A New Creation!

A few months ago, my dear friend Laura invited me to join her and a group of women working through the Bible Study, "Freedom from Emotional Eating" by Barb Raveling. I was so excited! However, life at that time was more than crazy! I was doing two Bible studies, Granddaddy was sick, still fighting adoptions in Liberia, etc, etc. A few weeks into it, I felt God tell me to lay it down for now. However, in the past few weeks, I have definitely sensed that this is the area God wants me working on now!

I am realizing how much my affair with food interferes in every area of my life! So in an act of obedience, I started the Bible study again this morning. The first thing to do is set boundaries. It is very crucial for me that this not be a "diet"! This is about getting food off the throne that belongs to God! But she uses the example of an affair between a married woman and man to illustrate how important boundaries are. So I prayed through some boundaries and believe I have some good ones that God has given me. I found myself running from one in particular because it is the foundation of my issue! Funny how we do that!

So my boundaries are:

1. No eating off kids' plates
2. Ne second helping
3. Eat for nourishment not for comfort or taste (exceptions are social occasions and vacations where I will still do my best to make choices that nourish my body not just my palette, but don't want it to become a legalistic issue either)
4. No eating after getting up from the dinner table - I am a bad night time snacker and that is usually when my biggest emotional eating occurs. No longer! I am a new creation that doesn't need night time snacking because God is meeting my every need!

She also talks about exercise and time with God. Of course, time with God is vital! It is the key! If I am going to remove food from the throne, then God must be at the top of my priority list and spending time in prayer and Bible study is just the simple basic for that. Exercise has been a challenge for lately. I actually love to exercise, but with the depression and the addition of a baby, finding the time and motivation have been non-existent. I will continue to have my daily time with God as a non-negotiable. I am adding to that some physical activity every day - even if it is just a walk around the block or yard work. I bought a Dancing with the Stars DVD that I am going to use today! I am excited about that! I LOVE to dance, but don't know how, so this should kill two birds with one stone..teach me to dance, and get this body moving! Plus, as Barb p0ints out, the more you exercise, the more motivated you are to stay in your boundaries and the better I feel emotionally!

So here we go...day one of the New Me! Watch out world! This battle is behind me and nothing will stop me now!

Something's Stirring....

It's nearly 1 am and I can't sleep! Not good since my alarm will be going off in about 4 hours! ugh!

One of the things keeping me up are the thoughts about my struggle with food. God is stirring something in me...not just me, but John too. John received a Word from God during church last Sunday. It was pretty cool and had nothing to do with my food struggles, but I feel it spoke directly to it. It had to do with some major decisions we are making right now. Life pretty well feels like it is in God's blender right now, but I am quite sure he is making something wonderful!

God spoke to John using Matthew 9 and the words of Jesus about pouring new wine into old wine skins. You can't do it. They will crack and spill out the new, good wine. I know God is speaking to me about my affair with food in the same way.

I have been through probably the worst 3 years of my life these past three years. They have been extreme! But there are so many areas of battle that I see beginning to be won...and I feel like food is the one for me that when conquered will open up a whole new world for me and my family. I don't fully understand that, but I am ready to be free from my addiction to food and bondage that it places me in! I am ready for the life God has for me! I am ready to be the new wineskin so that God can pour His new, good wine into me and I will be able to contain it and not waste it by cracking and pouring it out on the ground!

Yes, I want to be thing, but lately, that is not what has consumed my thoughts! What I have longed for is the freedom from the bondage and guilt that my affair and idolatry with food brings. I have shared before that I will pierce my nose when I hit 175 pounds as that will symbolize to me personally that I have overcome my bondage to food and have replaced food with Jesus as my comfort and security! I have thought a lot about that nose piercing....I am ready for my heart to be pierced for God in a new and exciting way!

God, reveal to me the boundaries that you want for me. Show me the boundaries I need to walk in so that I can be free from the bondage of food! I desire you to be my Portion, My Stronghold, my Comforter! Food will hold me no more! What the enemy has meant for evil, You will turn to good! Praise you!
In Jesus Name ~ Amen!

Victory over Food

Been a long time since I have visited this blog! Many reasons for that! Haven't stopped the battle to win over food, but haven't had a lot to say about it and have had even less victories! But that all changes today. What makes today any different than any other day I have said that in this battle with the bulge? Well, today I carry with me the tools, the weapons that will bring the Victory!

I have learned much about the Spiritual world and my life in Christ since last I visited this topic. I have shared with many that I was fighting my battles with a water gun when I needed a machine gun! I know hold the machine gun and every other weapon I could possibly ever need to win the war that wages for my soul and my obedience!

God has been laying this battle on my heart for some time now...again. But it is hard to gear up for a battle that you have been slaughtered in so many times before. But this time is different! I walked in obedience this morning and pulled out a Bible Study I started with a group of amazing women, but dropped because of too many things going on in my life. I got it out this morning to pick up this battle again as it seems to be the issue in my life God wants to deal with right now. But even before I got to the Bible Study, God took me to Romans 6 and spoke to me! I love it when words I have read countless times before jump off the page in a new way speaking to me at just the right moment about just the issue I have before me! It brings such encouragement and hope!

I know this isn't true for everyone, but for me, food is a spiritual issue! I am in bondage to food....addicted to food...it is not different than an alcoholic or a drug addict...mine is just legal and food is necessary so I can't go "cold turkey"!

However it is just as deadly - both physically and spiritually! The older I get, the more I feel the weight. Plus this is the first time since college that I have quit all physical exercise. Not because I consciously did it, but because I just can't find the time with five children including a new baby! But I must! I must for those five children, and because God said to! Obedience is going to be a key word for me in this journey!

God took me to Romans 6 this morning. The fact is my eating when I shouldn't, using food to comfort myself, using food to "stimulate" my tired body, any of those reasons and many more that I eat are sin! They are bondage. Romans 6 talks of how we who have been crucified with Christ, those of us who have been buried in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life, accepting Jesus as Lord, walk in victory over death, ie: SIN! Verse 8: "Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." And again in verses 10-14: "For the death that He died, He died, to sin once fora ll; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of you body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are no longer under law but under grace." Praise God! If I take "food" and substitute it for the word "sin" in those verses, then I have the freedom that I need to be walking in instead of the bondage that I currently walk in.

As I have learned about spiritual freedom, I have learned that for some freedom is an instant and for some it is a process. As much as I have longed for my freedom from food to be instant, I believe God wants me to go through the process so I fully understand what freedom means, and He wants me leaning on Him each step of the way!

I am ready! I am ready to slay this giant once and for all! I am ready to put the old self behind me and put on my new self...physically to represent spiritually what will be going on inside!

And if you have been reading this blog for a while you know that means at 173 pounds, I will be piercing my nose because it will mean food is once and for all off the throne of my heart, replaced by the only true King...Jesus Christ, which means my heart will be "pierced" for Him! :)

Rantings of a food addict

I am watching America's Biggest Loser Finale. I am seeing women who weighed what I weigh now. Do I look like that? YEP!

Mother's day 2009 has come and gone. I had posted Mother's Day 2008 how I was setting a goal to lose 100 lbs by Mother's Day this year. I was so determined....so ready to battle it all. Well, 2 days past Mother's Day, not only did I not lose 100 pounds, I gained 2! I currently weigh 165. From my last weight post, y0u can see that I got down to 242 at one point. But that has all come back on.

Why? Why can I not kick this? When I was watching Biggest Loser one night, a son asked his dad why he didn't do better by them. I lost it! My daughter has the same eating issue I have! She is already over weight at 9 years old. Why in the world does that not motivate me?

What will it take to motivate me? Will anything do it? I have seen my grandmother's heart with half of it dead...seen the sonogram of that. It impacted me at the time, but not enough to make a change!

I see my daughter struggling, but that doesn't do it!

I know there are spiritual issues. But how do I knock those? I know God is bigger than this issue, but yet it is still here.

I can't do it alone, yet I don't know where to turn.

I want to run with my kids. Losing weight would give me so much more energy to do that!

I know I have battled this since I was in 5th grade. I think I have made a fake image of myself. I had to in order to survive back then. I had to see myself as thinner than I am. I often wonder if there is a reverse anorexia that makes me see myself thinner than I really am.

All the emotions in me tonight just boil down to, I don't believe I can do it. I don't believe I can kick the eating habits, I don't believe I can ever get passed this problem.

It is not the only struggle in my life. There are so many! I think so many times, I lose my battle with food because I just get tired of fighting! If I give in, the fight is over!

I wonder what the next year will bring. I would love to think it will bring 100 pounds less of me...or even 50 pounds less of me.

We will see.

Long time!

I knew it had been a while since I had blogged here, but had no idea how long! Sorry about that!

John and I are one week and one day into the Daniel Fast. I am doing it! I can' t believe it! I have not cheated even one time...and today has been a day of emergency with the agency, and I still haven't cheated! We couldn't take all the non-allowable foods out of the house because of the kids, so I have moved past temptation of even hershey kisses today as I am stressed out! Go God!

A really nice perk also is that I have lost 12.6 pounds since last Thursday! Woohoo!!!!! 3 more pounds, and I can say, "Good bye 240!" I love it!

I need to blog more, but work is calling!

Good bye 250!!!!!

Wow! I can't believe it has been a month since I have posted! If I still have any readers, I am happy to announce I am now below 250!!!!!! I weighted 249.5 this morning! I have officially lost 10.5 pounds! I am so excited....not just about the weight loss, but about my change in attiutude toward food. I don't rally have to "think" about not eating. I eat when I am hungry and don't when I am not. Even when it is time to eat, I don't eat if I am not hungry. I know this is because I am getting closer and closer to God! Food is not appealing because I know it has nothing to offer me except nutrition...so this even changes the choices I make in food! It is really amazing! I would love to take credit, but I can't because I have tried so many times before and failed! But now, it is just natural....so that means it has to be God!

I am praying about doing the Daniel fast! I have friends who have done it and said it was life changing. I need to do some more research and see what it entails, and how much I would have to modify for my kids. Has anyone done it with their young kids??? I am wondering if they could do it with me and what kind of impact it would have on them....

I actually did try to post while I was in Liberia, West Africa, but the internet was slow and I lost my LONG post! I lost 2 pounds while there because I was so busy working I literally did not eat! I only ate breakfast and lunch a couple of the 11 days I was gone! I didn't lose weight because the food wasn't good....we have awesome restaraunts that we eat at....in fact the first time I went, I gained weight! That just shouldn't happen when you travel to Africa!

Just 49.5 lbs until I can say good bye to 200!! I can't wait!!!!

munchies alert!

Today is one of those days where the munchies are about to take me over! The hardest time for me to fight off eating when I am not hungry is when I am tired, and today is one of those days when I am exhausted! I should have slept when the little ones slept, but instead, I worked. Now I am regretting that decision. So I ate a nectarine to try and squelch the munchies. I hope it works! I am still with in my points, but we are eating at Chuck E. Cheese tonight for NOah's birthday, so that means I have to save enough points for pizza! :) I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!