Find Joy in Your Weight Loss Journey, Not Just the Destination

Psalm 16:11 “You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.”

James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” 

Here are a few ways you can implement this this week: 

• Keep a gratitude journal during your journey. When we focus on the good, and you HAVE good, we forget about our struggles.
• Celebrate non-scale victories: energy, less screen time, earlier mornings, time with Jesus, physical strength, energy, clarity. More water, more steps, looser fitting pants.
• Create joyful routines: worship walks, prayerful meal prep. Jesus jams in the kitchen or workout room. 

Lord, I don’t feel joyful in my weight loss journey, but I want to. I desire you, I ache to let you lead Father but I struggle with perfection, with people pleasing, with thinking I’m unworthy. Heal these thoughts Father and show me what You need me to see. Thank you for joy, thank You that You are with me always. Lord, I want to find joy in each step, will You teach me how? Help me see your goodness in the process Jesus, not just the outcome. 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.

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

You're welcome. I'm so glad. Welcome.

How are you? So today, we're shifting our focus from the finish line to the path itself. So yesterday was my daughter's first birthday.

We had her party this past weekend. My dad flew in from Florida. We had so many people at our house celebrating our girl.

We ate all the things. We had chili and hot dogs and cake and cupcakes, and we made s'mores over the fire. And as I think about today's topic, how to find joy in your weight loss journey, not just the destination.

Like this past weekend was an absolute perfect example to share the journey, because it's so easy to say, oh, I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to lose 50 pounds, I want to lose 100 pounds.

But when we look at those huge big things, you know, it can become so overwhelming.

And when you have a weekend like this, where yesterday we went to the zoo, and we've just been celebrating and eating and doing all these things, you can think, oh my gosh, well, I completely flaked on my weight loss plan.

And you can look at it that way, or you can look at it through a joyful perspective as, wow, I got to celebrate my precious girl this weekend.

And you know, when we think about it, like weight loss and health, they're journeys, they're not, they're not a race, they're not a sprint. Because even a sprint, a marathon has a finish line. So today, I want us to refocus.

What if joy is available right now, not just when your goal is reached? What if you choose to decide, like decide to choose joy, even if you ate cupcakes and cake and a s'more this weekend? What if we decide to choose joy in the struggle?

No, this is, this can be hard. I've lost 90 pounds. I can promise you, it was mostly having to choose joy in the throes of discipline.

But joy and discipline are a fruit of the spirit. And when we seek to find joy, even in those seemingly small results, like those are the times when God's gonna teach us the biggest lessons.

There were so many times, so like every Friday, in the beginning of my weight loss journey, I would go to my doctor's office and weigh in. They would just let me go back and hop on the scale.

And by that time it was the middle of the afternoon, like I was fully clothed, I would take my shoes off, but that was, you know, pretty much it. And so it would be like sometimes like a half an ounce, or sometimes like I would gain a half an ounce.

And I did all the right things. And it was really hard to find joy in those times. But now looking back, I didn't know the lessons God would reveal to me until later.

And so I want to ask you if you're finding joy in your weight loss journey. And I know that that's really hard, but I want us to start to look at this from the perspective of joy in the middle, instead of just at the destination.

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.

Are you ready for the Biblical Weight Loss Framework yet? You keep listening to the podcast.

What if I could actually give you specific for you tactical steps that you can take every single day to give God your weight loss journey and actually reach life-long results?

No more yo-yo diets, no more buying in to every fad thing that comes along, but really digging deep into your triggers and traumas and struggles around food and social situations and body dysmorphia and all of these things that we struggle with.

What if we could take those thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ? What if we could really give God our weight loss journey and let him heal our minds so we can heal our bodies and walk out our God-given purpose?

What if I've created a 90-day program with group accountability, with training videos and homework that will help you specifically move through the things that you need to as God reveals them to you?

I will be here to coach you along with others and we're really going to work on healing the things that you are specifically dealing with. So find the link in the show notes below or at herweightlossmindset.com/framework.

That's herweightlossmindset.com/framework. It is time once and for all to reach the goals that God has placed on your heart.

So today's verse comes from Psalm 16, verse 11, and it says, you will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever. We're also going to read from James 1, verses 2-4.

It says, consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Those are such incredible promises from our Heavenly Father. He cares so much about your weight loss journey because he cares about what you care about.

So I want you to consider a couple of things as we begin our conversation today. I want you to think about joy and where do we find joy? Joy is a fruit of a spirit.

Joy is found in God's presence alone, not a number on the scale. Happiness will come and go. Happiness is based on our circumstances.

Joy is found in God's presence. I want you to consider focusing on progress, over perfection. I want you to focus on listening and obeying the Holy Spirit, regardless of the outcome.

I want you to think about your choices and honoring God with those instead of thinking about the scale, or not eating to shame yourself, or eating to shame yourself. I want you to think about gratitude and how it turns routines into worship.

Joy strengthens discipline and reminds us why we're not quitting. No, life got hard. We know that life happens every single day.

I took my baby to the chiropractor this morning, and she literally hooped everywhere. I took her back to the office to change her, and because the bathroom was full, and a friend of mine works there, and I carried her back.

When I laid her down, I realized that she had poop all over the front of her, and had exploded out of the front side of her diaper.

So as my friend Leah is there helping me change her, and all of the things are exploding, she gets poop from her socks to her pants, to her sweatshirt, to her stomach, and as I'm almost done, I think, oh my gosh, I was holding her when I walked in

here. Sure enough, poop all over me. Listen, life gets hard.

Like, if I was gonna let that determine the course of my day, or the fact that I was up with her from 2.45 to 3.30 this morning, and I still got up at 4.45 o'clock to do my workout, like, you could really focus on all of the things in your life that

are frustrating and hard. But what's the point? Like, what's the point? Life is going to happen.

Things are gonna happen. Someone's gonna pull out in front of you while you're listening to worship music, and you're gonna say something that you shouldn't say. Or your appointment's going to fall through, or you're gonna run late.

Like, life is gonna happen. If we start to base the joy in our weight loss journey on life being perfect, it's no wonder we never reach our goals. It's not about perfection.

It's not even about progress sometimes. Sometimes it's just about smiling, faking it till you make it, and doing the next right thing. Finding joy in our weight loss journey, it is hard.

It is hard. Yeah, it's great when you're like, oh, I lost my first five pounds, and you look back and you think, wow, I lost five pounds, but that was hard. I skipped on a dessert.

I went for an extra run. I got up early and did my workout. I drank water when I'd rather drink coffee.

Like, it's hard. And when we choose joy in the hard, in the valley instead of at the mountaintop, like, we can't only focus on the mountaintop because most of life is not the mountain, it's the valley, right?

But when we focus on gratitude and all of the blessings that God has given us, our attitudes change, and we just want to keep going further. We want to keep exercising. We want to keep eating healthy meals.

And it's not going to be perfect. One day you might eat all the healthy meals, and the next day you might have one healthy meal, and the rest is garbage. Oh, Paige, try again.

Tomorrow's a new day. Let's say you have, okay, we have seven days in a week, and you eat five meals a day. That's 35 times you're eating.

And let's say you, quote, unquote, mess up, in your opinion, five meals through that week. You five times, you ate what you didn't want to eat or plan to eat. That's still 30 meals that you did pretty well.

You still nailed your snacks. Maybe you didn't eat what you wanted to at lunch, or you ate something after dinner or snuck into the pantry. Okay, you still nailed 30 meals.

Maybe out of that 35 meals, you messed up every single day. Maybe you messed up half the time. That's still almost 18 meals that you did really well with.

So give yourself a break, man. Like give yourself a break for real. Stop letting shame and the lies of the enemy and the lies of the people around you and the lies you tell yourself dictate your success or failure.

Because it's only through the eyes and the blood of Jesus that matter and he calls you worthy regardless of what you eat or what you weigh. Yeah, he wants us to be healthy body, mind, and spirit. But he loves us regardless.

He loves us a lot more unconditionally than we love ourselves most of the time. So I want you to do three things for me this week. I want you to keep a gratitude journal during your weight loss journey.

I want you every day to write down three to five things that you're grateful for. Three to five things. Because when we focus on the good and you have so much good, we forget about the things that we struggle with.

We forget that we have to do another load of laundry today after we did four loads yesterday. We forget about our struggles when we focus on gratitude. The next thing I want you to do is celebrate non-scale victories.

Think about the more energy. Think about spending less time on your phone. Think about getting up five minutes earlier in the morning.

Think about that little extra time that you spent with Jesus on your lunch hour. Think about the strength that you're building. Think about the clarity in your thoughts.

You're drinking more water. You took two more steps today than yesterday. Maybe your pants are starting to fit a little loose.

Maybe you're smiling a little bit more. Maybe you're not snapping at your kids as often.

These are all non-scale victories that matter a heck of a lot more than a stupid scale that has no idea what kind of a person you are or what kind of a thing that you're dealing with in your life. And then the third thing is create joyful routines.

Take worship walks. Pray while you're meal prepping. Jam your Jesus jams in the kitchen or in your workout room.

Create joyful routines. I love that first sip of coffee in the morning when I'm reading my Bible. That is my joyful routine.

Spending time with Jesus, drinking coffee in the peace and quiet when the hubby's gone to work and the baby's still asleep. That is my joyful routine. There are so many ways to find joy in the hard times of life.

We're not focusing on perfect days and nailing everything. We're focused on seeking the Lord. And what it is that he needs us to do first, and then walking that out obediently until he leads us to his next guided choice.

It's going to be slow. Sometimes it's going to be painful. But slow and steady wins every time.

We are not in a hurry. Some of you have been carrying extra weight around for decades. This might take you a decade to get where you want to go.

But when you're walking faithfully with the Lord, who cares how long it takes? The point is obedience. We're not in a hurry.

God can't work when we're in a hurry. God can't work when we're busy. God can't work when we're trying to control everything.

But when there's joy, when we choose joy, even in the struggle of the hard journey of weight loss, that's proof that He's right there with you. Choose joy when facing trials of any kind. We read in James.

Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let that perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. You are not meant to suffer through your journey.

You are meant to grow with God in it, letting Him lead every step. Think about Job. Job lost everything.

Everything was taken away from him, but he continued to trust God even in his sorrow. And at the end, God rebuilt him tenfold. When we let go and let him work, we're going to find joy eventually, even if you don't feel it right now.

Keep taking one step at a time. Lord, I don't feel joyful in my weight loss journey, but I want to. I desire you.

I ache to let you lead, Father, but I struggle with perfectionism and people-pleasing. I struggle thinking I'm unworthy, Father. Heal these thoughts and show me what you need me to see.

Thank you for joy. Thank you for your fruit. Thank you that you are with me always.

Lord, I want to find joy in each step. Will you teach me how? Help me see your goodness in the process, Jesus, not just the outcome.

I love you so much. 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.