Happy Monday!

You may have noticed before that I have become a fan of Becky at So Very Blessed.  She has an amazing insight from her own personal journey.

For those of us who have battled the weight loss journey, this may sound familiar.  You beat yourself up with guilt and shame and when that doesn’t work, you do it again.  No matter how often you do it though, it still doesn’t work.  Maybe it’s a cop out.  Maybe it helps us avoid the real issue, that we need to change our hearts, our minds and then our actions.

I totally understand how difficult that is.  I have done it many times and I’m sure you realize that when we do something over and over, you have created a new habit.  This isn’t a good habit.

What if we could finally accept God’s grace and see ourselves through His eyes?  He sees our hearts and spirit, He knows our every struggle and still loves us.  He still offers His grace freely.

Maybe when we learn to accept that, we will be able to throw away all of the diets, the guilt and blame and finally love ourselves enough to nourish it properly and give God the glory for His wisdom and unconditional love.

Grace truly changes everything!

Pray Unceasingly!!

Lois

 Grace Changes Everything

Becky at So Very Blessed <becky@soveryblessed.com>

I know you know the cycle well.

#1 – Make a choice you know isn’t good for you.

#2 – Beat yourself up and berate yourself over it.

#3 – Determine to do better next time.

#4 – Do better for a while then end up right back at #1 again.

Most of the time, women email me telling me that they feel like failures because they just don’t have enough willpower to stick with their plan to do better.

I get it! I used to do the same thing.

What do you think would happen if you focused more on changing step #2 than #3?

I know beating yourself up feels productive.

It feels like you can punish yourself into making the right choice next time.

It feels like the best way to prove that you really are sorry.

It feels like you have to carry some shame before you can allow yourself to move on.

So….How’s that been working for you?

Can I suggest another way?

God’s grace is the most powerful weapon there is in breaking the cycle of sin.

That includes overeating…​and that’s not the only part of weight loss where His grace is needed!

 

Instead of beating yourself up for your mistakes, trade your guilt for God’s grace in these 6 times on your weight loss journey.

I can’t be trusted around food. I’ll never be able to do this. I’m such a failure. I have too

much weight to lose. I just overate…again. I could never run a mile. I’m fat so who would ever love me?

On my 100-pound weight loss journey, all of those thoughts went through my head at one time or another. And they weren’t just fleeting thoughts. They were thoughts that dictated my happiness, my self-worth, my confidence, and my insecurities.

Of course, it takes practical steps to lose weight, but you have to change the way you think before you will be able to change the choices you make.

The first step to accepting God’s grace in your weight loss journey is recognizing when the lies, the thoughts that do not line up with God’s Word, creep in.

Whenever you hear a voice whispering to you that you aren’t good enough, that voice isn’t God. You will notice a common theme in all of the topics below – the overriding voice is one of shame.

I’ve written about the difference between guilt and shame before. Guilt can be great for guiding your behavior, like your conscience telling you what choices are right and wrong.

But very quickly, that guilt can spiral into shame, which no longer tells you your action was wrong, but instead tells you that there is something wrong with who you are that you should be ashamed of.

It’s so hard to recognize it when it’s happening, but if you can start noticing when those lies creep in and start replacing them with God’s Truth, it could change the entire course of your weight loss journey.

Because, well, grace changes everything.