I'll be honest. I used to wonder how people could get up early in the morning to go jogging. I stared at people who ate salads without salad dressing in absolute awe. I was envious of the girls at the gym wearing the skimpy workout clothes on their perfect bodies. I couldn't help but ask myself why they had willpower to stick with a diet plan, and at the time, I didn't. I was ashamed of the fact that I was too undisciplined to get up at 5:00 am every morning to workout. Instead, I preferred to sleep an extra hour or two or three. Those thoughts were almost always accompanied by feelings of shame, failure, and doubt that this time would be any different.
To this day, I still don't know the answer to the question. When I see a woman pushing her kid in a stroller as she runs, I don't know whether it's a normal thing for her to be at the track every day, or if she dragged herself out of bed kicking and screaming for the first time since giving birth. And neither do you! The person in the restaurant eating a vegetable plate may be doing so for the first time since falling back into their old, unhealthy eating habits 6 weeks ago. Likewise, the girl in the skimpy workout clothes who looks like she's having the time of her life on the treadmill may be working out because she gained 10 pounds, and for the first time in her life she realizes she's going to have to make some changes to her lifestyle to keep her weight under control. She's singing to the music not because she's having fun, but because she's trying to find a way to get through another workout session just like you! You can speculate all day about what motivates another person to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle, but it's a fruitless exercise because you'll never know the truth unless the other person tells you. Sometimes the truth of the matter is that the person has not adopted a healthy lifestyle. On the contrary, the individual whose body you’re coveting may be at the gym to mask the fact that she binges and purges regularly, but to all the world she simply appears to be another workout junkie. The person who is rapidly losing weight could have had gastric bypass surgery or suffer from an illness. Nevertheless, the enemy wants you to make unfair comparisons and dwell on those negative thoughts in order to belittle you in your own eyes. He wants you to measure yourself against everyone else and find yourself lacking. He wants you to covet someone else's healthy and fit-looking body without knowing that person is just two (2) payments away from being unable to afford to have the lap band implanted on their stomachs to help them lose weight tightened again. To this day, I don't love to work out, and I still don't fully understand the people who do. However, I do love my lord! Consequently, I count it as a simple thing to show Him I love and worship Him by obeying His commands to eat and drink for His glory and maintain the temple of His Holy Spirit by exercising. My God is worthy of the sacrifice to eat right and exercise because of the price He paid for me on the Cross where He put to death gluttony and idolatry to heal me by His stripes and make me the new, healthy and fit creature that I desired in my heart to be. If you count Him worthy of those same sacrifices, you'll discover that it's not your willpower that makes you choose to eat healthy foods and beverages. It's not self-discipline that causes you to rise early to walk in your neighborhood. On the contrary, when you surrender to His will in faith, love, and obedience, a strength exchange takes place whereby God's strength is perfected in your weakness, ‘For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:1). If you want God to work in you to make you healthy and fit for life through Christ, ORDER YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY! In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God! Do not procrastinate! Order your copy on Amazon and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!
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Ann Wooten Taylor
Ann is an attorney who has been licensed to practice law in the State of Arkansas since 2004, practicing in the areas of child abuse and neglect, special education, and unemployment insurance law. Mrs. Taylor is also the C.E.O. of Eating as an Act of Worship Ministries and a Christian author. Her first non-fiction, Christian book entitled, "Eating as an Act of Worship Workbook" was published and released by Life to Legacy Publishing in 2015. Her second book, the "Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher's Edition" was published and released in December 2016. Archives
January 2019
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