THE PERFECT DIET PLAN!

For the first few years of my life, I ate anything and everything I wanted and never had to worry about calories! I felt really sorry for my sister who moved from diet to diet. The only benefit she got from those diets were more calories added to her body.

Something has drastically changed now that I am older. It seems that all I need to do is inhale the sweet aroma of fried food and the calories miraculously lodge onto my hips with a tenacity no amount of walking is able to shake off. I can tell you, I am an expert on weight loss. My authority comes from years of observing my body and its very uncooperative metabolism at work!

I am about to share with you some very common sense tips.

Diets don’t work. No, they don’t. We get into diets so that we can lose enough weight and get back to eating the stuff that made us fat in the first place.

Diets multiply cravings in us. The very food I am supposed to stop taking is the food I end up dreaming about, fantasizing over and desperately longing for. The diet is the prison I cannot wait to get out of after serving time on it!

Diets are a twenty four hour reminder that I am fat! Each time I pass by the bagel, I am reminded why it is necessary to pass it by. Each time I swallow the green concoction that makes me want to gag, I remember that I am fat.

Diets isolate me from my friends. While on a diet, I have had to turn down dates with friends knowing that in order to succeed at weight loss I have to stay as far away from temptation as possible.

Diets have made me a social outcast! Okay, so that is gross exaggeration!

Lifestyle change though, has finally worked for me. I have trained myself to eat more of the good healthy stuff and a little of the not so good stuff. That keeps my binge eating away and cravings to a low hum.

The solution has been in imitating the lifestyle of my great grandparents, or what I perceive their lifestyle was! They walked most of the time, planted their food and ate what they grew. They were so busy making a living they did not have time to sit around and feel sorry for themselves. Even if they did feel sorry for themselves, there was no time to do it for too long. From sun up to sun down, they worked! They needed to sleep early too.

Diets don’t work in the spiritual realm either! I have found that when I get into a spiritual diet in order to fix an “overweight” problem, I quickly fall back into bad habits once the spiritual shape I want has been attained. For example, not talking to people and cutting off all social interactions can fix a verbal diarrhea problem but as soon as you plug back into ‘life’ the challenges with an uncontrolled tongue roar back into life! What I really need is to discipline myself by choosing to speak life giving words daily. The daily discipline of obeying God has led me to a closer walk with the Lord rather than the passionate resolutions after epic spiritual failure when I say I will never do this or that again! I have found that my greatest spiritual battles have been won one steady step at a time.

Hebrews 12:1 talks about laying aside every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that won’t let go. It encourages us to be determined to run the race that is ahead of us. Determination is a daily choice.

The reward? 2 Timothy 4:7. I have fought well. I have finished the race, and I have been faithful.