With Jewell’s graduation dominating our thoughts the last few months, I’ve thought about my parents. They both passed away a few years ago, Dad in 2013 and Mom in 2014. While we can’t know what could have been, I have wondered if they had made a few changes in their lifestyle would they have been here for their granddaughter’s graduation? After the Christmas holidays, I added an extra ten pounds of weight. With those factors in my mind, I decided I wanted to lose weight – about 23 pounds or so. Losing weight is very similar to losing bad/sinful habits or adding righteous habits.
I set a goal, a realistic goal. Twenty-three pounds is a lot. I determined that number by learning what my weight should be, based on the body mass index (BMI). In order to have a healthy BMI, what should my weight be? I set that number as the weight I would like to be.
What is your goal, spiritually speaking? What do you want to do? What would you like to stop? Of course, stopping sins is extremely important and cannot, really, be “tapered off.” But some of these same principles will apply in stopping sins. But, what good habits do you want to begin and are they realistic? You might not have the time, the energy or stamina, or the mental ability to learn New Testament Greek, so that might not be a realistic goal. But, learning how to use Greek language helps for English readers could be a goal.
Then, I determined how many calories I needed to consume each day to maintain the weight for my goal. Observe that I’m now thinking in terms of daily behavior. To lose my desired weight, I set a goal for three months because I felt that three months was a timeframe that I could manage. So I knew how much I needed to lose each week and how many calories I needed to consume to lose that weight.
Thus, I had two calorie numbers. One was the number I needed to consume to maintain my weight. The other was the number I needed to consume to lose my weight in three months. Each day, if I ate calories closer to the higher amount (but under the target), I would lose weight, just over a longer period. If I ate calories closer to the lower amount, I would lose weight faster, staying on target to lose my goal within three months.
What are you doing each day, spiritually speaking, to reach your goals? If you are trying to stop a sinful habit, you’ve got to pray each day that God will help you say “no” to that temptation that day. Handle one day at a time (Matt. 6:34). Each day, you have to keep yourself away from those temptations. Change your behavior. Change your schedule. Change what you are doing in your free time.
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If you are wanting to begin a new spiritual habit, again, you need to do something every day. Pray each day. Read or study each day. Make an effort to serve someone in the congregation each day. Call someone on the sick list, in the hospital, or an elderly person at home, each day. There were a few days over the three month period, when I ate more calories than I should. So, I got back on track the next day. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t stay consistent. But, when you fall, pick yourself back up.
Thinking about my calories forced me to think about what I was/am eating each day. That’s one of the best long-term impacts of these past three months. Rather than consuming food, I think primarily of consuming calories. That helped me reach my goals.
I also increased my exercises each day. Just like the calorie consumption, my exercises were broken down into what should I do each day? The more exercises I did, the faster the weight would be lost. I set a goal to reach at the end of the three months (three sets of 100 jumping jacks, for example), and then slowly began adding repetitions to my daily exercise.
The long and short of the three month effort is that I have lost 20 pounds. Perhaps this process has changed my thinking with the long term result being that I will be at my grand-children’s graduations. Certainly, genetics is outside of my ability to control but food and exercise can be controlled.
Of course, one can be overweight and be in heaven. But, these principles can help us spiritually if they motivate us to overcome sinful habits we have or begin spiritual disciplines which would help us serve Jesus Christ.
–Paul Holland
