EATRITE - 5c - How Can I Be Free?

Be prepared: Successful management of your body starts in the shopping. If you are going to re-educate your appetite successfully you have to learn what to buy and what to leave in the store. Avoid keeping foods in the house that are high in fat and sugar.

Change your lifestyle management: Many people make it difficult for themselves because they say they have no time to eat properly. Compulsive eaters that come to healing make a choice to restructure their eating behaviour. Unless you do this, you will never succeed in losing weight and keeping it off.

Although losing weight is important (because most compulsive eaters are overweight) it is important to be in God’s will for your life and to remember that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Renew your mind: Culturally we give food to represent friendship, hospitality and love, so to say NO to food seems to be a rejection of those emotions. Behaviour modification is important to help the Compulsive Eater to cope – i.e. when in a difficult situation, to break the vicious circle – feeling depressed leading to eating leading to guilt leading to further depression.

How to renew your mind:
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Philippians 4:13
Write down the scriptures that motivate you - Memorize them. Believe them. Say them.
Avoid flashpoints – if the smell of fresh bread affects you, take another route.
Send leftover foods to someone who needs them.
Retrain yourself if you eat when you watch TV – read or do something else instead.
Confine eating to your Designated Eating Places.
Slow down your eating. Chew each mouthful thoroughly.
When you are moody do something other than eat. Walk. Exercise. Read.

Help a fellow Compulsive Eater: Share something of what you are learning with someone. Encourage someone. Motivate someone. Congratulate someone. Comfort someone.

Do daily spiritual work: Start with the scriptures in this course. Say them often. Pray.

God will set you free:
“If the son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:36
What is freedom?
Being able to eat as God wants you to eat.
Sharing leftovers with others.
Changing your dress size once and for all.
Experiencing your hunger response. Eat well.
Fulfilling your needs – mentally, physically, spiritually, intellectually, socially, vocationally.
Following a new way of life steeped more and more in God’s ways.

There is no reason why anyone who stays freed by Christ should have an eating problem again.
Gluttony/eating disorders come from Satan. To overcome Satan we need to have “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.” Ephesians 1:18,19

- EATRITE – Leslie Hand

Homework 5c: Renew your mind and live increasingly freed by Jesus Christ every day.