68: Heck Yeah Self-Control
When it comes to food, boundaries give you freedom. Setting up walls of discernment about what’s really worth it to you to eat (Heck Yeah!) spares you the shame, guilt, negotiation and overall mind drama when it comes to food. You don’t have to give up your favorite chips, cookies or other treat foods- you just have to be thoughtful and intentional about incorporating them into your diet.
If you feel like your boundary walls have been dynamited or you’re still wandering the wilderness of sugar, flour and alcohol, then this week’s podcast is for you. I’m sharing strategy and scripture to help you rebuild your walls and maintain self-control.
EPISODE 68: Heck Yeah Self-Control
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
(0:44) Welcome back to the club!
In the Christian Health Club we have spent the month of June dialing in our self-control around food. We’ve been talking about and putting into practice different strategies, our daily scripture was focused on self-control verses and I want to share some of what we’ve been doing with you today.
We kicked off the month with one of the most familiar verses that comes to mind when we think of self-control which comes from Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And here’s what I shared with the group
You can pick joy, you can pick peace and you can pick self-control as surely as you can pick a piece of ripe, juicy fruit from a tree. God offers all Believers the ability to grow a fruitful life with the power of the Holy Spirit inside to lend us strength and guidance. He’s just waiting for us to pick Him, to choose His way, so that we may enjoy the bursting flavor of a more abundant life.
We have to be deliberate in our daily choice. Choose Him. Choose Strength. Choose the health of your Holy Temple.
(3:40) Navigating our Heck Yeahs:
When it comes to self control around food the place we get most thrown off is around what I call our Heck Yeahs - the foods that aren’t necessarily good for us but that we enjoy and want to keep in our diet.
A major component of Feast 2 Fast® is teaching people how to find that place where Real Food meets Real Life (it would be great if we all ate Real Food the way God made it 100% of the time) but most of us would like to be able to eat a cookie, have a glass of wine or have chips with our guacamole - and do it without guilt or shame.
One major goal I have is to help people live peaceably with food - especially carbs - for the most part that’s what trips us up- we’re not overeating and feeling guilty about chicken and salad.
In Feast 2 Fast® which by the way - the next round starts in August - I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking about that - it’s our Back-to-School round - which who knows what school is going to look like this year with Covid still being a major issue - but either way, I think we’ll all be ready for a reset and grounded way of eating.
The last few weeks of Feast 2 Fast® are what I call the Heck Yeah Weeks - it’s when we bring in our Heck Yeahs - the foods that aren’t great for us but the ones that we’d like to keep in our diet and not have to give up - or pretend to give up and then yo-yo diet around it.
Our overarching theme verse comes from 1 Corinthians 6:12
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things build up.
I will not be enslaved by anything.
(7:45) When it comes to Heck Yeahs we have to consider three things:
#1. All foods are “lawful” (allowed).
#2. But we choose what’s worth it (heck yeah). - IN Feast 2 Fast® we make a list of our Top 10 Heck Yeahs - we get really specific about what’s worth it.
#3. We avoid addictive foods (that we can’t stop eating) - the foods that “enslave” us as this verse says.
What’s great about this strategy is that it makes you in charge of this process - it trips your brain in a different way because it’s all about your choice.
The minute someone else tells you you can’t have this or you can’t have that, your brain wants to rebel. It’s when you feel deprived, restricted, and “told-to” that your brain is like - Oh yeah? Watch this!
When you are intentional, when you intentionally think , “I can have anything but I don’t want things that aren’t worth it, make me feel bad, or make the wheels come off”— it keeps you in the driver’s seat. It puts your brain in proactive mode instead of reactive mode.
You know what’s best for you and the only person that can make that happen IS you. You are in charge. You have your own back.
(12:15) Setting Boundaries:
By choosing our Top 10 Heck Yeahs, we’re setting our own boundaries of what’s really worth it to us.
Now boundary is a trigger word for some people, again it conjures up the idea of deprivation - but you’ve got to look at it in the sense that boundaries give us freedom.
Another verse I like when it comes to Heck Yeahs is this one from Proverbs 25:28
Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.
The walls and the boundaries keep us safe, but when the walls around us crumble…it’s a total free-for-all.
Putting up boundaries gives them more freedom to move about safely and gives us moms more peace in the process.
There is peace within the walls of discernment.
Your Heck Yeahs are your walls of discernment: When those crumble, when we travel into the wilderness of sugar, flour and alcohol it’s dangerous territory.
It can become a real slippery slope and it happens to the best of us - we’ve either dynamited our boundary walls and are wandering the wilderness OR we’re sticking to our Heck Yeahs but going overboard on them.
That’s what we’ve been working on in the Christian Health Club group— to tighten things back and maintain our self-control.
(15:40) There are three ways I advised my people and here’s what they are.
#1. Get Back To Your Top 10 and only Your Top 10 for at least 3 months.
If it’s not on your list, it’s not in your mouth.
After 3 months you can revisit and adjust your list if you want to. Maybe this is something you do seasonally. Like in the summer ice cream is on your list but in the winter there’s a different sweet you want to enjoy. Make your list and stick to to it.
#2. Only Eat your Heck Yeahs on Feast Days
When someone is just starting out in Feast 2 Fast, I recommend they only include their Heck Yeahs on Feast Days but as someone becomes more and more practiced at living the Feast 2 Fast® lifestyle, it’s totally fine to eat a Heck Yeah on any day as long as it stays within the carb load you’re trying to maintain.
If you want to drink a glass of wine on a Tuesday because it goes so well with your dinner but it’s not a Feast day, you can still do that and maintain your reasonable carb target.
But, if you find that it’s getting out of hand and one glass leads to 3 on a Tuesday and before you know it it’s like every day is a Feast Day, you need to dial it back to having Heck Yeahs on Feast Days only. Make that separation for yourself.
#3. And the last way to get self-control around your Heck Yeah eating is to track it.
Keep a food journal or use an app like My Fitness Pal so that you have more accountability.
One of the things we did this month in the CHC is a Track Your Macs challenge where we did log in our food. For those of us who don’t like counting and tracking when it comes to food and don’t do it on the reg, but I think it IS a good to do it every once in a while to check in on ourselves.
So those are the 3 options: Stick to your Top 10 for 3 months, only eat your Heck Yeahs on Feast Days, or Track. You could do one or a combo of those and really throw the rope around your eating to rein in back in for Self-Control.
(22:38) There are a few other things I want you to keep in mind while we’re on this topic.
When it comes to choosing your Heck Yeahs, you have to be honest with yourself about what foods you moderate well. If you are familiar with the book Better Than Before by Gretchin Rubin, she is the one who made the concept of being a moderator vs. an abstainer popular. She says you’re a moderator if you:
#1. Find that occasional indulgences heightens your pleasure and strengthens your resolve.
#2. You get panicky at the thought of never getting or doing something.
Moderators are able to have a square or two of chocolate and not the whole bar. Or a regular serving size of crackers and not 3 servings. Or a glass or two of wine a few days a week but 3-4 every night.
And if you can’t moderate it, you need to consider abstaining from it.
Gretchin Rubin says you’re an abstainer if you:
#1. Have trouble starting something once you’ve started it
#2. Aren’t tempted by things you’ve decided are off-limits.
Even though it sounds harder to be an abstainer, it can actually make it easier. For instance, I’ve abstained from gluten for years. It’s been a hard boundary, a hard Heck No for me. It takes out the negotiation, the devil and angel battle in your brain about whether or not you’re going to eat it. It’s just NO.
Foods that are overly tempting to you and instigate a lot of mind drama or poor self-control are likely ones you need to abstain from for a while. There’s a verse that comes that I included as a daily scripture post in the CHC. It comes from 1 Peter 5:8
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And here’s what I posted in the Club:Whatever is roaring at you from the pantry to come and eat it is likely not the food that is serving you best. We have to be aware of the obsessive or impulsive voice in our head that tempts, justifies, bargains and hurries us with food.
That voice often sounds like: If you eat all the cookies today, they’ll be out of the house so you can “start over” tomorrow. It’s just one more glass, it’s fine.
You never get to eat this, better do it while you can.
Sometimes the voice is so loud, so strong, and so seemingly reasonable that we don’t “want” to hear the truth about what we’re doing.
Remember that Heck Yeahs are planned, deliberate, savored and appreciated. They are softer, quieter, and self-controlled.
(28:50) Closing Thoughts:
Remember that the next round of Feast 2 Fast® will start in the latter half of August - so whether you will be joining us a newbie, a repeater or member of The CHC - write that into your mind calendar so that we can put these things into practice together.
Before I go I’m going to leave you with one more verse from 2 Timothy 1:7 which says:
For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:7
Remember that Self-discipline comes best from a place of power, love and faith. When it comes from fear, it’s doomed to fail.
Fear is impulsive, fear is deprivation, fear is extreme, fear is worry. Fear is a whip on your spirit.
Real self-control comes from a place of love for your body and the Maker of your body. It comes from finding peace in boundaries. It comes from faith in the holy power within you.
Self-discipline is freedom. It spares you the impulsive binging, the unsustainable deprivation, the extreme diets, and the worry that you’ll never pull out of this unhealthy cycle.
Self-control is not about chains, it’s about wings. It’s operating in the freedom of being your best self!
(31:02) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!