When the Desire to Lose Weight Overwhelms: What to Do When You're "Feeling" Fat. WfW Epsiode 19

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Speaker 1: Life audio. Hey, their friends had their creak more here. I'm glad you were watching or listening that compared to you podcasts. Today, we're in our special series called Waiting for Weight Loss. Today we're talking about fat versus feelings. What do you do when you just feel fat, when you just can't stand it, when you just can't take it anymore, when it just has to change, or you feel like you'll die. That's where we're going today. One kind of final concept that I want us to tackle is this concept of our fat and our feelings. Now, some of us would say I feel fat. Some of us have read the meme and you know that's not a feeling. Oh goodness. There's been lots of debate and conversation around this, but I think we all generally understand that there are days so when you feel better about your body and days when you feel worse about your body. And so as we think about being on this journey of waiting for weight loss but not making that the most important thing in our life, we also have to recognize that there are days when those feelings are just going to overwhelm us. So that's where we're going today. I'm glad you're here for it. Let's get to it. So what do you do on a bad body image day? Most of us would just call it a bad body day. You wake up and I don't know, maybe you do some body checking. Body checking is something we talk about and work through in the fourty day Journey. The body checking is you wake up and you feel your stomach, or you feel under your chin, or you feel your arms, or you feel your thighs. There are body parts that you check. You wake up and you feel like, uh oh, those parts feel a little different than they did yesterday, and maybe a panic or maybe it just immediately puts you in a lousy mood. You're like, I got the feeling today, blah, Like it sets you on a course today. I want to talk about, like, what do you do when you just wake up feeling bad? When you wake up consumed with what your body looks like or feels like. And the first thing I want us to understand is, Okay, physically, our bodies are always changing. In fact, you know, you know, sometimes you wake up in the morning you might feel like your stomach's flat, and then by two o'clock it feels different, or even vice versa. Maybe you wake up with a real full feeling, and then by two o'clock your stomach feels flatter. Like our bodies are constantly changing, right, They are not the same from hour to hour or from day to day. Especially if you're a woman who's still cycling. Start tracking your cycle and you will see that you've got a couple of weeks out of the month where maybe you feel and look a little thinner or smaller or trimmer, and other weeks when you're just like puffy. Well, if that's real, it's very real. But then there's this other angle to our body magissues, which is just how we feel about our bodies. Because remember we talked about this reality that body of magissues aren't actually about how your body looks like. Sometimes you can wake up you know it's supposed to be the best day of your month in terms of your cycle, and you feel like you've been eating well or exercising well and your body should be feeling good. But because of everything else going on in your life, you wake up and oh, you do not feel good about your body. What do you do? One daslike that. Well, here's a couple of suggestions. Thing one is, first, I think It's very important that we understand that so often, so many of us have been taught not consciously but subconsciously, that if there's a lot of chaos going on in our lives, if there are things that are out of our control, then we should turn to the one thing we can control. And I'm putting that in air quotes if you're listening instead of watching, and that is our bodies. And so often we have picked up and even inadvertently, this habit of all my word, my life is chaos. What can I fix? I'm going to control my eating today, I'm going to control how to exercise today. I'm going to just focus on my body today and that'll make it better. Now does it actually make it better? No? Of course not right when you're having a problem with your teenager, right, and your husband and your job, and you turn all your attention to like, well, I'm just going to eat healthy today and make sure that I get my work out in Like, does that actually fix any of those things?

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Speaker 2: Or?

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Speaker 1: Wrong? No, it doesn't. Right, And so what I would say is thing one, if you wake up on a bad body day, wake up and have a bad body day, you wake up and you're like Oh, I just feel horribleut my body. I'm just obsessing over It's all I can think about. I just have to do something about it right now. I just have to go get liposection, or I've got to start the shots, or I got to do something right now. I just can't take it anymore. I can't stand it. I can't stand it. I'm miserable, I'm frustrated. Oh, I'm just overwhelmed. I would encourage you to take a deep breath, I consider that that might not actually be about your body, It's most likely about something else, and then take a minute and very courageously say what else is going on in my life right now? What else? Oh? Could it be that big fight I just had with my parents? Could it be that I just found this out about what my husband is doing secretly? Could it be that I just wits end with these children. I don't know how to help them. Ask yourself, what else is going on? Give yourself a minute or two, or ten or thirty to process through what these other situations are with the Lord, right, it's not enough just think about it and worry about it. Friend, Right, if you can add a minute to your life by worrying. Worrying about it is not the same as praying about it, and worrying about it is not going to help it or fix it right, but processing through with Jesus.

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Speaker 2: Like cud, I'm frustrated about this, I'm angry about this, I'm sad about this, I'm broken over this, I'm lost over.

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Speaker 1: This, and feeling like you can feel all of those emotions whatever they are. You know, there's no bad emotions right like negative emotions are okay, they are still emotions. God gave you a wide breadth of emotions, so you can feel them all. Now. There are ways to handle them appropriately, but feeling them is not a bad thing. And most women that I work with that have spent a lot of time focused on their bodies and changing their bodies have a really hard time feeling feelings. I would much rather the bad feeling comes and me turn and start thinking about how to fix my body again. So what would it look like to sit in those feelings? And maybe it's journaling, maybe it's writing out like kind I'm so upset about this. I don't know what to do about this, or maybe it's just verbalizing like Lord help me. I don't know what to do. I'm lost, but feeling those feelings, allowing the Holy Spirit to come in and comfort you and encourage your heart. Remind your heart that you are safe in Christ. Right, remind you of who you are in Christ. And try that, and then see see how the rest the day goes. See if perhaps those obsessive swirly tally I can't step thinking about my body and how fat I am and how it has to change right now. See if that doesn't calm it down a little bit. Okay, that's idea one, and I think it's probably the most important idea because most of the time what we feel around our bodies is actually about other things. It's not about our bodies. Okay, number two, what if it actually is about my body. I'm in perimenopause, I have gained weight, I am aging, things look different, things feel different. Ah, there's this reality here that my body is not the same as it was ten or twenty years ago. And I don't know what to do with that. What do you do with that? Friend? It might almost be the same as my last suggestion. Right, it's sitting in this reality of Wow, there are some things that are actually out of my control, Like aging. I mean, I can use some creams and potions and you go get injections or whatever other options there are out there. But at the end of the day, I am getting older. Time is going by. I'm no longer the teenager or the twenty something in the family picture. I'm old enough to be the grandma in that family picture now. And there's some wrestling that comes with that. There's some grieving that comes with that, recognizing I'm in a new era of life. I'm at a new stage of life and there's no going back but Froen. That's when you have a choice to make. You can spend this whole new stage of life feeling frustrated that you're not in the old stage of life, or you can come and say, Okay, God, I see I know. I'm not twenty five. I'm not thirty five anymore. I'm closer to sixty than I am the forty. What what do you have for me now? God helped me to be content in this season. Show me what you have for me in this season. I wrote a book called Agent Gratefully. If you're watching on YouTube, it's behind me. So there's more than ninety thousand copies of it out there friends, So it's it's a good book I've heard, but it's called Agent Gratefully. There's second version of it, oh, SQL will be coming out in next year or so. But it's a thirty day devotional on aging that can encourage you if this is where you're at today, If you're in the season of like, I'm freaking out because I can't control things like I used to. Things don't look like they used to. This book will encourage you. But friend, separate your actual feelings from your body, because here's the thing, right, yea, how you feel about your body has nothing to do with how your body looks. And some of you have experienced this, right, you know, like I feel great and I was in a bigger size than when I was small and obsessing. Right, that's the truth. Confidence doesn't come from wearing a certain size. Confidence comes from Christ and the freer you become to focus your life on how and what He made you for doing other things, feeling alive in your purpose, feeling alive in loving others and loving God. Getting your mind off yourself, and there's so much freedom there that will allow you to wake up in the morning not thinking about your body. Not thinking about what you look like, but thinking about what does God have for me to do today? God gave me another day on this planet. What does he want from me today? What should I do to serve Him today? And when that's when you find freedom from those worly, truly swirly obsessive negative thoughts. If your words are I'm miserable. I can't stand it anymore, I can't take it anymore. It's too bad. I can't leave the house. I can't fill in the blank here. Then, when you are obsessing over your outsides, you're obsessing over your body in a way that goes far beyond stewardship to a place that may prove that you've made this an idol. Weight loss is a fine goal, but it's a terrible god. And when the goal becomes so important to us that we feel like we just can't make it without reaching that goal, that's a problem. I think of Rachel. Remember Jacob's story with Rachel and Leah. Rachel was the more beautiful sister, but in Genesis thirty one, she says, give me a baby or I'll die. Give me children or I'll die, and her demand shows how she's lost her peace. She's lost her joy. She's so obsessed with this idol, and Jacob doesn't reply to her very kindly. But is that what we're doing too? Are we saying, give me weight loss or I'll die? Man? The idol of weight loss can become a ruthless task master, making us feel like unless we obey it, unless we serve it, unless we achieve it will not be good enough. We'll not make it, we'll die and friend, that's how we know we've made it an idol, And that's when we have to go back. Remember those four exhales at the beginning of the series, or maybe there were only three of them, but that's when we need to go back and remember those exhales that you're already accepted, you have a purpose, you're already loved, seen and known. Losing weight does not change your value. You're turning to body change for your salvation and it's not going to change it. You're not going to feel less miserable as soon as you get the skinny body. This problem is not about your body. It's about what's going on in your heart. How is your heart oriented? So there's a fantastic book by Tim Keller called the freedom of self forgetfulness. I recommend it to all of my coaching clients because the concept is it's not really that you're going to be free once you reach that goal weight. You might feel a little better, health might be a little better. Sure, all those things great, no problem with that, right, But if you are living that we talked about this in last episode, that's self focused, insular life where the most important thing in your life is your body and taking care of your body and your health and your health goals and your weight goals. If you are living that life, you don't suddenly get free from that when you lose weight. In fact, there are actual studies out there that so that it gets worse. Body of magicians get worse for women that use a significant lose a significant amount of weight, Women that maybe never obsessed that much before, lose a significant amount of weight and start obsessing over their body like never before. It's not the paths of freedom. The paths of freedom is not self neglect. To listen to the difference, but it's self forgetfulness. It's waking up in the morning and you have to lay it down every morning, you really do, and after a while it becomes easier. But it's waking up and instead of feeling your stomach and feeling your chin and feeling your arms and be like, oh my body, Oh my body. I'm so stressed about my body. I look so awful on what to wait today and how to exposs today. Instead of doing that, It's okay, God, my body is yours. Tell me how to use it today, tell me what you want me to do with it today. I am going to take these thoughts captive. I'm not going to focus on my body today. I'm going to focus on you and what you made me for and what you have for me to do today. And that's the secret. That's a secret to not feeling fat. Hey, thanks for listening today. You can still join us in the Waiting for Weight Loss community. We'd love to see there, and I hope you'll join us on the forty Day Journey. I think that'll be encouraging to you. It starts in just a week. You can learn more at improve Budymange dot com look for the forty Day Journey TEP. Thanks for watching listening today. Bye, Brafe. Their two podcast is proud to be part of a Life Audio podcast Hour for more great Christian podcast. Go to lifeaudio dot com.