What Does Food Do For You? How Do You Replace It?

When you take away the food, you can be thrown into depression or
chaos unless you fill that void with something else, As
a Christian, that voice is best filled with the Lord.

Whenever you falter, turn to God's Word. Pray, meditate, keep
a prayer journal. According to Jesus, the main command of God is to "love Him with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all
your strength."

 

The second command is "love your neighbor as yourself." So, I would suggest, when cravings hit (as they surely will), call a friend, visit an elderly or disabled person, write a letter or communicate encouragement online. When we turn the focus on others, we learn that it's not all about me.

 

Though we start a weight loss program with drawing close to God, we must also hit the problem on mental and physical fronts.

Excess or fattening foods give us something, or else we wouldn’t turn to them. Examine your life. What does food do for you?

 

Comfort?

Stress relief?

Cessation of boredom?

Celebration?

 

To start:

 

1. If you haven’t already, decide on a food plan that works for you, one that provides a balanced, healthy way of eating and includes food you like and goes along with your lifestyle. If you can't eat that way forever with minor changes, you won't stay with it.

 

2. Purchase foods that work for your plan.

 

What must you keep around to stay on target?

    With me, I must have fruits and low-fat yogurt.

 

3. Decide on some activity.

 

Walking, running, gym, DVDs at home, dancing, water aerobics, swimming? What do you like?

 

     How can you incorporate your daily chores into exercise?

 

Suggestions

    Sit with small children & do toe touches or kicks?

    Go up and down steps at work every day?

    Break up sitting with 10-15 minutes of stretching or jogging in place?

     Housework

     Mowing lawn

     Knee bends while on telephone

 

Common sense tells us less in, more moving, equals weight loss, so on a practical level, we must do a combination of these two things.

Related Blogs:
 

https://welcome.weightwatchers.com/

http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/what-can-i-eat/

http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/flat-belly-diet

 

Any questions or suggestions?
 



Is It God's Way or the My Way?

There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death.
                                        Proverbs 16:25

     Willpower is fine as far as it goes, but for the compulsive overeater, it does not go far enough. The obsession we are trying to control is not rational, so it does not come under the sway of rational resolve. As a matter of fact, it is our “self-will run riot” that pushes us on from bite to bite all the way through a binge, so trying to use self-will to control compulsive overeating is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. The driving force behind out white-knuckled, clenched-teeth “no” can just as well shift over and fuel the mania to swallow more and more and everything.

                   from Hazelden Publication "When Willpower Is Not Enough"

First 3 steps of Overeaters Anonymous

 

1.     We admitted we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.     Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3.     Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

I’ve always been a journal-keeper through the good and the bad.

******I found this post in a journal from several years ago:

     What I have trouble with is step three (action). I can say the words “Lord, take over my will,” but I obviously don’t mean them because I continue to try to control and react negatively when it goes contrary to my wishes.

     I must learn to not react to others’ problems. Step three and giving up control is in direct proportion to my spiritual condition. God is in the now, not past or future.

 

 

Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind.

                           Matthew 22:37

 

     I think we get down the heart, the soul, even the strength. We follow Christ with everything in us, but we have a problem when it comes to our minds.

     Our minds take in our reason

                           logic

                           desire

                           imagination

                           memory

                           will

 

Our minds rebel, maybe only in a small area (like food). Jesus commanded us to love Him even with our whole mind. Rebellion in any area is simply rebellion, and God will not tolerate that. Like a rotten apple in a barrel of good ones, our small rebellion grows into a mountain of sin.

 

 

Who is driving the vehicle of your life? Who controls your food, your time, your thoughts?

 

When you begin the next diet, pray about it. Could it be that you're following a way that seems right to you, but ends in death and defeat?

 

 

 

How does symbolism affect our lives?

When I was in college, I loved English except for when the professor asked us to look for the symbolism in the stories we read. The stories she choose didn't make sense to me. Though I did well at every part of English except that, I often failed the symbolism tests.

Several years ago I took a fiction mentoring class for three days with award-winning Christian author, DiAnn Mills. One lesson focused on symbols. I explained I hated that. She tirelessly tried to convince me of its importance. The next year I took a class from DiAnn at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writing Conference, and I finally got it. Sorry, I was such a hardhead, DiAnn.

In my latest release, Worth Her Weight, food symbolized freedom to my main character. Of course, she learned that freedom only exists through Christ.

Tomorrow is Flag Day in America which gets me to thinking about how symbolism affects our lives. Men and women have died protecting the flag. Because we love America, we handle the flag with care by keeping it off the ground and folding it a certain way. Tomorrow, as flags unfurl across our cities, our minds will think of the United State of America. The flag doesn't become the land mass from "sea to shining sea," nor the great people that live within its boundaries, but we do fly it as a symbol of those things.

 

 

 

 

Other than God, the most important thing in my life is my marriage. The love that Charles and I share warms my heart. He's my friend, my lover, and my biggest fan. When we married, he slipped a wedding ring on my finger, and I've kept it there for 53 years. He's offered to buy me a new one, but this one means more to me than anything I might purchase today. The ring on this old, wrinkled hand of mine symbolizes the day I said "I do" commit to Charles.

 

Think about what symbols we use.

 

A cross represents our Christian faith because of Jesus' death on a cross.

 

A red rose stands for romantic love. (Take note of that, guys.)

 

For a fiftieth wedding anniversary, we give gold to indicate the golden years. (I wish.)

 

After 9/11, the workers looked at a metal beam that looked like a cross as a symbol that we would overcome.

 

Like my character, Lacey, in Worth Her Weight, I used food as my God, but food, drugs, alcohol, or even sports, shopping, or fishing can't replace God.

 

I open my Bible. I don't see it in the same way as the decorative cross. The Bible doesn't symbolize God's Word, it IS God's Word.

 

How does symbolism affect your life?

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

 



After God's Healing, What Next?

Have you ever prayed and felt God's forgiveness wash over you and cleanse you? What a wonderful feeling! The weight of sin drops from your life. You sparkle with excitement. Your energy level expands. You're free, free indeed.

You go your merry way, living your life as before, but forgiven and clean. In a few days, or weeks, or months, new burdens build up around your soul. What happened to your freedom? Why didn't it last? God forgave you. Why did you sin again?

Discouraged over not being able to sustain our salvation, we delve further into the anger and envy that plagued us before, so that the load we carry now is heavier than it was previously. Our minds fight greater demons. Our hearts break with failure. We are farther from God, not closer.

I've sensed this problem in the realm of weight loss. My mother started me on my first diet when I was fourteen. For over thirty years, I tried every diet imaginable. Some were healthy, some were not. Often, during that time, I called out to God, "Lord, keep me from craving sweets. Help me lose weight. Make this be the diet that works."

I began each new eating plan with great assurance. In the beginning, my hope and belief that I would lose my weight, keep it off, and never struggle with this problem again rose as high as the mountains that I wished to scale when we traveled to Red River, New Mexico. In later years, my hope grew weaker because of my failures. I would begin fresh, renewed with the promises of the new diet, only to find that in a few days, weeks, or months, food consumed my mind and my life.

Once again, I ate and ate. "That diet didn't work," I declared. I gained back the pounds I had lost, plus a few extra, so that by the time I tried a new program, I was even fatter than before. My situation was worse.


    But when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it roams through dry (arid) places in search of rest, but it does not find any.
    Then it says I will go back to my house from which I came out. And when it arrives, it finds the place unoccupied, swept, put in order, and decorated.
    Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and make their home there. And the last condition of that man becomes worse than the first. So also shall it be with this wicked generation.
                    Matthew 12:43-45
                  The Amplified Bible

These are Jesus' own words during a sermon to His followers.

Recently, God convicted our church leaders of the need to focus more on making disciples out of those who come to the altar for salvation. New converts were leaving the altar and going back to their usual lives without the strength and understanding that the Lord longs to give them for protection and strength from the devil's snares.

When sin is removed, God must fill the gap. After salvation must come lots of studying God's Word and lots of prayer. Friends and mentors are needed for instruction and guidance in the beginning until the new convert learns to rely on his own understanding of what God is saying to him, step by step.

In my Divine Dining Weight Controllers weekly class, this is also true in the realm of following Christ in weight loss. Just as before, if we begin a new plan and take away the food that brings us comfort and love and joy, we must fill our minds with something else or the food moves back in to take its usual place.

Food is not your friend.

Food is not your enemy.

Food is just a pleasant way of getting nutrition. Period.

Put God on the throne, instead of food.

Food doesn't belong there. God does.

When you start on the path of weight loss after years of compulsive overeating, concentrate less on what you eat or don't eat (or cleaning out your bodies) but concentrate more on drawing closer to the Lord, of filling your life with His presence.

Fill those empty places in your heart with God's love.

Fill your mind with God's wisdom.

Fill your life with truth, and the truth will set you truly free.

January is a good time to begin reading a devotion book like my Divine Dining: 365 Devotions to Guide You to Healthier Weight and Abundant Wellness. I find that daily reading God's Word and literature that guides us in the area of keeping our eating in God's control has helped me not only lose the 95 pounds but keep it off for nineteen years now. I recommend this to all compulsive overeaters like me.

Praise God, I'm now a recovering compulsive overeater.