Sometimes it is good to go back to the basics. Right now, since my life is flipped upside down processing so many things at a much deeper level, I am going to review some of the basics…
How did I live for the two years I released 100 pounds and kept it off? I clearly need to give attention and accountability to some of the “nuts and bolts”–the “mechanics”–of this approach while temptations are at their highest.
There are eight “Keys to Conscious Eating” in the Thin Within program. So, while God is doing a total inside-out remodel job with regard to what makes me tick, I will also return to the basics mechanically.
Today, Key #1 – Eat Only When My Body is Hungry
Sounds simple, right? Try it. I invite you to join me on this journey. Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section. In fact, you can post there that you are going to give this a try. You don’t even need to wait for a new day to start. No matter where you are…right NOW, you can try it! 🙂 –> Can you (can *I*) have an entire day where we eat only when we know, know, KNOW that our stomach is completely, 100% physically empty? It isn’t as easy as it sounds! 🙂 Not only that, but many of us, when we do this, discover that we have been using food as a coping mechanism and all kinds of “interesting things” surface. I will warn you now…take those unresolved emotions to the Lord and give them to him!
What does physical hunger even feel like?
One misconception is that hunger is a sound…a stomach growl. The Hallidays explain that this isn’t the case and remind us that a stomach growl can happen in response to food that is still in the stomach, in fact, just being digested. The most reliable signal for hunger is an emptiness, a slight ache, in the stomach pouch. The stomach is located pretty high compared to what most people think. It is just below where the ribs join in the sternum! Find your “breast bone” and move down to where it isn’t hard any more and in that soft area just below, is your stomach!
Many of us haven’t been hungry in a long time. It might be that physical hunger wasn’t a safe place for us as a kid. We may not like the unpleasant sensation of an empty stomach. We may even panic! But I have found in the past through perseverance (and, again, I need to get back to this basic), that I won’t DIE when I am hungry. In fact, God invites me to enjoy food when I am hungry! I can eat whatever I want to when I am hungry…but I get ahead of myself. Today, I will focus on not eating any meal or “snack” unless I am at what Thin Within calls a “0.” Totally empty, like a fuel gauge on a car. Nothing-in-there sort of hungry. 🙂
So, today, how about it. Will you join me? How about you, how about *I*…wait for physical emptiness in our stomachs? Give it a try and let me know what you think! Let me/us know what you experience!
I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. – Psalm 81:10
Lord, I pray that you might help me to return to this simple basic…that of waiting for physical hunger before I eat. I pray for any who may read this blog today or in days to come that may want to try this as well. Please infuse them with your strength and enable them to delight in finding “0.” I pray that we would lean on you to be our strength to resist eating outside of the godly parameters. You promise that you will be our portion. Lord, I know that I tend to gravitate toward food for a million reasons other than hunger. I pray that you will grab my attention should I be tempted to do that today. Thank you for what you are teaching me even now, Lord. In the precious Name of Jesus, Amen.
DISCLAIMER: It is always best to check with a physician before you try anything new. Please do that! 🙂
God has been showing me just how much I depend on the approval of others to establish my value. This is clearly out of God’s plan. This has been something we have been working on for a while, but I realized recently that it has a HUGE impact on me–more than I realized.
So this morning, I had to laugh. I was pouring out my heart to God in my journal and realized I had written the following:
“I have been so caught up in my performance. I clearly need to get my act together about that.”
HA! Even my solution is about performance!
I am so thankful that God is patient with me.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. – 2 Corinthians 3:17-18
In chapter two of Get Thin Stay Thin, the authors use the image of Lazarus’ death and resurrection to challenge the reader to understand what God may be up to in our own lives.
The authors refer to John 11:1-44 to do this and I include the link here so you can refer to the passage if you like. (It should open in a new window.)
Some observations about the passage:
Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was sick. (vs. 3)
As special as this family was to Jesus, he delayed in going to help. (vs. 6)
Jesus had a reason for allowing the delay…He knew things were going to get worse before they could get better. (Reminds me of the blog entry I posted yesterday.)But once he showed up on the scene, there would be no way of denying that the power of God had arrived in full force!
Lazarus’ sisters were clearly baffled that the Lord had delayed long enough that their brother had passed away. (vs. 21, 32)
It would be all too easy to accuse the Lord of not caring, of not loving enough… –> Do you feel this way at all? Do you feel like you have begged God for help and yet help seems delayed? Do you struggle with wondering if the Lord really loves you as he claims? In this account, we see that Jesus delayed intentionally, but for a higher purpose than could be fathomed. Perhaps this is the case with us as well. His delay is not a “No,” but is, perhaps a “Yes, when the time is right and you will see wonders you never imagined…”
Now that Jesus has arrived, even though Lazarus is dead, Jesus calls Lazarus out of the grave. (vs. 43, 44)
Jesus called Lazarus from death to life, as he has done for each of us through his own death and resurrection. But now we may feel abandoned and entombed in the hopelessness of our disordered eating…Jesus is there for us and does not hesitate, “Take away the stone.” (GTST, p. 40)
Jesus commissioned friends and family to take off Lazarus’ graveclothes (vs. 44)
Rather than to submit ourselves to the brutal task master of “rigid restraint” as seen in yet another diet that will only serve to condemn us, the Lord calls us forth out of our graves of captivity. Resurrection brings LIFE. All other options bring death. But the tricky thing about resurrection as depicted in this passage is…there are graveclothes that need unwrapping.
The authors of Get Thin Stay Thin want us to see that much of what served us while in the grave acts as a hindrance now. Layer by layer, these graveclothes must come off. We must allow those whom God has called to help us with this unwrapping, just as Lazarus could not unwrap himself.
We are alive in Christ; the saving work has been accomplished. But our grave clothes may still be in place, and if so, they can be removed only when we believe and have faith that we can be restored, when we risk stepping out of our tombs, and when we let our brothers and sisters participate in the unwrapping process. Jesus chooses to give certain people with whom we have relationships the privilege of participating in our restoration. (GTST, pgs. 40-41)
This is that call to trust and to allow those whom God has raised up for this purpose to help us to step out of darkness into the light of authenticity and intimacy with God and others. This can be terrifying. For some of us, we are quite content (thank you very much) to stay shrouded in the graveclothes that have been with us for so long. They hide us, give us a sense of security.
But we will never experience the freedom God has planned for us unless we are willing to believe that coming out of those graveclothes is worth it and allow it to happen.
When we choose to allow the unwrapping of our graveclothes, we find a God who infininitely loves us and desires that we grow up into all the fullness of the stature of Christ. But as we open the door to this light, we can expect disruption for a time. (GTST p. 45)
Oh, how true this is! And this brings me back to yesterday’s blog entry…whatever he is doing in my life, it feels like chaos, but he is up to something heavenly.
–> Do you feel even a shred of hope that you can do this, too? Will you believe Him that, while there seems to be chaos going on in your life, or what the Hallidays call “disruption” (that sure understates it! LOL!) that He is at work doing a new thing…a BIG thing…a HEAVENLY, divine thing in you?
Yes, there IS disruption, but I can’t help but acknowledge that some very serious strongholds have crashed down. Things I was in captivity to no longer have a hold on me. Forgive me for mixing all my metaphors, but I must say…While other things do seem to have me in their clutches, I know it is a matter of time before another layer of the graveclothes is tenderly, compassionately unwrapped and we continue to move forward. It is slow going, but I sense what is ahead will be wildly worth it.
Intimacy with our living God allows us to unwrap our graveclothes, release our defenses, discard our counterfeit behavior and come back to life. (GTST, p. 49)
Spring cleaning. It conjures up images of spray bottles of 409 and wet, dirty rags, brooms, a vacuum, and definitely piles of stuff hauled out of closets into the hall way or bedrooms. Head outside and it isn’t much better. To “clean the garage,” everything has to be hauled out into the light and sifted through. If someone comes along at just the wrong moment (and it seems like “just the wrong moment” lasts for days when a real, full-blown cleaning attempt is under way), it looks like a cyclone has hit–or worse–it appears to be a war-zone with carnage everywhere. One must excavate to find the floor and if the phone rings, hope is lost!
When doing a really thorough job of cleaning, things always look worse before they look better.
That, as opposed to the type of hurried cleaning I have done each week preparing for bible study at my house. Those “cleanings” are superficial at best. I grab everything that doesn’t belong in the living room or kitchen–those areas typically seen by guests–and throw it in to the bedroom where it will be “hidden” behind a closed door. Then go about my business of vacuuming, mopping and dusting–all the while knowing there is a mess to deal with in my bedroom.
God is definitely at work in my life doing the massive overhaul cleaning project…the kind that looks worse before it looks better. Just like during “spring cleaning” times, if I fixate on the mess in the hallway and become discouraged and end the process, it will be before He has accomplished what must be done. The mess has to be allowed so that we can sift through things and decide what has to go, what should stay, what room can be made for new things.
I have been processing so many things. There is this sense that my life has turned totally chaotic, but I know that God is up to something big. I must keep the faith, though. Right now, as all sorts of yuck is flushed to the surface for Him to help me deal with, I have to believe that this is part of his sanctification process in me. Even if outwardly my physical body has changed…and isn’t as “thin” as it was…that isn’t the point. In fact, it really seems so bizarre that I put so much emphasis on that given that is one aspect to who I am that doesn’t go with me on to eternity. My character does. Who I am does. God is doing an eternal work in me.
So here in the chaos, I have a chance to see that there are some things that haven’t yet been surrendered. I mean, before I suspected…now I know that this is the case. So as the Lord and I work through the “mess in the hall,” I realize that some of this is about letting go…things that are familiar, that I think are precious–or at the very least–are mine–may have to be surrendered to the county land fill (if you get my drift).
Someone posted on the Thin Within forum a thought that struck me as a BFO – A Blinding Flash of the Obvious…yet I hadn’t really thought of it like this before. That is this: No matter how long I have been at a 0–totally hungry–no matter if it has been an hour since I first sensed I am hungry but I just couldn’t get away to have a meal–my stomach is still the same size. It hasn’t gotten bigger. Being at a 0 longer doesn’t mean I need more food to reach my comfortable “satisfied” point – or what Thin Within calls a 5.
Isn’t that profound? 🙂 Obvious, but profound!
Another thought I wanted to share today is this…I have just completed my last day of study in the Freedom From Emotional Eatingworkbook. Sometimes there is a study that I just feel needs to be shared from the rooftops. The last week of study in this workbook is definitely one I wish MANY people could experience. In today’s reading in the workbook, Barb Raveling says:
My obsession with skinny was actually a deterrent to getting over the problem of emotional eating. I felt like I had to be skinny. But is this true? Does God say I have to be skinny? Of course not! He loves me just as I am, no matter what my weight.
I wonder how many of us can relate to being obsessed with being thin. This is an idol every bit as much as food can be an idol in our lives. Funny how having food be an idol can actually cause the constant toppling of our idol of “Thinness.” And funny how our inability to be perfect for our idol of “Thinness” often causes us to run back to food to pacify our disappointment in ourselves.
Finally, I wanted to share today something God wants me to get…to know deep inside every fiber of my being…something that he wants to flood the emptiness inside of me…He asks me if I believe what He says:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world
to be holy and blameless in his sight.
In love he predestined us
to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ,
in accordance with his pleasure and will—
to the praise of his glorious grace,
which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
In him we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of sins,
in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
And he made known to us the mystery of his will
according to his good pleasure,
which he purposed in Christ,
to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—
to bring all things in heaven
and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
In him we were also chosen,
having been predestined according
to the plan of him who works out everything
in conformity with the purpose of his will,
in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ,
might be for the praise of his glory.
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation.
Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal,
the promised Holy Spirit,
who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance
until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—
Sounds simple, right? Try it. I invite you to join me on this journey. Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section. In fact, you can post there that you are going to give this a try. You don’t even need to wait for a new day to start. No matter where you are…right NOW, you can try it! 🙂 –> Can you (can *I*) have an entire day where we eat only when we know, know, KNOW that our stomach is completely, 100% physically empty? It isn’t as easy as it sounds! 🙂 Not only that, but many of us, when we do this, discover that we have been using food as a coping mechanism and all kinds of “interesting things” surface. I will warn you now…take those unresolved emotions to the Lord and give them to him!
