Getting Out of Your Head: Overcoming Swirling Negative Thoughts or Obsession Waiting for Weight Loss Ep 16

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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey there, thanks for watching or listening to the Compared to You podcast today. I'm Heather creek Moor and we're in a series called Waiting for we Loss, and today we're going to talk about how to get out of your head. I think that is the most important thing. After recognizing that you've made your body image and idle, potentially that's between you and the Lord. But after seeing that idolatry, after seeing the ways that perhaps your heart has actually believed that a different body, a better body, a more beautiful body, would save you. After seeing and identifying all of that, you got to get out of your head. Now. I've done a couple other episodes on this before, but today I want to bring you a very relevant and real example from my own life. So that's where we're going today. I'm glad you're so. My husband and I just celebrated twenty years of marriage. So we went away for a few days to a tropical location and I felt like I was right back on my honeymoon again. And let me explain to you why I'm sitting at the pool and all of a sudden, I was overwhelmed with this very familiar feeling of oh, Wow, there's a lot of beautiful women here. And I remember back twenty years ago on my honeymoon, I remember feeling like, Wow, I thought my body image issues were going to be fixed when I got married, and instead now I feel like I'm in this even bigger competition where I now suddenly have to be on the lookout for all women that look better than me and then somehow stop my husband from seeing them, which is impossible unless you only Vay came in caves when deserts with no one around. And so I'm sitting there there at the pool, and these very familiar feelings are just overwhelming me. And I'm looking around and I'm seeing a variety of bodies, right, Because if we're honest with ourselves, we kind of zoom in on the good quote unquote better bodies, right, We zoom in the younger woman in the teeny tiny bikini, but we miss kind of the other people sitting around the pool. And what I recognize was that every woman there looked different. Every woman there had a different body size and different shape, and some of them were larger than me, and some of them were smaller than me, and different proportions. Right, we all looked different, and I was thinking my posture as I looked out around that pool, was where am I in the contest? How do I fit in? Am I going to win the contest? Am I going to lose the contest? Am I going to come in seventh? Am I going to come in twelfth? Am I going to come in last? And I was looking around thinking about these women as my competitors. I mean, I hate to say that, but that was kind of this default instinct. That's the way I used to live my life. I'd walk into a room and think where do I measure up and in relation to everyone else in this room? And I've been on this journey long enough myself now that I was able to be like, oh, that's stupid, Like okay, no, get your head out of that, Like focus on why you're here. You're going to celebrate twenty years of marriage with your husband. He chose you, He didn't choose any of these other women like be here with him. And I was able to kind of calm myself down, but the thought was still there. And then I went to dinner the first night, and it's a small resort and so it was kind of the same people. So we got to see the same people dressed, you know, for dinner instead of wearing bathing suits, and the same couples. And I was looking around at dinner and I thought, you know what, every one of these men is just focused on the woman he's with right now. Okay, I know there's some of the men there may have had wandering eyes or different habits whatever, like, I can't get into all of that. Those issues do exist, but for the most part, by and large, each man was there sitting across from a woman that he had chosen to spend this time with. Whether they were married or there was some dating couples there, there was some other interesting arrangements I'm not even sure of. I don't want to go into there. But he was there with that particular woman. And as I chatted with my husband about a little bit more, I was mentioning to him, I'm like, you know, women sit in these situations feeling like this as a contest, like I've got a win, I've got to be better than all these other women. But I'm sitting across from you, and your only hope is for time with me, Your only hope is for intimacy with me. You are not sitting there comparing me to everyone else around the pool. You just want more of me. And it changed my perspective of course, because it's like, wow, so much of this struggle I think I have to win so that I will be acceptable to my husband, right, or that he'll love me more or treat me better. And he already treats me well, right, But like, somehow this is gonna changing my body, is gonna unlock some video game levels of amazingness. But I have to compete in this contest in order to get there, and Fred, it's just not true. So much of the struggle is not about your body. It's about your head and your heart. And first you got to solve the heart issue, right, because getting that sinned out of our lives is the most important thing. Your spiritual health is far more important than your physical health, and so do that first, and then it's what's going on in your head now. We do a lot of work with women where we work through issues that maybe you've had for life, right where maybe you haven't felt safe because of some things that have happened to you, or you've felt insecure around your body because of things that were said to you, and these same cruel words have been repeating in your head for twenty thirty forty fifty years. Right, So there's a way in which you can get help for that, and you probably do need to get help for that. Like, no one ever told us we were supposed to be healed alone, right, We were only supposed to be in community and the church. As we come together, we can encourage each other and pray and find healing for even the these mental and spiritual struggles. That way is down. But today my question for you is, like, what's going on in your head? Friend? Do you even know? Have you paused for just a second to hear the thoughts and maybe examined to see whether or not they are true. I got a new book and I think I shared about it in the community. It's a book. I think it's called How to Do Self Brain Surgery. He talks about how eighty percent of the thoughts we have every single day are just simply not true, and we recycle these same thoughts over and over again. So chances are you're having the same eighty percent of your thoughts that aren't true every single day and do that for twenty thirty forty years, Right, And you start to believe that they're true because they've been around so long, they're familiar friends. Right, this is the thought I always have that I am too fill in the blank. I am too lazy, I am too fat, I am too ugly, I am too short, I am too tall. Well, I am too soft, i am too flat, I'm too jiggling, like whatever. Right, And we just keep having these ohs over and over and over and over again, and then we kind of start to project them on people like, well, my husband must think this about me too. I Meanwhile, husband might actually even be saying I don't think that about you, But we say I don't believe you, husband, You must think this about me, because this is the truth, and my truth is what's most important. Right. We do these things in our heads is where we get things all discombobulated. What is true? What is right? What is pure? Right? We've got a scripture telling us to think on these things as Christians. Round A twelve. We're supposed to have our minds renewed. If you are still thinking the same bad, negative thoughts you thought about your body as you thought before you became a Christian, friend, that's not the renewing of your mind and maybe, like me, if you feel like you've been a Christian since you were too little that thoughts about your body, but you're still thinking the same thoughts about your body as you did when you were a teenager. Friend, your mind needs to be renewed. That's not the renewing of the mind. Your thoughts should align with what God says about you. God's truth is the truth. Your truth is not the truth. God's truth is the truth. Who are you to disagree with God? A friend? It's deep stuff, but we've got to start thinking about what's going on in our heads. We get into this conversation in the forty day Body Image Journey. It starts in a couple of weeks. You can sign up at improve body image dot com. We'd love to have you join us for that. It's a really important step in this journey if you want to be free, if you want to stop obsessing, and let me tell you, you might not know what to do with yourself if you get free in this journey, because you're gonna have so much more headspace, you're gonna be like, I'm not sure what I should think about, I'm not sure what I should do. I don't know how this works. This is uncomfortable, right. We talk about what to do in that scenario as well. But friend, freedom is possible. You don't have to stay trapped in your head. You don't have to keep obsessing, keep swirling over the calories, over the inch that you pinched, over the number on the scale, over the size that you went up, or the two sizes that you went up, or the threes. You don't have to stay there, friend, You can live the life that God created you to live, and that's a life that wasn't focused on your body. Now, friend, again, you can still pursue your health goals, but there's a way to pursue them without being trapped in this porly surly head game. We're going to talk about this more in the community. Go to Waiting for Weightloss dot com, join us for the conversation there, and then make plans to join us in the forty day Journey. It's super affordable six weeks on zoom. It could change your life. Hey, thanks for listening today. We'll see you next time. Compared to you podcasts, it's proud to be part of the Life Audio podcast Network. From more great Christian podcast go to lifeaudio dot com