A Biblical Reset for January!!

 Lamentations 3:22–23, “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.”

Ladies Over 40:

Physiology with compassion
 -After forty, hormones begin subtle shifts. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone patterns change. Your basal metabolic rate nudges down. Sleep becomes more fragile. These aren’t moral failures; they’re biological processes. Treat them like information, not indictment.

1. The compassion principle
    Shame increases cortisol, and cortisol holds on to weight. When you respond to yourself with harshness, your body interprets that as stress. The first move toward sustainable change is kindness to your nervous system. That looks like two deep breaths before you eat, a pause before a decision, speak love to yourself, or an end of the day gratitude ritual. 
   
   
2. Small worship practices that change biology
    Let’s call habits “liturgies” — small, repeated acts that shape your soul and body. Three liturgies that matter:
   
   
   • Morning water 16-20 ounces + 25 grams of protein within 60 minutes of waking (stabilizes blood sugar).
   • A 12–20 minute walk mid-afternoon (lowers stress, improves insulin sensitivity).
   • A 15-minute meal-prep habit twice a week (reduces decision fatigue).

These are tactical things you can start right now. 

Week 1: The Mercy Move

• Choose one liturgy. Do it 5 days. Not 30 days. Five. This reduces pressure and builds trust.

Week 2: The Gentle Strength

• Add a 10–15 minute strength-mini: bodyweight squats, wall push-ups, and a single-band row. Two sessions this week.

Week 3: The Meal-Plan Practice

• Rotate three dinners you like. Make an extra portion each night. Your freezer and fridge will become your friend.

Week 4: The Sabbath Check

• Pick one day this week to notice: What nourished you? What drained you? No judgment — just noticing. And Sabbath doesn’t have to be Sunday; it’s whatever day works for you.

Lord Jesus, thank You that Your mercies are new every morning. Soften the hard edges in us that call for perfection. Give us courage for small acts of kindness toward our bodies. Teach us to steward what You have given with humility and joy. When we stumble, remind us You are not counting our failures — You are of

Are you sick of trying diet after diet and NOT losing weight?

Hey there friend, I'm Lindy Schlabach, Christian Fitness & Nutrition Coach. I gained 100 pounds in my late twenties and struggled for years to get it off. Seven years ago, I found a basic system that worked and has helped me lose 90 of those pounds. I’ve been working with women in online fitness and nutrition ever since to break chains of diet culture, embrace their bodies and fueling instead of dieting.

In this podcast, I'll teach you how to:

• • Lose Weight in a Way that honors God without obsessing about the scale
  • Meal Plan and Prep for Your Family
  • Follow a MACRO based plan that allows you to eat the foods you love.
  • Recognize and pray through triggers keeping you stuck.
  • I’ll help you Plan your week and schedule your self-care time.
  • Cultivate a spirit of self-discipline in your workouts you actually enjoy.
  
  It's time to give God your health journey and watch Him make you new, from the inside, OUT.

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Transcript

January Reset

Hey, sister, this is Lindy. If you're driving, I want you to put a hand on the wheel. And if you're sitting, set your phone down just for a moment.

Today, we're not doing a pep talk or talking about quick fixes. Today, I want to sit with you honestly and kindly about how January can feel and how God meets us there.

I want to talk about a strong biblical reset for January, really speaking to those ladies over 40 who are frustrated. You might be tired of New Year's promises. You may have a cupboard full of good intentions, but a heart full of old, familiar shame.

If that's you, take a breath, you're safe here. Let's do this together. Listen, I have set and quit so many New Year's resolutions over the years.

Now I say, Lord, lead me not to exaggerate and show me who needs me. Let's focus on integrity and service this year. No more diets, no more quick fixes, no more setting ourselves up for failure.

Let's choose a new choice with the Holy Spirit in the lead. Today's word comes from Lamentations, Chapter 3, Verses 22 to 23. It says, The faithful love of the Lord never ends.

His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh each morning.

I know we share this a lot, but I think it's so important to talk about. I want you to say that with me slowly. His mercies begin afresh every morning.

Thank you, Father, for fresh mercies every morning. It's not after you earn them. It's not if you were perfect yesterday.

His mercies are fresh every morning. Isn't that amazing? Thank you, Jesus.

Are you sick of trying diet after diet and not losing weight? Are you tired of doubting your ability to actually lose weight in a healthy way? Do you wish you could find a laid out for you plan that will help you stay accountable to your goals?

Hey friends, I'm Lindy Schlabach, Christian Fitness & Nutrition Coach. I gained 100 pounds in my late 20s and struggled for years to get it off. So grab your pre-workout and let's chat.

I would like to invite you to my free community on Facebook. You can join by subscribing to my email list. Once you subscribe to my email list at herweightlossmindset.com, I will send you the link to join.

We share every week fun recipes, encouragement, biblical encouragement, workouts, all kinds of fun things that will help you take a step towards your biblical weight loss goals. So go to herweightlossmindset.com and join my email list.

I promise you, I will never ever spam you.

My Reset Moment

So a few years ago, I work up on January 10th and found myself halfway through a doughnut that I did not want to eat.

And I remember the heaviest heaviness, not just in my body, but in my chest, in the loop thought, oh my gosh, Lindy, you always fail by the second week. I wanted to hide. I wanted to quit before I'd even tried.

That morning, I asked God a small honest question. Father, what do you want me to know today? And I felt like he whispered back, gentle, I'm with you in the reset, try again.

Just make one better choice the next time. This does not define you. I define you.

When we choose prayer over scrolling or water before coffee, when we go for a 10-minute walk or making one protein-rich snack, that one seemingly small choice is going to change the tone for our whole month.

Not because it's major, but because it's manageable. One, one choice at a time. And in the new year, I know, especially for us ladies over 40, it can feel really heavy.

Like we tried, we made it through another year, and we still did not release the weight. But it's not too late. And I want to talk a little bit about what's happening under the hood.

Aging Body Wisdom

After 40, your hormones begin subtle shifts. Honestly, after 35, because half of your eggs die when you're 35. So your hormones really start to shift.

Your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone patterns change. Your basal metabolic rate, it notches down just a little bit. Sleep becomes more fragile.

And these aren't moral failures. They're often some biological processes, but sometimes it's because our habits change. We're getting into the comfort of parenting or a new job, and we're not exercising like we were.

We're not eating like we were. We've slowly sacrificed our goals and convictions for comfort.

And oftentimes, ladies over 40, we make excuses for our time and our schedule and all the events that our kids are involved in, or we're involved in this or we're involved in that.

And our self-care and our health start to become the thing that we sacrifice first. Our sleep becomes more fragile. Like we have to exert energy to get energy.

This is our body's way of telling us that she needs something different than she's been getting. And we need to learn to discern what that is, through God's help and the Holy Spirit prompting.

We have to have compassion for ourselves through this time, but we can't make excuses either. Shame increases cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and cortisol makes your body hold on to weight.

You cannot release fat when you have a lot of stress in your life. And when you respond to yourself with harshness, your body interprets that as stress.

So first things first, we need to start moving towards sustainable change to kindness in our nervous system, to speaking life over our body. Maybe you need to take a couple deep breaths before you eat or pause before you make a decision.

You need to speak love to yourself. Keep a journal of gratitude at the end of the day. When we say we're fat, we're tired, we're hungry, we're this, we're that, our body becomes those things.

But when we say, I eat and move according to my goals, my identity is found in Jesus and not my sugar cravings.

When we start to speak life over our body and kindness to our body, when we see our reflection in the mirror after we've hopped out of the shower and it's not necessarily what we want, we can change that negative thought and say, I love my body.

I love my body just as she is. Thank you, Father, for this temple that you have blessed me with. Let me make small positive changes, Lord.

Lead me to small daily habits that are going to actually change my biology.

Sustainable Daily Habits

Some of those daily habits can look like 16 to 20 ounces of water before your coffee, 25 to 30 grams of protein for breakfast. This is going to stabilize your blood sugar and keep you satiated throughout the day.

I want you to start practicing eating 3-4 eggs with a cup or two of spinach and a couple pieces of good whole grain toast. Make your own bread. Dave's Killer is an excellent brand.

I often eat an entire Dave's Killer bagel. I love the everything bagels. There's like 20 grams maybe or 15 grams of protein in one of those babies.

Eat that. If you eat 3 scrambled eggs, a Dave's Killer bagel, and some spinach, that is like the best thing that you can put in your body. Do that for a month and watch what happens to your energy throughout the day.

Maybe you need to take a 15-20 minute walk in the mid-afternoon. This is going to lower your stress and improves your insulin sensitivity. You could take a quick walk after breakfast.

I have a program through Beachbody that I do quite often. It's called Walk Week. It's literally fitness cardio walking.

It's a really fun 15-20 minute walk that I can do a couple times a week. Maybe you need to make a 15-minute meal prep habit twice a week. This is going to keep you from decision fatigue and reaching for unhealthy choices.

Each of these seems so small, but when you repeat these with intention, it's going to change your hormone and it's going to heal you from the inside out.

If you want to change your body, ladies over 40, if you want to lean and tone, you must eat the right amount of protein. The more weight you have to lose, the more food you need to eat.

If you weigh 250 pounds and you're living on 1200 calories a day, it's not going to cut it. You need probably 24-2600 calories a day and probably about 180 grams of protein.

These are things that we discuss in depth in the Biblical Weight Loss Framework, because there's quite a few factors that go into what you actually need for a macro plan. But macros would work for anybody, in my personal opinion.

I'm not a doctor, but I've seen life-changing results happen when you eat with macros. How can we actually put this into practice?

Concrete January Plan

I want to share with you a couple of tactical things that I want you to do over the next four weeks. These are not resolutions. This is just leaning into the Holy Spirit and discerning where it is that he wants you to go.

Here's a concrete January reset that you can start right now. Week 1, you're going to do a mercy move. You're going to choose one habit.

I listed a couple above. You can do that or something else. And you're going to do it for five days.

All right, five. This is going to reduce pressure. It's going to build trust.

It's going to show you that you can do things. And then the next five days after that, you can either do the same habit or you can choose a different one, whatever feels right to you. Five days at a time, OK?

And then the second week, you're going to add gentle strength. So 10 to 15 minute strength. You can do bodyweight squats, wall push ups.

You could do like a single band row. I want you to do this three to four times that week, OK? And then week three, you're going to add a meal plan practice.

You're going to rotate week three, three dinners that you like. And I want you to make an extra portion each night. Fill up your freezer or fill up your fridge.

Like this is going to be your best friend. And remember, protein focus, protein focus, protein focus, and then build in the rest with your veggies and your healthy carbs. And then week four, we're going to start leaning into the Sabbath check.

And you're going to pick one day to Sabbath. What nourished you? What drained you?

Like, just recognizing those things. And Sabbath does not have to be Sunday. Actually, in the Bible times, we Sabbathed on Saturday.

But for a lot of you, you work on the weekend. So if you have a Wednesday Sabbath or a Thursday Sabbath, that's okay. God doesn't care.

There's no right or wrong. Just spending time with Him and in the Word. And did you know actually that when you Sabbath, like you're literally not supposed to think about anything else but the Lord, like no laundry, no dishes, no none of that.

You are focusing all day on the Lord. We're not watching TV. We're not scrolling on our phones like we're spending time with our family.

We're reading the Bible. We're maybe serving other people. That is a true Sabbath.

So I want you to say out loud, I am not made for shame.

Grace-Filled Transformation

I am being transformed by the renewal of my mind conforming to the image of Christ. And if you can't take a quick second and pause this podcast, and take three long deep breaths, and name one small mercy move that you're going to try today.

Listen, ladies, growing older can come with some really hard things, but aging is a blessing and so many people don't get to experience it.

You're not your age, you're not your weight, and you can decide to make true lasting change no matter how old you are. Because God calls us to care for the temple that he's trusted us with because he dwells in us.

And God's Holy Word invites us to transformation that begins in the heart. We repent of shame and sin. We reroute our identity in Christ, not the scale.

Because when our motivation and discipline is grace, our body responds without the burden of fear because we're operating and eating and moving by the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us. What a beautiful way to transform this January.

Lord Jesus, thank you that your mercies are new each morning. Soften the hard edges in us that call us for perfection, Lord. Give us courage for small acts of kindness toward our bodies.

Lord, it isn't always easy to age gracefully, so please lead us. Show us how to be kind to ourselves and remind us that our only true power comes from you inside of us. Teach us to steward what you have given us with humility and joy.

And when we stumble, Lord, remind us that you are not counting our failures. You are offering a fresh start every moment of every day. Lord, let us always do the next right thing.

We love you, we praise you, and we ask this in your precious and holy name. Amen. Hey sis, I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend? Also, please leave a quick review for the show on Apple Podcasts. It lights me up to know this podcast is helping you.

Okay, it's time to go make a protein shake and get my sweat on. No more standing in the kitchen waiting for motivation to appear. I will meet you back here for another episode.

God bless.