10 Lessons from a Former Fat Girl

Parham Amy

Description

Amy Parham, a former fat girl who became a fit girl after losing more than 100 pounds, learned what it takes to stay fit inside and out. In 10 Lessons from a Former Fat Girl, she offers nuggets of insight for changing not only the fat-girl body but also the fat-girl mentality. Focusing on the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our relationship with food and exercise, Amy shows how readers can make this a healthy partnership that brings permanent change. Amy speaks from experience as sheidentifies with the reader struggling with a food addictiondescribes emotional pitfalls that serve as triggers for overeatingexplores the mental and emotional benefits of regular exerciseillustrates how and why fitness must be a lifelong pursuitdemonstrates how to transform our minds as well as our bodiesThe result is a practical, proven plan that will help any reader reprogram the fat-girl mentality into fit-girl reality.

Informations

• Publié par: Harvest House Publishers, Inc.
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780736940764
• Langue: English

Extrait

10 Lessons
from a
Former
Fat
Girl
Amy
Parham
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Verses marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Verses marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189 USA. All rights reserved.
Verses marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible , 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. ( www.Lockman.org )
Verses marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Verses marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible , Copyright 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189 USA. All rights reserved.
Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota
Cover photo Lolo Highsmith (hair styled by Shannon Peery, Halo Salon, Columbia, SC)
Amy Parham: Published in association with the literary agency of Fedd Company, Inc., 9759 Concord Pass, Brentwood, TN 37027.
The Biggest Loser is not associated with this book or any of the views or information contained in this book.
10 LESSONS FROM A FORMER FAT GIRL
Copyright 2010 by Amy Parham
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parham, Amy, 1967-
10 lessons from a former fat girl / Amy Parham.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-3865-5 (pbk.)
1. Self-perception-Religious aspects-Christianity. 2. Body image. 3. Health-Religious aspects-Christianity. 4. Women-Religiouslife. 5. Food-Religious aspects-Christianity. 6. Emotions-Religious aspects-Christianity. I. Title. II. Title: Ten lessons from a former fat girl.
BV4598.25.P37 2011
248.4-dc22
2010025556
All rights reserved . No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 / BP-NI / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To all the women who feel like prisoners in their bodies and long to be free, this book is dedicated to you .

I would like to thank Jesus Christ, the giver of all freedom. I would also like to thank my husband, Phillip, for being my best friend; my boys, Austin, Pearson, and Rhett, for loving me just the way I am; my daddy, Don Pearson, for loving me with a love that exemplifies the love of Christ; and my mother, Margaret Williams, for showing me how to be a strong woman by being an excellent role model.
Finally, I send big hugs and thanks to all the women who are too numerous to list-but know who they are-for influencing my life in big and small ways and continuing to teach me fit-girl lessons through their examples, words, and deeds.
Contents
Life Is the Journey, Not the Arrival
Lesson 1: We All Have an Empty Place
Lesson 2: Food Has Whatever Power You Give It
Lesson 3: Rocky Road Is Not Your Boyfriend s Name
Lesson 4: When Emotions Eat at You, Don t Eat Back!
Lesson 5: Food Is Not a Stress Buster
Lesson 6: Fitness Is Your Friend
Lesson 7: You Can t Move Forward If You Can t Forgive
Lesson 8: Embrace Your Uniqueness
Lesson 9: Focus on Others
Lesson 10: Getting Used to the New You
About the Publisher
Begin Your Own Journey to Becoming a Fit Girl
About the Author
Life Is the Journey, Not the Arrival
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another .
-A NATOLE F RANCE
W hy is everyone so obsessed with their weight? This is the question I started asking myself when I had finally made the decision to settle for being the fat girl. I mean, I had a lot going for me. Why should the extra weight matter? I was organized. I was a great hostess. I volunteered in my church. I was a good wife, mother, and friend. Even though I had ballooned to 240 pounds and was tired all the time, weight was one area I decided to give myself a break. It didn t bother me, so why should it bother anyone else?
I got defensive when family members expressed their concerns and offered helpful suggestions to lose weight. My sister-in-law, who I always thought of as the skinny girl, repeatedly tried to encourage me with my weight loss. I remember one time when she took me out to lunch. As we were getting ready to leave, she presented me with a gift-a food journal. She was very excited about the prospect of teaching me how to write down my food intake each and every day. As you can imagine, I didn t share her enthusiasm. Simply looking at that book exhausted me.
See, I looked at the skinny girl as a different animal from me. I never truly believed that the things that worked for her would work for me. I somehow thought that I was different, and so my body worked differently than hers did. I didn t believe I could ever be like her, so why would I even try? This is the mentality of those of us who have been trapped inside our bodies and minds as fat girls.
Then something happened that changed the course of this fat girl. Along came a television reality show called The Biggest Loser . In 2008 my husband and I were chosen out of 300,000 hopeful candidates to go on television and reveal to America our struggle with obesity. This was an amazing opportunity but one that forced me to look at myself in a whole new way. The fat girl was to be exposed, and there was no place to hide from the truth. My husband and I lost a total of 256 pounds together as a couple on that show. That is an amazing victory, but that was just the beginning of the war. The weight-loss process revealed deeper issues that had caused us to put on the weight in the first place. Dealing with these issues would become the real challenge and the thing that solidified the transformation from the fat girl to the fit girl.
That is why this book may be different from any weight-loss book you have ever read. This book talks about not only the physical aspects of weight loss, but also the very real mental and emotional challenges that exist. It s about learning how to transform a fat girl (a woman who has poor eating and exercise habits, a food addiction, a lack of self-esteem, and a distorted image of herself, God, and others) into a fit girl (a woman who practices healthy eating and exercise habits, takes care of herself emotionally, physically, and mentally, and believes in herself and God).
This book is about identifying those areas in your life where you ve held yourself back from becoming the woman God created you to be. It s about digging up roots of bitterness and unforgiveness in your heart. It s about releasing those people and things in your past that have hurt you and, by doing so, gaining freedom from compulsions that rule your life. We have all been on a million diets, but have we dealt with the roots of our problems? For me, I had tried every diet I could find, but I never had focused on the core of the problem.
Be assured that this book is not a diet book or a manual to make you as skinny as a supermodel in 45 days or less. It is not a get-fit-quick scheme or program. I am not promoting any pills, potions, or magic fairy dust that you must buy now to change your life by tomorrow. I am not selling you an unrealistic expectation or a promise that the journey toward becoming a fit girl is an easy one. In fact, it s quite the opposite. It s a tough process and requires the peeling back of many layers.
I didn t understand this truth early on in my weight-loss journey. In my case, the more weight I lost (I lost more than 100 pounds), the more I realized that if I was really going to transform myself permanently, then in addition to my physical body, I was going to have to deal with the fat girl that lived on the inside.
What a wake-up call that was! One of the ways I did this was by searching deep inside my soul and figuring out why I was overweight to begin with. It s a shame that while most of us know that diet and exercise are the keys to weight loss, not many of us know the importance about talking about and dealing with the roots of the problem- why did we become overweight?
For me, it was an emotional crutch. I had always turned to food in times of stress, sadness, happiness, anger, or just about any emotion. It became instinctual. To further fuel my addiction to food, my parents owned a restaurant and ice-cream parlor. Can you guess what my favorite food was? I ll give you a hint. It s frozen and chocolate. Yep! Ice cream!
You can imagine how spending so much time in the back room of the family restaurant further charged my problem with compulsive eating. These were the realities that I started unraveling as I began to lose weight. It was hard to let go of my emotional-eating crutch. With food no longer acting as my security blanket, I felt like a skydiver who had jumped out of an airplane without a parachute.
I spent much of my life fighting against the fat-girl mentality. She was there even when I was thin. Have you ever looked at a skinny picture of yourself, but all you could see or remember was how fat you were or felt? That s a fat girl living on the inside of the fit girl. Unfortunately, the fat girl wields a lot of power. Time and time again, I would find the willpower to lose some weight and take better care of myself, but after a little success, I would panic and find myself slowly turning and running back to the comforts of my old id