Your Environment is Keeping You from Losing Weight

 1 Corinthians 15:32-34 “ What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.  Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.” 

 Romans 14:21, “:It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.”

4 Steps to Start:

STEP 1: CLEAN YOUR ENVIRONMENT

STEP 2: ADD SUPPORT

STEP 3: CREATE DEFAULT HABITS

STEP 4: PROTECT YOUR FOCUS

If you keep surrounding yourself with triggers you’ll keep falling into the same patterns. This isn’t about restriction. It’s about wisdom and leaning into the Holy Spirit. It’s about honoring God with our choices and our bodies and teaching our families a different way to live.

So, take a second to think; what in your environment needs to change? Write it down and ask the Lord to help you. He will. Pitch the food before your family has time to object, empty the bag so you don’t have a Costanza moment, Be the change. It starts with you mama.

Holy God, Give me wisdom to create an environment that supports obedience. Father, forgive me for staying complacent in this area of my life. Open the hearts of my friends and family as I continue on this journey to health and healing in Your Name. Not so that You will love me, but because You do. Thank You Father for a renewed sense of hope and self. Thank you for giving my family open hearts as I talk to them, lead me Jesus, help me to say the right thing and thank You for the opportunity to instill good habits in my children from here on out. Help me to be the change in our home. I love you Father, lead me, guide me, direct me, I love You, I trust You and I am so thankful that You continue to lead me down this path. Help me remove distractions and excuses Lord. Help me to surround myself with truth. It’s in Christ’s Holy Name I pray, Amen.

Action Step: CLEAR OUT THE PANTRY, TODAY

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.

Join The Biblical Weight Loss Framework: https://www.herweightlossmindset.com/framework

Join my FREE Community: https://bit.ly/JoinTheChristianWeightLossCommunity

Join my Insiders List with weekly tips for weight loss for Christian women: http://herweightlossmindset.com/herweightlossmindsetinsiders

Transcript

Hey, good morning, friends. So I want to take some pressure off of you today. This is not just lack of willpower.

Your environment is most likely working against you. And this is a hard one because it requires hard conversations. But those talks are key to reaching your goals.

So stay with me and let's dig in. Hey, friend, welcome to the podcast where we talk about weight loss a little differently. Not just calories and workouts, but the heart, the habits, and the beliefs behind it all.

Because this isn't about just losing weight. It's about becoming the woman God is calling you to be.

So if you're tired of starting over, stuck in cycles with food and ready to invite God into this journey for real change, once and for all, you're in the right place. So let's get into today's episode.

Right now through the end of May, I am extending the Mother's Day offer of 30 percent off to join the Biblical Weight Loss Framework. That is $150 in savings in this program.

If you have been waiting for your sign or confirmation that this is your place, go to herweightlossmindset.com/framework and enter the code momsday2026 to save 30 percent off. If you're on my email list, I sent you the direct link.

You can also find it in my free community at herweightlossmindset.com. But get in there. This is the time for you to take back your health.

We're not focusing on weight loss right now. We're not focusing on anything except connection to the Holy Spirit through this part of your journey.

So if you are ready once and for all to lose the weight forever, drop the weight, forget the weight, join the framework. You could find the link also in the show notes today.

So the good word this morning comes from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 32 to 34. It reads, What do I gain if humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.

Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning.

For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame. So I've had to have some pretty hard conversations with my husband lately on the effects of garlic and onions for someone with Hashimoto's.

And these have been staples in our diet for years, for decades for me. Like we cook with onions and garlic, but often times it just makes me feel awful. Like I used to, my dad used to get so mad at me.

I would go to the garden. He would grow these big beautiful green onions and I would take a wet paper towel and a salt shaker and I would eat the onions out of the garden.

And I used to get in trouble because by the end of harvest time, there's like one onion left. But life changes. Our goals change.

Our convictions become stronger. Maybe we have a diagnosis that we're dealing with. Maybe we just are dead set on living forgotten our health journey.

And it is time for our families to stand beside us. Now listen, my husband is amazing. I absolutely love him.

He is the best person that I know. But, you know, taking onions and garlic out of every meal is hard. So we're trying to just find that balance.

But we all have to sacrifice, right? We all have to ask for help in a loving way. Now I know the verse that I read seems kind of harsh, and it is.

But we also read in Romans 14 21, it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.

So if sugar is your downfall and you need to remove it from your home for a season, your family is just going to need to get on board. Maybe it's alcohol. Same process.

Maybe if it's carb-filled treats that are your downfall, they need to go. Not forever, maybe, but for a season. If it's causing you to stumble, it is a roadblock, it is a distraction, it is a temptation that's keeping you in sin.

And maybe, to be honest, it's good for everyone to take a break on occasion. So here's the truth. Like we're not making these decisions in isolation.

Your surroundings influence you constantly. What's in your pantry? What's on your phone?

What people around you normalize? So if your environment is not supporting your goals, you're always going to feel like you're fighting that uphill battle. But there's good news.

You can change your environment. And when you do, making God-centered choices around your goals gets easier.

So I'm going to give you four things that you can do right now to get started. And the first one is obvious. Clean up your environment.

Remove what's making obedience to the Holy Spirit hard. Like out of sight, out of mind. One of the body trainers, Alana Molstein, I think is how you pronounce her name.

You should follow her on Instagram. She's adorable. She has fun recipes.

But she used to say that out of sight, out of mind. And it has always stuck with me. So Darryl had this stupid candy bar in the pantry for a month.

Like he would take one annoying bite at a time and put it back. Like who does that? Like my husband is who.

He's not the one with the sugar problem here. He can go get ice cream and like a kid's cup. And he takes three bites out of it.

And he's like, here, do you want to finish this? Seriously, like finally one day I hit that stupid candy bar behind something and he forgot all about it. So a week later, I just threw it in the trash.

This works for me too when we go to Costco and we buy those Saunders dark chocolate sea salt caramels. Like do you know the ones I'm talking about? They are so good.

I hide them in Adelie's closet on the high upper shelf. Like sure, I know that they're there, but I don't see them. So I'm not tempted to grab every one every day like I used to.

So if it's tempting you, throw it in the trash. If it tempts you on what you can handle to get started in this journey, throw it away. No one else needs it.

Starving kids in Africa don't need your high fructose corn syrup. Like just pitch it. Okay, bye-bye.

Step 2 is add support. You need truth around you, my friend. You need encouragement, you need accountability, and this is when you have the conversation with the family.

This is when you sit everyone down and ask the Holy Spirit to speak through you. Even if you have unbeliefs in your family, pray for open hearts and speak what the Lord puts on your heart, and then put your foot down, set a boundary.

This is happening for one month. Then we will add back in a snack that everyone wants. This is for everyone's benefit, right?

Not yours. You don't want your family snacking on unhealthy garbage either. If your spouse, there's a fit, they can take their garbage food to work or leave it in their car.

This is for everyone's benefit. Garbage in, garbage out. It is your responsibility to take over the habits of your children so that they are not putting toxic chemicals and garbage into their bodies.

I know people think that I am insane that we don't let Adélie have red dye. We don't let Adélie have a lot of things that other kids can have. What's wrong about this?

She can have ice cream. She and the dog split, not the soft serve because it has a lot more sugar, but we get one of the premium vanilla kids cups. The dog and the baby split it, and she gets to eat a couple of bites.

I realize it's not perfect. It still has high fructose corn syrup in it, but it's not like we do it all the time, and she's not getting in that red dye. You get to set the boundary for what you give to your family and your children.

Then step 3 is create some default habits. Set things up so the right choice is automatic. We love, love, love, love, caracara oranges.

Just last night after dinner, we had one, and hubby even said these are even better than chocolate, and they are. They are so good. Stock your fridge with grapes, in-season fruit, these caracara oranges, goodness in, goodness out.

Your body is going to start to crave this goodness. Vegetables, fruit, delicious fruit, I feel like it's God's candy. It is God's gift to us.

It is chucked full of fiber. Yes, it has carbohydrates in it. It is good energy given to you straight from the Lord.

Focus on one cup servings at a time or, you know, one caracara orange. This is goodness in, goodness out, my friends, okay? I promise.

Step four, protect your focus. Watch what you're looking at. Pay attention to what you're listening to.

And consume things that push truth. So if you're taking a break from sugar, don't bake healthy options for dessert for now. Just take a break.

Let your body get rid of whatever cravings you have. Eliminate it. Pray through it.

So maybe you're at the point where you're like me and you gave up sugar for lunch and you're working to ease back into a routine. Get your family in the kitchen to bake fun treats together. Brittany at eatingbirdfood.com has a ton of great options.

Follow Bethany on Instagram at LittleSipper, L-I-L-S-I-P-P-E-R. She does all dairy free, gluten free, grain free, she has amazing delicious options. So just be smart here.

Let the Lord lead and you're always going to win. We're not just replacing high fructose corn syrup treats and dye treats with healthy sugar. I mean, yes, cane sugar is an amazing replacement, like for a season you might just need to get rid of it.

So pray over that and ask the Lord to speak to you. We're not changing like our habits to be loved here, right? But we're honoring our bodies because we're loved by our heavenly father.

Okay, so, you know, tough love moment, here we come. If you keep surrounding yourself with triggers, you're going to keep falling into the same patterns. Like this is not about restriction, it's about godly wisdom and leaning into the Holy Spirit.

It's about honoring the Lord with your choices in your bodies and teaching our families a different way to live, right?

If you've passed on unhealthy choices to your kids, if your kids are obese, they're not wanting to eat vegetables and fruit and they're eating in front of the television and they have constant screen time, like it's time to break these habits now.

Don't make them wait until they're your age to figure it out on their own. You are the example, good or bad. And it's time to right the wrongs that have been made by you or their dad or society or unhealthy family traits that have been passed down.

Like many of the bad habits that I have come from my grandmother and her incessant need to treat and snack break the habits before it breaks their spirits and their health. Like it is your responsibility.

So take a second to think what in your environment needs to change. Write it down. Ask the Lord to lead you.

Psalm 23, or Psalm 139, 23, 24. Remember? Ask him.

He will provide. And then pitch the food before your family even has time to object. Empty the bag so you don't have a George Costanza moment.

Like do you remember when that eclair had like one bite out of it and he went to put something in the garbage and he pulled it out and took a bite out of it and then his girlfriend's mom was standing there watching him. Like don't be that guy.

Be the change, mama. It starts with you. It starts in your home.

It starts with you setting the boundary. When we're the parent, it's time that we act like it, okay? I love you.

Most Holy God, give me wisdom to create an environment that supports obedience to you, Jesus.

Forgive me for staying complacent in this area of my life and open the hearts of my friends and family as I continue on this journey to health and healing in your holy name. Not so that you will love me, but because you already do.

Thank you, Father, for a renewed sense of hope and self. Thank you for giving my family open hearts as I talk to them. Lead me, Jesus.

Help me to say the right thing and thank you for the opportunity to instill good habits in my children from here on out. Forgive me for failing here. Help me to be the change in our home.

I love you, Father. Lead me, guide me, direct me. I love you so much.

I trust you and I'm so thankful that you continue to lead me through this path. Help me to remove distractions and excuses, Lord. Help me to surround myself with truth.

It's in Christ precious and holy name, I ask these things. Amen. So today, your action step is to clear out the pantry.

Not tomorrow. Today. Don't just throw the bag of chips in the trash.

Open the bag, toss them out. Don't just open the candy. Open it, put it directly in the garbage.

You can do this. I believe in you. Beloved, this isn't about doing everything perfectly, okay?

This is about becoming consistent in the things that actually matter. Waking up, spending time with the Lord in prayer and in the Word. So don't just walk away from this episode inspired.

Walk away making a decision to start every day with Jesus. What is one thing that you're going to do differently today? Just start there.

And if this episode spoke to you, share it with a friend who needs it too. Because you are not the only one who's walking through this. And if you would, would you go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review?

It helps me to know that these messages are encouraging you. Please know that I am here cheering you on. I am praying for you.

And if you want to work with me one on one, just shoot me an email to info at herweightlossmindset.com and let's talk about how we can work through your personal journey. I will see you back here for the next episode. God bless.