It is way easier to make a plan with the Lord. And what I really want to do by the end of this podcast is make a case for doing it with him rather than the way the world has taught you. And I just want you to be really clear when you’re at those three different stages: when you’re planning your food, when you’re thinking about making a change or having food thoughts, or when you actually make a change. I want you to just be very clear on am I hearing the Lord’s voice or am I hearing just what I’ve heard in the world, which is not the Lord’s voice? 

So let’s talk about planning and I’ll first, just give you an overview of what I believe traditional planning is based on and its main themes. Traditional planning or the way that the world does it or through diet culture essentially says the way you are right now is not okay. You are doing something wrong. Something is not right with you. And this plan we’ll make you right. This plan will make you okay. This plan will tell you if you’re okay if you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing. See, all of your trust has to go in the plan because the plan is what will make you okay. 

It doesn’t cultivate any self-trust, it doesn’t cultivate checking in with you or what your real needs are. It simply says you’re not okay now, follow this plan and we’ll make you okay. The function of traditional planning is the method to get okay. If you follow this long enough, you’ll eventually be okay. And that okayness, whatever is that, is getting you something that is truly only necessary in this world. It only has earthly value. And I’m not putting any judgment on that. We all want to feel good about ourselves. We all want to look good. I just want you to be clear that traditional planning is only getting you something that is a value in this world. It’s changing the way your body looks. 

Which changes, maybe your self-confidence, which is totally fine. Or the way you relate to people in the world, which is totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. It may be changing your health and of course that’s of importance, but I just want you to see that these are things that have earthly value. 

So to sum it up, you follow the plan and then you’re okay. You don’t follow the plan and you’re not okay. I hope that’s really clear. But when we plan with the holy spirit and the way that I believe Jesus would, it’s a way of showing ourselves love. It is an act of love. It’s an act of love that the Lord is asking for us to do for ourselves because we are his hands and feet. It’s cultivating the concept of God loves me and I’m learning to love me. And so we learned this skill as a way to show ourselves the Lord’s love. We’re treating ourselves in the way that the Lord would, and I call this authentic self care. 

Authentic self care means it’s true. It’s genuine. It’s from the Lord. It’s not from the world. It’s not what the world would say self care is, it is truly a godly self care. The purpose is to show ourselves love by giving you. What you need for the future you. And so if you take the example of a three-year-old going to preschool for the very first day, imagine that you’re sending your own child, a grandchild, a neighbor’s kid. And you are in charge of making sure that they are ready for preschool. You would make sure they have everything they need, they would have their backpack. They would have their favorite shirt. And if you were packing them a snack, you would pack them their favorite thing. 

And if you weren’t sure what their favorite thing was, and it was a choice between a couple of things you might say, do you want raspberries or strawberries? Do you want Teddy Grahams or do you want goldfish? You would check in with them to make it a very special day for them so that they feel seen and heard and known and supported. Of course the three-year-old couldn’t say this to you. But that is what you would be doing these are the actions, so that, that three-year-old had everything they needed for the day. And that’s what planning with the holy spirit is like when you look at your day. 

What do you need for the day? What do you want for the day? This is a way for you to connect with you that helps you grow in self-trust. One of my favorite things that I love to tell myself is I’m becoming a woman I can count on. I know what I need. I know how to take care of myself. And if you’re cultivating this skill, you can start saying to yourself, I’m becoming a woman. I can count on. I’m becoming a woman who knows herself. 

So this process gives you what you need for the future you. It also helps you get to know you and tune into you. So that like that three-year-old you feel seen and known and heard and loved and cared for. It shows you that you are worth knowing and tending to. I was talking with a client earlier this week and she said something about, well, there’s only so much navel gazing you can do. 

And it was interesting that her brain was offering that tuning into herself was a selfish thing to do. And you guys, I want to tell you that, that isn’t the way the Lord would speak to you. He would say, what do you need? How can I take care of you? And he would do it. It’s very, very Godly. It is of the Lord and, you know, it’s of the Lord because it feels tender and it feels gentle.   We’ve been told A myth that tending to ourselves is selfish. The real myth is that self neglect and not tending to our needs is sacrificial or in some way benefiting other people and self-neglect is not of the Lord. He does not want you, to neglect you, to discount you, to believe that you’re not worth tending to. 

You guys he created you. You are no less worthy than any other human on this earth. We’ve been taught that it’s sacrificial to neglect our needs. But the truth is that you’ve seen how far neglecting you has gotten you. And it only takes you farther and farther from the woman you want to be. And farther and farther from the way the Lord wants you to treat yourself. So we’re going to learn how to take care of you. In a way that’s very Godly and the way that he wants you to. 

I have three rules for the women who begin to plan. The three rules are: that you plan the food that you like, that you feel good about it and you plan for the woman who will eat the food, which means that if you know, you’re going to have a very long day, you don’t plan a complicated dinner. You just plan simple things that you enjoy. It also means that you probably don’t plan breakfast foods for dinner, cause you probably want something different for breakfast than dinner and dinner for breakfast, et cetera. 

I have many, many podcasts on how to plan food specifically, but today I’m just showing you the difference between traditional planning or the way the world has taught you and how planning with the holy spirit is way different. Now then most people will say, well, if I’m trying to lose weight, aren’t macros important and using my calorie trackers. No. Not right now. That will be important later. And that will only be important if you aren’t at a healthy weight, but usually the majority of women, their weight balances out and they get to their healthy weight simply by planning this way. The third reason that you would plan Jesus’s way, it’s because it makes him so happy. He loves when you are cared for, he loves when all of his children are being treated the way that he would. 

Okay, so now there are times after you make your plan, when you are thinking about making changes or you’re having food thoughts. The world would say, oh, there’s something wrong with you; you’re so weak; you have no willpower. But the Lord’s truth, the Lord’s truth is that you’re having a thought. You guys, it’s just a thought. It is literally just a thought and in our community, we teach you how to have a thought and not react to it. You can have an urge to eat something, a desire to eat something, you can have a thought about it, but it doesn’t have to affect your behavior. 

It’s just the thought there’s nothing wrong with having thoughts. So with Jesus, when you are thinking of making a change or you want to make a change to your plan, or you’re thinking of food. He didn’t say you’re weak, you have no willpower or something’s wrong. He says, notice the thought. And you can say to yourself out loud, I’m having the thought, I want ice cream. I’m having the thought, I want to add chips to my lunch. I’m having the thought, I’d rather eat a candy bar, than my apple and peanut butter. You can just have a thought. And if you’re noticing anxiety or stress, you just breathe and calm yourself down. Breathe and calm yourself down.  Because you can  make a change if you want to your plan. That’s totally fine. 

So let’s talk about if you make a change, if you do, or don’t make a change, both are equally valuable. Now the world would tell you that if you don’t make a change, oh, you did something right. But you might be doing it because you’re white knuckling it, or you’ve got willpower. But the world tends to say you did it right, you’re good. But the truth is that if you don’t make a change the way the Lord views, that is, oh, you felt that urge, you felt that desire, You notice that thought. You can learn what that was about. Learn about that desire, learn about what triggered that. 

And if you decide to not make a change, you got great information. Maybe you decided to not make a change because, well, it’s not that big of a deal, I’ll just have that tomorrow. I remember one time I forgot to put peanuts on my plan. I like to put peanuts on my salad and I was like, oh, well I could write it down, I guess and surrender the change or just tomorrow, I’ll remember that I want to put peanuts on my salad. And if you didn’t make a change, likely you learned something that you needed to learn. Whether it was how to process an urge or you found a non-food way to support yourself if you were having a stressful feeling. It’s just great information even if you don’t make a change. You’re not better. You’re not doing it right. You just didn’t make a change. You got information from that thought and maybe it was simply to notice. You can have a thought and not react to it. 

Now what, if you do make a change? If you do make a change, the world would say. You’re such a failure. You’d be all like critical of yourself. That mean girl would come out and you see, you always do this. Maybe you’d give up; I can’t do it. You’d feel despair. It make it means that you’re weak, you have no willpower. But you guys, that’s not the way the Lord sees it. The Lord sees that if you do make a change to your plan, that plan that you so lovingly made for yourself. If you made it change you can opportunity to look at that. What changes did you make? What prompted that change? You learn, you get information.

You know exactly why you made the change. So let’s talk about some possible reasons you may have made to change. The first one is  what I call an insignificant reason. Maybe it was an even swap. You decided to have chicken instead of pork. Maybe you forgot to write it down. For example, one day I forgot to write down that I wanted cheese on my egg sandwich and I’ve had cheese on my egg sandwich for the last six months. And so I just said, oh, I just forgot to write it down. 

So I wrote it down.  Maybe you got new information, your schedule changed. Perhaps you were going to go out for dinner and now you’re staying in. Maybe your son had a cross country meet, but now it’s rained out. You got new information, your schedule changed and now we pause and regroup and just make a new plan. But if you find that you ended up turning to food and stress ate and you used food to cope. You used food to buffer from difficult feelings. You were emotionally eating. That is awesome. You just detected an area or a situation where you need more support. You need more tools on how to cope. And so if that happened, you can learn from that as well. 

This is progressing your weight loss, so this happens I suggest the women in our community. Revisit the situation like they’re watching a movie. And so just write out the details of what happened? Like you’re watching a movie. And then ask yourself, what did I notice?  What did I learn? And what, if anything, would I like to change the next time? And so an example I can give you from my own experience is one night I was overeating at dinner. So we had family dinner and I  kept  picking up the food on the table. And then when I was cleaning up, I was eating some steamed Brussels sprouts. Another world would be like, oh, that’s not a big deal but you guys have the CAS behavior for me. 

And when I wrote it out, like I was watching a movie. What did I learn? What did I notice? I noticed how I was feeling responsible for how the other humans around my table were interacting with each other. I was noticing how I was worrying that one of my children would have a negative memory of family dinners. I was noticing how my husband was reacting to another child. What did I learn? I learned that I felt responsible for the way other human beings reacted. 

Is that interesting? There were many other things I learned at that time. But asking the question what, if anything, would I like to change? I wanted to change my perception of my role. And my role was to place a dinner on the table that was enjoyable and not feel responsible for the other humans that show up. And not try to manipulate them into acting a certain way. I simply created the environment and provided the food. I like to think of myself as being the venue and the caterer. And then the entertainment well, I’m not responsible for the entertainment. And so What I wanted to do differently next time was to feel detached from feeling responsible for their behavior.  

But that’s how we get to learn. I was able to detect an area where I needed more support and how I’m able to give myself that support. The bottom line my friends is that when you make a food change, looking at it through the lens of the holy spirit and with what, how I believe Jesus views This is that you at least know what you know, why you’re making a change. You know, your thoughts, you know, your feelings. You’re learning more. You’re becoming more connected to yourself. More connected to the holy spirit. 

And I just want to put this in there. You know, sometimes people will hear me say connected to yourself and that sounds like it could be selfish. But let me offer you this, who’s the one person on this earth that can prevent you from getting close to the Lord. The only person is you. Conversely, the only person that can bring you closer to the Lord is you as well. And I believe that if we can start to see all the areas that are blocking us from hearing his voice, which if you’re an emotional eater, part of that is food. When we can remove those obstacles, we are so much more able to hear his voice and be guided and have that clarity. 

So you can see that planning the way that Jesus would help you learn how to show yourself love and support you as a human being, living on this earth. It’s a way that you let him lead you in your food and weight struggles. And even if you’re not struggling, how you let him lead you in this area of your life with food and weight. And it helps you grow closer to you and Him. And remember you are the number one person to get to know on this earth that will help, you know him more. 

So I hope this has been helpful and so as you go through your journey with food, and planning your food and food thoughts and making a change. You can clearly start to treat yourself the way that the Lord would and see how he views this whole process. All right, everybody have a blessed day.