What does success at Thin Within look like to you?
Like many, when I first stumbled upon Thin Within, I was looking for a way to lose weight. Sure, I wanted to do it in a way that honored God, but really… I just wanted to drop some excess weight and fit into a smaller pants size. And God was faithful, He drew me closer to Himself and He also allowed me to release 40 pounds.
If you read my post on Failure, you’ll know that in the years since first coming to Thin Within, I have regained 30 of those pounds back. And during that time, God has really been challenging me on how I define Success and Failure with Thin Within. In the last 4 months through my coaching with Heidi, I have been able to take a hard look at how I’ve set my standards for what success really is.
In these past fruitful months, God has revealed to me over and over that success with Thin Within is about so much more than just releasing excess weight. It started slowly, but I could hear Him whisper to me each week that went by, “What if my definition of success is more than just losing weight? What if that is just a small piece of the pie?”
He began to show me that success really meant having daily quiet times with Him. Success was about surrendering my selfish ambition, my pride over appearance and my self-centered efforts to release weight. Victory took the form of me depending on him in humble submission on a daily (and often minute by minute) basis. Success was committing to praying against the enemy’s attempts to throw me off track with Thin Within. Victory was inward change in my heart that was reflected in my outward actions.
And as the weeks have turned into months He has shown me more and more about what true victory in Thin Within really looks like. There are so many wonderful ways we can experience success with Thin Within. And I just can’t keep all of these things to myself! Consider the many ways we can experience victory in Thin Within through Christ.
Success is saying no to a second helping when you’ve reached a 5
Success is getting back on the horse if you’ve fallen off
Success is dying to yourself
Success is seeing your faith deepen and your walk with God strengthen
Success is listening to your body and obeying its hunger signals
Success is asking God to help you get through that all-you-can-eat buffet
Success is defeating Satan’s attempts to steer you in the wrong direction
Success is seeking the Lord’s face each and every day in prayer and through His word
Success is rejecting preventative eating
Success is not allowing a “slip up” or failure to hold you down
Success is seeing that your body actually thrives within 0-5 boundaries
Success is being set free from food’s power over you
Success is overcoming a stronghold for the very first time (hallelujah!)
Success is not letting yourself fall into shame if you ate from 6-9
Success is seeing changes in your heart, not just your appearance
Success is running to Him in prayer when you feel tempted to start eating and you’re at a 3
Success is spending just one day where every meal was eaten between 0-5
Success is setting aside attempts to lose weight through your own power
Success is honoring our bodies with foods that make us feel energized and satisfied
Success is giving all the glory to God when you release even a tenth of a pound
Success is allowing His power to work through your weakness
Success is walking in humble dependence on God in this journey
Success is overcoming a challenging situation for the first time (0-5 on Thanksgiving Day anyone?!)
Success is breaking a bad habit
Success is seeing the fruit of Observation and Correction
Success is realizing you are being set free from bondage, one chain link at a time
Success is when Thin Within becomes more about growing closer to our Savior than dropping a pants size
I believe that God absolutely positively allows success to also include the release of excess weight. I’m living proof of that. (Editors Note: Becky has released ten pounds in the past four months!) But that is just one small piece of the victory pie! There are so many other pieces of the pie that He cares more about…like how our hearts are being transformed and how our minds are being renewed and how we are being drawn closer to our Creator.
How about you?
Have you experienced success with Thin Within other than releasing weight? Has God shown you any other pieces of the victory pie in addition to weight loss? Have you experienced freedom from strongholds or broken a bad habit? Did you see anything on the list of successes that you didn’t even realize were successes? Let’s celebrate those together!
Do you ever wonder why you can’t beat this? Why you keep doing yet another study about food and weight? Why you can’t just SHAKE loose of this challenge, this relationship with food, this weight?
The answer may be as simple as focus.
Let me illustrate:
Right now, don’t think about green gorillas.
No, really. Don’t think about green gorillas.
You aren’t, right? 🙂
Sit there for 30 seconds without a single thought of a green gorillas.
You aren’t thinking about green gorillas, are you? 🙂
LOL!
Ok, be honest…what are you thinking of?
If you are like most, if someone says “Don’t think about green gorillas,” that is precisely what you think about. When we try NOT to think about something—either a food that is off our “diet foods” list (when we were on diets), or a food we want to eat and are free to eat, but when we are not hungry—we can’t help but to think about it! Diets tell us what we can’t have and can’t think about. The more we try not to think about or not to want these things, the more we think about them and want them until we become overwhelmed and give in, sometimes after we have already eaten the dieter’s version of whatever it might be.
Read Colossians 2:20-23 in your Bible or below:
Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world,
why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules:
21“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”?
22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings.
23Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship,
their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body,
but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Please take a moment and underline descriptive phrases in this passage in your bible that are used to describe the mentality that Paul is confronting. Two are done for you.
Now write down what you underlined in the passage above:
_____Rules________________________________
_____Destined to Perish with Use_____________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
Which of the above descriptive words and phrases could also be used to describe a prescriptive way of managing weight or, which of the words above fit in describing “diets?” Circle any that apply.
What can’t diets do according to this passage?
Did you notice all those “do nots” in the passage? When told DO NOT, what do we do? Do you find it true that, often, you end up doing the very thing that you are told NOT to do! (Just like not thinking about green gorillas?)
Most often in worldly programs we are challenged to merely be “self controlled.” With these programs, we have often found ourselves eating foods that, while “good for us” don’t match up with what we really desire—they don’t satisfy. We have tried desperately to conform ourselves to an outward standard while resentment builds deep within. We are told not to eat this or that and, often, we give in to what we wanted in the first place.
God’s way of freedom from the chains that bind us, the coping mechanisms that constrict us, the addictions that hinder us, is for us to experience freedom from these outward restraints, to have our hearts and minds renewed and to transform us from the inside out! As our hearts are transformed, our choices will be as well. Moment by moment, our choices, when built one upon another, will radically alter externals—our appearance and behavior. We can walk in freedom!
This is why I have been crowing about renewing our minds for so long (and I will continue to do so!). We have to be willing to do the work it takes to change the way we think.
God has created us to experience joy in life—even in something as mundane as eating! We can praise HIM for his marvelous creativity in making mangos, asparagus, ice cream sundaes, and cheese enchiladas. Eating was never intended to torment us, but to bless us.
Dieting has caused us to be focused on ourselves, on our food, on our weight, on our size…on everything ME. Some of us have “done” Thin Within the same way we have done dieting—with the focus all on ME, MYSELF, and I. The focus has been on the externals…on my appearance, my behavior, my food, my exercise…ME. In embracing these approaches, however, we have done nothing to change our hearts in a positive direction. In fact, often, we come out of our experiences with these programmatic ways of handling food with an even deeper fixation on food or our bodies.
This is forming and shaping our hearts…not just our bodies (if physical changes happen at all). Do we really feel that the way we are becoming more self-absorbed is God-honoring and worth it as long as we lose weight? I hope not!
Let’s be intentional…and choose to take a radically different approach. Let’s allow our King to have our heart, our focus, our desires. He is going to do something major in our lives so it stands to reason that we want to have our focus in the right place.
How About You?
Are you ready to “do” this differently than you have done diets or Thin Within in the past? Do you want this to really be the last time you have to “start over?” Are you ready to do the work that is involved? If so, I strongly encourage you to go to the Renewing of the Mind Bible Study page here and do these studies (again if you have done them already). Do that and/or do a search on the blog for “Truth Cards.” I believe you will be SO blessed as you work on the way you THINK and on where your focus is. When we stop thinking ME ME ME and start thinking GOD GOD GOD some amazing transformations begin to take place. Honest. 🙂
A note about this multiple-part testimony: It seems so self-indulgent to me to share here on the blog all of this “All About Me” journey thing. My hope is that you will be encouraged! No matter how much “wandering” you think you have done, I am willing to bet I have done more! No matter how long you feel it has taken you to “get it” with regard to Thin Within principles, I am willing to bet it has taken me longer. No matter how many poor choices you feel you have made, I hope you can see I have made more! And *I* had a set up for “success” years ago!
So…that is why I have chosen to take the time (and space) and share this lengthy testimony with you. I truly hope that you can be encouraged. I have been the queen of failures, the master of flaky “commitments,” the expert of “good intentions!”
But God can and will turn any of it around. ALL of it matters! Rather than think it proves that I am a failure or flake, I choose to believe that it proves that God has deposited into my life investments that are now finally “maturing” (even if I am not! LOL!). Truthfully, if He can finally get through to me given all the chances I have had, then He can definitely transform ANYONE! So BE encouraged! And forgive me for going on and on with my testimony…
Letting Shame Win
Continuing from part 3…
The book project merged into another writing project through the holidays of 2001—what has now become the 12-week Thin Within Foundations Program material. As with the birthing of any work of value, there were many challenges. Looking back now, I can say it was all wonderfully worth it!
But at the time, facing the impossible tasks of writing constantly for short deadlines while trying to keep my home and homeschooling my then 8 and 10 year olds…emotionally, I was a basket case. What could have been an opportunity for growth—well, I allowed it to send me back to familiar coping mechanisms instead…plunging myself head long into overeating! Can you believe it!?
Do you find yourself gravitating toward that which is familiar–even when it is destructive? I know I do if I am not vigilant and guard against this tendency! That period was proof of that!
My journal entries at the time I was writing with Judy read like one struggling with two extremes (or what TW calls the pendulum swing). Resolved to demonstrate the freedom in practice that I knew Jesus had paid for me “in theory,” I repeatedly confessed my struggle with overeating to God and begged for His rescue. I lamented that even during my partnership with Judy Halliday—a wonderful mentor—still I hadn’t begun to live out the freedom that Jesus paid to provide for me. The feelings of defeat were, at times, absolutely overwhelming. More than ever before, I began to understand these words of the Apostle Paul:
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:18-24)
The problem was, I continued to leave out verse 25 and chapter 8 verses 1 and 2 which reads:
Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!…Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
I continued to write for the Thin Within company through the first part of 2002. The book came out in Spring of 2002. We filmed the earliest videos for the company about that same time. But how was I supposed to testify about the effectiveness of the Thin Within approach when my body didn’t reflect that truth? I knew it *was* effective, but I wasn’t choosing to live according to what I knew. What kind of testimony is that? (More shame piled on…)
It is still difficult for me to see or hear that people have viewed those early TW videos…but I know God can use even a cracked pot to contain his glory!
Nevertheless, the “truth” I lived at the time wasn’t the truth I knew in my head. Shame began to return to my life more quickly than any weight I had formerly lost (which is saying a lot as the weight had returned QUICKLY).
Shame is dangerous. It causes us to isolate, to hide, and furthers our sin/shame patterns. have you found that to be true? I know now that if I have been hiding out at home and not getting out to see people as often, to evaluate my life…what is going on. Am I caught again in a shame cycle?
This, too, is written about in the Thin Again book. So much of what I had learned remained only in my head, however. The more I knew and didn’t apply, the greater my shame.
At some point, I supposed I couldn’t “handle” continuing to connect with my friends and mentors in Thin Within if I wasn’t going to change. Slowly, I drifted away from my association with the Hallidays and the Thin Within company.
In fact, I was ashamed that my name had been placed not only in the acknowledgements of the TW book, but also inside on the front page! God’s call was irrefutable. Yet I continued to resist.
Oh, dear reader…my heart is heavy as I share these details with you. I do so in the hopes that you will know that no matter how rebellious or sinful you may feel you have been or even are…I have you beat! My own rebellion is far greater!
When it comes to giving my heart and eating to the Lord, no greater love could have been given…and yet I continued to resist. So many chances. So many opportunities. Yet I began to feel as if I didn’t want my name to be associated with Thin Within or the Hallidays. I felt I would reflect poorly on the Hallidays, on Thin Within and on the Lord. I wasn’t yet living the truth that I knew was contained within the pages of the book. Shame is so deadly.
This concept has been on my heart for a while. Basically, when I use the phrase “I am only human,” it is to *excuse* a behavior, attitude, or something I said.
Sure, it is a fact about my existence…I mess up…But….I want to find a way NOT to *admit* that I messed up…or find a way to justify that messing up is…well…*normal*…so I glibbly say “I am ONLY human!” (Usually with a bit of a defeated attitude, too….and for me…rebellion is there too when I say this….)
The truth is…I am NOT “only” human. I am human, yes….and that has some major drawbacks, to be sure. In fact, my human-ness seems to get in the way quite often!
However, because of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He did for me (and for you), I am not ONLY human! I have His Spirit resident in me. (Romans 8:15; 1 Corinthians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 6:19) In fact, scripture teaches that I have been made totally new in His sight!!! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Scripture teaches that I have been given EVERYTHING I need for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3) So, what is with my blaming my choice to sin on being “only human!”?
It is like I want to do what Flip Wilson used to do (a comedian from the 70s) “The Devil made me do it.” Am I really trying to claim that I had no choice in the matter, but my “human-ness made me do it?” Ridiculous, isn’t it?
The truth is, I no longer have to give in to my human-ness. I now have the freedom, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to CHOOSE to give in to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who is resident in me. I have the ability and the responsibility. (See Romans 8)
Will I fail? Sure, but that doesn’t mean I am to use my humanity as an excuse for failure.
In fact, the Lord tells us “Be holy as I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16) Woah. How holy is God, any how? Completely!
If I am supposed to be holy *as* He is holy, it basically is a biblical mandate for me to keep on keeping on, or as Paul says in Philippians to press on to reach the goal…nothing is worth keeping me from the goal. Holiness IS the goal–becoming Christ-like. It isn’t like I am human and should accept that I will live like a “mere mortal” with the occasional instance of doing something good or holy! Nope. Instead, I am called holy by God and now I am to live in accordance with the identity that HE gives to me. I will live making holy choices with *occasional* struggles with human-ness. NOT the other way around!
Before you think that I am a believer in achieving perfection on this earth….nope. I am not. The scriptures, while telling us God says we are to BE HOLY, also indicate that we won’t achieve that until the day of Christ Jesus–Phil 1:6– (or, as my dear Mother in Law often said…”When we get to glory!).
So why belabor this point???? Well, I have found that what I believe about my identity will radically affect how I behave. If I think of myself as “only human,” I am likely to live as “only human.” When someone says “I am only human” it usually comes with a defeated tone of voice, downcast, dejected. That AIN’T NO WAY TO LIVE!!!! I don’t want to live a defeated “only human” kind of life, do you? Not when the Lord Jesus Christ has paid the price for the glory of God…a treasure beyond fathoming…to be resident within me. No thank you!
Instead, I can believe and KNOW…”I am superhuman!” Believing God about what He says He has done in me, is the key, here. Believe what GOD says…He says His Spirit is in me. He says that He has empowered me for life and godliness…So, if I believe it, I will have a totally different expectation and approach to life! And definitely to my eating!!!!
If I keep eating when I am not hungry, or continue eating when I am already satisfied and blame it on being “only human” that is totally BOGUS. As one dear friend says, Jesus laid down His life for me. Will I not lay down a little food? Especially when I consider that He has sent His Spirit to empower me to do great things? Will I really insist that setting down food is beyond His ability to cope with? Do I think I am beyond the grasp of the Holy Spirit’s reach? Wow…I mean, this is GOD we are talking about! The one who causes the blind to see, stones to be rolled away and gives life to the dead! the one Who created the Heavens and the earth!!!
If I believe that the Spirit lives in me, then I will expect the Lord to empower me to LIVE in step with the Spirit with all of the fruit of the Spirit ripe and ready in my life! (Erm….this includes self-control!) So for me, I am done with excusing myself or my SIN as being all because (whine whine) “I am only human.”
That “ain’t no way to live!!!”
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