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Week 9 ~ “Why Should I Care?”and “YIKES! I Don’t Like My BODY! HELP!”

by | Aug 12, 2013 | Blog

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Image Source: iStockPhoto

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!

Tuesday

1. Return to Barb’s Careless Eating Study at her blog for part 2.

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 Study again.  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.

5. How are you doing with your summer study?

6. How are YOU? 🙂 I care!

How Much Food Do I Eat?

by | Jan 19, 2008 | Uncategorized

On the Thin Within forums, I have been asked some things about my eating. When I mentioned that I have refined and adjusted my hunger numbers over time, one member asked me if I was eating more like to what would be a “4” on the hunger scale.

Here is my (edited) response to her question:

Well, no. I would have to say that I am not eating anywhere close to what I would have called a “4” in the beginning. Here is why: I weighed 250 pounds when I began. I didn’t know it, but I had 100 extra pounds of fat to release. It takes X amount of food to sustain 100 extra pounds of fat. It takes less than that to begin to release the extra fat weight. As I released weight, I found that it took less food to sustain my NEW weight…but I wasn’t done releasing weight yet and I knew it.

God didn’t even let me evaluate it that way at the time…he made the process of change always be about him…and my heart. It is as I look back now that it seems to be so obvious what happened physically!

At that time, I could tell that, even with the releasing of the weight that had happened so far (say 50 pounds), I still had a stronghold with food going on. I saw a subtle attitude that I had that “I am owed” food to a “5”….and God began to gently nudge me…”Release it to me, child”…

Anyhow, so it took less food to sustain my new size and less food to release more of my extra fat as I went along. God nudged me that I was still clinging to the food…And so on.

I found that my body is efficient and that even as active as I am, I don’t need much food at a sitting to stop being hungry….which is my goal. How much food do I need to stop being hungry? That is the place that God has led me *now* call 5. I didn’t call that a 5 before. I would have called that a 1 or a 2. (I know this sounds scary…if someone had said it to me, I would have quit right then and there…it has to be GOD’s doing in us…it isn’t anything I would have planned! Honestly!)

The cool thing is, I went from eating more food each time, but only 2 times a day (or maybe 3) to eating 4 to 7 times a day, but not very much food each time.

My body and my life have adjusted to eating that way just by heeding what the Lord has said to do (in his strength…honestly…)…but if I was to compare how MUCH I eat at a sitting now to how much I ate at a sitting when I weighed 250 pounds…no…I ate a lot more then than I do now.

My thinking has changed. I don’t have anxiety about not getting food, for instance. I am not fearful. Hunger doesn’t bother me like it did then. I also don’t have fear of regaining weight (that is a new thing that God has done in the past 3 months!).

Another thought that God has changed in me is I figure that if I don’t eat enough at this sitting–if I serve myself too little–…if I am hungry again soon, I can eat again! For instance, yesterday I had a funky new food for a meal. I ate to what I call a 5…and within an hour I was hungry again! No problem. I ate.

If you want to see photographs of my portions for a few days, you can check …but don’t freak! It may not be what God leads YOU to do now! What is right for me now, came after a year of God slowly evolving things…and it wasn’t intentional to do anything but to ask the Lord what His will is…and to ask for His strength to do it…to release my grip on things like “I MUST have ‘a sweet’ after every meal” and other lies I believed and built my life on.

Hope this helps…again, though, don’t use it to judge your own eating. It is totally personal and I would have FREAKED out if anyone had shared this with me a year ago! God does amazing things in each of us in HIS timing! I am thrilled to delight in what I eat…and I don’t feel deprived at all.