Love Speaks Freedom – Delivering Us from Our Addictions to Food

By Dixie Diamanti –

He loves us! Our maker knows us inside and out, and loves us with a love that transcends what we can even imagine.

In my life, everything I have received from God has come in simplicity. This is because I try to complicate just about everything I have received from Him. It took me a long time to realize what we receive from Him has to be by faith, period.

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It is simple, really.

I struggled for years for acceptance by God only to finally see He was holding out His free gifts for me to simply just take hold of and use them. That was it!

Anything we receive from Him is in His power, not ours. We can’t work for it. Just believe Him and trust Him to light up the path of our journey as we travel along.

When I first realized how easy it was to end my compulsion to food I thought it was too good to be true. I actually felt guilty that it should be that easy because there is a multibillion dollar diet industry out there and how could I suggest that it can be done without paying thousands of dollars for the latest miracle diet.

Those of us who hate being focused on food, yet find ourselves daily focusing on food, and what we should eat at any moment in time, often ignore the obvious solution. It is actually easier to tell ourselves the answer is “out there” rather than to just take control once and for all…because if we keep trying all the new things then one day we will find the magic solution for our food issues. The problem with that is in the meantime we continue to grow in girth.

We actually use the hunt for answers to keep us from being responsible ourselves to give up our own power in exchange for His. I was always on one diet or another.

We want to think we don’t have any power to do anything about the problem. We just want to be fixed. But when the answer is not where we are looking our attempts are doomed to fail.

God can uncover your body issues and show you where the stronghold lies. The question is, are you ready to look at it?

Through years of being caught up in a stronghold of weight issues, believing I would always be fat, my body had indeed developed some serious health issues as a result. The abuse of eating foods that were not healthy and bingeing to make myself feel better played havoc and left many symptoms.

Finding freedom from my obsession with food was not about something that I do, but about finally realizing who I was in God’s eyes. I am beautiful to Him. He loves me. I am worth treating myself really well.

It was about learning to lean into Him and have Him reveal what my body needed to get healthy and be free from feeling powerless to do anything about it.

With the hold of the past gone I slowly began to become more interested in getting healthy so I could be the best I could be.

Being a life coach and working with people who revealed that their struggle with weight was just an outward expression of an inward emptiness, was eye opening in my own story.

I have witnessed so much suffering in people who are caught up in food obsession, and I have found it to be deeply rooted in our spirituality.

As they begin to share their pain  and tell the truth about their lives they begin to be released from the old picture of their poor bodies and begin to see how valued and beautiful they are in God’s eyes, they begin to have hope for release from the stronghold.

That is what happened to me. Through the recognizing of my stronghold, what began to follow was a new picture of me being free from the bondage. I took an interest in what I was putting into my body and how each thing I ate made me feel. I was shocked at the fact that most of my allergies were from what I was eating.

After visiting my holistic doctor and having blood work done he told me that it was time to take control or I would suffer all the ailments that plague most of our generation into old age. I already had high blood pressure. He told me to try going off all grains and sugar. Not as a fad diet but to see if that contributed to my inability to lose and my allergies.

I didn’t starve myself. I began to focus on why I wanted to eat when I felt the urge.

Was I hungry?

Was I upset?

Bored?

Did I need to feel loved?

I let myself stop a moment and think of what I was feeling. If it was hunger, then I allowed myself to eat until I was full. Then stop. And I didn’t eat any grains (which I thought I would really miss but I don’t, amazingly enough). I started eating lots of fresh organic produce and I started juicing which I get a real kick out of and love the fact that drinking fresh organic vegetable juice puts vitamins directly into your body, bypassing the digestive system, and to the directly to the organs that need the healthy boost.

If I was feeling bored, sad, or just wanted comfort I learned to start talking. Just start talking to Jesus about my need. And, you know what? He was right there to help me over that hurdle, filling my need as we talked together. Journaling to Him really helped too….because He always answered me and I could write it down. This was much more satisfying that the temporary high I got while eating.

The most challenging part of this whole issue with weight is that unless it also addressed the part of me that wanted something I couldn’t name, the emptiness inside, it wouldn’t work.

Jesus came to fill all of our empty places that we have tried to fill with everything but Him.

To be filled with Him works its way to our whole being, spirit, soul and body. We are trying to fill that hole in our soul with food. And it has created an endless cycle of defeat in our lives.

Our greatest inmost desire is for the love of God, even though we don’t realize it most of the time. The Hand of God carves out places in us only He can fill. Oh what a day of rejoicing when we really get this. He can fill us up when food cannot!! He wants to flood your life with His unfailing love.

I had to learn to pour out my heart to God and acknowledge every hollow place. I had to surrender my eating habits to Him every day. I love what Beth Moore says in her series on Breaking Free from strongholds.

“When you make a daily practice of inviting His love to fill your hollow places and make sure you are not hindering the process, God will begin to satisfy you more than a double cheeseburger.” ….Halleluiah!!

Today, I have been practicing my new way of eating for 2 months, though it has been a slow evolving to this place of finally taking control. I stopped focusing on weight and started focusing on being healthy. I cut out processed foods and sugar as much as possible. I stopped eating any kind of grain and found I do not have the problems I had when I was eating grains. I make sure I do not get hungry by eating more frequently. When I feel like I need to eat I ask myself if I am really hungry before I grab the first thing I see.

I snack on nuts, fruit, and organic yogurt. I juice and drink the juice twice a day. I take supplements based on what my body needs after the blood work showed what I needed. I try to remember to drink lots of water. And I am now starting to be more serious about some kind of exercise. I have to if I want to keep everything moving forward, including my joints and breathing capacity. Currently, I like rebounding on a mini trampoline and am starting to stretch more.

Not wanting this series to be focused on the fact that I have lost weight, but on the complete freedom He offers for our taking, I do have to say I have lost 20 pounds in 2 months. So I know I am onto something big and that always makes me want to share with others so you, too, can experience this amazing freedom.

I am free from the stronghold of eating to fill that gaping hole in my heart that began so many years ago and controlled me most of my life. I am through listening to “The Voice.”

I know that since God did it for me, He will do it for you too!! I have no doubt.

 

Originally posted on Dixie’s Blog.

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Love Speaks Freedom – Delivering Us from Our Addictions to Food
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