We have tools to use on this journey toward intuitive eating. Some come naturally and some come with some pain, but they all lead to a closer relationship with the Lord and they all lead to healing if we do the work needed to get there.
It started with a negative emotion. Anger. I had an issue going on in my life that was making me angry. And, it wasn’t just the anger that was causing problems but the obsessive thoughts that went along with the anger. My thoughts and obsessions about what was going on was becoming an idol and they were making me want to break my eating boundaries.
I’ve been in this community for almost two years, so I know the right tools to use when these situations come up, but I wasn’t using them. I had grown accustomed to dwelling on the problem. Have you ever felt like that? Sometimes we are so comfortable with the bad feelings that it takes a special circumstance to get us to want to change.
My special circumstance is taking a small group of ladies through Taste for Truth by Barb Raveling. I felt as a leader that it was about time I use our tools to work through what I was feeling. So I did. The first thing I did was make a commitment to my small group to go through the Anger and Annoyance questions in “I Deserve a Donut” by Barb Raveling. I completed my commitment, but it was difficult. I was weeping by the time I finished just the first couple of questions. Wow, now I know why it is so hard to actually do what helps us! I have to admit that even though it was difficult, I felt better when I completed my task.
The next day our lesson was on Truth Journaling. I took what I had written for the first question and used that for truth journaling. This opened my eyes to some things where I was in the wrong and believed lies instead of the truth.
The following day, I went back to complete our lesson on Day 21. I once again used my anger issue for this lesson. Barb asked us on Day 21 in Taste for Truth to focus on a trial that is going on right now. Then read Hebrews 12:1-15 and record everything it says about how God wants me to handle this trial and what He is hoping I will get out of it. Here is what I learned:
Lord, You want me to lay aside the weight of this trial. It is not mine to carry.
Lord, carrying weight that is not mine to carry is a sin. It is in essence saying that I should take care of my own trial instead of taking it to You. Lord, keep me from being ensnared by obsessive thinking which draws me into sin.
Lord, You are calling me to endure this race I am running to You.
Lord, You are telling me that the way to endure is to keep my eyes on You.
Lord Jesus, You are the source and perfecter of my faith. I can’t grow in my faith without You.
Lord Jesus, You called me as Your own and You feel joy in that.
Lord Jesus, You endured the pain of the cross and suffered the shame of crucifixion for me, one of the sheep in Your fold. I praise You as You sit at Father God’s right hand in glory!
Lord, as I look at Your example I see that as I walk with You and lean on You that I will not grow weary and lose heart.
Lord, in my struggles against sin I am not doing well in resisting the pull. Lord, help me keep my eyes on You. Renew my mind as I turn to You.
Lord, I am Your child; Your daughter. Let me not take Your discipline lightly. I know that Your discipline shows Your love for me. You desire my growth into the likeness of Jesus and You want Your will and glory to show forth from my life. That’s what I want too Lord!
Lord, I can endure this suffering as Your loving discipline. Lord, show me what You want me to learn from this trial and show me how to use this knowledge to help others.
Lord, do not let me forget that I am Your child and that You love me.
Lord, I submit to Your discipline for my growth. Transform me and my life Lord. Make me holy for You are holy.
Lord, even though I feel emotional pain right now, I know that Your discipline will lead to and yield the fruit of peace and righteousness.
Lord, I submit and surrender to Your training.
Lord, strengthen my tired hands and my weakened knees. I want my life to reflect Your glory and to show how You grow and transform me.
After working through this issue using the tools we have at our fingertips, I felt healed from my negative feelings. I shared with my friend and accountability partner Deanna Lewis that I felt like I had been washed on an old fashioned wash board, put through a wringer and now I have been hung up on a wash line to hang in the healing light of the SON! It was hard. It was difficult. But it was so worth it!
If you are dealing with negative feelings and emotions that make you want to break your eating boundaries, may I introduce you to Freedom from Emotional Eating by Barb Raveling? There is more work for me to do and I am happy to announce that Deanna Lewis and I will be offering a group study of this book starting in mid-September that will end by the end of November.
This class is for people who already have the basics of Thin Within down and are ready for the next level.
We will not be discussing weight, diets or any jargon regarding good or bad food choices. This way, we can be free to not be tempted to return to diet mentality while God is healing us from emotional eating.
Right now I am involved in a study called “A Taste for Truth” by Barb Raveling. It’s a great way to learn to renew my mind and fits nicely with eating “intuitively”, or 0-5. A few days ago, I joined the discussion on the chapter regarding emotional eating. My good friend Deanna Burris, who is leading the class asked us some questions and gave some advice that I wanted to share with you.
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Do you remember the first time you ate for emotional reasons?
Gals, we have tools to use that will sidetrack our desires to eat emotionally today. We can renew our minds before we eat out of our emotions. If we miss renewing our minds before eating, we can renew our minds after and that will bring us closer to making this a habit.
Barb says at the end of this lesson, “When we stuff our emotions with food, we miss out on so much. We can change that by developing a habit of going to God to talk through all those hard situations in our lives that make us want to eat for emotional reasons.”
Share what you discovered about those “Hard Things” in your life as you worked through today’s Bible Study.
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Emotional eating came early in life for me.
I was put on a diet at 5 yrs old and wasn’t allowed to have sweets. However, my sister was allowed to have them because she was skinny and I was not.
I remember feeling ugly and unloved while my sister was the favored one.
The first memory I have of emotional eating was probably when I was around 8 years old. My family was visiting my aunt’s house and she had a bowl of candy on her coffee table. At one point I was alone in the living room and so I saw an opportunity to eat candy. As I was eating it, I remember how good I felt and powerful and loved! Thus began my pattern of sneaking food. This is the beginning of my unhealthy relationship as food being my friend and comforter.
From the time I was a child, I learned that food helped ease the sadness and feelings of being unloved or insecure with myself. It made me feel like I had power when I would sneak food. I have learned now that I have done this into adulthood without even realizing it. As I used food to cope since early childhood, it became ingrained in me to respond to emotions with food.
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··· God Gives Hope! ···
God has opened my eyes to my emotional eating thru the book “HUNGER WITHIN”. He continues to show me ways to STOP this behavior thru the study of the book “A TASTE FOR TRUTH”. Renewing my mind about my identity in Jesus helps me a lot. Scripture about God being in control and His love and provision also keep me feeling secure in Him and I don’t reach for the food. I have learned that food is a lier. It is certainly NOT my friend and DOES NOT love me back! I am learning with these tools God has given me that only HE truly satisfies.
He loves me right now, right here wherever I am on the journey.
Food is just a tool for nourishing my body.
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.God has more work to do with me regarding emotional eating. Because of this, I am excited to announce that Deanna Burris and I will be offering a group study of Barb Raveling’s book “Freedom from Emotional Eating”. We will start in mid September and end by the end of November.
This class is for people who already have the basics of Thin Within down and are ready for the next level.
We will not be discussing weight, diets or any jargon regarding good or bad food choices. This way, we can be free to not be tempted to return to diet mentality while God is healing us from emotional eating.
We are sure you want more out of yourself and out of life than empty New Year’s resolutions — which are often promises made because everyone at the office is making them or because all the family members are sharing theirs.
Instead, let’s start off the first full week in January of 2016 with actionrather than just talk!
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
James 1:22
One way you can do that is to join our first Thin Within class of 2016, a study of “Discovering God’s Master Plan” which is the first workbook in our four-workbook series called “Rebuilding God’s Temple.” Our bodies are the temple of the the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). It’s an amazing truth! So let’s commit this year to living like this is the truth (since it is).
Visit our online classes page and sign up. We would love to have you and walk with you through the first three months of this new year. Registration closes on Friday, January 8th.
If you don’t want to be a part of a Facebook group, consider joining our Thin Within trade book study. Find the chapter you are on in the book and dive in any time. We are trying to encourage people to post comments to establish a community for support. Won’t you help us out? 🙂
How About You?
What will you do to not merely be a hearer only, but a doer?
I am in the 2015 Holiday Victory class that is studying Barb Raveling’s book, Taste for Truth. Even though Barb isn’t a member of the Thin Within community, reading this book (now for the third time) has been so life changing on my journey towards freedom from disordered eating and thinking and I wanted to share some truths that I found on day one of this Bible study.
On day one in Taste for Truth we look at our role compared to God’s role in the transformation process. I hope after reading this you will agree with me that everything we have done in the past to get to what we felt was the perfect body size without bringing God into the picture was an exercise in futility.
Take for instance the scripture found in John 8:31-32 – Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” In this scripture, my role is to abide in God’s Word and believe in Jesus. God’s role is to fill me with truth and to set me free. Do you see the beauty of what happens here? I abide and He works.
Here in John 15:1-5 I see that my role is to once again abide in Christ Jesus; to stay around Him and remain in Him. As I do this staying attached to the True Vine, I will bear fruit. If I don’t stay attached to Him, I can do nothing. God’s role as the Vine Dresser is to prune me. He will remove from me the sin in my life that prohibits the producing of fruit. How good is our heavenly Father that He takes on the job of changing me?
I love that we read and study the truth of Romans 12:2 in this book and our Thin Within/Hunger Within material. This is such an important step in freedom from disordered eating, body focus and food obsession to dealing with every area of life. In this scripture, my role is to renew my mind through God’s Word which has the power to transform me. I also have to let go of any area of my life that conforms to the world. I have found that if I don’t renew my mind on a regular basis, it is easy to be like one of the masses. Sadly, without abiding in Christ and renewing my mind, I tend to be like everyone else. God’s role is to aid in my transformation through the work of the Holy Spirit and to allow me to know His perfect will.
In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, my role is to wield the Sword of the Spirit which is God’s true Word so that I can take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ Jesus. The only way I can wield the Sword of the Spirit is to abide in God’s Word. There is that word again…abide. Hmm, I think I see a pattern developing here. God’s role is to tear down my strongholds. I think about all the times I have tried to tear down and demolish all the “strongholds” or things that had a strong hold over me in my heart and mind, and I find from the scriptures that I was fighting a losing battle. The battle belongs to the LORD God, not me.
In summary: my role is to abide or stay connected to Christ Jesus through the reading and studying of God’s Word; meditating on His Word in order to renew my mind and memorize His Word in order to wield the Sword of the Spirit. This doesn’t work if I just do it on Sundays in church. This is a daily requirement. God’s part in the transformation process is transforming me from the inside out so that my outer frame and countenance reflects the inner change of my heart through my true focus and devotion to the Lover of my Soul, Jesus Christ.
What I usually do when I want to transform myself in the area of weight loss is to join a popular weight loss club and spend a ton of money and chronically work out. If I could have transformed myself, I would not have needed Thin Within and this Holiday Victory class studying Barb Raveling’s book Taste for Truth. According to the verses that I studied by myself and now with you all, what I have done in the past doesn’t even get me started on the road to true freedom from my obsession with food and body image. This is only done through the power of God as I abide in Him. How about you? Are you ready to join me on this journey that we walk together at Thin Within and to finally let go of all those plans that never work for His plan that will?
This time of year it is easy to be wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of family gatherings, company parties, church dinners, gift and cookie exchanges. Although these may all be wonderful blessings, who has time to focus on 0 to 5 or be mindful about eating? (If we are honest, we know it takes even less time to eat 0 to 5 than to blow off our boundaries!) When we stop to acknowledge the reason the culture all around us has changed its pace (and will again on December 25th), we become keenly aware that the One Who loves us most calls to us…
“Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalm 46:10
In the middle of the chaos, craziness, and crunched schedules, can we still our hearts and take a deep breath? Can we turn our hearts–our focus–to the One who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17)? Can we whisper a quick prayer acknowledging His Presence in our midst?
Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.
Psalm 42:7
When we neglect these moments of stolen, reverent silence before our God, we are like a tourist taking a photograph through a telephoto lens that is auto-focused on a rock instead of on the historic fort in the distance. The photo has become all about the rock while what matters most is all a blur. The focus is off.
There are some things that this world was never meant to satisfy. The King of the Universe has created a God-shaped hole in our souls (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and only He can adequately fill that hole.
Not more busy-ness.
Not more stuff.
Not more food.
Not more of being the “hostess-with-the-mostest.”
He wants to infuse our lives with His joy and His peace. His peace passes understanding and His joy is boundless even in the middle of any holiday crisis, mall traffic jam, or burned-ham fiasco! But we do need to quiet our hearts and minds–cease from spinning with the what-ifs and maybe-sos–to recognize Him and welcome the peace and joy He promises (John 14:27; John 15:11). We need to be intentional with our focus to seize the victory He has in mind for us!
A practical way to do this is to set a watch or phone timer to go off every couple of hours. When the alarm sounds, it serves as a reminder to turn our thoughts in a Godward direction: “Thank you for this moment. I am so grateful that You are mindful of me, Lord.” “Lord, I need you right now. Please help me with this project.” “Thank you for the festive lights decorating the boulevard, Jesus! They remind me that You are the light of the world!” “Please be with that shopper who looked so sad, Lord.” “Thank you that you are my good Shepherd and you lead me beside still waters, even on this freeway!”
Doing this regularly has trained me to be more mindful that Jesus is with me even when I don’t use a timer. Jesus is with me through the white elephant gifts, secret Santa shopping, when I am stuck in a storm in gridlock traffic, and when I collapse in a hot bath at the end of the day. And He is with me when I eat before I am at a 0, yell at the kids or cut in front of the rude lady in line at Target.
I know that especially in those moments I can be still and know He is God. His peace and joy will bring all the rest of life into complete and perfect focus and help me submit my will to Him in those more harried moments. Will I quiet my heart and mind and focus on what really matters for a few moments? Will you?
What About You?
What can you do (practically) to regain your focus through the holiday season? Try it and share with us in the comments how God blesses these sacred moments with His Presence.
End the year on a positive note. Be intentional to bring some focus to the rest of your 2015 by joining our study of the Thin Within trade book starting on November 30th (Monday). We will read the Thin Within book in record time, pray for one another and share our victories and challenges! We will finish by January 1st. Visit our Online Classes page and sign up for the Thin Within book study. We would love to have you! This is especially helpful if you couldn’t quite manage the 12 week workbook class. 🙂 This is only 33 days. We can *do* that! 🙂
The more I get into the Word of God through the Thin Within classes, the more I want to whet my appetite for every spiritual blessing that is found in Christ. Barb Raveling’s bible study, Taste for Truth, is another one of her inspiring writings that have kept me motivated to stay within my boundaries.
At our church service this past weekend, I ministered on Psalm 16 emphasizing the boundary lines that God gives us. According to Psalm 16:6, the boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places. Often, I do not see these boundaries as pleasant, but when I look at the boundaries through spiritual eyes, I see the hand of God bringing nothing but good for my life.
Even though I lead studies, I still struggle with the temptation to eat outside of my boundaries. Daily mind renewing is a must for me. In the Preface of Taste for Truth, Barb Raveling discusses strongholds. I no longer want food to be my stronghold because it is a very unreliable one. I desire for God and His precious word to be my stronghold. When that happens, the stronghold of overeating comes tumbling down.
Barb Raveling discusses her struggle with gaining and losing weight, and her struggle sounds very much like my own. She discusses the amount of time change can take. No one wants to be told that releasing weight and overcoming food strongholds takes time, but when you think about it, it’s encouraging, especially when you’ve wanted progress to be quick like I have. Knowing that a certain amount of time is involved is actually comforting because the process has never been rapid for me. Thank God for His timing and His ways!
I believe that Taste for Truth will give us more than a taste of the living water and bread of life which brings true satisfaction and brings food into its proper perspective. I am ready for that “taste”! I am ready for my spiritual cup to be filled until it overflows with the truth of God’s word.
What about you? Are you ready for a taste of the truth of God’s word? If so, join me in this journey?
An invitation: I invite you and anyone you know to join me beginning July 28 to indulge in a Taste for Truth. The study will last for six weeks with the weekends off, and it will end on September 8. Facebook is required as I will be conducting the study in a secret/private Facebook group. Send me a friend request on Facebook (Allison Browning Mitchell) and join me in this amazing study that is sure to change your appetite.
Allison and her husband, Lanny, live in Hanover, West Virginia. They have two children, Aaron and Amber, and they are the pastors of The Haven of Rest, a church in their community. Allison is a recent graduate of Bluefield State College and loves teaching, writing, and reading.
If you are dealing with negative feelings and emotions that make you want to break your eating boundaries, may I introduce you to Freedom from Emotional Eating by Barb Raveling? There is more work for me to do and I am happy to announce that Deanna Lewis and I will be offering a group study of this book starting in mid-September that will end by the end of November.
