No Points, No Pre-Packaged Foods, Just Faith

I've been keeping a lid on this for a while, mostly because I didn't want to fail and bring discredit to God. But I've finally seen quantifiable results and I had to finally pass it on. The Lord has been good to me.

One of the things I knew I needed to do when I finished my novel was to take care of myself. Through long months of bashing my head against a wall, being up at all hours of the night writing, and generally spending weekends and all my free time stressing out over the mundane details of this particular scene or that particular character, I had become something of a shadow of my former self - a large 300 pound plus shadow. While I have never really cared one way or another for my physical condition, I wanted to get back into shape so that I could once again enjoy hiking and fishing and other outdoor pursuits.

The only problem with my plan was that I like food. A lot.

When you are an alcoholic, you need alcohol, but even you'd admit somewhere deep down that if you stopped drinking, it wouldn't kill you. Same thing with smoking. Really, deep down, you don't need alcohol or cigarettes or porn or any of the millions of myriad things we get addicted to. But food... that's another matter altogether. Everyone needs food. There is no way to get away from it. And so imagine telling an alcoholic that he doesn't need to stop drinking, he just needs to cut back to one small glass of beer a day. Yeah, right. Fat chance. Put any alcohol in front of the alcoholic and he'll just keep drinking.

So, how does one stop when one needs to keep eating, but manage it in a normal manner?

It occurred to me that in the past I had tried two methods. First, I had decided that I would only eat when I was hungry. That would help for a little while. Instead of eating whenever it was "time" I would only eat when I felt that first pang of hunger. But, of course, I didn't say what I would eat. And quite frankly, if you had to choose between a nice cheeseburger and a spinach salad, what would you choose? So, I realized that appealing to my body to stop myself from eating too much was a bad choice - akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house. The second method I had tried was to intellectually decide not to eat. After all, I KNEW what I needed to do. I KNEW what was good to eat and I KNEW how much exercise to do. Logic and right thinking would take care of the rest. I just had to listen intellectually to what my brain had to say and I would be just fine. Until my brain said, "I'm tired. I've been very good this week. One cheeseburger won't kill me. I'll just walk faster tomorrow." And then the next day, "I've been under so much stress lately, perhaps this isn't a good week to be dieting. I'll stop now and start up again next week." And then... well, you get the point. Intellectually, I was a dieting idiot. If the body was the fox in the hen house, the brain was like a Republican in charge of the treasury. It wasn't that the rules weren't there, but that they could be gotten around through incorrect justification.

Um... No body, no brain... am I out of options?

To be honest, I was kind of pissed off at myself. How weak was I? My body couldn't be trusted and my intellect was as leaky as a sieve. What kind of man was I that I couldn't force myself to stop eating? After all, it was just a choice wasn't it? The simplest thing we do on a daily basis. We make a choice. The answer is yes or no, this or that. Two outcomes and we know which one is the right one and yet, somehow, we still pick the wrong one - every time. How can that be?

It reminded me of sin.

And that was when I realized that the reason that I always chose the wrong outcome was that I was putting the authority behind the decision making process in the wrong place. Make a choice, let the body decide. Make a choice, let the brain decide. Each of these entities chose on the basis of the way they were feeling at that moment based upon hunger or desire. What I needed was an authority that would not waver, that would not change, and that would not allow me to stumble or fall. And so, I asked God to be my decision maker. I asked God to remind me what was the right choice to make and then hold me accountable for making that decision.

Simple. Make a decision. Always make the right choice. And then never worry about making the wrong choice because God will forgive me for being human if I should ever stumble. It can't be that easy, can it?

I started my diet around the middle of January. Last night, looking in the mirror, I suddenly noticed a new svelteness that I had not seen in the previous weeks. Today, I weighed myself and discovered that I had lost 17 and a half pounds - but more importantly, I had crossed under the 300 pound barrier for the first time in a long time.

I don't say this as a chastisement of people with a little more weight than others. People's body shapes and sizes are their own choice. I certainly never felt bad because I was overweight (in fact, many times I felt good ;) I just missed some things that I could no longer do. I'm not now losing weight to curry any sort of popularity or love. The kind of people that would like me more because I'm 200 pounds vs. 300 pounds are not the kind of people I want to associate with anyway. I'm saying this because I think we all have choices that we make consistently and we always seem to make the wrong choice again and again. Next time you're going to make that choice, ask God to help you make the right choice.

Its that simple. Yes or no. Right or wrong. Left or right. Everything comes down to a choice and if God backs you, you'll always make the right decision. No diet plans, no points, no calorie counting, no expensive nutritionists or psychologists, no nothing - just God and a choice.

(If you want to know more about my incredible diet method, please send me $19.95 plus shipping and handling and I'll send you a great book that will tell you all about how you too can make the right choices in life. Please specify whether 15th century English or modern English is your preference. ;)