God's Plan

As I was sitting in church today, I became aware of the fact that I think that GOD wants me to create an awareness with women about what is "right" about our bodies. We have a responsibility to our bodies because this is what houses our souls. Whatever we do to them needs to be "right" with GOD. If we use our bodies to separate ourselves from others, that is not right with GOD. If we try to make ourselves better than others by creating a better body than others, that is not right with GOD. If we sole judge ourselves or others by anything about theirs or our bodies, that is not right with GOD. If we abuse our bodies by using food as a drug or overexcersizing it, that is not right with GOD. So what is right with GOD? God is Love and the only thing right with GOD would be to love our bodies. Forgive ourselves for whatever it was with the past that was not right with GOD and move on from this day by being kind to our bodies and loving them for exactly the way they are. Comparing them to no one and not allowing anyone else to tell us what our bodies "Should be" because the only thing that is right by GOD is loving our bodies.

Thoughts for today

In the eating guidelines that Geneen Roth spells out in her book, Women Food and God, the one about eating without distractions was particularily challenging to me. I can not tell you how long I have been watching All My Children soap opera while eating. My days since I was 17 were centered around the show and I loved to eat my meal while watching. You would not believe the steps I would go through all these years to set this up. When I decided to follow the eating guidlines, I committed to practicing this guideline ACCEPT while watching All My Children...that would be toooooo hard!

Into the second day, I realized how this habit was formed. It is two-fold. I started doing this on my first diet at age of 17. I now realize that the reason I started doing this was because on the diet I hated the food I had to eat and somehow thought that if I watched my favorite show, I wouldn't notice the food that I was eating. Can you see how this was not good for me? Then during the times that I was not dieting, the reason I enjoyed eating so much while watching was because I was eating so much of really rediculous food that I thought was bad for me and was going to make me fat and the bad feeling about that wasn't so bad while watching my favorite show. In other words, the bad thing I was doing to myself was numbed by the good feeling of watching the show.

After realizing this, it was so easy for me to stop doing this. It was a huge step for me because this is an hour long show and I made sure that I was eating for the whole hour but sometimes was totally unaware what I was all eating.

It has now been 3 weeks since I stopped and it really was easy. I also find it a bit boring to sit and watch the show for a full hour of my time.

The second thing I wanted to share on my blog was about the pain and agony we put ourselves through to get a different body.

A friend of mine has a friend that is 71 and has been heavy most of her adult life. This woman who I will call Daisy is one of the most intrigueing people I have ever met. I am taken back by her whole demeaner and think she is beautiful both inside and out. I, personally, never gave much thought about her weight, but my friend talked about Daisy's weight all the time.

Recently, Daisy had knee surgery and I guess the medical field has scared her to death about her weight. My friend was telling me and my sisters that Daisy has decided to hire a personal trainer to make her excersize. I was a bit shocked by this and asked my friend how Daisy liked it. My friend (who is absolutely a restrictor) smiled, almost triumphantly and said that Daisy hated every minute of it, hated it! I thought at the time how horrible. To be 71 and HATE what she feels she has to do! An then I thought what was even more horrible was how other women just accepted that it was OK for Daisy to be doing something she HATED! We have all been sold a bill of goods about what "fat" people HAVE to do! For some reason, fat people need to do things they hate as opposed to thin people who don't have to do things they hate. So if a thin woman has vericose veins, should she go through the pain and agony of having them stripped even if she hates it? If a thin woman has big feet, should she walk around in smaller shoes even if she HATES the way it makes her feet feel to look like a perfect shoe size of 7? Why, why, why is it so acceptable for a fat woman to constantly do things she hates and everyone else thinks that is OK?

observing others

Through this process of re learning EVERYTHING about food and weight from Geneen Roth's Book, "Women Food and God", I have started to really observe others and their "diet" rituals. This is not so that I can judge them or challenge them, it is more to confirm what I already have learned.

Someone very close to me started dieting last year in November after learning from a physical that she was borderline diabetic and that her triglicerides were out of wack. Along with the form sent to her with these results was a prescription for some pills. She did not want to take the pills and decided to lose weight instead. She had had weight issues since she was a teenager. Lose some weight, gain some weight, lose some weight, gain some weight was her profile. Nine months after she started this, she looks good. 55 pounds gone and she looks like a different person.

So I started asking some questions. I stopped congratulating people for losing weight a long time ago because I stopped believing that it is something to congratulate people for. I asked her what she was doing to lose the weight. Everyone loves to tell you what they are doing to lose the weight and they usually start out by saying "It is really been kind of easy". She told me that she was eating only half her meal at lunch and saves the other half for dinner, she is making better choices like choosing foods that are less calories than what she normally eats and that she is walking everyday.

I asked her how often she weighs herself and she told me 3 times a day. I was floored! Why? She told me that she does it because if it shows that she gained even a pound, she will immediately go on the tread mill to "get rid of it". So I asked if she thought that losing weight was sheer willpower. "Oh absolutely" she said. Then I asked her how she felt about the prospect of living her life on sheer willpower in the future. She answered that it terrified her to think that she has to have this willpower everyday in order to continue losing weight and keeping it off. Terrified? OMG!

A couple of weeks ago she had met up with my family and we were all going to go out to eat after church and I had not seen her for a while and hoped that she would join us. When I asked her, she said that she couldn't because there wasn't anything at the restaurant that she COULD eat! They have all kinds of food but she couldn't eat any of it. Could it have been that she just wanted to show us how STRONG she was?

Think of the above story. Everyone who has read Geneen's book already knows were this path will lead. My heart goes out to my friend because this process she is putting herself through seems so harsh and difficult. She doesn't know any other way! She is ashamed of what her body was and even after 55 pounds, still is ashamed (but liking the compliments).

I have just developed such compassion for all the women who put themselves through this and the mental anguish it causes. There is another way!

Listening more

I has been two weeks from today that the book arrived. (WOMAN FOOD AND GOD). I have notw read it twice and I feel like a different person already. Things are starting to make sense to me. I have been able to reach back in my past and observed things that have happened. I try not to judge these incidents, but sometimes I do. Although I have not felt angry about some of these situations that happened in my life, I do see now how I have numbed myself from really feeling. I did not want the book to make me go back and see these things but it has.

There really was no decision made on my part to follow the eating guidelines. They all made sense to me and felt right. I began that first day to only eat when I was hungry, eat what I wanted to eat and eat without distractions. The eating only when I was hungry has been easy and really effortless. Out of habit, I have been inclined to grab some food but when I ask myself if I am hungry and the answer is "no", it has been easy to walk away from the food. I shrug my shoulders and tell myself that when I am hungry, I can have whatever it was that I was going to grab. Funny thing is that when I do get hungry, I don't want what I was going to grab. Do you know that I have never, since I was a teenager, eaten this way!

I also have realized that the feelings of being hungry do not always feel the same. They are different during the times of day. Morning hunger comes on fast and I can feel it in my throat. Afternoon hunger creeps up differently and it depends on if I have had caffeine. If I did have my coffee that morning, the feeling is somewhat shaky and feels real empty in my belly. At night it comes up quickly but the feelings inside my body are much deeper. Almost like I have to ask myself "Wait a minute, was that hunger I just felt?". I do not feel that panicky feeling when I am hungry like I have felt my whole life. Just, "Oh, it is time to eat something. What do I want?"

Eating at the table with no distractions has been the hardest for me, but I am getting used to it. I am tasting things that I have never tasted before but have been eating my whole life. My kids love the new rule and we are enjoying each other during these meal times. We are experimenting different tastes, textures and sensations and talking about them together!

I have also realized foods that I used to love and have stayed away from for years because of the beliefs I have had regarding them. I am slowly rediscovering foods that I loved and have really missed. I love this!

I have no idea the exact weight I was when I started and the great thing is that I really do not care. My body feels better. I did not start out to lose weight, I just wanted this obsession with food to end and I feel like it is ending. I know that the weight will just start falling off and feel that it already has.

I am starting to feel my body again and I am starting to feel again. Period!

What I have known for a very long time!

I do not know how, but for a very long time I have known that there was another way out of the over weight hell. I knew that it was not just about the food. I had a very hard time finding the support to back up that way of thinking. I tried to find the answers in all of my spiritual teachings and tried to put things together that make just common sense. After living a very long time with so many rules (this is bad for you, you shouldn't eat this, eat as much as you want of this), I had come to a place where I really did not know what was real anymore and what was propaganda for the diet industry.

Every diet I have been on that had the eating plans that were taught to me, did help me to lose weight, but how I suffered. All I could think about was food, food, food and how to make the very most out of every point I was given (and totally not calculating the m & ms). Food in general IS the problem and every diet made me think about food even more. What was even worse was the thought that I would have to live like this FOREVER! I suffered through each diet, angry at myself all the time that I had to do this. What was defective about me that I had to go through this hell? Day after day food was even more magnified than before. I dared not ask God's help in this because I always thought of losing weight something superficial and egotistic, both of which God has no interest in.

It was not until I read the book that I began to understand that I am not my full potential being because weight is on my mind 24/7. I did not have room in my life because this issue was taking up my mind space. It made me crabby, it made me unable to focus because all I could think of was what I was going to eat next. My mind was filled with food concoctions of what I could look forward to. I was always future thinking and that takes you away from the beauty of the present moment. And I have been doing this for a very long time. It is almost as if, once I had figured out what I was going to eat at the next eating time, I could then concentrate on whatever I was doing at the time while still anxiously anticipating that next feeding time. And, oh, was I going to make it something wonderful! Eating became the only thing I looked forward too. I only ate with people who I thought would totally accept my ways of eating or else I would eat alone. I did not feel bad about myself before I ate, but I always did after.

God did not intend me to live my life this way. It is not important to Him if I am fat or skinny, but I know that he wants me to LIVE, FEEL, BE AMAZED and most importantly, love myself so that I could serve Him better. An obsession, like food, will take you away from GOD. That is the affliction that I wanted to end. It wasn't being overweight, it was the role food played in my life and the misuse of it that was the affliction.

I feel like after reading the book, I am on my way home. I am on my way to where I have wanted to be for such a very long time. It is no longe that I want to "Lose Weight" which I have wanted my whole adult life, it is that I no longer want to be obsessed with food!

How it started

Realizing that I am 48 years old (soon to be 49) and that I have spent most of my adult years overweight, I finally got sick of it. I fell to me knees and asked (begged) God to deliver me from this affliction! Knowing what I know about God, I had total faith that he would. My problem was that I did not know if this was something that I SHOULD ask God to help me with. After all, the physical body I have always thought was my responsibility. I had never understood what GOD's interest in the physical body would be. In my prayer, I told him that if this was not something that I was supposed to ask him for help with, that is OK. But I truly did not know what or how to get rid of this affliction of being overweight.



I have know for some time that there is something more to this issue than the food I eat and how much of it I eat. I have felt for a long time that going on a diet was a bandaid fix on a much bigger problem, but I did not know what that problem was. I also have known for a long time that the messages that I grew up with in regards to food and weight were constantly playing in my mind and I could not escape them.



I have looked back on my life many times to pinpoint what happened and why. Reasons have dabbled my brain but nothing so concrete to give me a way to fix it. This I know, when I was a teenager, I was not overwieght! Sure, there were thinner girls than me and I admired their thinness but I was satisfied by my body. When I was a senior in high school, my mother decided to join Weight Watchers with some of her friends. She asked me if I wanted to join with her. I was absolutely floored! "OMG, my mother is asking me to join Weight Watchers with her! Does she think I need to loose weight? She must think so if she asked me! OMG this is my mother and she knows so much better than I about these things (even though I would never admit that to her) so it must be true that I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT!"

So at the ripe old age of 17 I joined Weight Watchers with my Mom. They weighed me and told me that I needed to lose 32 pounds. I sat in the meeting and listened to everyone talk about their temptations that they struggled with that week and about the weight they lost. Anyone who lost weight was applauded and anyone who did not were made to feel as if they had done something wrong. There was one woman in her 50's that stood up and said that she was in "maintenance"for 18 years and that she knew she would always have to watch her weight. I sat there in total fear thinking that I would have to spend the next 18 years in "maintenance". I quickly turned the page in the book to the maintenance page to see what you could "all" eat on maintenance and became immediately disappointed in how the rest of my life was going to be only eating the foods "on maintenance"!

Of course I lost weight. Anyone would with what we were allowed to eat! But did I suffer. Up till that point in my life, I ate what I wanted and did not pay a whole lot of attention to food. It was no big deal. Now, food was so magnified in my life. I had to pre plan every meal. Believe me, what I planned the day before to eat the next day was never appealing to me on that next day. All of the sudden food was front and center in my life. I yearned for those simpler days when I just ate when it was time to eat whateve sounded good to me. I got the ooohs and aaahs from everyone about how great I looked. I really liked that part! Mom was bragging about me all over the place! AAAH! I finally found a way to be front and center with her. Being one of seven children, that was not easy!

And so the diet cycle began and so did all of my weight problems.

Now go forward to me being on my knees asking for GOD's help. The Oprah show (which I rarely watched because it was on during my Piranha time of the day) was on and I was able to watch about 20 minutes of it. I was eldersitting and my replacement was not there yet because she was running late. They had this woman on named Geneen Roth who had written a book called "Women Food and God". The whole audience was filled with people who had read the book and all of them had lost weight. Something about it grabbed my attention (maybe it was the line that she said she made the decision to never diet again) and I immediately decided to buy the book. Well, the cd's would work better for me so I could put it on my Ipod and listen to it.

I do not know if I have ever been so anxious to get something in the mail! The moment it came, I put it on my Ipod and began listening! GOD HAD TRULY ANSWERED MY PRAYERS! I realized very quickly that I was as close as I had ever come to ending this affliction.

My blog is about my journey to end this affliction of being overweight. Little did I realize what the real affliction actually was.