I would try to be accountable to different trainers. I even had a therapist. And what I realized was that everything that I tried never really got to the root of my issue, which is essentially I was using food to cope with life. And you would think the therapist would have been able to get to the root of that, but he didn’t.

And all the things that I attempted to do. Never included the Lord, isn’t that interesting? So, what I was doing was praying on my couch in the morning and then going about my day. And I might have had a solution to try to overcome this binge eating, emotional eating, but none of those solutions included the Lord. I was still trying to use my own strength to just white knuckle through these solutions. I was learning a lot of tools. Lots of hacks but I didn’t know how to align them with the Lord. I didn’t know how to take those tools and say, okay, I’m going to implement these tools because I love you, Lord. 

I’m going to implement these tools to show you how much I want to overcome this emotional eating. I’m going to implement these tools so that I can have a more peaceful life. No, I didn’t do anything to glorify him. I did everything because I was so miserable and in so much pain. And I found that I just kept me stuck in a cycle. Overeating feels regret, swear it off, pray I won’t do it. Overeat, feel regret, squared off, pray I won’t do it. And I just couldn’t get out. So, if you can relate to that, and you feel like you were praying and praying and praying really hard, I want to tell you there’s nothing wrong with you. It doesn’t mean that you’re not holy enough that you aren’t praying enough. And you aren’t Catholic enough, it doesn’t mean anything.

It doesn’t mean that you’re not holy enough, there’s other things that are happening. So a couple things happen when we feel like we’re stuck in weight loss struggles and in cycles of stress eating, overeating, emotional eating, fill in the blank, whatever your flavor is. So one of the things that’s happening, that’s preventing us from our prayers. 

Feeling like they’re being answered is what I like to call tornado thinking. And tornado thinking is where we’re very distracted and very consumed and preoccupied by thoughts of: What should I eat? When should I eat what my body looks like? The scale diets, all the things, all the weight loss things, the macros, the counting calories. Whether it’s a solution that’s helping us lose weight or dealing with regret or fear of what we should eat or shouldn’t eat or looking at ourselves overeating. 

So there’s so much mental space around this topic and all the things related to it. All of the emotional exhaustion. Oh no, there’s a party. I’m afraid I’m going to overeat. Oh no, it’s a potluck. How am I going to handle that? What am I going to bring? What dish am I going to bring? Oh, know what these people are thinking about me. The amount of mental exhaustion that goes into tornado thinking. Not only the mental exhaustion but also the noise. And you guys know the holy spirit speaks to us in such a quiet, quiet voice. 

That if we are so consumed and distracted but all the other things, we will never hear his voice. The holy spirit just speaks to us in a whisper. So, how do you know the difference between God’s voice and not God’s voice? I think you guys can hear me talk now. And doesn’t this sound like God’s voice. God’s voice is calming, uplifting, gentle, tender, encouraging. 

He’s never rushing or critical or condemning or chaotic or confusing, oh, he gives us clarity.  And so tornado thinking keeps us distracted from hearing the Lord’s voice. So he may be trained to answer your prayers and he’s likely trying to answer your prayers by nudging. You probably listening to this podcast is one of the ways that he’s answering your prayers. 

People do it in a very slow, quiet, calm voice. And so one of the ways that you can get out of a tornado thinking. The second thing is  the Lord can only give us strength to do human things if we’re willing to use our human strength to do it.  I’m going to say that again. The Lord will only give us strength to do human things if we are willing to use our human strength to do it. 

Did you hear the key word there? Willing. Willing. Willing to do our part. And probably until now, you’ve never even considered what the heck that is or how to even do that. What that means is that the Lord will give me strength if I lean on him to be uncomfortable and sit with my feelings, he will make sure I’m safe and I won’t die but I have to be willing to not dump chocolate chips and a bar and a jar of peanut butter and eat them with a spoon. The Lord says, hey,  if you want to use your human strength to eat that food, that’s cool. But when you want my strength, I’ll be here. See, he cannot take the spoon out of my mouth. He can not keep me from hiding in my pantry and nudge me and say, no, Denise, come here, come over here.

I needed to learn some skills and some tools that would help me with that. That was sort of the missing piece. I couldn’t seem to stop myself and so I felt stuck. So, how do I get myself to do something that I feel I don’t even have the strength to do. 

And that’s where I had to learn some skills and some tools that would help me interrupt some of my patterns. I had to get a community of people to support me and teach me how to get through the discomfort of not doing the food thing, not coping with food. I needed somebody to tell me what to do instead. I needed somebody there to hold my hand and teach me how to do that. And then stand there with me and coach me through and tell me that I would be safe. 

And I needed someone to point me to the Lord. What I meant was that there were tools that I needed to learn. And I needed someone to help hold my hand while I implemented them. And I needed that person to remind me that my strength was found in the Lord and to continue to go to him and ask him for what he wanted. And help me implement all of that as a way to worship the Lord, as a way to lean on his strength. 

And you need something that is more than just stop eating, try harder, follow this meal plan. And I felt like that’s kind of all I had out there just. Well, if you don’t want to be doing it, stop doing it. I mean, okay, well that would be nice wouldn’t it? Just try harder, just follow this meal plan. You guys have, I could have done that. I totally would have done that. And if you could have done that, if you could do that right now, you would. So my point is my friends learning the tools and learning how to implement them to glorify the Lord allows his strength to come in. 

Okay, now here’s another bucket of people that feel that God just doesn’t care about what they eat. They think that struggles are too small, too trivial. The Lord doesn’t really care. He’s got bigger things to worry about, or they think they’re being selfish in vain.  And none of that is true. I was just coaching a woman the other day. And she was just saying how hard it was to take care of herself because she felt selfish. 

And we were talking about doing the weekly work in the weight loss with the holy spirit program, like 10 minutes of it. That she thought she should be doing something for her family, folding the laundry. And I said, listen, If you were overcoming a different struggle, it feels like heroin or cocaine or alcohol. If it was a different substance and you were learning how to not rely on it, to get through life you would spend 10 to 15 minutes a day doing that wouldn’t you? It would benefit your family. And the crazy thing is about two weeks prior to that, she and I had a call where she was just in tears on how desperate and lost she felt and how consumed she was by her food and weight.  

And how she felt like that’s all she could think about even when she was around her family. Isn’t it funny how our brains think that we can feel that desperation and then so easily forget it. And the craziest part is that the solution and the answer out of that pit is 10 to 15 minutes a day. 

But we can still slip back into feeling, oh, it’s not important to God, it’s too selfish, it’s vain. And all of you listening know that if you improve this one area of your life, if you feel free from your food and weight struggles, if you were free from excess weight, you know, every other area of your life would improve. That’s how, you know, it’s worth the time. Here’s what I know. I promise you. God cares about everything. And he wants you to be happy. 

He cares about everything and this is not trivial to him. Because your food and weight struggles are so distracting and consuming you can’t hear his voice. And that’s how I know he wants you to look at this. He wants your life to be free from being distracted from food and weight. You see, I believe our work as humans is to notice where our piece is being stolen and to address that, to minimize it and then eventually remove it.  And it was recently at a spiritual retreat this past weekend and the speaker was talking about the number one place where the enemy likes to create chaos is in our internal environment. Because internally is the only place we encounter God. 

If the enemy can keep us tangled up and distracted and feeling chaotic and confused and stuck. And we can’t hear the Lord’s voice and we’re very much distracted by that tornado thinking. I believe our work as humans for the rest of our lives is to notice where we’re unsettled, where our peace is stolen, where we are agitated. And to turn an eye to that and get curious and work on removing that from our life. 

So if you find that your food and weight struggles are distracting and they’re causing you stress and stealing your peace, that is our work to address it. It would be the same if you had to smudge on your glasses, that was in the center and you just like everything kind of look clouded. You might clean it off a little bit and it helps but it still may not be totally cleared up. And that’s distracting to you guys have all had that happen, whether it’s on your sunglasses

I want you to imagine that you’re in a concert hall and you’re seeing your very favorite play or concert and you bought the best seats. My son is currently loving going to Frozen on Broadway and  by January he will have seen it five times. I have been with him three times and I will see it with him the fourth time. And he’s very good about finding the best seats. He will only go see the show on the night where he can get the seat that he wants. 

We sat in the second row. We sat in the first row. We sat on the first row of the balcony. Like he just looks at the theater and then can determine based on the price he wants to pay the very best seat. So I want you to imagine that you have gotten the very best seat for a player or concert that you just cannot wait to see. 

And when you get to your seat that you paid a premium price for there is a seven foot man sitting in front of you. That my friends is exactly what tornado thinking is like. You can’t even see the darn stage you’re in the theater. You know, there’s a play going on but you can’t see it.  And I want you to imagine that the stage is what the Lord wants for you. So when you’re stuck in a tornado, thinking it is that much of an obstruction to knowing and seeing what the Lord wants for you. But if you moved the left just a little bit, you can see better. 

Unfortunately, this guy’s really wide and your view is pretty obstructed and you’re still really distracted. Not only now are you distracted by him, but you’re really distracted by your thoughts too, because you’re so annoyed. And then, you look around there’s nobody else in the auditorium so you could sit and move wherever you want. 

And that is freedom that you have when you learn how to quiet that tornado thinking. The Lord says, come on over let me give you a clear view of what I want. And you happily enjoy your life, the play, the concert.

That’s what it’s like, my friends and I promise you it’s not going to take a lot of effort to learn how to quiet that tornado thinking so you can hear the Lord’s voice and that way he can start to answer your prayers. 

So, let me take you back a little bit into my story, there was a point where someone actually told me what I could do instead of dumping chocolate chips into a jar of peanut butter. They gave me some tools. They held my hand and they showed me how to align every single act that I did with the Lord so I could use his strength. And I have that for you as well. This Friday, I’ll be doing a workshop called Surrender: The Missing Piece to Lasting Weight Loss, where I will be outlining five daily practices that surrender your food and weight loss struggles to the Lord. 

I want you to get your spot so you finally know how to do this entire process so that food and weight are no longer a problem for you. So come to my workshop,Surrender: The Missing Piece to Lasting Weight Loss. Go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com to get your spot today. All right, everybody showed up then and you will start to have your prayers answered. Have a blessed day.