by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 2, 2014 | Blog
I have worked through all four of the Thin Within workbooks.
I have worked through the Thin Within book.
I have led Thin Within groups three times in the last ten years.
I am a certified Wellness Coach and Pilates instructor.
I teach.
I KNOW this stuff!
And yes, here I am, still yearning for freedom, still waiting on God. Still wondering when I will be set free from struggling with excess eating and excess body weight.
Perhaps it’s precisely because I am immersed in the world of fitness that I am easily distracted and find it hard to keep my eyes fixed on the path that I know is the only way to freedom in this.
A few months ago I invested in a season of private coaching with Heidi Bylsma; a very wise decision! I remember sending her my daily logs with my “hunger numbers”—almost always reporting 0 to 5 eating. And yet I saw no weight loss and felt no progress happening. Heidi pointed out the discrepancy. ☺ As is the way of a good coach, Heidi put the observation out there and left it to me to wrestle with: “Brenda, you report eating within your chosen boundary of 0 to 5 on a consistent basis, yet you say you are not seeing the results you’d hoped for.”
In my wrestling, I decided I needed to more clearly define a “5.” Obviously I was eating past 5, so in my mind the solution was to get better at stopping at a 5.
One morning God turned the light on for me; all I had worked on with Heidi became clear as I read through the book of Joshua.
I came to the part where the land is being divided up between the tribes of Israel. I noticed how clear and precise the boundaries were and I started thinking how boundaries are important to God—God gives us boundaries for our safety, health and because He knows what is truly good for us.
In Joshua 18 the Scripture tells us that there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not received their inheritance. And Joshua says to them, ” How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the Lord the God of your ancestors has given you?”
God spoke to me through that—How long am I going to wait until I do MY part to take possession of the freedom that God has given me?
It’s my inheritance!
God has given it to me, but it is up to me to do my due diligence and receive what God has for me.
For me, at this point in my journey, trying to more precisely define a “5” on the hunger scale is not where God wants my focus.
I believe He is showing me that my part is to do what it takes to place myself before Him every single day for the renewing of my mind; soaking in the truth of His Word, writing Truth Cards as a daily practice, being honest about where I am spiritually and what I am doing, as well as what I am eating.
Sunday morning at church God again spoke to me—this time through a guest speaker. She was teaching from Genesis chapters 2 and 3, and she came to Chapter 3 verses 8 and 9, where Adam and Eve have disobeyed God and eaten from the one tree in the garden that He had forbidden. In verse 9 God calls out to Adam, saying, “Where are you?
I believe that God is asking that of me as well. “Where are you with ME, Brenda?” Are you living in all the abundance I have given you, or are you in a place of rebellion? What tree are you choosing?”
To me it’s a really big deal is that I finally have taken my eyes off of seeking weight loss above everything– although I haven’t given up and I do still want it. It’s that now I am seeking FIRST the kingdom of God; seeking GOD through specific, daily practices so that my focus turns away from food and body obsession.
I have learned that the daily practices of prayer, Bible reading, writing and reading Truth Cards, praising God in song, lifting my face to Him will bring about the renewing of my mind and the transforming of my heart, my body, and my life. And then eating within the boundaries of 0 to 5 will be a natural result of my decision to claim my inheritance and choose the abundant life He alone offers.
~ Brenda Ameli. Brenda lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching mind body movement and leading the women’s ministry at her church.
How About You?
Is it possible that “thin” or “0” or “5” has actually become a distraction from what God wants for you? Does God want you to focus elsewhere? What might responding to His invitation in this look like for you?
by Heidi Bylsma | Jan 1, 2014 | Blog
New Year’s Resolutions are motivated, no doubt, by a strong desire we have not to stay stuck…to make things happen that we know we want.
Even so, jokes abound this time of year about New Year’s resolutions. I have made my own jokes about it in past years, flippantly “resolving” to make only one resolution…that of not making ANY resolutions.
This year, I decided to look into God’s Word to see what it says about resolving or resolution. In the English Standard Version there are only 4 uses of the word “resolve.” The New International Version is not different:
- In 2 Chronicles 20:3, King Jehoshaphat resolves to inquire of the Lord when a large army marches on his people.
- Daniel 1:8 tells us that Daniel resolved not to forsake the dietary laws of the Jews when he was taken captive.
- In 1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul states that he resolved not to know anything except Jesus and Him crucified.
Other than those three uses of the word, “Resolve” in the NIV, there is this reference:
If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the Lord Almighty,
“I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings.
Yes, I have already cursed them,
because you have not resolved to honor me.
~ Malachi 2:2
If you have come to this blog for any length of time, if you have participated in any Thin Within groups, bible studies, or read the material yourself, you know that we speak a great deal of grace.
But I am remiss if I don’t point out that a twin truth with God pouring immeasurable grace on us is the fact that He desires our complete surrender to His will. I can’t read this passage in Malachi (or the other references in the bible) and feel ok with a New Year’s Resolution of “To walk the dog four times or more each week.” Or “Save $1000 for a vacation.” Or any of the other more typical things that I might include if I were to ever jump on the “Make New Year’s Resolutions” Bandwagon.
This passage screams sobering truths to me, instead.
What does God want me to be resolved to do?
He wants me resolved to Honor His Name.
There are consequences if I do not resolve to honor His Name. The New Covenant changes many things, but there is nevertheless a principle here: If I don’t resolve to honor the Name of the Lord, my experience will be that even blessings will be as though cursed. Perhaps this is what happens when I experience fear relative to food and my body. Food was intended by God to be a blessing. My body was intended by God to be a blessing. When I don’t resolve to honor Him with my life—especially, in this case, with my eating and drinking and how I treat my body—then even the blessings of food and my body seem to me as if “cursed.” They become so much less than He intended. They are a burden, a trial, a difficulty…a curse.
Will I take time this New Years Day to generate some New Years Resolutions? I haven’t in the past years, so I probably won’t this year…especially now that I have seen this passage. It seems a much better use of my time and investment of my energy to fulfill an intention that I know is called for in His Word.
I resolve afresh to honor the Name of the Lord.
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do,
do all to the glory of God.
~ 1 Corinthians 10:31
What will this look like? I will pursue renewing my mind with His truth. NO more settling for the lies that are contrary to His Word. Not even one lie! No matter how “little!” Like the lie that says “I deserve to eat something sweet every day or multiple times each day.”
No more apathy or “sloppiness” with my godly, God-given boundaries of eating only enough food to nourish me. “Eating this won’t matter.” IT DOES. No more of that lie either!
God lays claim to my body.
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God?
You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
So glorify God in your body.
~ 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So, I will be proactive and move my body in a healthy way, for the joy and benefit of doing so! AND to honor the Name of the Lord!
I resolve to honor the Name of my God.
It means making some difficult choices.
How About You?
What would it look like for you to resolve to honor the Name of the Lord? What blessings do you have that feel more like they are cursed these days? Is it possible that God invites you to resolve to honor His Name more than any other resolution this year?
by Heidi Bylsma | Dec 31, 2013 | Blog
On Saturday, I posted that I am declaring war on apathy. Even veterans find they can slip into periods of apathy or…downright disobedience. One of my new strategies for amping up my focus is to call it what it is…rebellion, resistance, disobedience. I know what God has called me to. Allowing myself to justify “little waverings” outside of his call is flat out disobedience.
So, my battle plan is concrete, specific.
One part of it requires that I journal two sets of questions from Barb Ravelings book, I Deserve a Donut and Other Lies that Make You Eat, each day. Once in the morning…before I am tempted to eat outside of my boundaries–in fact, before I have eaten at all. Then, I do another set before dinner–again…before I am tempted at all.
Sunday morning, these are the affirmations that resulted from doing the “Failure Eating” questions in her book. Do any of them fit for you? If so, they could become your own affirmations right now:
1. I am not a person who can follow my boundaries flawlessly without ever breaking them. The Lord, however, wants me to press on each and every time I do break them. Enough of the perfectionism! The sad truth that I have to accept right from the beginning is that I WILL mess up. So what will I do when I mess up? Quit? What kind of sense does that make? (None!)
2. I can’t change the way I ate yesterday or last week. I can’t change the consequences of those choices. What’s done is done. Instead, the Lord provides the strength now to enable me to care today. RIGHT NOW. I will press on. I will give my best to living according to my boundaries today. I DO care. I will eat according to what my body needs and when my spirit and heart are “hungry,” I will feed them what they need…which is not physical food! While I am free to eat desserts, I have allowed desserts to master me once again. I am choosing now to submit this issue to the Lord. He alone will master me. Desserts are now put in their proper place…into submission to God. I will exercise my freedom by choosing not to have dessert foods in my home right now for this season. I will remember that I AM IN A SPIRITUAL BATTLE!
3. God wants me to fight in the strength he provides with the weapons he provides, so I will.
4. By choosing to take the route of pressing on and in (instead of giving up), I will not regret it one bit. The Lord gives me the strength I need. Even if I stumble today, I will NOT throw in the towel and give in to eat what I want the rest of the day. I will, instead, take captive my thoughts, my desires and submit them to Him. He receives me and loves me..
5. I am committed to living a life with boundaries for the rest of my life so I will stop breaking them and acting like it is no big deal. I will accept that I will always have to have boundaries in this area of my life. I am not the type of person who can be healthy–emotionally, spiritually, and physically–without boundaries in my eating. I must come to terms with that. Accept it. Rejoice! God has used this difficulty to foster deep intimacy with me!
6. I choose to STOP BREAKING MY BOUNDARIES. I choose to stop minimizing choices outside of my boundaries!
7. A few months down the road…if I start now afresh to press on and keep my boundaries, I will be more mature spiritually and emotionally and I will have peace about where I am physically, too. God is changing me.
8. When I think of what I will gain, it is worth the sacrifice to follow my boundaries right this minute and for the rest of this day. The more I live according to my boundaries, the less difficult it becomes. But this doesn’t mean it will ever stop being a challenge. There will always be food I want to eat that my body doesn’t need.
Romans 6:1-2 – I have died to sin. I will not go on living in it.
Romans 13:14 – I choose to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to make NO provision for my flesh and its lusts!
I will stop focusing on the physical battle…that seems so negotiable depending on how eager I am to look different. I will choose instead to focus on the spiritual battle, knowing that this has eternal ramifications. The physical battle has to do with my physical size and is almost totally inconsequential! The spiritual battle–that of breaking free from the control of food–is extremely significant. I want nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ to master me.
How About You?
If you haven’t gotten Barb’s book yet, I strongly urge you to do so. It is an amazing tool.
Which set of questions will you journal through today?
What affirmations can you list that will support you in your renewed determination to live according to your godly boundaries?
NOTE: If you would like to participate in an online Thin Within class (no charge for the class—you need only purchase Workbook Kit #1), visit this post for details about a class starting on January 6th.
by Heidi Bylsma | Dec 27, 2013 | Blog
ATM machines. Amazing devices. But, even after all these years, I still view them with distrust. All the more since the unthinkable happened.
On a lazy Saturday evening last summer, I stood at the local ATM machine to make a deposit in my personal account. I inserted two checks totaling what, to me, is a significant amount of money. As I waited for the machine to verify that I had followed my end of the bargain :-), I noticed that all was not well. The ATM was taking a bit too long to respond. Then, horror of horrors!
“ERROR” appeared on the screen.
Something had gone wonky with the entire automated process. The checks were gone and no deposit was credited to my account. I fully anticipated that giving the machine my hard-won checks, I would have money present in my account in short order (even if not immediately).
After a conversation with a national customer service line representative and two visits to the bank, there was still no money posted to my account. In time, however, the deposit did show up.
I am not in the habit of waiting for much of anything. If I make a sacrifice of some sort, then this is especially true… I want a return on it …YESTERDAY! The ATM fiasco just illustrated this in a practical way.
Isn’t the same true for most of us in our quest to discover our “natural, God-given size?” In fact, this tendency may rush us right past what it will take to even make the changes. Or, assuming, we can “clean” the “outside of the cup,” or “constrain” our outer behavior, we may release weight, but the first trial that hits, we revert back to old behaviors and we are off on that downward slide once again.
What if we were to take the slow way…the reliable way? What if this struggle with food, our bodies, eating, isn’t so much about our size, but about our souls? What if God wants us to learn something we can learn no other way? What if he wants us to learn how desperately we need him? What if he wants us to learn the power of training our minds to think differently?
When you invest your time in renewing your mind, in training yourself to think truthfully, even before you are tempted to eat outside of your boundaries, you can actually gain a new mindset that can activate at just the right moment—say when you are most tempted to give in to desire eating! This does take extra time, yes. Like giving up my hard-earned checks to the ATM, I want instant gratification for a sacrifice. There aren’t many things we want to lose other than weight and there aren’t many things we are willing to give up, but we have to be willing to give up…to invest some of our time if we want to learn to think differently about food, about God, about ourselves, about our bodies, about this process.
First thing in the morning, when I am fresh, committed, resolved…it is then that I take the time to renew my mind, to carve out that time to go over in my mind what is true. I select from one of the many tools that I have shared here at the blog or from Barb Raveling’s website. I don’t need to do them all. I don’t need to take much time, even, but doing something makes all the difference in the world. Taking time to think, ponder, speak out loud such thoughts as these will be rewarding..like making an investment in a future return:
“Eating 0 to 5 is richly rewarding.”
“Eating according to these boundaries for me allows me freedom to enjoy all foods within moderation.”
“It is much better to live by design rather than by desire.”
“If I make sacrifices to live according to my boundaries starting now, life will be less chaotic, more peaceful and my body more healthy two months from now.”
As you begin to invest time in telling yourself the truth, in writing out these truths, in designing your truth cards, listening to encouraging Sound Cloud files or creating your own :-), you will find that in the moment of temptation, these are the thoughts that will come into your mind to strengthen you! When you just finished eating a wonderful dinner 0 to 5 and your high school daughter brings in a freshly baked plate of cookies that she made at a friend’s, the thoughts that you invested time thinking about will bathe your mind, enabling you to stand strong in the face of temptation.
Imagine, you are staring down a warm chocolate chip cookie (or four) and the thoughts that hit your mind are, “How many cookies will it really take to satisfy me right now?” or “Will I break a boundary right now if I eat this? What will I gain if I break my boundary right now? What will I lose? What will life look like (inside and out) if I practice *now* living according to this boundary? Is it a good boundary? How will what I do in this moment affect the larger picture? What choice do I really want to make right now?”
If I have spent time renewing my mind once or, even, twice a day, these are the thoughts that come to mind in those weaker moments, bringing with them life and strength infusing power to honor my body, my boundaries, and my God!
I can’t recommend enough the value of taking one set of questions from Barb Raveling’s book I Deserve a Donut and Other Likes That Make You Want To Eat (or her iPhone app) each day…preferably close to the time of day when you are most prone to struggle (I do this at 5pm each day in preparation for the temptation I have to engage in evening eating), and journal the answers. I have found that, for me, just thinking about the questions isn’t enough. I need to sit down and actually grapple with the questions a bit. Seeing my answers in print is really helpful. I do this even when I am not tempted. (Not many of us want to sit down and journal when we are being tempted.)
The time invested is SO worth it. In fact, I have found the investment worth some other sacrifices. I now set my alarm to wake me up earlier, giving me plenty of time in the morning to be able to renew my mind. It is like putting a deposit in an ATM (one that WORKS, though!). I know that if I put that time in, it will come back with lots of additional benefits.
How About You?
If you haven’t seen the consistency in your life with practicing the Thin Within principles or maintaining your godly boundaries of eating between hunger and satisfaction, are you willing to consider the possibility that you need to change things up? That it might be beneficial to begin now to invest some time (maybe even lose a little sleep…even 15 minutes!) in training your mind to be alert and ready for action? What are you willing to start doing today? If doing this every day is too much, you might want to consider 4x a week to start with. You might be surprised and actually enjoy it! 🙂 I know you will be pleased with the way it impacts your thinking!
by Christina Smith | Dec 20, 2013 | Blog
Image courtesy of nuttakit at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Christmas is upon us, followed by New Years, which brings parties, potlucks, family dinners, buffets of sweets, candy, etc. In my Gearing Up for the Holidays post I shared about ways to be proactive before the holiday celebrations begin. This time, I would like to share what took place before Thanksgiving in order for me to prepare for the big feast.
For several months now, since participating in the Renewing of the Mind study, I have been reading through my truth cards each day. I’ve stated before how important it has been to be in the Word and reading those truths each day: it’s literally CHANGED my life! The Lord has done an amazing work. He gets all of the praise, honor, and glory! So knowing how powerful His word is in renewing my mind and transforming my life, I knew how important it was to have those truths before my eyes before Thanksgiving.
This is what I did to plan ahead:
1. I wrote in my journal, which is ultimately a prayer journal. I asked the Lord to help me in the days ahead to stay within my boundaries.
2. I looked at Barb Raveling’s app ‘I Deserve a Donut’ about social eating, which suggested I read the parts about Justification Eating and Entitlement Eating.
3. In my journal, I wrote out the Justification Eating questions and answered them. I mentally saw myself on Thanksgiving day and the days surrounding Thanksgiving, knowing that I may be tempted to be a social eater or to make excuses to eat beyond what my body needs.
4. I wrote down notes from the app that really spoke to me so I could look back at them if needed.
5. I wrote out a plan of what I wanted Thanksgiving day to look like. I knew that we would be eating with dinner-size plates (I usually use a small plate), so I visually planned to load up my plate as if it was a small plate. I decided that I would eat slowly, savoring each bite, leaving one bite of food on my plate. I decided I would not take seconds. And then later I would enjoy a small serving of dessert, even if I wasn’t fully at a “0” (I felt that this was pleasing to the Lord and acceptable in His sight).
6. I wrote out a plan for when we would be going to a restaurant one of the days surrounding Thanksgiving. Since we were out of town, we wanted to visit our favorite restaurant in the area. I knew what I wanted for an appetizer and the entrée, so I planned ahead for what I felt would help me stay within my 0-5 boundary.
7. I wrote the victories I had already experienced that week, praising God for what He has done. I needed to remember those victories and remember that God is my strength!
How did it all turn out? The Lord gets all of the glory! I was amazed at how smooth Thanksgiving went. I ate according to the plan and I felt completely satisfied. While there were others who said they were stuffed and needed to nap, I felt energized. And a few hours after our meal, I was hungry and ate again. I am so thankful for what the Lord did that day and the days surrounding Thanksgiving. I was faithful to keep my eyes on Him and His truth and He was faithful to watch over His word to perform it. Praise God!
And He wants to do the same for you!
How about you?
Do you have a journal you can write out a plan in? How do you want to visualize yourself for the upcoming holiday celebrations? What can you do to prepare?
Written by: Christina
~ Brenda Ameli. Brenda lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching mind body movement and leading the women’s ministry at her church.
