Your Gift To God: A Fit and Healthy YOU!

By Diana Chaloux

Raise your hand if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to “lose weight”. O.k. so I can’t actually see you right now, but I’m going to guess that many of you are saying, “Yes, that’s me!”

Here’s my question. Why do you want to lose weight this year? There are a plethora of reasons that people want to lose those unwanted pounds, many which get packed on during the holiday months! The motivation to lose weight could be to feel good in the clothes that you wear, to walk with confidence, to look better for your spouse, to set a good and healthy example for your children, to improve your health, get off blood pressure or cholesterol medications, and reduce your risk of heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular disease. These are just a few of the most common examples.

The above motivators are all excellent reasons to engage in healthy exercise habits and provide your body with proper nutrition in order to create a more fit and healthy body to live in. But there is a motivator even more powerful than all of these physical and earthly reasons, the opportunity to offer a fit and healthy You as a gift to God. God provided you with a body to live in, and what a gift to Him it would be to offer it to his service in the best shape that it could possibly be!

Sounds great right! Keep in mind that becoming the fit and healthy person that you have the potential to be will require dedication, consistency and will power. All of these are gifts which God can and will provide you with if you ask for them in earnest. You must also realize that God has provided you with a choice in everything that you do, right down to the foods that you eat and the physical activity that you participate in. But what else does God have? Patience! So that means changes to your eating and exercise habits don’t have to happen overnight. Changing your behavior and adopting new and healthy habits which you can maintain for life can take a long time, but that should not stop you from taking those first steps to a fit and healthy you, today.

My advice is to start small and set some goals. Look into the future, three months from now, what fitness goals would you like to have achieved by that time? Write them down and keep them in a place where you can be reminded of them daily. Next take a look at where you are currently. How is your nutrition? What are you doing consistently for exercise? Once you have answered these questions, find one or two small changes you can make and commit to this week, which will help you get closer to your fitness goal.

Practice doing this each week, stay committed to the small goals that you make until they become a habit for you. Your weekly mini goals don’t have to be huge and overwhelming. Start small, it is better to make a small goal and stick to it, than to set a huge and unrealistic goal and fail to accomplish it. Can you make a small change to your daily eating patterns? Can you add a few minutes of extra physical activity into your day? Come up with a few ideas of your own and start making a commitment today. Better yet, pray and ask God to help you identify areas which you can work on.

I challenge you to make your New Year’s resolution a unique one this year. Don’t just resolve to “lose weight”, make the commitment to take the best care possible of the body that God has provided you with. Make the commitment to develop healthy eating and exercise habits this year, and present God with a wonderful gift, a fit and healthy You!

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” Romans 12:1