Addiction

My mom went to rehab when I was 10 years old. She had struggled with her drinking mostly in secret for years, using alcohol as a crutch when she was overwhelmed by feeling like she didn't measure up. In her desperate attempt to be perfect, she drank to cope, because as we all know, no one can really "do it all" and certainly no one can do it all perfectly. Then after many years of struggle, she decided to quit and went to rehab to kick the addiction for good.

My mom has now been sober for more than 20 years. I am so incredibly proud of her and could go on for many, many paragraphs about how her struggle has affected and influenced my life for the better. She is my hero and because of her transparency, I have seen God do amazing things through her.  But before I get on a roll gushing about how great my mama is, I should probably get to what's relevant to today's post. My mom is not the only addict in my family. I stand there with her.

For years my struggle with food has been one between vanity ruling and food ruling. Some days I'm motivated by affecting the scale (and my waistline), some days I'm motivated by what feels good right at that moment. "I don't care," I tell myself, while shoving more tater tots in my mouth. And it's a lie, of course, because I DO care. But what I often care about is not being healthy or holy, it's about being thin. Anybody out there understand what that's like?

In the last 5ish years, I've asked God to help me find the right motivation. Wanting to be thin hasn't been enough of a motivation to keep me from going back to food. Wanting to be healthy hasn't even really done it, although it's helped. Food still has me shackled. I am food's slave. And where I was deceived the most in the last few years is I thought I had it "mostly" under control. 75% of the time, I could do the right thing, make the right decision about food. And that was a huge step forward in comparison to what it had been in the past. But as we all know, that last 1/4 of the time can completely destroy the good done in the other 3/4.

So I searched for a better dieting plan. I tried out more rules, more strategies, more recipes, hoping it would be the difference between success and failure. And, no surprise, I would always end up right back where I was. Feeling defeated and a bit hopeless. Wondering exactly what it was that I was doing wrong or shaming myself mercilessly for not being more self-controlled. But I never addressed the biggest issue at hand: I am an addict. And before I can find the right healthy eating plan, I have to confront this much larger elephant in the room.

Often in the past I have treated this ferocious monster more like a stray mouse. For instance, when I screwed up a dieting plan, I would tell my accountability partner with a bit of laughter in my voice, "Oh man, I screwed up so bad the other day... I think I ate a dozen cookies in like 10 minutes." And we'd laugh and commiserate and say "it happens" or "we all have those days". And that was all. But here's the thing: because I am an addict, just like my mom is an alcoholic, I cannot treat these moments like they're no big deal. If my mom had a glass of wine, she would be breaking 20 years of sobriety. And my eating addiction needs to be treated with the same amount of gravity.

Jesus said that if your arm causes you to sin, it's better to cut it off. In that same vein, I've decided to make some drastic changes, not unlike what my mom has had to do. Here's my new list:

1. I will make my home a safe zone. Food that has a hold on me will not cross the threshold. 
• This includes throwing out or donating all items that are not on my healthy eating plan
• If I host a dinner or party where non-diet items are around, those items will either be sent home with a guest or thrown out. The whole "but there's starving children in Africa!" mentality does not apply here because starving children in Africa do not benefit from me eating 5 extra brownies. 
2. I will invite God into my "non-diet" food choices. 
• I realized that I had basically been giving no thought or prayer to my food choices on "off days" or "off meals". It's like I'd been happily handing the reins over to food. I was treating those times like people do Las Vegas: What happens during off days, stays during off days. And we all know that slogan is total crap. 
3. I will tell trustworthy people just how serious this is for me in order to help hold me accountable.
• My mom is quick to tell people she's an alcoholic. It's the best way to keep her safe from temptation. If everyone knows she shouldn't drink, she won't be thinking about whether she can get away with having a glass of wine. Same deal with me. While I can't tell everyone I know I'm a food addict (the lines aren't as clear with food as they are with alcohol, unfortunately), I can tell key people. For example, the girls in my small group are definitely going to know about this, so that when we're out to eat together and I don't order anything, they don't do the girl pressure thing ("live a little!") or think I'm on some crazy diet.
4. I will have someone in my life who is similar to an AA sponsor.
• My best friend Katie is currently holding this role. She is working toward becoming a nutritional adviser and I'm her guinea pig. Total win-win situation.
5. I will not make a decision to make an exception in the moment. Ever.
• Anything not on the diet plan gets run by Katie at least 24 hours prior. That way I will never have a doubt in my mind about whether it's a good idea or not.

Instead of battling this monster from the same angle I have been over and over again for years, I feel like I'm finally attacking from the high ground. I've underestimated my opponent in the past and it has been my downfall. I think Satan even let me gain some ground to make me think that I was on the right track. But I'm not falling for it anymore. I'm done building this house on sand. I'm going to start giving myself the foundation I need so that when the wind and waves hit, I don't go running to the cookies.

The bottom line is this is a sin issue for me. I know no one wants to look at eating that way, and it may make some people think I'm over-spiritualizing, but for me, it's the truth. I'm letting something other than God rule. That's idolatry. So I'm going to have me an idol-burning party. :)

I beg for your prayers in this. Ben and I leave on vacation in 3 days and vacation has generally held a "no rules" mentality for me. It can't be that way ever again. I have to view it like an alcoholic going out and getting plastered and thinking it doesn't matter. That's ridiculous. And it's the same way with me and food. But I finally feel confident that this is the right path. Not to make me skinny or even to make me healthy, but to make me free. I think the other two will come shortly afterward.

Moving forward in faith,
Leigh

Battling in the Promised Land

It's been a long time. Which means I'm going to write a lot. And it's not going to be well-written, either, because if I try to tell myself it has to be perfect, I'm not going to write at all. So, because of all that, let's start with something funny to make you actually want to read the rest of the blog (I'll throw more in here and there to keep it interesting):

Let's just state the obvious first. It's been 3 years since I've written here. Which means it's been over 4 years since I started this crazy journey. Although, of course, my "healthy lifestyle" journey has been going on since long before I ever decide to have weight loss surgery. I do feel like it was a turning point, however. It's a place in my journey where I want to lay down stones like the Israelites did after they crossed the Jordan river (you can find the story in Joshua 3).

Like the Israelites, I feel like I had wandered a long time in the "weight loss" desert. I can even think of how my first huge weight loss moment that had happened a few years prior had kind of been like my emancipation from Egypt. I thought I'd never be free of the shackles of my weight and food struggles. And then God got me out and gave me miracles I didn't deserve. I lost 80 pounds, got married (which I had only thought would be possible if I were thin), and felt confident in how I looked for the first time in my life. But again like the Israelites, I hadn't learned the lesson of complete dependence on God. My eyes were on the deliverance and the promised land, not on God. And slowly but surely, I fell back into all the same problems.

All that fancy analogy means is that my motives weren't yet in check. I wanted to lose weight because I wanted to be thin. I wanted to be thin because I wanted to be beautiful. And I wanted to be beautiful because I felt I was worth more as a person (in my eyes and in the eyes of others) when I was pretty. And I didn't think beautiful and overweight were ever a package deal.

What happened right around the time I had surgery was a moment of surrendering my dieting and weight-loss journey over to God. My instinct was to make this all about vanity and I knew that had to change. It wasn't easy and I'm still fighting the instincts that were a part of how I thought for so long, but I can see clearly how it was the beginning of using my weight-loss struggle as a way to draw near to God. And in the process the struggle itself became not to be thin, but to be healthy in mind, body and soul. There are a few important truths there that I'm now getting my mind to actually believe:

1. My worth as a person is not tied to my weight or how thin I am. (Original faulty belief: thin = pretty, pretty = valuable. Faulty belief brought on by: being a teenager. Or walking through the mall. Or any pretty girl on television/movies/Miss America pageants. I could go on, but we all get this one, I think.)
2. Just like every other girl out there, I have a beauty that is all my own and was never meant to be compared to anyone else's. (Original faulty belief: if I am in a room with someone prettier than me, I am no longer pretty. Faulty belief brought on by: see above.)
3. Being thin and being healthy are not the same things. Just because I can keep my weight down does not mean I have a healthy mindset about food. In addition, an unhealthy mindset will eventually come back to bite me. (Original faulty belief: if I work out enough, I can eat whatever I want and then I'll be healthy AND not have to worry about my eating habits! Faulty belief brought on by: a certain family member who runs marathons and then eats licorice and peanut butter for breakfast.)

So here I am 3 years later. Here's the nitty gritty weight update: As of yesterday morning, I weigh 169.6 pounds. I'd maintained my weight between 155-160 for about 2 years and then last year we went through a crazy period where I put on about 10 pounds. The short version of the story is that we were in the process of moving across the country and I thought God had told me that as long as my clothes fit and I felt good about myself, He didn't want me to get on the scale. I honestly don't know if that was God, (and because of the result, I somehow doubt it) but regardless, I gained all the extra poundage in about 2 months. When we got to our new destination, I got on the scale and about died. And if I'm honest, I've been struggling within 5 pounds of that weigh-in weight since then.

Because of my weight going up (and unfortunately my pants size going up a size as well... yuck), I've recently jumped back on the weight-loss wagon. Now as many of you know, maintaining and losing are two very different things.

Maintaining is much more relaxed. A pound up, a pound down, no big deal. Losing weight means I'm suddenly much more stressed out about the scale. A pound down means nothing until I've gone at least a week with that pound still down. And dear Lord, if I go up a pound, it's DEVASTATING and turns me into a guilt-ridden mess who suddenly is going back through every bite to see where I went wrong. Eating while dieting can be even more of an unhealthy obsession than eating when not dieting. Which seems backwards to me, because I'm trying to be healthy.

All that being said, this time around, I am tweaking a few things. God's wisdom has taught me that focusing all day on the food I'm eating (or not eating) is not healthy. I have enough healthy habits that are cemented into my life (including not having any "binge items" in my house), that I don't have to be super strict and have the diet take over my life. I don't have to count every calorie. What I do have to do is listen to God about my eating.

Now I know that sounds super overly spiritual. And to be clear, I'm not saying I wait for the Holy Spirit to "move" before I allow myself to eat. It's not that dramatic. What I do is invite God into the kitchen with me. I talk to Him when I'm making my food choices. And, of course, He's with me in Costco, too, because we all know I'm not making it out of there without a pie in my cart if God's not helping me. :)

I've never been very good at stopping before my plate is empty, so I try to be more aware of His voice while I eat, too. Just because there's "only two" bites left doesn't mean I have to eat them (no joke, I've literally heard God tell me "no" when I already had the bite in my mouth. And He's had to remind me that I hadn't swallowed yet.). I try to listen when I load up my plate, too. For example, sometimes there's just a little more than enough leftovers than I really need. And my old instinct is to just put it all in my bowl. God's been teaching me that there's no reason to do that. Even if there's only a few bites left of the leftovers after I serve myself, it's better left in the fridge or even down the garbage disposal than put into my body when I'm already full.

Other than that, it's just one obviously good (or even "better than bad") choice at a time. And like Lysa TerKeurst talks about in Made to Crave (insert broken record noise), one victorious choice at a time leads to victory.

So, here's what all that practically means for me right now: I'm heavier than what I believe is healthy. I need to be more diligent about my choices and I'd like to lose some weight. Exactly how much is debatable. I'd love to be at 150, but I'm not holding myself to that number. I'm talking to God about it. I know my body would feel better if I built up some muscle (I've had some random health/body-broken issues lately), so I'm working on that. There are a few strict "rules" I hold to, but I like to think of them more like boundaries. I eat a protein-rich breakfast every morning. I only have one cup of coffee a day. I don't bring food into the house that I know will test my self-control. There are lots of other things, too, and maybe in my next post I'll lay it all out.

The first time I lost all my weight was a miracle God provided through basically perfect circumstances. The second time, it was a journey I took with God step by step, learning complete dependence on Him and, in the process, learning that the "promised land" of my weight-loss journey looked completely different than the one I had pictured. Now I feel like I've been dwelling in the promised land for a while, but some Philistines I didn't quite annihilate the first time around have reared their ugly heads and God and I are going back out to battle and claim the land. My prayer is that He'll help me truly clear out all the "idol-worship" that I have going on. I don't want to put my vanity or anything else before God. I want to honor Him in my eating and in doing so, honor Him in my life.