If Willpower Worked You'd Be Skinny By Now

Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Willpower assumes three things:

1. Your body is neutral
2. Your emotions are irrelevant
3. Your history doesn’t matter

Journal Prompts:

-Where have I mistaken exhaustion for disobedience? Where have you tried to be busy instead of obedient? What if my body doesn’t need control but compassion? How can I make my body feel safe today? 

Lord, I lay down the belief that busy makes me better and that my struggle makes me weak.Father forgive me for making excuses and not listening to where You’re guiding me. I know that I need You most Lord. Show me how to steward my body with wisdom instead of force. Help me to love her, speak truth to her, rest her when she needs, move her and fuel her how she desires. Heal the places where shame has taken root Jesus, I love You so much.  Amen.

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

I want to start with a thought today that may make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, but hopefully also comforting. If willpower worked, you wouldn't still be struggling. You didn't wake up one day and decide to be inconsistent.

You didn't decide to crave food late at night. You didn't decide to feel out of control around eating.

You decided to try, and then you decided to try again, and then again, and somewhere along the way, the message became, if this isn't working, I must not be disciplined enough. But I need you to hear me today. That is not a biblical truth.

God is not measuring your worth, your obedience, or your faithfulness by how well you control your appetite. Can I get an amen? Praise the Lord.

If willpower worked, you'd be thin by now. Let's take a dive and see what we can get into today. Hang tight.

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.

And lose weight in a way that honors God without obsessing about the scale and meal plan and prep for your family. So grab your pre-workout and let's chat. You know I love this verse and I think it applies perfectly to where we're headed today.

So I truly believe that what we imprint in our heart over and over begins to speak to us when we need it the most. Galatians 6.9 says, Do you know it by heart yet? I hope so.

Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. So let's not look at this verse as an excuse to push harder. That is not Paul's intention here.

He's reminding us that doing good, that staying in faith when life gets hard, lets God do the work in our lives that he longs to do. We're not trying harder, but we're learning to surrender more, and even more so change how we try.

We remove the strive, we remove the try, we lay it down at the foot of the cross. So I want to explore a little bit why willpower fails. Willpower assumes three things.

Willpower assumes that your body is neutral, that your emotions are irrelevant, and that your history doesn't matter. Yet none of those are true. Your body keeps score, in a sense.

Years of dieting teach your body scarcity. Scarcity raises cortisol, the stress hormone, and cortisol tells your body to store fat and seek quick energy in an effort to protect and secure herself.

So when you're craving sugar, carbs, or comfort food, it's not moral failure. It's your body's biology, responding to the stress in your life.

Then you add emotional weight, people-pleasing, over-serving, under-resting, carrying everyone else's needs. Christian women are especially vulnerable here because we spiritualize self-neglect and we glorify busy. But Jesus never praised Brno.

In fact, he commands us to rest. So today, I want you to consider a spiritual reframe. We read in Galatians 5, 22 that self-control is a fruit of the spirit.

It is not a tool for self-punishment. Self-control and discipline are the same. Self-control as fruit is also part of the character of God that we read about in that verse.

We have all the other fruits as well. They all combine into the character that God gives us when we ask him into our hearts. So let's think about how fruit grows.

Fruit grows where it is nurtured. If your soil is exhausted, ashamed, starving, living in fear, then no amount of discipline is going to produce lasting change. God is not inviting you to try harder.

He's asking you to come closer to him to rest and to surrender. You are worthy today as you are. If you cannot love yourself today as you are, no amount of weight loss is ever going to be enough.

It's never going to be enough. Willpower is not the answer. It is total complete surrender to God in this area of your life.

I've been doing bodyweight workouts and bar for the last two years because I found myself just getting really, really sore after lifting weights. And so God called me to rest.

And when we came home from vacation in Florida, I was just really starting to pray because my body is not changing.

I've had blood work every three months for the past probably six to nine months, and it keeps showing that I'm holding a lot of inflammation in my body. And I know it's my hormones are out of balance.

And so as I was praying one morning, God literally said, like not verbally, but he put in my heart MBF, which is a program that I did years ago through Beachbody called Muscle Burns Fat. And so like two days before, he told me to do it well.

Then for two days, I continued to do the bar workout. He's like, do MBF. So last week, I started this Muscle Burns Fat workout.

And I felt so good when I was finished. It's a 21 day program, you know, 25 to 35 minutes a day. I'm starting week two today because I got started, you know, midweek.

But it's just interesting how he's going to lead us to the place that we need to go. And then it's up to him or up to us to walk that out in obedience. So I'd like to challenge you today to ask yourself a couple of questions as you journal this week.

Where have I mistaken exhaustion for disobedience? Where have you tried to be busy instead of obedient? What if my body doesn't need control, but compassion?

And how can I make my body feel safe today? What is the Lord leading me to do? What has He been calling me to do that I am afraid to do?

This is not about willpower. This is not about you doing this weight loss journey on your own.

This is about inviting the Holy Spirit into your heart, letting Him tell you exactly where to go and what to do, and then you having the confident courage to walk it out.

He also told me when we came home from vacation to start tracking my macros and live in them every single day, and I have not been doing that. Last week, I got on the scale and I was down two pounds this morning.

I got on the scale and I was up two plus pounds. I was so frustrated. When I started to ask myself why I did not hit my protein goal this week.

I don't even know that I hit it maybe one day out of seven. We're not going to get to where we want to go unless we start to live out and walk out what God needs us to do.

Lord, I lay down the belief that busy makes me better and that my struggle makes me weak. Father, forgive me for making excuses and not listening to where you are guiding me. I know that I need you most Lord.

Show me how to steward my body with wisdom instead of force. Help me to love her, speak truth to her, rest her when she needs, move her and fuel her how she desires. Jesus, heal the places where shame has taken root.

I love you so much. Thank you for continuing to do this work in me. Amen.

This is not about fixing your body, my friends. This is about restoring trust with God and with yourself. You are worth it.

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.