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THE LIES WE TELL OURSELVES ABOUT FOOD,

AND HOW TO REPLACE THEM WITH THE TRUTH.

I was first inspired to write about my struggles with food addiction through my pursuit with another struggle that has plagued my life, depression. In this pursuit I came across a book called Loving God with all your mind, by Elizabeth George. This book taught me many things about how to focus on God , and made me realize that I had spent all my adult life focusing on many different things that attributed to my depression. One of these things being food. I began to journal and search for the answers to why I had this addiction, how it came to be and most importantly how to train my mind to believe the truths about food, and the truth that God has made available to me through the bible. If I could just find the truth about why I felt this void in my life, why I felt like I was missing something so very important, then I could begin to fill that void with what I really needed and what I was really missing in my life, Instead of trying to fill it with food. So began my journey towards replacing the lies I had told myself for so long with the truth.

What is true about my battle with food? The truth is that for years I had filled my mind with untrue thoughts and emotions concerning food. The bible says that whatever is true, focus your mind on these things.(Phillipians 4:8) Years of untrue thoughts and emotions trained my mind to believe these lies. So, I began the task of training my mind the believe the truth. Before I did this I made a list of three lies I had told myself over the years .The first lie I had believed was that food is a reward.

LIE #1 : FOOD IS A REWARD: THE SEARCH FOR PEACE

I had told myself directly and indirectly that when I had been good, or when something good happened

Celebrate with food. Now, I am not saying that having food at a celebration is wrong, just that my focus on food became an obsession and in that I began to use any opportunity to use it to make me feel better! When I had participated in doing this, celebrating with food, I had been telling myself that rewarding myself with food is good and the best thing for me to do .Yes, in the past food has been used by me, the food addict as a reward, but where had it gotten me?? Fat, unhappy , AND with lots of wrong ideas about food . To top that off I had allowed myself to have an emotional connection, a love affair if you will, with food. Now, are those thing rewarding at all? The answer is a resounding NO WAY!! I want to first establish what the word reward means. One of the definitions given is reinforcement of good behavior. Can we really reinforce good behavior by creating new problems for ourselves by telling ourselves lies and not living in the truth? Looking to the bible for answers, we will see what God says about how we should be rewarded and what we can do to reinforce good behavior. Phillipians 3:14 says this: I press on toward the goal for the prize (reward) of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. First we need to understand that when we feel empty, when we feel a longing for something more, this is our desire for God in our hearts. It is our desire to feel worthy and loved and to have a purpose. We have failed to recognize the truth and tried to fill the emptiness with food and all the lies we tell ourselves concerning food. We should then turn to the truth and press on toward the prize ! The prize is God himself, and all that comes with him. All of that longing and desire was for him all along. And here is why. The truth about God that we need to know to overwrite the lies we have told ourselves is this. The search to fill the emptiness, the thing we desire is peace. Isaiah 26:3-4 says this you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. So we instead then, should focus our minds on God and not food and he will give us peace. John 14:27 says, MY peace I leave with you, MY peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled nor let them be afraid. Wow! Our troubled hearts are saved. God gives us HIS peace, and not just any peace but GOD’S peace! Now that we know the truth about how to find peace, and how to fill the emptiness in our hearts we can proceed and do it with truth. Then all the lies we told ourselves over the years will be replaced with the truth, GOD’S truth, and peace GOD’S peace.

LIE # 2 : FOOD IS COMFORT: THE SEARCH FOR HOPE

When I have been sad I have often comforted myself with food. Maybe it started early on in my childhood when my mom gave me candy for being good, and in being rewarded I felt happy , which brought me some level of comfort. I do not know for sure if that is where it started but I do know for sure that I have sought comfort from food on many occasions. Yes, I have in fact told myself a countless number of times that if I don’t feel good , food will make me feel better. But I now ask myself where is the truth in this? Did food ever make me feel better? No, usually it make me feel sick, sluggish and lacking in energy. Then a few hours(or minutes) later, before I ever had the chance to be hungry , the sugar and carbohydrates I had shoveled into my body caused cravings for MORE! Thus creating the vicious cycle I now know as food addiction. One definition of comfort is the act of giving relief in affliction. This means that as part of the many lies I told myself, that in my times of worry , disappointment or affliction that food was the answer, the thing that would free me and relieve me from my worry, disappointment and affliction. The real answer, the one I need to replace in my mind over the lies , is that what I really need is God. Phillipians 4:6-7 says, Do not worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. .If comfort is freedom from worry or disappointment then what I was longing for all along was available to me. God promises to free us from worry through and by prayer. If we ask him for freedom from worry he promises in his word to give it to us, through giving us the peace of God. These promises he gives to us in his word is most definitely more comforting than food ever was or ever could be!

Comfort, console, solace, these verbs mean to give hope. The search for comfort, in addition to the freedom from worry or disappointment ,was a search for hope. Hope defines promise, and the bible is full of God’s promises. Lesson one, Replace the lies with God’s peace, Lesson 2 replace the lies with the hope of God’s promises! These two things go hand in hand because God promises to give us peace if we ask him for it Again we look to Phillipians 4:6-7 , let your requests be know to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. After all most of the battle I have with food is in my mind, (emotionally) , what a relief it is to know that all I have to do is ask and he will guard my heart and my mind!

LIE # 3: FOOD MAKES ME HAPPY; THE SEARCH FOR JOY

In my search to fill the emptiness within me, using food for reward and comfort I felt that food was my source of happiness. Boy was I wrong! Food gave me a false and temporary sense of happiness. Temporary

Being the key word, and temporary the happiness was, hence forth the reason why I fell into the trap of seeking food for happiness over and over and over again, and the reason why I spiraled into the hole of despair of food addiction. All of this happened because I was searching for happiness from something that could never really make me happy! Another word for happiness is joy. The three things I was lacking in my life, the emptiness I felt was from the lack of Peace, hope and joy. In David’s psalm to the lord he writes, you have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. David was on to something!! God’s joy is more fulfilling than any food will ever or could ever be. In Proverbs we can also find two pieces of inspiration for joy. Proverbs 10:28 and proverbs 12:20. In these two verses we learn that “the hope of the righteous brings joy” and “those who plan peace have joy”. These two verses are very important in our journey to replace the lies we have told ourselves with truth. They teach us that hope brings joy. Two of the things we now know we need, and one brings the other. Hope brings joy. They also teach us that those who plan peace have joy. The fact is we spent a very long time telling ourselves over and over the lies about food. Now we have to “plan” to replace these lies, by planning peace. We do this by referring back to Isaiah 26:3-4 where we learned to keep our minds stayed on God, in return he keeps us in perfect peace.

In conclusion, we have learned that our search for something more was a longing for Peace, Joy and Hope. It will take time, but we now have the tools we need to begin to replace the lies with the truth in our minds. Just as we told ourselves over and over the lies about food, we will have to tell ourselves every day the truth about how to obtain Peace, Joy and Hope. One way we can do this is to write down the verses we have learned from in this lesson, and go over them every day. Our minds then, will be constantly filled with the truth. In addition to this I encourage you to write out your own personalized prayer concerning your struggles with this addiction, to keep at hand when temptation arises, and to have to remind you as the verses will what the truth is so that you can hide it in your hearts and minds!

Dear lord,

We give you thanks for showing us that we have a choice on what we tell ourselves. We know that telling ourselves lies only hurt us and that you want so much more for us in our lives. We thanks you for the truths in your word that teach us how we can obtain peace, hope , joy and so much more by trusting and drawing closer to you. Help us to continually draw our strength from you as we go on this journey of replacing the lies with your truth. Help is to hide in our hearts whatever is true, and to think on these things as your word says.

Amen

Danish Proverb:

Lord, I am working on a puzzle plain and simple….it is I.

Dear searching child, I have an answer to your puzzle, plain and simple…….it is I.