One thing we all have in common in this life is that everyone has their share of troubles. The good news is that we don’t have to face them alone! I believe in a real and compassionate God who hears my prayers and is available and willing to help me solve my problems, even those that are deeply personal or too embarrassing to discuss with anyone but God, and that includes the problems I used to try to deal with by eating.

Prior to my recent loss of 159 pounds, I thought eating was the answer to everything. I ate when I was happy, sad, under stress, confused, lonely, frustrated…the list goes on and on. The sad thing is that all that eating didn’t solve a single problem! In fact, it created many new ones for me.  I am five foot two inches tall and prior to my weight-loss program I weighed 281 pounds and my hips were five feet around.  As a result, I had considerable problems buying clothes, fitting into restaurant booths and airplane seatbelts, trimming my own toenails and tying my own shoes just to name a few.

The strange thing was that I had gotten so used to dealing with all these problems that starting a serious weight-loss program didn’t really occur to me until January of 2013. Yes, people did drop hints that I should lose weight and my doctor recommended it, but I didn’t pay attention to any of those suggestions until God did a miracle in my heart and helped me not only to  be willing to change my lifestyle, but also to be willing to trust him with all my pain and problems in a way that I had never done before. The wonderful result was that I have become a whole new person both physically and spiritually!

I am so thankful for all that God has done for me that I have written a book to share my personal story and the weight-loss program I designed for myself, so that other people can find hope and help.  The name of the book is No Salads Required! How I lost 159 Pounds without Salads, Celery, Sit-Ups or Surgery and How You Can Too! It will be available from Amazon.com and other stores in late summer or early fall of 2015.  My book contains all kinds of helpful advice about choosing the right foods, planning meals, exercise, and some poems to make it more fun, but I think the most important chapter is chapter 6.  It’s called “Asking God for Help”. The following is a quote from that chapter:

“One of the things I have learned to do in recent years is to turn to God and not to the refrigerator when I am upset about something. One excellent example of this is my loneliness and deep disappointment about not being married. For years, I tried to solve this problem by eating, but that never did any good. I finally have come to understand that the only way this is going to get any better is if I talk to God about all the deeply personal details of my situation and ask him to heal my broken heart and either send me a husband or fill me so full of himself that I am okay with walking alone with him the rest of my life. As of the time of this writing, I don’t know which he is going to do, but I know he is healing my heart just like he promised to do in Psalm 147:3 (NIV), which says, ‘He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.’ In my case, my heart was in pretty bad shape when I asked him to help me with it, but he has done a lot of good work in me so far, and the project continues.”

I know that each person reading this has at least one, possibly many problems that weigh heavily on their heart and I am not suggesting that even with God’s help that they will all disappear instantly, but I can tell you one thing. If you turn to God with your problems, you can at least start getting some help with what is really wrong. He really does love you and he also has infinite power to change things, which is a lot more than all the ice cream in the world can possibly offer.

Yes, eating can make you feel better for a few minutes or maybe an hour, but it’s definitely not a long term solution. Here is one more quote from No Salads Required! on this topic:

“No matter what problem you are going through, God is the one to ask for help. He really is the only person who knows what to do about it anyway! He may do a miracle to help you, he may send just the right person or people to walk beside you and give you the benefit of their experience, or he may take you out of the situation by putting you in a different job or moving you to a new city to get away from a bad situation and start over. He also might provide some other answer that fits your need perfectly, but rest assured he will help you.”

Of course, starting a new habit of turning to God instead of eating is something a person has to learn with practice, just like playing a musical instrument or learning a new language. It doesn’t happen all at once, but if you keep working at it, you will get better. I am in my second year of maintaining my new figure and I sometimes still catch myself thinking of what kind of snack would make me feel better when a problem comes up, instead of immediately turning to God. The difference now is when I do catch myself doing that, I shut the refrigerator door, and go find a place where I can talk to the one person who loves me more than anyone, my savior, Jesus Christ. He is always there waiting for me and he is available for you too!