The Best Diet Ever!

Did you hit your brick wall yet?  Don’t look around – yes I’m talking to you.  The one holding the remote, diving your hand into those high calorie snacks, having your little pity party because you’ve tried everything and nothing seems to be working?  Yes – I’m talking about the D word… Dieting.  We’ve seen the infomercials, read thousands of articles, commiserated over our weight loss woes with friends and co-workers, but maybe there’s a diet you just haven’t tried yet… What if dieting became less about how you look in the mirror, and more about causing your body to worship God?  Psalms 103 says, “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.  Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.”

Remember the days of your youth, when life was carefree – you ate what you wanted and just felt great?  Wouldn’t it be great to feel like that again?  In this Psalm, it tells even our inmost being to praise the Lord.  Our inmost being – our insides – not just our heart and our mind – but all that is within us is to praise God.  When the spirit of God is living within us, we have the power to heal, and we can co-labor with God in worshipping him by taking steps to improve our health and begin healing.  What the devil has stolen, it’s time to take back my friends.  Is there an organ in your body that isn’t working the way it should?  Do you have high cholesterol or blood pressure?  Or are you simply frustrated by those pounds that aren’t shedding – and you’ve tried – and tried again to lose them.

Let’s start with the matter of your heart.  Pull out a sheet of paper for this one – I want you to look inside yourself to pull out the answers to this.  Ready? 

Why are you wanting to lose weight?  Health reasons, you don’t like who you see in the mirror, your loved ones complain about your size, be honest with yourself – God knows your honest answer – be honest with him – he doesn’t mind.  In fact, the more honest you can be with the one who created you, the more you’ll discover how much he cares about you and wants to hear from you.  Weight can be such a sensitive subject – but God knows all about how you feel – he created you – he created your feelings.

Ok, so enough with the psychology chair for now… pull yourself up by your bootstraps and lets get working on the best new you ever!

Your Mind:

Love the Lord your God with all your mind – and love yourself too.  The mind is the hardest thing to force into compliance with Gods word.  Sometimes it takes a lot of work, and a lot of reminders to make your brain do something that it’s not used to.  Start by getting bossy with your mind – In the name of Jesus – I declare my mind has come into compliance with the Holy Spirit, and I am a child of God, an heir to the throne.  I have the mind of Christ and I am determined to follow after and worship him.  Your mind can be the biggest hurdle in weight loss.  The not wanting to work out, the not wanting to change eating habits etc.… you know your excuses.  Give yourself a reason to change – and be reasonable.  Start out with a weekly goal – and don’t be discouraged if you miss it – just move the deadline and make sure you follow through.  Get an accountability partner to help spur you on – especially in your moments of weakness.

Your heart:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart.  Loving God with your heart is the most basic form of worship to him.  When you love God with your heart, you radiate his glory – you glow.  Take a moment and just close your eyes, tell God how much you love him and feel how you glow in the moment.  Note how good you feel when you do this.

All that is within you:

Can you imagine if all of your organs started worshipping God in the same way that your heart can?  Can you imagine how good that would feel?  Close your eyes again and imagine that – imagine your kidneys and your liver – worshipping the Lord because they are full of health and life.  Can you feel the radiance of health and life that could be flowing from every cell within you?

How, you might be asking, can you create something within yourself like this where every part of you worships the Lord?  How can you take that step forward and say Yes to God and his desire for you to be healthy?  Stand up and declare it today – that from this moment forward, you are going to worship God by getting healthy.  Start by taking control of what goes in to your body and start becoming aware of the toxins that are in the direct and indirect things that you ingest.

Step 1:  You are what you eat… have you ever taken time to consider what you wash your dishes with?  I looked on the label of my dishwashing liquid to find that it was made with sodium silicate and Chlorine bleach.  Have you ever run a load of dishes and had a nice cold beverage – in a nice clean glass – and tasted the leftover remains of soap that remains on the glass?  I have, and one day it gave me an awful headache, my heart started racing, and I was dizzy – I had been poisoned.  Our organs are taking in that poison and dispersing it throughout our bodies – that’s definitely not a healthy way to worship God.  But never fear there are organic products out there.  Find one that is biodegradable and made from plant-based products - just Google it.

What other kind of poisons are you putting into your body?  Are you a smoker?  A heavy drinker?  Or use some other kind of poison?  How are those things worshipping God, when you know that they’re poison?  Yes these things are hard to put down – especially when you have had them as a habit – but God is greater than any weakness that we have – and he can help you get healthy, but you need to take the first step.  He’s not going to do it for you – but he will be with you every step of the way.

"Read Measurement Markings from Above"
Let God show you how he sees you

How is this all tying into the best diet ever?  Because the best diet to have is really not a diet – it’s a healthy lifestyle.  It’s a mindset of realizing that your body is a temple that the Lord longs to dwell in – and everything that you do to abuse your body – is abusing the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you.  Take a moment to think about that.  When you go into a church, or a holy place – what do you do in there?  How do you act?  Why?  Think of your body in the same terms as you would think of the church – holy.  “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.”  1 Corinthians 6:19-20

As Christians, we are commanded to honor God with our bodies.  Let that work itself into your brain and allow it to renew your mindset.  Would you bring garbage to a temple and leave it there?  Or do you bring only the best to the temple?  The choice really is yours to make – but I truly believe that once you start to have a reverence for your body as being a temple for the Holy Spirit to reside in, making healthy life choices will become as natural as breathing.

Becoming aware of what we put on and in our bodies is becoming increasingly important in a world where pesticides, harsh chemicals and environmental toxins are unavoidable.  We can’t control the world but we can filter what goes in to our temples by being diligent to be aware of the things we consume.  It does take work – and it takes a conscious effort.  But isn’t your health – and God, worth all the effort it takes?

Step 2:  Quit eating or at least cut back on processed foods!  Look at the label – what do you see?  What kinds of ingredients are you ingesting when you eat those items dubbed as “healthy”?  I was shocked when I took a nutrition class for college.  It opened my eyes to realize how blind society has become to believing what we’re told.  Foods that are labeled or advertised as being good for you – Don’t be a sheep and follow the herd on this one.  Those preservatives and additives that they put in processed foods – are not really what they’re cracked up to be.  Honestly – we read the labels looking for sugars and fats and fibers – but have you ever dissected the ingredients on the back of those labels and what they mean?  What is ascorbic acid – or guar gum?  What do they do?  Are they really a healthy item to be putting into our bodies?  Does it gross you out to know that some of the fillers that go into foods derive from sawdust?  Now that’s some serious fiber right there!  Linked to this blog is a fabulous website that allows you to print and read about many additives in our foods and their safety levels and what should be avoided.  It may change the way you look at what you are eating – check it out at www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

Other great resources that I love are tracking sites.  You can log in to these and enter in the foods that you’re eating, track your exercise, and they will give you a picture of the amount of calories and nutrition on your intake, as well as the calories burned during exercise.  With these tools, you can begin to monitor how – what you are eating effects the amount of exercise you need to reach your goal weight.  A “watched pot may never boil” – but tracking numbers like these lead to results.  My personal favorite of the two websites is WWW.Livestrong.com/myplate, or www.supertracker.usda.gov/default.aspx will offer you similar functions.

It’s so easy to get caught up into the zombie zone of weight loss – and kudos to you for deciding to make a change and becoming a healthier you – but don’t forget that the one who created you – adores you – and he wants you to know how much you are loved every single day – just as you are.  View yourself through God’s eyes, worship him and love him – and he will give you all the help you need to reach your dreams.

Daddy, You created us to be healthy and happy and loved.  In the name of Jesus, I pray that we be blessed with your strength and power to change things in our lives that are making us unhealthy, and allowing negativity into our lives.  Help us to heal, help us to grow, and most of all, help us to feel your love radiating within our hearts as we grow closer to you – I declare over my body that it is a temple of the Holy Spirit and I will honor you by co-laboring with you to make myself healthy and whole.  Enlighten me to make good choices, and bring me peace.  Help me to view myself from your eyes daddy, you call me beautiful, you call me perfect, you call me beautifully and wonderfully made, help me to believe those words.  In Jesus name Amen!