All I Want for Christmas is Weight Loss: When the Desire to Be Thinner Overwhelms You

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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey friend, Heather creekmar here, Merry Christmas. Thanks for listening to the Compared to podcast. WHOA What a moment we are in. I sort of feel like I need to do this episode to document this moment for posterity, because part of me is surprised that we're here, and the part of me isn't. Up to eighteen percent of adults in the US have tried using golp ones for weight loss. I'm not conting those who prescribed them as type two diabetes management, but friend, that's like one in every five people almost. That means you absolutely and definitely know someone or several someone's who are using glp ones. Maybe you're the one using them, and there's no shame or blame here. That's not why we're talking about this today. I'm not trying to talk you out of it. If you're getting the shots, I understand why. I'm also not going to try to talk about losing weight in this episode. Like friend, you would have to live under a rock to not want to lose weight. I'd like to lose weight too. I'm going to talk about that a little bit today. Some of you have been waiting or wanting me to say that, so I said it, So there you go. I would be thrilled to wake up tomorrow morning and be missing a bunch of pounds. But the pressure right now seems so amplified. And maybe it's because I've been in my own little cave trying to finish the second book on aging, or maybe it's because I haven't been on social media much, or maybe it's just because this happens every December for me at least, maybe it happens that way for you too. It's getting all the family photo Christmas cards, it's thinking about being in family photos or holiday events. It's figuring out what to wag to office parties or dressy functions. It's fighting not to go back to the disordered ways. I always related to food and December, which maybe you understand was eat all the things. Now in January, I can starve myself again. So today, can we sort this out together? If you're struggling that you're not where you want to be with your weight, I hope you listen to this encouragement and friend, if it does encourage you, like I know it would encourage someone else in your life. So would you consider sharing this episode with another woman you know or love, maybe discussing it with her. Or if you're like, no, this private struggle, I don't share this with anyone, Well, then hey, would you consider leaving a review of the show. That's like the nicest Christmas present you could give us is leaving a five star review wherever you listen. If you don't know how to do it, reach out when we can help. So thanks for being here today again, Merry Christmas. Now let's get to this tough, tough topic, what to do when the want to lose weight is overwhelming? Okay, Well, today's show is sponsored in part by but let's say inspired in part by the reality that I had a few clients this week, new clients who literally or almost apologized because they wanted to lose weight, as if they were saying something bad when they confess that to me. And they were clients to listen to the podcast, and I think that they had taken from listening to certain episodes of the podcast that it was bad for them to want to lose weight. And I was happy to let them off the hook with this truth, like you would have to be abnormal if you didn't want to lose weight, Like short of the small percentage of the population that is underweight and maybe trying to gain weight. It's safe to say that most people in the US want to lose weight. It's okay. Now here's where it gets tricky, though. Some of those who want to lose weight wear a size two, and some want to lose weight so they can fit back into that standard size twenty. And that's where it gets so deep and so complicated, because each of us is convinced that our struggle with our body and our desire to shrink is about something inside of us. It's something with us is flawed. This is my problem. It's my body that's the enemy. It's me that's the issue. It's my willpower. It's the way I eat, it's the way I exercise or don't exercise. This is about me, me, me, me, me. But friend, if we can just who let's zoom out, we can pause and step back and say, wait a second here. If everyone, almost everyone wants to lose weight, no matter what her size, it's got to be about something deeper, right. If we can zoom out, we have a chance of seeing that this problem isn't actually just about our bodies. It's about something much deeper. And I mentioned in the intro that we needed to note this moment, this cultural moment, for all of posterity. And here's what I mean by that. As recently as too or three years ago, we had celebrities with large bodies promoting body positivity and shouting big is beautiful, and then Ohsianthic, they've shrunk. What's the message? Big ain't so beautiful anymore. If you have a chance at skinny, you should take it, no matter what it costs. And the biggest disappointment to me and all this really isn't the celebrities, like I get, they will have an easier time finding roles if they fit a certain body type. What confuses me is tennis star Sermena Williams, whose angle was she had been doing everything quote unquote right and her body wouldn't shrink until she started on the semaglutide. And that scares me, friends, because she's a professional athlete. Professional athletes know how to feed their bodies appropriately for the amount of exercise they do every day. And when she says she was doing everything right, that's a different kind of right than when you and I give ourselves credit for choosing vegetables and taking a walk and say we did things right. Now she knows about how to feed her body appropriately. And yet she said she was doing that and she didn't shrink, and so the assumption was that because she didn't shrink, she wasn't healthy. Enter GLP ones. They help her shrink. They make a difference. Now she's healthier. I'm confused because we know what the GLP ones do. If you're not familiar with them, they're essentially appetites of presence. No, it's more complicated than that. For sure, they're stirring hormones that help you feel satiated, and some definitely need that. For sure. That's part of our body system that maybe broken, and the semiglutides can help set it right. I don't have any problem with the rationale for why someone would need to use a GLP one. But then there's others like many of the already thin Hollywood celebrities like the cast of Wicked, for example, who have just emaciated themselves. Their hunger and fullness cues probably weren't messed up. The GLP wants suppress appetite, so you can give yourself what is essentially a medically induced eating disorder. You eat less and you probably will shrink. A starving body shrinks, and the cultural moment is this. I've never been a big body posi fan. Like body positivity movement is not one that I signed on to, but the redeeming quality of that movement was that there was some level of cultural appreciation that people can come in different sizes. And now the GLP one message is vastly different than that. It's that we're all deep down thin people just waiting to starve our way out, and we've forgotten as a culture that keating disorders are very dangerous. When you starve, you waste away all your muscle, which will do long term metabolic damage. And when your body runs out a muscle to use for fuel, it starts to use your organs. Anorexics often die of heart issues, even at very young ages, because of electrolyte imbalances, and also because the heart muscle is one of the muscles that can waste away in a starving body. It's so dangerous, and yet it's popular again. It's glamorous. We're dying to be thin again. Didn't we already do this in the nineteen nineties, Like I thought, we had learned better, and again, please hear me. For some there's definitely a place for these medications. A good doctor shouldn't give it to someone with an eating disorder background. If you have a significant amount of weight you've been battling to lose, this might make sense for you. If you're a professional athlete who just had a baby, or a Hollywood star who already wore a size two. I'm just gonna say it, I think this is very dangerous. Of course, reality check here. Some of you have tried them and they didn't work for you like you hoped they would. You were super sick from the side effects, or they just didn't do much to silence your food noise. You could override whatever fullness cues you were getting, and it just didn't make a difference. Honestly, friend, I can only imagine that that is very frustrating. It was supposed to be the answer, and once again it wasn't. That's maddening. It's just another opportunity for dight culture to tell you there's something wrong with you. You were not good enough. If you were better, you'd know how to lose weight, you'd do better. I'm so sorry, friend, do not listen to that, because those are lies. But I'm sorry this added layer of the medications are making this whole relationship with food and body thing even worse for you. Now that's hard, but let's zoom out again. Let's take a thirty thousand foot view and let's get personal. I know what you mean when you say you just want to be smaller. I know why you want to shrink, and I know why you believe in your heart of hearts that thinner is always better because part of me really wants that too. And I'll say more about that right after this quick commercial break. You see, the glp ones are so tempting because it seems like we can snap our fingers and shrink, and some of us have been waiting for that opportunity our entire lives. Like I've personally wrestled with the thoughts of, well, maybe I could do the microdose, or what if there is something wrong in my body that only the golp ones could fix, Like shouldn't I try it? And yes, friend, hear me. I have so much freedom from my body image issues, I really do. I don't spend a lot of time fretting over my body or how it looks anymore. I feel very alive in my purpose and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about how you think I look. I really do feel free in the body image arena. And yet, and this is a big aunt. I'd like to lose some weight. When I first started talking about body image issues is a little more than a decade ago. I was forty years old and I wore a size four. That statement is appalling to some of you, and then others of you are like, oh, I get that. I struggle a lot even though I have a small body. But now, almost twelve years later, perimenopause, super stressful life situations, aging, Oh, friend, my daughter's the one wearing those size force now and as my weight crep up. As my size crep up. Like I got to size ten and that really wasn't a big deal because I had worn that size before at certain times in my life. But then I kept going to places I had never gone before, and then I leveled out and I've stayed in the same size for a few years now. Friend, I don't love ordering that size of clothing. I don't love holding my genes up to my husband's jeans when I take them out the laundry and feeling like mine or wider. I preferred being smaller. But here's what else I know, aside from wrestling the right combination of hormones in the season of my life, my body's mostly healthy. My hashi motos is in full remission, not because I've been restricting food, but because I finally gave myself freedom to eat and cultivate a healthy relationship with food. My thyroid numbers are great, though I'll never stop taking my natural desiccated thyroid medication. I feel good and energetic. Most days. I've worn a continuous glucose monitor, like just for fun out of curiosity. I have a long family history of diabetes, and my blood sugar's good ize several days a week. I eat nutritious foods about eighty percent of the time. According to my blood work, symptoms and related tests, I'm actually healthy. I just way too much. And every time I try to put any amount of intentionality into being quote unquote healthier with the secret hope that maybe I'll lose some weight too, I find myself resorting to my eating disorder defaults. I tell myself, Okay, maybe I'll just like not eat bread today and then I end up eating twice as much bread tomorrow. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, from research, from personal experience, from talking to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of you, diets don't work. I also know that restricting food for me will either land me back into a place of a full blown eating disorder. And that's if I get quote unquote good at restricting again and I was very good at it, or it will make me binge. I'll restrict and binge, restrict and binge, and that'll destroy the hard work I've put into healing my relationship with food. I know I can't do that now. Some of you may be saying, Heather, I hear you, but I'm not healthy, like I need to lose weight and that will solve my health problems. I see you. I hear you, friends, and I just pray that you have a wonderful, understanding doctor who doesn't get his or her information on health from social media. Because I was just reading the other day about how keto carb free diets are now being associated with greater levels of Alzheimer's and dementia. It's a dangerous roller coaster we've been on for the last few decades of cutting out entire food groups so that we could lose weight. And I know for many of you you followed that plan because a doctor told you to. Some of you went fat free in the nineteen nineties when a doctor told you that was the best way to lose weight, and then twenty years later the doctor said you had to be carb free. Maybe they were. There's some vegan period in there. It's all been very confusing, and it's hard to know who to trust and what is true because the science quote unquote science just keeps changing. And I've hesitated to share my journey in this. I certainly don't want to trigger you. Honestly. Part of my fear is that some of you are going to say, oh, Heather can't relate to me anymore because she's not as small as I am. And then others of you are going to say, oh, Heather can't relate to me anymore because she's not as big as I am. And I'm setting those fears aside today for one reason. You need to know that you're not the only one who holds a desire to lose weight. It's not a you problem. Again, it would be abnormal in our culture. If we didn't want to shrink, it's like wanting to be poor, or wanting to be unemployed, or wanting to be homeless. A thin body is a status, and it's a signal of wealth, privilege, intelligence value. We assign so so much to it. We idolize it. Of course we desire that, of course we would, So what do we do? It's frustrating to hold this desire that we can't just make happen. Like we live in an Amazon Prime society where we're used to getting what we want delivered within twenty four hours, and it seems like maybe golp once could do that, and for some maybe they have, again noting there's risks there, But for some of us, the struggle continues and maybe even feels harder as it seems like others have found a cure for their struggle. For anyone who tries the glps and goes off them for any reason, like that struggle that went away for a little while is just going to come right back. And so what do I do when I have an inordinate want? What do I do while I wait for something that may or may not ever happen. I may never get back to a small size or small size I like. I don't seem to have that kind of control over my body anymore. I could spend my entire life trying to self optimize and troubleshoot every little thing with the hope that maybe I could change my body size, and none of it, none of it might work. And that means I have to count the cost. What would it cost me to make weight loss a main goal in my life? Frankly, friend, it would cost me too much. It would cost my ability to be present with my family, because I know what I'm like when I am trying to follow a plan. It would cost me not being able to eat meals with them. It would cost me a lot of mental stress and frustrations. I'd have to turn my focus back to thinking about food and exercise in my body and what the skill says all of the time. If it cost me in my relationship with the Lord. Because that body of Thegitle is so so so tempting for me, I want to listen to it. I want to believe that as soon as my body is quote unquote good again, then I'll be able to have this amazing Christian life. But I know that's not the truth. Once that idol gets me to follow it, I keep following, and I can't serve Jesus and that idol for the sake of eternity. It's better for me to stay this size and put that idol aside so I can keep my eyes on Jesus and not be distracted by body change goals that are dictated by a body image iitle. But here's the other truth. I don't want to be the biggest one in the friend group. I don't want to be the biggest one in the picture. I don't want to see pictures of me on the internet and wonder how in the world I got so large. Friend. I did a speaking engagement not that long long ago, and they took a picture like from below, aiming up into the right as I was sitting on a stool, not a great angle. I want to be the thin one. I want status. I want you to see the photo and think, Wow, she looks good. I want glory. Yuck? Did I say that out loud? I write about this in my forty Day Body Image workbook close to the very end. But my struggle for glory is pretty similar to someone else's struggle for glory. Yeah, yeah, that's Lucifer, the most beautiful of all the angels. He wanted to be better than God, and we all know how that's turned out. And you may say how their I don't want to be better than God. I just kind of want to be better than all my friends, or at least as good as them. I just want to look better in pictures like just for me, I hear you. And yet, and yet, what's it gonna cost? Us? So what do we do? What do we do when our want overwhelms us? How do I keep just going through day by day holding this want, this desire, this goal for some of you, and yet knowing I don't have the power to snap my fingers and make it happen. What do we do with this want? Well, here's what I think we do. I think we have to hold a posture of humility from a position of secure worth. Okay, that's not the answer you're looking for. Attract with me here, I'm gonna say one more time, hold a posture of humility from a position of secure worth. Flippants too. Jesus modeled for us a posture of humility. We read how Jesus emptied himself of all of his glory, and that was glory that was rightly his, because he was God. But he came to earth to be like us. He took the human form of a servant. Isaiah tells us that the body he chose for himself was nothing to look at. I mean, wouldn't his mission have been easier if he had chosen to be the best looking guy on the planet. I mean, then everyone would have paid attention and respected him. Right, seems like that would have been an important part of strategic ministry. And yet he didn't. He modeled for us a posture of humility. He modeled for us what it's like to not live with selfish ambition or conceit. He did not rely on his looks. He didn't fret over whether or not he was good looking enough. He spent his life on earth serving the interests of others. And that's what we're commanded to do too. In this passage, anyone who tries to make it seem like being a good steward of your body is the most important thing you can do for the kingdom really needs to read Philippians. Jesus wasn't all about himself. He was all about others. But here's what we often miss when we think of humility. We're quick to say, oh, I've got that, I've got humility because I already think everyone else is better than me. But that's not true humility. Remember, our answer is holding a posture of humility from a position secure worth. Humility isn't deferring to everyone because you feel like yours gum and they're awesome. Humility is knowing your value, being secure in your worth, and still deciding to elevate others above yourself, thinking of others first, putting others interests and needs above your own. It's not deferring because you feel like you're the least. It's choosing to be the least here on earth because you know God has already chosen you, and you already have crowns and rewards waiting in heaven. You know this isn't the life that really counts. Not that you blow this life off. No, God gave you people to love, gifts to you stuff to do here, but you know that you are not of this world. You know that this culture's way of thinking and doing things is different from God's. And at the end of the day, you're gonna choose to obey him rather than believe how the social media influencer promised a better life. Here Christmas time and the Christmas song I love Oh Holy Night. I love it because of that one line. Then he appeared and the soul felt it's worth. Our souls will never feel their worth apart from Jesus and friend, isn't that really what we're longing for? Like? Okay, yeah, we can say like I want to be healthier, I want to be able to move better. You know, I want this or I want that. I just don't want people to overlook me anymore. Like I want to fit in. I don't want to be the fattest person of the extra You're like. All of that is true, and yet at the heart of it, I just have to wonder if I just want to feel my worth. I just want to feel valuable. I just want to feel like I'm lovable and worthy and I'm okay, and I fit in and no one's thinking bad thoughts about me and I won't be rejected. I just I want that kind of security. I want to know my worth. This is that reminder. I can't know that worth apart from Jesus. No amount of weight loss. No amount of surgery, no amount of fixing, trimming, reshaping, no amount of trying to get everything right in my diet and exercise and health things. No amount of self optimization is going to make me feel my worth. It just doesn't work that way. We were not designed to feel worthy based on how our bodies look, or really any of our achievements. Right. I think about Paul saying like all of his resume is dung in light of the Gospel, in light of Jesus, and that has to be our posture too. We can only have a posture of humility from a position of secure worth. Once I know my worth is found in Christ alone. Period, It's settled. I'm not still trying to earn it. I'm not still striving for it. I'm not still trying to prove it. My worth isn't ten pounds away, twenty pounds away, one hundred and twenty pounds away. No, my worth is settled. And because of that, I can lay down that desire I have for glory. I can rest in humility and say it's okay if I'm not winning, It's okay if I'm not the prettiest girl in the picture, It's okay. If you all got to see that picture of me online that was taken from below my thigh, it's okay because that's not really what it's about. I'm still worthy. God loves me, He sees me, he knows me, He has a plan for me. And so if your wont to lose weight is just overwhelming you, here's my charge. Be overwhelmed by something better this Christmas season. Be overwhelmed by the fact that God, God, the God of the universe, made himself a person, not a hot person, a person so that he could come and be rejected and die the death that you and I deserve to die because we're the ones that committed the sins. He didn't, and so he died and then was raised from the dead and restored to glory. He overcame sin and death so that we could be reconciled to God and someday spend eternity with him. That's a gospel friend. And if that doesn't overwhelm you, if that doesn't amaze you, if that doesn't stir your heart, then that's the place to start. Ask yourself, why why aren't I impressed by that? Why do I feel like, yeah, yeah, Heather, I know that, and yeah, but I would still be happier if I was skinnier. Friend, your soul will feel it's worth only when you're worth is found in Jesus. Thanks for listening today. I hope this has encouraged Jonavan has a leave us a review or share it with a friend. Starting December thirtieth, I've got a series of interviews with real women who have gone through our programs, but real women who started off with big body of the struggles that we have been able to help and walk with over the last few years. You're going to really love hearing their stories, so make sure to tune in starting the end of the month into the new year. And hey, our next forty day Journey will start on January twentieth. If you need more of this kind of encouragement. If you've tried all the health and diet things, you've tried, all the exercise things, you've done the same thing over and over again, you're expecting different results. Friend, try a new way this year. Join us on the forty day Journey beIN's January twenty and find out everything you need to know at improve body image dot com. Thanks for listening today. I hope something has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye bye. The Compared To podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Network for more great Christian content. I hope you go to Life audio dot com. Hey, friend, would you check out the date on that episode you just listened to? Yeah, it's been a minute. Listening to old podcast is almost like reading my diary from several years ago. In some cases, it's even a little embarrassing. So instead of listening straight through season by season, can I encourage you to skip ahead? I released brand new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, and if you're not sure where to start, you can go to Improvebody Image dot com find the start here button and I've got several episodes listed and categorized so you can find the topics that are most interesting to you. Your time is valuable, so skip straight to the good stuff. I'm glad you're here. Thanks for letting me be a part of your body image and food freedom journey.