“Vowing to do better, eat healthier, and make good choices, I head to the kitchen only to have my resolve melt like the icing on the cinnamon rolls my daughter just pulled from the oven. Yum. Oh, who cares what the scale says when this roll speaks such love and deliciousness. Two and a half cinnamon rolls later, I decide tomorrow will be a much better day to keep my promises to eat healthier. And since this is my last day to eat what I want, I better live it up. Another cinnamon roll, please” Oh does this ever sound familiar!! I know on several occasions I’ve “slipped up” and vowed to start again the next day & then use that as my excuse to go hog wild!
“If I admit my struggle with food to my friends, they might try to hold me accountable the next time we go out. And what if I’m not in th emood to be questioned about my nachos con queso with extra sour cream?” I’ve had these VERY thoughts before (fill in different fatty foods where the nachos con queso is.
“It was about the battle that raged in my heart. I thought about, craved, and arranged my life too much around food. So much so, I knew it was something God was challenging me to surrender to His control. Really surrender. Surrender to the point where I’d make radical changes for the sake of my spiritual health perhaps even more than my physical health” I could not agree more.
AND, the phrase that punched me in the gut and hasn’t let up since…pay attention to this one:
“Is it possible we love and rely on food more than we love and rely on God?” Go ahead. Read over that one a few times and let it really sink in.
and she continues with words that I could have uttered myself:
“I had to get honest enough to admit it: I relied on food more than I relied on God. I craved food more than I craved God. Food was my comfort. Food was my reward. Food was my joy. Food was what I turned to in times of stress, sadness, and even in times of happiness.”
“Each time I craved something I knew wasn’t a part of my plan, I used that craving as a prompt to pray. I craved a lot. So, I found myself praying a lot.” This makes me smile. Don’t think that God won’t use things like this to grab your attention.
[PERSONAL REFLECTIONS]
1) When it comes to your relationship with food, what repeated behaviors or events describe the cycle you experience and feel powerless to stop? Weighing in every single morning! If I don’t see the numbers go down even 1/10th of a pound or if they go up, I feel defeated and the first thing that I do is reach for something to eat. I need to only weigh ONCE a week and then hide my scale away.
2) What reasons motivate your desire to eat healthier? Do these reasons give your struggles with food a purpose strong enough to help you resist unhealthy eating? How do you respond to Lysa’s statement “I had to see the purpose of my struggle as something more than wearing smaller sizes and getting compliments form others…it had to be about something more than just me.” I have a few reasons for wanting to eat healthier. I want to feel more energy! I’ve gotten to the point where I feel lethargic and it’s a chore just to be up doing stuff. I also want to teach my children the importance of eating healthy while they’re young, I also want to be a healthy mom TO my kids…be around to see them grow up. I want to do it to be able to be around as long as humanly possible. Aesthetically I want to be able to look better. I want to be able to feel beautiful. I WANT to be able to say that these reasons give my struggle with food a purpose strong enough to help resist unhealthy eating…BUT…they haven’t motivated me enough so far. I’ve needed God to step in! I absolutely agree with her statement. Yes, it’ll be great to wear smaller clothes and hear people talk about how much weight I’ve lost - but at the end of the day I want to be able to make this temple that God gave me the best I can make it!
3) Consider your eating experiences over the last few days or weeks. Using the list below can you recall specific situations in which you turned to food for these reasons? One word that they are missing on this list is BOREDOM! I eat out of boredom a lot. Boredom and habit.
Comfort.
Reward. My friends will often hear me talk about rewarding myself for something with orange chocolate!
Joy.
Stress. I have an ex-husband who I can’t trust. There are always times in which I get stressed out and use that to go grab a bag of chips or a root beer.
Sadness. I was sad because I felt as if I was losing a friend. Therefore I saw that as a good reason to load up!
Happiness.
Keeping the same situations in mind, how do you imagine your experiences might have been different if you had relied on God, craved God, instead of turning to food? I believe that I would have felt the same comfort and the same reassurance and the same “hug” from God as I felt from food. Not only that, but in taking these things to God, I’d be able to rest assured that He would help me in taking care of them. The situations were never faced head on - they were just masked with the instant relief that food brings.
4) How do you respond to the idea of using your cravings as a prompt to pray? How has prayer helped or failed to help in your previous food battles? I believe that God can use any and every way as a prompt for you to pray. And I fully believe that if I will use that as a prompt to cry out to Him that He will deliver me from these cravings. I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never invited God in to my struggles with food, so I can’t answer the last question.
5) In your battles with food, are you more likely to choose a drastic, quick-fix approach or a moderate but longer-term approach What thoughts or feelings emerge when you consider dismantling your own tower of impossibility one craving at a time? I’m more likely to choose a moderate but longer-term approach. Although my approach here at the start is a detox, that is strictly just to shock my body and to let it know that the cravings can’t persuade me anymore. That could be seen as drastic - but I’m not viewing it as a quick fix as after detox - I am on the lifelong road of eating healthy and trying to lose weight.

