And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. John 8:32


Wednesday, March 31, 2010

New Blog Format

Yes, it’s true. I’m finally writing another blog post! I’m afraid I’ve had a terrible time thinking up things to write about lately. I kind of feel like I should stick to the emotional eating theme since this blog is supposed to be about emotional eating, but I can’t think of anything new to say about it!

So I was trying to decide what to do—close the blog, change the subject, etc.—when I had another idea. I thought it might be interesting to post some of my old journal entries that I wrote when I was trying to overcome emotional eating myself.

I actually remember buying that journal. I went up to Missoula and picked out a nice journal because I thought to myself, finally, I am going to commit myself to overcoming this problem. So I got a brown journal with a kind of cushy cover and made a commitment to begin journaling through my eating failures.

I have a terrible memory, so it’s been interesting to look at some of those old entries. I didn’t realize I had been planning to write a Bible study about emotional eating so long ago. The first journal entry is dated 2/28/06, and by March 3rd, I’m already talking about writing a Bible study.

Now I remember that my plan was to write the study, and then do the study, hoping that the study would help me get over my own emotional eating problem! Thankfully, God didn’t make me wait that long. Listen to my 9/23/06 entry:

The Lord is very good. It has been almost seven months since I started this journal. My hopes upon buying it were to record the growth in my life in the area of eating. My hopes were that by the end of the journal, I would learn how to control this area of my life. Now, less than seven months later, it seems that God has shown me the path.

I started by thinking my truth journaling was the answer, and that did help some. . . . This summer – probably early summer – I wrote the chapter on idolatry, and I learned about idolatry as I wrote it. And then God convicted me. Over the next month, I watched my behavior and thought, “Food is an idol in my life.”

I didn’t want an idol. I loved God too much to go to another god. So I decided to give up sweets, for life if necessary, to get rid of the idol. What was never worth it to me to lose weight (giving up sweets) was worth it to me for sweet communion with God.

You know, I don’t even remember when I had my last bowl of ice cream, or when I gave it up – I think late July or August. But I was still having problems eating too much – often granola or bread – still compulsive eating at times. Then one day I happened to run across a whole section of books at the Missoula library on food addiction.

I started researching – reading them for my Bible study – and that’s when I found the missing piece. It talked about certain foods and too much food that would set off binge eating. It said, don’t even have a bite of unallowed eating because that will set off uncontrolled eating.

I thought, “I think this is the answer to my problems.” I had long had the idea of no snacking but still allowed the bite, the nibble, the lick of the spoon, etc. And that would make me feel like I broke it which would lead to more eating.

The funny thing is that the food addict books said you should eliminate certain foods, but God had already led me to do that from the idolatry lesson. Eliminating those foods made it easier to stick to not even one bite outside of my plan.

His lovingkindness endures forever. And He continues to lead me and transform me in His time and as I am ready to lay down each area of my life before Him.

I didn’t publish my book until July of 2008, so I spent almost two more years writing it after this journal entry. During that time I came to the point where following the boundaries was easy. I also had a six week or so relapse over one of those Christmases, and some more struggles while I was doing the actual writing of the book. I'll try to include some of those entries as well.

What I'm hoping to accomplish with these entries is to show you that overcoming emotional eating is not a smooth and easy road. There are lots of failures along the way, but those failures will lead to eventual success if you keep sorting them out with God.

At any rate, I thought it might be interesting to share a few of these entries. Most of them will be far shorter than today’s post, so don’t get worried! I’ll try to post every Monday and Thursday. I won’t include whole entries, but will try to choose the parts of the entries that might be helpful.

Some of the entries will include truth journals, and some will just be regular journal entries, as I did a lot of each in this journal. These will be easy posts for me to write, as I won’t have to worry about being a perfectionist! I’ll post the first entry on Monday.