Name your many diets

Name your many diets; count them one by one.  I’m serious!  I want you to make a list of every diet you have been on since Jr. High School.  Now, ask yourself why none of them have worked.  I know none of them have worked because if they had, then why have you been on so many?  Let me let you all in on a little secret.  Every one of those diets probably does work!  Jenny Craig, Weight-Watchers, Biggest-Loser, to name a few.  All of them are based on the same simple principle.  Calories in, calories out.  If you eat more than you burn, you gain weight.  If you burn more than you eat, you lose weight.  It’s not rocket science.  So looking at your long list of diet mishaps, why are you still overweight?

I am sure you are ready for me to answer that question but the truth is, I can’t!  The answer is different for everyone.  The starting point for most everyone is the same: You have a food addiction.  The rest of the issue is for you to discover.  A food addiction is a symptom.  What is it that the addiction is feeding? (Pardon the pun!).  This is the part where you have to stop putting on a new band-aid (aka- diet) and look at the “infection” so to speak.  Ask yourself some hard questions.

#1-  When I am stressed, do I tend to binge eat?  If so, when did it start?

#2-  Do I associate food with comfort?  If so, why?

#3- Do I self-sabotage my diet because I am afraid to succeed?  If so, why do I hide behind my weight?

#4-  Do I take emotional pain to food instead of to God?

These are just a starting point to help you figure out the answer “WHY?”  If you don’t start with the root then I PROMISE your list of failed diets will grow longer and longer.  By the way, this teaching holds true with any addiction.  Smoking, alcohol, over-spending, etc, etc.  Fix the root and then you will produce good fruit in your life.