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.
In less than an hour, we will be having a “real time” chat from 7am-8am Pacific time this morning about Thin Within. Visit http://www.thinwithin.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2256 to see how. Hope to see you there. Feel free to come late or leave early. Just come! 🙂
Do you ever wonder about why you have heard the message about freedom in your eating, freedom from being tormented about your body and all those things that you struggle with…why you KNOW stuff and feel STRONGLY that “Yes! This is the truth! I believe! I will do it!” and then still struggle to walk in victory? Still have trouble fleshing the thing out?
So many I talk with about Thin Within experience this. I know I did for years. Probably at least 6 years before things “clicked” I knew…really KNEW the truths that God intended for my freedom. Yet it took until 2006 for me to begin to walk in even some measure of freedom. Truthfully, even now, I struggle with walking day in and out in the freedom Jesus provided!
Why is that? Why do we embrace it and believe it and then…don’t experience in our reality what God’s Word says we will?
In Stepping Up bible study by Beth Moore, she shares something really profound on page 81. She shares that she and her husband went to Angola to do some relief work. They were trying to take in the sights and sounds and smells of living death…starvation, malnutrition…rampant and overwhelming. A friend shared with them that one of the saddest things seen is when seed is brought in to plant and harvest, the people of the villages respond to it by EATING THE SEED instead of sowing the seed. She shares how she couldn’t get this thought out of her head and realized that God answered the question above…that some of us eat the seed of God’s word. We are starving and ravenous…we see it as the truth and good and wonderful…and take it in as temporary satisfaction for our “stomachs” if you will. Instead of working it and working it and waiting and waiting….sowing the seed of God’s Word in our lives.
I know what she is talking about because I have done this very thing. During the time that I wrote with the Hallidays, I had daily contact and help and support–I had the privilege of basically writing Judy Halliday’s God-given thoughts on the page for publishing…I “knew” the material…I was “eating” that seed…but I wasn’t working it into the soil of my life.
It takes time. And we want instant results, instant gratification…So, if we don’t see results that are measurable (the bathroom scale often enough), we toss it out…we have eaten the seed instead of sown it.
It takes work. It takes faith. It takes belief. God can do these things in us. It requires patience and perseverance. We wait on Him to do it, yet somehow walk with him, get in the soil and do some dirty “work” in our hearts along with him.
If we don’t, we are like those starving people in Angola. Their need would be provided for much better in the long term if they would SOW the seed instead of eating it. Starving, they don’t know how to trust. How like that I am.
Lord help me not just to eat the seed of your Word and have the temporary “satisfaction” of a full belly. But help me, instead, to sow the seed into my life, to be willing to work it, trust, see the thing through…and experience the harvest that you intend the seed to bring. In the precious Name of Jesus. Amen.
True confessions time…did you manage to get through Day 5’s “Mirror Mirror” exercise? Did you gloss over it quickly? Or did you go slowly, intentionally, methodically through it? What did you discover, if you did? What have you discovered, if you didn’t do it? 🙂
I hope that God blessed you in whatever he led you to do. If you felt his leading not to do the Mirror Mirror activity in Day 5, ask him to show you when his timing is for you to do it. He intends for us to be healed–completely. Fear is not in his plan for us!
Truthfully, I still haven’t done this activity, even though it is Saturday night as I am writing up this coming week’s assignment.
I have been evaluating why I am so unwilling to do the Mirror Mirror exercise and the only thing I can think of is that I must feel shame for not keeping all my weight off. As much as I spout off about not allowing physical appearances to be what we focus on, as much as I shout from the rooftops that we have to focus on the Lord, when push comes to shove, I still struggle with that longing to be back in the smaller size I lived in for a year.
This tells me that my focus is still on ME ME ME and APPEARANCE APPEARANCE APPEARANCE. I must commit afresh to focusing on him–to continuing my attributes of God list, taking time daily (or more often) to praise Him for his attributes, and writing out gratitudes daily. I know for a fact from experience that these things (combined with a few others which we will get to) are life transforming!
So, will you join me in recommitting to these things? I hope so.
This week’s assignment:
1.) Continue to keep a cumulative list of all the characteristics of God and how he treats people. Share with us here what some of the attributes of God are that are blessing you! It encourages us to hear!I don’t think many of us shared that last week…I don’t recall it if we did. Please post here…I would LOVE to see 5 or 10 of the attributes of God that mean the most to you in comments.
2.) Are you sick of me asking you to please continue to take a few minutes at the beginning of your study time each day to praise the Lord for at least three of the things on your list? Has this been affecting you in any way? I know when I DO this, I seem to start the day in a much more humble place and then I am not so prideful and arrogant about food and other things! When I exalt God to his rightful place, I see myself in the place where I am. It really is amazing that he has chosen to esteem us so very much, isn’t it?
3.) Read and complete Days 6 and 7 – through page 74. And PLEASE!!! If you haven’t been able to keep up with the reading, do NOT worry about it one bit! The cool thing about doing an internet study is that the questions and discussion are here for you whenever you get to it! If it is a week after I post the assignment or a month after…even a year after…no worries! You can still enjoy what God shares with you through the study and post here…someone will comment, even if it is December of 2011! 🙂
4.) I am excited about the material in chapter 6 as I believe it can unlock a lot of the mystery behind eating when we aren’t hungry. Fat machinery or flesh machinery is sort of the concept of eating on auto-pilot. There are a bunch of reasons we may do this. As you study this chapter see what resonates the most for you. You may want to journal about this stuff, too. I am still discovering new flesh machinery that crops up. Well, it isn’t new…it has been there all along and I just didn’t realize it! See what God uncovers for you! This is when the freedom bell really begins to toll!
5.) Ask the Lord about the tools that are introduced in chapter 6. Does he want you to use it or any of the others? The Thin Within food log is different from other food logs. Nevertheless, many of us just can’t yet “go there” or we will find ourselves caught in legalism and the Path of My Performance once again. On the other hand, you may be at a place in your life where God leads you personally to take on a bit of accountability in the form of this food log. Either way, freedom is yours! We are so unique and he leads us uniquely! Praise His Name! Also, keep in mind that he may lead you this way only for a short season. So if you sense his direction to use the TW Food Log, it may be for two weeks or a month. If you don’t sense that freedom, it could also be temporary. He will direct you. 🙂
6.) In Chapter 7 we hit emotional eating on the head. There is an exercise to help you do this. Please feel free to post here what God reveals to you as the week unfolds. On page 69, there is a list of “Reasons We Overeat.” Which can you identify most with?
7.) The Fat Machinery Log offers an opportunity to record ways that you are affected to slip into auto-pilot with your eating. See how many different ways you can identify fat (or flesh) machinery affecting you. Jot it down to refer to later, too. You can make a cumulative list in your journal if you need more room. I still remember how, after practicing the Thin Within principles for a number of years, I discovered that bad weather acted as a fat/flesh machinery for me! When the weather got bad, all kinds of emotions surfaced and I really struggled with the desire to comfort myself with food! That sure surprised me. 🙂
8.) As with any week, please post your thoughts and insights. You never can tell when God will use your words to bolster up a sister or brother in Christ who desperately needs encouragement!
9.) Friday night’s chat was fun as we had a number of people who had never come to a Thin Within chat before and/or those who hadn’t come in years. Why not carve time out to join us? The next real-time chat at the Thin Within website is Monday morning 7-8am Pacific time and Friday we will join together at 10-11am Pacific time. Click here to find out how.
Kim Finley is doing a great job helping to keep on top of approving comments here at the blog. I appreciate her support and help–and wisdom–so much! Please keep checking any updates of our special God is Doing a New Thing website. I have included Kim’s bio here.
Keep on praying for one another! You are precious to my heart and to Jesus! 🙂
If you like this video, please visit the YouTube site and let my friend, Bob Marshall know–he created the video to go with the song!
If you are in the US, have a wonderful Independence Day. Let us, however, declare with utter abandon, our complete and total dependence on our amazing, compassionate GOD! Let’s bow before him alone. 🙂
