I have become quite a fan of specialty coffee! Peppermint mochas, in particular. Iced or hot, both are at the very top of my list of “Ways to Pamper Myself.” Massages, manicures, facials, and pedicures are also on that list, too! I’m not sure which would be #1 – they are all favorites!
The Dutch Bros. barista had written “Happy Birthday” backwards with caramel syrup on the under side of the clear dome top!
(As you can see, I’m feeling pretty pampered!)
But as I look in the mirror – yes, lovingly and gently, yet honestly – and see my excess weight, my guess is that 20% of it has come from peppermint mochas.
(As an aside, I’d say another 20% has come from “just one more bite”! … Another 5% from Thanksgiving dinners. … Another 3% from cookie dough. … Another 10% from “seconds”… and on and on…)
Not every peppermint mocha has been problematic – only ones I imbibed outside of my 0-5 boundaries. But that’s most of them because, for a long time, I somehow (foolishly) thought that, just because they were liquid, they didn’t count!
So the Lord has been speaking to me recently about my relationship with peppermint mochas. OK, He’s been trying to speak to me about this for a long time, but I have not wanted to listen.
Our youngest daughter, Carlianne, and I at Starbucks! (As you can see, I am an equal opportunity peppermint mocha lover!)
When Christina Motley shared in one of her porch chats what the Lord spoke to her about her mother’s Chocolate Chip Bundt cake and all things chocolate chip, I knew it was time to listen to Him on this matter.
In Fresh Wind Fresh Desire, author Heidi Bylsma-Epperson talks about “lies,” “little-T truths,” and “big-T truths.” We all believe many lies and little-T truths that have completely messed up our thinking. Lies like “I’m doomed to be overweight forever because I simply cannot get control of my eating.”
This lie is actually interlaced with a “little-t truth” because this may very well be your experience thus far. However it’s a LIE that you are doomed to stay this way forever because God’s Big-T Truth is that “In Christ Jesus, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.”
Because our wrong thinking messes up our minds and keeps us bound to frustration, failure, and hopelessness, these lies and little-t truths must be exposed and recognized as being exactly what they are.
They cannot be allowed to stay locked into our belief system; no longer our “bottom line.” They must be replaced with God’s big-T truths! And this is what we call “renewing our mind.” We truly will be transformed by the renewing of our mind!
Heidi and Christina talk about making Truth Lists. In this article called Truth Lists for the Real-Life Journey I compiled several of the Truth Lists they have shared. And Christina’s truth list about chocolate chips is included in that article!
So I thought maybe I should do some serious truth journaling regarding my problematic peppermint mochas. Thinking there probably wasn’t really all that much to say about it, I decided to give it a try anyway. It’d just be a short but sweet exercise at best. But I was surprised at what poured out. (Pardon the pun!)
So let’s get going!
🤨Little-t Truth:Peppermint mochas make me feel special and valuable.
🤩 Big-T Truth:I am just as special and valuable without one.
🤨 Little-t Truth:Peppermint mochas are a tasty way of pampering myself, and I looooove being pampered.
🤩 Big-T Truth:Yes, but frequentpampering of myself does not need to be such a main goal of my life! As a follower of Christ, I am called to a life of self-denial. Not a life of continual pampering. I need to allow the Holy Spirit to comfort my spirit and nourish my soul so that I do not have such a great need to be pampered. I need to imbibe more in the Living Water: “The Lord lets me drink from His rivers of delight.”
🤨 Little-t Truth:Peppermint mochas make a plain, regular occasion – like driving somewhere – feel fun and special. They “spice it up.”
🤩 Big-T Truth:They do do this, but not without me paying a high price:like taking me outside of my 0-5 boundaries, which I believe the Lord has set for me, and which I need to follow whether I feel like it at the moment or not. I also believe that God has “made my boundaries to fall in pleasant places.” So I need to find fun and specialness INside my boundaries and OUTside of a peppermint mocha.
🤨 Little-t Truth:Peppermint mochas taste delicious, feel good going down, and are a fluid form of entertainment that lasts a while.
🤩Big-T Truth:True, but I pay a high price for this “entertainment”; it is not a form of entertainment that blesses my body if I have one when I am not at a zero, and/or drink too much of it. (beyond 5) Just because they are delicious and feel good going down doesn’t mean I need to indulge myself in that way every time I want to do so. They are part of what has gotten me too close to becoming pre-diabetic. (Which I have actually crossed over into a couple of times, but come back out.)
🤨Little-t Truth:If I am at a coffee shop getting gift cards for people, I feel like I deserve to get one of these to as a reward for myself for buying them for others!
🤩 Big-T Truth:Unless I have planned to be – and am – at a zero and it’s a good time to have one, I need to just focus on getting a gift for others – not for myself.
🤨Little-t Truth:When it’s hot outside, an iced peppermint mocha is a cool and refreshing way to cool off.
🤩 Big-T Truth:Other beverages or treats are also cool and refreshing and without such a high caloric content – unless I am truly at a zero and only drink up to a 5 (max).
🤨Little-t Truth:When it’s cold outside, a hot peppermint mocha is warm, soothing, and cozy.
🤩Big-T Truth:There are other drinks and activities that are warm, soothing, and cozy as well. Like spending time with the Lord! HE is the ultimate in warm (Jesus’ warm love), soothing (the Holy Spirit’s soothing presence), and cozy (“giving a feeling of comfort, warmth, relaxation and intimacy” – which is exactly what our Daddy-God longs to give us!
So does all this mean I don’t get to enjoy my favorite beverage anymore? Nope! It just means I need to be going to the Lord more regularly to get what I really need, what I’ve tried too often to get from my froo-froo drinks.
And then when I do have one, it needs to be within the parameters of my 0-5 eating boundaries. I have actually done this a few times now, and I have to tell you I enjoy my beverage sooooooo muuuuuch mooooore! Because it’s not only giving me enjoyment tastebud-wise, but, because I’m actually hungry, it tastes even better than normal.
Plus I’m staying true to myself and to my Lord ~ and nothing tastes better than that!!! As Heidi says:
Dear Scale, I’m done with you! I’m finished! You no longer get to tell me who you think I am or how well I am doing. You do NOT define me! You are not my friend anymore. Goodbye! Sincerely, Christina
This is overdue. I meant to write this weeks ago.
It’s Sunday night, July 13, 2014. We had a glorious weekend with BEAUTIFUL weather! We live in Southeast Alaska. It rains a lot here. We get 14-feet of precipitation a year. Yes, you read that right, 14 FEET! Our temperatures this weekend were in the upper 70’s. That is warm for us. It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!
Last night, I had this idea that I would weigh myself this morning. About a month ago, I removed the scale from my bathroom and put it in this storage space we have below our house, which is in a room above our cistern. (Because of all the rain we get, we collect the rain water into our cistern tanks, which is then filtered, and that’s the water we use for drinking and bathing). The room above the cistern is like an above ground crawl space. That’s where the scale lived for a few weeks…until last night when I got that [evil] thing out. Some of you may be wondering if I prayed about this: NOPE! I was full-throttle on-a-mission and I think the Lord was like, “Okay, have your way. You shall see…”
Mirror, mirror…who is the most beautiful of all? Well, let’s just say it’s, “Scale, scale, tell me, am I beautiful? Have I been good? Am I too much? Or not enough?”
I thought, “I’ve been doing really well (I’ve been good). I’m following my boundaries pretty consistently. God is changing me and transforming me. Let’s see the proof in the puddin’!”
I woke up. I got out of bed. I went (yeah, you know what I mean, let’s empty everything so no ounce counts against us). I put my 8-pound weight on the scale just to be sure it’s accurate (oh boy!). I stepped on the scale.
I gained 2 pounds! TWO pounds! GAINED!
Wait! This can’t be right.
Step off the scale.
Let’s try that 8-pound weight again.
Ready. Let’s try this again.
Step up.
Still a 2-pound gain. Sigh.
Now remember, it’s a beautiful day. But the majority of my day was spent in with this cloud hanging over me, all because of a number. A number. Two measly pounds. I let it define me. I let it steal my joy. I let it steal my whole day. I was grumpy. I set the mood for my home and my husband was affected, and so was my daughter. I was in a stinkin’, rotten mood all because of a contraption that spits out a number.
Really? I’m going to let it have that much leverage?
I’m DONE with it!
I am NOT what I weigh. I am defined by Jesus Christ.
So hours later, which really should have been right away, I sat down and renewed my mind using the Dumb Scale Eating questions from I Deserve a Donut app (there’s also the book) by Barb Raveling. That helped, but I still had a bad attitude. So then a little while later, I renewed my mind with the Discontentment questions from the same app. One of the questions asks what God wants me to do, and right away He showed me that I needed to apologize to my family for having such a bad attitude. And so I did, and they forgave me (along with hugs and kisses).
I’ve never walked away from the scale feeling better. Even if I had a weight loss, I still felt discontentment rising up in me. It will never be enough. It’s a tool the enemy has used in my life to make me feel like the scum of the earth. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but really, I have allowed it to define me. I am not my weight. I am more than a number!
So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask my husband to hide the scale and I’m going to ask him to not let me have it back–ever! (Unless the Lord clearly gives me the “ok” to weigh). Really, I’m so done with it! We actually have a use for the scale for weighing our luggage when leaving town since Alaska Airlines doesn’t really like a bag to be over 50-pounds (sometimes we are just tired of the rain and we would rather see snow or sun, you know?). We aren’t light packers, what can I say? So…he’s going to hide it and I’m going to be done with it.
Will you join me in this? Will you get rid of or ask a family member to hide the scale? Or wean yourself off the number-spitting contraption? Maybe instead of every day, how about once a week? And then once a month, and then every 3 months? And then never? The number isn’t important. You are important!
This is a scripture that was included with the Discontentment questions from I Deserve a Donut. It really spoke to me:
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being RENEWED day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Cor. 4:16-18
I don’t want to look at what is seen (the scale). I want to believe by faith that God is doing a work in me. Because He is transforming me, from the inside out. One of the questions asked in the Dumb Scale Eating questions is: Is it more important to lose weight, or to consistently renew your mind so you change the way you think about food?
Well, obviously it’s more important to consistently renew my mind. Because I have chosen to renew my mind and because God has transformed me (and continues to do so), I have seen some amazing changes take place. I no longer think about food like I used to. I used to lust after hunger (being at 0), but now sometimes when I’m hungry, I feel like it’s an inconvenience because I’m working on a project or spending time with my family. I’m no longer fearful about food (I used to think that sugar and carbs were doing deathly damage to my body). I eat smaller portions at restaurants (this is a new change). I don’t like feeling full, which for me is a “6”, where before, I used to numb myself with food. I no longer immediately think about eating after my kids are in bed (that is a HUGE transformation change–praise God!). And by following my boundaries, I was able to stay at a very healthy weight during my pregnancy. So WHY would I let a number make me feel like a failure? No way! I’m not doing that anymore!
I don’t know why I gained 2 pounds. But I’m not going to spend my time focusing on why. I’m just going to continue doing what I am doing: following my boundaries and most importantly renewing my mind. Taking the time to renew my mind about this got my attention today. God exposed the lies and revealed truth. The lie: you are what you weigh. The truth: the scale doesn’t define me; Christ defines me.
So would you join me on this quest to say goodbye to the scale? Let’s do it!
P.S. About 1-1/2 weeks after I weighed myself, I was able to tighten my belt one more notch. Praise God! So obviously something is happening. A new thing is happening! God is doing work from the inside out!
“You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.“A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” Galatians 5:7-9
Do you ever feel like you are going along on this Thin Within journey at a good pace, and then all of a sudden you get stuck or something gets in your way? I know this has happened to me plenty of times. Sometimes we have to stop and allow God to dig up what needs to be dug up so we can continue on once again, or He needs to remove the roadblock.
There have been a lot of things that have stalled me on this journey. Mostly, it’s been lies I have believed or habits that I’ve had for numerous years. For me, it’s been the lies that I shouldn’t be eating a certain food group, or that a well-known diet is the only thing that will help me so I better go back to dieting, being fixated on food research, etc.
Currently, we are turning our carport into a garage. My husband and a friend have been working hard this week getting the prep-work done for the foundation before the concrete is poured. They were working along at a good pace and they had one last corner to finish, when they realized there was some roots underneath the ground. After several hours of digging around, what they found ended up being a tree trunk and it’s roots! They had dug about 4 feet down, and then our neighbor came over with a chain saw and finished the job. We had no idea there was a tree trunk under the ground!
What if they would have started at that corner first? Would they have felt defeated? I know I may have felt that way. I would have been imagining roots everywhere!
We can go along at a steady pace in our Thin Within journey, and then BAM, we hit something hard. And then we have to focus on digging around and working on hacking at something until that thing is removed. We cannot just leave it there because it will make for a faulty foundation later on. We can no longer pretend it’s not there. We have to deal with it. And we may have to ask a friend for some help.
Just like my husband and his friend, I have had to hack away at things that were giving me a faulty foundation–or that could perhaps do foundational damage later on. It’s a lot of work to dig and dig, but our muscles get strengthened and we come away a bit stronger than before. And for days after my muscles will remind me that I worked them out, but later on I won’t even remember. And the best thing is that later on my foundation won’t sink because I took care of what needed to be taken care of.
When they first found the roots and realized it was a tree trunk, I remembered thinking, “So what! Just work around it!” But when my husband explained that it wouldn’t be good to have that tree trunk rot someday and then have the corner of our foundation cracking or sinking because of it. Oh! And that’s when the Lord began to pour into me what I am sharing with you today: we don’t want a sinking foundation!
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. Matthew 7:24-27
I am guessing that you, like me, don’t want your foundation crumbling. The best foundation to build on (and really the only foundation) should be the Rock of Christ Jesus! Christ is our Corner Stone! Everything should be built off of that corner. If there’s anything else in place of the Rock, then everything is going to come sliding off and crumbling down just like the man who built his house on the sand. Sand shifts. The Rock stands forever. The Rock is Truth! In relating to Thin Within, “sand” could be the lies we have believed, diet mentalities, placing our security in false securities, etc. That tree trunk represented those things to me. It’s all the lies that will rot in my mind over time. So I have had to dig around the root system (the lies) and had to have some friends (accountability) help me as well. As we dug, we exposed more rotten lies!
We can look at these “tree trunks” and give up, or we can put on our gloves and pick up our shovels and dig! We can take the time to renew our mind and allow the Lord to dissolve every lie (sand) and replace with truth (the Rock), or we can leave the trunk there to rot and cause future problems. And if it’s too much for you to handle on your own, ask a friend (accountability partner) for help. Sometimes we need twice the strength to help us overcome.
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2
How about you?
Are you stuck? Do you need some help digging out the lies? Do you have an accountability partner? If not, Heidi has some great information about it here. Are you willing to renew your mind so God can replace those lies with truth? Would you like some help in starting? I would love to hear from you!
…for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.
Isaiah 28:15b
At the heart of almost all of our eating “failures” — our choices to eat outside of our God-given boundaries of physical hunger and satisfaction — is belief in a lie. In fact, this lie is likely the #1 reason we keep “failing” at releasing weight or at sustaining 0 to 5 eating.
The belief we hold is this:
Obeying God is not as rewarding as eating will be.
“OUCH!,” right?
Is this a lie that is operative in your life? It is in mine (I hate to admit). In the moment, when the ice cream calls your name from the ice box or the GF muffin (when you aren’t hungry) insists that you peel back the paper and sink your teeth into it, what are you believing? This is going to taste soooOOooo good…and be more rewarding than heeding the Lord and living within the boundary that He has graciously given me.
Ok, so maybe this isn’t what you are intentionally thinking, but somehow, this thought is there, influencing your actions. It may have happened by accident.
How can we break this cycle? How can we stop the lies from affecting us accidentally? We can dismantle and, even, destroy this stronghold by being proactive. Each day when we wake up we can read, speak, listen to TRUTH. Even saying a true statement out loud can help set the tone for our day:
Lord, I know that obeying you is an honor and privilege
No food will taste so good that it will be worth disobeying you.
This is what it means to renew our minds with truth. I can use my truth cards to help me with this, taking just moments each morning before my feet hit the floor to practice what I want to think for the rest of the day!
We want to take a lie that has been causing us to act in ways that run counter to our godly goals (like eating within 0 to 5 eating boundaries) and reject it outright. We then replace that belief (rooted in a lie) with TRUTH–God’s thoughts after him.
As we do this more and more, we will experience transformation.
Romans 12:2 says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We want to expose the lies where they exist and welcome the truth into our lives. As we do this consistently, we will find that we actually like the freedom from the tyranny of the lie! We will find that we like the freedom from having to eat outside of our boundaries!
What About You?
1. What are some examples of truths that you can tell yourself each morning (and maybe throughout the day) so that when you are faced with an opportunity to eat outside of your boundaries, you have a truth at the ready…right there at the front of your mind…to refute the lie?
2. What is one practical way you will do this…today?
Image Source: iStockPhoto Don’tcha Just Love a Happy Eater? 🙂
The pig has nothing to do with this blog post except he made me smile. 🙂
Which is saying something. You see…I am in the middle of a tantrum.
I know. I am not supposed to have those, right?
Well, I am. So there.
Why, you may wonder? Why am I pitching a major fit? Melting down? Having a conniption?
The answer–if anything I ever teach is true–is probably wrapped up in something ridiculous like “I believe a LIE” or a whole BOATLOAD of lies. Truly, the heart of rebellion often is found in the littlest seed of a lie that was coddled, nurtured and given a chance to grow and take over.
I hate even typing those words right now because I guess that next to that little seed of a lie (lies) is the fact that I WANT to get strength from my anger, frustration…I want to OVERINDULGE in resentment and bitterness.
You see, God seems to be saying NO to me so often about all manner of things…BIG things…things that I thought were his will for my life… In fact, things that I could make a great case from God’s Word about! I wouldn’t have to take anything out of context!
And since HE is saying NO to me in BIG ways, I just don’t want to say no to me.
So, if I want to make myself feel better by eating, I don’t want to say NO to me about it.
If I want to eat “just because,” then that is a good enough reason for me as far as I am concerned.
I sure hope you can’t relate.
Dismantling The Lies
1. Buried in my attitude is the belief that life should be peaceful, predictable, and go the way I think it should go.
2. Buried in my attitude is a judgment of God–I have found him wanting. (Really?)
3. Buried in my attitude is short-sighted idiocy if I think that there will be no consequences to making choices about my eating ignoring God-given boundaries.
4. Buried in my attitude is a belief that eating whatever I want whenever I want will somehow offset my disappointment about other things in my life…that eating will make me happy in proportion to the heartache and frustration I feel. Or that eating that way will “get God back” or “change his mind.”
What Now?
This summer we have been studying recognizing the lies we believe and replacing them with truth.
So, let’s do look at the lies, replace them with truth, and see if we can come out the other side and call it a VICTORY.
1. The truth is that life isn’t peaceful, predictable and it often won’t go the way I think it should go. I believe this is why the bible tells me again and again things like “Set your minds on things above where Christ is seated…when Christ, who is your life, appears, you will also appear with him in glory,” “fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal,” “these light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all,” fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of your faith who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross and scorned its shame.” All of these things tell me that if I focus on what I see–the heartache and pain and my interpretation of God’s Divine “NO!”–I am missing it. What is unseen is something far greater than unrestrained gluttonous indulgence in favorite foods could ever give me and far outweighs the challenges I face.
Is this true for you, too?
2. Who am I to judge God? Do I really want to “go there?” His ways are NOT my ways and while I still don’t understand how what is happening could possibly be his will, it apparently is. He has ordained it for his purposes. Maybe, as much as I don’t like it, it’s like John Piper says: God so values our wholehearted faith that he will, graciously, take away everything else in the world that we might be tempted to rely on — even life itself. His aim is that we grow deeper and stronger in our confidence that he himself will be all we need.
Is this true for you, too?
3. My choices to eat outside of boundaries God has set for me have plenty of repercussions! I have been in that place before…where I kept on eating…I got physically unhealthier, loathed myself, was emotionally and spiritually numb (which isn’t a good thing, even though being emotionally numb may sound appealing right now). It is time to STOP IT THIS INSTANT!!!
Is this true for you, too?
4. The truth is eating whatever I want whenever I want will NOT offset my disappointment about other things in my life… eating will NOT make me happy in proportion to the heartache and frustration I feel. Not only that, but the situation that causes me such horrible disappointment, grief, frustration and heartache WILL NOT CHANGE FOR THE BETTER and I will go through it not being present to God and what HE wants to accomplish in me. It will be doubly AWFUL (if that is possible).
Is this true for you, too?
Do you have anything you are facing that is causing you to be frustrated, angry, to have a temper tantrum with God over your eating? What lies are at the heart of this? What truths ca you replace the lies with?
