Are your eating habits out of control? Do you need to lose weight?
One fear dieters often confront when trying to get a lust for food under control is the argument of “If I don’t eat, I’ll get hungry.”
Gluttons get in the habit of stuffing their mouths at will or whim. It brings pleasure, they believe, and also prevents them from feeling hungry.
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” Jesus taught.
When I committed myself to spiritually losing weight over 20 years ago, I saw the need to reduce snacking between meals. I wanted to pray more instead of weigh more! But 11 a.m. would roll around, and I’d feel starved.
One day, after struggling with the temptation to snack, I realized that I didn’t need to fear hunger. Waiting until noon to eat was not going to kill me! I didn’t live to stuff a stomach. I lived to glorify God, and eating more than I needed did not glorify God.
As I prayed daily for spiritual support and strength instead of going to the kitchen for more cookies, the dreaded hunger pangs left. I soon found it easy to wait until mealtime to eat with no snacks in between.
I lost the extra weight, and I’m wearing the same size pants today that I discovered in the new me back then.
Don’t fear hunger. It won’t hurt you. God is giving you everything you need internally to feel happy, contented and well without having to chomp on something between your teeth.
This is exactly what I needed to hear. Lately that’s the exact thought that’s been coming – you’d better eat now or you’ll be hungry later! And I’ve been taking larger portions to work for my meal time than I can possibly eat. These are anxious thoughts that need to be replaced by peace, and joy, and power. Thanks for this short and sweet reminder of who and what truly feeds me!
Weight gain is such a topic in our society. It seems to translate into preoccupation with matter, not Spirit.
I often hear the overweight thought say, “matter is unreal, man is spiritual” as a justification for its physical manifestation. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. (literally!) By that is meant, one can’t expect refuge in the truth that man is spiritual, if man is indulging in matter.
If the body is thought objectified, then thought needs to awaken to see food for what it truly is and put it in its place, as Jesus did. I struggle with it too, but am starting to see clearer.
ha ha!
It’s 11:00 am and I just sat down in front of the computer to read Evans’ website with a cup of tea and a box of crackers! wow. You can’t get more of an angel message than that.
So, I put the crackers back and poured the tea down the sink and will wait for lunch time.
Maybe we have to change our thought about “weight” to “wait”?
Thank you for these good thoughts.
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2:34 P.M.
Physical condition is a belief only. I am not changing a physical condition but dispensing a physical belief. I am not viewing a physical body by looking with material eyes, I am a spititual imaging God’s beautiful, perfect and healthy qualities. Identify your perfect spiritual self. What weight problem?, it dosen’t exist in God’s eyes.
After decades of gradual weight gain and sporadic attempts to get back to my “right” size, it seemed futile. I fell into the supposition that as we get older we get portly. Then a photo a friend gave me woke me up. I got truthful with myself. why did I eat more than I obviously needed? Soon the answer was right there…I was turning to snacks and food for comfort and reward. So I would comfort myself every night with popcorn, cookies, icecream, key lime pie….. and so on. Well, once I admitted I was always comforted by Spirit I didn’t even want that false, sensual version. And my reward was a new sense of dominion over this craving for the material feeling of fullness and delicious tastes. At first it was hard as the familiar thought patterns struggled against my dominion. but I found that if i said “NO!” out loud, the craving left! It was only a thought. And not a genuine one at that. Soon the weight fell off and withing several months I had dropped three sizes. it was not a quick fix, but a rethinking of where my comfort and reward comes. And I saw, too, that we are bombarded with the lure of food everywhere we go, but the ads, commercials, billboards, aromas, and temptations had no pull. I see right through that. After years of feeling helpless, I awoke to the fact that food is not the source of my good. Yes, I still eat but only for need. I don’t think about food anymore. I think about the presence of Love all around me comforting, rewarding, blessing, directing, and sustaining. What a great diet. As you quoted , “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”.
I read one of your articles on weight the other day and got a real boost. Today, I was just heading to the kitchen to find “something good to eat” when I veered off and got to my computer instead. I read a couple more of those blog ideas–and the contributions from other bloggers and decided to forget the snacks. I can make it until dinner.
I remember talking with someone about overeating, and the man said that one should always go away from the table a little bit hungry. My response was hilarious: “You’ve got to be kidding!? I figured that if I couldn’t make it between meals without getting hungry, how in the world would I make it if I left the table hungry. Then, right behind this thought came mental images of starving children–their bellies distended with hunger. I saw those images as a child–and they terrified me. When my parents urged me as a child to “clean up my plate,” all I could see was those children. And you can bet your sweet bippie, I cleaned my plate!! How sad that these pictures, which were intended to move us to compassion and action over the issue of world hunger, became “graven images” in my thought. How can you measure or weigh that kind of fear? So, yeah, thanks for the ideas on snacking. But let’s not forget to dismantel the fears.
As the grocery shopper and cook in the family, it seems particularly hard not to “take thought.” Any thoughts about that?
“Take no thought,” is not advocating ignorance, indifference or carelessness. I see it as instruction to focus on the spiritual, in this case, with food, on what truly nourishes and satisfies one. From my experience, the more I know it’s truth and love that bring real joy to my family, it’s easy and wise to walk by the junk food when shopping for groceries, that even from a material point of view, holds no value.
I just came across a diet along these lines that works. I have done a variation of it in the past.
It is called the no S diet. No snacking, no sweets, and no seconds. An exception is on days starting with an S. Certain days such as a birthday or Thanksgiving are special so they are an S day.
Of course, one does not overdo it on an S day.
Jesus said that He had meat that the hearers did not know about. It was not physical food, but doing the will of His Father and communing with Him.