Barb Raveling - Say Goodbye to Emotional Eating: 100 Renewing Exercises to Help You Break Free from the Control of Food

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

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The renewing questions in Part Two first appeared in slightly different form in I Deserve a Donut (And Other Lies That Make You Eat): A Christian Weight-Loss Resource and The Renewing of the Mind Project: Going to God for Help with Your Habits, Goals, and Emotions.

Say Goodbye to Emotional Eating

Copyright 2022 by Barb Raveling

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97408

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

ISBN 978-0-7369-8559-8 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7369-8560-4 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022931414

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Contents

I close my eyes and let out a sigh. This ice cream is so good, I think. Spoonful by spoonful, I revel in the joy of it as I devour the whole carton. Then I get up from my perch on the cold concrete at the local grade school and set off for the one-mile walk back to campus.

This was a regular occurrence for me back in my college days in Missoula, Montana. I didnt have a car at the time, so I was forced to walk to my little pig-out sessions. It was inconvenient but necessary. You see, I craved that ice cream. Nothing could stop me from getting it, not even the lack of a car or a cushy place to eat it. I was desperate, and desperate people do whatever they need to do to get their fix.

This type of behavior continued for another 20 years after college. You could tell how my life was going by looking at my body. In the good years I was skinny. In the bad years I wasnt. I was an emotional eaterand emotional eaters gain weight when life is hard.

Most of my pounds were added during the traumas of my life, but a good share of them were added during the celebrations: holidays, vacations, social gatheringseven weekends and evenings were a time for celebration. And what kind of celebration doesnt include food?

My guess is that if we were to sit down for a cup of coffee and a donut, you could tell me a similar story. We both have memories of far too many eating sessionsenough that weve lost hope more than once. For me, eating was that one thing in life that controlled methe thing I thought Id never get over. Thankfully, I was wrong.

More than two decades ago, God gave me a discipline that changed my life. First, He used it on my marriage; then He began to use it on my eating habits. That discipline is the renewing of the mind, and its so effective Ive gone 15 years without gaining my weight back.

God can do the same for you. In this book youll find 100 renewing-of-the-mind exercises designed specifically to help you say goodbye to emotional eating. Well talk more about how to use those exercises later, but first lets take a look at emotional eating.

Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is letting your emotions determine when and what you eat, not your will. So instead of just eating when were hungry or at mealtimes, well eat when were emotional. When were happy. When were sad. When were annoyed. When were overwhelmed. You name the emotionwere ready to eat for it.

Yesterday was a good example. It was 3:00 in the afternoon and I still had a long to-do list that was making me feel discouraged and overwhelmed. I was just thinking how terrible those jobs on the list were, when suddenly I had a brilliant idea. Ill go to the Dairy Queen for a little blizzard! I grabbed my car keys and headed for the door, but then I stopped. No, Barb, I told myself. Get up to your office and finish your work. And surprisingly, I did.

If I had followed through with my little plan, I would have let my emotionsnot my willdetermine what and when I ate. I call this living by desire, not design. Instead of planning the life I want and following through with it, Im allowing my emotions and desires to dictate the life I live.

Our culture is all about letting emotions and desires rule, but God isnt. First Corinthians 6:12 tells us, All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. When I engage in emotional eating, Im letting my emotions and desires master me. Theyre telling me what to eat and when to eat, and Im sitting back and letting them do that.

But heres the thing: in the old days, I didnt feel like I had any other choice. I would hear Christianspeople who never struggled with food a day in their lifetell me, You have a choice. You can choose to say no to the second bowl of ice cream and the third handful of chips.

But I knew otherwise. That food controlled me hook, line, and sinker, and I was powerless to say no. This made me feel defeated and hopeless. Where was the power of God in my life?

Well, the power of God was in the truth. Id heard the truth will make you free (John 8:32), but I didnt know what that meant at the time. Instead, I just felt like I was doomed to a life of being overweight and waking up each morning with dread, thinking back to everything Id eaten the night before.

The Truth Will Set You Free

But remember those people who told me I had a choice? They were right. Only the choice was different from what I had originally thought. It wasnt the choice of whether to eat the third cupcake. It was the choice of whether Id go to the truth to be set free from the desire to eat the third cupcake.

The truth will make us freebut we usually dont apply that verse to such mundane things as not bingeing on cupcakes when were feeling emotional. While its true that the truth sets us free from death to eternal life with God, its also true that the truth sets us free from the desires that control us.

The more God replaced lies with truth when I went to Him for help with emotional eating, the more I was able to see the beauty of eating with control. Truth changed my desires and allowed me to say goodbye to emotional eating. And when that happened, I was able to lose weight and have kept it off for more than 15 years now.