Christmas isn’t easy for emotional and obsessive eaters. I don’t know how many Christmases I’ve stuffed myself so full of goodies that by the time New Year’s rolled around, I weighed five or ten pounds more than I weighed at Thanksgiving just five weeks earlier.
I can still remember driving west on I-90 after marrying my husband in North Dakota 27 Christmases ago and throwing cookies out the window as we drove along because it was the only way I could keep myself from eating all of them in one big shot as we headed back to Montana.
Eating too many Christmas cookies isn’t good for our health, our figures, or our morale, but we make a bad situation worse when we take an extra step and condemn ourselves for eating them. My guess is that there are more than a few of you out there who are now beating yourselves up because you didn’t eat perfectly this holiday season!
So I decided to write a post today about perfectionism and emotional eating. I'm hoping you'll read this and stop beating yourself up if that's what you're doing - because perfectionism will hurt your efforts to break free from emotional eating.
Here are just a few of the areas where perfectionism kicks in to slow down our progress in breaking free from emotional eating:
1. Wanting a PERFECT body.
The lie we believe here is that the only thing that’s acceptable is a skinny body. Is this true? Of course not! If life is about loving God and loving others, then it’s loving God and loving others that makes us acceptable, not being skinny. Not to mention the fact that God accepts us “as is.” He doesn’t demand that we shape up before He's willing to love us.
Believing we need to be skinny to be acceptable will actually hurt our weight loss efforts because it leads to self-condemnation when we break our boundaries. “Well, I’ll never be skinny anyway after all that food,” we think, “so I might as well just eat this and this and this.” And then we go all out in the eating department, which of course, is counter-productive to losing weight.
If we instead focus on the truth that life is about loving God and others, it won’t be such a big deal if we break our boundaries. God is far more merciful and gracious than a world who demands physical perfection. He won’t beat us up because we eat too much, but He will want us to have the right attitude about food and our bodies. So He’ll be hoping we come to Him and to His Word so we can see both food and ourselves through His eyes.
2. Trusting in the PERFECT boundaries.
The lie we believe here is that “if we can just find the right set of boundaries it will be easy to control our eating and/or lose weight.” So we try new diets and new boundaries, just waiting for the right one to come along that will make us lose weight and keep it off.
The problem is that unless we radically change the way we think about food, people, and life, we’ll eventually go back to our old ways of handling life’s problems with food, and we’ll gain our weight back—no matter what program we used to lose the weight in the first place.
The boundaries are a good framework for eating, and I believe they’re necessary for the emotional eater, but we’ll never have enough will power to make ourselves stick to our boundaries until we change the way we think about food.
3. Expecting life and people to be PERFECT.
If we expect life and people to be perfect, we’ll eat when they’re not. At least, we will if we’re emotional eaters. Developing a lifestyle of gratefulness, grace, and dependence on God will help us do away with a good share of those negative emotions that make us feel like eating in the first place.
4. Relying on PERFECT foods.
It’s easy to get in the habit of thinking we deserve to eat well, and that if we only eat what our body really wants to eat—the perfect food, in other words—we won’t feel like overeating.
While this might be true for people who have never turned to food for emotional reasons, it’s usually not true for the emotional and obsessive eater, because it’s often not taste and hunger that’s driving us to eat.
5. Condemning ourselves when we don’t follow our boundaries PERFECTLY.
This is a biggie. I might as well eat because . . . I will never get over this because . . . I am such a failure because . . . I will always be overweight because . . . All of these sentences can be answered with the same phrase— because “I broke my boundaries.”
But the truth is that it would be an absolute miracle if we could break free from emotional eating without breaking our boundaries time and time again. And I mean that literally.
God doesn’t normally choose to solve our problems with a one-time magic swipe of His hand. Instead, He allows us to go through trials, leaning on Him for strength, truth, and wisdom because He can teach us more by having us lean on Him than He can by doing everything for us.
Failure paves a good share of the pathway to success. But failure only leads to success when we step from failure toward God. Our normal operating mode is to step from failure to the refrigerator.
I did that for years, but it wasn’t until I was willing to make the sacrifice of taking the time to renew my mind that I began to experience significant change. God used the truth to transform me. My next blog post will be a renewing the mind challenge to you to start the new year off right!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
How To Choose Boundaries
I’ve had a few questions lately about how to choose boundaries, so today I’d like to give some ideas that might help. If any of you want to share how you came up with your own boundaries, that would be great also. Please share your ideas in the comments section. I’ll be giving ideas for three different types of boundaries:
1. A set number of meals or snacks – example: three meals and one snack.
This may be a good boundary for you if . . .
• You like to eat meals with your family. Even if you’re not hungry, you’ll be able to sit down with them and eat a little bit.
• You like structure, order, and routine. This way you can plan out your meals and snacks and know when you can eat.
• You have a hard time telling when you’re hungry and when you’re full. With the meals/snacks boundaries, you’ll look at what’s available to eat before your meal and determine what a healthy amount is. Anything you eat above and beyond that amount would be something you would journal about.
• You tend to rationalize hunger i.e. tell yourself you’re hungry when you’re really not.
• You like to know when you can eat next.
2. Eating when hungry and stopping when full.
This may be a good boundary for you if . . .
• You have a hectic life and don’t have time for scheduled meals.
• You feel like it’s easier to control your eating if you eat only when hungry.
• You’re traveling and feel like nibbling all the time just because you’re on vacation.
• Would tend to use three meals and a snack as an opportunity to eat as much as you wanted at those meals and snacks and wouldn’t have a tendency to do that with hunger only boundaries.
3. Diets
This may be a good boundary for you if . . .
• You're faithfully doing one of the other boundaries and not losing weight even though you want to lose weight (and actually need to lose weight for your health).
Note: If you decide to go on a diet, you should be training yourself to follow one of the other boundaries while on your diet. For example, if you’re going to Weight Watchers and your lifetime boundaries are three meals and one snack a day, you would divide your points for the day between those four eating occasions. For example: 4 points for breakfast, 8 points for lunch, 8 points for supper, 3 points for snack. Then you would truth journal each time you ate more than your allowed points for each eating occasion.
One thing to remember with all the boundaries is that it’s impossible to find a set of boundaries that will be easy to follow if you’re an emotional eater. One set of boundaries may be more suited to your lifestyle and personality than another, but it still won’t keep you from eating when you’re stressed, bored, annoyed, etc.
What boundaries do is provide a structure to keep us from eating emotionally. You might say they keep us from eating whenever we feel like eating, because we feel like eating too often! Boundaries also provide a framework to know when to truth journal.
If you truth journal whenever you break your boundaries, the truth will start working its way into your heart, and there will come a time when you won’t feel like eating outside your boundaries. This doesn’t happen overnight, though. I just counted the number of lie/truth charts I have in a file for blog ideas and there were 17 of them – and I know I didn’t save all my charts!
If you’d like to read more about boundaries, look at the category headings on the left side of this blog and click on the link for boundaries. There are a couple of posts on rules and another one called “Not Even One Bite” that might provide helpful insight, as well.
1. A set number of meals or snacks – example: three meals and one snack.
This may be a good boundary for you if . . .
• You like to eat meals with your family. Even if you’re not hungry, you’ll be able to sit down with them and eat a little bit.
• You like structure, order, and routine. This way you can plan out your meals and snacks and know when you can eat.
• You have a hard time telling when you’re hungry and when you’re full. With the meals/snacks boundaries, you’ll look at what’s available to eat before your meal and determine what a healthy amount is. Anything you eat above and beyond that amount would be something you would journal about.
• You tend to rationalize hunger i.e. tell yourself you’re hungry when you’re really not.
• You like to know when you can eat next.
2. Eating when hungry and stopping when full.
This may be a good boundary for you if . . .
• You have a hectic life and don’t have time for scheduled meals.
• You feel like it’s easier to control your eating if you eat only when hungry.
• You’re traveling and feel like nibbling all the time just because you’re on vacation.
• Would tend to use three meals and a snack as an opportunity to eat as much as you wanted at those meals and snacks and wouldn’t have a tendency to do that with hunger only boundaries.
3. Diets
This may be a good boundary for you if . . .
• You're faithfully doing one of the other boundaries and not losing weight even though you want to lose weight (and actually need to lose weight for your health).
Note: If you decide to go on a diet, you should be training yourself to follow one of the other boundaries while on your diet. For example, if you’re going to Weight Watchers and your lifetime boundaries are three meals and one snack a day, you would divide your points for the day between those four eating occasions. For example: 4 points for breakfast, 8 points for lunch, 8 points for supper, 3 points for snack. Then you would truth journal each time you ate more than your allowed points for each eating occasion.
One thing to remember with all the boundaries is that it’s impossible to find a set of boundaries that will be easy to follow if you’re an emotional eater. One set of boundaries may be more suited to your lifestyle and personality than another, but it still won’t keep you from eating when you’re stressed, bored, annoyed, etc.
What boundaries do is provide a structure to keep us from eating emotionally. You might say they keep us from eating whenever we feel like eating, because we feel like eating too often! Boundaries also provide a framework to know when to truth journal.
If you truth journal whenever you break your boundaries, the truth will start working its way into your heart, and there will come a time when you won’t feel like eating outside your boundaries. This doesn’t happen overnight, though. I just counted the number of lie/truth charts I have in a file for blog ideas and there were 17 of them – and I know I didn’t save all my charts!
If you’d like to read more about boundaries, look at the category headings on the left side of this blog and click on the link for boundaries. There are a couple of posts on rules and another one called “Not Even One Bite” that might provide helpful insight, as well.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Christmas
Christmas isn’t an easy season for emotional eaters. In a month where we’re surrounded by good things to eat, we’re also surrounded by opportunities for negative emotions that make us want to eat.
The funny thing is that we’ve taken a holiday designed to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who came to bring us peace, and turned it into probably the least peaceful time of the year. The stress of all the things on our to-do lists would send us to the refrigerator even if the Christmas cookies didn't!
So what do we do? Resign ourselves to the inevitable Christmas weight gain? Get rid of the Christmas cookies? Or use the season as an opportunity to change our focus and see life, ourselves, our to-do list, and even Christmas through God’s eyes?
This Christmas my goal is to keep my focus on God throughout the Christmas season and to avoid getting caught up in the negative emotions that seem to come with the season. Here are a few of the ideas I had to help me reach that goal.
1. Practice the presence of God as much as possible.
I think I mentioned before that I’ve been reading the book The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a man who lived in the 1600’s. Here’s an excerpt from his book:
I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God, which I may call an actual presence of God; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them and prevent their appearance to others.
Brother Lawrence said that developing this habit of always being aware of God’s presence no matter what he was doing did more for his relationship with God than anything he’d ever done before.
I’ve found that it’s a hard habit to develop, but when it works, it’s delightful. It’s like you’re having a side conversation with God while you’re doing other things. Or like He’s right there with you fellowshipping with you while you do those other things. I’ve also found that it makes things you don’t usually enjoy doing almost enjoyable because you’re doing them with the One you love.
2. Deal with the emotions that come up when they come up.
When I find myself craving Christmas cookies, I'll ask myself, Is it the cookies, or is it my emotions? If you have a tendency to eat to procrastinate like I do, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to eat at Christmas. Same with eating for stress. Or relationship problems—often there are more of those at Christmas. What we need to do when we experience those emotion-induced cravings is go to God and work through the emotions.
3. Stick to my eating boundaries faithfully.
This is more important than ever at Christmas. It's helpful to get in the mindset of not even one bite outside of the boundaries - because one bite usually leads to lots of bites!
4. Prepare myself for parties and other tempting eating events by renewing my mind before I go.
I have to tell you that I don't actually do this one because it's not an area of temptation for me anymore, but I thought I'd write about it in case you might like to try it. I think it would have helped me back in the old days.
Here's the idea - before you go to the party, write down a list of things you might tell yourself that would make you want to overeat at the party. Recognize the lies and replace them with truth. You might also make a list of the advantages of eating whatever you want at the party and the disadvantages. This will help you recognize the truth that it really is better not to eat too much.
5. Don’t be a perfectionist or a procrastinator when it comes to holiday jobs.
I probably need to give myself this lecture every day. Perfectionism and procrastination lead to stress. Things don’t have to be perfect. Things don’t have to be done all at once. Pace your holiday jobs throughout the month—if you do one thing a day, it will be more manageable.
Here’s an example. Today, I’m going to buy my Christmas cards and address the envelopes. That’s a job I don’t mind doing—but if I were to tell myself I have to send a bunch of cards today, I probably wouldn’t even get around to buying the cards because the whole process would seem too intimidating. (Yes, I know, I’m a bit on the pathetic side.)
These last three things on the list might seem like they have more to do with practical issues rather than walking with God, but the truth is that every part of our lives affects our relationship with God. When I obsess over food, it affects my relationship with God. When I demand the easy life or the perfect life, it affects my relationship with God. When I get too busy, it affects my relationship with God.
That's why I really want to develop this habit of practicing the presence of God - because I can't focus on Him and demand those other things all at the same time. Living in His presence helps me live for Him. Which is exactly what I want to do this Christmas season.
The funny thing is that we’ve taken a holiday designed to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who came to bring us peace, and turned it into probably the least peaceful time of the year. The stress of all the things on our to-do lists would send us to the refrigerator even if the Christmas cookies didn't!
So what do we do? Resign ourselves to the inevitable Christmas weight gain? Get rid of the Christmas cookies? Or use the season as an opportunity to change our focus and see life, ourselves, our to-do list, and even Christmas through God’s eyes?
This Christmas my goal is to keep my focus on God throughout the Christmas season and to avoid getting caught up in the negative emotions that seem to come with the season. Here are a few of the ideas I had to help me reach that goal.
1. Practice the presence of God as much as possible.
I think I mentioned before that I’ve been reading the book The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a man who lived in the 1600’s. Here’s an excerpt from his book:
I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God, which I may call an actual presence of God; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them and prevent their appearance to others.
Brother Lawrence said that developing this habit of always being aware of God’s presence no matter what he was doing did more for his relationship with God than anything he’d ever done before.
I’ve found that it’s a hard habit to develop, but when it works, it’s delightful. It’s like you’re having a side conversation with God while you’re doing other things. Or like He’s right there with you fellowshipping with you while you do those other things. I’ve also found that it makes things you don’t usually enjoy doing almost enjoyable because you’re doing them with the One you love.
2. Deal with the emotions that come up when they come up.
When I find myself craving Christmas cookies, I'll ask myself, Is it the cookies, or is it my emotions? If you have a tendency to eat to procrastinate like I do, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to eat at Christmas. Same with eating for stress. Or relationship problems—often there are more of those at Christmas. What we need to do when we experience those emotion-induced cravings is go to God and work through the emotions.
3. Stick to my eating boundaries faithfully.
This is more important than ever at Christmas. It's helpful to get in the mindset of not even one bite outside of the boundaries - because one bite usually leads to lots of bites!
4. Prepare myself for parties and other tempting eating events by renewing my mind before I go.
I have to tell you that I don't actually do this one because it's not an area of temptation for me anymore, but I thought I'd write about it in case you might like to try it. I think it would have helped me back in the old days.
Here's the idea - before you go to the party, write down a list of things you might tell yourself that would make you want to overeat at the party. Recognize the lies and replace them with truth. You might also make a list of the advantages of eating whatever you want at the party and the disadvantages. This will help you recognize the truth that it really is better not to eat too much.
5. Don’t be a perfectionist or a procrastinator when it comes to holiday jobs.
I probably need to give myself this lecture every day. Perfectionism and procrastination lead to stress. Things don’t have to be perfect. Things don’t have to be done all at once. Pace your holiday jobs throughout the month—if you do one thing a day, it will be more manageable.
Here’s an example. Today, I’m going to buy my Christmas cards and address the envelopes. That’s a job I don’t mind doing—but if I were to tell myself I have to send a bunch of cards today, I probably wouldn’t even get around to buying the cards because the whole process would seem too intimidating. (Yes, I know, I’m a bit on the pathetic side.)
These last three things on the list might seem like they have more to do with practical issues rather than walking with God, but the truth is that every part of our lives affects our relationship with God. When I obsess over food, it affects my relationship with God. When I demand the easy life or the perfect life, it affects my relationship with God. When I get too busy, it affects my relationship with God.
That's why I really want to develop this habit of practicing the presence of God - because I can't focus on Him and demand those other things all at the same time. Living in His presence helps me live for Him. Which is exactly what I want to do this Christmas season.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Keep Your Eyes on the Goal: Part 3
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need to be reminded that the race I’m running is the one that leads to Jesus Christ. It’s so easy to make decisions based on other things—what will be most fun, what will be easiest, or even what will require the least amount of sacrifice.
We tend to handle our eating decisions the same way. If our main goal in life is to have fun, then it will be hard to control our eating because limiting ourselves isn’t fun. If our main goal in life is to be skinny, then we’ll have to worry about eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia. If our goal in life is to both indulge ourselves and be skinny, then we’ll drive ourselves crazy because those aren’t compatible goals.
What we need to do, with both life and eating, is to run the right race, or should I say the right races, because I think there are two different kinds of races we run in the right race category.
First, we run the race of our relationship with God. Our goal with this race is to keep Him first in our lives. In that race we need boundaries that will keep food from becoming either a controlling force or an idol.
Those boundaries will be different for each person depending on their eating weaknesses. In my own life the boundaries of three meals and one snack a day helped, but there was a season when I also had to give up sweets because I felt they were controlling me. I talked about that in Freedom from Emotional Eating.
The second type of race I see us running is the individual trial race. If you look at Hebrews 11, those saints each had different things God had called them to—and because of the nature of their calling they had different weights they had to throw off.
Take Noah for example. He would have had to throw off the weight of worrying about what people thought of him in order to build the ark. I imagine he would have had to put up with a lot of ridicule. Moses would have had to throw off the temptation to live the fun and easy life in order to do a job he wasn’t crazy about doing—leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses had to keep his eyes on his ultimate goal, God, so he could have the purpose and strength to do the unpleasant task before him.
We too have things God wants us to do even though they may not seem very big compared to the Hebrews 11 people. We also have things that get in the way of what God has called us to do. Food may be one of those things.
To look at boundaries this way, we might ask ourselves: what is God calling us to do with our lives, and what boundaries would help us run that race well? This will be different for each one of us, and it will probably change as we walk through life.
It could be that food doesn’t even factor into your individual race. I was surprised to discover that it did factor into mine. One of the races God has called me to run is the race of writing for Him. And when I get to a sticky part of writing and don’t know what to do (which happens a lot), my first impulse is to go get something to eat, preferably something sweet. God, of course, would rather see me turn to Him whenever I have problems writing.
I had to ask myself, “Are sweets a weight in my life?” My answer was yes. So I went back to my old boundaries—even though I don’t need to lose weight, even though food doesn’t control me, and even though food isn’t an idol—I decided to go back to the boundaries I talked about in my Bible study. Sweets only on social occasions, holidays and out of town trips. Fruit based sweets anytime.
And you know what? I’m finally at a point in my life where I didn’t mind giving them up. It wasn’t really a big sacrifice. That’s kind of exciting.
Breaking free from emotional eating is a process, a messy, disorderly process. You start out consumed with food. The first sign of success is usually the ending of binges. The second sign is usually being able to stick to your boundaries. Then comes moderation within the boundaries. And I’m thinking the last stage is when you don’t really care too much about food.
That doesn’t mean you progress through the process in a smooth, orderly, failure-free way. On the contrary, the process is riddled with failure. It’s easy to get discouraged when you see yourself sliding back a step. It will be far less discouraging, though, when you remember the real race you're running. It’s not the race that leads to a number on the scale. It’s the race that leads to God. The number on the scale is just a side benefit.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need to be reminded that the race I’m running is the one that leads to Jesus Christ. It’s so easy to make decisions based on other things—what will be most fun, what will be easiest, or even what will require the least amount of sacrifice.
We tend to handle our eating decisions the same way. If our main goal in life is to have fun, then it will be hard to control our eating because limiting ourselves isn’t fun. If our main goal in life is to be skinny, then we’ll have to worry about eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia. If our goal in life is to both indulge ourselves and be skinny, then we’ll drive ourselves crazy because those aren’t compatible goals.
What we need to do, with both life and eating, is to run the right race, or should I say the right races, because I think there are two different kinds of races we run in the right race category.
First, we run the race of our relationship with God. Our goal with this race is to keep Him first in our lives. In that race we need boundaries that will keep food from becoming either a controlling force or an idol.
Those boundaries will be different for each person depending on their eating weaknesses. In my own life the boundaries of three meals and one snack a day helped, but there was a season when I also had to give up sweets because I felt they were controlling me. I talked about that in Freedom from Emotional Eating.
The second type of race I see us running is the individual trial race. If you look at Hebrews 11, those saints each had different things God had called them to—and because of the nature of their calling they had different weights they had to throw off.
Take Noah for example. He would have had to throw off the weight of worrying about what people thought of him in order to build the ark. I imagine he would have had to put up with a lot of ridicule. Moses would have had to throw off the temptation to live the fun and easy life in order to do a job he wasn’t crazy about doing—leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses had to keep his eyes on his ultimate goal, God, so he could have the purpose and strength to do the unpleasant task before him.
We too have things God wants us to do even though they may not seem very big compared to the Hebrews 11 people. We also have things that get in the way of what God has called us to do. Food may be one of those things.
To look at boundaries this way, we might ask ourselves: what is God calling us to do with our lives, and what boundaries would help us run that race well? This will be different for each one of us, and it will probably change as we walk through life.
It could be that food doesn’t even factor into your individual race. I was surprised to discover that it did factor into mine. One of the races God has called me to run is the race of writing for Him. And when I get to a sticky part of writing and don’t know what to do (which happens a lot), my first impulse is to go get something to eat, preferably something sweet. God, of course, would rather see me turn to Him whenever I have problems writing.
I had to ask myself, “Are sweets a weight in my life?” My answer was yes. So I went back to my old boundaries—even though I don’t need to lose weight, even though food doesn’t control me, and even though food isn’t an idol—I decided to go back to the boundaries I talked about in my Bible study. Sweets only on social occasions, holidays and out of town trips. Fruit based sweets anytime.
And you know what? I’m finally at a point in my life where I didn’t mind giving them up. It wasn’t really a big sacrifice. That’s kind of exciting.
Breaking free from emotional eating is a process, a messy, disorderly process. You start out consumed with food. The first sign of success is usually the ending of binges. The second sign is usually being able to stick to your boundaries. Then comes moderation within the boundaries. And I’m thinking the last stage is when you don’t really care too much about food.
That doesn’t mean you progress through the process in a smooth, orderly, failure-free way. On the contrary, the process is riddled with failure. It’s easy to get discouraged when you see yourself sliding back a step. It will be far less discouraging, though, when you remember the real race you're running. It’s not the race that leads to a number on the scale. It’s the race that leads to God. The number on the scale is just a side benefit.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Keep Your Eyes on the Goal: Part Two
For the past two weeks, I’ve been thinking about how my last blog post relates to emotional eating. I had no idea it would cause me to
re-think my own eating boundaries, but it has. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post, but for now I’d like to talk about goals.
Here’s my question: Is the goal of being skinny a good enough goal to get you to give up the foods you love to eat, in the quantities you love to eat them? For me the answer to that question has always been no—except for special occasions, like weddings and reunions, or shocking moments, like stepping on the scale and seeing a number that you usually only see when you're pregnant.
In the past, if one of those moments happened to coincide with one of my rare bouts of actually being able to stick to a diet, I would lose weight—for awhile. But usually only until I reached an acceptable number on the scale, at which point I would joyfully give up the diet and revert back to my old ways, and eventually my old weight.
The fact was, I enjoyed recreational eating far too much to give it up
long-term for a skinny body. It was just like my old running career. The prize wasn’t worth the sacrifice.
Then one day I realized I was going after the wrong prize. That it really didn’t matter if I was skinny—but it did matter if food was affecting my relationship with God. That was the day I realized that sweets had become an idol in my life - and even though I loved God with all my heart, I was still turning to food for comfort more often than I was turning to Him. Crazy.
Although my love for God wasn't strong enough to actually get me to make the sacrifice of removing this idol from my life, it was at least strong enough to get me to want to make the sacrifice. For the first time in my life, I was willing to give up sweets--for good if necessary.
I spoke a little bit about that time in my life in Freedom from Emotional Eating, so I won’t go into detail here. Suffice it to say that having the desire to give up the idol wasn't enough to tear down the idol, just as having a desire to win races wouldn't have been enough to win races.
I also needed the right training methods (replacing lies with truth) and a good training schedule (boundaries). When the three of those things came together in my life, food lost its control over me. It’s been several years now of being free from its control, but what I just realized last week is that I’m still not free from its influence.
I’ll explain this more thoroughly in my next post. If you want food for thought between now and then, read Hebrews 11 and make a list of all the weights those old saints had to cast aside in order to run the races (or trials) that were set before them. Then spend a bit of time meditating on Hebrews 12:1-2 and ask God to show you if you have any weights you need to cast aside to run your own race. The answer might surprise you—it sure surprised me.
re-think my own eating boundaries, but it has. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post, but for now I’d like to talk about goals.
Here’s my question: Is the goal of being skinny a good enough goal to get you to give up the foods you love to eat, in the quantities you love to eat them? For me the answer to that question has always been no—except for special occasions, like weddings and reunions, or shocking moments, like stepping on the scale and seeing a number that you usually only see when you're pregnant.
In the past, if one of those moments happened to coincide with one of my rare bouts of actually being able to stick to a diet, I would lose weight—for awhile. But usually only until I reached an acceptable number on the scale, at which point I would joyfully give up the diet and revert back to my old ways, and eventually my old weight.
The fact was, I enjoyed recreational eating far too much to give it up
long-term for a skinny body. It was just like my old running career. The prize wasn’t worth the sacrifice.
Then one day I realized I was going after the wrong prize. That it really didn’t matter if I was skinny—but it did matter if food was affecting my relationship with God. That was the day I realized that sweets had become an idol in my life - and even though I loved God with all my heart, I was still turning to food for comfort more often than I was turning to Him. Crazy.
Although my love for God wasn't strong enough to actually get me to make the sacrifice of removing this idol from my life, it was at least strong enough to get me to want to make the sacrifice. For the first time in my life, I was willing to give up sweets--for good if necessary.
I spoke a little bit about that time in my life in Freedom from Emotional Eating, so I won’t go into detail here. Suffice it to say that having the desire to give up the idol wasn't enough to tear down the idol, just as having a desire to win races wouldn't have been enough to win races.
I also needed the right training methods (replacing lies with truth) and a good training schedule (boundaries). When the three of those things came together in my life, food lost its control over me. It’s been several years now of being free from its control, but what I just realized last week is that I’m still not free from its influence.
I’ll explain this more thoroughly in my next post. If you want food for thought between now and then, read Hebrews 11 and make a list of all the weights those old saints had to cast aside in order to run the races (or trials) that were set before them. Then spend a bit of time meditating on Hebrews 12:1-2 and ask God to show you if you have any weights you need to cast aside to run your own race. The answer might surprise you—it sure surprised me.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Keep your eyes on the Goal
When I was a freshman in college I joined the long distance cross-country track team. Now, I can just imagine what you might be thinking. Wow, Barb, must be really athletic if she was in cross country in college. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I joined the track team because I was a nice person, not an athletic person. Let me backtrack a bit. During the fall of my freshman year I made the mistake of taking a lifesaving course. The reason I say it was a mistake is because the teacher of the lifesaving course was also the coach of the cross country team. And that team only had four members on it. They needed five to compete. (Can you see where this is going?)
I had a terrible time saying no in those days, so when the coach asked me to join the team, I thought, “How bad could it be? It’s just a couple of months, and I do kind of like to run (emphasis on the kind of).” So I joined the team.
What I discovered was that when I had to get up at 5 a.m. (thank you, coach) and drive twenty miles out of town to find some hills to run three days a week—and then run for more than twenty minutes at a stretch once I got there—I no longer liked to run. But I felt too guilty to quit the team—because if I left, they wouldn’t have a team.
The races were even worse than the practices. I didn’t have a competitive bone in my body when it came to sports, and I always came in last. I just didn’t care enough about the goal of winning to work that hard at running. Instead my focus was on “Why am I running? This is so not fun. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” And that attitude got me last place every single time.
It occurs to me now that my walk with God is much like those races I used to run. If I keep my focus on what I’m giving up for God (I can’t believe I have to suffer like this), I’ll have a bad attitude—and I won’t do well in the race.
But if I keep my focus on God Himself, the Prize at the end of the race—I’ll do much better. Those hardships along the way won’t seem like such a big deal anymore, because God is worth the sacrifice.
This is true in every step of my Christian walk—whether it’s working on the sin in my life when it would be so much easier not to, doing what God has called me to do when I don’t necessarily enjoy it, or even continuing to press on when I see others dropping out of the race—if I keep my focus on who God is and why I’m doing what I’m doing, I’ll have a better attitude. And I’ll be far more likely to run the race victoriously.
The incredible thing about God is that He runs the race with me. He not only runs alongside me, offering encouraging words and help when I need it, He also stands at the finish line, cheering me on, eager to put His arms around me and shout, “Well done, good and faithful servant!!!”
When He’s my focus, I’m not only willing to suffer for Him—I’m eager to suffer for Him. I just need to keep my eyes on Him.
In my next post, I’ll look at this whole idea in the context of emotional eating.
I joined the track team because I was a nice person, not an athletic person. Let me backtrack a bit. During the fall of my freshman year I made the mistake of taking a lifesaving course. The reason I say it was a mistake is because the teacher of the lifesaving course was also the coach of the cross country team. And that team only had four members on it. They needed five to compete. (Can you see where this is going?)
I had a terrible time saying no in those days, so when the coach asked me to join the team, I thought, “How bad could it be? It’s just a couple of months, and I do kind of like to run (emphasis on the kind of).” So I joined the team.
What I discovered was that when I had to get up at 5 a.m. (thank you, coach) and drive twenty miles out of town to find some hills to run three days a week—and then run for more than twenty minutes at a stretch once I got there—I no longer liked to run. But I felt too guilty to quit the team—because if I left, they wouldn’t have a team.
The races were even worse than the practices. I didn’t have a competitive bone in my body when it came to sports, and I always came in last. I just didn’t care enough about the goal of winning to work that hard at running. Instead my focus was on “Why am I running? This is so not fun. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” And that attitude got me last place every single time.
It occurs to me now that my walk with God is much like those races I used to run. If I keep my focus on what I’m giving up for God (I can’t believe I have to suffer like this), I’ll have a bad attitude—and I won’t do well in the race.
But if I keep my focus on God Himself, the Prize at the end of the race—I’ll do much better. Those hardships along the way won’t seem like such a big deal anymore, because God is worth the sacrifice.
This is true in every step of my Christian walk—whether it’s working on the sin in my life when it would be so much easier not to, doing what God has called me to do when I don’t necessarily enjoy it, or even continuing to press on when I see others dropping out of the race—if I keep my focus on who God is and why I’m doing what I’m doing, I’ll have a better attitude. And I’ll be far more likely to run the race victoriously.
The incredible thing about God is that He runs the race with me. He not only runs alongside me, offering encouraging words and help when I need it, He also stands at the finish line, cheering me on, eager to put His arms around me and shout, “Well done, good and faithful servant!!!”
When He’s my focus, I’m not only willing to suffer for Him—I’m eager to suffer for Him. I just need to keep my eyes on Him.
In my next post, I’ll look at this whole idea in the context of emotional eating.
Friday, October 16, 2009
My life is better when I stick to my boundaries
Belief: That looks good. I should eat it.
Truth: My life is better when I stick to my boundaries.
Where do I get the idea that life will be better if I do the things that aren’t good for me?
Well, the idea’s been around since the beginning of mankind. Just look at Eve in the garden with Satan. He convinced her pretty easily that life would be better if she did what God had told her not to do.
He was tricky, though. He didn’t say, “Hey, Eve, God told you not to do this because He knew it wouldn’t be good for you—that it would make your life worse in the long run. But why don’t you disobey Him, anyway? After all, isn’t five minutes of fun worth a lifetime of consequences?”
No, he didn’t say that. He wanted Eve to forget about the long-term consequences of disobeying God. And he made her forget by focusing her attention on how fun, how really fun, it would be to eat that fruit.
Don’t we see the same principles at work in our own lives? When we break our boundaries, what are we focusing on? The fact that breaking our boundaries will lead to discouragement, weight gain, hopelessness, health problems, lethargy, laziness, depression, and not being able to wear our cute clothes? Or the fact that breaking our boundaries will be fun and tasty for five minutes?
Obviously, it’s the second. What we need to do is start asking ourselves this question when we're tempted to break our boundaries: Is five minutes of fun worth a lifetime of consequences?
And of course, the answer will be no. Our lives are better when we stick to our boundaries - even when the potential boundary breaker is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup blizzard. The more often I drill that into my head, the better off I’ll be.
Excuse me, I need to go ask myself a question.
Truth: My life is better when I stick to my boundaries.
Where do I get the idea that life will be better if I do the things that aren’t good for me?
Well, the idea’s been around since the beginning of mankind. Just look at Eve in the garden with Satan. He convinced her pretty easily that life would be better if she did what God had told her not to do.
He was tricky, though. He didn’t say, “Hey, Eve, God told you not to do this because He knew it wouldn’t be good for you—that it would make your life worse in the long run. But why don’t you disobey Him, anyway? After all, isn’t five minutes of fun worth a lifetime of consequences?”
No, he didn’t say that. He wanted Eve to forget about the long-term consequences of disobeying God. And he made her forget by focusing her attention on how fun, how really fun, it would be to eat that fruit.
Don’t we see the same principles at work in our own lives? When we break our boundaries, what are we focusing on? The fact that breaking our boundaries will lead to discouragement, weight gain, hopelessness, health problems, lethargy, laziness, depression, and not being able to wear our cute clothes? Or the fact that breaking our boundaries will be fun and tasty for five minutes?
Obviously, it’s the second. What we need to do is start asking ourselves this question when we're tempted to break our boundaries: Is five minutes of fun worth a lifetime of consequences?
And of course, the answer will be no. Our lives are better when we stick to our boundaries - even when the potential boundary breaker is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup blizzard. The more often I drill that into my head, the better off I’ll be.
Excuse me, I need to go ask myself a question.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Getting What We Want
And he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped. 2 Samuel 12:20
I’ve been reading 2 Samuel in my quiet times, and the thing that keeps hitting me is how submissive David is to God. And how human he is. It comforts me to know that God calls him a man after his own heart even though he messes up from time to time.
Take the time with Bathsheba and Uriah. As I was reading that story, I wondered if David was ever really convicted about his sin before Nathan came and talked to him. Do you suppose he was so used to getting what he wanted that he didn’t even recognize it was wrong to take another man’s wife and then have him killed to cover up his sin?
And do you suppose we have the same problem? Are we so used to getting what we want that we don’t even realize it’s wrong to make “getting whatever we want” a goal? I see that with eating. Most of the dieting articles in magazines focus on indulgence.
Take this headline: Eat whatever you want and lose weight! I don’t know about you, but if I ate whatever I wanted, I’d gain a hundred pounds. Surely there must be a glitch somewhere in that program.
Some articles take a different approach. They admit we can’t eat whatever we want, but instead they encourage us to indulge ourselves in other ways. Take a bubble bath. Go shopping. Watch a good movie.
There’s nothing wrong with doing those things, but we need to be careful of our focus. Does God really want us to live a life of indulgence? Look where indulgence got David.
And look where it gets us. In the physical realm it’s a weight gain, but that’s not all. Think of the emotional consequences of focusing our lives on getting what we want. Discontentment, boredom, resentment, depression, unhappiness—you name it. We’ll never get enough of what we want to be happy until we reach the point where what we want is God. That’s when joy kicks in.
David always comes back to that point. Look at verse 20 of 2 Samuel 12: And he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped.
David didn’t worship after he got what he wanted with Bathsheba. He didn’t worship after he got what he wanted with Uriah. No, he worshiped after he got what he didn’t want. He worshiped as soon as he heard the news that his baby died—the baby he had been pleading with God to spare for the previous six days.
Isn’t that mind boggling? David was so submitted to God by that point that he didn’t even hesitate. God didn’t give him what he wanted, but he worshiped Him anyway.
That’s the point I want to reach. Where everything I do is about God. Where I worship Him even when I don’t get what I want. First reaction.
I’ll know I’ve made progress when I no longer feel like I deserve to be indulged.
Two hours later (I guess I haven't made progress yet.)
Yes, I know, I'm commenting on my own blog. Pathetic, isn't it? I just have to tell you what God did this morning.
I was sitting down to write and I didn't feel like writing, so I said, "I know, I'll check my e-mails." The only problem was that I wasn't supposed to check my e-mails because I have a boundary of three times a day, and I'd already done my morning check. The only reason I wanted to check them again was to - you got it - indulge myself.
So I said to myself (after checking my e-mails and then truth journaling about it), "Okay, I'm supposed to go to God for help, not my e-mails." So I went back to the Bible, continuing to read on in 2 Samuel, not really thinking there would be anything that would apply to my situation in 2 Samuel.
And that's when it hit me. In chapter 19, David submits again - this time to Joab, and I realized, I need to submit to God - even if it's just for an hour of writing. That instead of checking my e-mails (which is what I felt like doing), I should be worshiping Him.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
I found that to be true this morning.
I’ve been reading 2 Samuel in my quiet times, and the thing that keeps hitting me is how submissive David is to God. And how human he is. It comforts me to know that God calls him a man after his own heart even though he messes up from time to time.
Take the time with Bathsheba and Uriah. As I was reading that story, I wondered if David was ever really convicted about his sin before Nathan came and talked to him. Do you suppose he was so used to getting what he wanted that he didn’t even recognize it was wrong to take another man’s wife and then have him killed to cover up his sin?
And do you suppose we have the same problem? Are we so used to getting what we want that we don’t even realize it’s wrong to make “getting whatever we want” a goal? I see that with eating. Most of the dieting articles in magazines focus on indulgence.
Take this headline: Eat whatever you want and lose weight! I don’t know about you, but if I ate whatever I wanted, I’d gain a hundred pounds. Surely there must be a glitch somewhere in that program.
Some articles take a different approach. They admit we can’t eat whatever we want, but instead they encourage us to indulge ourselves in other ways. Take a bubble bath. Go shopping. Watch a good movie.
There’s nothing wrong with doing those things, but we need to be careful of our focus. Does God really want us to live a life of indulgence? Look where indulgence got David.
And look where it gets us. In the physical realm it’s a weight gain, but that’s not all. Think of the emotional consequences of focusing our lives on getting what we want. Discontentment, boredom, resentment, depression, unhappiness—you name it. We’ll never get enough of what we want to be happy until we reach the point where what we want is God. That’s when joy kicks in.
David always comes back to that point. Look at verse 20 of 2 Samuel 12: And he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped.
David didn’t worship after he got what he wanted with Bathsheba. He didn’t worship after he got what he wanted with Uriah. No, he worshiped after he got what he didn’t want. He worshiped as soon as he heard the news that his baby died—the baby he had been pleading with God to spare for the previous six days.
Isn’t that mind boggling? David was so submitted to God by that point that he didn’t even hesitate. God didn’t give him what he wanted, but he worshiped Him anyway.
That’s the point I want to reach. Where everything I do is about God. Where I worship Him even when I don’t get what I want. First reaction.
I’ll know I’ve made progress when I no longer feel like I deserve to be indulged.
Two hours later (I guess I haven't made progress yet.)
Yes, I know, I'm commenting on my own blog. Pathetic, isn't it? I just have to tell you what God did this morning.
I was sitting down to write and I didn't feel like writing, so I said, "I know, I'll check my e-mails." The only problem was that I wasn't supposed to check my e-mails because I have a boundary of three times a day, and I'd already done my morning check. The only reason I wanted to check them again was to - you got it - indulge myself.
So I said to myself (after checking my e-mails and then truth journaling about it), "Okay, I'm supposed to go to God for help, not my e-mails." So I went back to the Bible, continuing to read on in 2 Samuel, not really thinking there would be anything that would apply to my situation in 2 Samuel.
And that's when it hit me. In chapter 19, David submits again - this time to Joab, and I realized, I need to submit to God - even if it's just for an hour of writing. That instead of checking my e-mails (which is what I felt like doing), I should be worshiping Him.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
I found that to be true this morning.
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