Weight loss success: Day 30

Quitting a habit of excess is easier when you understand the pleasure involved. Many lifers have achieved 25 days of success with their addiction. But temptation is still severe. It will stay severe until you learn the habit of focusing on the pleasure you now have. Your health is improving. This brings you long term pleasure. Think about this every day. Your medical bills will be lower giving you long term pleasure. Remind yourself daily. Now you feel better. This is a huge long term pleasure. Every time you are tempted by food remind yourself twice that you have the tremendous long term pleasure of feeling good. Obviously some days you will be in a bad mood. But with moderation you will always feel better consistently than you used to feel with a lifestyle of excess.

A desert or snack gives you a few minutes of pleasure. Often not quite as much as you think it does. Feeling better because of moderation gives you hours of pleasure every day. Notice it – appreciate it.

Feeling good increases your happiness. Say 5-25 times each day: I highly value the long term pleasure that feeling good from moderation gives me.

How to Never Stumble

2nd Peter 1 verse 3: His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life ⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶ and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷ and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ⁸ For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers and sisters,^[a] make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, ¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

To never stumble pursue goodness. Dr. Calvin Miller said:

• Realize that God is the source of all goodness. Seek to draw closer to Him, and express your love for Him. As you do, He will recreate you so that you naturally love goodness as He does and are motivated to obey His laws. Live to please God because you love Him.
• Meditate on God’s Word and ask the Holy Spirit to show you how you should apply it to every aspect of your life. Read a Bible chapter then think about what it means for 5 minutes.
• Be aware that other people are watching as you make decisions. When you choose good, you honor Christ and bring Him glory as His representative. But when you choose evil over good, you discredit His name and cause others to turn away from pursuing Him.
• Imitate Christ’s life by showing love for others. Seek to serve others in love whenever you have an opportunity.

2. We acquire knowledge by reading the Word, going to church – I watch a Robert Morris sermon every week day as well.
3. We have talked a lot about self-control. Pray about it, research it and improve self-control every day.
4. Perseverance means to never quit trying:

Battles are fought in our minds every day. When we begin to feel the battle is just too difficult and want to give up, we must choose to resist negative thoughts and be determined to rise above our problems. We must decide that we’re not going to quit. When we’re bombarded with doubts and fears, we must take a stand and say: “I’ll never give up! God’s on my side. He loves me, and He’s helping me! I’m going to make it!- Joyce Meyer

C.S. Lewis Quotes About Perseverance

God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

Romans 5:3-4 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

5. Godliness:

The idea that best expresses the idea of godliness in the Pastoral Epistles is the Old Testament expression, “to fear the Lord,” which was almost a synonym of “believer” under the Old Covenant. Someone who fears the Lord does not live in terror of God, but has a healthy respect for God and seeks in both heart and in action to “love God” and not be offensive to God.

And so we come back to Paul’s teaching to Timothy said to “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (4:7b-8)

In what ways did you train to become godly which have fallen by the way side. Were you changing for the better when you trained?

6. Mutual affection: It is the love we have for those who are like us, for those who share our values.  In the world of Christ-followers – Peter’s world of 2,000 years ago – mutual affection would refer to those who share our faith: affection we have for those who worship with us, who are in our church.

To overcome an addiction it is best to take the Bible very literally. If it says it, I believe it and I will live it. Others have other opinions about how to interpret the Bible. Don’t fight with them – explain what you believe and then try to find common ground with them.

Pray: Father, help me to have mutual affection for my Christian friends. Help me to love them, have peaceful fellowship with them and respect for them.

7. Love: Pray for God to take away your _____ and fill you with love. Focus on getting rid of wrong thoughts and actions and replacing them with the Holy Spirit who is love. I pray to be filled with love all the time – sometimes 25 times each day.  Some of us have plenty of empty space in our life that could be filled with Jesus love. Would we be happier if we were more filled with love? Would addiction lose its firm grasp if we were more filled with love?

The Bible says that if we do these things we will never stumble and we will go to heaven. What will you do today to focus on doing these things every day?

Read Matthew 2 Proverbs 25 and 2nd Corinthians 11

Weight loss success comes from developing new habits. Feel free to repeat this program as many times as it takes to develop new habits.