Start Your New Life Today (24 page)
Even if we can’t control all of our circumstances, one thing we do have control over is our attitude. What is your attitude toward food? Do you give it a place of importance that is out of balance? Do you live to eat or eat to live? We can control what we put into our bodies.
I am sure you don’t need me to convince you of the dangers of smoking, or the terrible cost of addiction to drugs and alcohol. We’re all aware that such substances are pleasure shortcuts. They are actually a way of avoiding the real issues that need to be dealt with. When you don’t have inner contentment, it becomes all too easy to go for the quick rush of pleasure provided by these vices—even if such pleasure is short-lived and comes with the chronic pain, suffering, and illness of addiction.
But people are less aware that food can play the same role. If I’m feeling down and I eat a candy bar, I feel better for a moment. Not long—the good sensation lasts only a fleeting instant after I swallow it—but fortunately there’s another candy bar after that one. And another after that. And even if the candy runs out and my depression returns, there’s that pint of ice cream in the fridge for just such emergencies. When the ice cream is gone, there is the chocolate cake or the pie. When we turn to food for comfort, we establish a pattern that is unhealthy and even dangerous—and still leaves us without the comfort we seek.
Food addiction is easy, because food doesn’t come with the same stigmas as drugs or alcohol. Unlike those vices, food has a legitimate—even essential—role in health. Only when it slips into overuse does it become a problem. But it’s so easy to get to that point! Food is reliable. Unlike spouses, friends, or great weather, it is
always
there. But that’s the problem. Any time we are feeling spiritually empty, whether through sadness, depression, or boredom, it’s easy to reach for food to fill that void. Soon, we are mistaking spiritual hunger for physical hunger, and food becomes the immediate answer to any drop in well-being.
You know where this leads. The more you try to treat your spiritual longing with food or other feel-good stimuli, the greater your soul’s cry for spiritual nourishment will be. The greater your disease will become.
The more you try to treat your spiritual longing with food or other feel- good stimuli, the greater your soul’s cry for spiritual nourishment will be. The greater your disease will become.
You can learn healthy behaviors. For example, reducing stress will help you curb your spiritual hunger. But it is important to learn and practice going to God for what you need instead of using a substitute such as food in trying to ease the pain or find comfort, or instead of being honest before Him about your real need. Fortunately, God is the source of true comfort and is always there when you need Him. Unlike bad food or drugs He doesn’t leave you overweight, sick, or lethargic. He freely gives His comfort. The “Father of sympathy (pity and mercy) and the God [Who is the Source] of every comfort (consolation and encouragement), Who comforts (consoles and encourages) us in every trouble” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4) is always there to provide healing of the root cause leading to unhealthy desires in addition to providing the true comfort we need.
When I am hurting, I have learned to run to God first, instead of another person or substance. I’m not saying this is automatic. It took me years to get this straight, and I still sometimes have to remind myself that what I truly need is
spiritual
nourishment. But learning this habit will do more to keep your mind and body sound and your life on an even keel than anything I know. Your spirit needs to be nourished just like your body does. Don’t wait until you have a crisis in your life to start feeding it. Nourish yourself spiritually first.
Stay Active
A
ctivity is important not only for weight control and healthy bodies but also for happiness. I believe that inactivity, laziness, and passivity are some of the culprits behind depression and feelings of dissatisfaction. I find that if I am feeling unhappy one of the things that will help is to simply do something. It helps me get my mind off myself and gets my blood flowing. The Bible tells a story of ten virgins waiting for their bridegroom to come. Five were wise and five were foolish. The wise ones stayed alert and spent time getting extra oil for their lamps so they would not go out in case the bridegroom was slow in coming, but the foolish did nothing. They were inactive and lazy, and they did nothing extra so when the bridegroom came they were unprepared and missed their opportunity (see Matthew 25:1–13). You may not be able to change your circumstances, but you can change your habits. Don’t let yourself live in ways that allow you to be excessively inactive. Rebel against too much convenience.
Don’t let yourself live in ways that allow you to be excessively inactive. Rebel against too much convenience.
To be honest, I think Satan has put one over on us. He has made everything so easy and comfortable and convenient it’s killing us. We think we are saving time and effort, but we are really losing strength and energy. Doing work, staying active, is not bad. Don’t try to avoid it. We want drive-through service for as many things in life as possible, but the trouble is,
there is no drive-through good health!
Starting today, take steps to make your life a little less convenient and a little more active.
Here are just a few ideas for how to do that:
• Take the stairs. Every time you skip the elevator and walk up a flight, you burn calories, tone some of the muscles you care most about toning, and wake yourself up too.
• Don’t waste time looking for the closest parking space. Purposely park so you have to walk a little.
• Walk as much as possible. Think of ways you can get in a little extra walking.
• Don’t procrastinate. When you think of a job that needs doing, get up and do it.
• Choose activities that force you to move. Try gardening, sweeping the driveway, dance classes, or mall walking.
• When you watch TV, get up and stretch periodically. Do the same thing at work.
• Sometimes try putting your TV in front of a treadmill and slowly walking while you watch. Go slow enough you aren’t distracted. You’ll be surprised how quickly it feels natural.
• Keep two five-pound exercise balls or weights in a convenient place where you will see them. Several times a day stop and do a short routine to exercise your upper body. It only takes a minute or two and it loosens up tight muscles.
Try incorporating ways of moving more in your daily life. You’ll feel better and be better equipped to serve God and others in your new life!
Power Up!
W
henever the word
exercise
is mentioned, lots of people groan. I’ll tell you a secret: I used to groan too! My husband tried to get me to exercise regularly for years and I just hated it. Walking on a treadmill was boring to me, and I always made excuses of being too busy. (We should stop saying, “I don’t have the time” regarding exercise, because what we really mean is, “That thing falls too far down on my priority list.”)
One day as I was looking at myself in the mirror I sensed God saying in my heart that I needed to get on a good exercise program if I wanted to be strong for what He has called me to do. Dave telling me to exercise seemed to aggravate me, but when God told me it had a different effect on me. I went to a gym and started working with a trainer, and it has been one of the single best things I have ever done in my life. My energy level is amazing, and I lost almost two pant sizes, which would make any woman happy.
Fortunately, gyms don’t have a monopoly on exercise. There are thousands of ways to get good exercise, and most don’t cost a lot of money, require special equipment, or sidetrack your day. Exercise can be something you look forward to doing if you find what is right for you. Perhaps walking is what you enjoy, or golf or tennis. Maybe you prefer to exercise at home by yourself or would enjoy being in an aerobics class. There are lots of choices, but the bottom line is we need to be active. You might wear a little gadget that measures the steps you take every day. It can become a goal to walk five thousand steps or more each day. I am convinced that God will customize a plan for you if you are willing to do it. In addition to traditional exercise, make an effort to keep your body active in as many small ways as possible.
Sometimes it is a good choice not to use every convenience offered to us. Some forced “inconveniences” are necessary because today we use our bodies so little. We have an abundance of appliances requiring no more than the push of a button to operate. Very few of us have jobs that involve exercise, and most of our leisure activities are spent with our feet up too. This is a new development, and a potentially deadly one. Human beings were made to exercise. Our bodies are fit together with joints because God expected we would be moving a lot.
Human beings were made to exercise. Our bodies are fit together with joints because God expected we would be moving a lot.
We don’t read in the Bible about Noah’s workout routine or Moses’ Pilates session, because everything they did in life involved exercise. Before vehicles, electricity, and machines, everything in the world was run by human power or animal power. If you wanted to get somewhere, you walked. If you needed to bring something with you, you carried it. You did laundry by hand, chopped your own firewood, and ground your own grain. This physically active lifestyle may have been one of the reasons for the incredible longevity of these biblical characters.
The best walker of all may have been Jesus. He routinely walked from His home in Galilee to Jerusalem—a distance of about 120 miles! Over the course of His ministry, He must have walked thousands of miles. In Jesus’ day people thought little of walking ten miles. And because they did it all their lives, they had the well-developed bodies to accomplish such long walks with ease. Once when I was in Moscow, I noticed most people were slender. When I asked why, I was informed that most of them had no automobiles and walked everywhere they went.
Even as recently as 1920, people in American towns and cities walked on average nearly two miles to and from work or school, in addition to whatever exercise they got while working. That walk alone burned about two hundred calories per day, which is worth twenty pounds a year in lost weight. When we traded in our daily walk for the convenience of a car, we didn’t realize we were getting twenty pounds in the bargain.
The benefit of weight-loss and a better appearance is just the tip of the iceberg. Just a few of the conditions you can help prevent through exercise are heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, asthma, depression, and gastrointestinal ills. You’ll get fewer colds, feel less stress, and look great too. Less fat, more muscle, better tone, straighter posture.
Great things happen when your sneaker hits the pavement and your heart starts pounding.
Eat Fat—The Right Kind
M
any nutritionists in the “Low-Fat Wars” of the eighties and nineties told us fat was the enemy. If we could just cut the fat in our diet, they told us, we would lose weight. Soon a horde of low-fat products appeared on store shelves to help us: low-fat cookies, low-fat ice cream, low-fat cheese and chips and frozen dinners. And we snapped them up. We cut the butter, the oil, the meat, and the mayo. We ate every low-fat product known to man. And you know what happened? We got fatter.
The percentage of obese Americans doubled in those two decades from 15 percent to 30 percent. The percentage of overweight children
tripled.
Women now eat 335 more calories per day than they did thirty years ago. How can this be? How can we cut fat and gain weight and even damage our overall health?
Women now eat 335 more calories per day than they did thirty years ago.
The answer is, the nutritionists who told us to cut fat simply did not know what they were talking about. The whole notion that fat made us fat came from the knowledge that, ounce for ounce, fat has more than twice as many calories as protein or carbohydrates. So replace the fat with an equal weight of something else, and we eat fewer calories, right?
Well, technically, yes. When low-fat diet proponents studied people in the lab, prepared their meals, and measured every calorie they consumed, replacing grams of fat with grams of carbs, it worked just fine. The people lost weight. No matter that they were starving, distracted, and grumpy. That wasn’t part of the study. The message went out far and wide: Low-fat, high-carb is your ticket to health and weight loss! Fat is a dirty word!
Unfortunately, things got a little more complicated when real people started trying this diet. Sure, a gram of carbohydrates has fewer calories than a gram of fat, but it turns out that doesn’t help much, because the gram of fat is much better at making you feel full. The carbohydrate just makes you want more, so you eat more. The percentage of calories we get from fat dropped from 37 percent to 32, while the percentage of calories from carbohydrates rose from 45 percent to 52.
Other problems came with swapping fat for carbs. Carbohydrates are types of sugar molecules. They don’t taste sweet on our tongue because they are too big to fit onto our sugar taste buds, but the body breaks them down into sugar molecules almost instantly. Machines can do it too: corn is a starch that doesn’t taste very sweet, but corn syrup is the exact same stuff broken down into little bits, and you know how sweet that is.
