Plan for failure.  Hey — don’t panic!  I didn’t say “plan to fail.”  You are planning to win.  But along the path to the finish line there will be many stumbles and falls.  You will lose some battles on the way to winning the war.

So get ready for the temporary defeats so they won’t become permanent ones.  Decide how you will deal with lapses from your plan.

One book I read recommended setting a weekly weight loss goal — say two pounds. If at the end of the week you haven’t lost two pounds, you go into extreme mode until those pounds are gone.  He recommended eating only nuts, seeds, and vegetables — a sort of modified fast — until you are at your goal. Then you go back to the regular plan.  You might want to do a juice fast, or even a water fast, to get you back on target.  If you have a bad week, you make up for it.

Don’t think that will work for you?  How about an extra exercise regimen?  If you eat a dessert, figure out how many calories it contains.  A piece of chocolate cake might have 500 calories, for instance.  It takes 25 steps to burn 1 calorie for most folks.  So you would need to add 12,500 steps to your regular total to make that chocolate cake go away.  Too much for one day for you?  Break it up and add extra steps each day for the next week until you have 12,500 extra steps logged.

That’s a lot of work — but it will make you appreciate what that cake means in terms of calories alone.  That’s without considering the effects on blood sugar and the whole chain of negative hormonal events that happen when you eat it.  It will also make you think twice before you eat another piece when it is offered to you.

The most deadly thought pattern is, “Oh well, I’ve blown it now. I might as well pig out.” You drop into a “fail” pattern. Each time you go there, it’s harder to get out.  So don’t go there.  Plan to get up again immediately.

One of my favorite verses is Micah 7:8,  “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.”

It’s a good motto!  I recommend that you make it your own.

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown