This is a stream of consciousness video…but maybe there is something here that can encourage you. Obviously, I have my work cut out for me this week! Do you? LOL!
Carelessly grazing as we walk through the kitchen, dipping into the candy dish on the office-mate’s desk, or sucking on mints just because they are there…these are little examples of Careless Eating. Careless eating is what often leads to that sudden panic… OH MY GOODNESS! I have been eating TOO much and I must GET SKINNY NOW!
All those moments when we said, “It’s just one bite” haunt us when we reach for a pair of pants hanging in our closet that we haven’t tried on in a couple of months. As we go to slip into them we wonder if our “just one bite(s)” will have cost us anything.
How does God feel about “just one bite?”
Is it possible that “Just one bite” is how we got in trouble in the first place? Either God has called us to the boundary of 0 and 5 or he hasn’t. If he has, does “just one bite” have a place?
How might those “just one bite” moments affect your appearance? Will this matter to you?
Monday
1. I haven’t asked you to do this in a while, so it is time. Are you committed to 0 to 5 eating? Do you believe it is from God for you? Why do you feel convinced in your heart that this is so? Write in your journal your thoughts about this and the statement “I know 0 to 5 eating is a boundary from God for my life” (or something similar). Date it and sign it if it will help. We want to recommit to this!
2. Visit Barb Raveling’s Careless Eating Study at her blog. Can you relate to her illustration about the alcoholic at all? Barb says: We can learn a lot from the life of an alcoholic. Although we can’t say not even one bite, we can say, not even one bite outside our boundaries.What do you think about that? Journal your feeling about that. What do you think of her statement, “The minute we think it’s just one bite, we are in danger.”
3. Do all the Bible Study questions that Barb has for us on that page, including looking up the bible verses. Journal what you discover.
4. Add any truths you have come up with to your Truth Cards.
5 Are you willing to take the challenge? TELL US! 🙂 Get an Accountability Partner. It isn’t too late!
2. Barb challenges us to incorporate the “Careless Eating Questions” into our lives so that when we are tempted to eat outside of our 0 and 5 boundaries we evaluate by using those questions. You can do these now, even if you aren’t experiencing temptation. I recommend going through these questions today and journaling your response.
3. Jot down any truths you have come up with for your Truth Cards.
4. Share with us here in the comments any thoughts that God has laid on your heart, truths you have added to your cards, or new insights (or old ones) that you got from the questions or the bible study.
Wednesday
1. Visit Barb Ravelings “Appearance Eating Bible Study”. How important is it to you to lose weight? Ask God to show you just how fixed your heart is on the physical results you want. What if you could have God in all his fullness and beauty, but not be the size/shape you want? What then? Would he be enough?
2. Can you relate at all to my confession in the video? How so?
3. To what source are you looking for your happiness?
4. Is there any living you are waiting to do until you look a certain way? What would God have you do…today?
Thursday
1. Visit Barb Raveling’s Appearance Eating Bible Studyagain. Complete Questions for your Journal numbers 1 through 5 and journal your answers.
2. Share here anything that God impresses upon your heart. What you share may encourage another person who visits and reads the comments–even if they don’t post. Consider it a ministry to others that you do in faith! (It ministers to ME! LOL!)
3. As you consider a person in your life that you feel requires you to be a different size or shape, it might be helpful to do some forgiveness work. When I do forgiveness work, it includes “telling on them to God.” Think of being a colossal tattle tale…you are God’s precious little child running to him to tattle on whoever it is. Pour it all out. What did they do to you? How do you feel about it? Tell your Heavenly Abba (Daddy) and then leave it with him. Ask him to help you to forgive…to choose to trust it all to His care.
Friday
1. Visit Barb Raveling’s Appearance Eating Bible Study yet one more time. 🙂 Complete questions 6 through 10 and journal your responses as time allows.
2. What truths can you add to your truth cards…or, if you aren’t yet creating a deck of truth cards, what truths is God speaking over you?
3. Share with us here how you feel God leading you to approach your desire for weight loss (Barb’s question 10).
4. If you haven’t done so as a part of any of the other questions in today’s assignment, you may want to reaffirm your confidence that God is calling you to 0 to 5 as your primary boundary. What are the secondary boundaries he is calling you to? Write these down to affirm them and date it.
This week we are investigating two things that spur us to eat outside of our primary boundary of physical hunger and satisfaction. One is our response to our weight on the bathroom scale…(I really hope you aren’t still hopping on your scale, though!) As we begin this week, I urge you to remember that your ideal size is whatever you land on when you faithfully eat according to the God given parameter of physical hunger and satisfaction. You don’t ever need to step on a scale again! So, if you haven’t yet, why not give your scale to someone else to keep for you? 🙂
Additionally, we will look at how often we can wait for physical hunger before eating. We may even be growing in our willingness and ability to process our emotions with the Lord instead of running to food instantly each time. But when we DO sit down to feed our “0” , we may zip on past our comfortable “5” or place of physical satisfaction. Let’s see what we can learn to help us stop it!
If we can take care of these two things, practically speaking, we will eliminate a bunch of our overeating!
I have broken this week’s assignments down again in the hopes that it will be helpful for you.
Monday
Visit Barb’s page: Bad Scale Eating at this link. She points out that we typically want to lose weight in a way that is fast, easy and fun and that when we have been dying to self for 8 weeks, it really is hard to get on the scale and see that we haven’t lost weight…but maybe we have even gained!
To be honest, with the Thin Within approach to landing on your God-given size, it often happens that way (sorry to break it to you now…). People may gain weight when they start off! Sometimes this happens at the beginning before the weight starts coming off.
That isn’t to say you should ignore that fact, shrug your shoulders, and just accept it. NOPE! Instead, re-evaluate and see what it is that needs to be tweaked. Instead of focusing on the man-made bathroom scale, how about focusing on the God-given HUNGER scale–that true physical “empty” or what we call “0” and that true physical SATISFIED or what Thin Within calls a “5?”
Chances are, if you aren’t feeling your clothes loosening up, you may be either deceiving yourself about eating between 0 and 5 or you may be drinking a lot of sweetened beverages throughout the day (stop it!–said with love!), or is it possible you are already at the size God intends for you?
Which do you think it is?
Barb has a section in her post about the scale called unrealistic expectations. She hits the nail on the head! We often have unrealistic expectations, but, again, I want to urge you to THROW OUT YOUR BATHROOM SCALE or, at the very least, have a friend take it and hide it. We can get so focused on it that we miss the thing that God IS doing and he promises that HE IS DOING A NEW THING!
Wouldn’t it be a “new thing” if we stopped weighing ourselves?At least it would be for many of us. Give it a try and after the typical week or so of panic, you will likely settle in to experiencing the peace and freedom that comes from refusing to let a man-made hunk of metal, plastic, springs, etc., arbitrarily assign a number to your size.
In Barb’s section called Unrealistic Expectations, can you identify with either option #1 or option #2? Which?
So how about doing what she suggests! In order to keep following your boundaries with a good attitude, take some time to renew your mind about the scale.
What other unrealistic expectations do you have? Can you find any truths in God’s Word that speak to this? Jot them down or share them with us here.
NOTE: Tomorrow, I will be posting about a “Fire the Desire: 3 Day Challenge.” We can do just about anything for three days. You may want to plan now for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — for joining the Fire the Desire 3 Day Challenge!
Tuesday
Barb includes an “Exercise for Journal” section at her Bad Scale Eating page(this is the same page as the one I had you visit yesterday). This is an OUTSTANDING exercise for us to do. Note her examples. (Again, please note that Barb uses dieting “lingo,” but you can trade the words and phrases out for ones that fit Thin Within and 0 to 5 eating.)
If you do this exercise, share with us here what the truths are that replaced any of the lies that you struggle(d) with!
Read today’s blog post about the “Fire the Desire 3 Day Challenge.” Are you going to give it a try? Do you have an accountability partner? If you haven’t connected with your accountability partner in a while, you may want to! Will you check in here? Tell us your intention if you plan to do the Challenge!
If you are like most of us, you can wait for 0 most of the time before eating, but stopping at 5 (or before) is another story altogether! What do you think? Do you find yourself continuing to eat past that place of pleasant satisfaction just because the food available is so YUMMY? Sometimes the food just is there and tastes so good that we want to keep on eating it.
Do Barb’s More is Better bible study. Summarize what God shows you.
Are there any truths you can add to your truth cards as a result of going through these two studies of Barb’s?
Barb asks “Do you need to set any secondary boundaries to protect yourself from good food eating? If so, what boundaries could you make?” As you consider this question, we rejoice hat we don’t need to have ANY food be off limits completely, but what about staying within the boundaries of 0 and 5? How can you set yourself up for success with your eating when Good Food abounds and you waited until 0? How can you plan ahead to help you succeed?
Are you joining in the Fire the Desire 3 – Day Challenge? If not, why not? 🙂 Today is Day 1! (You can start it any time, actually, but why not today?)
Thursday
Complete the Good Food Eating section included in Barb’s blog post(again, this is the same post as yesterday’s).
What insights come to you as a result of going through this material?
How are you doing on the Fire the Desire 3 – Day Challenge?
Friday
This is the last day of the Fire the Desire 3 – Day Challenge. How is it going? Stay off the scale in keeping with this week’s study. Truth journal about the scale if it will help. What about stopping at 5? Are you recognizing a 5 as it approaches? Are you eating slowly enough so that you can stop after a reasonable amount of food? What plan can you have to be proactive?
Extra Credit: 🙂 Weekends are tough for many of us. Sometimes it is because weekends signal us to let up our boundaries. Our routines are typically set aside. Can you create a plan for this weekend–a routine for yourself, some way to be proactive about experiencing success? Even if you aren’t doing the 3-day challenge, I hope you will include adding to your God List, having a Praise Fest, and adding to your Gratitudes Journal this weekend! I really believe that we will not stay in rebellion when we exalt God.
We can keep reading the latest greatest “non-diet,” “intuitive eating” material on the web, but there comes a point in time when we have to live up to the light we have been given.
Has that time come for you?
I get emails from people all the time…many are involved in the Thin Within Facebook Accountability Group, the regular Thin Within Facebook page, have frequented the Thin Within forums on an off for years, done all the workbooks, read Thin Within and Thin Again. Yet they still struggle with obedience. They still are frustrated by themselves. Maybe struggle implies more challenge then there has been. Some of us, don’t even put up a fight against the gluttony that sucks us in. We just roll over and give in to the desire.
What’s it gonna take to for us to stop it? To END THE REBELLION?
I guess another question would be “What’s REALLY holding you (me) back?”
With the way I have been this past week (and longer), I know what is in this Sound Cloud file holds the antidote for what I suffer from. I would wager might for you, too:
1. Have you read a lot of Thin Within material and done a lot of the workbooks or bible studies? Have you tried the online resources (of course you have if you are here at this website! LOL!). Do you really–in your heart of hearts–feel like you lack knowledge? Is there really anything more that more inspiration could offer you? Or is it time to live according to the light you already have?
2. Can you do what the audio suggests at the end…open to Psalm 30 or Isaiah 30 and pull out attributes of God or answers to this question: “What is God like and/or what has He done for people?” Can you praise him out loud for those attributes? Can you find three gifts that God has blessed you with in this moment, yes…even if your husband has just announced he is leaving, even if your daughter has admitted she is pregnant, even if you just got the news that you have cancer, even if your job is flushed because of your company’s “downsizing.” No matter what…can you find the gifts that God has offered you in this day, write them down and, out loud, thank him for them?
3. Are you willing to give THIS a try? Not another new bible study. Not another new accountability group, but the daily practice of praise and gratitude…and just see if it might not make a difference in the rebellion that has been living in your heart?
4. Do an experiment this weekend. Practice praise and gratitude this weekend. Build your God List. Use it for a Praise Fest. Keep a running list of the gifts God has given you. Speak these truths about God’s character and goodness OUT LOUD. See if, when you do this, you still have the same challenges in your eating…can you praise God at the same time you eat more food than he calls you to eat?
Let us know how it goes! Share your thoughts and insights here!
Here we are again. At the office party or in the kitchen after bible study and NUTS if the food isn’t just TOO tantalizing. It seems to have a magnetic pull on us.
We tell ourselves NO… we WON’T give in THIS time, but nevertheless before we know it we are laughing with the others, enjoying “fellowship” while holding (and eating from) a large plate of food. And it isn’t about hunger. It is, quite simply, about I WANT IT AND I WILL EAT IT BECAUSE I WANT IT. We might even have the thought that “It isn’t fair that everyone else should get to eat and just because I am not hungry, I don’t get to…”
This week we turn our attention to two related types of eating, “Indulgent Eating” and “Social Eating.” Often, we just don’t feel like following our boundaries. Often, it may be because we are in a social situation and everyone else is laughing, having fun, so it is “only fair” that we should get to as well. Barb’s studies this week bring some very important thoughts to the forefront.
I am breaking this week’s assignment down into 5 mini-assignments. Of course, you can do it any way you choose. 🙂
2. Select at least 3 statements from the first section under “This is what I learned” to add to your truth cards. Even better if you add all 5! Share with us which three you added. If you haven’t started a deck of truth cards yet, you can see a post about it here. Evaluate if this might be a tool that could be used by God to bring victory at a level you haven’t previously known. Is it worth it to try something new?
3. Use Barb’s journaling questions about Indulgent Eating to write statements that you can add to your truth cards. Here is an example:
The first journaling question, I use to frame my answer and to develop a statement that can go in my truth cards. Barb asks, “If you were to eat ‘what you want, when you want’ 100% of the time, how much do you think you’d weigh?”
My response:
“If I were to eat what I want when I want (in the quantities I want) 100% of the time, I would be at least 100 pounds overweight. I have been there before and I could get there easily again.”
Continue to use Barb’s Indulgent Eating material to frame statements for your truth cards. Share with us in the comments what you added to your truth cards today.
Tuesday:
Complete the rest of the journaling questions, including looking up the Scriptures that Barb supplied. Which verse means the most to you or did God use to encourage or challenge you? Share with us.
Answer Barb’s question: Is your life better or worse with boundaries?
What percentage of the time do you feel like you live as if you don’t have boundaries? Why do you think this is the case?
Complete Barb’s Indulgence Eating questions. Again, use any of your answers that fit to create new truth cards. Share here any truths that you feel led to share so that others can be encouraged as well.
Respond to Barb’s question: Do you think your best chance for happiness is to do what you want when you want? Why or why not?
Wednesday
Visit Barb’s social eating bible study page found here. Please don’t be put off by the “salad vs pizza” dieting scenario. Instead, imagine the more likely situation for you, as a Thin Within participant, to be in a situation where everyone else at a party or get-together is eating four pieces of pizza when you either aren’t at a “0” yet and have to wait to eat or you are at a “0” but it takes only one piece of pizza to get to a “5.” The rest of the scenario she paints for us plays out. The situation is totally ripe for overindulging. You finally get this feeling of being “ripped off” and give in and eat along with and as much as everyone else.
What is the lie that Barb says is present in the back of our minds?
What is true about the notion that “Life should be fair”?
Respond to Barb’s discussion of “The Fairness Line.” What do you think about what she says?
Thursday
I want to join Barb in encouraging you to recognize the lies that our society feeds us. The lie that “Life should be fair” saturates everything! What are ways that you know you have bought this lie? Can you persevere in renewing your mind with truth about this today? This week? How will you do this?
How are things going on your renewing of the mind plan? Maybe it’s time to recommit to your plan established in week 2! If you don’t have an accountability partner yet, please consider getting one today by visiting the Accountability Page and posting there. If you have had a partner, but haven’t been in touch, consider getting in touch with your partner and evaluating what you will do going forward or dissolve your partnership and let one another loose to find another partner.
Complete Barb’s “Social Eating Bible Study” section at the bottom of the page.
Friday
At the end of the Social Eating Bible Study, Barb asks: Think of an upcoming social gathering where you’ll have to control the way you eat if you want to follow your boundaries. If life is about indulging your desires, will you have much to be thankful for in that situation? Explain.
If life is about loving God and others, will you have much to be thankful for in that situation? Why or why not? Explain.
What is God laying on your heart today about Indulgent and Social eating? Are you happier when you live by design or desire?
Follow Up Comments
I know that the summer is filled with opportunities to enjoy friends, family, times in the sun, lots of fun! You can recommit to spending 15 minutes a day allowing God to change your thinking–even now in the middle of the summer. What do you think? I know lots of us started this study filled with promises to ourselves. If your heart is kindled to want to let the fire flare up again, why not just dive back in this week–today, even? There’s no need to throw in the towel until a new study starts. Don’t buy Satan’s big lie!
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.
– Psalm 150:6 NIV
Have you ever known someone who, no matter what wonderful things were going on, they found the dark clouds amidst all the silver linings of life? A”Christian Eeyore” has that “There’s not a cloud in the sky, but that’s because a terrible storm is brewing and it is sure to take us by surprise” approach to life. You know the type, right? I hope you aren’t that type, though!
This week, we are going to choose NOT to be like that. We are going to CELEBRATE and count the many ways that God has been at work in our lives.
The nature of this journey we are on, requires that we prayerfully scrutinize our choices. We “observe and correct” and find there is SO much to “correct.” We tell ourselves repeatedly how we could/should have done this or that better. I don’t know about you, but after I have just inhaled an extra piece of pizza beyond satisfied, I can “overlook” the previous three days of wonderful choices, honoring God, walking with him, and submitting to his leadership!
We have been doing some HARD work this summer! Rather than weighing our bodies and comparing notes and results, let’s invite God to weigh our hearts right now. NOT our bodies. See below to see what I mean:
Heart Scale
All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the LORD weighs the heart.
– Proverbs 21:2
If God were to weigh your heart, where would it land in the above illustration?
Here is a spiel about what I want us to do this week! 🙂
2.) Create a list of “land” you have captured for Christ on this journey this summer so far!
For instance:
I said no to a second helping last night at dinner
I have been drinking more water and less sweetened tea/coffee
I have been renewing my mind frequently and have noticed that I have begun to think God’s thoughts about myself, food, and God–to actually believe them!
I have been adding to my truth cards each week.
I have an accountability partner.
I have had 3 nights of successfully eating within my boundaries from dinner preparation time until bed time!
etc.
Your turn!
3.) If you have noticed that you tend to break your boundaries under certain circumstances, prayerfully make a plan for how to take that situation captive *before* it happens next time.
4.) Which of the three challenge levels mentioned by Barb in her evaluation post are you going to try out? Pick one and get an accountability partner if you haven’t yet. What can you do to structure your life to meet this challenge with victory? Make a plan!
5.) Consider having a gratitude blog or gratitude journal, specifically for thanking God for his gifts. Try these spots on the web:
6.) PLEASE POST HERE! What changes are you seeing in your life? Please praise our God and tell of all his wonderful deeds! Every continent (except Antarctica) has been represented by visitors to this website. So, if we are supposed to “declare among the nations” the things God has done for us, you can do so here and consider that one way of telling “The World” about what God has been doing! In fact, while I am asking for the moon :-), I would love you go to the Testimonials page and share a testimony there for everyone to see who lands at that page! Come on! 🙂
7.) Some sad news is that our trial membership at GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar has come to an end. I had *thought* that it was only $50 to continue, but it is $100! 🙁 I just can’t swing that. So, sadly, we won’t be having an online class this week unless I find a host that is cheaper. 🙁
8.) Will you pray for people to be encouraged through this ministry? I would love for visitors to see the many ways you see God at work in your life this summer! Thanks so much.
