I'm excited to have another guest blogger this week! Tara is a part of our GMG group and she has a gift for motivating others to lead a healthier lifestyle. Tara is a Beachbody Coach and when she's not working out with her husband or prepping meals, she's chasing around and loving on two precious little girls! At her house working out and eating healthy is a family affair. Today she shares with us her journey of becoming the woman God desires her to be on the inside AND outside!
As women, we seem to always place other’s physical and sometimes spiritual wellbeing, happiness, wholeness, and health above our own. This decision is one that we feel like we are making out of love towards our family and friends yet can direct our path down a tiresome road that will lead to self neglect, low self esteem, a spiritual drought, poor health, and even depression.
It is time we break that cycle! God made you! God wants you to take care of yourself so you can accomplish what no one else can for His kingdom! You are hosting the King of ALL Kings inside your heart! We would spend countless days, weeks, months, even years to prepare our home for a visit from an earthly King. We have a far bigger task than that! Our bodies are the temple of the Lord! He deserves to dwell in a temple made up of physical and spiritual wellbeing, happiness, wholeness, and health!
Just over two years ago, my husband and I began our healthy health and fitness journey. I phrase the description of our journey like I did because I had been on my own journey alone for years...and it was not a healthy one! I had always made health and fitness decisions that were based simply on seeing a certain number on that little black devil in my closet that many other much more lovingly refer to as a scale. My confidence was gained and lost when I felt like the number (which no one except me knew) reflected me being “in shape.” I grew up with three sisters, all of them taller than me, yet all of them weighed less than I did. I thought my weight should be less than theirs since my height was. I thought I was overweight because the BMI I calculated didn’t take into account my muscle mass. This is where my deepest, darkest secret stemmed from. I became a binge eater. I took caffeine pills. I took laxatives. I dehydrated myself. I did all this because my head was telling me that I was overweight if I weighed more than 125 since I am only 5’2”.
Oh! The times I was sick because of these unhealthy decisions I had made in order to reach that little number I had set in my mind so that I could feel confident! (twice reaching the point of having to have fluids at the hospital) The countless times my personal relationship with my husband was affected because I didn’t feel confident in my own skin! The times I lied to friends and family about why I was not eating when the truth was I had binged on thousands of calories and had chosen to not eat the next day to make up for the binge. The hours I would spend on the treadmill to burn off a certain amount of calories I had consumed. The caffeine pills that
caused me to be addicted to caffeine and the laxatives that caused me for a while to become dependent on them because I had abused them as well as my body. The selfish decisions I made in order to become what I had set in my mind to be healthy!
I hope you are able to see now why I described our journey that started two years ago the way I did with the double use of the word ‘health.’ Daniel and I began our journey working out together at home. Through a company I am now a coach with, I was taught how to eat properly to fuel my body with clean foods and work out with a purpose! I no longer spent exhausting hours running to burn calories. I learned that my body needed more substance to my workout, not necessarily more time.
That leads me to the thought of feeding our souls “clean” food and developing healthy spiritual habits that will make our spiritual life stronger. Everything that we allow our mind to be opened to, our brain to ponder on, and our heart to be changed by is what we are feeding our inner being. Each and everything that we do, as insignificant as it may seem, is moving us towards becoming spiritually stronger, weaker, or complacent.
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Philippians 4:8
Clean eating in the physical sense is ‘eschewing processed, packaged convenience foods laden with artificial additives in favor of real, whole foods that are as close to the source of production as possible, so you can live a better, longer life.’ This is honestly much harder to do in the physical sense than it is in the spiritual sense if you ask me and here is why: Though I try to avoid eating processed foods and am teaching my children to eat healthy as well, I do keep some processed food around my house for my girls. (They love their cheese balls and pop tarts...and unfortunately so do I!) These foods are available and convenient. Clean foods take time and effort to prepare. I must take time to prepare for the week ahead by cutting, chopping, baking, grilling, sautéing and portioning or else I will quickly find myself grabbing those convenient foods that aren’t clean.
Our spiritual life should honestly be a little more easily managed. We should be diligent in keeping our entire family fed by clean spiritual foods. Unlike unclean physical food, any amount of unclean spiritual food can be eternally life threatening. As a momma I can’t help but think about that for a time we can protect our children and keep them under our wing with little to no outside influences. I monitor everything about my children from what they watch and read, who they play with, what they hear, and what they wear. I feed their soul clean spiritual food with no tolerance for anything unclean. By protecting and keeping their hearts clean, it keeps me doing the same with mine!
Drifting my focus to the strengthening aspect of our health, exercise. It has become so much a part of Daniel and my lives that it has become something we need, desire, and feel unfocused without. This sure did not happen overnight! There were weeks of dread, sleep deprivation and half-heartedness when we began waking up extra early to get our day started with exercise.
But....then the results started to show! Our efforts were paying off! We both felt better from the inside out. We started to enjoy being sore! We felt invigorated after the strenuous workout.
Daniel and I developed a confidence as well as a stronger connection because of this shared discipline we were now incorporating in our lives. Thirty to forty-five minutes of purposeful hard work first thing in the morning made us stronger and more focused on keeping our body fueled with clean foods throughout the day. We began our day by working hard and did not want to mess up what we had done by eating something that was not good fuel for our body!
When we are focused on WHY we started the journey and celebrate each step it becomes a joyful one!
Oh the comparisons between exercise and spiritual strength! We need to spend time sitting at our Lord’s feet! We need to spend time studying His word to gain knowledge and understanding. We need to spend time in prayer to draw closer to Him. We need to open our hearts to hear our Lord’s voice and seek His guidance for our lives. Yes, those things take effort. It takes effort to be a God-fearing woman. It takes discipline. It takes hard work and perseverance. It takes purposefully directing each step we take in order to arrive at the end result that we want to achieve! We will grow weary along the way but it is so important to remember WHY we are on this journey and WHO is walking with us!
My journey on each of these paths will be lifelong. I hope I never become complacent in where I am and always remember my WHY! My family is my WHY! I want to be a confident and healthy wife to my godsent husband. I want to be a godly example of a healthy and spiritual woman to my girls. I can do neither of these things without my Lord!
I will leave you with this that I can apply to my spiritual as well as my physical life.
- Your children are NEVER an excuse but a REASON!
- Don’t compare yourself to others.
- Surround yourself with others with the same goals as you.
- Prioritize by placing things with lifelong and eternal value first.
- Always remember it will make you a better person...YOU ARE WORTH IT!
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