The New Year

11 days in to a New Year.  Commercial after commercial of lose weight, exercise, eat this, do that and on and on and on.  So reminiscent of last year but with one big difference.  This is MY ANNIVERSARY!!  The anniversary of a new 'me'.  The anniversary of finally surrendering to God my issues and entanglements with food.  I can't even believe it.  I've never stayed the course this way.  To have lost weight and actually to have kept it off AND to top it off to have so many others working toward their own freedoms.

All the weight loss commercials did one thing for me in the past - AGGRAVATED the HECK out of me.  I felt so angry at the weight and then at the commercials themselves for selling me a dream.  But you know what, I realized that the commercials were all right.  Eat less, exercise more...period.  It works right?  Right?  RIGHT!  So why doesn't it work? Why didn't it work?  Because if I could have done that I WOULDN'T BE FAT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! DUH!!!  So what works?  What works is getting the tools, learning the information, making a plan, putting it into action AND THEN SURRENDERING it all to God - daily. 

Back to Eden is so much more about turning to God in the midst of where I am than it is about what to eat, how to eat, and how much to exercise.  Most people don't admit to this...at first.  Like any other 'diet' we learn what foods to eat and how often and what exercises to do but unlike a 'diet' we then submit ourselves to God in prayer, turning over to Him the things that we have been burying in our foods. 

Some of us use food to make us happy and some of us use food to make other people happy.  You wouldn't believe how many 'cakes' and 'pies' I heard being made and eaten over the holidays.  We used the holiday's as an excuse to just throw it all in and 'live' I heard some say.