What makes the Healthy by Design Program different from others is our commitment to get to the root of why you overeat; emotionally eat, binge eat, keep yo-yo dieting or why you can’t stick to your fitness program. Yes, there are various reasons why you might be overweight but what we all have in common is an underlying reason we do what we do (or don’t do). Instead of focusing on the surface issues such as laziness, lack of motivation, poor discipline, lack of will-power or even lack of faith, we understand that the issues are much deeper.
As God also continues to bring me on my own journey with confronting my own deep rooted issue, last week my coach (Leesa) showed me how my people-pleasing was affecting my business. Since then, I’ve noticed how it affects not only my business but also my weight and health, my relationships, my marriage, my parenting — pretty much every area of my life. I noticed by tracking the source of my discontent.
I don’t know exactly when I became such a people pleaser. I do remember that as a child my older sister was the rebellious one so she got lots of attention and my younger sister was the cute one so she got lots of attention. I remember feeling average (under-statement), unimportant and insignificant. Being nice seemed to do the trick as a child and as I’ve learned, these patterns get kicked into high gear as adults.
Now for you, you may not be a people-pleaser, maybe you’re a perfectionist, drama queen or a rebel . (I teach about these in our Breakthrough Summits) Whatever the identity is that you’ve adopted, its keeping you from being in the excellent health that God has gifted you with. It is keeping you from living your God given purpose and it keeping others from knowing the true and authentic you.
The bible says, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen.”
Although it’s not our fault and although God is not holding us responsible for this exchange, as adults we now have a responsibility to erase these lies that we’ve adopted with the truth about God
For the last 20 years of working with people in the area of weight loss and health and as I’ve also evidenced in my own life, I’ve learned that the way to end our health and weight challenges is to let the truth of what God says about us permeate every fibre of our being.
We’ve been led to believe that if only we could pray more, trust God more or be more obedient to what God is telling us then we would be free from all these issues but I’m sure you know very spiritual, committed, God-loving and fearing Christians who struggle with their weight. Its NOT a faith problem. In fact, this belief just leaves us feeling more guilty which drives the issue even deeper down.
The solution is to:
1. Stop Scratching the surface and commit to go deeper
We waste so many years focusing on the wrong thing. We read more self-help books, try more weight loss programs, pray for more help but we never truly get to the root of why we’ve been stuck. The root I refer to is the lie you’ve made to believe, the fear that’s been buried deep down inside of you. The fear that you are not good enough, will always be a failure, will amount to nothing or a host of other lies that keep you procrastinating, making excuses, emotional eating, blaming and living unconsciously.
2. Let go of the Identities
We never actually walk around saying we lack confidence, we’re a failure or we don’t believe we are good enough. So instead we take on identities such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, rebelling and martyring. These identities are our way of protecting ourselves from who we really are but the also dim our light that God has called us to shine.
3. Replace the lies with BOTH spiritual truths and practical habits
Our identities were as a way of self-protection, but they distort our ability to see our heavenly father as sovereign. To live in joy, peace and freedom, we must learn how to remove these identities so we can receive what God says about us. This process will come from 1. renewing our minds so that we can finally start believing and receiving God’s promises and his truths. And 2. By learning practical ways to implement habits in a way that makes them lasting and permanent.
Let’s stop believing the lies that we just need to pray more or be more disciplined that we will lose the weight. The real lie is in our false identity that we’ve taken on but know that our heavenly father ready to love us back to health and wholeness once we learn how to receive his love.
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