by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 30, 2013 | Blog
What can we do after we have broken our boundaries during holidays, vacations, or dining out? We can renew our mind. This is how I might do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yyCBTQh5SQ?rel=0
(If you subscribe by email, you will need to visit the blog to see the video.)
What can you do to ensure you won’t give in to eating outside of your boundaries today and tomorrow? What will you do about the mistakes that have happened previously so that they don’t dictate what happens next?
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 27, 2013 | Blog
What can you do when you have been here before…and you have typically caved–eaten outside of your boundaries of hunger and satisfaction? What if you can see it coming? How can you observe and correct? How can you prevent another “failure?”
I just can’t renew my mind too often! I need to wash my mind clean from all kinds of lies and line dry it to have a fresh start by putting PURE truth into it!
Sometimes, an attitude of entitlement or justification taints the way I think about food, eating, and how willing I am to minimize the impact of breaking through the boundaries that God has led me to establish!
My husband just left town for a few days and for as long as we have been married (nearly 30 years), when he is out of town I have some of my biggest challenges with desire eating–wanting to break my boundaries of eating only when hungry and stopping eating when I am no longer hungry. When he leaves, it seems to trigger a mindset of some childhood trauma or something–a sense of abandonment! I know that sounds silly.
Exactly!
If I just let myself feel what I feel about it, or, worse, if I tell myself I am being silly and beat myself up over being such a baby, I invariably end up reaching for food to “comfort” me.
Hosting the bible study by Barb Raveling is SO good for me! This time, I choose to renew my mind right now and each day Bob is gone. This is what it looks like for me to do that:
Lord, Bob is out of town and you know that means I get sort of careless or I abandon all resolve with eating boundaries. I want to inhale food outside of 0 and 5. This time, I will not do that. Instead, I will reach for you as my true Comforter. Food is a counterfeit.
The TRUTH, Lord, is that Bob hasn’t abandoned me. This isn’t my childhood. This is my husband who has always come home to me before, so his track record seems to indicate he will come home this time, too! And no matter what happens–even if he doesn’t, food can’t comfort me like you can.
The TRUTH is that while I was abandoned in many ways as a child, you never abandoned me. You were there all along.
The TRUTH is, Lord, you are with me and will never leave me or forsake me, even if everyone else does!
I know that reaching for food during these days when Bob is gone is not going to satisfy the emptiness that I may feel.
Lord, thank you that I have the freedom to eat any food I desire when I am hungry. The rest of the time, when I am drawn to food, what will really minister to my soul is:
- sitting still in your presence
- quieting myself
- opening your Word
- praying
- Adding to my God List
- praising–having a Praise-Feast (Praise-Fest)
- writing in my gratitude blog
- calling a friend
- taking a hot bath and letting wonderful Christian music sooth my soul as the hot water soothes my body
All the ice cream in the world won’t make my life better, my marriage more secure, or the trials and insecurities I face go away. I choose you, Lord. I choose your boundary lines.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
– Psalm 16:7
Thank you that I can set my mind not on earthly things, but on things above. What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal. I choose to fix my eyes on the promise that you have an inheritance waiting for me, Lord. The boundaries that you have established for me are pleasant. When I am tempted to break them, I will turn to you. There will be joy in doing so. There will be a deep sense of satisfaction. You will be my Comfort and my Strength.
Amen
How about you? Are you facing a situation that often triggers eating outside of 0 and 5? Will you choose to renew your mind about your circumstances so that you can emerge victorious, capturing this moment for the Lord? 🙂
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 26, 2013 | Blog
One of the best times for me to renew my mind is when I am on my way to a meal out or an event where I know I could possibly be tempted to break my boundaries. I use the drive time (when I am alone) to speak truth into my life and to recommit (out loud!) to honoring the Lord with my eating and drinking.
Sometimes I record these “sessions” so that I can share them with you in case they can be helpful, but when my husband heard the first of these recordings he asked me some questions. From his questions have come some thoughts–some preliminaries–that I want to share with you.
First, even though I have been at this diligently since 2006 (and less consistently since 1999), I still work hard at it. God uses it to cause me to pray to him, to lean on him in a very tangible way. This has built my intimacy with him in many respects.
Secondly, even though these recordings may sound like they are “a lot of work,” it has become my nature to pray this way, to speak truth into my own life this way. It isn’t as much work as it may seem because I experience an intimacy with God that infuses my life with a truckload of joy! Truly! It is my joy to lean on God this way.
Third, these are examples of what I call “renewing my mind on the fly.” I do it in the face of important challenges to my boundaries. The first of these was when I was on my way to meet a friend for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. The quality of that recording is minimal. I hope you won’t be put off by the “preaching” nature of the recording. I am preaching to ME. I do this because it is truth, and it is worth it to me. It works for me to remind me of truth:
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/84473041″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The second recording is below. I renewed my mind on my way to a home fellowship group when I was feeling a lot of emotion and didn’t want to give in to eating dessert once I arrived.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/84984186″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
How about you? Do you have some potentially challenging situations before you today? Can you renew your mind “on the fly” before you arrive? What will you do to maintain your 0 to 5 eating boundaries?
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 13, 2013 | Blog
I consider Truth Journaling a lot like Renewing of the Mind “Boot Camp.” This isn’t for the faint of heart, but I tell you what…it has GREAT benefits! If you figure you aren’t a journaler, then you may want to renew your mind about that belief :-). If you could spend 10 minutes a day in something that could radically transform your life, draw you closer to God, enable you to think God’s thoughts after him instead of head down a road of thinking thoughts that take YOU captive, would it be worth it? I suggest you give this process a try. It is a training of sorts. If you do this training, then you will learn how to renew your mind practically speaking and will be able to do it “on the fly” more frequently.
This is one way you can work on the renewing of your mind goal, established in the Day 1 material. (Barb mentions Truth Journaling in Day 3.) Even if you aren’t doing the Weight Loss Bible Study with us, then you can use this approach any time you are tempted or even afterwards. I explain that a bit in the video.
One of the reasons I decided that I *could* afford the time to Truth Journal was because I knew I had spent plenty of time in the past looking at recipes, counting calories or fat grams (or “blocks”), reading dieting magazines, diet books, etc. I figured that given how much time in invested into establishing the mindset that didn’t work for me, it wasn’t at all unreasonable to spend a bit of time changing the way I think so that I could emerge victorious in pursuing a life of eating 0 to 5 for the rest of my days on this planet. 🙂 How about you? 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBzmuoY1olc?rel=0&w=560&h=315
I learned everything I know about Truth Journaling from Barb Raveling, first in her Freedom From Emotional Eating bible study. (Just a caveat…this speaks of dieting, but if you can get past that, the principles are very valuable…especially the part about truth journaling!) I love it and it has made a big difference in my life and in the lives of many people who have been in my Thin Within groups! You can do a search here at my blog, too, as I have written about this previously.
I hope this video helps you.
What can you truth journal about? When will you do that?
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 7, 2013 | Blog
When I woke up one day and found myself at a size 24 again (I had lost 100 pounds with a popular weight loss program previously and gained most of it back in a very short period of time) I realized that I didn’t get that way magically. It was action upon action that had gotten me to that place. Actions come about as a result of thinking.
So, it made sense that the key to why I gained weight again so readily is I had never learned to think differently. It was my thinking that caused me to act in such a way that all that extra weight landed on me. By the time I lost the weight in 1997 with Weight Watchers, I was even more obsessed with food and exercise than when I started. I know this may not be the case for everyone, but it was for me. While the outside of my body was changed physically,my heart and mind had been changed too…not for the better either. My mind was riveted to food as never before. I thought about it constantly. When an overuse injury kept me from being able to exercise excessively as I had been, my thoughts and actions about food and eating were betrayed. The weight poured back on.
It was time for me to realize that, if I wanted to see an outward change–to be a healthy size once and for all–I needed to not only act differently, but also to think differently.
In all honesty, this process continues to this day. It is a constant training!
James 1:14, 15 speaks of a progression. We have a thought. We mull it over. We ponder it and allow the thought to grow. Finally, it incites us into action.
Before it ever gets to that place, Paul in 2 Corinthians urges us to take the thought captive and submit it to obedience to Christ.
It stands to reason, if we want to act differently (knowing that health is found there), we have to learn to think differently. We have to train our minds.
This takes work. But anything worthwhile is worth working, fighting for!
And notice this…all along the way, we have a choice about what we will think. We can think the thoughts that lead to actions that don’t correspond with our godly goals and with truth. Or, we can choose to think thoughts that align with my desire to honor God with my eating and drinking and with my living.
Here are some things that we may need to think differently about–that we may need to renew our minds about.
ABOUT THE BATHROOM SCALE
Thoughts you may have now:
- I need the scale to land on this number ______.
- I need to see the numbers go down.
- The scale will tell me if I have been doing this “right” or not.
- The scale tells me if I am a failure or not, if I have value or not.
- I need to get on the scale each day (or multiple times each day).
And other thoughts like these. The thoughts you actually have may be more subtle, of course.
Do these thoughts pass the Philippians 4:8 test? Are they true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy? The answer goes without saying.
What is really true?
- The bathroom scale is a piece of metal and springs with an arbitrary number system on it–that is ALL.
- I can survive even if I don’t get on the bathroom scale. I can use other tools to evaluate my progress in losing weight–such as how my clothes fit or what I see in the mirror.
- God is after my heart and the scale can’t measure that! I can go to the Lord and ask Him if I am doing this as He would have me. HE is the only one I will go to for approval–not a machine made by man.
- God redeems all my past mistakes. He has declared me precious and holy in His sight. He has declared me HIS. He declares forever that I reflect HIS success through Jesus on the cross. He determines my value and worth. Not the scale.
- I do not need to get on the scale each day. In fact, I will survive if I never get on the scale again. (Yes, you really will.) The scale is designed to be a tool to help me. If it is not helping me, I can get rid of it until the time comes when I can think about it differently.
If you are feeling down about what the scale is telling you, my suggestion to you is get off the scale. Replace the thoughts you have about the scale with God’s thoughts about it.
Did you find yourself responding like this to my suggestion? I could never stop weighing myself at LEAST once each day!
Replace that thought, too! How about with this thought: Ok, God is doing a new thing. Me staying off the scale really WOULD be proof of that! I will choose to stay off the scale and I will survive! 🙂
ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF FOOD NEEDED BY YOUR BODY
Many are surprised about how little food it takes to satisfy physical hunger between 0 and 5. You may have thoughts like these about the small amount of food it takes to sustain your body:
- I can’t believe that I am not still hungry. Of course I need more food than that little bit!
- I really HATE that I can’t eat more that this without being over a “5.” God couldn’t possibly expect me to live on so little food!
- I will never be able to live like this the rest of my life! I love food just too much!
Here is another opportunity to see if these thoughts pass the Philippians 4:8 test! Are these thoughts true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy?
What is really true?
- My body is remarkably efficient! I don’t need that much food to sustain me. How COOL is that? God, I am fearfully and wonderfully made!
- God empowers and strengthens me to break strongholds such as eating more food than I need for reasons other than physical hunger. He is in the business of sanctifying–purifying–perfecting and this is part of that work. He is teaching me to depend on him so much. He is calling me closer to His heart through this struggle. With an invitation like that, I can definitely learn to feast on the Lord and release my hold on so much food!
- For my entire life, I get to walk with God in humble dependence on Him as He continues to work this fact–my need for so little food–into my life. I can’t fathom the great intimacy with a mighty, good, and wonderful God that is yet ahead for me!
- God promises to be my portion. I know that he means what He says and His promises are true. He will work into my life a deeper love for Him than I currently have for food.
- I have the wonderful privilege of selecting foods from all that is available. I may not eat very much of it, but I get to relish each and every bite and enjoy it thoroughly. What a gift that is!
What other thoughts could you use to replace the negative thoughts that don’t pass the Philippians 4:8 test relative to the small amount of food it takes to sustain you?
ABOUT THE RENEWING OF YOUR MIND
You may have thoughts about the process mentioned in Romans 12:2 about the renewing of your mind.
- It is just too much work to change the way I think!
- Do I really have to sit down and journal about all of this EACH time I am faced with the temptation to eat?
- This renewing the mind stuff takes too much time. Just gimme a diet so I can GET THIN!
These thoughts don’t pass the Philippians 4:8 test either. How about replacing them with:
- This will be worth fighting for, worth working for. This is transformation I am after and God will do it in me. I will participate in it with Him as He calls me. It will be worth it!
- I sit down to do things all the time (tv, read, computer, etc.) so I probably have more time to sit down and journal than I want to admit, but I also know that as I develop renewing my mind as a habit, I will be able to do it “on the fly” and won’t always need to sit down to do it! It is a process and I am in the early stages! It is worth learning. Romans 12:2!!!
- I have done diets before and gotten thin(ner) before. But they haven’t worked for me. I want a change that will draw me closer to God and change my inside AND out–for the rest of my days! This is it!
What other thoughts have you had that you want to renew your mind about?
