I Really Should . . .

January. Time to buy a new mattress. Right? All the ads proclaim it.

Truthfully, I don’t need a new mattress. Or do I?

I surprise myself by how easily I entertain the thought of buying a new mattress  just become some advertising executives decided to launch a buy-a-mattress-now campaign. Scary! And why January? Did my current mattress suddenly become unfit on January 1?

I have to force myself try to take a step back and evaluate. Do I really need a new mattress?

No.

Apparently January should also be the month I start exercising and dieting. Not a bad idea. And, frankly, I know this will do me more good than a new mattress.

Back in March I wrote a blog titled Let’s Together in which I wrote about my friend  encouraging me to start exercising: http://aftonrorvik.com/blog/2015/03/09/lets-together/ .Linda and I agreed to work on it together by using a fitness app called My Fitness Pal: https://www.myfitnesspal.com.

So, last March (not January, mind you) I started. I set a goal for weight loss and recorded the food I ate every day. I also increased the steps I took every day. My goal was modest—lose one pound a week. Linda and I regularly messaged each other through the app to cheer each other on or offer a word of congratulations.

I didn’t do it because some ad told me I should; I did it because I knew I needed to do it. True confession here—at my annual checkup that month, my doctor handed me a sheet of information about a low-fat diet. Hint! Hint!

So, my friend and I got to work.

And several months ago, I met my goal. Yahoo!!! What I didn’t anticipate was that in the process I established healthier eating and exercise patterns. Truthfully, I didn’t feel like I worked that hard at it. I just got smarter about what I ate and how I exercised.

In her new book, Love and Care for the One and Only You (http://ow.ly/X4Awy), Michelle Medlock Adams describes her fitness journey, one similar to mine. She also connects the dots between faith and fitness as do I. Finally, she offers practical suggestions, based on her many years as a fitness trainer.

In one of her Healthy Hints sections (p. 126) Michelle writes,

One tip that can help you stay on track with healthy eating is to simply record what you’re eating, following the rule: “If you bite it, you write it.” By keeping a food diary, you can chart your progress and learn from your patterns. In fact, recent studies reveal that people who kept a food diary six days a week lost about twice as much weight as those who only kept records one day a week or less.

She also writes about the importance of discovering the reason behind our eating patterns. I discovered that I stress-eat. My fitness journey has involved learning to recognize and acknowledge the stress in my life and then find ways to address it that don’t involve eating—prayer, coffee with a friend, journaling, walking, watching a Hallmark movie. . . .

Michelle explains it well.

Emotional eating, which we use as a distraction from stress, sorrow, emptiness, pain, and boredom, is always a speedy satisfier but never a permanent solution. The reason we turn to food, even when we’re not hungry, is because our souls are weary and discouraged, and food is tangible. Or, possibly, we associate food with pleasant memories so we automatically go back to what we know.

Whatever the reason for emotional eating, whenever you find yourself going down that road, stop and think: What am I really craving right now? Am I really craving ice cream, or am I truly craving something more permanent or satisfying?

When we are able to identify that we’re not really hungry for food but rather for God, we have won the battle (p. 156).

So, may I encourage you this January, whether or not you decide to buy a mattress, to consider setting an eating/fitness goal? After all, your body will last longer than a mattress.

Cheering you on!