I should be doing a few other things, but I just have to blog while I have that first cup of coffee this morning. It's too good of a revelation not to share. I have lost 10 pounds. If you want to be technical 9.8 pounds - but I feel comfortable rounding to 10. I got on the scale this morning and it confirms what I have always believed - that you don't have to diet to lose weight. Diet, as in seriously restrict your food intake till you're starving all the time.
I did the Weigh Down Workshop years ago with my friend Carol, and we both lost a lot of weight. We also learned a lot of scripture. There was a big hoopla in the Christian community when the founder was outed as a Unitarian - which I didn't bother me nearly as much as her hair! More recently I had started to participate in a similarly Bible based weight loss program online that I failed at rather quickly. I learned something from both of these studies that I have applied with success this week - that God designed our bodies to work a certain way. He created our bodies to function properly under certain conditions. The problem for me was that these programs also required a great deal of Bible study.
Whoa - before anyone gets offended or feels I just made some sort of shocking revelation about an aversion to the Bible, please understand - I love the Bible. But, I personally refuse to use it as some magic formula to get me from point A to point B as far as my weight loss. I just can't do it. I personally don't like it when someone seeks to get close to me with ulterior motivation, and I personally can't imagine God does either. This is not to diminish in any way the successes that others have had - but for me, I know that all the scripture memorization and Bible study had an ulterior motive. Which is why when it ended, I gained all the weight back, and failed. The Bible study was a stumbling block for me - a program of guilt and obligation - when I didn't get to it or stay consistent with it, how I ate and the numbers on the scales reflected it.
But recently I have been thinking so much about what we are supposed to eat and not eat. I have also pondered the all things in moderation - meaning that nothing need be eliminated but put in its proper place. I have had the hunger pangs of an empty stomach. I have experienced the joy of eating cake again, and still been dropping pounds here and there. When I realize that my body is working the way it was designed, I am worshipful towards a Creator who made me this way.
No secret formulas. No guilt and obligation. Just me and God. He is teaching me all about His marvelous creation of the human body - my own.
Showing posts with label guilt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guilt. Show all posts
17 February 2008
25 August 2007
Real or Obligation
I read this awesome post about guilt this morning and it got my thoughts going. Having been manipulated by a heavy dose of the g-word since childhood, and most especially since my parent's divorce, I have only in recent years been learning to distinguish the difference between real guilt because of wrong-doing and perceived guilt because I did not meet or exceed the expectations of someone else.
Perceived guilt comes in a variety of places. I grew up feeling personally responsible for my mother's mental health, and since it was a pretty consistent downward spiral, you can imagine the tsunami of guilt that I tried to stand against. As a young mother, I struggled with making the right choices for my babies - breast or bottle, cloth or disposable, and on and on and on, and as my children have grown these choices have become more complex. When bad things happen to or involving your children, in floods the guilt. In church and homeschool groups, you find yourself signing up to participate in good things because you think that they should happen, even while you don't feel necessarily compelled to do them, because if you don't you'll feel guilty that they didn't ever take off or weren't as good as they could've been because you did not do your part. This guilt can be handed down from the pulpit or from the group in general, and I too have participated in guilting others. (What do you mean you're not making the gingerbread houses this year? Sorry Helen!)
I have come to realize that anything motivated by guilt or obligation is not the real thing at all. It is why the Salvation Army bell ringers standing outside the stores on the holidays are successful, because we are motivated by the pressure to perform when we see a need. I am not saying the cause is not worthy, but that often we give out of the peer pressure of public performance versus out of the abundance of a generous heart.
Recently, I was talking to a friend and brought to tears when I realized that my mother never really let me love her. Everything you did for her was expected, and great mountains of guilt were heaped when you did not perform according to her specifications or expectations. This chokes a relationship and clogs off the natural flow of love.
If you think about the Garden, and the seeming risk Father took when He gave each of us freewill to choose to live in love with Him, it paints the perfect picture. Motivated by obligation and guilt, our "relationship" would mean nothing. Free to live above guilt is the path to perfect love.
Perceived guilt comes in a variety of places. I grew up feeling personally responsible for my mother's mental health, and since it was a pretty consistent downward spiral, you can imagine the tsunami of guilt that I tried to stand against. As a young mother, I struggled with making the right choices for my babies - breast or bottle, cloth or disposable, and on and on and on, and as my children have grown these choices have become more complex. When bad things happen to or involving your children, in floods the guilt. In church and homeschool groups, you find yourself signing up to participate in good things because you think that they should happen, even while you don't feel necessarily compelled to do them, because if you don't you'll feel guilty that they didn't ever take off or weren't as good as they could've been because you did not do your part. This guilt can be handed down from the pulpit or from the group in general, and I too have participated in guilting others. (What do you mean you're not making the gingerbread houses this year? Sorry Helen!)
I have come to realize that anything motivated by guilt or obligation is not the real thing at all. It is why the Salvation Army bell ringers standing outside the stores on the holidays are successful, because we are motivated by the pressure to perform when we see a need. I am not saying the cause is not worthy, but that often we give out of the peer pressure of public performance versus out of the abundance of a generous heart.
Recently, I was talking to a friend and brought to tears when I realized that my mother never really let me love her. Everything you did for her was expected, and great mountains of guilt were heaped when you did not perform according to her specifications or expectations. This chokes a relationship and clogs off the natural flow of love.
If you think about the Garden, and the seeming risk Father took when He gave each of us freewill to choose to live in love with Him, it paints the perfect picture. Motivated by obligation and guilt, our "relationship" would mean nothing. Free to live above guilt is the path to perfect love.
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