45 value that I will be giving away here during August. 🙂
Let’s renew our commitment to keep in touch this week, ok? 🙂
We are experiencing “technical difficulties.” The module that I installed here at the blog for the commenting and that we have been enjoying for the past three weeks or so is now telling Kim and I that we aren’t the administrators for the account. That means that if you type up a comment to a blog post or to another comment, we aren’t notified about it. If we log in to look at comments to approve them, we are told we can’t do that! 🙁
I wonder if the enemy is mad that we were having such blessed discussion and exchange. I sort of think so. You know, the enemy is real. Jesus spoke about him a lot and Paul certainly did in his letters to the churches. If we think he doesn’t care about this issue in our lives we are wrong. We must put on the full armor of God and take our stand against the devil’s schemes, just as it says in Ephesians 6!
Think about it…if you could break free–really free–from this issue, it would be evident to all the people that you know. God’s glory would be proclaimed and the enemy would be rendered impotent. Not something he will accept easily.
Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world, though! Isn’t that an awesome truth? We don’t need to fear the enemy, but we do need to be aware of him. This battle isn’t just with [our] flesh and blood. Instead we war with spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Fortunately, we have weapons that are not of this world, too.
We take captive our thoughts and subject them to obedience to Christ, one moment at a time, one thought at a time.
So…all that to say, I have written to IntenseDebate support in the hopes that they will fix things. In the meantime, I am just going to pray against this. Keep on posting your comments and once we get things figured out, Kim and I will approve all the comments and we will be back in business.
In the previous blog post, I asked “What size is Holy?”
Truthfully, it was a trick question. I have allowed the question to linger there and thought I would offer some thoughts about it now.
Jesus attributes his holiness to me. He who knew no sin became sin for me so that in him, I might become the righteousness of God. I have been attributed with his righteousness, his holiness. Ephesians 1 says that he chose me before the foundation of the earth to be holy and blameless in his sight. Holiness is something God attributes to me because of Jesus.
Yet, holiness is a choice, too, as I say no to the flesh and yes to the Spirit, one moment at a time, one choice at at time. I live as one set apart for him.
But no…there is no size that, by definition, is holy.
So often we judge people by externals! We think the pastor who is speaking isn’t quite “godly enough” because he has a “weight problem.” Not sure we have any business judging his size as a “weight problem” and I am positive we can’t judge him as lacking in “godliness” because of his size. But do we do this?
I know that many of us who have been involved in Christian “diet” or weight programs, connect our size with our walks with God. We may not do it on purpose, but we do it, sure enough. We somehow think that if we are losing weight or at our “goal weight” we are “walking with the Lord” and if we are gaining or staying the same that we are “in sin” or something else. This may not be true. Only our hearts and the Holy Spirit can testify to whether this is true or not. Our size can’t. Our shape can’t.
While it is true that, for most people, when we listen to the Lord and eat according to the physical cues of hunger and satisfaction, we will arrive at a size that the Lord chooses, it may not be a size or shape that we have in our heads. It is, in fact, incidental.
God doesn’t call us to be thin. He calls us to be his.
This means, giving myself clear away to him in my choices. This is living that “set apart” life for God that is holiness at it’s core. Let’s stop judging ourselves (and others) and stop attributing to God attitudes about our *size* that he doesn’t have!
It was a “trick question.” 🙂 Glad you girls saw through that.
Chapter 6 in Thin Within encourages us to examine “Fat Machinery.” Anything that puts us on auto-pilot, when we don’t engage our brains, and eat anyhow–that is Fat Machinery. We want to expose Fat Machinery and dismantle it.
There are four categories. Let’s look at them.
1. Conditioned or habitual responses. This is when circumstances pushes a button in me and I eat without thinking much about it. The book gives an example of turning on the TV—food automatically comes out. Movies mean popcorn.
How about you? Can you think of conditioned or habitual responses where you eat without engaging your brain?
2. Beliefs. What you believe about things will affect your eating. For instance, if you plan to be active, you believe you need a “hearty breakfast”—even if you aren’t yet hungry. The book uses the belief we have that we need “three square meals a day.” Many think if we don’t have three meals a day we will starve ourselves.
How about you? Do you have any beliefs that cause you to eat?
In our chat yesterday, we discovered that considering “boundaries” as restrictive rules–which we may believe can never be good–may result in us pushing against keys to conscious eating and other boundaries we may establish. When we evaluate this more carefully, we see that it is rooted in believing a lie! The truth is, boundaries guard GOOD things from being eroded or stolen from us, too.
3. Past stories. Things that happen in our past – usually that trigger emotional responses to food – can cause us to turn to food when we aren’t hungry. Again, since it is “fat machinery” we eat without prayerfully considering if we are hungry or not.
Our past stories are often a HUGE reason we eat. My parents were restrictive and abusive about food and eating. I developed a view that “freedom” from abusive parents meant plunging myself into massive quantities of all the foods that they restricted.
How about you? Do you have any past stories that you think might cause you to eat?
4. Failures. These can be dieting failures or even failures with Thin Within. If you have gained weight back you may feel like you will NEVER lose weight and keep it off. Believing this can keep you returning to food again and again…a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Do you have any struggle with this in your life?
One really obvious “fat machinery” mentioned in the book is our use of the bathroom scale. We allow the number to define our mood and often will eat differently in response to it.
If we haven’t gained, we are justified that “I got away with eating more…so I will continue to eat more…” if we didn’t gain any this week.
If we *have* gained, we may console ourselves by eating… “Oh what is the point of even trying to lose weight… I never will” and throw all godly boundaries to the wind!
Do you struggle with this at all?
This week, ask the Lord to make you aware of any “Fat Machinery” that is operable for you. But don’t stop there…DISMANTLE it. Write it down and ask him to make you aware of when it is happening…or to see it coming in advance!
What “fat machinery” do you see in your own life? If you would like help “dismantling” it, share with us here and let’s dialog about the lies, the automatic responses, the “triggers” that many of us experience relative to food.
