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I’m HOPEless and EMOTIONAL and I JUST WANT TO EAT!!!!

by | Aug 19, 2013 | Blog

(Week 10 Summer 2013 Renewing of the Mind Bible Study)

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Since January 11th, I have been going through a tough trial. It is taking me deeper and making me more desperate for God than ever. This has affected my eating. I feel like I am FIGHTING to do the right thing so often. And sometimes I just stop fighting…until I start fighting again…until I stop fighting again…until I…well, you get the gist, I bet.

I know that God peels back layer upon layer of stuff in my life…like the layers of an onion. Like Eustace in CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Aslan had to tear off the reptilian skin from Dragon-Eustace, ripping him clean of his scales…the pain of it all was necessary for him to be free of what bound him. Having gone through the transformation, though there may have been a grieving, there was also relief.

I feel a bit like Eustace. Will I welcome God’s new thing that he is doing, even in this? Or will I tenaciously cling to food as if by going through a hardship, being so sad, beaten up emotionally, etc., I deserve “this one vice?”

So, this week’s topic of emotional eating, coupled with hopeless eating, is something that is near and dear to my heart. Please don’t for one minute assume that what I share with you here is theoretical in my life. Far from it. Chances are, I have been in or AM in the trenches along with you. Or BOTH. Like with this week’s study topics, it is both. I have seen the truth of living these principles, but I need to be reminded.

 Monday

Do you ever feel driven to eat? You give in and you are still driven to eat? And does it go on until you are just too miserable to keep going or all the food is gone? What causes this? For many of us, it is overwhelming emotions. I think sometimes we are trying to literally make ourselves so miserable physically so that we can’t FEEL our emotions any more. Or maybe we are trying to punish ourselves for something…like for “being so weak” that we feel hurt, or sadness, or pain, or anguish or guilt. Using food for these reasons won’t solve the problems. We know that with our heads, but we keep eating anyhow.

  1. Visit Barb Raveling’s Emotional Eating Bible Study page. What does Barb say is true in her blurb before the “Journal” section?
  2. Can you add to your truth cards anything from this preliminary section?
  3. Can you journal about the situation that is causing you to want to eat? Right now, take a few minutes to think back to the last time you ate out of emotion. What was going on? How did you feel? What did you do in response to the situation? If you ate, what did you eat? How did you feel as you ate? How did you feel after you ate? Did eating help?
  4. Consider using some of Barb’s renewing of the mind tools if you aren’t already.
  5. Read the “Journal About the Situation — Not the Food” and add any truths to your truth cards. NOTE: I love Barb’s material, including her Freedom From Emotional Eating workbook, but it *does* have dieting vocabulary in it. Please be aware of that if you decide to purchase it!
  6. If you didn’t already, visit Barb’s other site at this link and go ahead and do the activities on that page. It is very helpful in moving through emotions that might lead you to eat outside of 0 and 5 boundaries.
  7. If appropriate, add more truths to your truth cards.

Tuesday

  1. Visit Barb’s Emotional Eating page again.
  2. Complete the Bible Study questions.

Wednesday

  1. Visit Barb’s Emotional Eating page again.
  2. Complete her emotional eating questions at the bottom of the page with an experience you had recently with emotional eating in mind.
  3. Add anything to your truth cards that you glean.

Thursday

I love what Barb says. This is NOT hopeless as long as we keep fighting lies with truth. That is KEY! We have to be willing to do the hard work!

  1. Visit Barb’s hopeless eating bible study page. Consider that Barb would write in her journal even after she had broken her boundaries. She shared with us in our first class that even doing this afterwards, she found it transformed her! Are you willing?
  2. Complete her Hopeless Bible Study eating questions.
  3. Can you add any truth cards to your deck?

Friday

  1. Visit Barb’s hopeless eating bible study page again.
  2. Complete her Hopeless Eating questions for your journal at the bottom of that page.
  3. Can you add any truth cards to your deck?
  4. Recap this week: What are you learning about emotions and how to take command over them instead of allowing them to lead you to food?

Time for the Brownie :-)

by | Jan 22, 2008 | Uncategorized

Well, after all the anticipation of last night, today it was pretty uneventful. I think I ate it merely because I planned on eating it. To be truthful, something else sounded better, but that seemed just too weird. So, I prepared the brownie and some ice cream. In the picture, all you really have for scale is the tines of the fork.
I tell ya…if you take four times as long to eat half as much, you feel like you have twice as much as you used to! Or so the theory goes! LOL!

The Brownie is CALLING!!!!

by | Jan 22, 2008 | Blog

So what is up? Sunday I ate one meal to 6 and another one yesterday. Not only that, but I have had constant thoughts of food. In fact, last night, I obsessed about brownies! I haven’t experienced brownies being such a powerful draw in a long while.

I dug in my heels and refused to succumb to eating the brownie and ice cream (just a tiny bit…) unless I was at a zero. ALL EVENING I looooonged to be at a zero. I was LUSTING big time for that zero so I could have “My preciousssssss….”

The zero never came and I actually considered several times having the stupid brownie anyhow just to “End the torment!” I realized that this was what I did over and over again in the past. I minimized the significance of indulging in “Just a tiny brownie and just a dollop of ice cream…” It isn’t even the food that is the issue here. It is my HEART. I didn’t want to harden my heart to the sweet voice of God in exchange for the insistent voice of the stupid brownie! Good grief! How is it that something like that could have so much POWER over me? :-/


I finally went to bed at 10pm (No, I didn’t eat the brownie), but no sooner did my head hit the pillow then hunger hit BIG time! AH! BROWNIE TIME!!!!!

That thought was followed by God stopping me dead in my tracks. My gentle, loving Shepherd laid it on my heart that while I could get up to go eat, that I needed to bypass the brownie. Why? Because brownies are evil? NO! Because brownies are not nutritious? NO! I had to bypass the brownie because I had to be master over IT instead of letting it own me! So, God convicted me that even if I ate (which I was free to do, even if it was 10:15pm by this time), it would be something other than the brownie. Ok, so I did not have a godly little attitude about that. More like “Wow, Lord…that is a total bummer…are you sure?”


I chose to fast that hunger to the Lord and go to sleep instead.

This morning, when I woke up, the first order of business in my quiet time with God was to look at just what has been going on with me! Why the eating to a 6 at Sunday’s lunch and again yesterday at lunch? And why the obsessive thoughts about the brownie? That isn’t freedom! So what is up?

God showed me in the quietness…in the stillness…the brownie has no power over me, but what did is feelings of rejection that I had at church on Sunday. I was deeply wounded and I hadn’t yet recognized that pain or given it a voice. I spent time this morning, sharing with the Lord the pain I felt about what happened on Sunday and then intentionally choosing to forgive the one(s) who I felt wounded by.

You know what? That act rendered a death blow to Brownie Obsession! LOL!

Funny how my emotions, even when they are not at the surface…can play a powerful role in causing food to seem like an answer when I am not hungry!