The kids are all gone at backpacking camps, and I’m alone in the house with a carton of Blue Bunny cookie dough ice cream and a Tupperware container filled with rhubarb cheesecake bars.
Not only that, I still have an hour and a half of writing to do for the day and a decision to make that I don’t really want to make—both of which make me feel like eating. Not to mention the fact that it’s late afternoon, that magical time of day when the things in the freezer often call out to us.
But I’m not listening. Let me take that back—I was listening, but not anymore. Why am I not listening? Because I decided to truth journal about it (before I actually ate anything, for a change), and I no longer feel like eating.
This is what I wrote:
Beliefs: 1. Some ice cream would be good right now. 2. I deserve it after such a hard day. 3. And since I still have more than an hour of writing to do.
Truths: 1. It would be good for about FIVE MINUTES!!! After that it would make me feel bloated, uncomfortable, crummy when I wake up tomorrow morning, and weigh more than I want to weigh. Is that all worth five minutes of enjoyment? (I actually capitalized the five minutes again in my journal, but I’ll spare you that.) No, the answer is no. 2. Some days will go like this. If possible I need to devote my mornings to writing, so I don’t have any left by afternoon. But when I think of the collective suffering in the world, I’m one of the lucky ones. 3. That hour of writing is an opportunity for me to share in the sufferings of Christ(ouch).
Then I truth journaled about the decision, since that was another thing that was making me want to eat. And you know what? I didn’t feel like eating anymore by the time I was through.
There’s two things I think are really important to keep from giving in to emotional eating.
They are:
1. Start working on your emotions. If you only journal about the food, you'll be in danger of turning to some other bad habit to escape your emotions. If you learn to go to God for your emotions, you'll see things from His point of view and the negative emotions themselves will go away. Journaling about both the writing and the decision today gave me peace about both of those.
2. Make a commitment to journal or pray Scripture before you eat outside your boundaries – even if you’re already planning to eat. Just say to yourself, “That’s okay – I can still have the bowl of ice cream (or whatever), I just need to renew my mind first." More often than not your desires will change, but if they don’t you have nothing to lose. You can go ahead and eat what you were planning to eat.
Why don’t you give this a try and see how it goes? I actually got interrupted while I was writing this so it’s been a couple of hours since I was tempted by the ice cream. And I still haven’t felt like eating anything. I’m not using will power to avoid eating – I just don’t feel like it anymore. Because I’m believing the truth. But I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t taken the time to find it.
Showing posts with label Scripture prayers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scripture prayers. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Friday, December 5, 2008
Words of Advice from All of You
Hi everyone,
My post today is for those of you who are going through the Freedom from Emotional Eating Bible study. As you may know, I just published it in late July, so it’s still pretty new. I have really enjoyed hearing from all of you who are doing the study and am excited to see how God is helping you break free from emotional eating.
What I’d like to do today is share some of the things I’ve learned from all of you as I’ve watched God use these principles in your lives. If you haven’t done the study yet, or if you’re in the middle of it, these are things that will help you along the journey.
1. Diets
I mentioned this in the book, but I’d like to re-emphasize it. Be careful with diets! If you’re already doing well on a diet, that’s great—stay on it and use the study to help you stick to the boundaries.
However, if you’re not on a diet, this isn’t the time to start. My strong recommendation from watching women who have been successful is to focus on establishing your boundaries—not dieting. I wouldn’t even consider a diet until you’ve consistently stayed within your boundaries for at least two months.
It’s much easier to stick to your boundaries if you don’t have diet restrictions, and the most important thing in the beginning is to stop binging and eliminate grazing. If you can get rid of those two behaviors, you’ll probably lose weight anyway without dieting.
Another reason not to diet is that it will help you not to focus on looks. Surprisingly, one our biggest motivations for emotional eating is the fear of gaining weight. If you make your goal at the beginning just to follow your boundaries rather than lose weight, it will help prevent that “eating because I broke my diet” cycle from kicking in.
From what I’ve seen, the women who don’t diet are more successful at sticking to their boundaries than the ones who diet, and I actually think they end up losing more weight too. (This doesn’t apply to women who were doing well on a diet before they started the Bible study.)
2. Boundaries
If you’re using eating when hungry as your boundary, check out the book Thin Within by Judy Halliday and the Thin Within forum at www.thinwithin.org/forums. The ladies on the forum are really great, and you’ll get some good advice and support.
If you’re using a certain number of meals and a snack as your boundary, try to use hunger as your guide. If you’re hungry for each meal, then you know that you ate the right amount at the last meal. If you’re never hungry, then you’re eating too much at each meal.
Also, at the beginning of each meal, look at the food available and decide what a reasonable amount is (it may be helpful to get a book on nutrition if you’re not familiar with what healthy amounts are). Decide what you’re going to eat before you start to eat. If you end up eating more than you planned, consider that a breaking of the boundaries and make an entry in your lie-truth chart.
3. Truth-journaling
Be consistent with your truth journaling. Do it every time you break the boundaries. It may seem like it’s not working. You may feel like it’s a waste of time—but it’s not! For some women it helps already within the first couple of weeks. For others it won’t seem like it’s working at all and then all of a sudden it will kick in on the sixth or seventh week, and they’ll find that their desires are completely changing.
Statistics show that 95% of dieters gain their weight back. I believe that’s because they’ve changed their actions without changing their beliefs. If you change your beliefs, your desires will actually change. Truth journaling is extremely important for long-term success.
4. Scripture Prayers
Try doing this in the middle of your temptation. I just did this two different times in the past week and it completely took away the desire to eat. The first time I was craving ice cream (when I had just had a bowl a short time before). I prayed Ephesians 4:22-24 and didn’t feel like eating the ice cream anymore (for the rest of the day!) Another time I was stressed out and felt like eating even though there wasn’t anything good in the house. I was actually planning to break my boundaries and eat, but I thought, “Well, I’ll just try praying Scripture even though I’m planning to eat, just to see if it works.” It worked. I prayed the perfectionism and stress verses on page 35 of the book and those took away my desire to eat.
5. Work on your emotions.
Since this blog is just about emotional eating, I haven’t talked much about the emotions. However, five chapters in Freedom from Emotional Eating are devoted to handling your emotions, and these chapters will help you learn how to deal with your negative emotions. If you have an overriding emotion in your life that’s making you eat, it’s far more effective to work on the emotion itself rather than not eating for that emotion. If you can learn how to go to God for that emotion, you won’t need to go to food.
6. Be careful with other escape techniques.
Yesterday, I realized I was using the internet to procrastinate. I was feeling distant in my relationship with God and realized it was because I was relying too much on the internet for motivation to do crummy jobs. I know that might sound a little far-fetched, but it’s true. Idols develop slowly, and we’re often not aware it’s happening.
If I’m going to the internet for deliverance from the hard things in my life, it’s becoming a source of comfort to me, and it’s in danger of becoming an idol in my life. Remember the introduction to the Bible study? The way to avoid idols and obsessions is to put boundaries in place. So I have a new boundary with the internet—twice a day if I want to do any browsing. It’s an easy temptation since I’m on the computer quite a bit to write.
Well, that’s about it for things I wish I had put in the Bible study. If any of you have tips or want to share what’s worked for you, write a comment below. I haven’t figured out how to put a comment box on there if you don’t have a google account or blog—I’ll try to remember to ask my computer techie son when he comes home from college. Anyway, I’ve appreciated hearing from all of you, and I’m praying God will give you freedom from emotional eating!
My post today is for those of you who are going through the Freedom from Emotional Eating Bible study. As you may know, I just published it in late July, so it’s still pretty new. I have really enjoyed hearing from all of you who are doing the study and am excited to see how God is helping you break free from emotional eating.
What I’d like to do today is share some of the things I’ve learned from all of you as I’ve watched God use these principles in your lives. If you haven’t done the study yet, or if you’re in the middle of it, these are things that will help you along the journey.
1. Diets
I mentioned this in the book, but I’d like to re-emphasize it. Be careful with diets! If you’re already doing well on a diet, that’s great—stay on it and use the study to help you stick to the boundaries.
However, if you’re not on a diet, this isn’t the time to start. My strong recommendation from watching women who have been successful is to focus on establishing your boundaries—not dieting. I wouldn’t even consider a diet until you’ve consistently stayed within your boundaries for at least two months.
It’s much easier to stick to your boundaries if you don’t have diet restrictions, and the most important thing in the beginning is to stop binging and eliminate grazing. If you can get rid of those two behaviors, you’ll probably lose weight anyway without dieting.
Another reason not to diet is that it will help you not to focus on looks. Surprisingly, one our biggest motivations for emotional eating is the fear of gaining weight. If you make your goal at the beginning just to follow your boundaries rather than lose weight, it will help prevent that “eating because I broke my diet” cycle from kicking in.
From what I’ve seen, the women who don’t diet are more successful at sticking to their boundaries than the ones who diet, and I actually think they end up losing more weight too. (This doesn’t apply to women who were doing well on a diet before they started the Bible study.)
2. Boundaries
If you’re using eating when hungry as your boundary, check out the book Thin Within by Judy Halliday and the Thin Within forum at www.thinwithin.org/forums. The ladies on the forum are really great, and you’ll get some good advice and support.
If you’re using a certain number of meals and a snack as your boundary, try to use hunger as your guide. If you’re hungry for each meal, then you know that you ate the right amount at the last meal. If you’re never hungry, then you’re eating too much at each meal.
Also, at the beginning of each meal, look at the food available and decide what a reasonable amount is (it may be helpful to get a book on nutrition if you’re not familiar with what healthy amounts are). Decide what you’re going to eat before you start to eat. If you end up eating more than you planned, consider that a breaking of the boundaries and make an entry in your lie-truth chart.
3. Truth-journaling
Be consistent with your truth journaling. Do it every time you break the boundaries. It may seem like it’s not working. You may feel like it’s a waste of time—but it’s not! For some women it helps already within the first couple of weeks. For others it won’t seem like it’s working at all and then all of a sudden it will kick in on the sixth or seventh week, and they’ll find that their desires are completely changing.
Statistics show that 95% of dieters gain their weight back. I believe that’s because they’ve changed their actions without changing their beliefs. If you change your beliefs, your desires will actually change. Truth journaling is extremely important for long-term success.
4. Scripture Prayers
Try doing this in the middle of your temptation. I just did this two different times in the past week and it completely took away the desire to eat. The first time I was craving ice cream (when I had just had a bowl a short time before). I prayed Ephesians 4:22-24 and didn’t feel like eating the ice cream anymore (for the rest of the day!) Another time I was stressed out and felt like eating even though there wasn’t anything good in the house. I was actually planning to break my boundaries and eat, but I thought, “Well, I’ll just try praying Scripture even though I’m planning to eat, just to see if it works.” It worked. I prayed the perfectionism and stress verses on page 35 of the book and those took away my desire to eat.
5. Work on your emotions.
Since this blog is just about emotional eating, I haven’t talked much about the emotions. However, five chapters in Freedom from Emotional Eating are devoted to handling your emotions, and these chapters will help you learn how to deal with your negative emotions. If you have an overriding emotion in your life that’s making you eat, it’s far more effective to work on the emotion itself rather than not eating for that emotion. If you can learn how to go to God for that emotion, you won’t need to go to food.
6. Be careful with other escape techniques.
Yesterday, I realized I was using the internet to procrastinate. I was feeling distant in my relationship with God and realized it was because I was relying too much on the internet for motivation to do crummy jobs. I know that might sound a little far-fetched, but it’s true. Idols develop slowly, and we’re often not aware it’s happening.
If I’m going to the internet for deliverance from the hard things in my life, it’s becoming a source of comfort to me, and it’s in danger of becoming an idol in my life. Remember the introduction to the Bible study? The way to avoid idols and obsessions is to put boundaries in place. So I have a new boundary with the internet—twice a day if I want to do any browsing. It’s an easy temptation since I’m on the computer quite a bit to write.
Well, that’s about it for things I wish I had put in the Bible study. If any of you have tips or want to share what’s worked for you, write a comment below. I haven’t figured out how to put a comment box on there if you don’t have a google account or blog—I’ll try to remember to ask my computer techie son when he comes home from college. Anyway, I’ve appreciated hearing from all of you, and I’m praying God will give you freedom from emotional eating!
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