Cockiness

“Define your week by obedience, not by a number on the scale.” -Karen Ehman

I’m falling fast into discouragement again.  Yesterday was a terrible day.  I’m in my third week of this weight loss plateau and doing everything I can to bust it.  I woke up feeling terrible from drinking diet soda the night prior (which I have now decided to give up).  I slogged through work in a fog and had to do some administrative discipline, not my forte.  I got to the gym and was miserable…I couldn’t even keep up my normal pace, I just wanted to leave before I even walked in the door.  I forced myself through it, I mean, a crappy workout is better than no workout, right?  Then I headed to back PT and sat in my minivan almost in tears because I just didn’t want to go.  I went anyway, and cried through the first ten minutes (thank God for patient PTs and techs).  I don’t know what my problem was yesterday, I was just in a bad way all around.

This quote stood out to me this morning when I sat down at my desk to have some devotional time before starting my work.  I think I’ve discovered the root of my downward spiral: cockiness.  At the start of my weight loss, I was in constant conversation (prayer) with God to get me through minute by minute.  I’ve become lax.  I’ve had a taste of a little success and have not relied as deeply on my sole source of motivation and encouragement.  It’s time to pull in the reigns again on all fronts.

What this looks like:

• Get back to constant conversation with God over every. little. thing.  Each bite I take, each thought I have, every movement I make
• Continued daily devotions, without exception, focusing on what I need to be working on
• Tidying up my eating.  I’ve gotten a little free with my eating, especially on weekends–not overeating, just making choices that could have been better.  Just because I have the availability in my eating plan to eat it, that doesn’t mean I should.
• Exercising properly.  It’s just 40 minutes out of my day.  Bite the bullet and just do it, and if I’m going to do it, do it right–no sniveling.

When I’m living in obedience, I’m doing what I need to be doing to live a free and healthy life.  When I’m in my head, I’m doing what *I* think is best, and not what God has shown me to be best for me.  I have confessed this to God this morning and asked for forgiveness.  Now it’s time to walk again in obedience to God’s leading, and not my own–remembering that it’s not “me against the world” but that it’s me following the One that’s gone before me to pave the way.