"According to an interview with Jakubczak on the University of Maryland web site, 75% of overeating is caused by emotions, so dealing with emotions appropriately is important."
I guess it's a good thing we're working on emotional eating!
Showing posts with label emotional eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotional eating. Show all posts
Friday, November 4, 2011
Emotional Hunger vs. Physical Hunger
I thought this article gave a good description of the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger. Here's an interesting quote from the article:
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Emotional Eating and 1 John 2
Summer’s here, and I’m afraid I haven’t been blogging much. Of course, you always worry about emotional eating bloggers who stop blogging. “Why aren’t they writing?” you think. Have they gone off the wagon? Are they eating like crazy and feeling too guilty to write? Will they ever start writing again?
Well, the answer is no, I’m not eating like crazy. I’m doing something much less fun—I’m writing like crazy on my new Bible study. Of course, crazy for me only means about three hours a day, four days a week. But when you factor in procrastination and interruptions it seems like about 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Anyway, I was studying 1 John 2:15-17 this week and couldn’t help but notice how much it ties in with our emotional eating struggles. Here’s what it says:
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away and also it’s lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
It may not seem like it ties in at first glance, but look again. I think we get caught up in all three of the “loves” mentioned in this passage when it comes to our weight and eating issues. Let’s look at them one at a time:
Lust of the flesh: We get caught in this trap when we turn to food to satisfy our emotional needs and when we love the food itself so much we feel like we just have to have it.
Lust of the eyes: This happens when we see all those skinny, beautiful movie stars and think we have to have bodies like they do. (It also happens in restaurants when we see the person at the next table eating a gorgeous piece of cake right in front of us.)
Pride of life: When we feel like we have to lose weight to impress others, gain their approval, or live up to expectations (theirs or ours), we’re flirting with the pride of life.
As I studied the passage further, I realized two more things:
1. You can never get enough of the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, or the boastful pride of life to be satisfied if you’re turning to them to satisfy emotional needs. You’ll always want more.
Lust of the flesh: Think of it. Do you ever have enough ice cream to be satisfied if you’re turning to ice cream to make you happy? Do you ever get enough chips if you’re turning to chips for comfort? Do you ever have enough graham crackers if you’re turning to graham crackers to avoid writing your Bible study? (Oh, wait a minute, that’s the question I’m supposed to be asking myself!)
Lust of the eyes: It’s natural for us to want to look like the skinny people we see out there, but when we feel like we have to look like them, we’re moving into lust of the eyes territory. Losing weight is a lot like eating. If we’re doing it to satisfy our emotional needs (to be happy, to feel confident, etc.), we’ll never lose enough to be happy. We’ll always be thinking, “If only I could lose a few more pounds . . .”
Pride of life: If we feel like we need to lose weight to be acceptable or admired,we'll never reach the point where we're satisfied with our weight. Why? Because in this country, skinnier is better—and we can always do just a little bit “better.” This is the type of thinking that leads to anorexia.
2. There will always be consequences when you turn to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life for happiness.
Lust of the flesh: It’s pretty easy to see the consequences here—if we eat too much we gain weight!
Lust of the eyes: This might lead to an obsession with working out and dieting or a fixation on the scale. Often the biggest consequences are emotional: discontentment, envy, discouragement, depression, and hopelessness.
Pride of life: Not only do you have the emotional consequences of insecurity, but there’s also the tendency to isolate one’s self. If we feel like others will judge and reject us because we’re overweight, we won’t want to reach out to them.
I thought it was eye-opening to see that we'll never be satisfied with food or weight loss if we're placing too much importance on them (which we tend to do). Another thing that struck me was the importance of seeing not just food from God's point of view, but this whole issue from His point of view.
What we need to remember is that life is about loving God and others, not about looking good and doing what we feel like doing. Let’s see how that applies to each of these “loves.”
Lust of the flesh: My purpose in eating shouldn’t be to indulge myself but to glorify God. I need to ask myself, “Am I honoring God by eating this food, or am I indulging the flesh?” If I were struggling with anorexia I would ask, “Am I honoring God by not eating this food, or am I putting my need to be skinny (or whatever the driving force is) above Him?”
Lust of the eyes: The bottom line here is this: LIFE IS NOT ABOUT LOOKING GOOD AND BEING SKINNY! Every time I step on the scale and beat myself up because I gained two pounds, I need to shout those words to myself. Every time I get insecure because of the way I look I need to shout those words to myself. Every time you do your morning beauty routine or work out and skip your time with God, you need to shout those words to yourself! (I left myself out of that one because I rarely do the morning workout or beauty routine anyway – I know I said I did the workout in my Bible study, but I’m afraid that was a short-lived phase of my life!)
Pride of Life: My main purpose for trying to control my eating should be to overcome the stronghold of emotional eating—not fit into a society obsessed with looks. Every time I feel like I’m not good enough, and that I need to make a desperate attempt to lose weight so I can be good enough, I need to tell myself, “God loves me just as I am. I don’t need to lose weight to be acceptable. I just need to keep working on this stronghold."
I guess the bottom line is I need to seek the approval of God and not men in everything I do. Live my life for Him, and glorify Him in everything I do.
Which means I need to stop eating graham crackers just because I can't figure out how to write my Bible study.
P.S. The other thing I've been doing lately is hiking with my husband and kids. The picture at the top of this blog was taken on one of our hikes last week.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Working on the Emotions
According to a 7/19/06 ABC news report, about 140,000 people have weight-loss surgery each year, and it's estimated that somewhere between 5 and 30 percent of them pick up new addictive behaviors afterward.
That was three years ago. I can only guess that the numbers have gone up.
This underscores for me the importance of not just working on the lies that make us eat, but also working on the lies that are causing our negative emotions in the first place. If we don’t go to God with those negative emotions, we’ll have to do something else with them—and that something else could very well lead to another addiction.
Let’s look at this issue from the standpoint of just one emotion. Take the emotion of anger—do you ever feel annoyed with your friends or family members? Is there anyone at church or work that really gets on your nerves? How do you respond in these situations?
Here are some possible responses:
1) Eat.
2) Truth journal so you don’t eat.
3) Withdraw—ignore them or get out of the relationship.
4) Try to be nice even though you’re silently resenting them.
5) Get your feelings out by talking to a friend or writing in a journal.
6) Try to change them. Maybe if you say the right thing, they’ll see the light and change.
7) Feel sorry for yourself.
8) Yell at them.
9) Learn to see them through God’s eyes, then accept, forgive, and love.
Of course, we all know the right response—but it’s certainly not the natural response, is it? We would really have to spend some time bringing our thoughts captive to the truth if we wanted to respond with that last option. That option, though, is the only option that will bring peace (unless of course the other person is willing and able to change, which doesn’t usually happen).
Now you might think that the second option is a good option also. I agree—it’s a good option—but if that’s all you do, it can be a dangerous option. Why? Because those negative emotions still need to be released. If you only work on not eating and don’t work on getting rid of the anger, you’ll be in danger of turning to another escape to get rid of those negative emotions.
Women often tell me that Freedom from Emotional Eating is just as much about regular life as it is about eating. That’s because it’s regular life that makes us eat. If we don’t learn how to deal with our problems the way God wants us to, those emotions will still be there in need of an outlet. If we don’t eat, what will we do?
So much of the Christian walk is about dying to our “rights” and being willing to do anything for God. Because we’re so entrenched in the world’s way of thinking, it’s hard for us to do that without first taking the time to carry our thoughts captive to the truth.
I find that when I take the time to line my thoughts up with God’s thoughts, it helps me submit to Him—and submitting to Him always brings peace.
And peace is one of those emotions that doesn’t make me feel like eating.
That was three years ago. I can only guess that the numbers have gone up.
This underscores for me the importance of not just working on the lies that make us eat, but also working on the lies that are causing our negative emotions in the first place. If we don’t go to God with those negative emotions, we’ll have to do something else with them—and that something else could very well lead to another addiction.
Let’s look at this issue from the standpoint of just one emotion. Take the emotion of anger—do you ever feel annoyed with your friends or family members? Is there anyone at church or work that really gets on your nerves? How do you respond in these situations?
Here are some possible responses:
1) Eat.
2) Truth journal so you don’t eat.
3) Withdraw—ignore them or get out of the relationship.
4) Try to be nice even though you’re silently resenting them.
5) Get your feelings out by talking to a friend or writing in a journal.
6) Try to change them. Maybe if you say the right thing, they’ll see the light and change.
7) Feel sorry for yourself.
8) Yell at them.
9) Learn to see them through God’s eyes, then accept, forgive, and love.
Of course, we all know the right response—but it’s certainly not the natural response, is it? We would really have to spend some time bringing our thoughts captive to the truth if we wanted to respond with that last option. That option, though, is the only option that will bring peace (unless of course the other person is willing and able to change, which doesn’t usually happen).
Now you might think that the second option is a good option also. I agree—it’s a good option—but if that’s all you do, it can be a dangerous option. Why? Because those negative emotions still need to be released. If you only work on not eating and don’t work on getting rid of the anger, you’ll be in danger of turning to another escape to get rid of those negative emotions.
Women often tell me that Freedom from Emotional Eating is just as much about regular life as it is about eating. That’s because it’s regular life that makes us eat. If we don’t learn how to deal with our problems the way God wants us to, those emotions will still be there in need of an outlet. If we don’t eat, what will we do?
So much of the Christian walk is about dying to our “rights” and being willing to do anything for God. Because we’re so entrenched in the world’s way of thinking, it’s hard for us to do that without first taking the time to carry our thoughts captive to the truth.
I find that when I take the time to line my thoughts up with God’s thoughts, it helps me submit to Him—and submitting to Him always brings peace.
And peace is one of those emotions that doesn’t make me feel like eating.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Gravity and Emotional Eating
Have you ever wondered why we don’t worry about being hijacked to the moon when we get on an airplane? I can think of three reasons:
1. Planes don’t have the right type of fuel to get to the moon.
2. Planes don’t have enough thrust to get to the moon.
3. Planes don’t have the physical structure necessary to get to the moon.
It takes a lot to escape the pull of earth’s gravity, and most airplanes don’t have what it takes to make the grade. If they want to reach the moon, they have to go through a radical change in their design.
It’s the same with us if we want to escape a stronghold or bad habit. If we want to succeed, then we have to make sure we're going about it the right way. Let’s take a look at how astronauts escape gravity and apply it to our own struggle to escape emotional eating:
1. We need the right type of fuel.
As I mentioned in the introduction to Freedom from Emotional Eating, it’s our thoughts that “fuel” our actions. You could think of our thoughts as airplane fuel, and God’s thoughts as rocket fuel.
If we want to break free from emotional eating, we need to get rid of that “airplane fuel” and replace it with rocket fuel. This happens when we replace the lies we believe with truth and fill ourselves with God’s Word. Scripture prayers, truth journaling, and Bible study will provide the fuel we need to break free from the pull of emotional eating.
2. We need enough thrust.
Rockets need the ability to keep going up, which requires a tremendous amount of fuel and a certain type of engine. You could say the engine we need is one that runs on the fuel of God’s Word. The more our lives are directed toward God, the easier it will be to break free from emotional eating.
What happens if a rocket coasts? It falls back down, doesn’t it? In like manner, I can't just work on emotional eating for a few days and then "coast" when the going gets hard. The days I most need to pray Scripture and truth journal are the days when I'm consistently breaking my boundaries. If I bring my thoughts to the truth every time I fail, pretty soon I won't be failing all the time. It's much easier to coast, but coasting won't help me break free from the "pull" of emotional eating.
3. We need the right type of structure.
A rocket is designed to protect the people inside and keep them moving in the right direction. In like manner, we need to place structures in our own lives that will help us move in the direction we want to go. Here are a few things that have helped me:
• Have a set time each day for Bible study and prayer.
• Print out some Bible verses to pray through and attach them to a clip board, so they’re easy to find.
• Attach some lie-truth charts to the same clipboard, so you can truth journal whenever you eat outside your boundaries.
• Find a friend to pray with and hold each other accountable to working on your stronghold.
• Establish boundaries where necessary.
One nice thing about gravity is that the pull weakens the farther up you go. It’s still there, so you have to be careful, but it’s not the same struggle that it was back when you were trying to break free from it.
Thankfully, it’s the same way with strongholds—if you use the right fuel, keep that upward thrust, and put the right structures into your life to help you succeed, eventually you’ll break free of the stronghold. There will come a point when living free gets easier.
This has happened to me with emotional eating. I rarely truth journal or pray Scripture for it these days. That doesn’t mean I never struggle with emotional eating—it’s just that it doesn’t have a hold on me anymore. Bad days are rare, and even when they come, I can usually see the truth right away and correct my behavior.
I wouldn’t have gotten to that point, though, if I hadn’t made the effort to break free from the stronghold. And let me tell you—it was an effort.
Can you imagine those early scientists who started to picture a trip to the moon? It might have seemed impossible at the beginning, but they worked on it and worked on it, and eventually it happened.
My friend, I want to encourage you today not to give up. Success is possible.
Just make sure you use the right fuel, keep your upward thrust, and structure your life to help you move in the right direction, . . . because you can’t get to the moon in an airplane.
(I know—that last line was incredibly hokey, but I couldn't resist!)
1. Planes don’t have the right type of fuel to get to the moon.
2. Planes don’t have enough thrust to get to the moon.
3. Planes don’t have the physical structure necessary to get to the moon.
It takes a lot to escape the pull of earth’s gravity, and most airplanes don’t have what it takes to make the grade. If they want to reach the moon, they have to go through a radical change in their design.
It’s the same with us if we want to escape a stronghold or bad habit. If we want to succeed, then we have to make sure we're going about it the right way. Let’s take a look at how astronauts escape gravity and apply it to our own struggle to escape emotional eating:
1. We need the right type of fuel.
As I mentioned in the introduction to Freedom from Emotional Eating, it’s our thoughts that “fuel” our actions. You could think of our thoughts as airplane fuel, and God’s thoughts as rocket fuel.
If we want to break free from emotional eating, we need to get rid of that “airplane fuel” and replace it with rocket fuel. This happens when we replace the lies we believe with truth and fill ourselves with God’s Word. Scripture prayers, truth journaling, and Bible study will provide the fuel we need to break free from the pull of emotional eating.
2. We need enough thrust.
Rockets need the ability to keep going up, which requires a tremendous amount of fuel and a certain type of engine. You could say the engine we need is one that runs on the fuel of God’s Word. The more our lives are directed toward God, the easier it will be to break free from emotional eating.
What happens if a rocket coasts? It falls back down, doesn’t it? In like manner, I can't just work on emotional eating for a few days and then "coast" when the going gets hard. The days I most need to pray Scripture and truth journal are the days when I'm consistently breaking my boundaries. If I bring my thoughts to the truth every time I fail, pretty soon I won't be failing all the time. It's much easier to coast, but coasting won't help me break free from the "pull" of emotional eating.
3. We need the right type of structure.
A rocket is designed to protect the people inside and keep them moving in the right direction. In like manner, we need to place structures in our own lives that will help us move in the direction we want to go. Here are a few things that have helped me:
• Have a set time each day for Bible study and prayer.
• Print out some Bible verses to pray through and attach them to a clip board, so they’re easy to find.
• Attach some lie-truth charts to the same clipboard, so you can truth journal whenever you eat outside your boundaries.
• Find a friend to pray with and hold each other accountable to working on your stronghold.
• Establish boundaries where necessary.
One nice thing about gravity is that the pull weakens the farther up you go. It’s still there, so you have to be careful, but it’s not the same struggle that it was back when you were trying to break free from it.
Thankfully, it’s the same way with strongholds—if you use the right fuel, keep that upward thrust, and put the right structures into your life to help you succeed, eventually you’ll break free of the stronghold. There will come a point when living free gets easier.
This has happened to me with emotional eating. I rarely truth journal or pray Scripture for it these days. That doesn’t mean I never struggle with emotional eating—it’s just that it doesn’t have a hold on me anymore. Bad days are rare, and even when they come, I can usually see the truth right away and correct my behavior.
I wouldn’t have gotten to that point, though, if I hadn’t made the effort to break free from the stronghold. And let me tell you—it was an effort.
Can you imagine those early scientists who started to picture a trip to the moon? It might have seemed impossible at the beginning, but they worked on it and worked on it, and eventually it happened.
My friend, I want to encourage you today not to give up. Success is possible.
Just make sure you use the right fuel, keep your upward thrust, and structure your life to help you move in the right direction, . . . because you can’t get to the moon in an airplane.
(I know—that last line was incredibly hokey, but I couldn't resist!)
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!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Vacations
I think it was the eight cartons of ice cream at my parents’ house that started me down the rocky road (no pun intended) of emotional eating again. I was doing great until the last day of the visit…and then I let my guard down.
I had no excuse. No, I take that back - I had lots of excuses.
It’s a shame to waste this incredible gourmet ice cream. After all, I am on vacation. And I’ve done so well the rest of the visit; I really deserve to splurge a little bit today.
I wouldn’t necessarily call three bowls of ice cream a little splurge....
Then there was the trip home.
I need to keep up my energy for driving. I’ll start being good when I get home. One last (huge, high calorie, incredibly yummy ice cream treat) and then I’ll be good.
But I wasn’t good. Why? Because the next week was “Fair Week.” And you know what fair week means, don’t you? That’s right - “Fair Food.” Elephant ears. Ice cream. Greek gyros. Deep-fried twinkies. (yes, twinkies.)
I was bad, bad, bad.
So now school has started. The kids are back in a routine, and so am I. It’s back to the boundaries after too long of a vacation.
But here’s the good news. I only gained a pound or two. Why? Because God was speaking the truth about food to me, even while my mind was speaking lies.
I ate more than I should have, but not as much as I would have eaten a couple years ago. I ate what I felt like eating, but I didn’t feel like eating as much as I would have a couple years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, I recognize that I was in dangerous territory. Breaking the boundaries consistently is a risky practice. I need them for my own protection and safety, and it feels good to be following them again.
But the victory is that God is changing the way I think, so that even when the fence is down, I don’t really want to escape.
I had no excuse. No, I take that back - I had lots of excuses.
It’s a shame to waste this incredible gourmet ice cream. After all, I am on vacation. And I’ve done so well the rest of the visit; I really deserve to splurge a little bit today.
I wouldn’t necessarily call three bowls of ice cream a little splurge....
Then there was the trip home.
I need to keep up my energy for driving. I’ll start being good when I get home. One last (huge, high calorie, incredibly yummy ice cream treat) and then I’ll be good.
But I wasn’t good. Why? Because the next week was “Fair Week.” And you know what fair week means, don’t you? That’s right - “Fair Food.” Elephant ears. Ice cream. Greek gyros. Deep-fried twinkies. (yes, twinkies.)
I was bad, bad, bad.
So now school has started. The kids are back in a routine, and so am I. It’s back to the boundaries after too long of a vacation.
But here’s the good news. I only gained a pound or two. Why? Because God was speaking the truth about food to me, even while my mind was speaking lies.
I ate more than I should have, but not as much as I would have eaten a couple years ago. I ate what I felt like eating, but I didn’t feel like eating as much as I would have a couple years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, I recognize that I was in dangerous territory. Breaking the boundaries consistently is a risky practice. I need them for my own protection and safety, and it feels good to be following them again.
But the victory is that God is changing the way I think, so that even when the fence is down, I don’t really want to escape.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The Value of Truth Journaling
If you haven’t done my Bible study, you may be wondering what I mean when I say truth journaling. Ephesians 4:22-24 speaks of the importance of renewing our minds. Truth journaling is simply a practical way of doing that.
My first brownie post gave you a sample of how it works. You write down what you believe, then look at each sentence to determine the truth of what you believe. Let me explain how this works with a simple diagram.
Beliefs ® Feelings ® Actions
(Note: This is only a simple diagram if you are a techie. For someone like me, it's a very complicated diagram, because I can't figure out how to turn those little R's with circles around them into arrows. I'm afraid you'll have to use your imagination. Picture an arrow starting at beliefs and going toward feelings and another arrow starting at feelings and going toward actions. While you're imagining the arrows, you might as well imagine that it's indented, because that's what I really wanted, but I couldn't make it happen.)
Behavioral scientists use this diagram to show how our thoughts affect our behaviors. Here’s an example: If I believe the plane is going to crash, I’m going to be terrified of flying, and I probably won’t fly. I might be able to force myself to fly, but it will always be a painful struggle.
How much easier it would be if I could convince myself that flying really isn’t all that dangerous. Then I would actually have good feelings about it, and I wouldn’t even have to make myself fly. I’d want to fly, because I could get places so much faster.
Now look at that diagram again. I also believe things about eating that aren’t true—things that my friends who don’t struggle with emotional eating have never believed. These lies make me want to eat, and because I feel like eating, I eat. Wouldn’t my life be much better, if I could learn to believe the right things about food so that I didn’t feel like eating for emotional reasons?
That’s what my Bible study, Freedom from Emotional Eating, is about—learning how to change the way we think about food so we won’t feel like overeating.
My first brownie post gave you a sample of how it works. You write down what you believe, then look at each sentence to determine the truth of what you believe. Let me explain how this works with a simple diagram.
Beliefs ® Feelings ® Actions
(Note: This is only a simple diagram if you are a techie. For someone like me, it's a very complicated diagram, because I can't figure out how to turn those little R's with circles around them into arrows. I'm afraid you'll have to use your imagination. Picture an arrow starting at beliefs and going toward feelings and another arrow starting at feelings and going toward actions. While you're imagining the arrows, you might as well imagine that it's indented, because that's what I really wanted, but I couldn't make it happen.)
Behavioral scientists use this diagram to show how our thoughts affect our behaviors. Here’s an example: If I believe the plane is going to crash, I’m going to be terrified of flying, and I probably won’t fly. I might be able to force myself to fly, but it will always be a painful struggle.
How much easier it would be if I could convince myself that flying really isn’t all that dangerous. Then I would actually have good feelings about it, and I wouldn’t even have to make myself fly. I’d want to fly, because I could get places so much faster.
Now look at that diagram again. I also believe things about eating that aren’t true—things that my friends who don’t struggle with emotional eating have never believed. These lies make me want to eat, and because I feel like eating, I eat. Wouldn’t my life be much better, if I could learn to believe the right things about food so that I didn’t feel like eating for emotional reasons?
That’s what my Bible study, Freedom from Emotional Eating, is about—learning how to change the way we think about food so we won’t feel like overeating.
Friday, August 15, 2008
More on the Brownies
I hate to tell you this, but I have to write another post about the brownies, and I can just hear what you’re saying.
“What? Enough with the brownies! Doesn’t that girl have a life?”
“Brownies? That sounds good. I wonder if I have any in the freezer?”
“Hmmm…a three part series on two brownies? I might want to take this one off my favorites list.”
But I’m sure there are a few of you out there, my faithful readers (alright, maybe only my mom), who are still wondering, did she eat the brownies?
Well, let me satisfy your curiosity right away and say that there is still one brownie in the freezer (and, yes, it is the same brownie. I didn’t make another whole pan of brownies just so I could truthfully tell you that I still had one brownie in the freezer.)
After I truth journaled, I didn’t think about those brownies again the rest of the day. The craving was gone. I didn’t need self-control to keep from eating them, because I didn’t even feel like eating them after looking at the truth.
There’s great value in taking the time to truth journal, but I admit, it’s not a natural response. Let’s take a look at some of the other things we might do instead:
1. Say no to the brownies and munch on some celery sticks.
2. Do something exciting to get our minds off the brownies.
3. Throw the brownies in the garbage can and put something bad over the top so we won’t be tempted to take them back out of the garbage can again.
4. Eat the brownies and feel guilty.
5. Leave the brownies as a treat for the mailman.
6. Exercise.
7. Eat the brownies one thin slice at a time, so that it doesn’t seem like we’re really going to eat all the brownies.
8. Give the brownies to our kids.
9. Lock the brownies in the outdoor freezer and put the key in the highest cupboard in the kitchen.
10. Say, “I’ll go on a diet tomorrow,” and eat the brownies without feeling guilty….
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you why truth journaling is the best option.
(Oh, and for all you extremely observant and possibly suspicious people out there who are wondering what happened to the other brownie - I ate it for dessert that night!)
“What? Enough with the brownies! Doesn’t that girl have a life?”
“Brownies? That sounds good. I wonder if I have any in the freezer?”
“Hmmm…a three part series on two brownies? I might want to take this one off my favorites list.”
But I’m sure there are a few of you out there, my faithful readers (alright, maybe only my mom), who are still wondering, did she eat the brownies?
Well, let me satisfy your curiosity right away and say that there is still one brownie in the freezer (and, yes, it is the same brownie. I didn’t make another whole pan of brownies just so I could truthfully tell you that I still had one brownie in the freezer.)
After I truth journaled, I didn’t think about those brownies again the rest of the day. The craving was gone. I didn’t need self-control to keep from eating them, because I didn’t even feel like eating them after looking at the truth.
There’s great value in taking the time to truth journal, but I admit, it’s not a natural response. Let’s take a look at some of the other things we might do instead:
1. Say no to the brownies and munch on some celery sticks.
2. Do something exciting to get our minds off the brownies.
3. Throw the brownies in the garbage can and put something bad over the top so we won’t be tempted to take them back out of the garbage can again.
4. Eat the brownies and feel guilty.
5. Leave the brownies as a treat for the mailman.
6. Exercise.
7. Eat the brownies one thin slice at a time, so that it doesn’t seem like we’re really going to eat all the brownies.
8. Give the brownies to our kids.
9. Lock the brownies in the outdoor freezer and put the key in the highest cupboard in the kitchen.
10. Say, “I’ll go on a diet tomorrow,” and eat the brownies without feeling guilty….
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you why truth journaling is the best option.
(Oh, and for all you extremely observant and possibly suspicious people out there who are wondering what happened to the other brownie - I ate it for dessert that night!)
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Brownies
This morning I’m actively engaged in not eating the two brownies that are sitting in the freezer (They used to be sitting on the counter, but I put them in the freezer because I like them cold.)
This is what I’m thinking that’s making me want to eat them, “It would be worth having a treat since my life is going so badly, and I deserve a treat since my life is going so badly!”
Well, if you’ve done my Bible study or studied psychology, you know that what we believe determines how we feel, and what we feel influences what we do. So if I’m going to keep myself from eating those brownies, I better change what I believe pretty quickly or the brownies will be history.
Did you notice that I’m believing some lies that are making me want to eat those brownies? Well, you’ll be happy to know that I did actually truth journal already, and these are my conclusions:
Lie: It would be worth having a treat since my life is going so badly.
Truth: If I have a treat now, I know that I will have at least 40 points today and probably more. I’m at a dangerous point this morning (since I already had a half inch slice of the brownie, and I ate more that I should have last night.) I don’t want to add compulsive eating to my already bad life!
Lie: I deserve a treat since my life is going so badly.
Truth: God would say, “Come to me, Barb, I’ll give you peace. The brownie will give you bondage. It’s the darkness disguised as the light—don’t give in to it.”
Bottom Line: If I’m going to eat the brownies, I better tell myself the truth about them, and this is what I would have to say: “I’m going to eat those brownies, get discouraged and depressed, lose confidence in myself, eat enough to gain weight, and head down a path of being controlled by food, but it’s worth it for one minute of pleasure.”
I think not! I’m going to skip those brownies, and to be very honest with you, after looking at the truth, I don’t even feel like eating them anymore. (And for the record, my life isn’t even bad—I was just feeling sorry for myself because I have too much to do!)
This is what I’m thinking that’s making me want to eat them, “It would be worth having a treat since my life is going so badly, and I deserve a treat since my life is going so badly!”
Well, if you’ve done my Bible study or studied psychology, you know that what we believe determines how we feel, and what we feel influences what we do. So if I’m going to keep myself from eating those brownies, I better change what I believe pretty quickly or the brownies will be history.
Did you notice that I’m believing some lies that are making me want to eat those brownies? Well, you’ll be happy to know that I did actually truth journal already, and these are my conclusions:
Lie: It would be worth having a treat since my life is going so badly.
Truth: If I have a treat now, I know that I will have at least 40 points today and probably more. I’m at a dangerous point this morning (since I already had a half inch slice of the brownie, and I ate more that I should have last night.) I don’t want to add compulsive eating to my already bad life!
Lie: I deserve a treat since my life is going so badly.
Truth: God would say, “Come to me, Barb, I’ll give you peace. The brownie will give you bondage. It’s the darkness disguised as the light—don’t give in to it.”
Bottom Line: If I’m going to eat the brownies, I better tell myself the truth about them, and this is what I would have to say: “I’m going to eat those brownies, get discouraged and depressed, lose confidence in myself, eat enough to gain weight, and head down a path of being controlled by food, but it’s worth it for one minute of pleasure.”
I think not! I’m going to skip those brownies, and to be very honest with you, after looking at the truth, I don’t even feel like eating them anymore. (And for the record, my life isn’t even bad—I was just feeling sorry for myself because I have too much to do!)
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