My husband works for Union Pacific Railroad. What that means is he travels a LOT. The railroad goes all over the country–so does he. 🙂
Last week, his travels took him to the home of wonderful southwestern and Mexican food – Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In this video, Bob shares his strategies for managing this trip in spite of having very little flexibility for the timing of his meals and what he would be served.
1. Bob clearly is willing to say no to himself in spite of claiming to still have an incessant love for large quantities of food. Are you still battling willingness? Or are you seeing even an incremental movement forward in your life–where you are a bit more willing than you were yesterday, a week ago, or a month ago? CELEBRATE the movement forward! WOOT!
2. Consider an upcoming vacation, trip, or even a meal out. What plan can you come up with so that you can maintain your primary boundary of eating 0 to 5?
3. Sit with the Lord a bit and ask him to give you a truth that you might add to your truth cards related to conferences, traveling, eating out.
4. What is one strategy that Bob uses that you might be able to use?
“I don’t care what my boundaries are…I wasn’t thinking about life on a day like this one when I ‘committed’ 0 to 5 eating.”
“Given what I am facing, surely God doesn’t expect me to just be ‘good’ after a day like today!!!”
“It’s just not fair. How come my sister can eat whatever she wants and never gain weight! It makes me crazy!”
“I am going to hang out on the boat this weekend with the ice chest, snacks, good friends, and just kick back. I’m not going to worry about my eating for a day! I have been good, after all. I deserve a break!”
Can you identify with these statements? Chances are, we all can.
In our society we are told that we deserve the best, we deserve all we can grab. Life should be fair! There is never a need to be sad or uncomfortable with so many options for making ourselves feel happy!
These are lies that we sometimes tell ourselves–lies that take us outside of our God-given boundaries of eating between physical hunger and physical satisfaction. If we want to really experience the victory that we have longed for, we have to be willing to recognize the lies when they appear and replace them with God’s truth. That is what our “Renewing of the Mind” bible study is about this summer. We want to change the way we think, because what we think, affects what we believe, and what we believe, affects our actions. Our actions over time establish patterns and it is those patterns that bring forth fruit in our lives…the results that we either rejoice in or are discouraged by–both in our character and outwardly.
If we want to choose a fruitful life that reflects the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, we have to start with what we tell ourselves. How often do we tell ourselves we are entitled to “the good life?” Is this creating an unworkable belief that runs counter to realizing our godly goals?
Here is a 7 minute video on this subject (if you are an email subscriber, you may have to visit the website in order to see it):
I believe that if Justification is a primary reason we eat outside of our 0 to 5 boundaries, then Entitlement is its twin. Truly, if we could eliminate Justification Eating and Entitlement Eating, much of our eating outside of 0 and 5 would stop altogether!
Consider how wonderfully refreshing it is to live with integrity, acknowledging and praising the God of the Universe as he walks personally with you, inviting you into a life of discovery. He is sufficient! No, maybe not in the way we have come to expect in our world of drive-thrus, instant coffee, and microwave ovens. We think we are entitled to bigger, faster, and more. But our God IS huge! His glory fills the entire earth and he invites us to step up into intimacy with him–even as we train ourselves for godliness. It is SOOoooo worth it!
Assignment:
1.) Each week, I have asked you to evaluate if GOD has called you to a primary boundary of eating 0 to 5. If you aren’t convinced that this is something God is calling you to do, I believe you won’t be successful. You will find a million reasons NOT to eat 0 to 5. But if you know God is calling you to do it, if you have a conviction that is deep and abiding, then write it down in your journal and each time you reaffirm that this is, indeed, a conviction that comes to you from God, date it in your journal. I urge you to do this today, too–even if you already did yesterday.
2.) Evaluate if you need to adjust your secondary boundaries. Have you successfully lived with the secondary boundaries you established for yourself previously? It might be time to move forward…to add another one or tweak a prior secondary boundary. For those of you new to this, if you have noticed that you are unaware of physical satisfaction as it approaches, you can observe and correct–see if there are any trends as you look over the past week or so. Are your eating occasions outside of 0 to 5 (your primary boundary) when you are in the car? When you watch TV? Typically limited to one food in particular or when you are with a certain friend? If so, this provides the perfect opportunity to establish a secondary boundary to support you relative to that trend. If you are unclear what secondary boundaries can be helpful to you, post a question here in the comments section. Chances are, someone has dealt with the same challenge as you and has an idea for some supportive secondary boundaries!
3.) Visit this page at Barb Raveling’s website–read and do the bible study and journaling activities on the page. You can print her blog post out and then journal your answers if you like.
4.) What do you believe about entitlement? How has it been affecting your eating?
5.) In the video, I gave the example of my driving as another area of my life where I struggle with an attitude of entitlement. How about you? Where do you see an attitude of entitlement: “I deserve the good life.” “Life should be fair.” or “I shouldn’t have to suffer!” affecting you? What are God’s truths about these situations?
6.) In the video, I mention four steps that can help you eliminate an attitude of entitlement. Try one (or more) of the following and see if it helps you!
Create Truth Cards that remind you daily the truth about entitlement, what God’s view of this is, whether life should be fair or not, and all that comes to the one who is willing to suffer if God calls you to do so. Here is a video about Truth Cards.
7.) Share here with us what God shows you about “Entitlement Eating” this week. How can we pray for you?
8.) Recording of our online class from this week of study (it is a sound file only, so don’t expect a video):
Description:
“I deserve the good life!” “Life should be fair!” “I deserve to never be sad or uncomfortable and if I am any of these things, I will use food to make me feel better because it is my right!”
Many of us have experienced this. Some of us may even live with a sense of entitlement. If we do, chances are we will never be consistent in our Thin Within efforts to eat between the parameters of 0 and 5 (or hunger and satisfaction).
What is God’s view of this attitude? What are we to do instead? How?
Of all the situations and challenges we face in maintaining our primary boundary of eating within 0 and 5, probably the #1 on the list is “Night Time Eating.” If ever there is a time of day that we find ourselves “justifying” eating outside of physical hunger and satisfaction, it is probably 8 times out of 10, from the dinner hour on for many of us.
Here is a sound file that speaks to this. (If you are an email subscriber, you may need to visit the blog site in order to hear the file.)
How about you? Do you struggle with night time eating outside of your boundaries of 0 and 5? What can you do to structure tonight for success? Will you? 🙂
When I was in high school, my friend, Shauna, and I routinely packed away an entire large pizza at the nearby Shakey’s pizza parlor. Another typical activity was entering Baskin Robbins (an ice cream store), talking loudly about “All the people coming over tonight who will enjoy eating a Mud Pie with us…” There were NO other people. We bought the Mud Pie for us to eat all by ourselves! We were just too embarrassed to let the clerk believe that we didn’t have a host of people joining us! (Maybe asking for two spoons was a give away!)
We often joked about how “jolly” we were when we were together because of how much we enjoyed eating together.
Do you have someone like this in your life? Or even sort of like this in your life?
One friend of mine calls an “eating partner” a “drinking buddy.” She has a point. I guess psycho-speak might refer to this as being “co-dependent.”
How do you think God feels about this partnership at this stage of your life? If eating within the boundary of physical hunger and satisfaction is something that you are convinced God wants you to do, maybe you will need to come up with a new strategy for this friendship. Maybe a secondary boundary is in order when/if/for what purpose you get together with your “drinking buddy.” It might be as simple as switching restaurants. You could suggest you split a meal together. Or, perhaps, you could switch “activities” altogether! Is it possible you need just to stop getting together for a month or two? Ouch!
What do you think? Is there someone in your life that you may need to take a “hiatus” from temporarily? What will you gain if you do? What will you lose if you don’t?
Here is a sound file that explains what I hope ALL of us (even those not involved in the bible study) will do! (Email subscribers need to visit the blog site to access the sound file):
1.) Establish our primary and secondary boundaries.
Mine are:
Primary Boundary – Eat 0 to 5
Secondary Boundaries – 1.) Eat only when sitting down (sitting in the car doesn’t count! :-)) 2.) Eat only when my mind and body are relaxed
2.) Establish our plan for renewing our minds.
Mine looks like this and I will send a report to my accountability partner each day about these things as well:
Renew my mind with my Eating Truth Cards each morning.
Listen to my Truth Play List at least once during the day.
Review/Scan or re-read highlights in my cards between 4 and 6pm each day.
You can do this, too.
What is your primary boundary? This one’s easy–If you are a Thin Within participant, you will want to have this one be “To eat 0 to 5” or something like that.
What will your two secondary boundaries be this week?Remember that secondary boundaries support your ability to live within your primary boundary. Any of the Keys to Conscious Eating can work. “To have the TV off when eating,” or something like that can work, too!
What will your plan be to renew your mind? Remember, renewing the mind is something we are doing so we can think differently–specifically, so we can think God’s thoughts about something, in this case, 0 to 5 eating, or our bodies, or food generally…or something like that! I have made my truth cards specifically about eating 0 to 5 since that is my primary boundary. More on that in our online class. We talked about ways of renewing our minds agin the online class for this week. Here is that video:
