“Keep a craving journal
A craving journal can help you zero in on your patterns and triggers. Keep track of your food intake. Note the moments in each day when you crave food:
- What time was it?
- How intense was the craving (on a scale of 1-10)?
- What were you doing?
- Who were you with?
- How were you feeling?
Yesterday on Sunday we had company and my wife bought doughnuts. My only focus was on doughnuts and I had a big apple fritter. It made me feel a big sick. Today on Monday I was focused on the many things I would do today and I had raisin bran because I forgot about the doughnuts. Later when I did notice then, I did not eat one. We track our cravings because we learn that we had to have a doughnut Sunday because it was my whole focus.
With that learned information I now know I should have focused also on health on Sunday. Maybe eaten oatmeal and a quarter of a doughnut. I wasn’t tracking calories and I focused on the wrong thing.
We will continue the session about how satan lies to us from Genesis.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Then in the next chapter satan says.
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring
[j] and hers;
he will crush
[k] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Life is the same today for you and me as it was for Adam and Eve. If we obey God and live the way He wants us to live we start to live under a new blessing. When we do things He does not want us to do bad things happen then more bad things happen. A curse is bad things happening and then multiplied bad things happening.
Tomorro, we will talk about self control which helps us have a blessing instead of a curse.
How to lose weight: tip #8 Eat more vegetables and less carbs
Read Proverbs 5
Prayer is one of the best ways to break down the wall of unforgiveness in our hearts. When we begin to pray for the person who has wronged us, God begins to fill us with His Spirit.
We also see ourselves in a new light, guilty of sin and in need of forgiveness. If God did not withhold his forgiveness from us, why should we withhold forgiveness from another? How many times do you need to pray per day to forgive _____? For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (NIV)
We also forgive so that our prayers will not be hindered:
Repentance in the Bible is a condition you must have before you can be saved. To repent means to change. “With addiction it is the same thing, we need to change. A change of mind” – a decision, a choice, a determination of the heart, a deliberate exercise of the will – in which one determines to act differently in the future than he has in the past. As a Christian to change we must hear, believe and obey God’s will to understand how to change. With addiction we must hear, believe, study and be disciplined with renewing ourselves in order to change. Do we have genuine sorrow for the fact that we fell back into addiction again? Have we thought about and tried to understand why it was wrong? Were we busy enough worshipping God and trying to fulfill our purpose when we overindulged?
In Christianity simply admitting one has sinned is not enough. Some people know they have sinned but don’t care, or at least don’t really regret what they did.
Joel 2:12,13 – Turn to God (repent) with weeping and mourning. Tear your heart, not your garment. God wants, not mere outward expressions of grief, but sincere sorrow. We must sincerely wish we had never done the act.
2 Corinthians 7:10 – Godly sorrow leads to repentance unto salvation. One who does not repent cannot be saved, and he cannot truly repent without sorrow.
James 4:8,9 – Sinners must mourn and weep.
A person may admit he did wrong and may even stop committing the sin, but that does not prove he regrets what he did. He may think it was justified under the circumstances, but he simply has no reason to do it again.
It is also possible for a person to know he is wrong and be sorry without really making up his mind to change. Some people have the idea that repentance just means being sorry – if they just admit they were wrong and say they are sorry, everything is forgiven.
But repentance is a decision to change. Why is this important?
A. Repentance Is Essential in Order to Develop Proper Attitudes.
We can never please God till we develop a proper state of mind. We can never quit addiction untill we develop a new way of thinking.
Proverbs 4:23 – Keep your heart diligently because out of it are the issues of life. People do wrong because they chose to do wrong. In order to start doing right, they must change their mind and decide to do right – repent.
The mind is where we decide what we will do. This is why our state of mind is so important.
Romans 6:17,18 – One who is a servant of sin needs to be made free from sin and become a servant of righteousness. To do this, he must obey God “from the heart.” You cannot obey from the heart until you have decided in your heart to obey. That decision to do right is repentance.
Joel 2:12,13 – Repentance must involve the heart – the inner man. We can never please God till we get our heart right. That happens in repentance. When people know what God wants but will not do it, they lack repentance. (They may also lack faith, love, etc., but one thing they definitely lack is repentance.)
If your past actions have hurt someone else you need to apologize and then make restitution (if restitution will not make things worse).
With addiction we need to change and develop the proper state of mind. Study why your addiction hurts you – at every level. We think if we get drunk on our couch in our house and no one knows or even cares that we did no wrong. A great Christian thinks he did a terrible wrong if he wastes even one day in self indulgence instead of helping people or preparing to help people. A great Christian thinks he made a huge mistake if she provides a bad example for other Christians.
Pray “Father renew my mind and help me to understand why my addiction is bad for me and give me the wisdom to know how to work to begin to change”.
2. Checklist for avoiding relapse: Even during times when you are succeeding, prayer urgently often each day to overcome addiction – to develop habits that you may very well need during seasons of difficult temptation.
2. Pray: “Father help me to make it a habit to always plan my next few days. It is vital to plan because boredom is a trigger to relapse. Routine and concrete scheduling can be a lifesaver. A schedule, coupled with passion for a new hobby or sporting activity, allows people to successfully and happily break the cycle of boredom.
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Thank you for reading day 11 of this program on how to lose weight.
Index
Day 1: Cravings
Day 2: Develop positive addictions
Day 3: Start an overcoming addiction journal
Day 4: Controlling emotions
Day 5: Don’t sell your pleasure backwords
Day 6: With the Spirit we have liberty
Day 7: You have some self control
Day 8: Have coping statements
Day 9: Living water
Day 10: Learning from Genesis
