The Redemption of My Physical Body: part twenty

Wow, it's been a while since I have talked about this subject. I think it might be my favorite one because I am continuing to live in this blessing every day. I'm continue to live in freedom like I never thought I could know.

All in all I'm about 60 pounds lighter than my all-time highest weight. (I'm just saying this so that people can know that it really was a lot, not just 10 or 15 pounds, it took a while). I probably weighed something like that in college or so. I'm 40 pounds lighter than when I got married. So in a total of three years I lost 10, gained 30 and then lost 60 pounds. Needless to say, my body has kind of been on this kind of roller coaster.

Today I went for a run. I haven't really ran in ages. I mean, I run when I play ultimate and stuff like that, but not gone out and pounded the pavement. My exercise of choice is walking. It's easier to do, you don't always sweat really bad so you don't have to shower afterward, you can go a short distance or a long distance, I can walk with my jeans on, all I need are my tennis shoes. I even walk in my Chacos sometimes. Levi loves to walk with me, I can think and breathe and my arms and legs are moving, it's beautiful. I can enjoy nature and I'm rarely in pain (except maybe when I go up a hill or something). Okay, but I was sitting my quiet time, just enjoying the presence of the Lord when suddenly He impressed on my heart to go for a run. Really God? I have struggled with shin splints throughout my life, I have had knee issues, are you sure? Yes, go for a run.

So I got out there and it was really amazing. I felt so light and free. I had to stop and walk several times because my lungs weren't used to it, but that's okay. I'm really past caring what anybody thinks of me :). But my heart was pumping and I was pushing it. I was praying and asking that God would help our church to persevere, to break through the wall and continue in our prayer movement. I was praying for my friend who shared a really difficult thing lately, she's a runner so I thought of her :) and just praying that the Enemy couldn't lie to her.
(Side note: whenever I experience a spiritual mountaintop with God or have an amazing breakthrough or share something that is so deep inside of me I always encounter lies from the Enemy. It's just how it works. You think, "man, I said this wrong, now people are going to think this about me..." The truth is that Satan just got the crap knocked out of him and he's just fighting back, but the only thing he knows how to do is lie. So, the truth is that God delights in her bringing things into the light that were kept in darkness, she has great courage and has impacted my life for the better because of it.)
I was able to just struggle and fight and let it all come out in my prayers to the Lord. I probably only went a mile or so and probably walked half of it. But I am convinced that it was better than sitting on my couch. :)

The cool thing about my run is that I experienced freedom in a place where there had been bondage before. Exercise has been an area of bondage for me. Let me explain: I always felt like I "needed" to exercise in order to lose weight. Exercise was a chore, a punishment for my "bad behavior" on a diet. It was my thrashing about to get myself out of this quicksand that was my struggle with weight/food/binge-eating. God called me for a while just to lay down exercising all together. It was getting out of hand and He just told me to stop and only eat what my body called for. Whoa. Are you sure about this God? (Do you see how much I question him?!? haha!) But He was faithful to allow me to lose weight just by moving throughout my day as a coffee shop worker and eating (a lot) less than I did by just eating what my body CALLED for.

Then when I got pregnant He gave me walking. I walked about 3-4 times a week anywhere from 1-3 miles depending on what I felt like doing. God was telling me to listen to my body and take exercise off the pedestal. He was slowly prying the food out of my hands and slowly giving things back to me a hundred times better than what they had been before. I don't know if this means I will start running now, I don't know. I will let you know if that's the case, but I do know that I can have freedom to go and I can pray and ask Him for direction.

Also as a side note, I have been encouraging my husband to run. He complains sometimes that he doesn't get enough exercise and sometimes doesn't have enough stamina. I told him he should start running after work. His response was yeah, but I don't like running. (who DOES? Just kidding, I know there are some weird people out there who do:)) But it was like God was saying, hey, maybe you should stop telling him what to do and just be a freakin' example. He asked me how it went when I got back and I said it was great and told him all God taught me and showed me and he was like, man, I really wanna get a running stroller so I can take Levi. WHAT?! That's all I had to do? Just make it look like fun? Haha! Crazy.

I feel like the more I get healthy, the healthier I want to be. Does that make sense? It's like I know that eating healthy foods will make me feel better, so that's what I do. I know that getting some exercise makes me feel better, so that's what I do. It's little by little baby steps to get where you want to go. It's not just one big crash diet over and over every weekend, it is slowly and steadily and the more you do it, the more you will want to do it. Don't let Satan lie to you and tell you that you will never make it. I believed that lie for years. I thought, this weight is NEVER going to come off. I wanted to believe it was possible, but there was still this nagging voice (Satan's) that was telling me I couldn't. It was as though I had to stop "trying" and start listening to God.

For all of you practicals out there who are saying, yeah right Jody, that's fine and good for you, but I'm just impossible. I want to challenge you to take these practical steps.
-Turn off your TV. Don't watch it, don't look at it. Don't watch TV online.
-Don't eat while on the computer. Don't do it. I know, it's killing two birds with one stone. But it distracts you from what you are actually eating and you end up ignoring your stomach signs.
-Go to bed at 10, wake up at 6 and spend an hour with God before you do anything else. Before you check your email, phone, Facebook, blog, all of that. Just open up the Bible, get a journal and ask Him to speak. Read a Psalm, or a Proverb, read from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Those are good places to start. Get your journal and talk to God. If you schedule is earlier or later than mine, that's totally fine, but make sure and give yourself a solid hour. Not 15 minutes, not 30 minutes, an hour. This allows ample time to wait for the Lord to speak.
-Move throughout the day. If it's housework, just do it. If it's going on a walk at lunch instead of sleeping at your desk, do it. If it is getting home from work and getting your tennis shoes on and going for a 15 minute walk around the block, just do it. If it's going on a bike ride after dinner, do it. :)
-Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. Eat mostly healthy, but don't be completely perfect. It's okay to eat something with sugar in it as long as it's not the whole carton of ice cream. Sometimes it's just a bite of cake or one cookie. If you know you can't stop at one, then just don't have some. There will be another something tasty to eat tomorrow and for sure you WON'T regret not eating the sugary thing. I try not to have something sweet after every meal. It needs to be a treat every now and then. If you find you are eating dessert every night just say, I'm going to skip a few nights or days and not eat any. There are times when I tell my husband, "no, we can't have ice cream in the house, I'm going to clean it out." So we don't have ice cream in the house for a couple of weeks, and then it passes.

Okay, those are my practicals. If you have any other questions feel free to comment or email me or something.

A Bodily Cleansing :) part 14

::side note, if you have been keeping up with this and feel like you have strangely missed part 13, you will find that I had misnumbered and counted 11 twice, my bad::



I want to be perfect.

I was vacuuming my house and yelling at myself inside my head. If somebody would have walked in on me that moment they would have thought I was perfect. Here I was, on a Friday afternoon, vacuuming and cleaning.

I don't know what it is, maybe it is that I just came off of this cleanse, maybe it's the fact that it's that time of the month, maybe I don't have the right kinds of foods in my house, but it has not been a graceful re-entry into the world. This afternoon I just didn't care what I ate. It was like a throwing out of all the rules, kicking them out and completely going in another direction. That's why I was so angry at myself that afternoon. My anger spilled out onto Ben, onto Levi and onto the world. I wanted to do right, but instead I would do wrong. What is wrong with me? I was asking myself, I thought I was FREE from this? I wrote a whole series about how I am free. I'm going to explode out of my jeans in a few weeks, I'm going to look bloated and chubby again! Ahh! Those were the thoughts running through my head.

What was weird is that I didn't even care. It was like I just wanted this other food that was calling my name in the pantry. I could have thrown the food out, but I feel like I would have just gone to something else instead. Am I crazy? Yes. The whole time I'm thinking, what is going to bring me out of crazy land? I called Ben and told him about what I had done. He kind of laughed actually. It's good, because I take this stuff so seriously like it's life or death and he helps me to have some perspective. He asked me why I did it and I said, "I don't even know." Was I trying to get back at him again for leaving the brownies behind? No, that wasn't it. "Well, Jody, you have a choice." I HAVE A CHOICE?! It doesn't feel like I have a choice sometimes. Why doesn't it FEEL like I have a choice?

Maybe it's because I feel alone and I am weak when I am alone.

I want to live in community. Not to be co-dependent and only run to others with my problems, but because I tend toward isolation. I love people, but I tend to isolate myself, especially when I'm in sin. I feel as though I have a tremendous lack of friendships. Not the ones on Facebook and stuff like that, but friends who come over without notice, who call for no reason but just to talk, who come over for dinner or who invite me to come over at any time. Friends who share deepness from their hearts, their walks with God, who ask me to come over so I can pray with them... I'm not blaming anyone for this lack of friendships other than myself. I long for community. I long for a brotherhood, sisterhood... not just to go to the same church and see people each week to smile at them and say I'm doing fine, but to really love on and pray for them and when things are not fine to say that their not fine and could you please pray with me or talk through something with me... I long for community.

I have so much more to say on this subject. So much more that is coming out of my heart and spirit on this. I wish I lived closer, I wish I reached out to my neighbors down the street, why do I not just walk over there? Why do I not have them over? When is it that I don't just get in the car and drive to my friend's house? Okay, so much more. So much more about how I am sick of the American way and the American culture and our white picket fences and perfect neat little schedules and manners and politeness.

I'm going to come full-circle back to the whole eating thing... I think this is why I am never going to go on a "diet" again. Crashing is too much. I don't need to live my life on a roller coaster of "good eating" and "bad eating" I want to live my life on a journey towards the Lord. I want to follow Him and not try to do things on my own anymore.

Lord, please take this broken, messed-up vessel and use it for Your glory. Help me not to be distracted by me. Teach me to follow You with everything that I am.

A Bodily Cleansing :) part 10

Hm, how do I start this post? I sit and wonder how to confess what I have done. ...

I sort of feel like there is all this pressure on me (since I'm blogging about this) to be perfect and amazing and just have the most amazing results. Now that I step back I bit I realize that is a false perception.

I haven't been able to walk the past two days because of the weather. I feel like that's okay though, I don't want to be too hard on myself. Something has been gnawing in the back of my mind though, "I'm not doing that great. I'm not perfect." Last week I was perfect. This week I seem to be anything but perfect.

This afternoon I found myself eating cashews. Cashews? Really? They were in the pantry and then I got them out. Later on I picked them up and started eating them. "What in the world am I doing?" I thought. It kind of shook me.

Okay, if you have ever been on a hardcore diet or even a fast or something, it's like you begin to feel yourself free falling. You were in the sky and doing amazingly and feeling amazing and doing everything extra perfectly and eating exactly the amount of calories, drinking exactly the same water... and then somebody says something and it starts to unearth you. Then you feel strange and it makes you question things. Then you think, I'll just have this one thing and that's when you begin your free fall. That's just the beginning. Then there is no stopping because if you ate that one little thing that was kind of borderline then it's really justifiable to eat this other thing too, and, well I broke that rule so I might as well break this big one over here.

It was kind of a crazy day. I had a meeting, taught a piano lesson, visited a friend who had a baby, had worship team practice, Levi's sleeping was totally weird and his nap wasn't long enough. (This makes him have a constant whine, it's pretty much like fingernails on a chalkboard and you try to do anything you can to make it stop.) This afternoon I would go over and give him this little food (he gets himself pretty messy so you have to be careful what you give him and how you give it to him). Then I would go over here and do this thing on the computer, check this text message. Whoops, somebody is calling, should I start dinner? I really really want to go see my friend who just had her precious baby (it was amazing to hold her!!)

I was totally scattered. I didn't get dinner in the oven. Ben came home and nothing was done I was just standing in the kitchen blankly staring at him saying, "I didn't have time to fix the chicken, we have to go to worship team practice, I'm sorry you're hungry." I failed as a wife. And on top of that, I failed on my anniversary. I started to juice something and it just felt wrong. I didn't want the stupid juice. Ben was tired from being in and out of meetings all day and Levi was a mess. I pulled out the whole grain bread I got a Whole Foods and put some honey mustard and then the leftover calzone fillings from yesterday, stuck it in the toaster. Ben didn't want it. (It really frustrates me when Ben doesn't want food that I just "throw" together. If I take time to fix something and it's good, he LOVES it. Sometimes I don't care if he loves it or not, just eat it, it's food. :) So I ate it. I was hungry and I wanted to justify what I had done.

In explanation for this seemingly spur of the moment decision, I was thinking that I needed to stop the cleanse soon. I needed to start integrating things back into my life. I had been thinking all day about how I would do this. I think I imagined that it would be this perfect moment from heaven and the food I integrated back into my diet would come down on a plate with wings and a bright light that said, "well done, my good and faithful servant."

The weird part is that I began to feel that pull. When we came home from worship team practice (all three of us go) I saw the leftovers on the counter and it had been so good (everything is "so good" when you are not eating anything:)) and so I finished it. Honestly, it wasn't even a full meal's worth. But I began to feel myself magnetically pulled toward the pantry and the refrigerator. I thought, I need to juice something, hm, don't those strawberries look nice, oh yeah, that dried fruit in the pantry is good, I should have some oatmeal too... Thankfully, Ben was in the kitchen with me. He was cleaning and I was wanting to start grazing.

I started to talk out loud and say "I feel like I have broken this huge rule. I have done something that is irreversible." He asked me what in the world I was talking about. "You know," I said, "this cleanse thing, by eating that food I broke a rule and now I need to go plummeting down into the depths."
"Jody, I have never broken a rule of a diet, do you know why?"
"Because you have never been on a diet?"
"Exactly."
Shut up Ben, I don't need this right now. That's what I wanted to say. But the cool thing about Ben is he doesn't say things pridefully, he just says them logically.
"Yeah, but didn't you ever struggle with your eating when you went from swimming several hours a day to not swimming at all?"
"I think I just always ate what I wanted to eat" He said. "When I was swimming I could eat two big macs and felt great, but now if I ate two big macs it would make me want to throw up."
"Yeah, but when you are those big macs you had a good feeling right? Didn't you ever think when you were sad, if only I could have two big macs like that one time, then I would feel better."
He looked at me for a minute. Then he said, "I think as a man I compartmentalize those things. Food has its own little compartment. When I'm in that compartment I enjoy the food, I love the food, but I don't associate it with other good feelings. I think that women, who are all connected might tend to associate the feelings food gave them and try to mimic them in other situations. Maybe that's why women struggle with emotional eating more than men would."

Such wisdom there in our kitchen. I associate guilt with food, good feelings with food, boredom with food...

I think food needs to be put back in its proper place.

Lord, help me. My heart is prone towards selfishness, please help me to trust in You. Help me not to be prideful, but to walk humbly with You. I don't want to diet just for the sake of dieting. I want to learn from You the proper place for food.

A Bodily Cleansing :) part 6

So I'm back from our trip. All in all it was a lot of fun. The only meat I had was on a sandwich on Wednesday. I had bread a couple of times, whole grain of course. I drank a fair amount of water, went to bed late, got up somewhat late, slept mostly through the night and took an Ambien just to make sure. I really fall back on Ambien a lot, I'm not sure that's such a good thing.

On the way to and from I was reading through/skimming some books a friend loaned me that are about this thing called the "Halleluiah Diet" It's a Christian-based thing that this pastor started. He watched his mom be diagnosed with colon cancer, go through radiation, chemo and eventually die of pneumonia because the treatments had so weakened her body. Then he was diagnosed with colon cancer, he had a tumor the size of a baseball just under his rib cage. He didn't want to go through all the chemo and radiation (hell) he had watched his mom endure. So he decided to go the natural way. He started juicing things and ate ONLY raw fruits and vegetables. Anyways, it healed him. Cool story. So he started this thing called the "Halleluiah Diet"

I totally think this is a great idea. I believe that raw fruits and vegetables, organic and free of hormones and pesticides is so good. I also believe that we Americans put a lot of unnecessary crap in our body. Cokes, fast food, desserts, fried anything... All those wonderfully delicious foods... I'm so hungry now just thinking about them :) And we are plagued with so much illness: Heart disease and cancer to name a few. So yes, I agree with all that stuff. But this is reminding me of my days on my restrictive diet when I was fifteen years old. I read a book similar to this and was gung hoe. Now I'm reading it with a voice of caution in the back of my mind.

Here's my one problem: it's self-focused. It's body-focused. I'm going to backtrack and say that I don't think this pastor is so much self-focused. I think his intention is to help people, help heal people, but I wonder about his message that it is not about Christ's salvation but about how we can save ourselves. ... I just skimmed the book, read different passages and premises, so this is not a full-on review. Please read it and find out for yourself.

Like I said earlier, I get caught up in this self-centered nature of mine and suddenly food, eating, exercise is all about me. This is the tension between my selfish heart and the Holy Spirit within me.

On the other side of that is the fact that I need to care for this body SO THAT I will be able to minister to others. I need to put healthy things in it so I have the energy to study the Word, to minister to others, to love on my child, to love my husband, to worship God. I need to exercise so that I will have energy and stamina to do these things. But my FOCUS needs to be on the Lord and not on food. In other times in my life I have made dieting an idol, I don't want to do that again. I'm going to continue eating as healthy as I can, continue juicing and things, just to do what I need to do, but I do not want it to consume me.

Lord, help me in this. Help me to know Your will and what You desire for my body, mind and spirit. I want to be used for Your sake and for Your glory. You alone are worthy of my attention and time, help me to worship You.