june2006

My pastor shared this with our congregation not long ago and although he wasn't referring to getting in shape, it sure does apply and I wanted to use his visual to share with you.

Have you ever gone into a store to purchase a bike and you see the bike you want all put together on display. You tell the store employee that you want that bike and they tell you they will have it ready for you at the cashier. When you get to the cashier, you see this flat box with a picture on the front of the bike. You say to yourself, "NOOOOO, I want the bike that is all put together! I don't want it all in pieces! You have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to put this all together!"

We all dread those two words "Assembly Required". The thought of reading directions written for college engineer graduates and looking at the hundreds of pieces just puts a spirit of dread in you.

But that is how our weight loss journey is. We see that picture on that box, and that is our HOPE. Our vision, our prize of what we want and inside are all the pieces and instructions and so we have to have FAITH to know that we will figure it out, we will get these pieces together and we know it will take time and HARD WORK and we know it won't be an easy task.

But once we get that beautiful bicycle all put together, then we can be proud at what we have accomplished, hop on and take the greatest ride of our life.

I think that visual is such a great way to look at this!

It is easy to see how diets wreck our metabolism. Any diet that tries to cut back drastically on anything from calories to carbs is doomed from the start because it doesn't work with how the human body works. It seems logical: eat less, burn more, lose weight, but the only true way to lose weights is to burn more calories per day than we eat. Our body's natural instinct isn't to keep reviving your metabolism once your food intake goes down because not long after you start depriving your body, it is going to lower your metabolism to match the food coming in. This explains why we are successful the first few weeks of a diet and then even though you continue to stick to the diet, the weight loss stops and although you eat like a bird, no more is lost.

Diets also can cause you to feel sluggish, depressed, cravings for "real food" which leads to sneaking forbidden foods and slipping off the diet and then the weight comes back with a vengeance and you end up bigger than you were to start with. Diets can also imprison you and cause you to resent them which in the end, causes you to stop dieting.

A slow metabolism also causes you to lose muscle, which is what is needed to burn more calories. The more lean muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even while sleeping!

When you go on a diet, you have to go off it and the more you go on and off, the more messed up your metabolism becomes. The key is to fix our metabolism and make lifetime changes that we can live with forever, not temporary ones. Temporary diet = temporary loss.

The good news is that there are plenty of things you can do to fix your metabolism. After over 30 years of messing mine up, I was able to get mine working well in 5 months and high functioning in about 18 months. Here are 5 ways to boost that metabolism:

1. EXERCISE

2. EAT BREAKFAST (don't skip any meals, especially breakfast!)

3. DRINK WATER

4. SLEEP WELL

5. STAY ACTIVE (you can burn an extra 350 calories a day by doing this. Take the stairs, park far from the store, walk and move as much as you can)

You may have an eating disorder if:

You have an intense fear of becoming fat or gaining weight

You struggle with eating patterns you feel powerless to stop.

You experience an extreme hatred of your body

You abuse diet pills, laxatives, or even illegal drugs to help you lose weight.

You binge at least two days a week for a 6 month period

You purge after eating either by vomiting or compulsive exercise.

You eat large amounts of food when you are not physically hungry.

You eat alone because you are embarassed at how much you eat or what you eat.

You feel disgusted, guilty or depressed by the way you eat

For women: Your menstrual cycles stop or become irregular

If you think you might have an eating disorder, I want to encourage you to tell someone you trust today. Looking at the past, I was a bit borderline with some of those responses and if it were not for the wonderful people in my life, I could have gone down an eating disorder path. This is bondage and if you are in this, you need to be freed today and be at peace with your food and body. Being healthy should represent freedom! So talk to someone right away and don't let this control you any longer.