Adapted from Bod4God
by Steve Reynolds
Put God on your team
There are no excuses for not caring for your own body, the beautiful, finely-tuned machine God gave you as your place of residence on earth. So first, you have to get God on your team. I have a sneaking hunch that He has been hanging around waiting for you to get to this place. He wants your body to be all it can be. He has plans for you and for your life. He wants to help you, and He is able to do “above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
Proverbs 13:20 says, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” I had to choose wise people to be part of my team. I had to find people who would come alongside me as Aaron and Hur did for Moses, recorded in Exodus 17:12. Every time Moses held up his hands and stood for God, his team won the war. But when he dropped his hands because his arms were heavy, the team lost. Aaron and Hur came alongside to hold up his arms. Your team is crucial for winning the war on obesity. Who is going to hold up your hands? I intentionally sought out people who could help me. There were three kinds of people I chose for my team:
People Who Will Educate You
I chose students of health. I read. I studied. I talked to people who had also lost weight. But first and foremost, I talked to my doctor. You really must make a point to see a doctor before you begin any eating and exercise changes. My doctor played a major role in my weight loss and was always there to ask me how I was doing with my eating and exercising. For a long time I didn’t have any good news to report to him. I was a diabetic, and I was supposed to see the doctor frequently. I didn’t go because I didn’t want him to tell me again and again what I should be doing and wasn’t. Maybe you can relate to this. My doctor never backed down. He just kept asking. When I started exercising, he didn’t tell me I was doing well to exercise three times a week. He said, “You eat every day, why don’t you exercise every day?” I had to acknowledge he made a good point.
Read books, articles, and web pages written by people who can help you learn about good health. There is a huge amount of information available today, so there is no excuse for being ignorant about your health. “But books and magazines cost so much,” I hear you protest. Think of this educational material as an investment in your own body. You are worth it! If you truly can’t afford to own some books, use the public library. You’ll find plenty there to educate your mind about good health.
People Who Will Encourage You
Find some people who will encourage you. You need to have role models. As I said earlier, former Governor Mike Huckabee is my role model. I look to him as a great example. I’ve seen his life, and I’ve read his book on how he lost weight.
I’m also encouraged when I see all the people at Capital Baptist Church who have lost weight. I know this program — this lifestyle change — works, because I’ve seen it in action. If I were ever discouraged, all I’d have to do is sit down with Rich or Eric or any of the others and say, “Tell me your weight-loss story again,” and I’d be encouraged to go on. It is truly amazing what these participants, along with God’s help, have done about getting their bodies back to health.
People Who Will Equip You
Finally, we all need people who will equip us — those who can show us how to do what we’ve purposed to do. Many people are the same as I was. They don’t exercise. I think it would be great to have a personal trainer working with me on a regular basis, but I don’t. However, the first time I went to the gym to exercise, a personal trainer took me around to show me the machines. He explained how to use each piece of equipment at the gym without injuring myself and told me what each piece of equipment would do to help me. He taught me how to build my endurance on each apparatus.
One other equipping help is the Body & Soul exercise program held at our church. Perhaps joining such a program would work better for you than a gym workout. You have to find people and programs that can equip you for the long battle of losing weight. The good news is that after only a few days of exercise, you will begin to feel better than you have in a long time. That’s something to look forward to right now. What is true of the spiritual body is also true of the physical, and one can help the other: “The whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:16).