Saturday, January 28, 2006

How to control weight from a spiritual standpoint.

When I became pregnant with our son, I was wearing a size 6. Within a year after his birth I was wearing size 16. To say the least, I was horrified. How did this happen? Why did this happen? A few months later, I became pregnant again and decided that something had to be done about the weight problem. I turned to God for guidance, as I’m used to doing for every situation. At the time, I was home schooling 4 high school students and so for our PE time, we took a one mile walk 3 days a week. Mind you, one mile is only walking for 15 minutes, but it’s all I could manage. I wasn’t walking to lose weight. I was walking because I could. God gave me freedom, energy, joy, movement, etc and I needed to use that instead of just sitting around or chasing my son all over the house.
My eating habits changed too. But, not in the form of a diet. I just decided that over eating wasn’t what God wanted for me or any one. Was I making a god out of food? Was I giving more power to food than I was giving to God? As I sat down to each meal, I asked God if I needed the next bite. Materially speaking, we learn that our stomachs are actually only the size of our fist. So, why do we think we need an entire plate full of food. I know my fist isn’t that large. Anything more than a fist full seemed to be overeating. Oh, but the food tasts too good to eat just a little! But I had to question “Is God telling me I need to eat more? Or are these thoughts not from God?” I didn’t feel limited in any way about my eating. I wasn’t counting calories or obsessing over fat grams. Again, was I going to give calories or fat grams more power than I was giving God? Of course not!
The day after my daughter was born, I had lost twenty pounds from the time I became pregnant with her. After that, I increased my activity level by taking both children for walks around the neighborhood. Now, I could walk for an hour instead of just 15 minutes! For the past year I’ve been back down to the 130’s and it comes from my choice to not give power to food. I have so enjoyed turning to God for my fitness. Another thing I focused on was having a fit state of thought. Not only did I desire to be physically fit, but I knew I needed to be mentally fit as well. So, I began practicing questioning each thought. “Is this thought from God? Or am I letting the world around me take my thinking away from everything good and focus on the bad?” Every time we think a thought, we have a choice to think good, true, God-like thoughts, or we can think worldly, negative thoughts. I know which ones I prefer!

No comments: