Crippling anxiety even as a child

For Mia Dinoto, the crippling anxiety attacks started when she was 8.

“I was diagnosed with OCD and anxiety. I got really, really depressed,” Mia says on her YouTube channel. “I got panic attacks 24/7 every single day. I would not leave my house. I was terrified to leave my house. I felt stuck inside myself. I was trapped inside myself.”

Raised in Christian home, Mia didn’t know Jesus and, trying to pray, found it difficult and neglected it for years at a time.

“Is my life going to be like this?” she asked her parents, who signed her up with a therapist three times a week.

“I got put on medication,” she says.

She wavered between being able to function “like a normal person” and relapsing, she says.

In her teens, Mia was diagnosed with anorexia. “It consumed my life,” she says. “I no longer cared about anything other than what I ate, what I looked like, working out. All my goals, priorities and values got thrown away. I didn’t care about anything else. I would do anything to get skinny and have the perfect body.”

Mia argued with her family members and treated them rudely, she says. “I got in fights with them every day,” she says. “I pushed all my friends away.”

“I got to a really unhealthy point where I was starving myself. I was malnourished,” she says. “I still looked into the mirror and thought I was fat. It consumed my thoughts. My anxiety and depression came back worse this time.”

Under the crushing weight of depression, she was fatigued and slept 16 hours every night. Living in California at the time, she would be outside in 90-degree weather with a jacket and comforter because her malnourished body felt cold; it didn’t have the nutrients to produce heat to warm itself.

Her regular menstrual cycle stopped for a year. “My body was shutting down,” she admits. “I didn’t care about my health. I just wanted to be skinny.”

“Saying it seems so stupid. Anorexia isn’t just a health problem; it is a mental health problem,” she now realizes. “It consumed me.”

Her parents enrolled her in a strict, in-house treatment center, but it didn’t work. Hearing a podcast about overcoming anxiety through chakra meditation and manifesting, she fell into New Age practices trying to get more balanced and “control her destiny.”

Then she stumbled across a video that challenged chakra ideas from the Christian perspective. She considered herself a Christian and was startled to hear, for the first time, that chakra was anti-Christian. She found out she was drifting ever farther from God.

“I didn’t want to do anything against Christianity,” she says. “I watched a lot of videos, and I realized I was being pulled away from God because I was depending on myself to fix things and not the Lord.”

Her brother started reading the Bible and this prompted Mia to do the same.

“I had never… Read the rest: crippling anxiety even as a child

Firm atheist shaken by science, eating disorders

Decidedly “100% atheist,” Mariah Jones pitied Christians, believing they reject reason and the advancements of scientific knowledge.

“I did not believe in God,” Mariah says on a 2019 video on her YouTube channel. “I didn’t believe in spirituality at all. I thought believing in such things was silly. Basically I was just a strong believer in science.”

Right after high school, Mariah joined the Navy in 2013. It was in the Navy that she developed anorexia and bulimia.

“It grew more and more aggressive as the years went by,” she says.

Once out of the Navy, she enrolled in college, and she positively relished the science classes which at first affirmed her belief in nothing.

“I used to enjoy when people would bring up God so that I could try and destroy their argument with science.” she admits. “I would ask them impossible questions that would put them in this awkward position and make it pretty much impossible for them to answer.

“I hated when people would talk about Jesus.”

Her distaste for Christianity was extreme, fueled by the grip of the evil one in her life.

“My mentality towards Christians and anyone who was religious was like, You’re wasting your entire life trying to live by these impossible standards and these rules that supposedly God created just to go to a place after you die,” she says. “I thought religion was a man-made construct that was harmful to people.”

Then a boomerang struck in 2017 in her second year in college. The same science that in the first year of college affirmed her atheist became the science of the second year of college that undermined her atheism.

Specifically, how could biological molecules with astronomical number of atoms all sequenced with confunding minute precision have just come together by chance? she wondered.

SEE RELATED ARTICLE: SCIENTIST SY GARTE BECAME A CHRISTIAN WHEN HE STUDIED MOLECULAR BIOLOGY.

So at first science contributed to her atheistic arrogance. Then, as the classes advanced, they deconstructed it.

“Having to accept that everything just formed on its own by itself on accident, it didn’t make sense to me,” Mariah admits. “It really started to bother me because deep down I didn’t want to believe something. I didn’t want to take that responsibility.”

God diet: She dropped 100 pounds

Jackie Halgash lost 100 pounds when she got her comfort from prayer instead of eating.

“I used food for comfort all the time. I used food for when I was happy and when I was sad. I think pretty much any time I felt like eating,” she says on a CBN video. “I got to a point where I couldn’t stand it anymore. I would get up in the morning and before I opened my eyes, my first thought was: what did I do last night? What did I eat? Oh, no! didn’t mean to! I meant to not eat after dinner!”

As a nurse, she knew how obesity jeopardizes health, but the feelings driving compulsive eating overpowered her mental understanding of health. She made rules for herself but always broke them.

Then she found a Christian weight loss program that brought the Lord into her eating.

“It’s a spiritual growth program and that’s the key,” she says. “It gave me the tools that I needed in my faith to be able to stop eating and bring the Lord into my eating.”

As she depended on the Lord, she ate only to being satisfied, not full. When she felt tempted, she called out to the Lord and dedicated that moment as a fast unto the Lord.

“The weight dropped off,” she says.

She dedicated it to the Lord: “Thank You, take this. This is a fast. Take this and I honor You because this is what You’re asking me to do.” Read the rest: God diet to drop 100 pounds

Groomed by pimp, girl rescued from anxiety by God

MySpace, Heather found just the sort of compassionate older friend to whom she, at age 12, could confide her troubles, things she couldn’t share with her own parents.

Then, he showed up on the evening news under arrest for intent to prostitute a minor. Heather’s profile popped up as one of his top eight on MySpace, a now virtually defunct social media.

“I felt like talking to him was a rush because it was a secret,” she recounts in a CBN video. “I saw the red flags on multiple occasions, but I ignored them because it was not what I wanted to believe. I could talk to him about school. I could talk to him about family. He was this unbiased person I could bring in. He was kind. He was someone I could confide in. I enjoyed talking to him.”

When the man was arrested, Heather feared she would be raped. She had no idea if he was in jail or released. All she knew was that he lived in her town.

Her fears grew into gnawing anxieties that dogged her for most of the rest of her life.

As a teen, she discovered anorexia and bulimia — and this gave her a sense of control.

“I was so anxious and afraid that I remember I wasn’t hungry,” she says. “I remember thinking, oh this is a great distraction. I felt powerful.”

Next Heather turned to “cutting” — the practice of slitting your wrists to toy with suicide and express desperation.

“There was an overwhelming release of tension with cutting,” she says.

During her sophomore year of high school, 11 loved ones died within eight months.

“I felt more out-of-control having people being ripped away from me, people dying too young,” she says. “I started cutting a lot more, a lot deeper.”

By now, she was receiving professional counseling — to no avail.

“I kept punishing myself for the mistakes that I had made,” she admits. “It distracted me from the sadness I felt. But more than anything, it helped with my anxiety.”

She attended college a few hours from home. The change of scenario did nothing to help her. Without her family watching out for her destructive tendencies, Heather indulged her coping mechanisms.

“I felt like there was nothing left that even the world could offer me and I was not going to get better,” she says. Read the rest: Grooming online of girls.

Shed stress, shed pounds

Maybe your problem is not sugar after all.

It might be cortisol. It’s a useful hormone that helps you kick into “fight or flight” mode.

Your adrenal glands dump into your blood system during stress. Its purpose was to — occasionally — heighten blood pressure and heartbeat when in danger of a predator or war in ancient times.

Nowadays, sabre tooth tigers, Black Plague or invading mongols are not a threat. No, your problems are worse- bills, deadlines, domestic friction, rejection, loneliness, competition, low self esteem, weight gain, sickness. Plus, the world is coming to an end (again)

We have more stress points than any civilization ever, and as a result our cortisol levels are puncturing the stratosphere. Excess cortisol cues hypertension, high blood sugar, inflammation, depression, insomnia, atherosclerosis and a bunch of other cools ways to die or live in misery before dying. This is serious! There’s even a full-blown academic journal dedicated to its study: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress.

We’re stressed about stress.

Of course, people develop coping mechanisms to lighten the overload. There are some that are escapist and some are counteractions: alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, binge-watching, oversleeping, social isolation, scape-goating, gaming.

One more: dunking donuts.

Or candy, or soda.

Sugar gives an instant pleasure from a dopamine release in your bloodstream. Dopamine is the happy hormone. It counteracts the cortisol and offsets it, if temporarily. It’s an tangible relief.

Behold then!

Excessive obesity then is not just a product of the prevalence of added sugar in grocery store items. It’s not just a product an overly sedentary lifestyle. Lack of information about nutrition alone cannot be blamed — nor can the marketing fusillade of the food industry.

Our weight problem can be traced to unhealthy stress levels.

You don’t need to strengthen your willpower to resist that chocolate bar. You need to lower your stress levels. Read the rest of the article for practical tips to lower stress and thus shed pounds.

Overcoming overeating in Christ

Michelle Aguilar was 18 when her mom told her she was leaving her dad. She was devastated. Wasn’t her life with Christian parents supposed to be perfect?

Michelle cut off communication with her mom and her insecurities grew. To internalize the rejection and depression, she turned to eating sweets to boost her spirits.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she says on an I am Second video. “I didn’t know how to deal with my pain or the confusion that I was going through. I think when you’re at a place where you’re kind of out of control with a lot of things, it’s an easy step to turn to food.”

She gained weight steadily, always hiding behind a million dollar smile. She reached 242 pounds.

As a Christian, “I knew I couldn’t turn to drugs or alcohol,” Michelle says. “Food was acceptable and it gave me a sense of control. (But) it becomes a guilt thing. You realize that you’re eating, and you’re feeling bad while you’re eating, and it’s just making it worse.”

Mom remarried and took Michelle’s two siblings. Michelle was left alone with dad.

Then a co-worker told her about The Biggest Loser reality TV show, in which overweight contestants worked out to see who loses the most weight, and the “biggest loser” wins $250.000. Michelle auditioned and was rejected the first time, but producers called to include her in the new season.

It had been six years since she talked to her mom. Dad suggested she participate in the program with her mother, who had also gained substantial pounds. Perhaps their participation might break down the walls between them. In this edition of Biggest Loser it was teams, parent-child or husband-wife.

“I really felt like God was saying, I’m going to give you an opportunity to start over and change from the inside out, and this could be the option if you’re willing to do it.”

But there were mixed emotions. Re-connecting with mom appealed to her, but Michelle viewed her as “the source of my pain, the source of my weight gain.”

She charged into a rigorous physical regimen like a would-be winner. But then she chipped her tooth. Her smile had always been her shield. It projected an image of self-confidence even when she was crying on the inside. It was her only defense against shame, and now it was gone.

“I felt like somebody had stripped away that armor, and said, “No, look at you. You’re smile is gone now. What are you going to do?’” she says. Finish reading how to overcome overeating.

Justine Bateman found God overcoming anorexia

Actress Justine Bateman thought her binge eating and purging was normal, but when a friend gently suggested she had an addiction as serious as alcohol or drugs, she entered a 12-step program. That’s where she found Jesus.

“I found the highest high by hitting the lowest low,” the 51-year-old told the New York Daily News. “I’ve actually become the person I always wanted to become, although not in the way I thought it would happen.”

The former star from “Family Ties” and “Men Behaving Badly” battled eating disorders for 10 years before getting help. “I realized I had eating disorders, went into recovery and found a relationship with God,” Bateman recounted.

Bateman said it all started at age 16, when she suffered bouts of anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating, without understanding the danger of what she was doing. “I had a horrible body image,” she said. “I always had the tape measure out. I was always getting on the scale.” Read the rest of the story.