Posted on

The head knowledge

Do you ever find yourself coming across the same topic from numerous sources? Like it keeps coming up over and over and you get to the point that you start thinking that perhaps you should start piecing together?

For me the past few days have seen the same topic coming up. The topic involves self worth, body image, caring for and loving yourself. It’s not a new topic for me but it is something that I’ve never come to a positive conclusion on.

I didn’t lose weight the way I wanted to this week. I was annoyed. I didn’t deserve a tiny gain (and yes I can see that it is a tiny gain, but I still didn’t deserve it!) I was cross that my body doesn’t respond the way that scientifically it should. Calories in minus more calories out should scientifically equal less weight. SCIENCE SUCKS. Well that’s my current opinion! I’ll get over it, well I may get over it!

Going back to the topic of self worth and body image, the question my devotion book (Savor: Shauna Niequiest) posed to me today was:

What would it take for you to live well in your body this season?

My immediate reaction is to think along physical lines; lose weight, lose inches, get nice clothes. I move onto mental thoughts; be more confident, accept where I am, recognise my progress. However, because of the series of repeated messages my brain moved on to the idea of the renewing of my mind.

The devotional email that I had read first thing this morning was all 3 steps for renewing your mind. And so with that fresh in my mind I was prompted to back to look back to the email and I pulled out a few keys words for each of the steps:

Renewing you mind

  1. Recognise negative thoughts – Does this thought help me? Is it true? Does it steal my peace? Does it match with God’s word? – Awareness is the first step to controlling thoughts
  2. Reject negative thoughts – If you’ve decided it’s not really true, don’t allow yourself to entertain it any more. – Take control of what you’re thinking rather than letting it run rampant.
  3. Replace negative thoughts – We have the authority and power to reject those negative thoughts and shift them to be more positive. 

Tracie Miles: Proverbs 31 Ministries

I think I probably do step one most of the time. I think I probably don’t do step two or step three! I’m an overthinker. I’m a look at the worst case scenario and then let that develop for the next 3 days thinker. I recognise this as part of my personality but I just don’t seem to be able to win. Although to be fair on myself I’m not sure how much I try and there are times when my overthinking is actually a positive part of my personality it’s just that for it to be a positive part it was to be based on step one above in particular IT IS EVEN TRUE?!?!?!

I decided to spend some time thinking about what I know (my head knowledge) of what God thinks about me. I came up with 27 “I am…..” statements.

IMG_4625.jpg

I was quite surprised how many I could come up with and to be fair I could probably think of more if I hadn’t filled the page with these ones. 

What I’m beginning to realise is that I have the head knowledge for a transformed heart and for the negative to stop winning, I’m just know sure I have the heart feelings to go with it. As a feeler in personality that’s a big deal! 

Posted on

Like learning to ride a bike

Have you ever tried to teach someone to ride a bike? I hadn’t really until today.

We got our three year old a bike with stabilisers for giving up his dummy and so we now start the process of learning how to do it. He happily asks to have the bike out from the garage, puts on the helmet, climbs on the bike and then he just sits on with his feet on the pedals going nowhere fast, or at all to be honest!!

I tried to help. It wasn’t pretty. It was the end of a long day with the kids and my patience was low, maybe bike riding should not be a post 6pm activity! Anyway he would put his feet on the pedal and push one foot down and start to move which sounds and looks promising. He would then take his foot off the pedal that he next needed to push to keep moving. He would lose the flow and he would have to start again.

It did not matter how many times I would tell him that he needed to keep his feet on the pedal, he would still keep taking that foot off and that lead to me getting more and more frustrated with him, losing my patience, raising my voice slightly, all the usual ugly moments you wish you could go back and change.

After a little while of attempting this and repeating the phrase you need to keep your foot on the pedal to no avail, my lovely husband came outside and I exclaimed “I just need to go inside for a few moments!”

As I sat down exacerbated by really quite a short exchange I just felt God say “that’s what you do”. And as I thought about it I realised it is in so many situations. I request to do something, get all kitted out for it, get lined up to start, take a small motion towards it and then I take my foot off the pedal and God’s somewhere in the background shouting “STOP TAKING YOUR FOOT OFF THE FLIPPING PEDAL” – to be fair He probably isn’t shouting that but in my head that’s what I think he is shouting.

It’s so easy to lose momentum. Something gets hard. Something is boring. Something is frustrating, The weather changes. You get injured. People distract you. Life gets in the way. Another ‘thing’ needs our attention and it seems more important. Priorities get confused.

The thing is that I am sure that there are things in everyone’s life where we keep coming back to that very same issue, and keep making a start and then taking our feet off the pedal without even really meaning to sometimes. If you keep going round in the circle to the same situation chances are you keep starting and then stopping.

I can think of a few things where I do this but weight loss is the most obvious. It’s easily been 10 years of starting and stopping. Getting distracted, giving up, life causing issues, children. I’ve all the excuses in the world and many of them are justified but for me weight is an issue. It’s something that need to be dealt with. It’s a physical, emotional and spiritual area of my life which needs me discipline, attention and effort. I need to keep my foot on the pedal.
I’m doing better with this. I’ve got further than ever before but my mojo has disappeared a little. My discipline is lacking. My focus fuzz. My attraction to chocolate stronger. I need to spend time getting back that self control and discipline so that God doesn’t have to keep shouting to me about my feet on the pedals! I can’t do it alone but I’m so blessed to have friends and family who have my back and maybe I need to start by asking for help!

Keep your feet on the pedals because you never know just what you might achieve if you stop pulling it off at the most important moment. Just imagine the progress and then maybe gaffa tape your feet onto the pedal which I will confess was what I was tempted to do with the three year old!

Posted on

What am I doing?

Someone asked me what I’m doing to lose weight. I thought I’d share my response!

I’m almost at 2.5 stone off in 6 months. There’s a few things I’ve done.

1) The biggest thing was learning that I’m worth the effort and therefore not to just give up. I’ve spent all my adult life trying to lose weight and getting nowhere because when others needed something that got in the way I’d give up.

2) I read a book called Made To Crave by Lysa TerKeurst. It changed my mindset about diet towards it being a journey of discipline with God but that he’s the one who defines my worth and not the scales. SO worth reading.

3) I’m using the My Fitness Pal app on my phone to track my calories and write down everything that I eat. I’ve done slimming world and weight watchers over the years and they just don’t work for me. I find I give up and all I want is the banned food. With my fitness pal I can eat whatever I want as long as I am within my calories for the day (though I have found that I have naturally fallen into making healthier choices because it normally means fuller for longer!) and if it gets to the end of the day and I want to eat something I don’t have enough calories for I go for a walk or I pave around the house to earn the calories. If I don’t want to earn them I don’t get to eat it.

4) I got myself a Fitbit. I started by aiming to walk 5000 steps a day and I really struggled. I now manage between 10000 and 15000 a day. I pace while I read my bible or a book to gain more steps!!

5) I have friends on my fitness pal and Fitbit who keep me accountable. I also make it very open that I’m trying to lose weight including posting my weekly weight losses on my Instagram feed. It means that if I went off plan people would notice because my habits would change and so someone would ask me and bring me back in check!!

It’s a really hard journey and there are so many things that get in the way. I’ve always been a comfort eater and I’ve always been an all or nothing person so I’m either fully on plan or not at all. I’m trying to change both of those things and have seen real breakthroughs partially because of the book.

I’ve been to a BBQ and a baby shower recently where I knew if I started eating the food I wouldn’t stop. Before the BBQ I ate dinner. I wanted to go to the BBQ for the company not for the food. Before the baby shower I told both the mum to be and the friend I was going with that I wouldn’t be eating anything. The sense of achievement I had at walking away from both those events having stuck to my plan was incredible.

 Sorry to have rambled on for so long!! Any questions or anything else please do feel free to message back. It’s something I’m incredibly passionate about and empowering other people to make process in their journey is so important to me too!! So anything I can do to help just shout!

Posted on

Perception or more?!

This is mostly a rant at myself but you know I can rant at you too if it’ll help?!

Why am I so easily influenced by the worldly perception that showing weaknesses is failure? Why do I let that perception rule my internal thought processes? Why do I seem to think that only perfection is enough for those around me. My whole emotional existence seems to be easily destroyed by such simple comparisons, comments, observations and overthinking.

I’m tired of trying to be wonder-wife, supermum, the incredible friend, captain weight loss and any other super hero you can think of.

It can be putting myself down as a wife because I failed to clean the bathroom or didn’t finish dinner at the time I was aiming for.

Or berating myself because the supermum I aspired to be first thing in the morning turned into the toddler watching almost an entire serious of Fireman Sam whilst the baby naps instead of doing fun activities like making a fire engine out of a box! (and I somehow still didn’t manage to clean the bathroom?!?)

Or a rubbish friend because I forgot something like sending a message or not encouraging someone enough.

Or even just as a person aiming to lose weight. I *should* have lost more. I *shouldnt* have eaten that.

My overthinking mind influenced by a perception from somewhere, where I don’t know, tells me I am not enough and I cannot be enough until I am always achieving.

One of closest and most valuable, lovely friends sent me this the other day.


What if I could live in that mindset?! I don’t really know how it would help me get the bathroom cleaned, the fire engine made, the messages sent or the weight lost but I suspect somewhere God would make it work!!

Achieving is important. Achieving gets things done. Achieving motivates me to do more achieving but the perfectionism and the negative impact that goes with that achieving will destroy me.

So when I feel overwhelmed with an under whelmed soul and an overthinking mind maybe I need to just stop and remember I was made for me!

Posted on

Bottom of the pile or worth the effort?

Do you see yourself as worth it?
For years I, without knowing it, did not believe I was worth it. Now by it I mean the effort from myself or from others.
For years I tried to lose weight using weight watchers, tesco diets and slimming world. For years I would lose a bit of weight and then stop and start putting it back on.
For years I put myself at the bottom of the pile thinking that everyone else’s needs were more important and needed to be met before my own.
For years I put myself down and thought negatively about everything I did and everything that was said to me as a compliment.
Then after a life changing moment of heartbreak and the encouragement of a friend I started to realise that I was worth effort. I was valuable and mattered. My feelings didn’t always have to be compromised for the sake of others. My losing weight was important and worth putting effort into because I was worth putting effort into and it mattered to me.
The key phrases from the course Freedom in Christ ;
“I am accepted
I am secure
I am significant”
I began, with a whole lot of help from God, to change a mindset that which had been so deeply instilled in me from so many sources which should have been instilling the complete opposite that I had not spent any of my adult life believing any differently. In conversation that made me feel down and insignificant I would repeat in my head the three phrases above. When a negative thought came into head I would remind myself of those phrases.
I also had prayer and that opened the freedom from negative thoughts using what I now know to be God’s whisper to correct thoughts of maybe even 15 years history. Whispers from God about being worth time, him seeing me as beautiful, wanting the best for me, looking after my heart and building me up those helped to change my mindset!
So having had my mindset changed and having found a way of losing weight which worked for my personality type I started to see progress in something that meant so much to me. I invested time in myself and what I needed to do to stay on track and I was proud and encouraged by those around me.
Do you believe that you are worth the effort? Chances are if you consistently put yourself right at the bottom of giant pile telling yourself you do because you are called to serve others that you don’t recognise your need to made to feel worth it. It’s exhausting to love from a tank that is empty.