Tag: weight loss

Fearfully and wonderfully made

A few days ago, I was back at it with an old foe. Self-image, weight issues, hearing words from long ago echoing in my mind. Thinking about how I can’t seem to lose weight without obsession or extreme deprivation, thinking about what certain members of my family might be saying about me behind my back if they could see me right now. It’s something I’ve dealt with for a very long time and is just not something I’ve beaten yet.

It’s easy to imagine what other people think and then start feeling like God probably feels the same way. Disappointed that I still have baby weight from last time, disappointed that I am not athletic, that I am not a socially accepted size. I was going down that road when I felt Him whisper, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I turned in my Bible to Psalms 139 and read this familiar verse again:

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:

marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knows right well.”

I have for many years imagined myself to be overweight, even when I wasn’t. When I was a young teenager and had to stop wearing junior sizes and wear women’s clothing, I thought this meant I was now fat. When my friends wore size fours and I wore a size ten, I thought this meant I was huge. I look back at photos of myself and feel grieved that I spent so many years thinking that way. So why do I still do that? I’m not talking about making excuses for bad eating or sitting around doing nothing – those are things I’ve been working on for a very long time – I mean focusing too much on clothing size and the shape of my body and what I look like in photos.

He has done marvelous works in my life, both physically and spiritually. I have been delivered from depression, healed of allergies and given the opportunity to carry and birth eight children, even though I once said I wouldn’t have more than three and when I got married, assumed I would be done by the time I was thirty. My body certainly shows the signs of carrying those babies but why don’t I wear it as a badge of honour? Why do I obsess?

The day after this gentle reminder, I asked God how I could lose a bit more weight. He answered quietly, “Just stop eating so much.” I tend to believe that I need to calorie count, work out all the time, eat perfectly, etc. to lose any weight at all and because of my weakness when it comes to perfectionism, I often give up when I realize I can’t do all of that perfectly. But what if I don’t need to be a size ten again? God knows what is right for me and I believe that the first step is moderation. Moderation in what I eat and how I exercise. Not giving into gluttony but not starving myself or becoming obsessive either – that side of things isn’t moderation any more than eating at a buffet every day would be. Not sitting around doing nothing but not spending all my extra time on exercise.

There are practical things I can do to lose weight or at least stop gaining but if my view of myself is broken and I do not see myself through God’s eyes, my motives will always be wrong. I have watched people with a terrible self-image have amazing success at losing weight and it’s just never enough – they still see themselves as too fat or not fit enough. I’ve been down that road, doing crazy things to just lose a few more pounds to hit a goal. That’s not what I want. I want to look at myself and know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I need to love myself regardless of extra weight, wrinkles, stretch marks or blemishes. If I can figure this out, it won’t matter what I look like and I can finally win this long battle.

 

Revelation, Identity, Summer, Time Flies

On time flying:

We’re halfway through August. We’ve done all our camps, aren’t going on holidays, have only a few more weeks before it will be labour day and fall birthdays and the baby is almost seven months old already. It isn’t anything new but it always shocks me a bit.

Summer or the lack thereof:

We have not had the warmest summer this year. We’ve had so much rain that the berries on my mountain ash are a different colour than in past years (rain is what I’m thanking for this change anyway), the backyard looks like a jungle and I’ve suddenly realized that every tree on my lot needs pruning (and a few that are growing into my yard from the neighbours’ as well). I’ve dunked myself in an ice cold river a few times but the last time I wondered why, as the sun wasn’t beating down on me when I came out and I shivered my way back to my cabin and a hot shower half an hour later. Today the older kids are hanging out in a tent in the backyard and hoping that maybe the forecast will change and it won’t rain tonight or tomorrow. Today it’s hot. It feels like summer. Tomorrow we have a 90% chance of more rain. No forest fires this year, though. That we can be thankful for. And we’ll hope that maybe winter will wait until the end of October again.

Identity:

This is something I’ve been wrestling with yet again but feeling like I’m on the cusp of figuring it out. I’m getting better at owning who I am and trying to learn who I am in Christ. I was singing a worship song not long ago: “All I am is yours,” it repeats in the chorus. I’ve always sang this song feeling that I was declaring all I have/am as belonging to Him. It suddenly came to me that ALL I AM is His. If everything was stripped away, I am His. Right now, I’m mother, wife, writer, etc. but at the core of me, I am His. What I have and who I am belongs to Him but being His should be my first identity.

Revelation:

We visited a nearby church a few weeks ago. Our church doesn’t meet on Sundays over the summer so we thought we would visit somewhere else every so often on Sundays.I don’t remember what it was that the worship leader said, but I spent some time waiting on God and He spoke to my heart very clearly. I had been stressing so much over weight loss lately and while I had been trying to go walking more often and eat less sugar, more vegetables, etc. the calorie counting/obsessive exercise lifestyle was reaching out more and more as a solution, even though I know how damaging it has been in the past. The word I received that Sunday morning was simple. He said, “You don’t have to lose weight for me to love you.” Ouch. I know this. I know it’s true. He doesn’t love anyone less because of their weight. But growing up, there was an undercurrent of, “thin and fit is holier, better, more Christ like.” It did its damage and I’ve had a hard time moving past it as an adult. When you start talking about this, many well-meaning believers launch into diatribes about gluttony and sloth as though those are the only reasons people might be heavier than others. After this simple word, He asked me a question. “Would you still eat well and exercise if you didn’t lose weight?” My honest answer had to be, “probably not.” I have been so focused on fitting into the mold that this culture finds appealing that I’d lost the plot on the purpose of eating a balanced diet and moving my body enough. With people around me pushing Beachbody, supplements, weight loss challenges, Keto, Paleo, etc. I had gotten distracted. Yes, I would like my body to feel better than it does right now. But I know that weight loss cannot be my focus or I will lean into obsessive behaviour. In the past, I’ve tried to take my focus off of pounds and put it on inches lost or clothing sizes changed but even that leads into obsessing. Meanwhile, I’m missing the whole point. I should eat well because I feel better when I do. Because God made my body to function best when it is in balance. I should go walking with my husband because it is good for our relationship and good for my body.

Anyway, I’m a work in progress. I ate too much sugar at camp and I’m having to adjust back to normal now that we’re home again. I need to think a bit more about what I’m eating and maybe prepping things for myself will help but the last thing I need to do is start weighing or measuring those things before I eat them, or eating only the things on a certain list of good/bad. That is dangerous territory that I know better than to walk into again.