The journey of a thousand miles begins with...

So, a bit of promised info from the last post:

Starting Weight: 325

I would argue that surely I'm not that big, but, uh, did you catch the picture on the last post? Uhm, yeah.

An interesting thing has been happening this last week. I think I know how to do this. I've been doing a lot of reflecting on past failures and realizing that though they have given birth to discouragement, hopelessness, frustration, and the like, in the midst of that have come some valuable insights to seeing victory. So, I'm gonna post about it. I need to get these thoughts down, see how they read, if you know what I mean.

This post I'm thinking about the seeing the big picture. That's realizing that this problem is physical, spiritual, and emotional. It's happening on more than one level. Now, let me just say this, I'm going to focus on these seperately, but we all know that in real life they don't divide all nice and neat like.

What I have to remember physically is that I'm broken. I've heard it said that "my body knows what it needs if I would just listen to it". While that is true to some extent, I have to acknowledge that I have cravings and desires that my body simply doesn't need at best, and are dangerous and life sucking at worst. That means an intentional plan for how and what and when you will eat is incredibly important. It is practically important to have options within the plan of attack, but the plan needs to be in place. Written, tracked, and followed.

Spiritually I had to realize that I just didn't have bad eating habits alone, but I had placed a value on food that had become an object of worship. If you just see singing or praying as worship, that may sound weird to you. If you see the process of valuing and serving and yielding to as worship, it probably begins to clear up. Honest confession and repentance of raising up an idol needs to be a daily and sometimes meal by meal process.

The emotional part is strongly connected to the spiritual part. The difficulty is at times realizing that God has given us so much to give us joy and a lift, and sometimes a good meal is what He gives. He gives relationships, wine, music, film, and so much more. Being able to let the gift of good food be something that is from God and turning to the food as the Source of emotional healing and soothing and fulfillment are at times foggy lines, but I have to engage and recognize the difference.

I'm off to a really good start, and I see these as things I've not included at some point in my past attempts, or attempted to leave out one or two. I'll post more specifically about my plan and how I'm dealing with the daily temptations next.