WEIGH DOWN DIET week 1

As I stated on New Year’s Day, I will be logging my struggles and hopefully my accomplishments with weight loss once a week. So, here we go….week one.

On New Year’s Day my husband’s family scheduled their Christmas. As I’m sure it is with most families in the United States, family Christmas’s are code for ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT-ALL-DAY-LONG celebrations. So, the very day I start my Weigh Down Diet, I was hit with food temptation alamode. We started out at a buffet restaurant which literally had every type of food you could even imagine. Then after dinner, we went back to my mother-in-laws where she laid out her schmorgusborg of tasty little treasures. Now, I’m sure all your mothers and mother-in-laws are wonderful cooks, however, until you have tasted the delectable morsels that my mother-in-law can create you have no idea what the word temptation truly means. I did more praying than I did anything that entire night. My husband even commented on the fact that I didn’t eat that much – SCORE! Day one down……150 to go.

I finished the night off reading in Gwen Shamblin’s book, The Weigh Down Diet, chapter one. She likened our struggles with any temptation we might face whether it is food, alcohol, drugs, sexual lust, money, etc. to the struggles the Israelites faced while spending their forty years in the desert of testing. She stated on page 10…

“But before God would let His children inherit the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, He took them on a journey through the Desert of Testing. Deuteronomy 8:2, 3 says, ‘Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.’”

In order for us to learn anything, we must first be humble and bow to God, not to food (or anything else for that matter!) I’m just hoping I can learn these lessons and it doesn’t take forty years! I must say food isn’t a huge temptation until the evening. I get my food-temps on come supper time and when the boys in the house start their munching rituals. I failed miserably on several evenings. I’d eat passed full and then afterwards, the guilt. But as in anything, there is always tomorrow. I woke up and started again. Changing of heart is never going to be an easy thing – nor is it going to be fast. More praying, less eating.

Something that Gwen preaches more than anything is filling up on God, not food. When you are tempted to eat AND ARE NOT HUNGRY the first thing you need to do is either get on your knees and pray or open the Bible up. The passage I have turned to to help me when I am struggling to not eat that left-over cookie, sneak that last bite of steak, or inhale a bag of potato chips is 1 Peter 5:8-9

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

If you are going through anything like I am right now, I hope my struggles can give you comfort – you have another sister out there in the world undergoing the same kind of suffering! Give thanks for that! Though the scales haven’t shown a loss, I do feel like I’m better than I was December 31st. Maybe I'll be able to report a more encouraging post next week. We'll see!

0 POUNDS LOST 146 DAYS TO GO