Breaking Free from the Religion of Dieting: Tara's Story of Body Image, Faith, and True Freedom

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Life Audio.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: Hey there, head the creekmar here, thanks for listening to the Compared to You podcast today. I promised you a new series on the religion of dieting, and we're going to get to that, but I thought it might be helpful first for you to hear another story of a real woman whose life has been transformed as she's walked through really sorting out her body, image and food issues with God at the center of that sorting process. Her name is Tara, and she's been let's say, processing and sorting and working and praying and learning and all the things for almost five years now. In fact, she's done so much of it that she's joined us and is now one of the coaches on our team. And if you've been part of the Forty Day Journey, you've met her in the forty Day Journey. But I thought today it might be helpful to share Terra's story because in terror story, you're gonna hear that scene theme I mentioned that religion of dieting. She thought by handling food the way she was handling food, she was actually doing it the biblical way. She was trying to be a good Christian through restricting food. I think this might be encouraging or informative to you. We're going to dig into this topping more of the next couple weeks, but for today, here's Tara's story. I'm glad you're here for it. Tara, thanks for being on the Compared to his show today, Oh, I'm so.

00:01:38
Speaker 1: Happy to be here. Such a blessing to be with you.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: So Tara is here to share her journey and I do. So let's go back to the beginning. Your journey started. What would you say last.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: January January tenth or something like that.

00:01:54
Speaker 2: Okay, what about look?

00:01:56
Speaker 1: Oh goodness. So it's interesting because I feel like that was the beginning of my But now that we're in November and I'm kind of going through it, I look back and I'm like, oh, man, God had brought me, had been preparing me for this way before that day. But for me, that date was like I had gone in to do my morning You Version Bible app which was something that I had been doing daily with God for a while.

00:02:21
Speaker 3: Now as I get up early before the kids.

00:02:23
Speaker 1: When the house is quiet, and I'd go to my Version Holy Bible app and I would do like a guided prayer. I would do plans and read the devotionals and then do the scriptures and that kind of thing to try to get my day started because I was really, you know, had been struggling in many areas, and on that particular day, I remember going in and just looking her usual at another Bible plan I was looking for to help me with my food. How can I eat biblically to lose weight? To fast? What should I be eating? How can I make this work? God? How do I honor You? And I was at that place where I was like I had done every Bible plan a day, had a new version that came up with food, I had tried every fast. I mean, I'm kind of backtracking here, but basically, in that moment, you're compared to who Bible plant came up and there was a pair on with the little measuring tape, and of course I'm like, well, there it is. I'm going to get my little waist skinny again. And it was so interesting and I clicked on it and I started reading the devotional and I will never forget like I don't even remember what the words were at the time. I just remember being gripped, like like the Holy Spirit just gripped me in that moment, and there was this pause like this is totally different, this is nothing that I expected. And it was like, oh lord, she's speaking my heart, my mind, my thoughts, everything, And I think I read like the entire devotional in that one sitting. And I went back and I kept doing it day after day, and I feel like it was just there was something so desperate in me at that point, and your words gripped me so much, and from that it was just like, thus started my journey.

00:04:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's go back even before that then, Yeah, what's your relationship like with your food and your body?

00:04:30
Speaker 1: Like what did that look like?

00:04:32
Speaker 2: And you know, go back as far as you want to in terms of your story.

00:04:37
Speaker 1: I know I was thinking about that. I was like, man, it's funny because when I thought about January, I thought like, oh, yeah, you know, my story with this it has only been you know, a couple of years in my mind. But when I you know, being in this, in this process and this journey with you since then, I've.

00:04:53
Speaker 3: Realized how far back it really goes.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: And so January was really like that epitome of like hitting a wall and just being like I need help and not even realizing it so before that. Really going back, I mean, gosh, we could go back, way way far back, but I think it really began. Like I'm so blessed. I was raised in like a wonderful home, I mean, typical kind of typical two parents. I was very lucky. I grew up with the foundation in Jesus. That was so I think it was such a gift that got me through so much. I live up and grew up all my whole life in Massachusetts and the suburbs. We went to church and we talked about Jesus, but we also followed, you know, a lot of the ways of the world. We're part of our lifestyle. You know, what to eat was shaped by you know, my mom, and you know what she thought was healthy or good food at the time. Unbeknownst to her, you know, I was, you know, utterly on. You know, you eat your good foods first, and then you eat other foods afterwards. Treats are you know, to be had only every now and then. And my parents wanted me very much to know that I was loved, and they never They always showed me that. But I grew up as even as a young child, showing signs of anxiety and depression, lots of fears, lots of insecurities, and as a result, I think that my my mom in particular, really felt that it was important for me, you know, have self esteem, to feel good about myself. She really wanted me to see how valuable I was, and though in her heart, I know she knows that her goal was to believe, for me to believe that Jesus was, you know, my my teaching me that he was my savior and that he loved me. She praised me so much on the external things. I had a lot of praise on from early on, just on how I.

00:06:52
Speaker 3: Look, how I.

00:06:55
Speaker 1: Performed in my sports, or how I did in school, And though it was always in a very positive way, I learned to feel that I wanted to continue gaining that prace and gaining that feeling. That kind of started a lifelong journey of I think, really seeking approval, really seeking a desire to be to be loved. And what I ended up doing was getting into a sport. I feel like that really was detrimental for me and my journey with insecurity. And I did gymnastics starting at a really young age and got into competitive gym mastics really early on, and as it was built of that, I had a huge focus on my body. So when I was younger, it was fun. I had loved it. I had a skill for it, I had a talent. We flipped around, it was fun. But growing up I was always really aware of what I ate, of how I looked having to wear this small, little, leer tard. And then once my body started to.

00:07:54
Speaker 3: Change as I hit puberty, as.

00:07:57
Speaker 1: Girls change, and the small, any little shape I was in started to get larger, and the hips got bigger, and the belly of the bottom and all those areas start to fill out. I just was like, oh no, no, no, no, no, this can't happen. It was like okay, And I immediately started restricting and going into ways that I could could control that my body from not changing basically, and trying to keep it within what I thought it needed to be. And then just this concept of a judge staring at me, judging me, like everything was about are my toes pointed perfectly or my legs straight as this move? You know, every single tiny detail of me was constant being judged. And I think that I just took that viewpoint on a larger scale my whole life and really felt that I needed to win the approval of my parents, of my teachers, of my peers. And then with a kind of predisposition for anxiety and depression, I spent most of my younger days, like my young teenage days, just feeling so unworthy and I loved so terrified. There's so much fear, so much insecurity, and my mother and her you know, desire and hopes of just building that confidence in me, you know, would often make comments just like you know, they're jealous or you know, you're such a you know, you have such kind of heart and you do so well in school and you're so this. You know, they just you know, you know, you always have a shoes to say, like you know, you you know, oh someone's always some guys always interested in you, you know. And then that started getting me into thinking as I got older, too, about attention from from them. So then I was like, well, if the guy's interested in me, and that means that I'm valuable or worth something and it's worth being jealous for. Then now it came to be about keeping my body in this this way for a sport. Then it became keeping my body looking attractive to get the attention of mem And I also sort of started to give up almost on create cultivating friendships because I just felt like I never fit in with the girls. I always felt really less than I was the subject of some bullying in high school, which was really really hard for me too as well. So there were a lot of days where I would sit or in the art room for lunch because I didn't have someone to sit with, and I would just do artwork and paint and I'd pretend like I put this front on, to pretend like it didn't bother me that I chose to do that, that I wanted to be alone and I was a loner, that I was different, and I went through many different phases of trying to create the identity that I wanted everyone else to see. So it was so much of me trying to put on what I thought I needed to show the world to protect myself. So I think that with this sort of between the eating and the you know, the depression, the anxiety in my younger years, it really took me down a dark road more with getting into alcohol and drugs, and so the food never seemed like a big deal to me. That was just normal, like you just you have to restrict to state thin. You have to not eat, you know, you have to make sure you don't eat to much sugar. You have to restrict calories. You have to eat healthy. You know. We didn't have chips and we didn't have junk food in the house. And I remember, like I remember those treat cereals would be like a special evening. I could have a treat cereal for dessert because like you can't have like Cinnamento's crunch for breakfast, Like that would be awful and like that's so bad for your body and all that stuff. So that became a I think the morality of food started. And that's that time too. And then my journey with drugs and alcohol got really really, really scary as I got a little bit older and went off to college and sort of it became easy and available, you know. I started at a young age experimenting with it, and I always kept my grades up. I always, you know, did with such a perfectionist and everything I did and said. If I just had everything with good on the outid, if I kept the straight a's, if I kept the sports up, if I kept all these things up, you know, community service and did all these things that if I just tell the right behaviors that I would be lovable and that somebody would love me, or if I had a boyfriend, or and eventually all those things will come you know, we'll come crashing down, and the boyfriend will leave and the you know, test will go bad, or I will eat you know, the wrong food, and and so my story really took a dark turn in my college years, and my idea of what I thought my life was going to look like really drastically changed from that of like, Okay, I'm going to be success. I'm going to you know, do what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to get the job, and I'm going to make the money, and I'm going to find a great husband, and I'm going to have you know, the two kids or.

00:12:55
Speaker 4: You know, what do they say, like the one point five kids?

00:12:57
Speaker 1: Two were five kids, and I want big events and all those things. And it was just I was so caught up in what I believed I needed to do, and all along my journey, the one it's so hard because it's like it's it's just so there's so much that happens in our lives the one kind of repeating thing was always Jesus. He was always there. I was just never good enough for him. I was never there was so much shame and guilt, there was so much fear, and there was so much like I just was. I just never felt worthy. And I did not understand the real true love of Jesus, like I knew that he loved me. I understood the cross, or so I thought, you know, he died for my sins. But it was always like I would go back to him with sort of like a begging and a pleading and an apologizing and I'm so sorry I failed you again, and a Lord, please help me, and what am I doing wrong? And and there were periods of time I think, you know, there's so many periods of time where I hit such dark places in my life where I know, without a shadow of a doubt that it was that it was God in those moments. And so after college, I my life took a radical, drastic turn, and I knew. My family intervened and we knew that I needed help, and I went in to start my recovery. And by the time I was twenty four, I had gone into too in another two different rehabs and I got myself sober. I shouldn't say gotten myself sober.

00:14:33
Speaker 3: Because I that was by the grace of God.

00:14:36
Speaker 1: But I had gone through programs, and I had fallen on my knees and surrender on so many occasions. And I think it was really, you know, in that point that my relationship with with my Savior really deepened, where I really started to understand how much he loved me, and I started to look back on all the times that he was there for me and some of those deepest, darkest moments of such pain and such sadness, and when I started to just sort of get back on my feet and I felt like I almost had to start my life over. It was like a whole new beginning and I felt like a little girl again, just sort of learning learning how to to live life. Like I had no coping, I had no I had no way to cope with any of the hardships in life. I really didn't understand that it was okay to not be okay, that it was okay to not feel okay at the time, that it was okay to not be happy all the time. I didn't know. I really thought that like life was supposed to be this happy, comfortable thing all the time, and if it wasn't, I was doing something wrong and I had to fight it fix it. And so I think in you know, my life, God brought in a wonderful, wonderful man into my life who and gave me the gift of two amazing, wonderful children.

00:16:10
Speaker 3: And then I just.

00:16:12
Speaker 1: Dove into marriage and motherhood and and that was incredible. But around the time that my son was about to be born, we went through about the first five years of his life, like just the most extreme medical conditions with him. He was premature, two months early, you know, lived in the hospitals the first month of his life. I was in our hospitals the first year his life, diagnosed with all sorts of different issues with his kidneys, had surgery at a year old, and you you know, we got through it. God was so good during that time, again deepening my faith, deepening my walk with him. And then we sort of were like, okay, yeah, all right, we're gonna move on down next stage. And about eighteen months my son who was diagnosed with reno blastoma, which is an extremely rare cancer of the eye. And at that time that I feel like was really, like there have been these points in my life where God really had showed up in some really dark places, and that was really one of them. But for the first time, this was something that I didn't blame myself for, like I didn't cause this. And I actually struggled with that for a while, Like we went into genetic testing because I thought my first thought was I did this. I didn't. I couldn't even do this right for it. I couldn't even bring a life into the world for you, Like I must have eaten something wrong, I must have taken like I didn't exercise. It was It's insane, the guilt in me, you know. And again I'm going to use this word, and this is only from the grace that you've given me. How there is pride, Like I really, even though most of my life was at a point of feeling worthless and unlovable or not good enough, it was still always about me. It was like I was at the center of everything that was right or wrong or good or bad or awful. And even when my son had the cancer, it was like, oh my gosh, what did I do wrong? And I realized, wow, Like God worked with me so much for me to understand, like it wasn't genetics, it wasn't anything, it was just it just happened. And we had many years of a struggle with that. And God was good every part of the way. He brought his grace and his like I call him like God moments or God winks, where he would just make himself so obvious, like the doctor would just be in awe that like this seizure would work or this would come. And that's I mean, I could talk to you for hours about that a little. But I bring that up because I feel like these were all parts that God had to like start working and softening my heart and pointing me back towards Him and start sort of I had to start dying a little bit to self through all these and I didn't even realize that's what was happening. But there was something about my life that was turning less about me and more about Him. And I remember people saying to me, like, how could you get through that? And I said, after we got through it, and he's doing wonderful now, he's eleven, he's great. He's been cancer free now since he was five. Like it's such a blessing. But I look back and I say I wouldn't change us saying about what happened in my life with my alcoholism and drug addiction, with my son and what we went through with him, because it was in those extreme moments that I actually was able to fall on my knees and say, I can't do this. I am so I remember one night with my son when we weren't sure if he was going to make it, and I went outside under the stars in the middle of the and I think it was freezing out, and I had like a little nightgown on, and I was just shaking, and I just remember falling on my knees and saying, God, I cannot do this, Like I don't know. My whole life has been about me trying to figure out what's right and what's best and how to do this and you know, what do I have to do to make life work? And I remember the piece that came over me in that moment, just like I didn't know what was going to happen, but I just knew that he was there.

00:20:33
Speaker 3: He was there, and.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: That was like, that was the shift. And so I think that really prepared me for down the road. You know, in January, when after having my daughter. She's almost eight now, so it was really like eight years for having my daughter. I had gained a ton of weight, bigger than I'd ever been, and I've kind of always been able to manage it before that, even with Eddie being born early. I think it spared me the two months of that lat two months of waiting, so I never really got to that. But I had no idea that my whole life I had been dieting. My whole life, I had been restricting or doing some form of a diet. I mean, I did everything that was out there. I've tried everything, but it was really in those last eight years I would say that it became very drastic because all the diets I had done didn't work. Yeah, they inevitably didn't work, and I couldn't go back to that because well that one didn't work. So it was like check check, and I was running out of things to do. I was just running out of everything, and so it really just got to the point I had tried everything I knew to do, to the point where I was just simply not eating food anymore and still thinking I needed to lose weight and wondering why I couldn't lose weight.

00:21:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, let's pause there for a second. Tara. Now, when you say you were trying not to eat food, I mean, I know your story. We've worked together for a while. Now, would you have caused yourself an anna last January?

00:22:02
Speaker 1: Oh God no, not a million years. Never and never.

00:22:06
Speaker 2: And now as you look back, with what you know about eating disorders and disordered eating and your story, now, would you give yourself an eating disorder label?

00:22:15
Speaker 1: Now? Absolutely? And it feels good. It's just such a strange thing to say that. It actually feels good to be able to to say it without shame or guilt, to accept it, to not blame myself for it, and to also understand what all those years, what was happening?

00:22:41
Speaker 2: Because you thought it was normal, right, Oh.

00:22:44
Speaker 1: My gosh, I thought it was so normal.

00:22:46
Speaker 2: I didn't think you were doing anything different than any other woman you knew, right, I mean.

00:22:52
Speaker 1: Even when it first started, I actually thought that it was like I was like, I mean, I was so proud of myself, like my discipline. I was so like, yes, God must be smiling down on me, Like, look at all that weight I've lost, Look at the discipline of my exercise and my eating I had people praising me all the time for it, which is of course, you know, I had, you know, the whole world. Everything I saw, everything I read, every person I spoke to, just further supported that belief that this was a good thing, this was a healthy thing. And and as I went further down that journey, it I really look back and I think there was never a time in those eight years that I didn't think that I had to lose weight. Even when you get to the goal weight, it was maybe there's a little bit more, I could probably get down more, you know there, And it was it was so much of these cleanses that I started getting on was for me. That started with a lot of like juice cleanses, detox like sugar detoxes. That really is what started a lot. I mean I remember going back even my younger days and doing at one point I had done fourteen days or I think it was of like a the lemonade class.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: Yeah with the maple syrup.

00:24:30
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, m a little bit of maple syrup.

00:24:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to drink any ballons or whatever.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, the two leaders of the salt water and then you can't leave your house for like hours, so I'd be up at four am before work to do that, and I, you know, fully I read the book.

00:24:47
Speaker 1: I believed everything this was. I think, I think it was a doctor, and I thought he was a doctor. I mean, you know, so I believed it all these all these lenses. I did, all these juice cleanses. I would spend hundreds of dollars on some of the ones, or I'd spend hundreds of dollars on organic produce to buy the ones for juice cleans for a week that you know was supposed to clean your body out and everybody needs this, and like, I would do that, and then I would restrict, restrict, restrict, restrict. I would eat such minimally, and then I would get to a point, whether it was a birthday party for my children or a family member or a wedding or whatever it was, and there'd be something there that was so enticing and I'd say, I'll just have a little bit, and the next thing I know, I am just out of control. And so over time, I truly started to believe that this was my addiction coming back. So for me, this became synonymous with the addiction when I struggled with it in my youth with the alcohol dress. It's like here, it's just I'm an addict. I'm an addictive personality. Sugar is addictive, you know.

00:25:53
Speaker 3: I read articles that were.

00:25:55
Speaker 1: You know, showing you know about how the brain acts reacts the same way too, you know, a cookie as it does to you know, cocaine or heroine. And then it's like, well, they don't tell you, and I love, like like learning from you that it does the same thing when you get a hug or when you know. There's just so much I've learned, and I could just it's just so overwhelming that in those moments I would have but my life on it if you had said, like I would have staked my life on it, that I was living in God's will, that I was doing what he wanted me to do, to do with my body for him to be healthy for him. And I think at some point as my journey with my savior progressed, it sort of shifted what started off as just like this health journey and sort of a little bit of a penance. I felt that I needed to sort of pay back for the abuse.

00:26:56
Speaker 3: I'd put my body through when I was younger.

00:26:59
Speaker 1: So getting healthy was like you know you owe this. You owe this to God for the body he gave you. You have to get your body healthy. You abused it. There was a shame and a guilt and sort of this penance I felt I had to pay. But then as I got further along in this journey with Jesus, I started thinking, okay, well, God, Like I started doing all those scriptures. Your body's a temple, you know your ah. I just took everything. I really and truly and honestly believed that my suffering I'm supposed to suffer with Christ. That my suffering was You're an addict. You want to eat sugar. Shame on you. That's temptation. You need to fight it. You need to battle against these foods. You need to submit your body, you need to beat it with exercise. All those things. Really felt like that was like my cross to bear. Like I would, I would write in my journal about stuff like.

00:27:53
Speaker 2: That, to spell it out for someone listening at home, who's maybe ever thought about this before. I think you're spot on. I don't think you're alone in the fact that many of us have been taught that our spiritual battle is the battle to keep our body a certain size, right, that. Yeah, temptation is what happens when you open the freezer, you know, like you like be strong and courageous against oreos. Yes, yes, it's an alternate religion, like that is not what the Christian faith is, right, we are tempted to sin, not to eat something that tastes good. And so you know, someone listening today's probably never thought about it like that before. But I really appreciate you spelling that out, because we need to start calling this out. Like, ladies, this is not our biggest battle. Our biggest battle is not whether or not we can wear the jeans we wore when we were twenty five. Like, there's serious stuff going on in the spiritual realm, and it's time that we stand up and see that God has made us overcomers and more than conquerors, not so that we can wear the size we want to wear. It's for something much greater, right, So I love that you shared all that. Now, So all of that was kind of like the context of where you were coming from, right, and then you and I have a call. I don't know, it's probably like March or April of last year. How did that look like? What what what started to happen as we started to work together.

00:29:34
Speaker 1: When I finally when I found when I found you, it was like I just knew, I knew. I was like, I just God put it in my heart like this was big, something was happening. I was definitely at a place where it wasn't working anymore. There was God had stirred in my heart that I just kept thinking, like bored, I need I'm not I need more strength. I need, I need, I need more of your word. I need I need, you know, to dig in deeper. I need to do more. And then when you brought the concept of idolatry into this, it literally blew my mind. Oh my gosh. It was so like, oh, it's such a gift. It's such a gift because I, like you had said, I literally thought idolatry was the melted jewelry and the little like the golden calf, like you know when Noah comes down Milt, Like I just I literally was like, yep, check out that commandment. I'll set never have to worry about that. And you know, I love God and I want and I want to serve him, so of course I don't idolize any And it was just incredible there there is a brokenness to ourselves that we have to I had to accept, Like I always thought that the weakness was such a bad thing, you know, it's so like shame. No, it was like you helped me to see how we all have the sin inside of our hearts. You know, we just come into this world with it, and we have so much brokenness that we carry around and we are so easily led astray. You know, there's a harsh world out there. There's a lot of deceit, there's a lot of lies. And when I understood that I was putting all of my worth and value into what my body looked like, like, it hit me so hard, Like I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. I didn't really recognize that. I really believed that if I didn't have this certain body type, that I had no value, that I wasn't worthy of love, I wouldn't be good enough for my husband or my children, for the people around me. Forgot to be a servant of his. So when I started reading those books and realizing how deceived I was, I was like, I need help. I need so much help, Because that was like at that point, I was like I don't know what to do. I literally had spent my whole life believing something and leading up to a certain way and thinking I was walking in God's path for me, and all of a sudden that like shattered, and kind of at the same time I was doing that journey with you, I also started realizing, like, something is wrong with the way that I'm eating. This isn't normal, Like God was showing me this is not okay. But I didn't know what to do, like I just I was. I was completely paralyzed, stuck. And at the same time, I was going through tremendous, tremendous physical issues. I was having years of gipain. I had gone for every type of procedure and endoscope and biopsies and they you know, and literally ended up being sent homed with laxatives. And that was sort of what came from that, which is the worst thing that could have, you know, at the time. And then on the physical side, because I was beating my body with exercise and fear of folding onto this, I was experiencing tremendous physical pain in all sorts of areas. So at this point when I when I found you, I was trying to do this. I had heard about the intuitive eating you would mention it was. It was it was okay, this is great, this is wonderful. But I didn't understand, and I brought it.

00:33:38
Speaker 3: As another plan.

00:33:39
Speaker 1: This is the plan I have to do, and I have to do it right and I have to do it. And I tried to do it on my own, and it got pretty scary and pretty messy. And that's when I was, like, we senior podcasts and I heard about group coaching and the individual coaching, and I don't even I like, I think. I just emailed you and I was just I don't even know what I said. I probably babbled it makes sense, and I was just so overwhelmed and I just wanted to like drive to your house and like knock on your arm and be like help me. And I was so moved by everything that you shared and everything that you said had touched me so much, and I had connected and I connected with it so much. It was like it was like every time I heard you speak that you were sitting next to me holding my hand and we were having like coffee together, and for the first time, I don't know, I just felt hopeful. I felt like but I still wasn't ready. I still didn't know how to eat disorder. That was so crazy, Like that took a while for me to really work with you and understand that.

00:34:42
Speaker 2: I am a firm believer that until you figure out I hate to say the word solve because that sounds so final, so like before and after picture, but until you get a grip on the body image side of things, the food side of things isn't safe, right, like you can't, I mean, And that was how God was with me, Like that was very gracious to work with me on body image stuff. And that's why there's some language and compared to who that talks about like diet stuff, because God hadn't touched my food yet, like he couldn't have. He had to start with helping me with my body image and identity and him and and and make it safe for my body to be a different size before he could ever talk to me about what I was doing with my food.

00:35:31
Speaker 1: So the group coaching was just life changing, I mean life changing. And I know that that was so, I mean, that was God. I mean, I have I never felt God as much as I have felt him, and not only with with what you gave me, and the resources you you showed me, and the books that I read through you, and the scriptures that became like new to me. I saw them in a only way, the truth that you opened my eyes to. And then the other the group of women that I have been connected with that I'm still on a daily basis. We literally hold each other up daily with encouragement and love as we walk through this life together and deal with you know, it started off as this journey with this body image and it's just permeated every aspect of my life now because I realized how much that was really affecting every aspect of my life. I mean, I was consumed by this. I walk in a freedom now that is so wow wow, I mean unfathomable, is really like all I can say, because I remember so many days just praying to God like I don't know how Lord, but I can't live like this anymore. I am such a prisoner and that's really what it was it was like. And now the freedom that I have, it's so different though, because I used to think freedom was ease and comfort. It's not easy, and you know, there are hard days still and I'm still I still have to be visual and it's a daily surrender. But I have this whole community now, from you to these beautiful women I met in your group and then you connected me, you know, the you know with the intruive eating for Christian women and you know working with not I love non diet dietician, and like, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have beautiful women and friendships in my life too that are there's an acceptance and a love. Oh what I still marvel at every day is through the process of working with you to really, for the first time, I think, understand what it means to be to find my identity and my love in Jesus and to seek Him first, to seek his presence. And the prayer that I keep saying is more of Him and less of me. And the more I focus on Him and the more I focus on what He can do through me. Even this morning, I was listening to a little Bible exerpt from First Peter and it was talking about how women, you know, you don't have to adorn yourselves and I remember, you know, reading that before and kind of missing the point that it was, like, listen, it's not about what's on the outside. You know when I know we hear that, but it's like it's what's coming out of our hearts. But for the first time, I'm living that and I'm feeling it so like the head and the heart have connected where that never ever ever happened before. It was just like God, I know, I don't feel it. I know it, but I don't feel it. It's coming together and it's connecting. I just so desperately want to share this gift, like I'm so on fire with like the I'm just so on fire inside because when I think of how struggling and how much pain and how dark it got had times towards the end and just falling on my knees and crying and crying, and then God bringing me to that January day and where I am now and that it's not always easy, but I can be in a in a in a larger body. I have people who even say to me, like what are you doing? Like you you, like, how are you so peaceful? Like the world's going crazy, Like what's going on with you? Like they just seem different, Yeah, because my heart's different. Yeah.

00:39:29
Speaker 2: And that's a huge testimony too, right, you know, And it's it's I mean it's so good, and you know, you showed it a little bit about this in the beginning of your journey too, But I feel like that shame element is so real for so many people.

00:39:42
Speaker 3: Right.

00:39:42
Speaker 2: We feel the shame and we want to cover the shame. We're desperate to cover the shame, and we try to cover the shame through getting our outsides so they look like, oh, well, I don't have anything to be ashamed of, Like there's no shame here. Get my body, you look at my size, right, And I think what you've discovered is, you know that pride, the body, pride, the trying to fix everything ourselves is a form of pride, you know, even with what got taught you through your son's cancer, like you were not in control, and surrendering that to Jesus is what actually covers the shame in a way that's so much more filling and so much more beautiful than any of our efforts. And then like that's really where the freedom is is having that shame covered, like you don't have to be ashamed anymore of whatever size you're wearing. Yeah, as you know, you know, the futility and trying to cover the shame with oh, I'm going to just go on another plan and try to get the body out. You know that doesn't work. So but Tara, when you signed up, okay, like I just for someone who's like considering either doing group coaching next year or or you know, ready to sign up for individual coaching, Like, were you a little nervous it wasn't gonna work?

00:41:06
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh. I was absolutely terrified. And to be honest, when I first started signing up, I was really hoping that you were going to tell me how to eat. I was like, Okay, so maybe part of this body thing will be we'll talk about the heart stuff and I will, you know, learn to connect deeper with Jesus and learn my value through him. And then Heather's going to help me figure out like what my new like plans going to look like in my life, Like what the new like it really like? It was so ingrained in me, and then I quickly realized that that was not how it works. And there is definitely like who the rollercoaster of emotions are on believable, there's definitely. And I love how wonderful you were with us through this process of grieving, Like there's just a lot of grieving. There's a gleaming period. There's a grieving of like what I thought I was my life was going to look like what I thought I was going to look like. There's a feeling of just like powerlessness and confusion and like I've followed my whole life. I've I've like planned this and that, and now what's like, wait, I have to listen to myself and like I you know, surrender and pray. I mean, it's really challenging because it's so opposite of everything that I'd ever done. And that's exactly why it worked. That's exactly why it works because it wasn't the world's way, it wasn't my way. It was God's way. It's what his path was, and I just couldn't do it on my own because it's like, you know, the definition of standing doing the same thing overder giving it over and I'm getting different self or like I can't fix I can't help work through some of these things with the same mind that's creating them. So it was like I just needed to like have those wow moments that God gave me through you and through the process.

00:43:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about when you first met the girls. You call them the girls, so I'll call them the girls. They're all women. But what, like, how is that the first because the first group, I mean even your group, like you're so tight now some of you actually got together in person and you live like in various parts of the middle of the country and east coast, But like, what was it like the first week, Raven two weeks you're kind of like, oh, I don't you know?

00:43:42
Speaker 1: I was that like, oh my, To be honest, I was actually okay.

00:43:46
Speaker 3: So obviously I'm terrified, like terrified of what are they going to.

00:43:50
Speaker 1: Think I look like? And I was also like so upset this is and this is what's crazy, Like they didn't they don't get they didn't get to see me in my cute little body. They're only going to see me in my big body. And I remember thinking like like like they're not going to like me as like it's that's how crazy, That's how ingrained that mentality was. But I remember being nervous of what they would think, because you know, we're on zoom and we can see each other, whatevers of what they would think I would look like, nervous of how like they would relate like, am I going to be crazy? Like? Are they am? I? Like? Way? Am I? Like? Am I the worst case ever? Like I'm crazy, I'm severe, I'm out there. No one can be this bad, you know, because that's sometimes what we think with the thoughts that we have. And I remember the first call, feeling so nervous and.

00:44:34
Speaker 3: Everybody was kind of quiet.

00:44:36
Speaker 1: And when I get nervous, I talk. I talk. I talk a lot, but I do, and I feel like I probably I remember I think even after the first call, I think I might have even emailed you and said, oh gosh, I'm like so embarrassed. I feel like I said all the wrong things. I feel like all the right and you're like, and you even said something comforting. You're like, yep, that's what happens after that. That's that sort of like we go back into ourselves and were saying go and then it's like, oh wait a minute, this is not about me, right, And it was so it was so wonderful though, because what I did take away from it was that we instantly we're all like, oh, yes, we are all in this together. We are all feeling these things, we are all thinking these things. We had There was like this feeling of a shared brain, which was such a comfort. Like our experiences may have different nuances to it, but the feelings and the thoughts that are center around these this body image and the shame was so so so similar. And that's where that bond came in. We were all experiencing it to together. And there's such a gift in that it's such a grace amount that there's there's nothing we feel that we can't share about what we're we're thinking or feeling because we have come to realize that we have all either been there or going through it or I cannot imagine how I could still live in the bondage and the prison that I was living in. It was so hard. And the freedom that I gained in other areas of my life, like the fact that I can even eat food with enjoyment now it's not a gift, but the friendships that need, the women I get to talk to, and the way that it's just filtrated into my life with my children and my husband, my family. I am just so grateful that God did not let my fear or my you know, embarrassment, or whatever the million voices in my head that always the better of me that I did not listen to them, and I just listened to the gut that said just do something different. Email Heather, just do it, just put it out there, and it's care of the rest. I really, he just really took care of the rest. Every step, every step along the way, he is taking care of the rest.

00:47:06
Speaker 2: Hey, I hope you've enjoyed this replay of Terra's story. Like we said, Tara is now one of our coaches. So if you're looking for more support and encouragement on your body image journey, reach out to Tara or I through improvebody image dot com click the tab work with me. Also be starting a new forty day journey this summer. It'll be in the afternoons for our international friends especially, so you can make it this time, but we'd love to have you join us for that. You can find more information at improvedbody image dot com. Thanks for listening today. I hope something to has helped you stop comparing and start living. The Compared to You podcast is proud to be probably of the Life Audio podcast Network. From more great Christian podcast go to lifebudio dot com.