Elle

Once upon a time there was a girl who was overweight. But she saw the light and she lost her extra weight and bought a whole new wardrobe and new makeup and styled her hair differently and everywhere she went the birds sang and small forrest creatures followed her around and stared at her with devoted admiration. A tall, dark handsome man with perfect teeth and a broad vocabulary swept her off her feet and they spent all their days traveling to exotic places and all their nights watching Downton Abbey and drinking red wine and eating organic food.

No. No, that’s not my story.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was overweight. But she realized that because she was overweight she was missing out on stuff that seemed like an awful lot of fun. So she whipped herself into shape and ate nothing but vegetables (the really serious kind, like kale and parsnips and brussels sprouts and beets) with an occasional smattering of fruit. And then one day, she drove by a Whataburger and remembered how good those all beef patty covered with melted cheese and flanked by a greasy bun with all the fixins’ used to taste. And all the organic food and all the Billy Blanks’ Tai-Bo videos couldn’t put Humpty together again. She gained everything back, and then some.

No, that’s not it either.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was overweight. For a very long time, she accepted this as something that was simply fact. Something she couldn’t change. And then, one day, she realized that she could change it. So she employed her common sense, will power, and ability to self-educate and within a year’s time, she was in an entirely different place. For the first time ever, she didn’t have her clothes organized by size and she didn’t worry so much about pool parties or last minute outings or about people taking pictures and putting them on Facebook. She wasn’t scared anymore. She started to really live.

But then, perhaps because she wasn’t as sure of herself as she thought she was, or perhaps because she just didn’t realize the breadth of the commitment a “lifestyle change” would require, she began to slip. Exercise became more and more infrequent. She gave herself permission to eat the foods and the quantities of food that she used to eat, in the “before” days. She dabbled in dating, but it was a foreign land to her and when insecurities surfaced, she turned to her old coping mechanisms. Food. Food. More food. And living became less, and the existing became more.

There. Right there, is where she found herself two years after beginning her journey. It wasn’t where she wanted to be, and after months of swinging back and forth on a pendulum between dieting legalism and hopeless fat-must-be-her-destiny fatalism, she was ready to make a choice.

Being human, she realized, is to have certain proclivities. And hers were for the sweet and savory things of life. For many mornings in a row, she woke up early and contemplated her position while spirals of steam rose from her coffee cup and tickled her nostrils. Where to go from here? How to begin the going? What to change, so that maybe the going will go until it’s finished this time? She journaled these things and made a plan.

First. She changed her environment. She went from a house with five people far from work (much too far to be able to cook healthy food on a regular basis) to a small home with one roommate about six minutes from work (that she could easily get to and invest the time in making meals that supported her overall goals).

Second. She dropped the timeline. Losing weight fast would be good. Losing weight permanently, the right way, would be much better.

Third. She resolved that she would accept herself, warts and all. That she would maintain a sense of realism, so so as not to become a victim in life, and a sense of humor, so that she would remember to laugh at herself.

Yes. That’s my story. My priorities are realigned, and I’m ready to write again. And I’m buckled up, for safety, obviously.

Here are a few of the things I’ve been eating this week. Can’t wait to tell you more about them.

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Back to 183.

They say (yes, they) that the average person gains 10 pounds during the holidays, but I think I’ll go ahead and tap the brakes at 5.

For a brief, shining moment I had dipped my toes back into the 170s. And then the holidays happened. Well, I let them happen. Those Christmas cookies and pies didn’t hop onto my plate and jump down my throat on their own. And now I have to pay the piper.

I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last month about how, in this year, I experienced my lowest weight since high school, and also my highest weight since I started down this journey about two years ago. How is that I did so well, and then did so poorly, all within the span of a few months?

The thing is, I almost had it. But not quite. While I had made some positive changes to the way I was eating and the kinds of food I was eating, I never actually put food in its right place in my life. Before I lost weight, food was my friend, my loyal companion. After I lost food, it became something I could exert control over. Like, maybe there were other things in my life that weren’t working out the way I wanted, but I most certainly had the power to chose what I put in my mouth. It was a dragon that I’d slain. And instead of being ashamed over my relationship with food, I became prideful about it.

See, the problem is that all that time, food still held an inappropriately important position in my life. A nearly all-consuming position. It was, in essence, an idol.

I don’t believe that food is inherently evil. Actually, food is a good thing. And, being a professing Christian, I’ll go even further and say that food is a gift from a loving God. I mean, think about it. God could have made food really boring. He could have said, “There, see that tree over yonder? Ok, well, whenever you need nourishment, just go gnaw off some bark.” And that could have been it. Tree bark. How utterly dull.

But he didn’t do that. He gave us food that comes in every color of the rainbow. He gave us sweet food, savory food, food that can be cooked or eaten raw. He gave us herbs and seasonings. He gave those foods mouth-watering aromas. We have nuts, beans, grains… the list goes on and on. Basically, God made food fun–He wanted us to enjoy it. But He doesn’t want us to worship it.

When my job pushes me over the edge, and my reaction is to reach for the nearest candy bar to cope, I am making a grave mistake. I am making a conscious decision to prefer God’s gifts (food) over God Himself. This hasn’t worked out well for me historically. If I’m not happy about some circumstance in my life, waking up the next morning to find a bigger number on the scale does not help the situation. Ever. Ever. Ever.

So here I am. Legs crossed in front of me, hands in folded in my lap, eyes fixed on some distant object while I work my jaw back and forth and ponder the New Year unfolding before me. I think about a God who is big enough to change the things about me that I cannot, and a prayer starts to form in the recesses of my mind. “Teach me to view food rightly. As a gift to be enjoyed, to tickle the senses and remind me that the creator of anything is always better, and more fascinating and interesting than what has been created.”

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Ok, so the number is…

178.8

Which, believe it or not, I’m actually thrilled about. I started the week at 183. (I know, I’m completely out of order, but we’re reining it back in). 

You’ve heard it said that the “mind is a powerful thing,” but in 2004, the Cleveland Clinic conducted a study that brought astounding gravity to the cogency of that statement.

A group of 30 young, healthy adults was divided into three smaller groups, and each group was given a task to perform for 15 minutes a day, five days a week, for 12 weeks.

Group 1) imagine exercising one of their small fingers

Group 2) imagine exercising their bicep muscles

Group 3) do nothing (they were the control group)

At the end of the 12 week experiment, Group 1 had increased the strength in their finger muscles by 53%. Group 2 had increased the strength in their biceps by 13.4%. Group 3 didn’t have any reportable changes.

Besides the fact that this means I could potentially imagine my way into a bikini by next summer, there are some profoundly important implications we have to consider upon observing these results.

1) The mind is, indeed, powerful. If the mind can literally “think” a muscle into existence, then what kind of damage can a depressing thought do? I’d hazard to guess… it might depress you.

I’ve spent much of this year under the burden of a hefty sadness, feeling trapped by an addiction to food. Feeling left behind while others go on to get married and start families. Feeling, in many ways, like a hopeless outsider. Like damaged goods. Could it be that the action of dwelling on these thoughts is the vehicle by which they became manifest in my daily life?

2) That which has been done can be undone.

If, after that experiment, strength in the fingers and biceps existed where it once had not (and all of this a result of brain activity), we have to acknowledge an exciting truth! Reality can be changed. For me, this means the story I’ve been writing about myself isn’t set in stone. The things I’ve been convincing myself are true – that I am hopeless, useless, defeated, not normal, unredeemable – they are no more attached to me than a thought. And bad thoughts are easily cast off and replaced by good ones. Healthy ones. Hopeful ones.

I am 28 years old. My body works. My family loves me. My favorite talent is writing. I want to live a life marked by love, health, and wisdom. I was designed for growth and exploration. I am rich in the ways that matter. And I really like my hair.

Now what was I depressed about?

3) When I forget these things, as I am prone to do,  I am greatly comforted by the knowledge that One who is much greater than I is looking out for my well-being, and will see to it that I am led back into Truth.

In my time with the Lord this morning, the verse that leapt off the page at me was this:

“You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough…The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty.”

                                                                                                                                                         -Galatians 5:7-10

In other words, God is persistently at work to uproot and change the part of me that thinks it will find happiness in a tube of raw cookie dough. And he knows that self-deprecating thoughts, even small ones (yeast), have tripped me up. I have stumbled over them, and identified myself as a failure (the whole batch of dough). And that isn’t from Him. He calls me to shift my gaze away from the things that are scary, to focus fully on the goodness and kindness of His nature, and to plant myself firmly in the knowledge that He wants to teach me to enjoy the gift of health, one moment at a time.

Journaling through the thoughts.

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