Hey guys I’m back, finally got my password straightened. Well my nails are orange glitter in one hand and purple nail polish.
I also weigh 116 lb. I have a food review:
I HOP near Hobby Lobby in Houston, TX.
Pumpkin cheesecake pancakes – it melted in my mouth.
Get it while you can.
Many people do Yoga as exercise, but do you know where it actually comes from and the meaning of the exercise of Yoga?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ty5q_whats-wrong-with-yoga_webcam
DISCLAIMER: I decided to preface this blog with a disclaimer that says that some people may not be ready to receive this. I ask that you pray about it and let God help you decide what’s right in your heart. This is supposed to be a form of meat to some people and to other people it might seem to be a form of milk, but whatever your level of faith is that is what you have to operate in. But I encourage you to grow to keep an open mind, and be teachable to new levels of understanding and revelation. Read the whole article with wisdom and don’t overgeneralize the message that it is trying to teach. I am trying to show my understanding of the fine line between holiness and light, and darkness and deception and for those not ready to receive it I pray that someday you might be able to receive it.
The above sites were some of the sites I referred to when I first began to realize the term of Yoga. Some of the links may be dead. Did you know that the word “Yoga” means to be “yoked”? And did you know that when you are doing yoga you are essentially yoking yourself with the hindu “creator of the world.” We know that there is only one Creator and His name is YHWH, pronounced “YAHWEH”. Anyone other than that (except for Jesus because He is included as part of YHWH”) then you are dealing with someone who is of darkness. “God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all” [1 John]
I have some Christian and non-Christian friends and relatives who do or have done yoga. For the non-Christian people who do yoga, their ignorance leads them to be exposed to the powers of darkness, but for the believers who know and intimately desire to be with Jesus and to be in Heaven and yet yearn to “live a healthy lifestyle”, but don’t know what powers they are being subjected to when they participate in yoga.
I know someone who is a nonbeliever to this day that practices yoga, and was practicing yoga until they got struck with cancer. They didn’t know why they got cancer, and they left a pretty healthy life (they ate right, they did exercise (yoga), but they were committed to doing yoga. Now I am not saying that yoga in itself caused the cancer, but it left a door open. As a nonbeliever who becomes excused for their lack of knowledge, it might be a disgrace to God, and if He leads them to Him, then His blood will cover their sins. But for a Christian, that is supposed to live a sanctified and holy life and to be intimate with our Creator, Jehovah, YHWH, Father God, why would they want to be yoked with someone who is not the One that created them?
In essence when you are doing Yoga, you are being submissive to and accepting Hinduism and denying Christ. Why is that? Because there is a spirit behind it. The stretches you do in yoga line up the “chakras” in the part of the body, which are circles in the body, and cause that part of the body to be submission to the “hindu creator”, who we know is not the Creator of the Bible. I may even be as bold to say that hindu creator is actually satan. That we are submitting ourselves to the powers of darkness, if we decide to line up our body, and yoke up our soul to the one that is not from above.
Now I may have tried yoga once as a Christian not knowing what I was doing when I was doing it, but I can testify that the hindu belief system is demonic in nature. I used to be a hindu, and there are strong ties between the realm of the mind and the powers of darkness beheld in the mind when you practice hinduism, paganism, occultic, or any other belief that does not come from Jesus. When you have held these ties for a long time, and held to these beliefs for a long time, you become soulish. For more on that, I might have to talk about the three parts of a person (body, soul, and spirit). Think of them as three gears- left to right. We can get stuck in the first gear sometimes, and then when we try to go to the the third gear we get stuck in second gear. That’s where things like music have a large role.
During this time, in which today is actually Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish Holiday, but has value in Christianity, the emphasis is on Holiness and cleansing and getting your heart right with God. When you get your heart right with God and walk a path of holiness your life becomes different.
Some people focus on yoga for exercise and losing weight, but there’s nothing like good old fashioned cardio, lifting weights, and the best walking if you are able. Besides yoga is really hard. Why would you want to put yourself through that when 1) there are other ways to exercise 2) it’s not going to bear any fruit in the long run?
Now I have to mention breathing – I know there is a yoga-based breathing technique for relaxation – actually there’s more than one. But the real breath in the Bible, comes from the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God, called ruwach. So when God put His breath in us when He created us as humans, we were given a breath of life. But when we became born again, we inherited a new breath of life, which is His Holy Spirit. So when we breathe, we should put this in mind – “This is the air I breathe, Your very presence living in Me.” [from the song]
As far as relaxation goes, nothing can give us peace like Jehovah Shalom. He even was peace for Gideon when he was afraid, “24Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it, The Lord is Peace.” Judges 6:24
What does the Bible have to say about meditation? Again, one of my favorite verses, Philippians 4:8 8For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them] or meditate on them.” (emphasis mine)
You make think that you need to relax, need to de-stress, need to get in shape, need to be worry free, but I am telling you that there is nothing so big that our God can’t solve and that your answers must be found in yoga, but your answers are actualy found in Jesus. To find that peace that can only be found in Jehovah Shalom, the God that is of peace. When you don’t have that peace you go looking in other places to find it. As far as exercises go, I know that prayer alone cannot help you lose weight, but using godly wisdom when it comes to exercise and discerning the spirits when it comes to exercise, nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle, can lead you to fulfill the deep desires of your heart. And if you don’t believe in Christ, then I pray that someday you’ll see what can fill that void in your life.
In my revision of this article I’d like to thank someone for oversimplifying the answers when it comes to things like exercise and faith. Sometimes it takes a stretch of faith to walk the line of holiness and that takes a deeper level of maturity and a walk with Christ.
You know the post I posted last time where I was talking about talking to my “friend” that was bipolar? Well that was actually me. I wanted to have a little more anonymity before revealing that about myself. Because of having bipolar disorder I have had also had to experience the downfalls of being on medication that makes me gain weight.
I think I was normal weight in Elementary school, but I had to deal with people calling me ugly, and they are even now some of my facebook friends. I have forgiven them all, but those seeds had their way in shaping my mind. I was a little bit more developed than other girls my age when I was in 5th grade, but I wasn’t overweight. I had some self-image and self-esteem issues. I also did not know how much Jesus was rejected for me and that He loves me and that He died for me.
Then in Middle School I started thinking I was fat because I couldn’t find clothes that fit me in the store, and I wasn’t as physically fit as the other girls in my school. I couldn’t do as many crunches; I couldn’t run as fast or as long, (probably because of my flat feet), and I couldn’t play the sports as well as everybody else. It was about that time that I started becoming a vegetarian, even though I am not one anymore. I never knew how to eat healthy, and I didn’t like my family’s cooking. I wanted to eat American. So while I was in 7th grade I ate an apple everyday for lunch and that’s it and I would be able to fit into those size 10 jeans. Size 10 was super small for me, and I was pretty thin at that size. In 8th grade I was still pretty thin, but because my stomach was not super flat and because I had a little bit of a pouch of a stomach I still thought I was fat.
In high school, I had to deal with so many physical issues including two bouts of Gastroentiritis, and bipolar disorder that I wasn’t primarily concerned with my weight. I had so many things going on, and I always HATED P.E. It felt like torture. I was probably a little overweight, but I was way out of my league compared to everyone else. While I was in my last year of high school I started to put on weight (balloned up to 185) and I didn’t even realize why- my bipolar med. I joined Jenny Craig and lost like 25 pounds. Then I lost like 35 more doing the treadmill until I went down to 125 and was able to fit into my size 10 Jeans. Then I went manic like crazy. Long story.
It wasn’t until after 1999 that my weight started to come back again. My face became rounder. It happened all of a sudden. It was about the time that I started an atypical antipsychotic. That medicine gave me Diabetes within two years. I am not exactly sure how much I weighed in 2001 [my salvation year], but at that time I started to eat meat because I found out that because I couldn’t eat as many carbs, and because of the thyroid condition I had I was very limited on what I could eat so I chose to start eating meat. For a long time I was denial about diabetes and addicted to carbs and sweet food. But I think part of the problem was that I was on a Dopamine and Serotonin uptake inhibitor so my brain wasn’t sending my the right signals telling me I was full. The other part was me. I was trying to fill a void that I could only fill with a relationship to Jesus, but since I wasn’t part of a church I wasn’t getting the spiritual food I needed so I turned to physical food. I was part of a sorority and Bible Studies that had some love and truth, but I hadn’t sunken into the meat of the gospel and started going to the Word myself. But that turning to food for comfort and seeking after love from my earthly father started a vicious cycle of trying to lose weight and gaining weight and back and forth to this day. In the middle of it all I had a coma. No one really knows why. I suspect it was the chastening of the Lord. It just happened and resulted in my kidneys shutting down and a treatment of dialysis while I was unconscious. It was after that I had to learn the hard way to get closer to God and to change the way I thought about food.
Before I get into my whole life story here – I want to mention that it has been really hard for me lately while I have been going up and down in my weight – I eat healthy 90% of the time, but when I don’t have time to plan, or when I am bored and because I don’t really sit and have meals with my mom, dad, and sister, I end up getting into vicious cycles of eating too much food because I am trying to fill a void and trying to submit to the flesh and instead of to the Spirit. But it is a hard battle the people that are obese have to go through. For me the hardest thing is when I get over 200 pounds I start having problems walking. Being able to know the difference between actually eating for hunger, and eating for something else, takes a lot of wisdom. At times I feel like I am fighting very hard and not seeing results so then I have to have faith to see beyond my circumstances, and because James says, “Faith without works is dead,” I have to go through the effort of planning my meals, and going to the gym, and doing cardio at home to get the desired results. All the time I want to forget about all this. I want to not have to think about it anymore. I want to not have to think that I have to take bipolar meds, and that I don’t look like the way I look when I am at a certain weight and that I have a hard time walking if I get beyond a certain also associated with other health risks. I am really trying just to make it to 195. Every time I try to lose weight and commit to something it falls short and I pray about it. Maybe I don’t spend enough time in prayer, but most of my day is spent cooking, eating, and vegging out in front of the tv and eating. I can’t play any sports or have no coordination to dance. Those are the days that I really feel down like today and I sometimes think about the verse – Luke 12:24
“24Observe and consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn; and [yet] God feeds them. Of how much more worth are you than the birds!
It also talks about not to worry about anything in that passage. So here I am fretting about how much I want to lose weight and what I am going to eat that God says not to worry! So then that makes me want to give up on my meal planning and calorie counting and just keep my eyes on Jesus like Peter did. Oh, how I desire to be able to not to live in a body where I had to struggle like this. So then I ask God sometimes, “Why?” And here’s what He says, “I created you this way so that you would come running to me with your problems and seek after me.” I also read that in a book somewhere. I know that I am a glutton and unworthy of His love and what He did for me, but I am so glad that He accepts me flaws and failures and wants to put His circling arms around me. With this I know that God loves me despite what I weigh and because of that I can love myself.
singingsinglev4 