by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 18, 2013 | Blog
How important is it to you to be thin? Do you feel like losing weight will solve problems in your life and just, well, make you happier? What if God were to offer you a wonderful change in your character, a heart that is being conformed to his, a mind that is not burdened, yet you weren’t as thin as you think you should be. Would that be ok?
This week, we have the opportunity to evaluate the premium we place on thinness and if we are thinking God’s thoughts about it or if we have some work to do renewing our minds about how we think about weight and size. I hope that you are encouraged even though the material may be convicting!
We will also have a look at Entitlement Eating–another BIGGEE in motivating much of our eating outside of our boundaries.
We are already in Week three of our Weight Loss Bible Study with a Thin Within Spin. 🙂 If you are subscribed to this blog with email or another reader and the video doesn’t show up, please visit the blog site and check out the video. Here is what is going on this week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZASAhFLiGE?rel=0&w=480&h=360
So, this week, be sure to:
- Continue with your renewing your mind goal and taking time to try renewing of the mind.
- Can you resolve to not eat outside your boundaries for three days this week?
- If you haven’t tried Truth Journaling yet, give it a go.
- Read and do the questions and journaling activities for Barb’s Bible Study Day 5.
- Read and do the questions and journaling activites for Barb’s Bible Study Day 6.
- Continue to post here. Each time you do, it enters you in the drawing for a free book or free coaching…each Friday, I draw a name. The lucky winner gets to pick either a Thin Within book, a Hunger Within book, or a free week of coaching. Not only that, but you all are such GREAT support for one another! THANK YOU again!
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 16, 2013 | Blog
I was asked in one of the comments about the schedule, so thought I would post it as a separate post instead of in a response in the comments where it might get buried. 🙂
Here is the schedule – the first link is to the study at Barb’s site. The second link is to the post here with the videos, assignments, etc:
I will probably add one that Barb doesn’t have — it is unique to 0 to 5 eaters — “Preventative Hunger Eating.” Week 5
Then I will probably have a wrap up during a week 9. A chance for us to debrief about some things and a looking forward to what might be next.
As of now, I plan to use the Thin Within workbook with a RENEWING OF THE MIND focus for a study to follow this one.
So, how is it going for you all? Is this study helpful? Is your thinking changing? Do you see any differences in the way you act that you can tie to changes in your thinking?
If you feel like you are stuck in the same-old same-old, I want to encourage you to ask yourself this question…what am I willing to do differently so that I get different results? If you haven’t been working on the renewing of your mind, start there! 🙂
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 11, 2013 | Blog
Last week, we did Day 1 and Day 2 of Barb Ravelings Weight Loss Bible Study. If you haven’t yet done that material–no problem. Go at the pace that works for you. Just keep moving forward!
I shared last week that we have to be willing to renew our minds–to think differently, if we are going to act differently for the rest of our days. This will ensure that the transformation we experience is lasting. We made a “renewing of the mind” goal, in fact. How is that going for you? I would love to hear.
I wanted to share some thoughts that I have as I look over my notes from doing Day 2 of Barb’s study. Because I am colossally lazy :-), I will do that in video…
Thoughts on Day 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEU_XohAz78?rel=0&w=640&h=480
Here is a preview of what you will be studying this week. Beneath the video, I have posted your assignment for this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKvWa7SUZAQ?rel=0
This week:
- Continue with your Renewing Of Your Mind goal. You are proactively taking time to think God’s thoughts (that pass the Philippians 4:8 test) about whatever it is that you need to renew your mind about.
- Additionally, be alert and on your guard to any other thoughts that are NOT His thoughts about your body, size, eating, 0 to 5, boundaries and anything else pertinent to this journey. Take captive your thoughts so they don’t take YOU captive!
- Do Barb’s Day 3 study on “Justification Eating.” Be alert to any mention of “calories” and trade dieting terminology for something that is congruent with 0 to 5 and Thin Within.
- Make a list of lies that you tell yourself to justify eating outside of true physical hunger and true physical satisfaction.
- Complete Barb’s Day 4 study on “Indulgent Eating.“
- Did you take Barb’s challenge last week? To have three days of not eating outside of your boundaries? Why not take the challenge this week. Just three days of truly sticking with 0 to 5. See what happens!
Note: If you are struggling with thinking about food all the time, you have to choose to think about something else. You can’t just tell yourself to stop thinking about food! The best thing I have found to think about is what God says is my true portion…HIM. At my other blog, I have a boatload of resources that can help with that. I especially recommend establishing and adding to a God List and using that to have a Praise-Fest.
- Don’t forget to post here to the blog to support one another, ask questions, share your insights! Each time you do, you get entered in the drawing for a Thin Within book (donated by the Thin Within ministry), a Hunger Within book (donated by Arthur and Judy Halliday) or an hour of personal coaching with yours truly.
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 3, 2013 | Blog
Hi, everyone. I know many of you may have gotten the link for the study starting tomorrow from Barb Raveling’s blog.
That said, I don’t want anyone to be surprised…I use a non-diet approach. Specifically, I use Thin Within. I was the collaborator with the Hallidays for the book and drafted the first edition of the workbook back in 2001. I am pretty entrenched in the material! 🙂 And happy to be! I won’t be talking about dieting during our study. Or at least I would rather not. 🙂
My (very lengthy-desperately-needing-to-be-edited) testimony is here. I hate to ask you to read the entire thing, but it might help to let you know where I am coming from if you don’t already know.
I am looking forward to getting started with you tomorrow.
Some of you are also wondering how this will work. The majority of the studying will be done by YOU! 🙂 You can get out of this study as much as you like, depending on how much time you put into it between Mondays.
- Each Monday, I will post a blog post that recaps the previous assignment and/or what is to come. Some of these may include video. Some may not.
- Monday’s post will typically include an assignment. Pace yourself for the week. Some of it may need to be done as soon as possible. Do as much (or as little) of this assignment as you would like, but I challenge you to dive in deep…go for all you are worth in this! Of course we want the easy fix, but we know that there is no easy fix. We have all lost weight before, but we know that there is more to this. This study will get us digging for the more.
- You will be challenged to work hard. Not at losing weight, but on thinking differently. The internal work you will be encouraged to do, may be challenging! Plan now how you will handle the desire to quit or to ignore this much needed component of our study.
- Between Mondays during the week , I plan to have other content posted for you. Some of it will be related to a topic that I have stumbled upon during the study. Some of it may be more supplementary to the study. Either way, it will be designed to help you as you continue this journey! I hope you will stop by during the week. Follow the blog or subscribe if you want to be notified when new content is posted.
- Remember that this study will focus us more than anything on Renewing Our Minds! This is what will make the HUGE difference. We are going to use Barb’s approach of renewing the mind and apply it to our Thin Within journeys. I believe that these strategies (Barb’s renewing of the mind and Thin Within’s non-diet approach) are HUGELY compatible!
As we prepare for launch tomorrow, just a couple of things I would love for you to do:
…pray for me and for yourself and others studying. Pray that our eyes would be open and for clarity. Pray for unreserved devotion. Pray that we will be “sold out” to the Lord and resign our eating to Him, forsaking an attitude of entitlement! Pray for open hearts and open eyes. He is faithful to answer that prayer.
…ask questions…here now as well as through our study. The more questions you ask, the more clear things will become. Chances are that if you have a question, someone else has that same question, too. If you ask it, others benefit as well.
What do you hope to experience through this study? 🙂 What questions do you have even now?
by Heidi Bylsma | Feb 25, 2013 | Blog
Mark your calendars for Mondays, starting one week from today–March 4th–for our study of Barb Raveling’s Weight Loss Bible Study. We will study putting a Thin Within Spin on the material.
Before we begin, I wanted to share with you some thoughts I have at the outset.
First, if you know me at all, you know that I don’t prefer focusing on weight loss. And that is one of the things I love about Barb–neither does she. Even though this study is called “Weight Loss Bible Study,” she focuses our attention on renewing our minds so that the transformation we desire physically is birthed by a deeper transformation inwardly. This is the only way to experience permanent change. It is only fair to warn you this requires a lot of work. You likely will be pushed out of your comfort zone. You may want to decide now what you will do when you are tempted to quit!
Secondly, Barb *does* use the word “diet”…be forewarned! So, when you see the word DIET or DIETING in Barb’s material during our study, please replace it in your thinking with “0 to 5 Eating” instead. Barb does a great job of speaking of boundaries. For those on diets, this may include points or calories or whatever else. For us, our primary boundary is to eat between 0 (physical hunger) and 5 (physical satisfaction). Please don’t let the use of the term “diet” throw you! God can use this material in our lives!
Thirdly, logistically, it can be easiest to work through the material if you print it out or have it on your own computer. I like to copy and paste Barb’s material into a Word document so I can interact with the material directly. This way, her blog posts become a journal for me that I save on my laptop. I can refer to it later or finish the study at a later time. If you don’t want to do that, you can print them out and/or journal in a notebook just as effectively.
What I do *not* recommend is to just do it in your head! 🙂 We tend to get lazy if we try that approach.
Given how much energy and effort and practice we have put into eating more than we need, causing us to carry extra weight, we can certainly spend time renewing our mind, thinking differently, by doing bible study. 🙂
So, what are your hopes, concerns, questions before we launch into this study?
