Sweet Grace For Your Journey

Episode 080--Daily Surrender with Kim Dolan Leto

My guest today is Kim Dolan Leto is the author of two books. She is a speaker, podcaster and coach. She is the founder of the FIT, Faith Inspired Transformation which is also the title of her first book. Her second book is a devotional entitled Strong. Confident. His, which is also the title of her podcast.

She is an ESPN Fitness America Champion and proudly represented America as the only American in the top five for Fox Sports Ms. Fitness World. She’s also been on the cover of numerous fitness magazines and featured on numerous shows including The 700 Club. 

Undergoing her own body and life transformation, Kim knows first-hand the importance of doing food, fitness and confidence through Christ.

With 20 years in the fitness industry and a lifetime of Jesus working in her, she’s dedicated her life to teaching women how to get fit and find confidence His way.

I titled this episode Daily Surrender because Kim shares the truth of this in numerous ways from not relying on diets to overcoming body shame to falling in love with exercise to the freedom that comes when we surrender each and every day to God.

This is a little bit longer podcast but every minute is worth it.

You can find Kim at: https://www.kimdolanleto.com. She is also on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube at Kim Dolan Leto. 

You can join Overcomers Academy here: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/Overcomers

Episode 079-Stepping Into Destiny

Stepping into destiny isn’t a one-time event. It comes when we begin to learn how to fully depend on God. Everything which comes into our lives are meant to teach us how to do that. Everything. When we get to the point where we think we can handle everything ourselves, we’ve just stepped out of our destiny.

The Holy Spirit gives us gifts we can use on this journey, however we need Him to activate them. He will when we submit our plans to Him. We have to do what Proverbs 3:5-8 in the Message Bible says. “Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all. Run to God! Run from evil! Your body will glow with health, your very bones will vibrate with life!”

It’s not healthy to live in a state of chronic stress. It’s not only related to our overall health, but to our purpose and the destiny God has for us. These verses in Proverbs give us a good outline for stepping into our destinies. They will also help us achieve overall health. That’s logical because if we aren’t healthy we cannot fulfill the destiny God has for us.

In this episode, we talk about the steps to health and relief from stress outlined in this passage:

-Trust God From the Bottom of Your Heart

-Stop Trying To Figure It All Out

-Listen for God’s Voice In Everything You Do and Everywhere You Go

-Don’t Assume You Know It All

-Run to God

-Run from Evil

God has a greater-than-you-can-think-imagine-or-dream goal for each of us. His destiny for you is something you won’t know until you get there, but when you do, it will blow your socks off. You only reach your destiny by surrendering to God and totally trusting Him.

Stepping into our destinies means we are living totally sold out to Jesus. It means we are listening to God and watching for how He is moving and directing us. His goal for us was planned before we were born. He will get us there even though we may feel like we’ve blown it.

At the end of this passage is a great promise from God that tells us when we follow the steps outlined, the results will be that our bodies will glow with health and our very bones will vibrate with life. I’m looking forward to that promise!

Eating Stress link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/stress/

Overcomers Academy link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers/

Episode 078-Stand Firm in the Faith

What I want you to understand is food, or other addictions like alcohol, drugs, pornography, gossip, infidelity, is not your stronghold. The stronghold is your mindset that is driving you to stress and worry over every little thing. It’s the noise you are allowing to take up residence in your head. 

Because of all the voices that are taunting you and pointing fingers at you, you are eating to try to make them stop. When we go to food or other addictions, we mask the voices for a while and then they start again in earnest and tell you why you should be more ashamed because you didn’t follow your diet. 

I wish I could tell you just to scream at the voices and tell them to stop, but I know from personal experience that doesn’t work because my voice has no power over the enemy unless I am surrendered to God. Then I can use the name of Jesus with the authority He has given me.

Attached to The World

Basically, we are too attached to this world and its cares, woes, victories and struggles. We are living in the drama because on some level we like it. On another level we wish we weren’t in the middle of it. God, however, warns us about being too attached to this world.

In John 12:25 TPT Jesus says, “The person who loves his life and pampers himself will miss true life! But the one who detaches his life from this world and abandons himself to Me, will find true life and enjoy it forever!”

Attachment to this world really means that we are unwilling to submit completely to God. In our pride and stubbornness, we are holding on to something we think we need to make it through. But we have to see that whatever we are holding on to is keeping us from centering our lives totally in God. He’s calling all of us to a deeper journey with Him, but first we have to detach from everything we have become attached to in this world. What that means is if God requires it from us, we give it willingly.

In this podcast episode, we talk about: 

1. Casting your worries on Jesus

2. Humbling yourselves

3. Taking negative thoughts captive

4. Submitting thoughts to God

5. Learning how to be well-balanced and alert

6. Resisting the devil

7. What God promises us

8. Prayer for restoration

Eating Stress Course: https://TeresashieldsParker.com/stress/

Overcomers Academy link: https://Teresashieldsparker.com/overcomers/

Episode 077--Replacing Toxic Thoughts

Stress is rooted in worry. Worry occurs in our minds or thoughts. Negative thoughts are toxic thoughts. A toxic thought is one that is very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way. These are thoughts we can’t get away from. They are constantly on replay in our minds. 

Toxic thoughts are harmful, detrimental, destructive, injurious or damaging. They cause us to feel sick, weak, frail, run-down, overwhelmed, afraid and fearful. They begin from the half-truths Satan loves to throw at us. These are lies he tries to carefully conceal. 

The evil one especially likes throw toxic thoughts our way when we are getting some momentum towards working with God to manage the stressors in our lives and get a handle on our healthy eating journey. 

The devil is smart. He knows we have conquered one area and we’re doing really well there so now he throws something at us to sidetrack us—an issue, an injury, a busy season, an illness of a loved one, financial woes, time constraints, obligations or assignments we feel we just can’t say no to.  

We had started thinking healthy thoughts that are new, transformed, redeemed, fit, sound, well, whole, hearty, robust, tough, active, lively, vigorous, thriving, prosperous and good. 

Prescription for Healthy Thoughts

The Apostle Paul gave Timothy a great prescription for healthy thoughts in ​2 Timothy 1:7 AMP—"​For God did not give us a spirit of timidity or cowardice or fear, but He has given us a spirit of power and of love and of sound judgment and personal discipline, abilities that result in a calm, well-balanced mind and self-control.”  

When we overload ourselves with to do lists and agendas and oughts and shoulds and musts we are not trusting an all-powerful God to intervene on our behalf. Why should He? We are fulfilling our own prayers and if we do that then we have zero trust in God. We have begun to live from toxic thoughts which are designed to overwhelm us and steal our power from us.

We must allow God to renew our minds by taking the unhealthy thoughts captive and putting the healthy thoughts in their place. This is really the meaning of ​2 Cor. 10:5​ when it talks about taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. 

We corral the negative thoughts. When they enter our minds we immediately identify them. I like to think of it as putting an electric fence around those thoughts. If I go there, if I start trying to accept them into my life they can be deadly. 

If we have negative toxic or poisonous thoughts, we need to capture them and convert them to positive, life-giving thoughts that will bring about Godly changes in our outlook sand our goals for each and every moment of every day. 

This particular episode has action steps which are on the transcript download available when you sign up for the free eating stress course. Go here: teresashieldsparker.com/stress/ to get immediate access.

Episode 076--Putting Stress to Rest

We’ve been talking about stress and by now our goal should be to put stress to rest not just with whatever current issue is stressing us out, but to learn how to hand these issues to God and trust Him enough to take care of them in His time and His way. 

However many times we don’t even realize what we are stressing over or perseverating about. We just automatically turn to food to try to make us feel better whenever the feeling of overwhelm hits us. We use food to try to mask our stress. It numbs it for a while but then we need more to numb it again. We have a learned behavior and we’ve taught it to ourselves way too well.

For many years when I weighed 430 pounds, I thought my weight was causing me the most stress. However, my weight was simply a by-product of my stress! I would stress over some problem and then eat to try to make the stress go away. The eating caused weight gain. But the real issue wasn’t the eating, the issue was what was causing my stress! 

This is a cycle that makes us feel like we are going crazy! That’s because we weren’t created to handle every single problem that we see in the world, in our friends' lives, in our family’s lives and even our own. We have to stop the insanity of trying to control everything. If we can just stop and clear our minds, we can see everything that is happening to us right now is attributing to our stress because we are living in a state of chronic stress. So everything looks and feels stressful, even good things. I know I’ve been there. Living in chronic stress is no fun.

God’s Prescription

In Matthew 11:28-30 MSG, Jesus said, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” 

I think I am finally living in His unforced rhythms of grace. In the past, I felt like I was carrying a heavy burden of a calling I had to complete perfectly, but in these verses Jesus tells me those things which feel like heavy burdens are not from Him. The things from Him will help me live freely and lightly. I was in desperate need of just that.

Christian Fatigue Syndrome is something I had read about but didn’t think it was a thing until my doctor explained that I was pushing too hard on life. It happens to those of us who think we are the only ones who can save the world in our specific sphere of influence or calling. Of course that isn’t true and I cognitively knew that, but deep down inside the achiever in me pushed me to do more. 

God’s prescription for me was to set aside time in the mornings to just be silent, still and present with Him. In those times I was made aware of the cacophony of noise in my head and the time it takes my body to relax, clear my mind and focus on the Lover of my soul. 

During those times the One I had worked myself into exhaustion for just held me and told me to stop and let Him take over, really take over. In doing that, I began to learn how to stop overthinking every issue and problem and simply hand them to Him. 

This isn’t as easy as it sounds and in this episode I explain more about how to do this.

Eating Stress Course: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/stress/

Episode 075--Managing Stressors

To curtail stress, we have to learn how to manage our stressors. When we are in the midst of overwhelming stress that just feels like one more job we can’t or don’t want to face. We just want the stressors, whatever they are, to go away.  The sad truth is the things that stress us out are not likely to just go away. We have to put forth some effort to make that happen in a healthy manner.

So what can we do about them? We can manage how we respond to them. Before long instead of stress managing us we can manage our stress. We can take back our power. We have freely given into stressors of all kinds and when we do this, we give them the power over our lives.

When I look back over my own life, I see how I allowed any problem I had to consume me and when we do that, we immediately give the problem the power over us. In order to stop obsessing over the problem, then I’d try to forget about it by indulging in comfort foods. If I could forget about my problems then they couldn’t overwhelm me and stress me out. And of course the problem doesn’t go away. It’s still there and the additional pounds being added to my body adds physical stress along with the emotional and mental stress I already have.

Combine this with the fact that that for most of my life I would overthink any problem. As a matter of I think I just think too much. Some people are verbal processors, but I am an internal processor. It becomes exhausting because many times this means I am constantly dwelling on the negative aspects or the problem points of any issue. I physically wore my brain out thinking of all the possible scenarios to solve a problem or make an issue go away. 

I call this living from our minds. I used to think this was what God expected of me. I mean He gave me a brain so He must want me to use it to figure out the solutions to everyone’s problems. But the longer I live the more I understand that He gave me a mind so that I can submit it to Him because He actually does have the solution to every problem. Instead I want to jump in and fix it.

Here’s what happens when I overthink an issue. I keep repeating the scenario over and over in my head. I picture a thousand different ways the problem could be solved. If I said this and then they said that, then maybe it would go this way.

Then I talk myself out of that and do something totally stupid to get myself in an even more stressful situation. I exhaust my brain when I use it this way. It is worry, plain and simple. Worry is like praying to yourself when we should be handing the issue to God and leaving it in His capable hands.

To manage stress we must:

-Pay Attention to positive thoughts and godly attitudes rather than negative, repetitive thoughts.

-Face the real issue at the core of what we are stressed

-Understand the major life stressors and how they affect us

-Understand the Holy Spirit provides the gift of peace of heart and mind

-Take our thoughts captive according to 2 Cor. 10:5

-Trust God to lead us and take care of us

Action Steps to help you will be in the transcripts download available by signing up for the free Eating Stress course.

Eating Stress Course: https://Teresashieldsparker.com/stress/

Episode 074--Living in Chronic Stress

For most of my adult life I lived in a state of chronic stress and I overate whatever I wanted to try to get rid of the level of stress I felt. Since understanding that stress is a major reason I was eating all the time, I’ve lost 250 pounds and kept it off since 2013. The weight loss, of course, is great, but even greater is now I can more readily recognize when I am in a state of stress or headed towards a state of chronic stress and deal with it in ways that actually reduce the stress rather than add to it. 

At 430 pounds, I lived in a state of chronic stress. Anyone who is in the super morbidly obese category has put their bodies in this situation. Living in chronic stress is no fun. Many of us are there, we just don’t realize it. So today I want to talk about chronic stress, what it is and some ways to begin to manage it. 

One of the reasons I lived in chronic stress is because I put myself there with my constant striving to be better and do more. There are many reasons for this but one of the biggest ones is that is how I God made me. And if He made me this way, then He can certainly help me understand how to use my strengths and not make them into my weakness.

All of my pushing and striving do better and do more added additional stress which I tried to mitigate by overeating. This only served to pile on the pounds to the point that I weighed 430 lbs. and landed in the hospital which a cardiac surgeon telling me I needed to lose weight and keep it off or I would be dead in five years.

This wasn’t the first time a doctor had told me I needed to lose weight. But this was the first time a doctor said it in such a way that it made me mad, but also got my full attention because he had added an expiration date!

For the first time I faced my own mortality. It was the moment that Duet 30:19-20 NLT talks about. “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying Him, and committing yourself firmly to Him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land.”

For the first time I saw that my way of dealing with the stress of everyday life was killing me. I wanted to choose life. 

This was just the start of my turn-around point. It should have motivated me to do what God told me in 1977, but I still had many more years to wallow through my difficulties. I did go on a diet and lost 100 lbs. This time I kept it off longer. But because I still didn’t see what I was doing as a sin against God, I did not commit to it fully.

My problem was that I did not see what I was doing as a sin. I didn’t see overeating as a sin. I had no problem many other things as sin, but overeating was not in that category for me.  

When a sin becomes common place, meaning everyone is doing it without thinking, it becomes a normal lifestyle. We don’t even think about it because everywhere we look we are being enticed towards our one main vice—for me that was eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. 

On the podcast I share more about how this helped me understand how to deal with stress in other ways and what some of the signs of chronic stress are. Don’t miss the Action Steps for dealing with Stress which are available with my free Eating Stress Course.

Eating Stress Course: https://TeresashieldsParker.com/stress/. Each week you will receive an email when the new lesson has been uploaded.

Episode 073--Eating Stress

Stress is a big deal these days. We may not realize it, but totally changing the way we do things is stressful. Staying home is stressful. Not being with extended family and friends is stressful. Not going on vacation is stressful. Just thinking about going to the grocery store or even to church is stressful.

We’ve all been through a lot in 2020 and it shows. And now it seems to be carrying over into 2021. But as we venture forward into the world, poke our heads up out of the holes we’ve lived in for over a year, we’re realizing some things about 2020 that we didn’t factor in. 

Those of us who are getting older, though, are realizing that diets aren’t working like they used to. And if we’d be honest with ourselves diets never worked to change our habits for life. If they had worked, we wouldn’t be continually running back to them to solve our issues.The other issue is one I know all too well. If you already weigh say 250 pounds or more, 30 additional pounds can be dangerous as it will lead to diseases of all types. But the biggest danger may be the reality that what you are eating is basically stress. That bag of chips? It’s actually Stress. That box of cookies—stress. That tub of ice cream? Stress. All those brownies you baked? Stress. All those yummy new desserts you tried out on your family when you just wanted something different and yummy to eat? Mark it S-T-R-E-S-S.

What you are eating is STRESS plain and simple and it will add more pounds than just the food alone. Eating stress is really no fun at all. Chronic stress is a big factor in behaviors such as alcohol or drug abuse and the one I am talking the most about today—overeating.

When we are in the midst of stress and turn to food we pretty much do it mindlessly. Most of the time we are not even aware of what we are eating. We think we are eating it because it will make us feel better. Instead we sit in front of the tv watching reruns of old movies and before we know it we’ve eaten a whole bag of chips but we haven’t even tasted a single one.

The culprit here is not the food. The culprit is our inability to deal with the emotions we are feeling. Using food to try to solve our problems only gives us more problems to deal with. Soon the doctor is warning us that our blood pressure is too high. When we don’t pay attention to that we find our blood sugar is too high as well. We begin to have mobility issues and fatigue and brain fog. We know we have a problem with overeating but we keep telling ourselves that as soon as everything gets back to normal, we’ll be able to lose the weight. The problem is we have already begun to rely on our old friend, sugar and foods with high carbohydrate content. They just make us feel better … for a moment. Then we need more of the same kind of food to get that same feeling. It’s a cycle that never stops. As a matter of fact it can easily last through an entire movie marathon. 

It helped us forget about all our problems, but if you wait a minute, you’ll find the problem is still there and therefore so is the stress. It hasn’t gone anywhere. You have just temporarily drowned it under a mountain of food you didn’t need to consume.

This is the first of a series I’m calling Eating Stress. This podcast and the three that come after it will be compiled into a training along with the video to each podcast. It will also contain a downloadable transcript which will include action steps which aren’t on the podcast or the video. 

To sign up to get notified each week when the new video is added to the training, go here: https://teresashieldsparker.com/stress/. Videos and transcripts will likely be added each Friday. 

Overcomers Academy link— https://teresashieldsparker.com/overcomers/

Episode 072--Weighty Marriage Issues

If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this lifelong journey of weight gain and weight loss it is that I cannot lose weight for someone else. I can only do it for me. We can’t lose weight for our husbands. It has to be for us. We have to want it for ourselves.

Recently I listened to a sermon by a Missouri pastor who essentially said if husbands stray it’s because their wives have gained weight or as he said, “have let themselves go.” His premise was that men are visual and they want to desire their wives but they can’t if they aren’t slim and trim like our former first lady. He even put a picture of her on the screen during his sermon. I was livid and it took me a while to come down off my soap box. 

When I weighed 430 pounds, I used to think if I lost weight my husband would love me more. The problem really wasn’t that He wanted me to lose weight, it was that I felt so bad about myself that I was sure he didn’t want me or one day wouldn’t want me. I also thought I wasn’t a good wife because I was so overweight. I was unhappy with myself. 

But even with all those thoughts and even though I loved my husband, Every time I tried to lose weight for him I failed. When it was for him if he didn’t applaud my weight loss I would quit and throw in the towel.

There’s a lot to said about motivations to lose weight. We have to care enough about ourselves to want to become healthy in every area—spiritually, emotionally, mentally and last of all physically. 

Proverbs 31:30 TPT says, “Charm can be misleading, and beauty is vain and so quickly fades but this virtuous woman lives in the wonder, awe, and fear of the Lord. She will be praised throughout eternity.” 

Thankfully the pastor that preached this dreadful sermon has been put on leave by His denomination and is in forced professional counseling. The denomination also said his views were not the views of that denomination. 

His sermon really triggered me to go back to that book I wrote in 1995, 199 Ideas and Suggestions to Love and Respect Your Husband. It also made me start thinking anew about writing a marriage memoir. 

When we were chatting about the sermon, I asked my husband if he thought a man was mainly visual. He said that the visual is important to men, but more than that he pointed to a man’s deep desire for valor. Although the dictionary says the definition of valor is “strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness,” to Roy valor is mainly keeping his promises, protecting his family, being the one who provides. 

In talking about this particular sermon he pointed out that for a man valor means staying with his wife no matter what she or he is going through. This is the reason, I dedicated my first book to “my husband, who has loved me through thick and thin, more of the former than the latter.”

This is really where commitment comes into play in a marriage when a man will stay with you and care about you no matter what you weigh or what you are struggling with. Sure we’ve had our ups and downs but we have learned how to harmonize with each other, which is a form of submission that has worked for us.

In my podcast episode called Weighty Marriage Issues, I talk about this and give 10 tips for ways wives can love and respect their husbands. 

If you want to listen to the sermon I mentioned, find it on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TeresaShieldsParker.

Overcomers Christian Weight Loss Academy link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers/

One-On-One Coaching link: https://www.teresashieldsparker.com/vip-freedom-coaching/ 

Email: [email protected]

Episode 071--God Calling

Have you ever prayed and asked God one thing and He seemed to answer with something that was totally off topic? For most of my adult life I felt this way when I prayed about my life’s calling or direction. 

My prayer would always start out something like this. “God, this is me again. Can you tell me, what is my calling? What do you want me to be doing for You? I know you’ve called me to write, but it feels like there is something specific I should be writing. Would you show me, please God? Call and I will do whatever you want me to do.”

Eventually God would answer, but it seemed His answers to my plea for direction were totally incongruous with what I thought I was asking. His answers always seemed to come back to telling me how to lose weight and get healthy. This was the one thing I didn’t think I could do. Plus I didn’t think it was in the category of a life calling like say being a missionary, preacher, teacher or anything that seemed Godly like that. 

What I didn’t see all of those years, though, was how very persistent He was this answer. Recently I was cleaning out my office and found all my old prayer journals. It was a rainy afternoon, perfect for revisiting my life. Reading through them helped me see my life in a new and different way.

I saw how what I had been praying about and how He had answered me directly related to my calling. I was just too stubborn to understand it. Thankfully, He finally got through to me. He’s very patient and as long as we keep asking, He will keep answering until we finally get it.

God is more concerned about us fulfilling our callings than we are. He knows how we will mess up His plans, but He still helps us get back on the right path and headed towards our calling with purpose and determination to follow Him every step of the way. 

On this podcast, I share how I finally got on board with what He had been trying to tell me all of my life. 

Overcomers Academy link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/Overcomers/

Sweet Surrender: Breaking Strongholds: https://www.teresashieldsparker.com/sweet-surrender/