by Heidi Bylsma | Sep 20, 2010 | Blog
Hi! If you are happening by “late” and want to join in our study of the Thin Within workbook, but don’t yet have a copy, you can place an order with Pam and Joe Donaldson. Just give a call to 877-729-8932 M-F, 9-5pm Eastern time and let them know you want the “Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Kit #1.” If you aren’t sure what it is, visit this link to see a run down about it.
Leaders, my pdf notes for this first session of my group may be found at this link. Please email me if you want the Microsoft Word version to edit for your personal use. Are you using these notes? I would love to hear about it if so.
If you are participating with us, your “assignment” for this week is to:
1.) Do lesson 2 in the Workbook, reading all the material for Lesson 2 and completing the workbook exercises for week 2.
2.) As you read and study, please continue your lists: “What God is Like” and “What God Does.” Use these to start your time each day with 5 minutes (or more) of praise. Thank God for His attributes and for the ways he interacts with humans. I often do this when I feel overwhelmed, down, or tempted. By recounting God’s attributes and saying them out loud, there is something powerful that happens in me. Temptation doesn’t quite have the power it otherwise would and I find my spirits are lifted. Whatever trials are harassing me get put in perspective in light of what an amazing God I have!
3.) Wait for 0 to eat physical food. Stop eating when you are physically satisfied. Ask the Lord to help you clarify physical satisfaction, if it seems unclear.
4.) Prayerfully evaluate if your use of the scale is in its proper place. Does the bathroom scale define what kind of day you have? What if you were to “fast” using the scale for a week? Does the thought bother you? Ask the Lord what he would have you to do about this. Some find it a very helpful tool. Others of us (including me) find that the scale is a tool of condemnation or pride. I can’t seem to get my heart in a place to use it appropriately, so I got rid of mine!
5.) This week, please consider visiting us at the Thin Within Facebook page or Thin Within forums to get and give support to others!
6.) I hope you will come back to the blog tomorrow or Tuesday and read the devotional that I will post here. More, I hope you will respond. I know I haven’t been “around” much. My family is going through a real challenging time and I am not online nearly so much, but I read every comment and respond when I can. I love it when I see you all interacting with one another. Please don’t give up! 🙂
7.) Feel free to comment here in response to any of the above. I would love to hear what God is doing in your lives!
I am praying for you all. Will you pray for me, too? 🙂
by Heidi Bylsma | Aug 16, 2010 | Blog
I wonder if you can relate to these thoughts:
“I just decided to quit Thin Within for a while. I just couldn’t do it right.”
“There is something I am not getting about eating 0 to 5. I am not losing any weight.”
“There is too much freedom with this approach to eating. I do better with counting calories/points/blocks/fat grams” (etc., etc!).
“I haven’t lost any weight yet. I don’t know what is wrong with me!”
“I gained back all the weight I lost when I did Thin Within before. What is wrong with me?”
Many of us who apply ourselves to living the principles taught in Thin Within often struggle with thoughts like these. Sometimes, we stop and start the book or workbook numerous times. We visit the forums, this blog :-), the Thin Within Facebook page, maybe even the Thin Within SparkTeam, or a Thin Within Yahoo group–earnestly for a few days, a few weeks, maybe even a few months, before we again become discouraged and thoughts like those above fly through our heads.
Let’s recognize what is going on here! This is perfectionism rearing its head. Are you, like me…not having ever considered yourself a perfectionist really? Thoughts like these are tell-tale indicators that perhaps we are!
Not only that, but I want to suggest that these thoughts reveal that our focus needs to shift. Is the physical–our bodies, weight, size, shape–really what God wants us to spend such energy on? Even if we were at our “ideal body weight” (whatever that is!) would this be freedom, to constantly be clinging to the size and struggling not to gain an ounce? God calls us to freedom and He defines that that is!
For our light and momentary troubles
are achieving for us an eternal glory
that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.
– 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Truthfully, in Christ, I believe we all have a longing for our eternal heavenly home–for perfection. It is a godly longing for perfection. But this godly longing becomes a roadblock when we stop and allow it to determine what we will do next. Or when we focus on the things in this world that are temporary (such as our body shape and size). In fact, it isn’t just a roadblock–it is an idol of our heart. Let me explain.
God is in the business of sanctifying his people. He justifies us. He declares us holy and righteous in Christ, but our Christian life does not stop there. God is in the business of progressively leading us to a holy life. One moment at a time, one choice at a time. We are being cleansed, sanctified, practically washed up, if you will.
BUT we won’t arrive at “perfect” this side of heaven.
That is just the reality!
Something we have to realize is that when we insist on perfection–“Doing it right”–or else we will quit, we are not allowing God to direct our paths. We are leaning on our own understanding. We are not acknowledging him or the eternal work he is doing within. We are elevating our pride in our performance above his personal leading in our lives.
The truth is even when we aren’t reading or “doing” Thin Within, God is at work in our lives. Perhaps he is doing something deeper–a work that must be done in order for me to get to the next level of freedom.
God values faithfulness so highly. When I know that God has called me to respond to my hunger and satisfied signals and to invite him into my eating experience, when I am convicted that I need to be rid of my bathroom scale because it is an idol in my life, when I am called not to give in to the pressures to have a Barbie body even at 48 years of age and 2 kids later…even when I don’t do any of these things well, FAITHFULNESS is what really matters! Hanging in there. Please, this is not “doing it perfect.”
Faithfulness means, every time I wander, every time I fall down, I allow GOD to lift me up again. It means that I rejoice in my weaknesses, because in my weaknesses, HIS strength is clearly seen. It means that I know that even when my weight isn’t where I want it to be, GOD IS FAITHFUL AND IS AT WORK DOING WHAT MATTERS INSIDE OF ME.
The following passage, one I quote here frequently, is the antithesis of perfectionism. Yet here it is! God’s thought on this matter!
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,
so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses,
in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
– 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
Let’s reject the mentality that we must bail if we aren’t “doing it” perfectly!
Let’s be faithful and trust the Lord that He is at work in us doing a new thing!
How about you? Do you struggle with wanting to quit when you aren’t “doing” this thing perfectly? Will you take a moment and affirm what is true about the work God is even now doing in you? Will you allow your weakness to be a showcase for His marvelous strength?
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 6, 2010 | Blog
Chapter 6 in Thin Within encourages us to examine “Fat Machinery.” Anything that puts us on auto-pilot, when we don’t engage our brains, and eat anyhow–that is Fat Machinery. We want to expose Fat Machinery and dismantle it.
There are four categories. Let’s look at them.
1. Conditioned or habitual responses. This is when circumstances pushes a button in me and I eat without thinking much about it. The book gives an example of turning on the TV—food automatically comes out. Movies mean popcorn.
How about you? Can you think of conditioned or habitual responses where you eat without engaging your brain?
2. Beliefs. What you believe about things will affect your eating. For instance, if you plan to be active, you believe you need a “hearty breakfast”—even if you aren’t yet hungry. The book uses the belief we have that we need “three square meals a day.” Many think if we don’t have three meals a day we will starve ourselves.
How about you? Do you have any beliefs that cause you to eat?
In our chat yesterday, we discovered that considering “boundaries” as restrictive rules–which we may believe can never be good–may result in us pushing against keys to conscious eating and other boundaries we may establish. When we evaluate this more carefully, we see that it is rooted in believing a lie! The truth is, boundaries guard GOOD things from being eroded or stolen from us, too.
3. Past stories. Things that happen in our past – usually that trigger emotional responses to food – can cause us to turn to food when we aren’t hungry. Again, since it is “fat machinery” we eat without prayerfully considering if we are hungry or not.
Our past stories are often a HUGE reason we eat. My parents were restrictive and abusive about food and eating. I developed a view that “freedom” from abusive parents meant plunging myself into massive quantities of all the foods that they restricted.
How about you? Do you have any past stories that you think might cause you to eat?
4. Failures. These can be dieting failures or even failures with Thin Within. If you have gained weight back you may feel like you will NEVER lose weight and keep it off. Believing this can keep you returning to food again and again…a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Do you have any struggle with this in your life?
One really obvious “fat machinery” mentioned in the book is our use of the bathroom scale. We allow the number to define our mood and often will eat differently in response to it.
If we haven’t gained, we are justified that “I got away with eating more…so I will continue to eat more…” if we didn’t gain any this week.
If we *have* gained, we may console ourselves by eating… “Oh what is the point of even trying to lose weight… I never will” and throw all godly boundaries to the wind!
Do you struggle with this at all?
This week, ask the Lord to make you aware of any “Fat Machinery” that is operable for you. But don’t stop there…DISMANTLE it. Write it down and ask him to make you aware of when it is happening…or to see it coming in advance!
What “fat machinery” do you see in your own life? If you would like help “dismantling” it, share with us here and let’s dialog about the lies, the automatic responses, the “triggers” that many of us experience relative to food.
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 5, 2010 | Blog
Do you ever wonder about why you have heard the message about freedom in your eating, freedom from being tormented about your body and all those things that you struggle with…why you KNOW stuff and feel STRONGLY that “Yes! This is the truth! I believe! I will do it!” and then still struggle to walk in victory? Still have trouble fleshing the thing out?
So many I talk with about Thin Within experience this. I know I did for years. Probably at least 6 years before things “clicked” I knew…really KNEW the truths that God intended for my freedom. Yet it took until 2006 for me to begin to walk in even some measure of freedom. Truthfully, even now, I struggle with walking day in and out in the freedom Jesus provided!
Why is that? Why do we embrace it and believe it and then…don’t experience in our reality what God’s Word says we will?
In Stepping Up bible study by Beth Moore, she shares something really profound on page 81. She shares that she and her husband went to Angola to do some relief work. They were trying to take in the sights and sounds and smells of living death…starvation, malnutrition…rampant and overwhelming. A friend shared with them that one of the saddest things seen is when seed is brought in to plant and harvest, the people of the villages respond to it by EATING THE SEED instead of sowing the seed. She shares how she couldn’t get this thought out of her head and realized that God answered the question above…that some of us eat the seed of God’s word. We are starving and ravenous…we see it as the truth and good and wonderful…and take it in as temporary satisfaction for our “stomachs” if you will. Instead of working it and working it and waiting and waiting….sowing the seed of God’s Word in our lives.
I know what she is talking about because I have done this very thing. During the time that I wrote with the Hallidays, I had daily contact and help and support–I had the privilege of basically writing Judy Halliday’s God-given thoughts on the page for publishing…I “knew” the material…I was “eating” that seed…but I wasn’t working it into the soil of my life.
It takes time. And we want instant results, instant gratification…So, if we don’t see results that are measurable (the bathroom scale often enough), we toss it out…we have eaten the seed instead of sown it.
It takes work. It takes faith. It takes belief. God can do these things in us. It requires patience and perseverance. We wait on Him to do it, yet somehow walk with him, get in the soil and do some dirty “work” in our hearts along with him.
If we don’t, we are like those starving people in Angola. Their need would be provided for much better in the long term if they would SOW the seed instead of eating it. Starving, they don’t know how to trust. How like that I am.
Lord help me not just to eat the seed of your Word and have the temporary “satisfaction” of a full belly. But help me, instead, to sow the seed into my life, to be willing to work it, trust, see the thing through…and experience the harvest that you intend the seed to bring. In the precious Name of Jesus. Amen.
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 1, 2010 | Blog
Michael Hyatt didn’t get to be CEO of the largest Christian publishing company in the world by chance. And he really has some great ideas. I read his blog pretty regularly. I want to share some wisdom he shared on Monday with you. Remember, as with any human advice, subject it prayerfully to the Lord. Like, for me, I go “wonky” into legalism and obsession if I “track” anything. So whenever someone suggests that, I have to ask God “Is now the time to change and start tracking again?” So far, God has said, “No. Not time.” Of course, I refer to the use of a bathroom scale and writing down my weight. I don’t do it. I don’t have a bathroom scale.
So, with that caveat, I want to introduce you to Michael Hyatt and his post “Five Strategies for Building New Habits.”
What do you think of Michael’s suggestions? Are any of them valuable for you and the place where you currently find yourself on your journey? Which ones?
