Honoring My Temple

If Change Is the Goal, Something Has to Change

• Kelly Wenner • Season 1 • Episode 18

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0:00 | 13:47

Do you ever feel stuck?

Like you've been wanting change for a long time, but somehow keep ending up in the same place?

Whether it's your weight, your health, your habits, or another area of life, there comes a point when we have to ask an honest question: Are the things we're doing actually producing the results we want?

In this episode of Honoring My Temple, we'll explore the difference between maintenance and growth, why motivation alone isn't enough, and how small shifts in awareness, habits, and support can lead to meaningful change over time.

We'll also discuss a powerful biblical perspective on growth, why lasting change is often built one ordinary decision at a time, and one simple question that may be more important than asking "how."

If you've been feeling frustrated, stagnant, or ready for a fresh approach, this episode is for you.

Connect & Go Deeper

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Honoring My Temple podcast. If you're looking to put God at the center of your life and live that out practically through your health, habits, and everyday choices, this podcast is for you. I'm Kelly Wenner, founder of Soul Strength Fit and author of Honoring My Temple. Here we explore biblical wisdom and how to apply it to real life, your mindset, food, exercise, and the habits that shape who you're becoming. Let's get started. Here's an important question to ask yourself. Do you feel stuck? Do you feel like you've been wanting change, but aren't really making the forward progress you hoped for? Maybe the same struggles keep showing up, the same habits, the same frustrations. You keep wanting change, but somehow keep ending up right where you started. Let's get specific for a moment and talk about our health, our habits, our weight, and the goals we're working toward. If you feel like nothing is changing, here's something important to understand. You're doing a great job of maintaining. If you're not losing weight, gaining strength, improving your health, or moving closer to your goals, then you're successfully maintaining your current results. You're doing a great job of staying the same. Now here's the next question. Is your goal to maintain or to change? Because many people say they want change. They want to lose weight, they want more energy, they want healthier habits, they want to feel stronger, they want to improve your health. But their current routines, habits, and patterns are producing maintenance, not change. So if your goal is change, but you've been staying the same, I want you to acknowledge something. You've been doing a great job of maintaining. Now ask yourself, is this where I want to be? And if the answer is no, then the next question becomes: what needs to change? This principle applies to every area of life. If someone told me they felt stagnant in their faith, I probably wouldn't tell them to keep doing exactly what they've been doing, just try harder. Maybe I'd encourage them to join a small group, start taking prayer walks, begin journaling, serve in a new way, try fasting, shake things up a bit. I remember years ago walking through a particularly dark season of life, and it was one of these seasons where it felt difficult to trust God, difficult to sense his presence, difficult to see him clearly. A Christian therapist gave me some advice I'd never heard before. She suggested I take a solo retreat in nature and spend time fasting and praying. Honestly, it wasn't something I would have ever come up with on my own, but looking back, she recognized something I couldn't see. I needed a different approach. I needed to shake things up. And sometimes we need to do the same thing with our health goals. I'd love to share one example I see often with coaching clients. One woman came to me feeling stuck. She had about 10 to 15 pounds she wanted to lose, but no matter what she did, she couldn't seem to make progress. She wasn't new to healthy eating, she wasn't new to exercise, she'd tracked calories before and felt she had a good understanding of nutrition, but she also had a pattern. She would lose a little weight, gain it back, lose a little weight, gain it back, and repeat the cycle. When we took a closer look, we discovered something important. She thought she was eating far fewer calories than she actually was. The bites of food while cooking, finishing the kids' plates, coffee drinks, restaurant meals, salad dressings, just the mindless snacking, all the little things that didn't seem like much in the moment were adding up. The truth was she wasn't failing, she was maintaining. She was eating exactly enough calories to maintain her current weight. Her daily habits were producing maintenance rather than change. Once we identified what was actually happening, we were able to make some changes. We increased her protein, added more fiber, improved awareness around food, addressed mindless snacking, created a realistic calorie target, and helped her build habits that allowed her to consistently stay within it. And finally, she began seeing the progress she had been wanting. The interesting thing is that what she needed wasn't more motivation. She didn't need to want it more. She needed awareness. She needed to see what was actually happening because once she could clearly see the habits producing her current results, we could begin making adjustments. We could create a different approach. And that's when she finally started making forward progress. And maybe that's true for some of us as well. If your goal is change, but your results have been maintenance, what needs to change? What might God be inviting you to do differently? I love that verse because it reminds us that God doesn't leave us guessing. If we come to Him. But notice that we still have to walk the path. We still have to take the step. We still have to make the change. If your goal is change, but your results have been maintenance, then maybe it's time to stop asking, why isn't this working and start asking what needs to change? Because sometimes the answer isn't more effort. Sometimes it's a different approach. Maybe what needs to change is your level of awareness. That's what happened with my coaching client. She wasn't lacking desire. She wasn't lacking knowledge. She wasn't lacking motivation. She simply wasn't seeing the whole picture, the extra bites here and there, the coffee calories, the restaurant meals, the handful of snacks or nuts that never made it into her mental calorie count. When she became aware of what was actually happening, everything changed. Or maybe what needs to change is your structure. Many people spend years waiting to feel motivated enough to finally get serious. But motivation is unreliable. Some of the people who successfully transformed their health weren't the most motivated people. They simply built systems that helped them keep showing up. The brain doesn't reward intensity, it rewards repetition. Showing up consistently at 70% beats going all in at 100% and then quitting three weeks later. Every single time. How fast can I lose the weight? How quickly can I reach my goal? How soon will I see the results? But scripture often points us toward a different question. Not how fast can I get there, but what am I building? Because meaningful things are rarely built quickly. Strong marriages aren't, deep faith isn't, character isn't, and lasting health isn't either. Which brings to mind a verse I love. Proverbs 14 1 says, The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. Now this verse is speaking about the home and family, but your body is your home, your temple as well. And I think this principle applies beautifully to our health. Through our daily choices, we're either building something up or tearing something down. Every meal, every workout, every night of sleep, every decision, we're laying another brick. The challenge is that strong houses aren't built in a weekend. They are built one brick at a time. And the same is true for our health: a strong body, a healthy lifestyle, a consistent walk with God. Those things are built slowly through thousands of ordinary decisions. Yet many of us keep asking the same question, how? How am I finally going to lose the weight? How am I going to stay consistent? How am I going to break this habit? How am I going to reach my goals? But maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe the question isn't how. Maybe the question is who? Who can help me stay accountable? Who can encourage me when I feel discouraged? Who can help me see the blind spots I'm missing? Who can walk alongside me when the journey gets hard? Who can help me build the habits and structure I need to succeed? The people who experience lasting change aren't always the most motivated. They aren't always the most disciplined. Often they're the people who stop trying to figure everything out on their own. They invited others into the process. A coach, a mentor, a friend, a walking partner, a workout buddy. One of the reasons accountability is so powerful is because growth rarely happens in isolation. Left to ourselves, it's easy to drift. Drift away from our goals, drift away from healthy habits, drift away from the changes we're trying to make. Sometimes we just need someone to help us stay on course. God never intended us to do life entirely on our own. So let me ask you again: if your goal is change, but your results have been maintenance, what needs to change? Your awareness, your structure, your expectations, your support system? Bring that question before God. Ask Him to reveal the answer. And then be willing to do something different. Because if change is the goal, eventually something has to change. Now, before we finish, I want to make an important distinction. There may be seasons where maintaining is wonderful. There may be seasons where maintaining your weight is a wonderful goal. There may be seasons where maintaining your health is a victory. There may be seasons where maintaining your strength and mobility is exactly what you're aiming for. In fact, there may come a season of life where maintaining your weight, maintaining your strength, or maintaining your health is a tremendous accomplishment. But even in those seasons, we are still called to grow. Even if physical change isn't your goal right now, growth should always be. One of my favorite verses says, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. What a beautiful reminder. The reality is all of us are getting older. Our physical bodies are temporary, and no amount of healthy eating, exercise, or self-care changes that reality. But we can continue to grow. We can grow in wisdom. We can grow in self-discipline. We can grow in gratitude. We can grow in our relationship with food. We can grow in our understanding of why we eat and how we care for ourselves. We can grow in our consistency. We can grow in our faith. We can grow in becoming more Christ-like in absolutely every area of our lives. So whether your goal right now is weight loss, better health, more energy, stronger habits, or simply maintaining the progress you've already made. Don't settle for stagnation. Keep growing. Keep improving. Keep becoming the person God is calling you to be. And as we finish today, I'd encourage you to return to the question we've been asking throughout this episode. What needs to change? Maybe it's your awareness, maybe it's your habits, maybe it's your expectations, maybe it's your support system, maybe it's something entirely different. Ask God to reveal it. And then choose one thing, not 10 things, not a complete life overhaul, just one thing. One habit to improve, one action to take, one change to make, one step forward. Because if change is the goal, eventually something has to change. And the best time to begin is today. Thanks for spending this time with me. To learn more, visit SoulStrengthFit.com.