Practice Diligence in Your Daily Habits

As you are working on your weight, I recommend you start your day with prayer for these three things every day: wisdom, courage and patience. You’ll need wisdom to discern the right things to do for your health, courage to do the right thing, and then patience to keep doing the right thing until you reach your ideal size and then beyond to maintain it.

“The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty; but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty” (Prov. 21:5).

Asking for help through prayer gives you an edge, in that you won’t have to just rely on your own human strength. Take advantage of your access to God through Jesus Christ, and you will reach your wellness potential more quickly, easily and joyfully.

Once you’ve got your day anchored in prayer, then you’ll need to plan. Think about your routine and how you might fit healthy eating and physical activity into your day. Can you pack a healthy lunch? Check out a restaurant’s website for good nutritional options if you are going out? Go for a walk after work? Don’t leave your day to chance. If you do that, you’ll likely fall back into old habits, and you all know where those lead!

So every day, be diligent in planning your day so that you will be successful in being healthy for that day. Put all of your focus and energy to staying on target for just that day. If you find yourself wanting to return to your old habits, then go back to your vision. Really see yourself as if you’ve already reached it and yourself practicing healthy habits to reach it.

Consider this: You can’t go anywhere unless you have already gone there first in your mind. So make your vision more real than the memory of practicing the unhealthy habits, and that is the direction in which you’ll go.

Physical Freedom Tip

Let’s start adding some fruits and vegetables into your diet, because eating more of them is the simplest and fastest way to achieve better health. Now, I’m not talking about fruits covered in sugar or vegetables drenched in cream sauce and fat. I mean keeping it simple and as close as possible to the way God made them.

A good place to begin is to add two fruit snacks per day, one in the morning and one in the evening. I recommend sticking with the higher-fiber fruits, like apples, pears, oranges or a cup of frozen berries.

For vegetables, I’d recommend adding at least two servings of green vegetables for lunch and dinner. This can be a salad, some steamed broccoli, spinach, stir-fry vegetables or turnip greens. These vegetables provide tons of vitamins, minerals and fiber to fill you up but with little calories. They will become your best friend in your weight-loss quest.

Physical Freedom Assignment

Check out the following website: World’s Healthiest Foods. Under the fruit and vegetable listings, choose a few that you like. Start planning how you can include those in your daily diet as recommended above. If you want to start with adding one fruit or vegetable, that’s OK. Just work your way up, and stay the course.

Kimberly Taylor is the author of The Weight Loss Scriptures and many other books. Once 240 pounds and a size 22, she can testify of God’s goodness and healing power. Visit takebackyourtemple.com and receive more free health and weight-loss tips.