S2. E24. Emotional Eating (feat. Matthew 11:28-30)
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[00:00:00] Feelings are not sinful. They are not evil. They are indicators. Our feelings are built in mechanisms by God that speak to the state of our heart and mind and what our body needs. And Jesus, even though he felt all of these emotions, he was not governed by them. So as emotions arise within your soul, do you recognize how God has equipped you with these internal indicators that speak to the state of your soul in mind? But why do we go to food?
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Hello. Hello. Welcome back to Your Daily Bread podcast. Oh, y'all, I am so excited to record today's episode all about how to navigate emotional eating. What are some tangible steps? How do we turn to God versus turning to food? Because anyone that has ever fallen into emotional eating, you know, whether it's in the moment or afterwards.
Oh, that probably wasn't what my body needed, but that's how I coped in that moment. And so as we go into this episode, I rebuke now in the name of Jesus any guilt or shame that comes up, there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. As we go into this episode, I don't want you to feel bad or shameful for how you have chosen to cope with.
The big, overwhelming, maybe even painful emotions that you have felt. And if you have [00:02:00] chosen to cope through food, I want you to take compassion on yourself. So as we go through this, I think that there needs to be a healthy amount of self-examination, but this is not condemnation. And I pray that this episode equips you with a framework of how to metabolize your emotions with Jesus.
Versus turning to food. This isn't necessarily going to change and happen overnight, but this is a learned practice and as you navigate your big emotions. I want you to remember, and this is something that I say to my clients all the time, that nothing is a failure.
Everything is feedback. So even later today or tomorrow, you might stumble into emotional eating Again, that is not a failure. You're like, you might be thinking, dang, I just listened to this episode. Why am I doing this again? That is not a failure. That's feedback something might come to mind like, oh, okay, that's where I, that's what I need to work on.
That's the step I need to work on. And so it might actually help you to [00:03:00] overcome this when you view things as feedback and data for yourself and not just condemning yourself. So I really just wanted to start that off with this disclaimer, because. I know that this can be such a sensitive topic, and I don't want you to shame yourself for how you have chosen to cope with your emotions.
This episode will show you that there's another way and that Jesus has another way, but you emotionally eating has gotten you through some very painful, overwhelming things and even though that may not be God's best for us, we have to show that part of ourselves and how we chose to cope with compassion, because that makes it a more inviting environment for yourself to grow. There actually was a study done on self-compassion. And the people that were more compassionate with themselves as they were growing and establishing healthy habits, they were actually more consistent with a healthy lifestyle. And if you can't show yourself compassion.
Receive Jesus's [00:04:00] compassion. That is God's nature. He is compassionate. He is slow to anger. He is rich in mercy, abounding in love. So if you can't be compassionate and loving with yourself, receive that from Jesus and that will teach you how to receive yourself as Christ receives you over time. And that makes it a more inviting environment for you to grow in and learn when you are more compassionate with yourself.
So there's even research and scientific studies to back that up. So I just wanted to preface this episode with that. Father, God, thank you so much for this day. Lord, thank you for this word and this scripture that you have unfolded and unpacked for me, Lord, and I just pray that. There are ears to hear this and that this truly is a transformative episode for every single person that listens to this.
I pray that it is so transformative that people share, share, share this episode with more people that need this and to break free from the chains of emotional eating. Lord, I just pray that [00:05:00] your word is illuminated and your Holy Spirit does what only it can do, and Lord, I pray that everything that is said in this episode is what you want to say.
And not what I wanna say, Lord. And thank you for choosing me to be your vessel. In Jesus name we pray, amen. We are gonna be unpacking Matthew 1128 through 30 in the Message translation. Jesus says, are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me and get away with me and you'll recover your life.
I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't let anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. Oh, this scripture is so good. The Lord unfolded four different steps.
For my spiritual [00:06:00] director, Lori, and since that I'll go through the four steps. Since then, the Lord has even unfolded to me something even deeper, like, wow, these are also the steps to equip people to not keep falling into emotional eating. So we will dive into that as well. The first step in this is location.
The second step is invitation. The third step is observation, and the fourth step is participation. First, the Lord wants you to locate how are you feeling? What is the emotion that you are experiencing right now? Are you tired? Are you worn out? Are you burned out? Are you stressed?
Are you anxious? Are you longing? Are you unsteady? Are you feeling restless? Are you feeling betrayed, rejected, fragile, hopeful, numb? What are you feeling? What is the state of your soul? And then he [00:07:00] says, this is his invitation. Come to me. Get away with me. Get away with me. Get away from food, get away from other temptations.
We don't even just turn to food. Sometimes we turn to scrolling, to shopping, to numbing out, to binge watching Netflix or a show or extreme, excessive punishing exercise. Some people turn to pornography for comfort, smoking, drinking drugs. We can turn to so many things. But Jesus, his invitation has come to me, get away with me.
And you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Then the third step is observation. Walk with me. Work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn from Jesus the unforced rhythms of grace, and then we participate with him. We take his yoke upon us, and his yoke is easy and the burden is light. So this translation is.
A [00:08:00] paraphrase, a different transition of that verse. He's not gonna light anything heavy or ill-fitting on us. If something does feel heavy, something does feel ill-fitting. That's an indicator that we need to give that to Jesus. And we need to work and be diligent to keep company with Jesus, to abide in him, to stay tethered to the vine.
Because when we do that and we keep company with Jesus, we live freely and lightly. So good. So what the Lord unfolded for me is that the first two steps, location and invitation are in the moment supports for handling emotional eating. You're feeling some type of way. What do we do in the moment? And then the third and fourth step observation and participation are how we.
Build a life and rhythms with Jesus where we are more consistently offloading and processing, metabolizing our emotions with Jesus. So they are not coming to a head as often. So it's not that you won't ever need those in the moment supports, we certainly will, but you might not need them as often. And if you are [00:09:00] always turning to food when you're really stressed, we need.
In the moment supports for when you're really feeling stressed and feel like turning to food for comfort. But we also need to look at your lifestyle. Why are you getting to the end of your day so stressed? What are your main stressors and how can we offload that stress to Jesus? How can the burden be lighter and easier?
How can we take on Jesus's easy yoke? Because that is his promise that if we do that we'll learn to live freely and lightly. So if we're not feeling free and light, Lord, how? How do I build better rhythms? To feel freer and lighter on a daily basis. And what does that look like on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, what rhythms do I need monthly, quarterly, annually to keep in step with Jesus, to keep in step with you Lord, so that I'm processing my emotions and they're not coming to a head as often.
Where now I need those in the moment. Support. So, so it's a both and we need the in the moment supports and we need the lifestyle change. So if we get [00:10:00] into. Location. First, we need to ask ourselves, are we physically hungry or is this emotional?
And if you eat sporadically, if you eat in a restrictive way, if you're not fueling yourself enough, if you. Drink so much caffeine where now we're suppressing our hunger. We exercise so much that that gives us a false sense of fullness. There's so many different things that can interrupt our true hunger and fullness cues, but if you are not nourishing yourself adequately and really eat three meals a day, multiple snacks, getting enough carbs, protein, fiber, you may be.
Really needing food. And you may also be feeling something emotionally, but, it's easier to discern what's an emotional hunger and what's a physical hunger when you can trust, ah, okay. I know I have fueled earlier in the day. I know I have eaten enough. This truly is emotional. and typically emotional hunger has a very quick onset.
It comes on very quickly, and it's more of a head hunger. Like you don't feel any [00:11:00] sensations in your lower body or your stomach. Not that we should be waiting to eat till our stomach growls, but it is really above the head and typically it is for a specific food. Like, I need this now, this specific thing now.
'cause that's your comfort food. And there are some times where we crave specific foods like chocolate on your period, and that's indicative of low magnesium, for example. But this is distinctly different from that. So that's something to tease out with the with the Lord as well. But that's really the first question that we wanna ask ourselves.
Like, do I physically need to eat? Or is this emotional If it's both, like, yes, I'm feeling really stressed, but it's also lunchtime. If it is dinnertime at the end of my day and I'm, I know I'm hungry and I do need to eat and I'm feeling some type of way, what do we do? And this is where we look to Jesus.
So we're gonna jump quick to observation. What, what, what would Jesus do? And Jesus at the time of the last Supper was. Very distressed leading up to the [00:12:00] cross. It says when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, that it was like he was sweating blood. He was so, so distressed about going to the cross, but eventually he metabolized those emotions with the Lord to get to a place where he says, Lord, let your will be done. See the Garden of Gethsemane is a distinctly different. Instance to the last Supper. Those are two different scenes. Jesus did not take out his emotions on the food at the last Supper.
He took the bread, he broke it. He gave it to his disciples. He was in Godly community. He fueled himself physically. He ate dinner. He had the bread, he had the wine, everything that was at the Last Supper. And he shared it in Godly community. He did not hoard it all for himself and he did not take out his emotions on the food.
He physically fueled himself. Then he went to the garden, then he got away with God to metabolize his emotions. And it's easier to do that when, when you're physically fueled and you know, okay, this isn't a physical hunger. I have fueled myself while now I'm going to metabolize my emotions with gut. So that is how Jesus models [00:13:00] that and resisting.
Emotional eating.
So it's important to name our emotions and then go to God. And your feelings are not too big for God sometimes the feelings that we feel I've heard, Dr. Allison Cook, describe it like this. Sometimes the feelings that we feel the thoughts in our head can be our worst critic. Can be our biggest enemy. But it says in Psalm 23, I have prepared a table before you in the presence of your enemy.
So you want to imagine all of your emotions sitting at a table. They have a distinct separate seat at the table. So like you have a seat at the table.
Your anger has a seat at the table. Your stress has a seat at the table. Your frustration, your joy, all of that has a seat at the table, and Jesus has a seat at the table and you're sitting around. What does Jesus have to say to your anger, to your feelings of rejection, to to your stress, to that longing?
To your joy. What does Jesus have to say to all of that? And that can [00:14:00] be so comforting. And I love that imagery because it separates you from your emotions. You are not your emotions. Those are just a, a part of you. So if any of you have seen that movie Inside Out, that Disney, Pixar movie with Inside Out with all the different emotions, definitely watch that because I think that that can give you.
Or remind you that you are not your emotions, you are not your anger. You can give it a seat at your table, and Jesus has something to say to that that can be very comforting for you. And when we just let our emotions rule us and we're operating from our emotions, or if we completely ignore suppress or numb out, distract ourselves from our emotions.
That robs us of our confidence and joy. We miss out on the important gifts that the parts of you that are experiencing these feelings have to offer. You're missing out on that, like Romans 8 28 experience, that he can make all things work together for your good because you love him, and we know that [00:15:00] you were called according to his purpose.
So Dr. Allison Cook really outlines that in her book, boundaries of the Soul and. our feelings are indicators, so they have something to teach us. Like if we're triggered, it's not always a bad thing. That's an indicator. Oh, there's healing to be done in that area, and we do that in the safety of Jesus.
It is safe for you to bring your emotions to him. You're not burdening him. He longs to be with you.
So those are our in the moment supports. That's what we have to do. Identify what is the state of your soul, and then really work to go to Jesus and turn away from food. Then we get into observation. Jesus says, walk with me. Work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn. Learn from Jesus the unforced rhythms of grace.
So when you study the life of Jesus, you see his rhythms. You see how he operated his life. He frequently was leaving the disciples to go retreat and be alone with his father, to be alone with God. And we have to do that as [00:16:00] well. Jesus was highly sought after. He was very busy. And there's even one verse in Mark one that says.
Jesus had gone off to pray alone and the disciples said to him, everyone was looking for you, and here's the, Jesus already knew that everybody was looking for him, yet he wanted to go alone to go pray. He knew that his soul needed that and he needed to get filled up by God so that he had something to pour out, and he still had time to heal everyone.
He still had time to teach the disciples. He still had time to preach everywhere. He still had time to do all of those things, but he needed to. Retreat and be with God. So when we study Jesus's rhythms, if you are too busy to go to God and retreat and have your alone time with God, you're either too busy or you're not making it a priority.
Because we always have time for what we make a priority. And I'm not saying that your quiet time has to be an hour long. What your quiet time looks like with God looks different in each season, and there's ways to [00:17:00] interact with God. In, abide in him throughout the day. We need to be doing that. But we also need to have time set aside to be alone with God, because that's what we see Jesus doing
and we see in Mark six that Jesus and his disciples were frequently navigating. Really busy seasons in their ministry and also emotional complexity. In Mark six, around verse 30, we see that Jesus commissioned his disciples to go out and preach the gospel and cast out demons.
And they were so excited about that and also around this time, the disciples and Jews, they were tasked with getting John the Baptist's body and burying it after he was beheaded.
So there's that joy and sorrow, which is so common in our Christian walk. To be carrying both of those at the same time or seemingly conflicting emotions. Jesus dealt with that his disciples dealt with, that they were so joyous of the people that were being healed and the [00:18:00] gospel spreading in their movement, building steam and momentum, and also they're grieving at the same time.
so Jesus empathizes that you're carrying both of those. And it is really interesting that when the disciples came back. they were so excited to tell Jesus all the wonderful things that they did when they were on the road and commissioned and sent out to by two, the first thing that Jesus says to them is, come away to a deserted place all, by yourselves and rest a while.
He cared more about their rest and their rhythms and them getting away to rest than their successes in ministry. Of course, he cared about the wins and the things that they were doing for the kingdom, but Jesus cared more about their sustainability in ministry, their long-term success versus.
Their short term results and he knew the way that they were going to sustain themselves in ministry was if they practiced healthy rhythms of work and rest.
And taking time to rest and resting in the [00:19:00] Lord is not lazy. It's not self-sabotage. 'cause I think so often we're like, I'm doing all these things. Go, go, go. And then we need rest. And we see that as a failure. We're like, oh, I'm just trying to self-sabotage. No, you need rhythms of working and resting. It's wise to rest to to be able to sustain yourself in ministry and the walk that the Lord has called you on.
So I really wanna encourage y'all to be reading all those accounts of Jesus and be looking for Jesus's rhythms in his lifestyle so that you can learn from him and watch how he did it. Because he changed the world in three years. He was insanely busy, but he was never hurried.
He walked so slowly through the crowd that while he was going to heal Jairus's daughter, he walked so slowly through the crowd that the bleeding woman of 12 years. Could catch up to him to touch the hem of his garment so we can't be so busy through life. 'cause how many divine appointments are we missing because we're rushing?
I think it would be really good for anyone who hasn't already to read the book, the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, [00:20:00] by John Mark Comer. Read that book at the beginning of this year. Changed my life all about rest and how to get rid of hurry in your life by studying Jesus' rhythms because he was insanely busy, but he was never hurried.
And lastly, our last step is participation. We want to do things with Jesus. Daily life with Jesus. So this really comes from increasing our awareness of Emmanuel God with us increasing our awareness of God's presence with us always. 'cause God is with us always. But how? Often, are we not even aware of him or we feel far away?
Your feelings of his presence, how close, far, isn't indicative of his actual presence. He is with you always, whether you acknowledge it or not. So your prayer should be, Lord, increase my awareness of your presence always.
And we want to do our daily life, our practices with Jesus. So what does that look like? And to have practices that , help us offload our emotions to Jesus, get in his presence. It's less about the practices [00:21:00] themselves and more about his presence, but these practices can give you a rhythm and routine of, just feeling grounded in the Lord, and it creates the environment, creates the space to posture your heart towards him and to hear from him. And so we need a variety of different practices, and I want you to start thinking, okay, what practices allow me to feel closer to God and posture my heart and soul towards him?
And are those on my calendar? That might be worship. It might be walking in nature, journaling, reading, silence, taking communion, gratitude, Sabbath like dio, divina and scripture meditation, solitude, different devotionals. There's so many different things that we could do. But it's important that those are on our calendar.
So yes, we need those in the moment supports and like, okay, what can I do in the moment when I'm feeling some type of way to turn to God, but do I have a lifestyle of communing with God so that I'm consistently offloading my emotions to him so things aren't coming to a head as often?[00:22:00]
And what are those things that are on my calendar daily, weekly? Monthly, quarterly, and annually. I hope that this was helpful.
And I think meditating through this scripture and just taking it line by line will allow the Lord to speak to you on what you need to do, specifically with him, to process your emotions and if you need help healing your relationship with food healing from emotional eating. Being able to discern what's a physical hunger and an emotional hunger, then definitely, head to the show notes and look for the different ways to work with me because I would love to support you on this journey.
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