I decided to do a little talking about this book cause I am find it interesting. I started reading it the other day after stumbling onto info on you tube about it.
I hate talking about m
y weight. I feel like I am complaining about it when I do. I had family members and friends that are over weight and when they try to diet, that is seriously all they can talk about. They become obsessed. My mom is on the Atkins Diet and has been for like 4 years and sometimes she can’t help but complain, “I don’t feel like I am loosing and does this shirt look bigger.” No offense to her or anything. God bless her. I am just happy she is getting healthy.I have read all kinds of diet books. Including books where the writer tells the story of giving up and accepting they will be big all there life and telling the reader, “You know what, you should accept yourself the way you are.”
So you ask, why am I talking about this weigh down thing.
Well the auther, Gwen Shamblin, makes a few really good points that really rang true with me. She said no matter how much we try to say, “hey I am a big this is how I will always be.” We still deep down long to be thinner in some way, shape. and form. She says the reason for that is because is some way we can’t fight this urge we have to want to be smaller in size. I mean, when I wake up in the morning and my back is hurting and my knees ache when I go up stares and I know it is cause I am over weight I can’t help but think may if only I was 50 pounds lighter.
She takes a spiritual approach to weight loss saying that we fill ourselves with food when we really need to fill ourselves with God and that being over weight is just not natural to the human body so how can we never accept it. We can only just live with it.
Let’s think about this. Have you ever met that big girl or guy that claims they accept being big and they own it and that is who they are, but they make those comment from time to time about being fat that makes it sound like secretly they aren’t happy about it. I know I do it from time to time. And when they say those things it makes you personally feel a little bad and you might be fat yourself.
Anyway, she takes scripture from the bible explaining how God doesn’t like it when we over indulge in anything, whether it is low fat cookies or low carb bread or full fat cheese cake. I am not trying to make anyone uncomfortable today by talking about scripture but I am a baby Christian I am learning everyday and trying to be positive and improve my life so for those not liking this, sorry to offend.
Here are some of the scriptures she sights. I took time to look at them in my own bible to make sure she wasn’t just pulling out random things from the bible and applying them to weight loss.
Ephesians 4:19 (New International Version)
19Having lost all sensitivity; they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
Have you ever sat down to a meal and ate so much you couldn’t move and hated yourself after wards. Then turned around and did it again at the next meal.
Our body has natural sensors that tell us when we are full, but sometimes we ignore them to the point that we eat so much so fast that by the time you get done eating you are way past the full mark.
This isn’t the first time I have read this either. It is cause our culture insists on teaching us from child hood, no matter how much is on your plate you need to eat it all.
If you don’t believe me try this experiment. Sit down and eat and put your spoon down between each bite and wait till you have chewed and swallowed what is in your mouth before you pick it up again. And while you chew take time and taste and pay attention to what is in your mouth. You may find it taking you a really long time to eat, but I guarantee you will be full before you actually finish half the food on your plate. If you keep eating ever though you are full, then you are overeating. One thing you may have to even remind yourself is hey, if I put this in the fridge it will be there when I come back and it will taste just as good. (Well if you made it yourself). I actually noticed one day when I went to Wendy’s that I was actually full after I ate my fries and still went ahead and ate the double bacon cheese burger and strawberry milkshake.
Mark 7:14-23 (New International Version)
14Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "[a]
17After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18"Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? 19For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")
20He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' 21For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' "
She talks about this in relation to people always saying what you should and should not eat. My mom being the seasoned dieter she it always tells me how many calories is in this and that, but if you look back in history before people knew what calories were people ate what they wanted. Yet today, Americans are bigger than ever even with all the diet food and the diet crazes and the rules an how to exercise.
Basically the author puts it like this, it isn’t the food that is making you fat, it is what you are doing with the food. How you are treating it. She said people who diet put food on a pedestal. They are so in love with it that is controls there whole life. If they stopped and just enjoyed the food and realized it will always be there and they can always have more and they stopped binge eating out of fear they can’t eat that food and just ate whatever they wanted, but only as much as there body asked for they would never have to worry a day in there life about being BIG. I am including this video because she goes through the church to teach people how to re-train themselves on how to eat. This is the result.
It just seemed so dramatic to watch this. I know this woman may seem corny some, but think of it like this. Have you ever heard some of those cliché sayings like .
Vincent Van Gogh: Inspirational Quotes on Greatness
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
It is like, we all know this, how cliché, but then if you apply it to your life all these crazy good things happen to you. Many people dismiss things cause of the box they are presented in but when I saw this video I was floored. I can’t say I have never seen any diet clinic do this. In fact I read a book on Weight Watchers once, and it talked about how most of those people that loose weight with them gain it back as soon as they leave the program.
Not to mention, the teachings are practically free. I got the book at the library and it talks about everything. They even put the basics of the program online so you can watch the video and learn from it.
Just gotta be open minded.
1 Timothy 4:8 (New International Version)
8For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
Another thing she talks about is exercise and how people try to use exercise to make up for over eating. I use to do this in high school. I exercised for 2 hours a day to work off my junk food and my cheese burgers and my cookies. But, I got tired of living like that after so many years. That is when I began to gain weight and it never stopped.
I remember watching my clothes get to smaller and the frustration. I couldn’t fight my eating habits and the more I did the more depressed and obsessed I got.
On top of having watch dogs on my ass reminding me of every pound I was gaining. Eating junk before coming home from school so others wouldn’t find out. I have never imagined myself as a food hoarder or hider or a sneak and eat kind of a person but I was.
When I got in college I lost my mind. Freedom!!
Colossians 2:16 (New International Version)
16Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink.”
Colossians 2:20-23 (New International Version)
20Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? 22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
One of the interesting things in this book is that she said she learned how to eat herself by studying the habits of naturally thin people. You know the ones that eat anything they want but never gain weight. My mom use to complain at me that if I eat fruit and vegetables I will gain weight. In fact she still does.
Thin people don’t know why they are thin. In there mind they are doing nothing different from the rest of us. Heck in my mind I am doing nothing different from the average person my own self. One of the things pointed out in her observation was that people that are “naturally thin” generally tend to eat only the things they really enjoy and they never over do it. I remember I had some friends in school that could eat half a candy bar and put the rest away for another day.
It baffled the hell out of me. How can you just sit there and not eat that candy like that!! Candy would haunt me till I ate all of it. It is like an insecurity I have had programmed into me.
I thought everyone lived like this. But apparently there are people out there that don’t need to eat everything on there plate and they get satisfied. How does that happen?
Anyway, I am not saying this book has a miracle cure or anything, I am not saying this is the end of being over weight. I am not saying exercise is bad and that my whole world has transformed. I am just saying, I got a completely different perspective to look at weight loss for a change, is all. Many people struggle all there lives and want to find the answer. I won’t know how much of an answer I have found till I finish the book. I just wanted to share some interesting experiences with everyone today.
If you made it to the end of this GOD BLESS YOU.
Thanks for reading my crazy ramblings. This was more like an essay than an book review.
~Arie
