Confession from an emotional eater

Hello, my name is Jenny, and I'm an emotional eater.

All together now..."Hi Jenny."

The last two years, my life has been full of reading, writing papers, researching, more reading, and hours of editing because of my graduate school work. I knew I was (and my ENTIRE family was) under stress ALL THE TIME, but I tried not to believe it. Stress can do crazy things to do. It makes you frustrated, angry, resentful, bitter...just to name a few. It can cause you to become someone you don't want to be.

Sammy was not quite 2 years old, and Caleb was barely 2 months old when I began grad school. Yup, just like you, I shake my head and say, "What (were you) was I thinking!!!" I did have some very good reasons for going back to school when I did (and I will talk about that further when I post my graduation pictures from last weekend), but it's only been the last few months that I've wrestled with a "side effect" from going to school AND being the mother of 2 small children AND being a youth pastor's wife AND being over committed...etc.

And that side effect is emotional eating.

Let me take you back a bit...

I was the same size, 5 foot 3, 130 pounds through high school and college. Then...I got married, and it was all down hill from there. I gained almost 30 pounds my first year of marriage--almost 10 years ago--. And even though I lost some of it, I never fully lost that weight. Then, 4 years ago, I had Sammy and gained 30 MORE pounds. I lost most of that within a year, but then became pregnant with Caleb around Sammy's 1st birthday and proceeded to put on 40 MORE pounds. The day I gave birth to Caleb, I was within 10 pounds of the 200 mark! EEK!

Then, I started grad school. You can just imagine how well my weight loss has been the last 2 years...I have only lost 20 pounds...and 8 of them were Caleb!

But, on April 1st, even though I was still finishing my HUGE research paper, I decided enough was enough! I was taking control over my emotional eating!

So I began to do calorie counting. It was very intimidating at first, but I found some really great websites to help me get started with how many calories I should be eating to lose 1-2 pounds a week and help me figure out how many calories I burned and also how many calories were in common foods.

In the last 6 weeks, I have lost 12 pounds! Yeah!

I feel great, have dropped one jean size, and am motivated to keep going.

And even though a lot of people haven't noticed, I'VE noticed and my HUSBAND has noticed.

In the midst of this 6 week journey, I have come to realize that this is yet another area that I am unable to do by MYSELF. What I mean is that I've had to really pray and ask God to help me NOT grab the chips, but grab the carrots instead. I've realized how WEAK I am, and that there's really nothing I do in my own power. This is not about me gaining control (even though I really, really like having control), but it's about me handing over the control to the One who wants me to give EVERYTHING, including my eating to HIM.

So, even though these BEFORE



and AFTER


pictures may not show my 12 pound loss, I do hope they show how I'm learning that it's less and less about me, and more and more about becoming like Him.