Key Ingredient to Weight Loss: Stillness
The hardest part of losing weight, even maintaining my healthy weight is being still.
Yes, you read that right.
Maybe you’re a little confused right now, saying, “I thought I needed to move more. Why would I want to be still?”
I’m not talking about my body, even though it transfers there.
I’m talking about my thoughts.
"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10
The stillness of the mind.
What I wouldn’t give to let my thoughts rest.
You know the struggle.
There are many memes out there about this…
“I started making some lunch, walked out of the kitchen, sat on the couch, and thought, ‘Wow. I’m hungry. I should start making some lunch.’”
Or
"I don’t have ducks. Or a row. I have squirrels, and they’re everywhere."
While there may be some physical or hormonal changes that sometimes contribute to disordered thinking, there is another influence that many don’t talk about.
Avoiding feeling.
It’s something I am consistently struggling with.
Why is feeling so hard?
Because it stinks. That’s why.
Who wants to sit and attend to how God is convicting them? Who wants to feel pain, sadness, frustration, annoyance, embarrassment, or wrong?
No one I know.
So, what do most of us do?
We get busy.
We move from one task to the next. We just keep going to distract ourselves.
I forget that God gave us emotions for a reason.
Imagine a life without feeling. I mean it. Think about the birth of your child. It would be just like any other day. You would have no attachment to that beautiful creature God gave you to care for.
Emotions are the indicators that we need to be alert to certain situations. They are the catalysts to creating memories and strong neural pathways in our brains. Neural pathways that help us repeat (or not to repeat) certain behaviors.
Feelings are what lead us into action. We feel fear, so we avoid danger. We feel love, so we create relationships. We feel disappointment, so we change our behavior.
But how many of us are attentive to our emotions?
I’m guessing very few of you (at least this is what I find true from my clients). The enemy loves to help us numb frustration, stress, guilt, pain, etc. with plenty of distraction.
So, like many of you, I just keep falling into the snare of busyness. And one of the easiest ways, for me, to stay busy is…
EATING.
Here is the crux of my problem.
I resist feeling because I never was taught how to embrace emotions. Feelings make me… well, feel out of control. That if I lean into frustration, I’ll never get out. The enemy feeds me the lie that I’m just a victim to feeling this way forever.
Feeling like the victim creates more thinking about myself and how I’m feeling, creating more negative emotions. It’s a terrible, spinning cycle to be in.
So, I search for some relief… in food. I’ll go on binges, shoving anything edible in my mouth. I won’t even realize it at times. It numbs or distracts me from what’s really going on.
Unfortunately, it’s only temporary and actually produces more negative emotions in the end.
This is not how God wants me to live.
Here is the ONLY way I have found that actually cures…
STILLNESS...
to take in God’s Truth and lean into the gift of feeling.
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15
It’s in the stillness I can capture every thought (2 Corinthians 10:5) and hold it to the light of Truth. It’s in the stillness that I can lean into feeling and then make a conscious choice about how I am going to act.
A pause. One of my most underutilized, God-given tools. I know I have been in the middle of an eating binge, and it feels like I can’t stop myself. But in that intensity of the moment, I try to remember;
“I just need one minute. I can come back and keep eating if I want, but I’m going to give myself one minute. One minute to focus on Truth and be still.”
"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you." Isaiah 26:3
Something amazing always happens when I pause. I walk away. I quit eating. I breathe. The emotions don’t necessarily go away instantly, but there is a calmness.
My thoughts slow down, and life starts to look more manageable.
Stillness. It’s a beautiful but unusual weapon that God gives us to fight the lies the enemy uses to keep us stuck.
But one I’m ready to use more often.
How about you?
"The Lord will fight for you, and all you have to do is keep still." Exodus 14:14
PS Losing weight was/is a journey. It took me down many paths that I didn't need or wish I wouldn't have traveled. That's why I help Christian women walk a path to lose weight, but also renew their mind and transform their lifestyle so they can live God's good plan for their life. If you're ready, sign up for a Discovery Call HERE.
