When Will I Stop Overeating?
Making Wise Choices with Your Freedom
My daughter loves to blow out candles, and I often forget to let her. I usually go ahead and blow it out THEN remember what she wanted. This is super frustrating for her! Eating is similar.
I spent many years forgetting how I wanted to eat in a day, only to remember at the end of the day that I had wanted to eat in a more healthy way during the day. This also happened across a period of many days. Example: it wasn’t until after Christmas that I’d remember how I had wanted to be more careful with sweets during the holidays. Instead, I had eaten sweet after sweet after sweet from Thanksgiving till Christmas. Then I felt gross. The week after Christmas, I'd remember how miserable I felt when I ate too many sweets and that I had meant to be more careful.
“So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time, we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.”
Turns out this is a real thing in the world of psychology. There’s a predictable timeline in changing a behavior, and the moment of, “Oh, wait, I wanted to do that differently” first comes AFTER the regretted behavior, then it happens a little sooner, and a little sooner until, eventually, we begin to remember how we want to live BEFORE the moment of temptation. We start to wake up in the morning, aware of how we want to eat and live, and we can ask God to help us ahead of time. And He does.
Don’t be discouraged if you remember how you want to eat only AFTER you overeat. Be kind to yourself. Be curious about why you ate the way you did. Then ask God to help you make wise and beneficial choices with your freedom next time. In behavioral change, there is a process. Your “Aha” moment will come earlier and earlier each time if you don’t give up. God is faithful!