Episodes

What if managing your image was about more than just your body? Have you ever felt yourself trying to manage your personality? Have you ever tried to portray an "image" of yourself that was more like your ideal than perhaps like you were actually wired? Today, Heather explores the world of personality and image. She shares her personal story of feeling like she needed a personality makeover and how she "changed her image" by becoming more out-going, but what she has learned in the decades since....

Today Heather talks to her Intuitive Eating Coaches — Erin Todd and Char-Lee Haze from the Intuitive Eating for Christian Women podcast — about whether or not you can be “sugar-free” while practicing intuitive eating. Char-Lee lays out a framework for making authentic decisions for our health that are: purposeful, personal, and peaceful. The coaches walk Heather through a journey where she explores with them the science, scripture, and her lived experience come together so that she can make wise...

I pray that this month-long series to help you pray for your body image and "Tune in" to God while you tune out the voices of marketers and Diet Culture has made a powerful impact in your life. Today we finish the series with a look at what's next. What should you do if you started feeling freedom? How do you stay on the road to body image freedom without falling back into hold habits and patters of behaving or thinking. Heather gives suggestions today to help you stay on track and stay connecte...

Today we pray that God would make us more holy. It sounds like a strange thing to pray for. But, throughout the New Testament we are encouraged to be striving for holiness. There are many things we strive for on this earth--beauty, power, money, success, love of others, acceptance, approval--but striving for these types of worldly treasures leads us to stress and burnout. It's never enough when we're chasing these worldly things. We'll never be satisfied. But, chasing holiness? That's when we ha...

Today we pray to be more loving. There are many ways being more loving can help us overcome body image issues and insecurity, but today we talk about how believing and receiving God's love can help us feel more of that love so that it overflows into the way we love others and the way we treat our bodies. Loving our bodies is something talked about a lot in culture today, but I don't believe the way culture talks about it is helpful. Culture says to flaunt what you have and show your middle finge...

God gives us so much grace. When we're struggling with issues like body image or insecurity or comparison, his grace is our only cure. As Heather writes in the Burden of Better - she thought that she had a comparison problem, but what she really had was a shallow understanding of grace. If we truly understood all the different ways God's grace was at work in every aspect of our lives, we'd be free from comparison and even body image worry! It's also essential to have a good grip on grace so we c...

Today we're talking about praying for peace with the boundaries of our bodies. One of the hardest aspects of our body image struggles may be accepting the way God made and "sized" our bodies. For some, there's frustration over height or size. For others its frustration over specific body parts. But, either way, recognizing that God made us on purpose, for a purpose, means our bodies were made with intention. Today we pray for the grace to be able to accept our bodies and even thank God for the "...

Who doesn't want to be radiant? We all long to shine with a beauty that draws others to us and that those around us would describe as "radiant." While marketers promise that radiance comes from using the right skin care products, cosmetics, and beauty rituals, the Bible tells us that radiance comes from turning our faces to him. So, today in our series where we are praying every day for our body image issues, we're going to pray for this type of radiance. Today we ask God to make us radiant and ...

Today we take time during our month-long series where we're praying for your body image issues to pray for a new view of beauty. Why do we feel compelled to try to look a certain way or be a certain "type" of beautiful? It's often because we have defined beauty the way someone else does. We may be defining beauty the way a parent or old boyfriend did. Or, we may be defining beauty the way magazines or Instagram does. But, are we defining beauty the way God does? Does God's definition of beauty e...

Today we're praying for God to give us a new view of food. Some of us have feared food. Some have treated it like a savior. But the best way to interact with food is to see it as a good gift from God. God designed us to eat. He designed our bodies to run on food. And, he gave us a wide variety of food textures and flavors and a tongue and mouth that could sense them all. If we were supposed to live on manna (the kind of bread God gave the Israelites every day when they were wandering through the...

Like we talked about yesterday, an important part of this process is seeing and believing something new about your body and your value and even food and what it’s intended for. Today we are praying for truth and clarity around food rules. What we need to remember is that there is a lot of lower case "t" truth in this world. There are lots of "truths" about what we need to eat to be healthy, what we need to do to be healthy. But if you’ve been on this planet for a few decades, you may have notice...

Are you praying for a healthier relationship with food? Are you always restricting or binging? Do you obsess over food or feel like thoughts of food run your life? Do you fear food or what food might do to you? Are you caught up in labels like "good" foods and "bad" foods? If so, today's episode is for you. For the next few days we’re going to pray for our relationship with food. Even if you don’t think food has ever been an area of struggle – you may be surprised as we go through these daily pr...

Yesterday we talked about praying for freedom from what others think of us, but today we're talking about praying for freedom from what we think of ourselves!! What happens when we have ideals or expectations for ourselves that we can't meet? What happens when our opinions of ourselves are crippling us or making us obsess over how we "should" be better or different? Today, Heather talks about how when we’re overly worried about our opinion of ourselves, we've placed our own opinions of ourselves...

Today in our month-long series where we are praying for your body image, we pray for protection from the opinions of others (or approval) related to our body image. Worrying about what others will think of your body is a type of fear. For some, we fear the opinion of parents – mom or dad's opinion of your body has always heavily influenced your own opinion of your body. If mom doesn’t think you look good, you can’t think you look good. For others, we fear the opinion of friends, exes, or "everyo...

Like shame – condemnation can weigh heavy on us. Condemnation can shout loudly at us when we eat something culture says is bad or if we don’t do something we thought we should or were supposed to do or if we miss a workout, or if we didn’t lose the X number of pounds we resolved to lose last year! There are many opportunities for condemnation to join shame and scream at us that we’re doing something terrible. But, as I’ve worked with clients over the years, I’ve noticed it’s hard for us not to s...

Shame is what keeps us afraid and hiding around our body image issues. When we’re embarrassed, we will do anything to cover our shame. Sometimes it seems like the easiest route to covering our shame would be to "get" the body/outside appearance that we want so we will be safe from condemnation or the opinions of others. But, shame is deeper than our skin. What often happens is that we may have a successful physical transformation, but the shame remains. Then it feels even more hopeless because w...

Christian Body Image Coach, Heather Creekmore, has never worked with a client who didn’t have a soundtrack of lies that she listened to regularly. Lies rage and tell these women they are lazy, ugly, not good enough, or should feel ashamed. Today we talk about the lies -- how easy they are to listen to and how important it is to block them out after you identify them. Most of us will say things to ourselves that we would never say out loud to someone else. One challenge for many of us is we gasli...

Most who struggle with body image and eating issues struggle with fear at some level. We may not call it that. We may call it "diligence" or "perfectionism" or "anxiety" or "body worry," but under it all is fear. We’re afraid of the opinions of others, we’re afraid of being unaccepted or misunderstood, and we’re afraid that if we don’t try our hardest to do everything just right then things will go wrong and it will be all our fault. We are overly responsible for ourselves and perhaps for others...

Today our body image prayer is focused on praying to renew our mind. It’s really important that we understand that this battle with our body image, with food, with the way we look, what we weigh, what size we are, what our skin looks like – these are not battles with the mirror, the scale or public opinion of our bodies – these are battles in our mind and in our hearts. The battle is between what we choose to believe is important, what we choose to believe makes us valuable, loveable, and gives...

Food and body image issues can be confusing and distracting so in today's daily prayer we pray for freedom. One of Heather's biggest struggles was to know who she was serving. The temptation from Diet Culture and messages all around was to serve her body and herself and listen to the god (little g) god of body image and appearance who said that if she looked a certain way, then she would be free. Today, Heather digs into what scripture says about the pull to serve a different master and how reco...

We often think about the word consistency in a dieting context. "If I could just be consistent. . . " Or, "if I could just eat only these foods and not these foods or if I could just work out every day . . ." If you’re like me, at the beginning of a new season, I feel like I have all this willpower to do things every single day! Then by day 14 or 15, my willpower runs out. I feel guilt and shame, and I wonder what’s wrong with me that I can’t be consistent! Today Heather encourages you that the...

Today we pray for strength. Food, eating, and body image struggles are real. But God's word encourages us that we don't have to fight them alone. We can be strong because of who is helping us. Today, we talk about how to invite God to help us with these issues and how to let him lead and guide each day. The world wants to tell you that you’ll get stronger when you accomplish your goals or when you follow the plan perfectly, but that’s not God’s prescription. He says strength comes when we rely e...

Today we continue our "Tune in to Him" daily prayer series with a prayer for faith. Have you ever felt like things could never get better? Have you tried SO many different things to improve your body image that it almost feels like a lost cause? Perhaps you are trying to muster some faith right now that this year could be different, but, deep down, you still wonder if things can ever change. Today Heather guides you on a prayer to help build your faith. God can do ALL things. All things are pos...

This month we'll be spending every weekday praying for issues related to body image and comparison issues. January is the time when everything and everyone around us beckons for us to tune in to their way to be "better" in the new year. Through this series, Heather encourages you to focus on deepening our trust for the only One who can truly make us better. We'll spend a few minutes each day talking and praying for issues like fear, trust, health, food, and more. Invite a friend to listen along ...