Basics… Key #1 Eat Only When My Body Is Hungry

by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 27, 2009 | Blog

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!

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 Speaks

by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 15, 2009 | Blog

Over the year that I released 100 pounds, I received accolades, praise, encouragement. It was wonderful on the one hand, but I battled with my pride…and lost. For the better part of the following year, I coasted along maintaining the weight loss pretty effortlessly (said rather smugly), but during that year, my focus shifted. I sensed it…and began to grab earnestly–desperately, even–for some way not to let the goal for which I had worked slip through my grasp. During that time, my focus definitely went OFF of listening to the voice of God in the moment by moment walk of life and on to the food, my weight, performance.

As I look back over the past 2 months, I see even more how I have strayed. My desperate attempts to focus on the Lord have been about performance…reading this book, doing that bible study…DO DO DO!!!

I feel like the people spoken about in Isaiah 28:11-13:

12 to whom he said,

“This is the resting place, let the weary rest“;

and, “This is the place of repose”—

but they would not listen.

13 So then, the word of the LORD to them will become:

Do and do, do and do,

rule on rule, rule on rule;

a little here, a little there—

so that they will go and fall backward,

be injured and snared and captured.

Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, a little here, a little there…

I fasted sweets, began the 60-60 experiment, fasted the bathroom scale…did The Lord’s Table bible study, did the Freedom From Emotional Eating bible study and began reading numerous other books, all designed to GET ME CLOSER TO GOD again.

Talk about frenzy!

One thing, though…I haven’t been still. My frenetic grasping at straws has just further promoted the very problem I am desperately trying to solve.

Jesus says, “Peace be still.”

“Be still and KNOW that I AM God…”

“Come to me and rest…”

“Let the weary rest…”

“Child, I lead you beside still waters…”

TRUE CONFESSIONS: (Oh, this is hard and I want to edit this OUT of this blog entry…) As I noticed that the jeans I have worn for 15 months have begun to be uncomfortable, I got on the scale yet again and noticed the number is TEN pounds up from where I landed in October of 2007.

PANIC.

Dread, shame…what I have feared is happening….

This is a ruse, though. Fixating on the number hasn’t helped me at all, so why would it now?

So, today I step off the scale by which man weighs my value…off the man-made platform that says, “Look at my success, world! I have maintained my weight loss!”

But I don’t do this in shame. I do it in relief. The jig is up, the performance has ended. The curtain has closed. Now I can just be. Whew!

Today, I emailed my accountability partner and let her know that I think I should stop reporting about food. I want to focus on something else. Like GOD, maybe? Having responded to God’s leading in this, I am so much more at peace with food, eating and my body already!

I think that, for this season, just as in my earliest years of this “Thin Within” journey, I have to set aside scales, charts, reports, graphs, numbers…I have to BE. I have to LISTEN. I have to REST. No more striving.

I went to the Lord yesterday and today. Instead of turning to my “quiet” time basket filled with workbooks, “how to pray more powerfully” books and other “aids” to make me “more effective” in my walk with God… I stilled my heart. No…I let HIM still my heart. I asked, “Lord, where do you want me to turn in your Word to hear from you?” Then I did the unthinkable…I waited… GASP!!!!

He wasted no time telling me something that surprised me… “Join me in Jeremiah 3,”came the whisper.

I obeyed–as if to walk through a gate of promise–and set my eyes on the page ordained for my heart in this moment and asked God “What, Lord? What do you have for me here?” Nestled in the midst of this chapter, He showed me this:

13 Only acknowledge your guilt—

you have rebelled against the LORD your God,

you have scattered your favors to foreign gods

under every spreading tree,

and have not obeyed me,’ ”

declares the LORD.

God beckons to me. He is merciful, not angry. But he wants me to quit trying to throw “godly” band-aids on a cancer. My zealous hustling and bustling spiritually has an appearance of godliness, but devoid of it’s power. How many bible studies and books can one really complete? If I fill in yet more blanks, will it make me more godly? The one who dies with the most filled in workbooks wins? No…

I must acknowledge that I am eating out of his will. I am living out of his will. I am pursuing that which is out of his will. Acknowledge your guilt he says to me. Quit trying to cover it up by more bible study, more doing, more avoiding.

Child, You have rebelled.

Child, You have not obeyed.



That is at the heart of this.

Child, I love you.

In fact, all of my frenetic searching and doing and performing is actually contributing to the very problem I hoped to solve. It isn’t my JOB to solve it, in fact. In Jeremiah 3 he spoke to me about that as well…

This, he does want.

Those years of my life that were eaten up by dysfunction…he will somehow redeem. This is a promise for my future. He wants me to continue this path, but with a stillness of heart…not a desperate attempt to make something happen, to win yet more accolades, or to really “get thin forever.”

26 You WILL have plenty to eat, until you are full,

and you WILL praise the name of the LORD your God,

who has worked wonders for you;

never again will my people be shamed.

27 Then you WILL know that I am in Israel,

that I am the LORD your God,

and that there is no other;

never again will my people be shamed.

Eating as Worship

by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 5, 2009 | Blog

My accountability partner sent me the link for a great devotion. I have to share it with you. It is short! Click here.

Day 52 TLT Take Every Thought Captive

by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 1, 2009 | Blog

Rather than give a detailed summary of what is in the TLT workbook today, I am going to flesh it out.

Three things in this lesson:
1.) Take captive every thought and let Christ be the judge of whether or not the thought should be allowed entrance into the mind and heart. If Christ says no, reject the thought…but this must be done to see if CHRIST wants the thought in there. I can either take the thought captive or be taken captive by the thought. The passage is 2 Corinthians 10:3-6.

2.) It isn’t enough to just reject negative thoughts. We must also embrace thoughts that are godly. This principle is found in Philippians 4:8. Do my thoughts (or what I am reading, watching, etc…) pass the “Philippians 4:8 Test?” The idea being I will only dwell on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable and praiseworthy. When it comes to rejecting negative thoughts, we have to also have something positive to think about…God’s Word provides that.

3.) Philippians 4:9 takes it a step further. Whatever we know to do, we are to DO it. This connects with the previous lessons.

This three step process will enable us to not be taken captive by lustful or greedy thoughts about food when we aren’t hungry. Or to allow ourselves be beaten up by the enemy when he accuses us.

And this is what I want to hash out here today…

This is very hard for me. Only a week ago (it feels like forever…) I obeyed what I felt the Lord wanted me to do and put the scale away “forever.” But this came at the tail end of a fasting of sweets which was in response to my reaction to having given up diet soda drinking (which I drank verrrry excessively).

But rather than throwing other “must dos” at myself in response to removing aspartame from my life, I should have *processed* what was going on in me when I removed the diet coke. That would have been a grace-filled thing to do.

While the caffeine withdrawals likely took only a few short days to weather through, the psychological and spiritual withdrawals from diet soda were much more severe and intense. I found myself gravitating toward sweet foods again.

So I fasted sweet foods. While I fasted sweets for about 10 days, I was at such peace…but when I allowed them in my life again, I found that a “dieting mentality” had crept back into my mind and heart. Subtly, my thinking had shifted from “all things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial…I will not be mastered by anything…” to THESE ARE NOT permissible! THIS IS NAUGHTY! I am BAD! Followed by desperately rebelling against that rigidity…

At the same time, I knew there was one more stronghold in my life…that of depending on the bathroom scale. So I decided to remove it from my life. Do you see the desperation? I was throwing band-aids everywhere. Likely what I needed to do was *process* the removal of a significant thing from my life…diet soda. I missed that.

All of this was taking on a lot emotionally at one time. (This sounds so whiny and ridiculous to me…) I am not sure all of this at the same time was from the Lord. Certainly, I think he would have wanted me to process what was going on in my reaction as I came off of nutrasweet. I deflected really doing that. Instead I treated symptoms…fasted sugar. Adding more angst and emotional baggage, perhaps, to things that needed to be brought before the throne of God.

Ok, so where does that leave me today?

Today I pulled out the scale. (The voice says “Another failure…”) It reflected what I knew to be true. My eating is off kilter. I didn’t need the scale to tell me that, but I began to feel like NOT having a man-made number to attach to it at this stage of my journey was to be in denial.

I share this with such struggle…the accusations of the enemy have come to fruition. He laughs with glee. The scale actually says SIX POUNDS up. I need to confess this here…by way of keeping a lid on pride and by way of accountability. Given my accountability reports to my accountability partner, there must also have been a LOT of deception going on too!

This is where today’s lesson really comes home, though.

My response to this man-made arbitrary number (and the rest that goes with it) is deep sadness. Truthfully, it isn’t the number alone that makes me sad. It is the truth that my greed and DECEPTION has put me in the place that it shows up so quickly on the scale.

The thoughts that are now bombarding me for entrance into my life are all the same voices that the enemy has thrown at me for a couple of years now… “See? You ARE a fraud!” “You may think you have everyone fooled, but WE know the truth! The scale is finally proving it!” “You *are* a glutton! You ARE forever going to be a fat person trying to pretend she is someone else!” “Admit it! Give it up! You are a fake!”

These are the thoughts that are demanding entrance this morning.

The bottom line is this…the TRUTHS in my life are:
1.) I have been eating more than my body needs to be sustained
2.) Most of my eating outside of my godly boundaries has been sweet foods
3.) My physical body is beginning to carry the excess energy (By the way…before I got on the scale I knew this from the way my jeans were fitting…just a bit more snug…I didn’t really need the number to tell me anything!)

These are the TRUTHS.

In addition the following are truths as well:

4.) God is still God.
5.) I am still the Lord’s
6.) He is STILL doing a NEW thing in me right now!
7.) That which He has begun he WILL complete — His Word promises!

Going back to the steps outlined in today’s lesson in The Lord’s Table, then, step one is to surrender my thoughts to obedience to Christ. In this case, I must recognize that all the things that the enemy is whispering in my ear…they are LIES. So I will take captive each thought and bring it to God. He says “No…REJECT IT.” I will reject the enemy’s lies.

Step 2 then is to submit my thoughts to the Philippians 4:8 test. What is TRUE is vital here…so the list above is what I will rehearse in my mind today. Especially items 4-7 and related thoughts.

However, the truth is also that I have work to do relative to this whole nutrasweet dependency. Just because it is out of my life doesn’t mean I don’t have issues to deal with. It reminds me of addiction…often when you take the substance that is being abused out of a person’s life, they maintain the same behaviors, but with a different substance. Thus, the true issues aren’t dealt with.

God wants to deal with the underlying issues that motivate me to grab a hold of whatever it may be. He wants me to grab a hold of him no matter what! The only “substance” that I am to lean on is HIM.

Then thirdly, if I follow the lesson in TLT, I will DO what I know is best and right. For me, this has to include some ways of fighting negative thoughts today. So here is my battle plan:
1.) Gratitude blog today…I will write in it later today, but practice gratitude throughout the day
2.) I will get out my spiral cards and keep them with me today…bible verses are on them. I will work on memorizing a new one and review old ones I have memorized. I will pray the scriptures on them
3.) I will continue to pray every 60 minutes to reconnect with God (Soul Revolution the 60-60 experiment)
4.) I will keep praise music playing
5.) I will spend some time prayer journaling today…

I do plan on attacking the deeper issues as soon as TLT study is completed. My accountability partner and I will be going through the Hallidays’ Get Thin Stay Thin book together. (This book used to be called Thin Again and before that it was called Silent Hunger. It is a challenging book that looks at the underlying causes of our overeating (and other things)…it is what I need right now, even though I went through it some years ago…).

If I have a thought of “You weigh _____! You are a FRAUD!” I will combat that with, “I am more than a conqueror in Christ. God IS doing a new thing in me! I perceive it! I will fix my eyes on Jesus the author and perfector of my faith…” and so on.

So…how about you? Do you have a battle of the mind going on today too? What can you do to apply these three things:
1.) Take captive thoughts to obedience to Christ?
2.) Submit your thinking, your doing, reading, watching to the Philippians 4:8 test?
3.) DO something that will be a response to what you KNOW? (Phil 4:9)?

Join me, ok? I am praying for you and for me…

Day 48 TLT – Sweet!

by Heidi Bylsma | Dec 28, 2008 | Blog

When I gave up aspartame–the artificial flavoring that makes diet sodas taste so good–it was as if I had taken the lid off of Pandora’s Box…out came reality! I discovered that I had never dealt with an “issue” of mine…even through the year of steady weight release and the subsequent year of maintaining my new weight. I had a “thing” –a BIG THING– for sweets!