This is Part 1 of a two-post series.

At first, people kept asking how I did it, so I told them. But many shook their heads in disbelief, as if what I said just couldn’t be, because what I told them flew in the face of conventional weight-loss wisdom.

But with every passing year, I’m more certain than ever that what worked for me can work for anyone, because what I’m suggesting isn’t a matter of counting calories, depriving yourself, or eating foods you don’t like. It’s a matter of pulling out the lies we believe that keep us overweight.

The story of how I lost 75 pounds and have kept it off for 24 years is written in two parts. The first is here; the second comes next.

Thinking back, I want to remember steps. It’s what we do when we try to lose weight, right? And on paper, it makes sense: Eating less calories = weight loss. Doing more exercise = burning more calories = weight loss.

And if people were robots with calculators for brains, and hearts directly wired to those calculators, and bodies that did exactly what they were told, then who would be overweight?

But we’re more than just robots with fact calculators for brains. We have hearts and minds and bodies that run on faith, freedom, and pleasure. We have to attend to more than just calories and ketos when we approach this subject of healthy eating and weight loss.

We have to attend to our hearts and what we believe.

My journey is a journey of believing. It has more to do with pulling weeds than putting down my fork. My weeds were the lies I believed that kept me fat. I had to plant truth in their place. It was truth that set me free.

Twenty-four years ago, I weighed over 200 pounds. I’d been a long distance runner in college and fit all my life until ten years before this. So how had I gained so much weight? By believing this: being thin will make me happy, and dieting is the way to be thin.

With my recent weight gain of a few pounds, I’ve realized these lies are taking root again. For all of the believing I’ve done to lose all of the weight I’ve lost, I can still get fooled and forget. I have to keep chewing on these truths like they’re plugs of life-giving tobacco, and they keep working for me, even after all these years.

Here are The 10 Truths I Found to Lose 75 Pounds:

1. I can stop dieting and start living.

2. I was created to be free.

3. I can eat any food I want–do I really want it?

4. I can eat anytime I’m hungry.

5. I can make healthy choices.

6. I can manage treats.

7. I can focus on living.

8. I can celebrate healthy choices.

9. I can push restart now.

10. I can trust God to help me.

1. I can stop dieting and start living.

It was a night I’ll never forget, when I told God I was desperate and begged him to help.

Food had become more than what kept my stomach from growling. It was comfort. Why did I need so much comfort? The obvious reason was to escape the misery of being fat. I ate because I was fat. But I was fat because I ate. This was a hamster wheel I couldn’t get off of.

I certainly couldn’t be happy being a fat, forty-something with five healthy kids. I wanted thin. I wanted it more than I wanted to care for my new baby. More than I wanted to live. More than I wanted God.

How do I know? Because I had those things, and I was still unhappy. Anything that steals my joy is an idol, and this was a big one.

But what was driving me to food, even when I lost weight? I’d had success taking off pounds over the years. If being thin was my ticket to happy, why wasn’t I happy when I got there? Because whether fat or thin, eating was my life-hack.

Underneath the mindlessness that let me eat a box of Girl Scout cookies in one sitting was the lie that eating would make me feel better, no matter what I was facing. I didn’t consciously think food had that power, of course, but I sure lived like I did.

An idol is something I set up for myself and empower to make me feel better. But of course, unless I’m hungry, food never makes me feel better. I only hope that it will.

Pregnancy packed on the pounds, and I did everything I knew how to unpack them—dieting, exercising, fasting. All I had to show after ten years of trying was 75 extra pounds. Losing weight by dieting wasn’t working. In fact, dieting was making me fat!

“God, I want to be happy right here where I am, not wait for ‘one day.’ Forgive me for wanting thinness more than you. I’m desperate to live a new way, but I don’t know how. Please help.”

I didn’t know how that prayer would be answered, but one thing was sure: I got down off my hamster wheel that night. I was so relieved, I felt like taking a walk. So I did.

2. I was created to be free.

Lots of people lose weight, but few keep it off, because we want to eat what we please. Dieting denies that God given right. It tells us what to eat, when, and how much. Dieting takes away our freedom to enjoy food the way God intended. He doesn’t lock us up in diet jail.

We also don’t keep it off because we naturally go back to the food we love when a diet is over. To keep the pounds off, we have to keep up the diet, but no one wants to live a lifetime of deprivation.

The assumption with dieting is that I can’t be trusted to manage my own food. I must trust The Diet Professionals to manage it for me. But God gives me freedom with food.

Paul warned that some would say we should abstain from certain foods, ones that God created to enjoy. He wrote, “…everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it’s received with thanksgiving….” It’s “deceiving spirits and demons” that influence us to believe otherwise, 1 Timothy 4:1-4.

Isn’t it just like the enemy to try to take away our freedom?

There’s no food that can’t be enjoyed, even chocolate cheesecake. God says it’s all good, but it’s not all equally good for you. “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial. All things are lawful, but I won’t be mastered by anything,” 1 Corinthians 6:12.

It’s not all beneficial—so be wise. Nothing is off limits—but don’t let anything become your master. Freedom rests in the balance.

3. I can eat any food I want–do I really want it?

It’s in the spirit of that freedom that I say, “Yes, you can have it!” I always affirm my God given right to eat anything I want. But I follow with the question “Do you really want it?” because it gets at the real issue. Not can I have it? Of course I can. But do I want it? Because if I can admit that I don’t want it, then I can walk away from it.

I’d stumbled into, “Yes, you can have it!” because I realized that what made me want food I wasn’t hungry for was believing I couldn’t have it in the first place. It’s the same feeling I have anytime someone says, “Don’t look!” and I can’t help myself, I look. When I say I can have it, suddenly those “gotta haves” turn into “meh, nah.”

“Yes, you can have it!” are the magic words that get me past my inner child, who wants treats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So I can ask my better self, my redeemed self, who wants to live God’s way, “Do you really want it?”

When I ask, I give myself time to feel. Often I realize, Wow, I don’t want this. My stomach is full. It even hurts a little. What I want is to take a bath. To read. To relax with my husband. And then I do.

This inner dialogue only “works” if I let myself feel the permission deeply. Yes, I can have whatever food I’m tempted by. No question. Anything whatsoever. I let myself feel the freedom. And then I ask, “Do you really want it?”

If I say no, it’s not because I can’t have what’s in front of me. It’s because I really don’t want it. I can always walk away from what I don’t want. With practice, it’s easy. I do it all the time.

4. I can eat anytime I’m hungry.

Pay attention to how a naturally thin person eats, and you’ll notice this: they eat when they’re hungry, they eat what they want, and they stop when they’re satisfied.

There’s a God-given appetite meter inside us. Even if it’s stopped working, it starts again when we pay attention to it and let it guide us. The appetite meter gets stronger with practice, like a muscle that gets stronger with use. Two simple things enable it: waiting until physical hunger to eat and stopping when satisfied.

The secret for how much to eat has been tucked inside our bodies all along. It’s been tucked inside God’s word, too. Proverbs says, “Have you found honey? Eat only what you need. Too much of it, and you’ll vomit,” Proverbs 25:16.

We can trust God, who gave us our appetite and its meter. It’s not wired to make us fat. It’s wired to let us know when to eat and when to stop based on how much energy we need. We can trust our bodies when it comes to what we put in our mouths, too. We deserve our trust.

Your God given meter might be asleep, it might be broken, it might be so weak that it can’t get your attention anymore, but it’s still there. And it can be resurrected. I know because mine was gagged and hog-tied for years, and it’s come back to life.

At first, I didn’t want to wait until I was hungry every time I ate. Sometimes I had to wait most of the day, depending on what I’d had for breakfast. But the reason to wait for true, physical hunger is because you will feel the cue to stop eating, only if you’ve been empty to start.

It’s hard work. Think of it as a kind of “eating training.” Eventually, you won’t think to eat until you’re hungry.

Imagine.

5. I can make healthy choices.

Throughout my journey, I had to keep reminding myself that my goal was finding fitness, not thinness. Ten years of pining for “thin” took some effort to lay down.

But compared to dieting, making healthy choices was easy. I drank more water, added more veggies to dinner. I also learned to accept several pounds more than thin.

Exercising-to-be-thin had kept me discouraged, strapped to the sofa with Stouffers. But exercising-to-be-healthy got me up and out the door. Eventually, I traded walking for running, Diet Coke for water, crackers for carrots. I joined the Y. I bought a bike.

This whole process had to be easy, so that I would stick with it. I wanted to be fit for life, didn’t I? So I made a little change I could live with. And when I was ready, I made another one.

One night I opened the Bible and read, “…he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus,” Philippians 1:6. I knew that God had begun a good work in me when I first believed.

But the next part, that God would perfect me, was something new. It wasn’t up to me? A load I didn’t know I was carrying suddenly fell at my feet. And the monkey for doing better, for getting the-heck-out of my fat suit, jumped off my back and onto God’s. I breathed deep relief.

The power to make these changes came from God, who shouldered the burden, so that I was freed up to choose them. Because I was choosing the changes I wanted to make, it was easy to make them. And because I made them gradually, they became permanent.

There was never a “going on” or “going off” this plan. I wasn’t deprived. I ate what I wanted.

What was there not to like?

For part 2 with truths 6-10, and the rest of the story, click here for “The Ten Truths I Found to Lose 75 Pounds, Part 2,” or simply find it posted next.