Have you ever found yourself standing in front of the refrigerator… not because you're hungry, but because you're hoping food might somehow soften a hard day?
We've all been there.
The long meeting. The argument that lingers. The loneliness that creeps in. The exhaustion that settles deep in our bones.
And before we even think about it, we reach.
This week on Nourished to Bloom, we're diving into that tender moment — when food becomes more than nourishment and starts functioning as our coping mechanism.
Here's the truth we unpack together:
Emotional eating isn't a moral failure.
It's human.
But the deeper question isn't whether we seek comfort — it's where we seek it.
In this episode, we explore:
🌱 Comfort vs. Refuge – Food is a gift meant for nourishment and even enjoyment, but it was never meant to carry the weight of our grief, stress, or loneliness.
🙏 Running to God First – How to gently redirect our need for soothing back to the Lord, who alone is our true refuge.
❤️ A Practical Pause Tool – Name the emotion. Offer it in prayer. Ask, "What am I actually needing right now?" Let the Holy Spirit guide your response.
✌🏻 From Compulsion to Conscious Choice – Moving away from reactive, shame-filled eating and toward intentional freedom.
📖 Loosening the Rope – Emotional eating often reveals a deeper attachment. Lent gives us space to practice running to God instead of food for ultimate comfort.
This isn't about declaring war on snacks.
It's about awareness.
It's about learning to let food be food — good, nourishing, enjoyable — but not our savior.
🌱 Your Invitation This Week
When the urge to eat hits, pause — even if you've already started.
• Name the emotion. • Offer it to God. • Ask what would truly nourish you in that moment.
Sometimes it might still be food. Sometimes it might be rest, connection, silence, or prayer.
By Easter, we're not aiming for fewer cravings.
We're aiming for deeper freedom.
Let's untether our hearts and remember:
God alone is our refuge.
You were made to bloom. 🌸
Join The Nourished to Bloom Community: www.community.karatrochta.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/karatrochta
The Nourished to Bloom Podcast Show Notes: www.podcast.karatrochta.com/shownotes
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We've all had these moments in life when we're reaching
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for food, when we're standing in front of the refrigerator just looking for
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answers. Not because we're hungry, but because
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we're overwhelmed, or we're sad, or we're
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angry. Maybe it's been a long day. Maybe you're just
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feeling lonely. Maybe you're just tired of
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thinking, and before you even realize it, you're in the pantry
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elbow deep in a bag of chips. Today we're talking about that
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moment. Because food is a gift. It's meant to
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nourish and even comfort us in healthy ways.
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But the problem comes when it becomes the first and only
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place we run for, for relief. It can quietly
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become another one of those ropes, another attachment that's
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tethering our hearts. This week on the Nourish to Bloom Podcast,
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we're exploring the difference between comfort and refuge, and how to
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gently redirect our need for soothing back to the Lord,
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the only one who is meant to carry it all.
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Welcome to the Nourish to Bloom podcast, where your faith meets your
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health. I'm your host, Kara Trocta, a registered dietitian and
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certified Catholic coach, and I'm here to help you cultivate a deeper connection
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with your body, your spirit, and the nourishment that sustains them
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both. In a world filled with noise and
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confusion about food, health, and body image, this podcast
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offers truth and healing from a Christ-centered perspective.
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Together, we'll untangle the deep roots of diet culture and discover what
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it means to truly care for ourselves through joyful
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nourishment of mind, body, and soul. We're here to dive into
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the transformative power of intuitive eating coupled with the rich teachings of our
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Christian faith. With every episode, I'll be cheering you on,
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offering insights, inspiration, and practical tools to help
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you heal your relationship with food and embrace the beauty
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of your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit with
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confidence and courage that can only be found in Christ.
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Join me as we journey together towards a more holistic approach to wellness,
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one that honors the wisdom of your body as God's creation,
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the teachings of our faith, and the unique purpose you're called to
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fulfill. You were made to bloom,
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to come into full beauty and health in order to bear good fruit
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for the Lord with your life. So if you're ready to nourish your body,
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feed your soul, and bloom into the best version of yourself, then you're
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in the right place. And I'm so happy you're here. Welcome
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to Nourish to Bloom, where every day is a sacred
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invitation to thrive. Hey there,
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welcome back to the Nourish to Bloom podcast. So happy to
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be spending some time here with you this week. And as you are
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listening to this, I am in Rome with my family.
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Thinking and praying for each one of you and can't wait to
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share some of the highlights when I get back. But today we
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are continuing on our Lenten food
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freedom journey, and over the past few weeks we've talked about
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loosening those ropes, those attachments that tether our
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hearts, those small strings and thick cords that
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kind of keep us pinned down, that keep us from really rising and being in
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communion with the Lord. We've talked about non-food fasts.
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We've talked about honoring hunger as God
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designed our bodies, and we've imagined Jesus sitting at our table
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sharing a meal with us. And today we're going to talk about something
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that I think is a little tender for some of us.
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Um, it's really about emotional eating— what happens when food
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becomes comfort, not physical hunger,
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not nourishment, but when we use food as emotional
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soothing. Because the truth is that food is, is good.
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God created food to be good, to, to be enjoyable,
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to be pleasurable. So I think that we would eat, right?
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We— he knew that our bodies needed that physical nourishment. And imagine if food tasted
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like cardboard. We probably wouldn't be very motivated to get that, that
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need met, would we? So food is this gift, and it's meant
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for enjoyment and celebration. But food was
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never meant to carry the weight of our emotions, the
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loneliness, the stress, our disappointment,
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our exhaustion, or our grief. And yet, for many of
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us, sometimes that is exactly what it does. You've
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had a day. The long meeting, the
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toddler meltdown, or the teenage meltdown, the
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comparison spiral. That argument
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with your spouse or with your friends or with a family member that just won't
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leave your mind, and you don't even think about it. You don't
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even realize what you're doing. You just reach for the food,
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not because you're hungry, but because you're really
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just tired of feeling the way that you are.
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You want to feel something different. Maybe it's peace
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or it's comfort. But I want to be very clear,
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when we talk about emotional eating, it is not a moral
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failure. You are not bad if you turn for
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food. It's just a coping mechanism that you've
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learned. And I want to point out that it is a learned behavior
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to reach for food when we're feeling a certain way.
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It's a human reflex and one that has kind of been taught to us. Think
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about the number of rom-com movies that you have watched that when
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the man in that movie just breaks her heart,
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she reaches for the ice cream or the cookie dough,
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right? It's something that has been learned, and our
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natural human reflex is to want to not
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feel those negative emotions. God created us to
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seek comfort. The question is not whether we seek
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comfort, but the question is really where we seek it.
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Because comfort itself is not the rope. It's not that
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attachment that's tethering your heart. It's this
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misplaced comfort that can really be that attachment.
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When food becomes that primary place that you run to, when it
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becomes the, the fastest relief, it has the ability
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to numb you, to distract you. When it becomes the thing that
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quiets everything else, but yet does not actually
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solve the problem, does not make that emotion go away.
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That's when it starts carrying more than it was designed to carry.
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And I want you to remember that image of the quote from Saint John of
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the Cross. A rope doesn't have to be evil to tether you.
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It's just something that has too much
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authority, has— that its hold has too much authority in your
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life. So what do we do with this?
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Well, we don't shame ourselves, and we don't swing
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to harsh restriction, and we don't declare a war on
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food or simultaneously give it up or restrict it all. We
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just get curious. So the next time you feel this urge to
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eat outside of physical hunger, just pause
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for a moment and ask yourself, what am
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I actually needing right now? And
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you might find that it's probably not food, that
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you're not needing physical nourishment. Maybe you're needing rest.
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Maybe you're needing reassurance or
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connection. Maybe it's distraction or
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silence or relief or comfort.
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Sometimes in this instance, we can use food as a signal.
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It's when we find ourselves turning to food
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because it has been a learned behavior that, and an association
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that we make that when we want to feel one of these things,
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we reach for food because it's brought that
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comfort or that peace to us in the past, we can use that as a
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signal that, hey, there's something going on
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instead of using it as a solution
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that doesn't work very well. When we find
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ourselves turning to emotional eating, it can be pointing to a deeper ache.
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And this is where we can start to gently redirect that
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attachment, to start to loosen the rope, to cut the tether.
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Not by suppressing your hunger, not by condemning the desire,
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but by just widening the response per se.
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Instead of, "I shouldn't eat this," we can instead try, "What
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would actually nourish me right now?" Maybe
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it is food. Maybe it's a snack and something to
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drink and 5 minutes alone and you're good to go. Or maybe
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what would actually nourish you in that moment is stepping outside
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or texting a friend, turning off the
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noise. And of course, what
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can bring us that ultimate comfort is prayer, turning to the Lord
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in these moments and saying, Lord, I feel overwhelmed, I feel
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angry, I feel sad, I feel whatever it is,
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and, and surrender it to him.
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Because the deeper truth is that we were not designed to self-soothe
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indefinitely. If we remember that we were designed for
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communion, it's that communion with the Lord, it's
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that problem solving with the Lord, it's taking these,
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these emotions and these situations that bring on these
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emotions and turning to the Lord in that
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moment to have him help you solve this.
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Emotional eating often happens when we are trying to carry
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alone what we were meant to bring to God.
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And Lent is that perfect time to practice the shift,
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not by eliminating our desire for comfort, but by
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redirecting it. That tether
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loosens when food stops being the first and only place we
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run. It loosens when we say, foods can
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be enjoyable, food can be comforting, but food is
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not my refuge. Psalm 62 says,
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pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for
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us. Not snacks, not scrolling,
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not more productivity. God, God
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alone is our refuge.
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In these moments, it's pouring out our heart to Him and letting
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Him be that safe place, that sanctuary,
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that solution that we are longing for.
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So your practice for this week is when the urge comes,
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and it will, just pause if you can.
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Even if you find yourself already have eaten something and it's that moment that it
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hits in, oh, I know what I'm doing. Pause,
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name the emotion, offer it up
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to God, and let the Holy Spirit help
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you decide intentionally what you are going to do in that moment.
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Sometimes you'll still eat, and that's okay, but now it's a
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conscious choice. It's not compulsive and it's not reactive,
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and that's the shift. We're not trying to become more rigid,
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we're really seeking to become more free.
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By Easter, it's not that we really want fewer cravings, but we want
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deeper awareness. We want to learn how to let
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food return to its rightful place of it being good,
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a gift, enjoyable, and nourishing, but not
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our ultimate, because that, that
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belongs to God and only to God. So try
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this this week if you find yourself struggling with emotional eating.
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And next week, we're going to be talking about body image and how comparison
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becomes another rope that quietly shapes
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our relationship with food and ourselves and
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ultimately can interfere with our relationship with the Lord.
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But until then, notice where you run when these emotions
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strike. Is it running to food or some other
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distraction, or is it running to the Lord? I hope you have a
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beautiful and blessed week. Remember, beauty held is the seed,
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beauty shared is the flower. It is your time to bloom. Take care
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and God bless.