You can stop emotional eating, whatever your size and shape. Hasn’t nearly everyone turned to food when cranky, tired, bored, or sad? Yep. When you’re upset, your emotions can “overtake” your brain and walk you to your fridge or pantry in search of a snack.
An emotion-driven woman an autopilot!
In this short article, I’ll share two stories of former emotional eaters–my mom and me as well as four basics steps to lifelong change. Then you’ll get a peek at my eBook Fit for Life.
What Is Emotional Eating?
It is eating food to bring pleasure or numb pain, especially when upset. Click & Tweet! You may feel lonely, so you eat nonjudgmental, “friend”-ly chips. You may be sad or angry; iIce cream seems the perfect antidote.
Sometimes a person who struggles with emotional eating also is enslaved to destructive eating problems such as:
- compulsive overeating
- bulimia (bingeing and purging)
- anorexia (self-induced starvationunder-eating, sometimes with over-exercising, for extreme weight loss)
Friend, if you have one of these destructive eating problems, may I encourage you to read Marie Notcheva’s book Redeemed from the Pit? The subtitle — “biblical repentance and restoration from the bondage of eating disorders — summarizes Marie’s own story of victory over eating disorders, specifically bulimia.
My Mom, Compulsive Overeater
My mom struggled with compulsive overeating. Like some overeaters, she ate like a robin in public and at the family dinner table, and gorged privately. She wore her food.
Two hundred seventy pounds and afraid of the big three-oh-oh, my mom marched into her first Weight Watchers meeting, head high. She wanted to stop emotional eating and fit her old clothes again. She also wanted to lose the shame. A year later, she had dropped 105 pounds, the size of a whole — albeit small — person. Click & Tweet!
Her enemy – not her body or her fat cells or her husband but the father of lies (John 8:44) – had tricked her every time she turned to food for comfort. He convinced her she’d find love in food. When she stopped believing lies, she began to make changes for a higher purpose.
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31
Me, the Skinny Glutton
I thought I was fat as I entered my teen years. I wasn’t. I just didn’t look like bird-legged Paris runway models, and this ate at me. (Pun, intended.)
Like a kid at a carnival, I peered into the fun house mirror and saw someone ugly: thunder thighs topped by a golf-ball-sized head. Me. Ugly me. .
I had “fat” thinking and counted calories every day, several times a day. Click & Tweet! I memorized the calorie counts of the foods I favored — from an apple to a bread slice to a square of cheese to a squirt of whipped cream. I wrote down everything I ate and added the numbers. If they went over my 1,500 daily allotment, I increased my daily exercises — crunches, leg lifts, push-ups, jump roping, jogging. If I was “good” and stayed under 1,500. I let myself have a small treat, like a cookie.
If I was “very bad” and topped 2,000 calories, I called myself every curse word I knew and on purpose overate to make myself feel sick. Yes, this was a sick sort of punishment that fit my imagined “crime.”
Can you imagine how legalistic I had become? Have you counted calories too and felt bad if you exceeded a certain number? How did you respond?
I was a skinny glutton with fat thinking and a sick system of rewards and punishments. Click & Tweet! It was godless, and I was full of pride — when I “succeeded” and when I “failed.” As I look back on the way I ate, I feel sad. . .and glad. How come? God changed me from the inside out. He can change you too.
4 Steps to Changing You
The perfect body eludes everyone because there’s no such thing. It also is the lesser goal.
The best goal is God’s process of change. The Holy Spirit empowers you to succeed. You won’t “lose ten pounds in a week,” as some quick-fix diets claim. You’ll discover something better: transformation.
God can transform you and give you the contentment you long for. These steps are filled out in detail in Elyse Fitzpatrick’s book Love to Eat, Hate to Eat.
- Agree with God that your current way of eating is sinful and cease from it.
- Become convinced that God’s way of disciplined eating is right and begin doing it.
- Change your thoughts and line them up with God’s thoughts (as revealed in the Bible), particularly in your eating habits.
- Keep on practicing these new thoughts and habit, even when the struggle gets hard.
Fit for Life eBook
Would you like a simple and direct plan to win the battle with food? Click & Tweet! My eBook shows you process, step by step. It’s practical and easy to follow. It’s hope for real change.
You’ll discover how to:
1. Think well.
2. Speak well.
3. Rest well.
4. Drink well.
5. Dress well.
6. Move well.
7. Eat well.
Did you notice that I placed “eat well” last? This might seem strange to someone with food problems, but is completely in line with God’s Word. God’s purposes never fail. Click & Tweet!
He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6
As you think-speak-rest-drink-dress-and-move well — as God desires — you will eat well and break the bondage of emotional eating.
FIT FOR LIFE
Your Biblical Guide to Getting Fit & Losing Weight
Click HERE to read a chapter.
eBook -only $7!
($17 value)
Sharing Hope with Your Heart,
