I have realized more and more in my life that when I try to control something I end up messing it up. As soon as I get my greasy little fingers on something it is bound to just fall apart.
I feel like weight loss needs to be almost unnoticeable. What is the saying? A watched pot never boils? When I keep stepping on the scale every day and several times a day, when I keep going and looking in the mirror at my stomach and keep thinking about it I defeat myself. When I exercise too hard and starve myself I either collapse or I give up and eat everything in sight.
All my life whenever I would TRY to lose weight I would either maintain or gain. That sounds crazy right? I think it was because my trying was fueled by my own self-will. As soon as my self-will burnt out I would crash and binge. I am still amazed at how long I did this. I mean, it was years of dieting one week and crashing that weekend, crashing several times in a week even. Maybe keeping it up for a two or three weeks (I'm not sure how long sometimes it runs together in my mind) and then crashing. Maybe because the amount of weight felt insurmountable. I remember when I reached 50 pounds over what I needed to be... it felt like I would never go back. I remember being categorized on the doctor's charts as being "obese" ... I really remember that, that hopelessness.
Hopelessness is a dark place. I think many women feel this way about their weight. Maybe you have 100 pounds to lose, maybe it's just the last 20 pounds that won't come off since the baby came. I think it's an overwhelming sense that "my body is never going to change" "I am never going to change" ...
So I'm sitting here, trying to think of how I got hope. What can I say to encourage you? Well, let's be clear about one thing first, hope is only found in Christ. If you are in Him you have an eternal hope of glory. Our bodies here on this earth will never work perfectly but thankfully when we pass into glory we will get a new body that will be perfect. No more of these earthly struggles. Let me just yell here: PRAISE THE LORD! I'm not gonna have to deal with this thing anymore.
Okay, after that I think what gave me a lot of hope was just pulling away from the world. I stopped watching TV, stopped reading "Fit" and "YM" and just started asking God, "What do You think of me?" The message of the world is that I will never be skinny enough, my hair will never be perfect enough, I will never be rich enough. It's not that I had to separate myself from people so much, I just had to really start to monitor what I looked at and listened to.
The more I asked the Lord what He thought, the more I asked Him what He gave me to eat... little by little, without even realizing it, I began to lose weight. The thing is, the Holy Spirit never told me to overeat. :) If anything, He gave me the self-control to pass up dessert if I didn't need it, the presence of mind not to overeat in the afternoon. I knew that God created fruits and vegetables for my benefit with all the vitamins and minerals in them. It was this new and crazy way of eating.
I know some of you may think I'm crazy with this, but I'm just being honest. This by no means has been a perfect process. I mess up often and stray from His leading often, but God has poured out mercy in my life in these times. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness. He is slow to anger and abounding in love.
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