So, you have done it again, huh? You have started another study “fresh.” A “brand new start” you told yourself. “This time, I am going to do this right!” Yet, here you are again. You didn’t even want to come to this blog today. You didn’t want to see everyone else crowing about how wonderful they are doing and how great the study is. All you can see is what YOU think is your “big fat failure”…again. You want to throw in the towel and just plain ol’ quit. Once again, you did what you always do (you think). You flaked out before even the second week of the study had come and gone. You wonder why you should bother to keep trying?
STOP IT.
That’s right. I said STOP IT. (Do I sound mean? I really don’t intend to!)
What you have always done before, maybe, is quit when you have “failed.”
THIS time, you can offer your failure to the hands of the Redeemer and watch him take your failure and turn it into a victory. That’s right…your binge…even the binge that seems to have lasted two days or two weeks…you have come up for air. For some reason you are here. Right now. CELEBRATE THAT! WOOT!
You don’t need to wonder who has been spying on you and feeding me secret information about what to write for a blog post. 🙂 Not at all! I can write this because so many of us have been there…and ARE there. You are NOT alone!
You can STOP it NOW. You will NOT do what you have always done. What you have always done, perhaps, isn’t what you think. You may be frustrated with yourself, all right. But the “what you have always done” isn’t the binge or the purge or whatever else. It is the quitting *because* of it. And you don’t HAVE to do that this time. You can emerge a victor, more than a conqueror. You do NOT have to quit, but can, instead, say “That was just a step or two (or 7) backwards, but now I am moving forward again…” That’s right….get back on the horse today, my friend.
Harley and Heidi Try to Rebuild
The photo above is of me in 2007. One of the things that motivated me to get serious about my weight loss in 2006 was, I am a bit embarrassed to say, I had horses. My lifelong dream had finally come true and I had allowed myself to get so heavy that I thought that I shouldn’t ride them. Harley had bucked me off. That’s right. Bucked me off. One of the first orders of business for me in the spring of 2007 after I had lost most of the weight was to work with a trainer to help me overcome my fear and to help Harley overcome his! I had failed but I had to get back on the horse. I was better for getting back on. So was he.
You and I live in a Genesis 3 world. We will NEVER be free from sin and sin’s pull on us. We will fall off our horses. Even after a week, a month, or a YEAR of doing so well! We can still fall! But we don’t have to let the fall win. It doesn’t have to dictate what will happen next. We have a great Redeemer. He can take our failures and turn them into teachers of truth. We can actually be better as a result.
Think about it. The cross looked like the biggest failure in history. The disciples must have wondered, “But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Satan croaked with glee, thinking he had won. Then, Jesus blew the lid off the grave and salvation was purchased for everyone. That is the way a Redeemer works. He takes what *looks* worthless…what *looks* worse than that, even…and turns it into beauty for all eternity.
So, STOP TALKING ABOUT QUITTING.
Right now. STOP IT. 🙂
You are NOT going to quit. You can’t!
We love you.
More…GOD loves you.
Now, press that restart button. Wait for physical hunger the next time you eat.
And evaluate dispassionately what has been happening to cause you to slip, to fall, to face plant. Consider what event triggered the challenge. How did you respond emotionally? Why? What is true in this situation? And what can you do to plan for success the next time, even if the next time is 5 minutes from now?
As you launch into this leg of your journey, there may be three fears or doubts that assault you. If you are like most of us, maybe you can relate to these. Hope there is something here that can encourage you!
Let’s not let doubt win. Instead, let’s submit our thinking, our doubts and fears, to the Philippians 4:8 test:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble,
whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent
or praiseworthy—think about such things.
– Philippians 4:8
If you find yourself thinking things that are not serving the godly goals you have established (and I mention some of those thoughts, doubts, and fears in this video), subject them to this test: Is this thought true, noble, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy? If not, REJECT the thought!
We demolish arguments and every pretension
that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,
and we take captive every thought
to make it obedient to Christ.
– 2 Corinthians 10:5
This is what we are doing! We are replacing thoughts that are not God’s thoughts with His thoughts. How does God think about whatever it is you are thinking about? What does He think about your attempts to apply these principles? What does He think about the doubts that people may verbalize to you? What does He think about the process of eating 0 to 5 for landing on a healthy weight and maintaining it all your life long?
What do you think? 🙂
What doubts have you been facing as you begin this leg of your journey?
A dieting mentality might cause a temporary poor choice to result in a longer lasting setback. I have learned nothing in the past 14 years of eating 0 to 5 if not to look at each moment as being significant in and of itself. What I choose to do now is every bit as important.
Yesterday, I wasn’t diligent with my 0 to 5 boundaries. When I went to bed last night, my stomach was uncomfortable. I haven’t done that to myself in a long while. While it is helpful for me to evaluate *why* I overate the way I did, that isn’t what this post is about. 🙂 This post is about what now?
I have a couple of choices. I can beat myself up over the head. This option is likely to result in condemnation. That certainly won’t produce positive changes. We can’t hate ourselves into positive change.
…or…
I can prevail upon the mercy and grace of God and extend that same mercy and grace to myself. THIS moment matters. What will I choose to do in THIS moment? Right now? As I begin my day, I can choose the RESET button. Yesterday is GONE. I don’t have to live in the shadow of it.
What about you? What choice will you make right now?
In the Fall of 2002, my family and I moved to the country to fulfill a life-long dream I had of owning horses. All the work of preparing the land, fences, including the moving of tons of rock (literally) by hand caused me to work my tail off (literally) outside. When we moved, I weighed in at 230 pounds. But I quickly began to shed extra weight primarily because I was working outside so hard. The physical demands being placed on my body were more than the amount of food I was putting in, so I began to shed weight relatively quickly. I deceived myself into thinking I was now applying the TW principles. I got down to 170 lbs, patted myself on the back and arrogantly reconnected with folks at Thin Within, including the Hallidays.
I again began to write articles for Thin Within’s ThinLine magazine. A few pieces were published, but, honestly…they were devoid of heart. I wasn’t living the message, and this time God wasn’t going to let me get away with not living the truth. It wasn’t about weight. It was about my heart which I continued to withhold.
I should have gotten the hint when a piece I wrote on the Abundant Life didn’t make the cut for the magazine. In my arrogance and pride, I refused to see what God was saying. I even tried participating in online support groups, but these experiences, too, were cold–devoid of heart for me. My heart was rock solid—frozen…HARD. I wanted God to snap me out of it, but He was calling me to live according to the truth that He had already revealed to me. He had done so much for me…and yet I continued to insist that He do more. I was not yet willing to make the hard choices.
I still hadn’t surrendered food and eating to the Lord. I definitely hadn’t surrendered my son’s autism…and it continued to be a heartache to me.
Not only that, but issues with my mother intensified at that time, causing even more bitterness—reopening the wounds that God had done so much healing of in the summer of 2001. Unfortunately, rather than apply what I knew to be true—that I needed to keep short accounts and walk in forgiveness moment by moment—I stored up bitterness. The wedge intensified, not only in my relationships with people (including my mother), but also in my relationship with the Lord.
I chose not to deal with this at its root—a big mistake.
God used the horses to minister to my soul and to Daniel’s. Below is a video showing a special connection between Daniel and our formerly abused mustang, Dodger. In the video, you can see where my weight had gotten. That wasn’t even my heaviest…it was on its way down! I wrote about the special connection Daniel and Dodger had and that piece was published in the Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul Volume 2.
As the big outside work projects were completed, the winter began and my body was no longer called on to do as much physical labor outside, the weight began to pour back on. The truth was evident. I hadn’t dealt with the heart issue…my heart was still chained to food—as if there had been any doubt! Shame intensified again…and I once again withdrew from friends that might remind me of the Thin Within message.
Stubborn. Rebellious.
It wasn’t that I didn’t *know* what to do! I knew all right. But I remained content (in a manner) with my arrogance and pride, refusing to surrender. I got angrier and angrier at the Lord.
My blood pressure had become an issue even while I was thinner and more active—before we had moved. Now it was off the charts and I needed more medication to manage it. I would fall asleep at night wondering if I would wake up or have a stroke and die in my sleep…or a heart attack. We live on the side of a steep hill and three times a day I went out to spread hay all over the hillside for the horses…and there were times I wondered if I would keel over down there and how long it would be before my family would notice that I hadn’t come back in…and I would be out there dead in my tracks. 🙁 You know…that isn’t the abundant life that Jesus came and died to give to me. And it is NO way to “live.”
In late 2005, when I reread an email I had sent off to my sister in an emotional frenzy, I was shocked at the absolute hatred I verbalized for our mother. God used that to knock me soundly upside the head. I was shocked at what I had become. Not just physically…but inside, too! After all the “forgiveness work” I had done in 2001, what had happened? It was a reflection of the deterioration of my heart that was visible outwardly in what I had allowed my body to become as well.
God used that exposure and a series of events to begin to peel away the hard callus over my heart. My Mom ended up in incredible emotional and physical need. God used this to show me what “faith choices” really were. I could step out in faith and choose with an act of my will to do that which I didn’t FEEL like doing. I discovered, as I stepped out in faith and believed Him for what He wanted to do, that my heart softened to my Mom who had so great a need for the first time in her life.
This was a difficult time as I lost my Mother-in-Law with whom I was incredibly close. In a very real way, Phyllis had been the godly loving Mom I had never known in my own biological mom. She was a prayer warrior who loved Jesus and she was my best friend even before I met her son :-). To lose her at the same time that my own Mom needed me—I knew it was no accident.
I am feeling like this really will happen this time. I will reach my God-given size…and not just because I have mechanically applied the physiological aspects of 0-5 eating. God is really transforming me INSIDE (within) and out.
For some reason the 35 pounds I have lost seems like it was ALL really significant–like half from my tummy and half from my bottom. My profile looks different…when I accidentally see my reflection, now, I don’t cringe…I don’t freak. I look *different*…Almost…well, “normal.”
So what is my fear? How many times have I lost weight….a bizillion. And then gained it again. A bizillion. Just since having kids, I have lost over 210 pounds (not counting the latest 35) and gained it back…
I remember after I lost 110 pounds with Weight Watchers and made a huge monumental decision to break free from my fear of gaining the weight back…and I got rid of all my biggest sized clothing. (And the smaller sizes between that biggest size and where I was). I struggled with doing this for a long time before taking those large sized clothes to Good Will. When I did it, I hooted and hollered and celebrated! I was FREE!
I regretted it within two years. I had no clothes that fit as I gained back the weight and had to go out and *buy* the bigger sizes. That was awful.
Today I had the thought hit me, “I will probably gain all this back again just like I always have.”
Well, nuts, if that isn’t from the pit of hell, I don’t know what is. But I also am a realist…this thought has history supporting it as fact. However, on the other side of things, I also know that because this is so different this time…since God really is making me different “within” that former history doesn’t have to be repeated. I can truly FORGET what is behind and press on! So there!
So…I am going to do something different. No, I won’t get rid of the big sized clothing. I guess that says something….
Instead, though, I am going to type up little notes to pin inside the pockets. If I ever wear those jeans again, I will find that note. I know myself well enough to know that I will HAVE to read it…I am like that. In that note, I will point out how wonderfully easy and quick God has been making this. I will put my testimony of seeing God work, transforming me…and the way He is also calling me to be restored in ministry at the same time as well….
I think that it could matter. I know that the worldly thought that kept me from starting this sooner was that it would take “such a long time” to release weight. Well, that isn’t true at all. Not only that, but eating this way has felt GREAT.
Yes, there have been times I have stumbled. Around Christmas, I went bonkers. I still manage to eat beyond the place God has told me to stop many times. I am in process….
I will just slip a reminder in the pocket of those pants.
Who knows? Maybe when I finally DO get the courage and overcome my fear to give those jeans away, I will have forgotten about the note pinned in them and some unsuspecting thrift store shopper will find the note…and get hope! LOL!
Do I sound nuts?
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