Hello beautiful people! How are things? My sincere hope is that all is well with you. If I can be completely honest, the past few weeks have been a struggle for me. I ate a lot of things that I shouldn’t have, and let’s not even talk about exercise. It was patchy at best. Whew! The blessing in all of this, is that I learned a few things in my struggle that I would like to share with you. I have noticed that when I crave something that is unhealthy for me, there are at least one of these issues going on in my life:
- I haven’t spent time with God lately.
- You see, God has created us all to worship. When that focus is placed elsewhere, we begin to crave things that are not good for us. Sure, God can make all those things work together for our good, but doing the right thing first will save us unnecessary heartache/trauma.
- I have issues or feelings that I am suppressing or afraid to deal with.
- I don’t know about you, but I’m an emotional eater. I just realized what this was a few months ago. I literally eat instead of dealing with conflicting or confusing emotions. The funny thing is, God wants to help me with how I feel, but I want to handle it on my own. We are to cast all of our cares on Him because He cares for us, but sometimes being transparent is difficult. We may fear judgment, but God’s purpose for us seeking Him is so that He can remove the weight of the cares of this world. By giving God my problems and feelings, it says that I trust God to move in my situation. I can move freely and with confidence because I know that He has it under control.
- I have failed to plan my eating for the week.
- If we fail to plan, we plan to fail! It’s as simple as that. I can have all of the good intentions in the world, but life happens. A bad day at work usually translates a stop at the drive-thru on the way home. When I plan and prepare my meals, I take all of the guesswork out of eating healthy.
- My body is comfortable with the way things are.
- This last point is going to blow your mind! Did you know that your body will naturally fight for you to maintain your weight? One of your body’s main goals is to achieve and to maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis can simply be defined as ‘the body in balance’. One of the ways that body achieves this is called the Set Point Theory. Any change in your body weight may be seen as taking your body out of balance, which triggers chemicals in the brain to bring your body back to it’s comfortable place. For example, if you’ve been 250 pounds for a while, but you lost about 20 pounds. Your body will actually send signals to your brain to eat to try to gain those 20 pounds back! Remember, 250 pounds is where your body is in balance; healthy or not. It is up to you to fight through this natural process to reset your body and create a new normal.
The mind body connection with food is real and is definitely worth exploration. Before you take a bite out of that doughnut, ask yourself, do I really want this? How will indulging in this treat contribute to my goals? No matter if you decide to eat the doughnut or not, remember to give yourself some grace. We are striving for progress, not perfection! You will have bad days, or in my case, a bad week! It’s ok. The journey to wholeness is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow and steady wins the race! I got over my hump by taking some time to journal, pray, and give myself some much-needed grace. We all need grace daily. I pray that you not only give grace to others, but that you drink deeply of the well of God’s grace often. It never runs dry.
Healthfully yours,
Felicia