weight loss | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Do Not Worry About What To Eat: Jesus

Anita Mathias — Wed, 03 May 2023 14:44:22 +0000

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ […]

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Every Prison has a Door… (and We Usually Have the Key!)

Anita Mathias — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 22:01:21 +0000

From Practice to Mastery Image Credit: https://guitarsquid.com So, not being a super-disciplined person, I’ve struggled all my adult life with a few things, surprisingly common struggles for those for whom discipline is problematic. I carry more weight than I should. Okay, I have lost 47 pounds over the last few years as I […]

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The Life-Changing Practice of Meditation

Anita Mathias — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 18:24:05 +0000

So, a couple of years ago, almost on a whim, my husband Roy and I took an intensive eight week course in Mindfulness at the Oxford Department of Psychiatry! (and at the famous local psychiatric hospital, the Warneford!!) I didn’t really know what Mindfulness was, but I “knew,” we should do it. You can imagine […]

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In Which I Tell You about a Weighty Battle

Anita Mathias — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 23:14:29 +0000

Obesity Influences Have you had “one step forward, one and half step backward” struggles, otherwise known as the dread vicious circle? I am delighted to say that, at the moment, I do not have any vicious circles in my life—those nightmare phases of life where everything you do has unintended negative consequences. You know: You […]

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Fail Better: Only Do Not Go Backwards

Anita Mathias — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 10:20:51 +0000

Image Credit The aged Abraham sends his servant back to Ur to get a wife for Isaac with these instructions, “Make sure that you do not take my son back there,” Abraham said. “Only do not take my son back there.” (Gen. 24:8). Straight ahead lay the land of promise, the land to which he […]

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Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet

Anita Mathias — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:14:34 +0000

I am reading Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet. Cameron says we over-eat and gain weight when “something is eating us.” A lot of emotion gets displaced onto food. We use food to feed our emotions and our minds and spirits, instead of our physical bodies. She suggests simple tools to deal with this. One is […]

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Zapping Negativity and Worry Through Prayer and Faith

Anita Mathias — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:32:07 +0000

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson in her book Positivity ( Norman Vincent Peale with data) says that “experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.” And how do we do experience three positive […]

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Common Grace: Or Why God Loves Classical Music, Zen Habits and The Happiness Project

Anita Mathias — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:16:20 +0000

So I was tidying our bedroom today, putting my stack of CDs back into their cases and listening to Stravinsky, glorious music filling the room. And though I had been in a bad mood, for no good reason, ungrateful girl that I am, my bad mood lifted. I unconsciously started praying in tongues. I started […]

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In Which I Boast of my Weaknesses

Anita Mathias — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:18:14 +0000

Paul describes “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.” Three times he pleaded with the Lord to take it away from him, but Christ simply says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Perhaps Christ said: If you were never weak, my Paul, you who […]

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Murakami’s “What I Talk about When I Talk about Running”: The Connection between the Creative Life and Exercise

Anita Mathias — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:34:27 +0000

Available on Amazon.com I am thoroughly enjoying listening to Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” as I am trying to learn to run (using the NHS Couch to 5K app.) When Murakami began to write full-time, he gained weight. “If I wanted to have a long life as a novelist, […]

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