Sheri Rose Shepherd - Fit for My King: His Princess 30-Day Diet Plan and Devotional

Fit for
My King

His Princess 30-Day Diet Plan and Devotional

SHERI ROSE SHEPHERD

2009 by Sheri Rose Shepherd

Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shepherd, Sheri Rose, 1961
Fit for my King : his princess 30-day diet plan and devotional / Sheri Rose Shepherd
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8007-1916-6 (cloth)
1. Christian womenPrayers and devotions. 2. Christian womenHealth and hygiene. 3. Reducing dietsRecipes. 4. Weight lossReligious aspects Christianity. I. Title.
BV4844.S5335 2009
242 .4dc22 2009024035

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked CEV is taken from the Contemporary English Version 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture marked NLT1 is taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked NLT2 is taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from Sheri Rose Shepherd, His Princess Bride: Love Letters from Your Prince (Revell, 2008) are used in some of the prayers.

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

M ost women look at me today and think Im the lead commander of this diet war we cant seem to win. I speak at several womens conferences each year on a variety of topics; however, every time Id share the part of my life of how God healed me from an eating disorder, helped me conquer chronic fatigue, and gave me the strength and wisdom to lose over fifty pounds and keep it off, the women would bombard me with a desperate cry to teach them how.

So, after ten years of addressing this topic, speaking to over half a million women across this nation, I felt the Lord leading me to share His plan for His Princesses to break free from this food issue and Barbie bondage so we can win this Diet War once and for all!

I know from personal experience what its like to grow up in what society refers to as a dysfunctional home. (Today, there are so many dysfunctional families that much of the world has lost sight of what a healthy, functional family looks like.) My parents have been married and divorced three times each, and Ive been a part of five blended families. My dad had an extremely violent temper, and my mom was paralyzed by emotional pain. Because they were always in one crisis situation after another, I never felt the freedom to go to either of them for comfort and direction. When I needed comfort, I found it in food. When I was in pain, I used drugs and alcohol to escape. By the time I was sixteen, I was addicted to both the food and the drugs. I made so many poor choices, burned so many bridges, and nearly destroyed my mind and body. I believed I was destined for destruction. I wanted desperately to crawl out of this deep, dark hole of despair, but the harder I tried, the deeper I fell into depression and the more I ate.

At the lowest point in my life, my stepmom Susie challenged me with a painful question. She asked me how long I was going to use my past as an excuse for the poor choices I was making. She shocked me with the truth that I could do nothing to change my past, but I could choose to make the right choices to change my future.

That painful truth empowered me to change almost everything about myself. Believe it or not, in just one year, I lost all my excess weight, I stopped using drugs, I changed my friends, I changed my attitude, I improved my grades, I changed my clothes and my hair color, and while I was in a change mode, I even got a nose job.

I went from a drug-using, overweight, insecure junior in high school to a powerful, popular senior who had boyfriends, a local beauty title, and a much better place in life. It looked like I had it all, and to the outside world I did. There was only one piece missing from what appeared to be the perfect puzzle: no matter how much I projected a perfect life or look on the outside, on the inside I continued to die a silent and secretive death that no one could see but me.

I felt lonely even in a roomful of people. I battled with deep, hidden depression because money, things, worldly success, and beauty could only hide my painthey could not heal my heart or rebuild what was broken in my life or nourish my soul.

An English teacher of mine was so frustrated with me that she told me I would never amount to anything in life, that I was born to be a loser. I was certain my teacher was right until I discovered Gods grammar lesson for broken lives like mine:

Dont put a period where God has a comma,
Because He has a plan for every life He creates.

By the time I reached age twenty-four, I did not know how to deal with my feelings. How could I possibly tell anyone that the young woman who seemed to have it all still cried herself to sleep every night, just like she did when she was a little girl. If I went to a doctor for my emotional pain, he would look at my blessed life and give me a drug for depression. I couldnt tell my parents because I did not want to disappoint them, when they were so proud of all I had become. If I told my friends about my emotional pain and eating disorder, they would look at my successes and think that I was ungrateful. So I did what I had learned to do as a young girl; once again I ignored the warning signs. I covered them up by losing more weight, winning more pageants, making more money, setting more goals, and filling my schedule with excessive busyness so I wouldnt have time to feel any pain.

I was thrown out on the road of reality. This time my emotional pain was so severe that every part of my body was hurting. I had panic attacks, crying spells, loss of memory, and chronic depression. The original pain from my childhood that had given me the power to change my life as a teenager no longer worked.

I had no more strength or desire to fill the empty pages of my life. I felt as if I were at the end of my lifes story. I could not decorate the pain I was feeling anymore. I thought out a way I could end my life quickly; I felt it would be better to die with the world thinking that I was successful than to disappoint them with the truth that I was a mess.

I checked myself into a hotel room and decided that I would take my life with sleeping pills. When I walked into the room, I threw myself on the floor and screamed at the top of my lungs, God, do You exist? If You do, please show me!

I immediately felt His presence in the room, comforting me. The next morning I was invited by a friend to his grand parents house, and these were the missionaries who led me to the greatest crown of all, the crown of everlasting life. This couple had nothing in common with me, but they had the very thing I needed mostthey had peace and purpose and joy. The way they lived for the Lord led me out of slavery from the lies of this world and into the truth of Gods promises for my life. It has been a long journey to learn how to walk in the freedom and even harder to stay free, but today, praise be to God, I am completely free and at peace with who God has created me to be. In other words, no more Barbie bondage, and the Diet War has been won!