Danna Demetre - Change Your Habits, Change Your Life: A Proven Plan for Healthy Living

change your
habits,
change your
life

change your
habits,
change your
life

A Proven Plan for Healthy Living

DANNA DEMETRE

2009 by Danna Demetre

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

Demetre, Danna.

Change your habits, change your life : a proven plan for healthy living / Danna
Demetre.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8007-3331-5 (pbk.)

1. HealthReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Food habits. 3. Habit breaking
Religious aspectsChristianity. 4. Change (Psychology)Religious aspects
Christianity. I. Title.

BT732.D45 2009

248.8 6dc22

2008041927

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 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 NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Portions of this book are from Danna Demetres book Scale Down: A RealisticGuide to Balancing Body, Soul, and Spirit (Grand Rapids: Revell, 2003).

This is a book based on the research of the author, and the ideas, procedures, and suggestions in this book are not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of your personal health professional. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Consult your physician before adopting any of the suggestions in this book (whether or not explicitly noted in the text), as well as about any condition that may require diagnosis or medical attention. In addition, the statements made by the author regarding certain products or services represent the opinion of the author alone and do not constitute a recommendation or endorsement of any product or service by the publisher. The author and publisher disclaim any liability arising directly or indirectly from the use of the book or any products mentioned herein.

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc. 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com.

contents

introduction
Whats Wrong with Me?

Whats wrong with me? I cant even make it one day without giving into my cravings and going on a binge. I feel like food has total control over me. Will I struggle like this the rest of my life? Why cant I just be normal and eat when Im hungry? Im a total loser. Ill never change.

Most evenings this young nursing student found herself hanging over the toilet bowl vomiting after shed binged on doughnuts, cookies, potato chips, or whatever else she could accumulate quickly on her embarrassing daily raid of the local mini-mart on the way home from classes. Tonight she ended her purging session sobbing into the porcelain bowl. Why cant I stop this? No one answered her pathetic plea.

Shed been struggling for almost five years, and no one knew. While she could stand to lose fifteen or twenty pounds, she looked fairly good in her clothes. Most people called her pretty. She seemed smart, secure, and well liked. She was well liked by everyone but herself.

Now she was engaged to a man nine years her senior who said he would not marry her until she weighed 120 pounds. She thought that his demand would be great motivation, but it only sent her into a more dangerous cycle. Now, she was considering taking amphetamines again to kill her insatiable appetite. She knew better. But, how could pills be worse than what she was doing to her bodysometimes bingeing and purging up to five times a day? She believed her own lie and found an old friend from high school who still had connections.

The pills worked great. She had no appetite and great energy. The speed made her restless when she sat studying for hours, so she took up smoking to give herself something to do. As soon as she lost all the weight, shed give up the cigarettes and the pills. She knew shed have the motivation once she was thin. (Thats what they all say.)

She was more on task with her studies and feeling great as the pounds dropped off faster than ever. Shed be married in no time! And she was. She took her scale on her honeymoon. She just had to maintain that 120 pounds, fearing the rejection of her new husband if she didnt. A few days into her marriage, she flushed the diet pills down the toilet, vowing to never take them again. She had to stop. She had no choice. She was beginning to have really scary panic attacks. Her appetite returned. The panic attacks got worse.

After several months of unrelenting fear, she called on her husband more and more to assure her she would be okay. But he was confused and repulsed by her anxiety and simply withdrew. So once again... she ate... and ate... and ate. And she purged. He never knew her secret. He only knew that she didnt have the perfect 120-pound body anymore. She had the average 148-pound one that he loathed... that she loathed too. She felt lost, trapped, weak, and afraid. Afraid she could never change and be the healthy woman inside and out she so desired to be.

That young woman was meover thirty years ago. I had some dangerously unhealthy habits that were firmly supported by some dangerously unhealthy thinking. What started as occasional overeating led to compulsive overeating, and then in my desire to control my out-of-control behavior, I resorted to purging. That dangerous habit of bulimia peaked in college but actually continued intermittently for about sixteen years.

I share all of this with you because I want you to know that I know what it feels like to be in bondage. I thought the problem was all about my behavior. I discovered that in reality it was all about my unhealthy beliefs and thought patterns. My journey out of bondage took a while because I tried for many years to change from the outside in. I changed my behavior, hoping it would change my urges. That really never worked for long. Id lose a few pounds, or quit smoking for a few weeks, only to return to my old habits, feeling more defeated and pathetic than ever.

The victory I finally found was not really of my own doing. And it certainly wasnt in the order I would have chosen. You see, those panic attacks became so unrelenting that I literally thought I was losing my mind... dying... or both. The unremitting anxiety led me to seek help, first from medical doctors, then from counselors and psychiatrists. I was the ultimate hypochondriac for a few years, sure that the medical doctors were missing some hidden disease that was going to kill me at any moment. I was so motivated to discover my malady that I got straight As in my medical-surgical classes and then again in my psychology unit. But all that study left me still wondering,