Taking care of your health in American society today is very counter-cultural. So many people struggle with excess weight, food compulsions and addiction. Even with the abundance of nutritional and fitness information we have at our disposal we still are killing ourselves with food.
Taking care of ourselves requires 4 things, I like to call them the “Four D’s”.
Decision
Coming to the place of realization that something has to be done.
Dedication
Making a commitment that you are ready to pursue a healthy lifestyle.
Determination
When temptations come against you, you have to prepare yourself through God’s word to fend off disobedience and attacks of the enemy.
Discipline
Practice makes perfect. Have a plan, set a schedule, prepare, and keep practicing.
Deciding to take care of yourself is a process. You can start hard core and and change everything in your life to achieve a weight loss result. Some individuals will have a result that’s long lasting, but most will experience short term success. It took me almost two years to loose 90 pounds. It was the small steps, the little changes, the daily obediences to what God was asking me to do that netted me the long term benefit of keeping the weight off now for almost 9 years.
Don’t be hard on yourself. If you can walk to the mailbox today, do. Tomorrow walk there again and a few steps further. The next week walk to the end of the road and back. Just keep doing a little bit more each day. If you don’t eat any vegetables now, it would be counter productive to force yourself to eat a vegetarian diet. You could just add one vegetable a day to start, then add two in a few weeks and grow from there.
We are an all or nothing society. But God sees things differently. His word says that “from glory to glory He’s changing us”. If you drink water today – GLORY! If you walk for 5 minutes – GLORY! If you read His word and receive wisdom – YES! If you let go of anger, hurts and unforgiveness – AWESOME! That is how you change your life, one little step at a time.