DAY 8 - Need To Learn To Feel The Signs!

Even though I had realized that I needed to listen more to God's signal that my body is truly hungry... I can't seem to realize in the moment that I am not hungry! I find that I have been eating my meals before feeling any sign of hunger, and I haven't felt my stomach rumble in a few days. This is a sign to me that I must be eating too much. I was listening to some weigh-down tapes last night. This is a form of loosing weight just by listening to your signals of hunger and eating out of stomach hunger not head or heart hunger. The tapes also help you to become closer to God and trust him throughout your journey. The tape I listened to last night mentioned starting off with a fast. A fast from food until you truly feel hungry. I think God has showed me that I need to do this to realize how much I have been eating when I am not really hungry.

Even though I lost 2 pounds last week, I could probably be loosing more if I only ate when I was TRULY hungry. So my fast starts right now @11:00 pm. And I will record tomorrow when I first felt hunger. It will be difficult but I will try and eat very slowly and stop as soon as I feel that I am no longer hungry. That has always been a problem for me. I eat way too fast, and by the time I feel full I have already eaten twice what I should've!

Exercise was pretty good today, my mom and I took the dog for about a 45 minute walk - it was hot! Later in the evening my friend Kristin and I went for our walk/run intervals. This week we have moved up to running 1 minute then walking 4.5 minutes and repeating this 9 times! It gets harder later on in the workout, but I can feel that running for the whole minute is starting to feel easier than just running the 30 seconds did in the beginning! This is pretty exciting. I know running for one minute doesn't sound like much but repeating it 9 times is quite tiring! In these next 12 weeks I hope to be running for much longer at a time and a much longer distance with ease. Working my way up slowly!

For breakfast today I had a low-fat bagel with light cream cheese and low-cal, low-sugar jam. Snack was a yogurt and a granola bar. Lunch was 2 diet bread with becel, fat free turkey slices, fat free cheese and pickle. Snack was a pear. Dinner with the family was Chicken Cordon Bleu with rice and carrots. Later in the evening I mistook head/heart hunger for real hunger and I ate another bagel. I realized instantly afterward that I hadn't been truly hungry and I felt very guilty. I need to pray everyday for God to give me strength to resist these temptations. I am starting out rough and making a lot of mistakes, but I hope things will get easier as I go. I want God to release me from this urge to eat! Release me from food! I want so badly to not care or think about food unless I am truly hungry and am only using it to fuel my body and keep me alive. This is my dream.

So for now I will be fasting until I feel true hunger, and I will hold myself to that. It has been a frustrating day as I usually drink lots of water and am a naturally thirsty person, and we are out of water! I have had to last on 2 bottles today and diet pop! I usually don't drink pop but I was desperate! This should be fixed by tomorrow.

I will pray for God to give me the strength to face the day, and to ignore any urges I have to eat outside of physical hunger.


I am hoping this fast will open my eyes to how little food I actually need!


Anything is possible WITH GOD,
-Beth