Why don't you switch the light on, girl?

Just read this.  I want to walk in the light, not stumble around like a plonker, in the dark.

If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth—we’re not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin. (1 John 1:6-7 MSG)

Here's how it works...

I'm not a scientist or a nutritionist (the world of science thanks me for that) but I figure one of our biggest food issues, is not what we eat, but how much we eat.   Food today is probably packed out with loads of addictive rubbish, but it is still possible to have 'a little of what you fancy'.  It's a question of how much.

For me, I have good days and bad days.  A good day means sticking (to the letter) to a set amount of calories. So come supper time, even if I wasn't hungry, I'd be fishing about for stuff to nibble on, so I could polish off my 'calorie allowance' for the day.

A bad day on the other hand, meant letting it all hang on, usually eating very little by day and then having a bottle of Prosecco for dinner with a nice carb-heavy meal...think Pasta, cream, cheese or fajitas.  Oh how I looooovveee fajitas.   The result of that though is a heavy 'food hangover' the next day - feeling disgusting, bloated and guilty.  

I would wake up in the morning, feeling lethargic and unhappy with myself. The 'action' of those feelings is to then wear black and to 'hide' my body.

Much of this stream of thought is unconscious - but people always comment when I've lost weight, more so because they notice I'm wearing brighter clothes.

So this experiment is to become more aware of what I'm shovelling in my mouth and more aware of my thought processes.  

After yesterday's sort of blue day, an arrow shot through my head, 'go home, eat, relax'.  But how would that make stuff any better?  Having a plate of creamy carbs isn't going to fix the problems I'm facing...though it'd probably provide a temporary escape.  

Funny how my brain has become wired in this way.   This is what I'm trying to smash.  It's a starve-binge cycle that's messed up and which fixes nada.

Day 3 begins...

Overwhelmed...

Funny how, when you ask God to deal with an area of your life, He always seems to start doing other stuff too.  Driving home tonight and the word 'overwhelmed' was in my head -that's genuinely how I felt.  

I have so much stuff on my plate at the moment (ha...good pun, considering!), that I felt like I was about to be hit by a tsunami. Now did not feel like a good time to start tackling eating issues. But then again, there never is a good time.  There's always an excuse, always a reason not to.   So, I stuck with it, had a reasonably nice dinner, ate thoughtfully and slowly and stopped when I'd had enough.

Later, I went to my cell group and we got talking about what to do when we're overwhelmed.  I hadn't told a soul about how I was feeling but that exact word kept cropping up, 'overwhelmed'.  We sang the Bethel song too;

God, I look to you, I won't be overwhelmed. Give me vision to see things like you do.

And so day 2 of thoughtful, conscious eating comes to an end.  I passed my first emotional eating test and learned just a smidge more about what I should be doing, when I feel like life's waters are threatening to drown me. 

God's not interested in me...

I saw this today and the first part, summed up exactly how I have felt (deep down, and secretly) for such a long time.   It reminds me that freedom is possible.

Yesterday (urgh)

So yesterday was a pretty rotten day. Ok, to be fair, the first part of the day was pretty good; Church was great (love that place) and if I'm honest, I was looking forward to getting home, opening some wine and cooking a nice meal.  Headed off to the supermarket after church and bought ingredients for Pad Thai.

I got home, unpacked food and then took part in my funny little relaxation ritual...opened wine, put on some chilled music and sat in my big, comfy swivel chair, just watching the world go by from the window.  Later, I cooked up the shrimp and peanut Pad Thai and polished it off with a not-so-homemade rice pudding.

And then about an hour later, it started.  I began to feel really ill...like scarily bloated and sick.  I didn't think I'd eaten that much, but perhaps the combo of foods had conspired to create this horrible, horrible feeling.  It was so uncomfortable and I was also wracked with this guilt at my First World indulgence.  One half of the world goes to bed hungry...and here was me, unwell from eating too much.  Something was very, very wrong with that picture, and so at around 8pm last night, my self-loathing truly knew no boundsand I headed to bed. 

Not surprisingly, couldn't really sleep, so suffered in agony for about 2 hours, till it passed.  I woke up this morning, feeling better but still annoyed at what I'd done.  It reminded me of a time in my life, about 10 years ago, when I used to purposefully overeat, in order to get that 'full' feeling.  I thought those days were long over, but last night it felt like they'd come back with a fury.

In the fevered wee hours, I decided (not for the first time....ha!) that I needed to get to the bottom of all this and that also, as a Christian, why was I saying one thing about my beliefs, but in private, this thing seemed to have such control in my life.  It just felt (and still does!) like a big disconnect and I want to be free.

This morning, I had a bit of a ropey day at work, felt light-headed and uncomfortable and it again reinforced the idea that the self abuse had to stop.  How?  Good question...but I'm going to return to what I know best; listening to my own bod.

I figure that my body tells me when I've had enough, I've just gotten very good at ignoring it. Plus, I use food and wine as an emotional crutch.  And that's just the beginning. 

However,  if I don't want to be sitting here in exactly the same place in 10 years time, then I gotta make changes.

So, here we go....