Thank God, in order to lose and main­tain weight, we don’t have to “diet”. We don’t have to starve and never eat foods we love.
We just need to make some per­ma­nent lifestyle changes to man­age our weight on a long term basis.
Here are 8 lifestyle changes a believer can make to man­age their weight for good:
 
(1) Don’t Keep the Wrong Foods in the House!
Temp­ta­tion is a beast and is the devil’s spe­cialty.  If we have empty high calorie/sugary foods in the house, it makes his job eas­ier for us to give up and give in to eat­ing these unhealthy foods.

Speak the Word of God when crav­ings hit and the enemy will be defeated.

 
(2) Replace the Wrong Foods with God­lier Foods

What are God­lier foods? Sim­ply foods that are not processed and that are nat­u­rally grown from the earth that are extremely nutri­tious for us. Fruits and veg­eta­bles. Most National Dietary Guide­lines sug­gest 6+ serv­ings of these com­plex car­bo­hy­drates a day. Have them more acces­si­ble and ready to eat.

 
(3) Lis­ten to your Body’s ‘Signal’

We all get it. A slight nudge in our bel­lies telling us that we have had enough food. But do we lis­ten? Do we stop? I’ll leave you to answer that one.

That sig­nal is a nat­ural mech­a­nism of the body cus­tomized by God alert­ing us that it has had enough food. Any fur­ther eat­ing is unnec­es­sary calo­ries that goes towards fat storage.

 

(4) Scan Prod­uct Labels for Calo­rie Content

Excess weight comes from excess calo­ries. We don’t have to check calo­ries for every morsel of food we put in our mouths — but we should have an idea.

It serves us very well to know that if we have a choice of two or more foods, and the calo­rie con­tent is avail­able to read, we should read it so that we can be able to make the wis­est choice.

 

(5) Eat Higher Fiber Foods

Higher fiber foods fills us up longer, pre­vent­ing us from con­sum­ing more calo­ries as a result of get­ting hun­grier sooner than if we ate foods with lit­tle to no fiber.  High fiber foods are also good for your health known to pre­vent dia­betes, heart dis­ease, and constipation.

 

(6) Drink A Lot more Water

It’s eas­ier to think that we are hun­gry when we are in fact just dehy­drated. It may be hard to tell the difference.

If you are feel­ing hun­gry and haven’t had water in the last hour, try drink­ing a glass and wait 10 – 20 min­utes to deci­pher whether you are really hun­gry or not. Drink­ing ade­quate water also helps speed up the weight loss process.

 

(7) Carry Healthy Snacks & Water with You

Get­ting caught hun­gry & thirsty some­where where there are no good food choices to make can cost you hun­dreds if not thou­sands of calo­ries in one day.  It can blow the top right of your weight loss goals and end up dis­cour­ag­ing you.

If you have some healthy snacks like fruit, nuts, cheese and some water on hand,  it will help hold you over until you can get to a health­ier meal.  The more calo­ries you avoid, the bet­ter your chances of los­ing weight.

 

(8) Get Active

You were prob­a­bly hop­ing I was going to skip this one. It’s so much eas­ier to just watch what you eat to lose weight & main­tain than to watch what you eat AND exercise!

But the truth is if you are doing both together, you are increas­ing your chances of weight loss and main­te­nance expo­nen­tially!

When cut­ting calo­ries and get­ting active, you are burn­ing the can­dle at both ends, your body will trans­form dras­ti­cally if you are CONSISTENT and make it a part of your lifestyle.

 

Mak­ing lifestyle changes can be dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing so it’s impor­tant to give your­self time to make the tran­si­tion. Lean on the Lord for help and guid­ance and he will get you through! For some­thing this impor­tant, he surely will!

 

 

You can get your free copy of the Spirit-filled fit­ness eBook, “One Foot Out the Door: A Christian’s Guide to Get­ting Active Once and For All” upon free sub­scrip­tion to this Min­istry Blog avail­able top right hand side of this page.

 

YOU will be blessed!