Is emotional or binge eating ruining your weight loss goals? Is it threatening your health?
You can end the anguish of binge eating with God’s help. I’m not speaking from theory—I am speaking from experience. The change that has happened to me, it can happen to you.
The first thing you need to do is determine if you are ready to change. Whenever you are seeking to make any change in your life, your mindset is the most important factor in determining your success potential. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
There are five mindset stages each person goes through on the way to permanent change:
1. “I don’t believe I can change.”
2. “I’m thinking about changing.”
3. “I’m making plans for change.”
4. “I’m taking steps to change.”
5. “I’ve changed and it’s part of my life.”
One of the reasons you need to identify your mindset first is that there might be limiting beliefs that will sabotage your efforts. This applies primarily at Stages 1 and 2.
Even if you want to change on the surface, there may be emotional reasons beneath the surface that oppose your desire. It’s like an iceberg; the largest, most deadly part of it is beneath the surface. Remember the Titanic!
At Stage 1, you’ve stopped believing you can change because you’ve labeled past attempts as failures. Or you may be receiving extra attention from others from your habit that you don’t want to give up. Finally, “binge eater” may now have become your identity and you can’t imagine living another way.
Stage 2 is different because you want to change and believe you can change, but you haven’t made a decision that the effort is worth it. In this case, you need a strong motivator to change. A strong motivator can be positive (you want to be a good role model for your children) or negative (you want to prevent the heart disease that runs in your family. Whatever your motivator is, it needs to be strong enough to move you to take action.
Stages 3-5 are the Action stages; you want and believe you can change, plus you have a strong motivator that convinces you the effort to change is worth it. Now all you need is a solid plan to follow and to walk those steps out day by day.
The baseline of your Action plan is to identify the difference between physical and emotional hunger. If not physically hungry, then you need to be willing to pull back the curtain and ask yourself, “What emotion am I feeling that is driving me to eat?”
The emotion is what you need to take care of because food can only help you with physical hunger. There are many effective emotional management strategies that are Biblical and based on science. The core issue is learning to trust God with your emotions. For most of us, that is a step-by-step process.
However long it takes though, be willing to start the process. As 1 Peter 5:7 says, cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you!
Once 240 pounds and a size 22, Kimberly Taylor can testify of God’s healing power to end binge eating. She is the creator of the new online course ‘How to Stop Binge Eating’. Charisma readers can get a discount of 70% off with the coupon code: Charisma.
