Sid Roth - I Supernaturally Lost Weight with NO Diet or Supplements with Lisa Bevere
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter and it seems as though you can't pick up a newspaper, a magazine, watch television without seeing someone that is thin and sexy, and it seems as though all of society says if you're not thin, you're not in. And most of society is fat. Let's face it. So everyone seems to be uncomfortable. Everyone is taking diet programs and supplements, and changing the way they eat, and exercise, and exercise, and exercise. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a supernatural way of controlling your weight? My guest Lisa Bevere had a weight problem. She doesn't have a weight problem as you can see right now. Lisa, it's hard to believe but you say that a lot of your weight problem came from a bad image about yourself.
Lisa Bevere: Most definitely from a great problem with fear. And I think that's a major issue for a lot of women. You were making the point that in America a lot of people are fat. We are a country that has more information on weight loss, exercise, diet. We have an abundance of what to do with it. We have an abundance of information with a great lack of transformation in this nation.
Sid Roth: And what's so amazing to me, as one that's been up and down myself, I'm part of that mishpochah, that family that yo-yo. But the thing that is so amazing is that there are some diets that say, don't have any meat. Then there are other diets that say eat all the meat you want.
Lisa Bevere: Exactly.
Sid Roth: And there are doctors that say it's hazardous to your health. And then there's others that say, oh no, that's how you get healthy. Look at the cave men. I mean, it gets very confusing, Lisa.
Lisa Bevere: It is extremely confusing and then you have to really figure out who you are and how you plug in or whatever, and I really don't believe it's supposed to be that complicated. I really believe that you can eat whatever you want in a moderate way and be healthy. And I'm not saying eat only Cheetos and chocolate. I'm saying you can eat and if you change the reasons why you're eating you'll change what you're eating automatically.
Sid Roth: Let's find out a bit about you. Tell me about your background of areas, let's just call them, points where you were hurt.
Lisa Bevere: Well I think that we're dealing with a lot of young girls right now and a lot of women, period, as young girls, they were violated and hurt or wounded at young ages. And because of that they have allowed their worth to be reduced to something on the outside instead of what was on the inside. I always felt like I had two of me, Sid. I felt like I had the projected image and then I had the protective image. The protective one was the real me, the one I was scared that if anybody found out they may not like me, they might not really, you know, they might reject the real me. So if they rejected the projected me that was okay. They weren't going to ever have a chance with the real me. At five years old I lost an eye to cancer. I have an artificial eye.
Sid Roth: That is kind of unusual for a child.
Lisa Bevere: Totally. And when that happened, it you know, you would think people would feel sorry for you. But kids can be really cruel.
Sid Roth: Right.
Lisa Bevere: I remember going to school with a bandage over my eye and not really feeling like that bandage was just over my eye, but it had encompassed and imprisoned my entire body. I remember feeling, you know, that I had become what I was on the outside, that I become an eye, that I become the loss of an eye and having kids make fun of me. And then as I got older, when I turned 15, I was always a swimmer. From the time I was five until the time I was 18 I swam competitively. One year I sat out because of an ankle injury. I came in and I had eaten like I was still in training. And my father said, "Come here. Let me see. Turn around". I remember as soon as he said that, I remember all of a sudden feeling very uncomfortable. And he said, "Turn around". And he said, "Oh my goodness, you're huge. How much do you weigh"? And I said, "I don't know". At 15, I only weighed myself for, you know, physicals or camp, you know. Weight was a function of growth. It was not how I measured myself.
Sid Roth: So you weren't aware until it was pointed out to you.
Lisa Bevere: Exactly. Well I was feeling that little bit of uncomfortableness, but not to that level. And my father said, "You're at least 140 pounds. There's no way you should weigh that much. You go back and weigh yourself". And I remember feeling just this darkness come over me. I went back, I got on the scale and sure enough, he was right. I came back and I said, "You know, I'm 139". He said, "Oh, that's way, you're never going to have any dates. Nobody is going to ask you out. You need to lose weight. You're fat".
Sid Roth: You know what? You probably thought...
Lisa Bevere: He thought he was helping me. He thought he was helping me.
Sid Roth: But you don't, as I understand those things are called curses.
Lisa Bevere: Exactly. Exactly. And the father has such the power to bless or curse his children. And you know, the daughter, how she reacts with her father is how she's going to look for approval from men. And so here I was, you know, and I said, okay, disciplined person, extreme person, and all that. I went back into the room. I took off my clothes, didn't have a full length mirror, and I stood on my bed and I remember it was really interesting because all I had was like a headless image. And I looked at my body, and I thought, you're the enemy. You have got to get control. I am going to make you lose weight. You're disgusting, you're gross. I began to berate myself. I'm thinking, if I punish myself that I would never cross that line. And I cut back on my food, and exercised and started running. And at first I was able, being 15 years old, to drop my weight very fast. I went to school two weeks later and everybody was, wow, look at you. What have you been doing? Oh you've lost weight. I had lost about 10, 15 pounds, and they were like, wow, you look great. And I thought, okay, when I'm thin I deserve love. When I'm thin I'm in control of my life. When I'm thin I'm successful. When I'm fat I'm out of control. I don't deserve love and I deserve to be rejected. And so I drew that line. Now at 15, I was okay for a while. I swam the next year, you know, kept going. And then I went away to college, and I went to college at the University of Arizona and all the girls were about this big around and they're blond from California and I was an Indiana corn-fed heifer. All of a sudden, I was a little bit hefty now. And I remember thinking, I've got to get thinner, I've got to get thinner. And I got to the place where I was 103 pounds and yet I looked in the mirror and saw myself as fat. Didn't see the veins, didn't see the gauntness, didn't see the bones sticking out of my neck. I remember I had a sorority sister sit me down and say, "Lisa, you're too thin". And I thought, she's jealous, she's jealous. Because I had a voice that was always telling me you're not thin enough.
Sid Roth: That voice wasn't a friend of yours though, it was an enemy.
Lisa Bevere: It starts out as a friend and it becomes a tyrant. It becomes an accuser. It constantly rides you and it refuses to ever pleased. And that is how a tyrant thinks by never rewarding you, always just having that carrot just right in front of your face. And so I lived to please that voice. But it isn't your friend. It's your enemy and it's there to destroy you.
Sid Roth: You were actually a slave.
Lisa Bevere: Yes I was. I was in captivity. And there's a thousand women who will die this year from eating disorders in America alone, and that's just what we know of. There's millions of women in America that are affected by this, and you know, it's actually to affect men. They're not big enough. They don't worry about being too thin. They worry about not being big enough.
Sid Roth: Now it's lifting the weights.
Lisa Bevere: It's all becoming imprisoned to the outside instead of who you are on the inside.
Sid Roth: You, in your book, you talk about an understanding of a human that very few people have a comprehension that a human is divided into three parts.
Lisa Bevere: Right.
Sid Roth: Psychiatry usually talks about two parts.
Lisa Bevere: Two, right. Well I believe that who we are on the outside is actually the smallest reflection of who we really are. I am a spirit. I have a soul, which is my mind, my will and emotions, and I live in a body. Someday my body is going to die. But I believe that my spirit will go to be with God. Now your emotions and things are all affected by how you're raised, the kind of things. And I believe what happened with me, there was a wounding in my soul that had a spiritual hold on my life where I had, when you have a wound and you have a valid need for something, you can try to meet that thing invalidly and that's what I tried to do with the weight thing. But what happened is that it hit me at such a level that I had a spiritual voice constantly attacking me and saying, you're not good enough. And because of vulnerability, I was not in a place where I could really be strong spiritually which would say, this is a lie, I am not what I am on the outside.
Sid Roth: How about you? Are you listening to lies? Are you relating to what Lisa is saying? You're about ready to have one of the most wonderful experiences of your life. Don't go away. We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with Lisa Bevere who has found not a natural, but a supernatural way to change the way you think about yourself, which will have the effect. Take a look at Lisa. I mean, obviously whatever you're into was working.
Lisa Bevere: And if anybody saw what I did they would not believe that I really was doing anything. I do not exercise. Now I'm not saying you should not exercise. I have four sons and so I don't really have a whole lot of time for mommy time. You know, it's all mommy, nothing for myself. But I don't exercise. I don't diet. I don't count calories. I don't worry about what I eat.
Sid Roth: No weight supplements.
Lisa Bevere: No weight supplements. I don't believe that you have to do that. I really believe, Sid, that the unseen controls be seen and if you can change yourself from the inside out then sooner or later what's on the inside will change what's on the outside. You know, I had such a controlling spirit of fear over my life where I constantly feared rejection, failure. I constantly looked at myself and said, comparison-wise, I don't need it, I'm not acceptable. And I think every single woman in America battles that. Every time, you just go to the grocery store, you see these women that, you know, are cleavage and thin, and you know, sexually desirable and you're there with your kids in the grocery carts, and you know, you're thinking, I can't be that. And there's a constant feeling, there's a constant image being sent to women that we constantly have in front of us. Whether we realize it or not we're being bombarded with an image that is a lot, it's not even the truth. It's not even real.
Sid Roth: Where are we as far as history goes?
Lisa Bevere: We're repeating ourselves, most definitely.
Sid Roth: Tell me, what's the age?
Lisa Bevere: Well you know, it's amazing. We're almost like the Roman culture. We have really returned to a hedonistic culture where everything is measured by self-gratification. And it's interesting because the Bible predicts that in the last days this would happen. God says that because people will not recognize him as creator or be thankful, and just say, you've done so much. Look at those beautiful mountains, look at this beautiful what they were doing, he says, it turns them over to be mastered by the lust that's grown within them. And what happens when you have lust mastering you, you try to satiate it. You try to do anything you can to satisfy that. And so what happens, we have a culture that their goal is to be sexually attractive and that really is the goal in any culture. That was the goal of the Roman culture. You know, they would eat and then throw up. It's interesting.
Sid Roth: So it's the same thing of the anorexics.
Lisa Bevere: They actually elevated it to a vomitorium where the men and the women, you would eat these elaborate banquets and then you would go over and throw up. And we have really gotten to that place where, you know, it's a little bit different. There's a little bit twist on it. Theirs was just, we like the taste, now we're full, we can't eat any more, let's throw up so we can eat more.
Sid Roth: And look at all the diseases we have in society. Somehow it's all got to be connected.
Lisa Bevere: Exactly. And I really believe that when we violate natural laws, when we call evil good and good evil, when we do not esteem what is to be esteemed, when we esteem the base and hate the pure, then we do things in our life that break the laws that govern us physically, that introduce disease, introduce different problems. And we have, you know, these women that are dying because they won't eat and there will be an abundance of food. You know, they're starving themselves in the midst of abundance, and that has to be spiritual, and it can't be reasoned with. You know, we have a lot of counseling centers that are really trying to help these women right now. I get a lot of letters. The name of my book is "You Are Not What You Weigh" because I'm trying to say to women, you're not what you weigh. You think that once you're 117 pounds and five-foot-six and everything is going to be happy in your life, but you're wrong. You're not, that's not what you are. You're something so different, something so much more valuable. And if you will escape that prison and that tyranny of that lie and turn to the truth, and come out of that dark cellar you've lived in so long, then you're going to find out the truth, and when you know the truth, it's going to set you free.
Sid Roth: What happened to you?
Lisa Bevere: Well with me, I had this eating disorder from the time I was 15 until the time I was 21, and at about that time I met the most wonderful man I've ever had in my life, and I married him. I thought, this is wonderful, we've got to get married. So I married him. But I went back home and when I went back home I went back to everything I had been around. I had, at this point I had been overweight, anorexic and now I had become a Christian. And Christians don't drink, they don't smoke, but they eat. And you know, God doesn't say that gluttony is okay, and drinking and smoking is wrong. God says anything that masters you is not healthy.
Sid Roth: That's an acceptable sin.
Lisa Bevere: It's, Christians tend to judge what they're not in bondage to. And so, you know, that was an acceptable thing. You know, we're not in bondage to cigarettes, we're not in bondage to alcohol, we're in bondage to food, but that's all right. And so I went from being underweight to be overweight again. And I had gotten married. I had bought a wedding gown and about three weeks before my wedding I needed to go and get a slip for it. Well when I went in I couldn't get the gown on. It was about this far apart. Now I had gained so much weight.
Sid Roth: In just that short period of time.
Lisa Bevere: Well in about two months I had gained quite a bit of weight. And when you have done the anorexic thing, what happens is you're afraid to start eating because you're afraid you won't be able to stop. And when you do that to your body you will gain weight very rapidly because your body, when you start to eat it says, oh my goodness, she's finally eating, let's store it.
Sid Roth: I've been told that your metabolism actually changes when you do that.
Lisa Bevere: It totally gets destroyed.
Sid Roth: When you lose weight and gain weight, and lose weight, and gain weight.
Lisa Bevere: My metabolism was so destroyed, and I had been into the laxatives and the diuretics for so long that I had really abused my body. I could eat an apple and not lose any weight. I could, you know, eat everything in the refrigerator. I could not be moderate. I could nothing or everything, but I could not be moderate. There was no middle baseline. And I had just realized I had outgrown my, you know, wedding gown that my parents had paid a lot of money for. And I came home, and I threw myself down on the floor, and I started crying, and I said, "This is not fair. This is not fair". And I really was mad at God. I said, "You have made me so messed up. I can't eat this. This is not fair". And I cried, and I was angry, and I was scared. And then I heard a voice say to me, "Your weight is an idol to you. Food is an idol to you". Now when I heard "idol" I thought of my children's Bible, this little golden calf.
Sid Roth: What does idol mean?
Lisa Bevere: Exactly. What does an idol mean? And God said, "It's what you give your strength to and draw your strength from. It's how you spend yourself. It's what you think about all the time. It's what controls you. It's what accuses you". And he said, "If you will repent," which means turn from it, "if you'll repent I'll heal you". And then he said, "And I'm going to tell you what you should weigh, not Vogue, not Shape, not Glamour. I made you and I'm going to tell you". I was kind of sitting there going, I had never put God into this part of my life. You would care about that? God, you're involved in this? Do you even care?
Sid Roth: Yeah. You would think God isn't interested in what you weigh. A doctor you go is interested in what you weigh.
Lisa Bevere: But he's interested in anything that holds his children captive.
Sid Roth: So God told you what you should weigh.
Lisa Bevere: Exactly. And he gave me a number. At the time, now you've got to understand how warped my idea was. I wanted to weigh 83 pounds at one point.
Sid Roth: Eighty-three?
Lisa Bevere: Yeah. I'm five-foot-seven, wanted to weigh 83.
Sid Roth: Sideways we wouldn't see you.
Lisa Bevere: No, no, no. I'd be dead. But the reason where I got that figure from was I remembered in eighth grade feeling thin and that was the last time I remember being comfortable with myself before I started puberty, before everything else, and I wanted to go back to that. So I felt like if I could back 83 pounds then I would be free.
Sid Roth: Eighty-three pounds? Let's find out what God did in her life. Because what God did for Lisa he wants to do for you. Don't go away. We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth back again with Lisa Bevere and I know you can hardly wait. Lisa, so you want to go down.
Lisa Bevere: Right.
Sid Roth: To being Twiggy.
Lisa Bevere: Well beyond that, from being way unhealthy. But God gave me a figure and it was much more than the 83 pounds, but it was much less than I was at that point. I think it was about 140 at that point. And it was 116 was the weight he gave me. And I tore it off, the little piece of paper, and I stuck it in my Bible.
Sid Roth: Did he give you instructions on how to get down to the weight?
Lisa Bevere: Exactly. And then he said something to me. He said, "Now, no more dieting, no more weighing yourself". I weighed myself incessantly, I mean, eight times a day at least. You, people with eating disorders constantly do that. So I climbed in the attic, I put my scales away and I said, okay, no more dieting. All right, I can do that. I'm going to lose this weight. And then I started to panic, and God said, "No more dieting. I want you to go on a fast". I said, a fast? Wait a minute, you just...
Sid Roth: Had you ever been on a fast?
Lisa Bevere: Yes I had, but not really a true fast. I kind of do those things, I need to hear from God, I need to lose some weight. I think I just won't eat today. But God said, "No, you don't understand". He said, "What I'm talking to about is totally different than anything you've done". He said, "A diet will change the way you look, but a fast will change the way you live". He said, "A diet will change your appearance, but the fast will change the way you see things for the rest of your life". He said, "A diet is a denial of food". He said, "A fast is the time when you find out I am enough to sustain you". And I didn't believe he was. I didn't believe that God was going to sustain me, Sid. I believed I had to have food. I believed I had to have the approval of other people. I believed I would live for that. So I said, all right. And I remember thinking, God is calling me to himself for the next three days. And I went on a juice and distilled water and water fast for the next three days. And I was not anorexic at this time. I was overweight. I don't believe he would have me fast at that time if I had been underweight. And for the next three days, I just said, I'm changing my focus. I'm changing the way I'm not going to look at these things. I'd hear whispering. I'd hear, go weigh yourself. I bet you're losing weight. Just go. A little encourage. No, I'm not doing that. And the next three days I just said, "God, you know, you made me. You need to heal this area in me that's been wounded, that has made me so vulnerable". And during that time, just totally changed. Then after I came off he said, "Now I'm going to teach you to eat until you're satisfied, not until you're uncomfortable". I didn't know how to stop eating until I was in pain. I thought you stopped eating when you could not eat any more.
Sid Roth: Yeah. I came from a culture where my parents said the children in Europe are starving.
Lisa Bevere: Starving. Food is love.
Sid Roth: Eat, eat.
Lisa Bevere: I used to say, can we send it to them? I don't want this. But you know, I'm from an Italian background. Same thing. You eat. We show we love you by feeding you. And so I remembered pushing away and saying, I'm done and I remember my mom saying, "You don't like it"? Oh no, I like it, but I'm satisfied. And you know what I had to do to get that? I had to acknowledge God's involvement before I ate. You know, it's amazing, everybody will say grace. Why do we say grace? He says, we offer our food with prayer and thanksgiving. We say, all right God, you have provided this food for me. It's not my source. It's not what gives me contentment. It's from strength. And I'm going to ask you to show me when I'm satisfied, not when I'm engorged, not when I'm in pain.
Sid Roth: How long did it take for this change of, basically it's a total change of thinking.
Lisa Bevere: It was a total change of thinking. And it happened on the fast and it was, immediately it changed my life. Now I can't tell you the voice didn't try to come back. When I was pregnant with my first child I remember being on the doctor's table and he said, "Whoa, you gained eight pounds in one month". And he said, "You better stop this. You're going to be weigh too heavy". And I remember coming off the table, this is in Dallas, and saying to him, "Listen, I’m five-foot-seven, I weigh 135. I'm six months pregnant. Don't you dare say that to me. There's a lot of women that are five-foot-seven that weigh 135 when they're not pregnant". You know, it's a cultural thing where there's a fear thing to lose weight. I said, "No, no, I'm not going to do this". But now I have been married for 17 years. I have four kids.
Sid Roth: So this has been going on for 17 years.
Lisa Bevere: Seventeen years, four children and God has been faithful. If I will eat until I'm satisfied then I'm fine. You know, it's amazing. The Bible talks about this woman named Sarah who was beautiful and 75, a hundred years old. So beautiful that kings were taking her from her husband. And it says that we can be her daughters if we don't give way to hysterical fears. It doesn't say anything about running aerobics in the desert. It doesn't say anything about diet and exercise plans. It says, if we don't live in fear. And fear is such a governing force. I believe that our culture right now is so fearful, so self-motivated, so self-conscious. That is what we got in the garden. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, immediately they realized they were naked. They became entrapped to the outside when God really wants us to be free from the inside out.
Sid Roth: Would you like to be free? Would you like to be free from the inside out? Lisa said that the first thing she did is she repented of having an idol, the idol in Lisa's life, food. What's the idol in your life? Sports, money, sex, drugs, alcohol? What is your idol? Repent of that. Say, God I've replaced you with my idol and I don't want my idol. I want you. I need you, God. I need you. Please forgive me. I believe that Jesus died for my sin and by his blood it's washed away and I'm clean. But I need your help every minute of every day. Come inside of me. Take over my life. I make you Lord over my eating, over everything. And Lord, if I do anything that's displeasing show me and I'll be quick to repent. I want to know you more than anything else. Change me. It's not just my weight, it's my everything. I need change and you're my only hope, and I turn to you in Jesus' name. Thank you, God. Thank you that you hear my prayers, that you have something better for me than I have right now. My heart's cry is there must be something more and now I know there is. You, you're the more. I make you not just my savior so I can go to Heaven. I make you my Lord. I need you desperately. I have such a passion for you, God. I need you, Lord. I need you.