Habits (And I’m Not Talkin’ Healthy Ones)

Thank you sooo much for the response to my sister-in-love Thais’ interview Monday about her new book on cancer survival. Over 100 comments!  She was thrilled!!! So thrilled she decided to have two winners. Yippeee!!! They are:

Nita Sullivan; time stamp 11:35 am on 2-21

Bobbie G; time stamp 12:15 pm on 2-21

Nita & Bobbie— send your home address to me at [email protected] right away!

And gals….you can still visit Thais’ site for another chance to win her book. Just click here!

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Habits.

There are healthy ones: flossing your teeth daily; looking both ways before crossing the street; taking your vitamins.

And there are not so healthy ones too.

Sorry to say, but my week brought habits of the latter kind.

Bad, bad habits.

Most of you know I have been sick; really sick. The kind of sick where I laid on the couch feverish & achy for days.

Once those symptoms left, I felt better for a few days. Enough so that I went to North Carolina for 48 hours. (Transported safely via the prayers of many of you!)

When I got home, I started having lung trouble. The “feels-like-someone-is-squeezing-the-life-and-breath-outta-me” kind of lung trouble.

I coughed like there’s no tomorrow.

So I was hauled off by the hubster to ER where they diagnosed me with bronchitis, gave me an inhaler and wonderful drugs.

Those who know me well know I am usually anti-drugs, but I was sick y’all!! (Oops—my P31 southern side is showing!)

The weird thing is, through all of this sickness, I have had no appetite.

That was great for the first week-and-a-half. I hardly ate.

Then, doc told me to eat to regain my strength. The trouble was, nothing sounded good.

So, I went from salty to sweet to savory, all the while trying to get something to taste good.

Nothing did.

I kept eating.

Then I noticed I was beginning to eat out of habit alone. Seriously! My taste-buds were gone and I had no cravings for anything, I just ate out of habit.

It was breakfast so I thought….“Hmmmm… I made the boys homemade oatmeal-whole wheat-buttermilk waffles, I’ll have one. With real maple syrup, please. No, make that two!”

It was afternoon. Maybe something sweet will do. Nope. Now I’ll try something salty.

Trouble was–there were no food choices that were both healthy & salty around–only teenage-boy snacks like chips and such.

I ate some, even though I really couldn’t taste them.

For the love of Pete–I even tried sour gummie worms!!

Again…no taste.

Once I began to feel better, I started cooking & baking again: peanut-butter apple crisp for my boys one night; strawberry-cream cheese pretzel dessert for our son’s birthday another.

Usually I can resist these treats. I opt for some berries and Greek yogurt instead or a little dark chocolate and a cup of something hot & calorie-free.

But this last week I just kept tasting & eating— both hoping to get my taste-buds to respond and (mainly) out of habit.

A very unhealthy habit.

How about the rest of you?

Are there any foods you are tempted to eat simply out of habit?

Do they taunt you at work?

Cry out to you at your church’s coffee hour?

Beckon you at breakfast?

Lure you at lunch?

Search you out at suppertime?

Beseech you at bedtime?

What are some food you eat simply because they are there, whether you find yourself at home or on the road?

Let us know.

Also, how was YOUR week! We want to know so we can pray for you.

So comment away.

I am vowing to do better. After this post, I will step on the scale (though I REALLY don’t want to) Next week I will tell you if I gained or lost.

We are in this together!

Habit-busting Blessings,

24 Comments

  1. I crave dark chocolate, but last week, I had a cold and couldn’t taste a thing, so I tried my hardest to avoid eating empty calories. I thought, what is the point in eating it if I can’t really enjoy it? I am just now starting to get my taste back, so I am liking that. I have another reason to eat healthier too…I am 25 weeks pregnant with my husband’s and my second child (another daughter)! I tried making a green smoothie (fruit and greens blended together) one day, and it didn’t sit well with me, so I haven’t tried another one since. I know I really should because they are so healthy and good tasting too, but I haven’t had the nerve to try one again. Maybe, I will this week. I will let you know if and when I do. LOL

  2. Hi, this is Nita Sullivan, I can’t go to proverbs 31. You can mail my book to 2131 deerwood rd.pensacola florida 32526 Thank you s much I can’t wait to read my book!!!!!

  3. Just got over the “crud” here at my house too…that’s what we call it in South Mississippi. I completely lost my sense of smell and taste! I had to ask my husband if what I was eating tasted good. He assured me it did, so I ate it. The only thing that seemed to register for my taste buds was chocolate. I’d almost broken my dependency on that daily chocolate habit and now the only thing that remotely tasted good was chocolate. Feeling much better now….but now I’ve got that nasty chocolate habit to break again. Maybe.
    Donna
    anotherbattlewon.blogspot.com

  4. Sweets and nuts!! Once I put a nut in my mouth I am a goner unless someone moves the can at least 1 mile from me. Sweets are just as bad, one bite and I lose all rational. Some things I have learned I JUST CAN NOT have them in my house.

    Been a wonderful week for me and absolutely beautiful weather here in North Georgia.

    Pray for me and my husband to be able to reach some financial stability as it is taking it’s toll both physically and mentally on both of us. Being 66 and 73 yrs old, it is not good to live in such stress. All prayers would be appreciated.

  5. Kylie….I have been to your beautiful city, one of my most favorite places on my New Zealand trip. So sorry to hear about the quake. Blessings to you and your city as you recover.

  6. Karen, this is definitely what I do! I was feeling great after reading ‘Made to Crave’ and looking at my eating and sacrificing of unhealthy food as a way to grow my relationship with God. In fact, for a while it almost seemed too easy! (I knew that it couldn’t last forever!)
    On Tuesday, at about 12.50pm (New Zealand time) my home city of Christchurch had a massive earthquake (although 6.3M doesn’t sound too big, and wasn’t as big as the one we had in Sept of 7.1M, it was only 5 kilometres deep) and we have had huge amounts of damage to our once picturesque city and more sadly, loss of life. Praise God that my family and friends and house are safe although there were some close calls. Talking about my eating seems insignificant next to this, suffice to say that I riverted back to my old eating habits.
    Please pray for our city, that we will not get more large earthquakes and that God will be seen and His love will be shown in this disaster and draw more to Him.
    I’m off to have a shower now for the first time since Tuesday morning as we now have our waste water back up and running :-)
    For more info check out http://www.stuff.co.nz
    Thanks ladies, for being there to support, listen and pray.

  7. Karen- feel better! I have been sick the past week, not as awful as you have but just enough to completely get off track. It is so, so hard to get back on the healthy train and yet so easy to slip right back in to old habits. I try to remember that “a setback is a setup for a comeback” but sometimes the stubborn me doesn’t want to hear it! Praying for everyone…

  8. Thanking God for His lovingkindness.
    This verse helped me this week:

    “Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
    I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.”
    Psalm 50:15

    One of the habits that had been hurting my health was eating late at night. TOO MUCH Chocolate in any form and bread. Last night was challenging, everytime I went to the kitchen I saw this verse and read it to our Heavenly Father for help. He helped me!!!
    I’ve lost 3 lbs. since I decided to ask God to help me and eat mainly high nutrient foods. Reading ” Eat To Live”.

  9. I eat to cope with headaches or tiredness when i cant do what my body really needs, which is to sleep.
    I try to stay in my weight watchers points range and mix salty with sweet, eg salt and vinegar rice crackers followed by a fun size chocolate. But sometimes nothing satisfies and i am so hungry and tired and aching that after a few days i think “i am tired of watching what i eat, i NEED something to get me through it all!” but i never really binge because my conscience kicks in. Jowever i do snack just enough to never lose the last few kilos i want to lose. I kust keep putting on and losing it over and over!

  10. The problem I have is when I buy that junkfood for the kiddos, I try to have ‘just a small taste’, and end up eating the whole bag of chips, or M&M’s, or whatever. Frequently, I use food to help me ‘think’ about something I need to do (procrastinate).
    So I am working on only buying healthy snacks, and keeping a to do list to keep me focused.

  11. Yesterday was my birthday and I had a HUGE gourmet cup cake plus some other goodies. I have been on vacation since the beginning of the week and have been munching on snacks a lot. I must stop it! We can do it girls! Blessings to all!

  12. Wow, where to begin… I too have been reading/following along “Made To Crave” journey. Lysa TerKeurst’s book has touched my life more than I can tell you. Another great asset in my weight loss journey has been the 6 wk bible study I’ve been doing with Melissa Taylor (www.melissataylor.org). I re-started my weight loss journey over again the beginning of the year knowing this time will be different…”Crave God Not Food”!!! I can’t say that since beginning my healthy eating journey that I haven’t been tempted, cause I have; but when I’m tempted I know that’s a reminder for me to pray and ask for God’s help to get me through. There has been times that I’ve broke over because it’s a special event/celebration or like Karen this past week I was sick w/the crud. I basically ate whatever I wanted, when ever I wanted…feed a cold so to speak. Then I went back to my healthy eating a few days later. Needless to say a day or so after getting back to my healthy eating my body went into shock & I felt so sick! I cannot begin to tell you how bad I felt, for a bit I thought about going to the ER myself. I thought I had came down w/something else but the next day I was fine. Then this past wkend I basically splurged all wkend (my hubby & I went out, which doesn’t happen very often). Then yesterday my body went into shock again, I felt horrible; like my sugar, blood pressure something was off. I went on & exercised last night & the Holy Spirit reminded me how I felt last week after “breaking over” & then how I felt yesterday…it was like God telling me “hey wake up this is the reason you’re not feeling good”. Definitely an eye opener for me. God is calling me to a higher level of seeking His face & obtaining freedom when it comes to food.

    Now that I’ve wrote a book..LOL Since the beginning of the yr I’ve lost 22 lbs (doing my happy dance), but I’ve lost that weight being in Gods FREEDOM! That means more to me than loosing the weight. The other day I got a compliment from one of the gals I sing w/on our praise team. She said “somethings different about you, I can’t put my finger on it but somethings definitely different”. In my mind I thought WOW! Gods FREEDOM is shining through me! Praying for everyone on here!
    Be Blessed!!!
    Treva

  13. Just wanted to let you all know how precious you are to me. I am praying for each of you by name!!!! Have a wonderful week!

  14. I think I eat because I feel I have to. Like I had mentioned in a previous comment; I grew up hearing how skinny/ugly I was and that I needed to eat more so I could look normal. That’s why I eat now. And I still don’t eat enough just unhealthy, empty calorie stuff. I am getting better by the grace of God. It has been three weeks since I had fast food.

    Thanks for the encouragement and continually praying for your complete healing.

  15. Hello Girls, I have struggled with these issues SO much -all my life or as long as I remember. I really love food. I am (“was” – power of the tongue!) a social eater, a habit eater, a closet eater, etc. I started my weight loss journey with God this year and I am now 15 lbs lighter and at least 40 more pounds to go. What has broken me free from my strongholds is GOD and prayer!

    The books that have helped me incredibly are “Made to Crave” and “Praying God’s Word” by Beth Moore. Beth Moore has a section in her book “Praying God’s Word” with scripture prayers for breaking free from food related strongholds – AWESOME! If you have an iphone she has the app for the book and you can by just that section if you’d like for $0.99. I truly recommend it. I have scripture prayers written on index cards posted all around my kitchen, bedroom, at the office, in my purse, etc. to remind me and so that I can go to them at any time for support.

    God is SO GOOD! I have forgotten to eat. That is HUGE for me. I never would foget in the past. I would wake up thinking about food. Last couple of weeks the break through has been evident by my forgetting that I need to eat. INCREDIBLE, but all things are possible with GOD!

    Love you all! Praying for you.

  16. I’ve had a terrible couple of weeks. I think I’ve mentioned that both of my adult children have moved back home after 2 1/2 years of being empty nested. So there are 3 adults and a 1 year old in a small house. They seem to slip easily back into the mom will wait on us hand and foot mode and I’m stressed beyond belief. I’ve had 3 migraines in 9 days. The meds make me feel icky and grumpy. Monday night I was sitting on the couch with a bag of chips, stuffing them in as fast as I could. The “good grief, look what you just did” hit me later in the night when my stomach was upset and I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been stress stuffing (I can’t even call what I’ve been doing eating!!) for 2 weeks now and have gained 2 1/2 pounds. February is a BIG birthday month for us. Last birthday is tonight with creme brulee as the dessert. sigh. Trying to do better during the day. Snacking on veggies as I type. Trying to take steps to get a grip on the stress. Talked to the kids last night about helping out more around the house. sigh. Thank you Lord for the blessing of my children and grandson and the opportunities presenting themselves to spend precious time with them. Amen.

  17. Good Morning Karen,

    The week was good but the weekend was my demise. I thought it was because my friend was coming that I wanted and ate pretty much everything in sight but to no avail has it came yet so keep a sister in your prayers. But I want everything in sight I snaked while I cooked and then I kill myself in the gym the next day trying to burn it all off. When will I stop circling this mountain and turn north for good and never come back to it unless it is to help someone else up. Love ya all and thanks for your prayers.

  18. WOW this is great! First of all, the chocolates and candy on peoples desks at work are very tempting for me. Just because they are there does not mean that I have to eat them!!!! Also, what Barb just said is interesting, too. Whenever my husband is gone I usually eat horribly. I am a Michigan girl so I’m sure my husband will be taking at least one more snowmobile trip this year and I am vowing that I will not give into the horrible eating trend. As Barb said, just because I am eating something horrible does not mean he will come home sooner! Thanks everyone!

  19. OK Karen, did you step inside my head and read my thoughts (lol). I have been doing this for years, and it’s not just one type of food, it’s whatever is around. My husband gave me some unpleasant news on Monday that he had to be out of town for an undetermined amount of time. The first thing I did was go grab something out of the fride. But, for the first time I stopped and asked “will this____make it so he doesn’t have to leave?” I would never have gotten to that point without the encourgement and teaching I have received both on your blog and from “Made to Crave”. I’ll be praying for both of us to cultivate a new habit of asking “will this______ do/change_______?”

  20. Wow – this hits home! I struggle with baking things for others and “tasting” them! I have to keep things like chips out of the house because they are too tempting for me. I know exactly how you feel!

  21. Oh yes – that’s a good way to explain it…a habit appetite. It’s lunchtime so I’ll eat. There are donuts, so I’ll eat. Lunch at XXX…well their onion rings are good, so I’d better have some. I’d made up my mind that I wouldn’t eat the treats at fellowship on Sundays unless it was something homemade (well, it’s a start! :-)). On Sunday there were 3 homemade treats, so I had one of each. Honest? They were all disappointing (doesn’t happen often)and then I was annoyed with myself. Thanks for the encouragement today…and always!

  22. For years I have made sandwiches for lunch. With those sandwiches always comes chips. A sandwich and chips. That’s lunch. Now, I really don’t need those chips. But I often eat them just because it’s lunch time. Habit, like you said. By God’s grace I’ve been doing better and have been eating carrots or a sliced apple instead, but I often crave those empty calories. Thanks for sharing, Karen! I appreciate the good reminders to keep doing the next right thing.

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