Time for Change

by | Jan 16, 2014 | Devotional, Health, Uncategorized

“How’d you lose all that weight?” It’s the most common question I get asked these days since I’ve come “out of the closet” as a former super morbidly obese person. One thing for sure, it was time for change.

Eating HealthyPeople stop me in the locker room at the community recreation center where I go to swim every day. People private message me on Facebook. People entreat me to give them some advice that will “fix” them.

Without reiterating my entire story, which is why I wrote my memoir, Sweet Grace: How I Lost 250 Pounds and Stopped Trying to Earn God’s Favor, the short answer is I changed my mind.

Most people know the concept that my thoughts govern my feelings and my feelings govern my behavior. If I can change my thoughts I can change everything about me.

The problem is there is this subtle part at work that I really don’t understand. It’s called my subconscious. So with my conscious mind I will be saying all the things I “should” be doing but constantly in the background is the subconscious mind telling me how I need to go eat a cinnamon roll or bake a batch of cookies because I’m tired and have worked hard today and deserve all of those things or I’m bored, depressed, lonely, angry or …

Although with my conscious mind I know I have 250 pounds to lose and I can’t eat two dozen cookies in one night and do that, I end up there before I know it.

For years I struggled in this loop. Diets didn’t work because the operating system of my mind, the subconscious was always running. I wanted to change my mind, but I didn’t know how.

I was a victim to tapes that played in my head constantly. And yet I did not want to be. The good I wanted to do I didn’t do and the bad I didn’t want to do I did.1

Several chapters later I learn how implement the real secret. Since God is good I need to offer my body to Him kind of like a living sacrifice. I do it out of love for Him and a desire to please Him.  It’s a sensible way to serve Him. I don’t run after what makes me feel good, but I let God change the way I think. Then I know how to do what is good and pleasing to Him.2 It’s pretty clear. To become different I have to change my mind.

I was letting my feelings lead my mind, talk my mind into things it already knew were not good for my body. My old way of doing things always won out. I hadn’t reprogrammed my mind. It was on the auto-pilot of habit.

To change that I couldn’t erase the old tapes my mind had grown accustomed to, but I could stop playing them. I could put in new tapes to override the old. I could tell myself something different. I could take control over my subconscious mind that acted like a willful child.

Understanding that God wants me to be healthy so that I am available to do His will was a driving force in subduing out-of-control impulses that I had allowed to control my life.

I do not even blame it on some malevolent power. I blame myself and my unwillingness to reign in the tug towards filling soul needs with unhealthy, weight-inducing, organ-busting foods.

I changed my mind. I decided to take control of my impulses. I decided not to eat processed sugar and not to eat gluten. These decisions put me back in the driver’s seat of my own life.

So when people ask me how I lost weight, instead of the long, lengthy explanation, I’m simply going to answer, “I changed my mind.”

It’s as simple as that. It’s as hard as that.

1Romans 7:19

2Romans 12:1-2

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Get your copy of Sweet Grace: How I Lost 250 Pounds and Stopped Trying to Earn God’s Favor by clicking on the title. Also, grab a copy of Sweet Grace Study Guide: Practical Steps to Lose Weight and Overcome Sugar Addiction. If you already have a copy of either the Study Guide or the memoir, I would be honored if you would go to the pages and share a few sentences in the reviews.