Are You Full Yet?

When my kids were little, I planned a trip to Arizona with the newest baby to visit my parents. Thinking my four-year-old might enjoy a trip to see Grandma and Grandpa, I invited him along.

I told him he could come if he wanted, or he could stay home and go to a friend’s house one night for a sleepover and a video.

My little four-year-old agonized over the decision. Which would be more fun: going on a plane to see grandma and grandpa or sleeping at a friends’ house and watching a video?

He finally chose the plane trip, but it was a tough decision.

Not only does this show how video-deprived my kids were, it also shows what a hard time we have making decisions. Especially when we want the best possible option for maximum fun and enjoyment.

The criteria we use for making decisions reveals a lot about what’s important to us. For my son, the key factor was fun. He was following in his mom’s footsteps because that's what I have a tendency to live for.

We're all tempted to live for things other than God, and we can see these temptations at work in the way we make decisions.

Just think about your own life. What do you base your decisions on? The answer to that question may show what you have a tendency to live for.

Here are a few possibilities:

1. What will be most fun?
2. What will be easiest?
3. What will be safest?
4. What’s fair?
5. What’s comfortable?
6. What will help me get the most work accomplished?
7. What will make people admire me?
8. What will make people like me?
9. What will make the least amount of people mad at me?
10. What is the Father’s will?

The problem with living for things other than God is that we never get enough to satisfy. If we choose the video, we’ll worry that the plane trip would have been more fun. If we choose the plane trip, we’ll wonder about that video.

God talks about this issue in Jeremiah 2:13 when He says this:

For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Fun as a life goal is a broken cistern that can hold no water. No matter how much we pour in, we’ll never get enough to fill us up.

The same holds true for a life focused on comfort, fair, safe, or skinny.

And the same holds true for a life focused on food.

When we live for things other than God, we’ll never get enough to satisfy. The more we pour into our needy bodies, the more we’ll need because the cistern is broken.

The best thing we can do if we really want to be happy is to go to the fountain of living waters.

Because He’s the only One who can truly fill us.

Thought for the day: What are you trying to fill yourself up with? Is it working?

If It Don't Come Easy, You Gotta Let It Go

It’s been more than twenty years since Tanya Tucker came out with her hit, but the song’s message lives on: If it don’t come easy, you gotta let it go.

She was talking about relationships, but how often are we tempted to apply the same principle to eating?

Bored with my boundaries? Gotta let it go.

Tired of renewing my mind? Gotta let it go.

Frustrated with the whole battle? Gotta let it go.

The song is fun, but I’m not sure it’s scriptural.

Think of what Jesus said to His disciples: If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me. *

That doesn’t sound like a Man who would say, If it don’t come easy, you gotta let it go.

We all have days we want to let it go.

Those are the days we need to renew our minds more than ever. Press into God. Let Him replace those song lyrics running through our minds with the truth of His Word.

And always remember: If it don’t come easy, it’s an opportunity to grow. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

To think about: Are boundaries usually easy to follow, or do have to give up something to follow them? Is Christ usually easy to follow, or do you usually have to give up something to follow Him?

*Matthew 16:24

P.S. You may have noticed I'm back to writing my blog. It's not coming easy, but I'm going to try not to let it go!

P.P. S. If you want to watch a good video by Francis Chan on growing through trials, check out this link: The Holy Spirit's Power and Our Effort - Part One.

New Blog

Hi everyone, I finally have the new blog up and running. You can find it here. Hope to see you all over there! Barb

Not Even One Bite

(Note: This is a re-post of a blog from January 7, 2009.)

When I first started writing my Bible study, I checked out all the books I could find at the library that contained information on emotional eating. In the process, I discovered a whole new section of books that I hadn’t seen before.

Did you know that in addition to the “diet book” section, there’s also a section of books on eating disorders and compulsive eating? I read some of those books, and they were very enlightening.

One of the common threads that ran through the books was the admonition to stick religiously to an eating plan. To eat even one bite off the plan, the books said, was to put yourself in dangerous territory. It could lead to a binge.

I remember thinking at the time that this was the missing ingredient in my own struggles with food. I had my eating plan already in place at the time—a simple plan of allowing myself three meals and one snack each day.

The problem was that I sometimes had a bite here and a bite there that wasn’t on "the plan." While these bites didn’t add up to many calories, they still weren’t good for me. What they did was weaken my boundaries—the boundaries I had put in place myself to protect me from emotional eating.

Unfortunately, weak boundaries often lead to broken boundaries. What begins as a crack in the dam soon becomes an all-out flood—and I had my share of “floods.”

The books made me see the necessity of following the plan exactly. In other words, not one bite outside the boundaries. Not even a lick of the fingers. Nada. Nothing.

I determined to be more faithful about following the boundaries, and you know what? It made a difference. A big difference. Sticking rigidly to the plan made it easier to actually follow the plan.

Whether your boundaries are hunger or meals, I encourage you to follow them exactly. Don’t eat even one bite outside your boundaries—because even though it's hard to stick to your boundaries, it's a lot harder to stick to them after you break them than before you break them.

Starting Over

(Note: This is a re-post of a blog from April 27, 2009 with an update at the end. In honor of the first Monday of the New Year when I imagine a good percentage of us are planning to start eating healthy once again! )


Do you ever wonder if you’ll struggle with food for the rest of your life? I know I used to feel like that. Eating seemed to be that one thing in life I would never be able to get a handle on. I didn’t control food—it controlled me.

I know many of you who read this blog feel the same way I used to feel. You wonder if you’ll ever get over it, and you’re tired of the battle. It’s hard to keep pressing on when you fail time after time after time.

Of course, Monday mornings are always hopeful. That’s the traditional day to start the new program, right? We eat all weekend with the idea that we’ll be good “starting Monday.”

But Monday never lasts. By Thursday or Friday (if we last that long), it’s back to the same old story—breaking our boundaries, feeling discouraged, and wanting to give up.

Here’s the interesting thing. Since we have a tendency to handle life’s problems with food, our natural inclination is to handle the problem of trying to stick to our eating boundaries the same way. When it’s hard, we eat! Of course, that breaks the boundaries and leads to the feeling that we’ll never get over the problem.

So what’s the answer? Are we stuck in an endless circle of failure and discouragement? No, a thousand times no! The answer is God. He can set us free from anything. He’s the Creator of the universe. He can move mountains. Of course, He can set us free from emotional eating.

What we need to do is study His Word to find out how He sets people free. What does God use to change behavior? Let’s look at Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. When He prayed this prayer, He knew He wouldn’t be around much longer, and He was praying for the ones He was leaving behind.

In John 17:15 Jesus is telling the Father, “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.” This could also be translated “keep them out of evil.”

He goes on to say how this is accomplished in verse 17, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The Greek word for “in” that’s used here has an essence of “by means of.” We are sanctified and kept from evil by means of the truth.

In other words, we don’t change our behavior by getting up Monday morning and saying, “This week is going to be different! This week I’m going to stick with my plan!” No, we’re changed by the truth.

Remember, it’s not about the boundaries. It’s not about the plan. It’s about truth—and truth comes from God and His Word.

Food no longer controls me, but it’s not because of any brilliant displays of self-control and determination on my part. It was an incredibly difficult battle to change the way I responded to life. It often felt like I was limping along barely able to make progress.

When I felt that old urge to pull myself up by the bootstraps and “wait ‘til Monday,” I had to tell myself, “No, that’s not the way it works. It’s the truth that will set me free. I need to spend more time with God today. I need to cling to His word. I need to carry my thoughts captive to Him.” And that’s what set me free.

It’s also what keeps me free. When I feel tempted to go back to my old ways, I pull out my trusty lie-truth charts and start filling them out again. As I write the truth, I see my desires change before my eyes.

The Bible is a life-changing, joy-giving book. I’m amazed by its brilliance and transformed by it’s wisdom. This Monday morning, I encourage you to look for the solution to emotional eating in its pages—and not in another program!

1/3/11 Update: Since I wrote this post almost two years ago, I thought you might like an update just to see if the truth really works. I have to tell you, yes, it does! My weight has stayed consistent since this post and actually probably dropped by a few pounds. Food has not regained its control over me.

When I think back to the early days of breaking free from emotional eating, what I remember is an endless battle. I got tired of truth journaling. I wasn't convinced that it would really work. In fact, even when I was writing Freedom from Emotional Eating, I worried about publishing it because I was afraid I would gain my weight back - which of course would be very embarrassing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Sometimes you just have to trust God and believe what He says even if you haven't seen it with your own eyes yet. The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12:2 that we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

But that doesn't mean we'll be transformed instantly and easily. Renewing the mind is kind of like training your mind to go down a new path of truth when it's used to going down a path of lies.

It takes a long time to clear out all those old lies. You have to keep going back every time you catch yourself believing them and apply the truth again. But eventually that new path will get just as well used as the old path, and it won't be as much work to walk it anymore.

That's where I'm at with my eating now. I rarely need truth journaling tune-ups anymore for emotional eating. I think I only truth journaled one day this past month - it was right in the middle of probably ten dozen Christmas cookies in the house if I remember right.

I do still slip up on my boundaries occasionally, but not enough to affect my weight or even to feel the need to truth journal about it. That doesn't mean I'm through renewing my mind, though. I have plenty of opportunities in other areas! I'll be writing about some of those things on the new blog.

I better get going because my computer is about to lose power. I hope you all have a good Monday tomorrow. And I hope you develop or continue the habit of renewing your mind this year!

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re enjoying your friends and family this Christmas – and not eating too many Christmas cookies while you enjoy them! I just wanted to let you know I’ve set up my new blog and should be posting on it beginning mid to late January.

The new blog will be called Transformed by Trials, and the first trial I’ll be writing about will be insecurity. I’m hoping to do some video teaching too if I can figure out the technology to do that.

It's taken longer than I thought to get it going because all of my writing efforts are still being put into the new Bible study I'm writing and teaching. But I think I'll have most of that written by sometime in January, so I'll be able to start working on the blog.

In the meantime I thought I'd re-post some of my old entries from this blog. Hope to see see you soon at the new blog!

Have I ever mentioned that I'm a procrastinator? I hate to even look at the date of my last blog post. It looks like it was more than five months ago. You may have been wondering, where is Barb these days? Well, Barb is at home, alive and well, but not writing blog posts!

I wasn't planning to take a break. If I had planned it, I would have told everyone. Unfortunately, I just couldn't think of anything to write, and I kept putting it off and putting it off until five months went by without writing anything.

Then last night I was talking with one of my kids about the new Bible study I was writing. We were discussing the coping techniques we use with different trials, and I asked him if he could think of any coping techniques I left out of my new study. He said, "How about ignoring the problem?" Bingo.

That's one of my biggest coping techniques, and it wasn't even in the book! My trial was "what to write for the blog." And instead of dealing with the issue - either thinking of something to write or ending the blog, I just ignored the trial. For five months.

So, now I'm back, and I apologize for my absence with no words of good-bye or explanation. The bigger reason I haven't been writing is that I've been putting all my efforts into writing and teaching a new Bible study on worry, insecurity, and anger. I've taught it to women and teenage girls now, and my next project is to see if it works for college and career age guys and girls.

What I'd like to do is start a more general blog, not just emotional eating, but other issues, as well. I'm not sure when I'll get that up and running but hopefully sometime in the next month. I'll post a blog entry here when I have it ready to go.

I was also thinking it might be helpful to make a favorites label on this blog which would include a set of posts that could help women who are exploring the idea of renewing their minds in the area of food - maybe some basic posts to get them started on it. If anyone has any ideas of posts that would be helpful, would you mind e-mailing me at truthwaypress@gmail.com or just posting a comment here? (At least if there is anyone out there still checking my blog after five months absence!)

I wish I could see all of you in real life and visit with you face-to-face. But of course, I can't. I pray that God is keeping you safe in the comfort of His arms and that you are finding strength in His Word.

Freedom is a process

It took about seven months of truth journaling for eating before I felt a tenuous freedom. I posted my first freedom entry a couple of months ago. What I've found since I wrote that entry almost four years ago is that freedom is more of an ongoing process than a one time now-I've-accomplished-it-and-I-can-relax sort of event.

Yes, it gets much easier to follow boundaries. Yes, I'm far more controlled than I used to be. Yes, I no longer worry about going back to my old ways. But no, I'm not completely free of the desire to eat for non-hunger reasons.

I still have those old desires at times. In fact, even as I write this I'm sad I've already had breakfast, because I would much rather go have something to eat than go back to my writing which is what I plan to do next.

So even though the desire to eat decreases, it never completely goes away - at least it hasn't for me, not permanently, anyway. What happens is that you develop the habit of going to God for help with the problem. You gain confidence that the truth will set you free, and because you're confident, that's where you go for help when you are tempted to go back to your old ways.

Here are a few more journal entries I made after I was feeling relatively free:

Day 219 - 10/4/06

I feel like food no longer controls me. It seems like I could maintain my weight now without a lot of struggle - yet I don't know yet about losing weight. I seem to be in a "limited control" situation and am cautiously optimistic. Lately, I have felt like I may be able to go back to sweets if I stick to meal times.

Day 241 - 10/26/06

I'm trying to think of my problem areas in eating right now, and I can't think of any. My lingering reasons for overeating are: 1) stress and feeling overwhelmed 2) procrastination 3) The "I deserve it" lie 4) Fear of failure (with overeating).

5/12/10

It's interesting to read old journal entries to see how God continues to work. My only lingering reason for overeating now is procrastination (that and unexpected good things available to eat). Unfortunately, I still haven't developed the habit of going to God first when faced with things I don't want to do. When I do, I'll probably lose a few pounds.

Instant Success?

Wouldn’t you love to have instant success in the area of emotional eating and weight loss? To lose all of your weight in just a few months without suffering and without ever once breaking your boundaries or feeling like a failure?

That would be so nice, but also so unlikely.

The fact is, we often have to fail over and over again before we get really good at something. And it’s the same with emotional eating. Even now after almost four years of being free from emotional eating, I still have times when I have to go back to the drawing board and start truth journaling again so I don’t go back to my old ways. That doesn’t mean I’m back in bondage whenever that happens. It just means I need to truth journal so I don’t go back into bondage.

My confidence isn’t in my success. My confidence is in God who sets me free and in a Bible that works. The truth sets me free. I just need to go back to it and apply it every time I fail. That’s what I was reminding myself of in this next truth journal entry.

Day 146 – 7/23/06

I’m feeling defeated today. I’ve been trying to change myself by will power again, not with the truth. Plus I’ve been putting perfectionist standards on myself. Condemning myself when I fail.

This is a stronghold – it requires spiritual weapons of prayer and carrying my thought captive. Getting up and using will power and positive attitude is not going to cut it!

I need to go back to journaling when I eat for a non-hunger or non-meal reason. Back to the basics. Plus meditate on Scripture. Remember, I can’t do it by getting up and starting anew. Only the truth will change me.