Food for Fuel

Those who know me, will know the quest I have been on to find that one, simple, miracle cure to restore my body shape back to what it was in the 1980’s. Although I have learnt a lot regarding food and weightless, I’ve recently discovered that part of my problem is due to my relationship with food and the lies I’ve been believing. 

Growing up as a child, I was extremely skinny. So much so, that my doctor had me eating a small jar of peanut butter a day, just so I would put on some weight!  However, something happened after I hit menopause, which I’m told is caused by my metabolism having taken the slow lane…

There are tons of suggestions on the internet on how to boost your metabolism, and I keep meaning to try them, but at the moment, I am too busy enjoying my food.

I wake up planning my breakfast and lunch and already know what I will be having for dinner, the night before. So much of my thought life is consumed by food and what I eat.  I’ve believed the lie that food comforts me, but in all honesty, I am never satisfied with it.  If I eat something too salty, I need something sweet to balance it out, and vice versa.  

I was recently reminded that when what you consume starts to consume you, it is a sure sign that it has become an idol in your life.  So I’ve realized I need to change the way I think about food. Instead of waiting for victory in this area of my life, I’ve decided to share my thoughts, so you can join me on this journey.  Here are my 7 tips I’ve discovered so far…

1. Reduce or Replace instead of Quit - I don’t know about you, but the minute I try to cut out anything bad from my diet, I end up just craving it more. So my answer is to either reduce or replace these things with healthier options. For instance, I have gone from 2 sugars to 1, or honey and have replaced white bread for wholegrain seeded bread. I am also enjoying dark chocolate more, instead of milk chocolate and eating popcorn, rice crackers and pretzels in place of potato crisps.
2. Know When You’re Full – Growing up, I learnt to clean my plate, so I find it difficult to know what it feels like to feel full. However, often at Christmas or buffet-style meals, I certainly know what it feels like to feel TOO full, which means I need to learn to know when to stop, before I overindulge.
3. Wait Before Seconds – This ties in with point number 2 – Don’t just eat seconds because it is delicious and you want more. When I wait for my stomach to give me the signal that I’ve had enough, I find it easier to resist the temptation to be greedy. By practicing delayed gratification, I save the leftovers for tomorrow.
4. Use a Smaller Plate – If you are tempted like me to load your plate, try using a side plate or a smaller plate or bowl to help reduce your portion size. A smaller plate changes our perspective on the size of your meal. As well as knowing the correct portions we should be eating, in relation to our vegetables, proteins and carbohydrates.
5. Eat for Fuel – So much of my eating nowadays revolves around habit or entertainment. With every celebration and event, the main focus seems to be about the food. If we only eat to refuel ourselves, we will be more energized instead of ‘maggies vol, oegies toe’ (An Afrikaans phrase that means when your stomach is full, your eyes close to sleep). I am not saying I’m going to stop eating cake or gourmet food to celebrate with, but I will try to make the event and the people the highlight, instead of the food. The same goes for eating our 3 meals out of habit.  If I'm still full from the meal before, I will delay the next or skip it. 
6. Move it, but Don’t Overdo it! – As a non-gym fan and flat owner, with limited floor space, I was happy to hear that too much exercise is counteractive to weight loss. Apparently, the fat hormone cortisol is released when you exercise too intensively. Besides taking my dog for her twice daily 20 minutes walks, I am now also trying Chair exercises through one of the many available Apps.
7. Pray Before Eating – Last, but probably the most important, is to pray first. When I change the way I view food and use it to fuel me for energy and nutrition, I become more conscious and convicted of what I am feeding my body. By saying Grace or praying over my meal before I eat, I am asking God to bless the food to my body. I am reminding myself daily, that my body is the Temple where God’s Spirit lives within me, and should be kept pure and holy, and is not a dustbin for feeding junk.

As we encourage one another with our body transformations, let us be patient with ourselves and extend grace when we fail.  By seeking God first and relying on His strength to help us resist the temptations and lure of food that is not good for us, we can overcome our binge, junk and comfort eating.

I love that verse in Psalms 34:8 that tells us to taste and see that the Lord is good, because it reminds me that God created food to be delicious, and to enjoy it. But, yet again, Satan has taken something good and turned it to become our enemy. 

We can grow the fruit of our self-control by being mindful of what we eat and learning to acknowledge when we have had enough. We cannot expect our bodies to operate and function as God intended them to, if we are not eating the correct ‘fuel’. 

Please can I ask you to take the time and be vulnerable to share your own helpful tips. I believe that a community that cares enough to share, is a powerful tool that God’s uses to help us each heal and grow together. God is with us all in this journey and victory is our portion!

Below are further tips from a shared source that sounds viable enough to be worth considering…

https://insights.avea-life.com/glucose-imbalance/nutrition/glucose-goddess-hacks/

For those who are struggling particularly with comfort eating, see my previous blog that I hope will help you further -  https://sharingsfromsam.blogspot.com/2022/05/seeking-comfort-from-god-instead-of-food.html

Happy eating as you eat for fuel!

Finding the Lost

Have you ever lost something really valuable, much needed or expensive to replace?  When you can’t find something and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach and your heart beats into panic mode?  Recently, I lost my car keys and experienced that very real, dreaded feeling. What made it worse is that there was a public holiday the day before, where I hadn’t gone out, so my limited memory gabbled to remember my steps from the last time I had seen them.  I was so sure I had put them in my jacket pocket, but after turning all my jackets upside down, emptying my handbag, shopping bags and checking every drawer, nook or cranny, I was at a complete loss. I even panicked that I might have left them inside the car or the boot, but the spare key convinced me otherwise.  Yes, I had a spare key, but it does not have the remote for the immobiliser which is a much-needed device living in South Africa!

After a whole day of searching frantically and turning up empty handed, I was reminded about a time when my husband had lost his wedding ring a week before our 10^th anniversary.  I had anxiously viewed this is a foreboding sign for our marriage and left no stone unturned in helping him to find it. It wasn’t until someone from Church reminded me that the Holy Spirit can help us find things when we ask Him, that I decided to pray. I believe God prompted me to look in our daughter’s toy box, for this was a place I never would have thought to look.  Lo and behold, it was there!  It must have come off when he was packing away her toys, the neat freak that he is…

So, with this remembered, reliable tool, I turned the situation over to God, asking Him to reveal where my car keys were. Later that afternoon, I had the notion to look in the drawer where we keep our dog’s leash and voila – there it was!!  That rush of relief sweeping through your body is the best feeling in the world! With a grateful heart and heartfelt thanks to God, I now know I will never forget to pray first, the next time I lose something.

Finding the lost made me think also of our mission as Christians in finding those who need God’s salvation.  Imagine if we all searched for people like we do for lost material things, how many souls we would find for Christ?  The truth is that there is a harvest field out there that is ready to be picked, if we will just take the time to go out there and really search to find them. 

Feeding our Faith with Prayer

The difference between to pray and a prayer is that pray is a means of addressing God, but prayer is the two-way conversation that we have with Him.  In other words, to pray is a verb, but prayer is a noun, a sacred thing.

As Christians, we are called to pray and there are many reasons to do so, but sadly, we only seem to do it earnestly when in need.  Prayer should be our first response, not our emergency back-up when nothing else seems to work.

We should pray before the event, over the event and through the event, and not just after the event.  Although God knows our needs before we even have to ask them, He desires our interaction of being alone with Him. He wants us to commune with Him, to converse with Him, to vent with Him and to seek His presence earnestly and early.

There is something special and powerful when we make the choice and sacrifice to start our day early, alone and in a quiet place, to get into the presence of God in prayer. There is much rest, replenishment and wisdom to be found in this secret place, which sets up our attitude for the day correctly, to face whatever lays ahead.  

When we study Jesus’s example of prayer, we can clearly see the awesome benefits and miraculous results of time spent with His Father.  Unlike ourselves, it should not be a rushed quick request chat, but a lengthy, sometimes overnight time of seeking and listening.

Our prayers are a time of memorial and for remembrance – to remember the person and His faithfulness and to remind God of His promises towards us. It’s like a court case where we get to go before the Righteous Judge with our advocate Jesus and our counselor the Holy Spirit, and plead our case for His ruling, to make our requests and supplications known.

Many of us when faced with adversary, either isolate or talk to anyone who will listen, when instead our prayer time should be when we turn to God for His advice and opinion on the situation, and then wait to hear it, either for Him to speak to our hearts, or through His Word.  When we spend time in prayer, I like to imagine God lays His hands on us to bless us with the touch of His anointing, for there is nothing more powerful than having felt His touch after spending time in His presence.

When we develop a posture of prayer, either with our hands together, eyes closed, or on our knees or with our hands up in praise, it is like a tap that opens up to pour out the filling of the Holy Spirit into our lives, our minds and our hearts.

When we prayer regularly, constantly, consistently and persistently, it fuels our faith and grows our belief, so that every doubt, worry, fear or temptation is destroyed.  It is the power that gives us our Spiritual strength to face our stormy situations with a nevertheless, overcoming faith.

If you are facing a situation with no answers or a scary future, I challenge you today to get serious about prayer and see how God can transform the situation; if not the problem itself, then definitely ourselves to deal with it.  Our breakthrough will come when we stop asking God to remove the problem and start asking Him to help us to get through it.

Just like our muscles need exercise, and how we say Grace before we eat to bless the food to our bodies, we need to exercise our faith with prayer so that God can bless our day.

In conclusion, I leave you with this simple acrostic for prayer –

P = Praise God for who He is and for His faithfulness
R = Repent of your attitude, sin or lack of faith and unbelief, and ask for His forgiveness
A = Ask God for His help, for answers, for whatever you are needing
Y = Yield and submit to whatever is God’s will for your life and for your situation
E = Empty your mind of all your worries, concerns, doubts or what makes you confused
R = Rest in God’s presence and be replenished and restored