We all know about the ABCs of CPR – Airways, Breathing, Circulation. These three things can mean life or death. But do you know the ABCs Of Weight Loss? These ABCs can also mean life or death.
The difference between being healthy and unhealthy is where I am going here. We are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. So if our thoughts are unhealthy, this potentially can lead to death.
The alternative is also true – if our strongest thoughts are healthy, they can lead to a happy and healthy life. Let’s take a look at the ABCs Of Weight Loss.
The ABCs of Weight Loss – Awareness
The first letter of the ABCs of Weight Loss stands for “Awareness.” Are you aware of what you are putting into your body? Are you aware of your strongest thoughts? Are you aware of how you are talking to yourself?
What You Are Putting Into Your Body
Everything you put into your mouth is important. These things affect your body in one of two ways… They can:
- Be beneficial to your body, or
- Be harmful to your body
What you put into your body includes food, drinks, alcohol, medication, and even the chemicals and pollutants that you breathe in.
Your Strongest Thoughts
Another way we can put things into our bodies is through our minds. Every day, our mind comes up with between 50,000 to 80,000 thoughts. Isn’t that crazy?
These thoughts can be positive or negative, but I can almost guarantee that the greater percentage of your thoughts will be negative.
It takes up to 9 positive thoughts to counteract just 1 negative thought. So, if you do the math, if you are having more negative thoughts than positive thoughts, it can get pretty overwhelming really quickly.
How You Are Talking To Yourself
How you talk to yourself is the same as how you are thinking. So often, women have a lot of negative self-talk every day. All of this negative self-talk actually starts compounding, which eventually leads to doubt, lack of confidence, illness, depression, anxiety, and low self-worth.
The ABCs of Weight Loss – Belief
One of the keys to weight loss is believing that you can do it. You need to believe in yourself in order to actually accomplish your goals.
If you have failed at many diets in the past, your first instinct is to tell yourself that “I’m just going to fail again.” This is where the diet culture has completely ruined the morale of thousands of women because the truth is:
You haven’t failed at dieting. Dieting has failed you!
When we can finally realize that we are not failures, and rather that we are children of God made in His image, amazing things start to happen. When you believe in yourself, you are much more likely to succeed.
Read Kayce’s blog post: You Are Not An Accident
The ABCs of Weight Loss – Consistency
Over the last 2 years of helping women lose weight without dieting, Consistency is by far the biggest key to weight loss.
The Bible speaks a lot about running the race with endurance. When we look at our weight loss journey as a race, endurance equals consistency. It’s not about perfection, but rather it is about consistently making healthy decisions over long periods of time.
You make hundreds (maybe even thousands) of choices every single day. What would happen if you started making just one healthier choice each day? How about 5 healthier choices each day?
Maybe, it’s choosing to have water instead of a soda pop with dinner. Or maybe it’s being satisfied with your first helping and choosing not to go back for seconds. What about choosing to go on a walk instead of watching “just one more episode.”
Read Kayce’s Blog post: The “I Think I Can’s” Of Weight Loss
Your Weight Loss Path – Tying It All Together
In order for the ABCs of Weight Loss to help you lose weight, the most important thing is to use these ABCs every single day. They all work in conjunction with one another.
When you wake up in the morning, become aware of the first thing that you put in your body. Maybe it’s a thought, or maybe it’s some coffee. No matter what you put into your body first, make sure it is aligning with your goals. Remember, healthy thoughts lead to healthy actions, and healthy actions lead to healthy results!
Next, work at changing your belief system. This isn’t easy, but it is very necessary to have sustained success in your weight loss journey.
In one of the Craig Groeschel sermons I watched a few months ago, he had some brilliant advice about belief.
Think It. Write it. Confess it. Until you believe it!
Sometimes, belief starts with unbelief. But even in that unbelief, you need to write down the positive truth about who you are, and start speaking it. Keep speaking it until you believe it. Trust me – this really works!
This exercise might seem really silly at first, but actually commit to trying it and see how it transforms your life.
If you want to check out Craig Groeschel’s new book, Winning The War In Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, check it out on Amazon here. I highly recommend it!
Lastly, to tie it all together, you must be consistent. You are being consistent, no matter what you are doing. Maybe you are consistently making unhealthy choices, or maybe you are consistently making healthy choices. But either way, you are being consistent.
Now, it’s time to consistently make healthy choices. Become aware of the choices you are making. We know sometimes these choices can be difficult because our thoughts are leading us down the wrong path. However, Kayce and I have a saying in our community:
Choose Your Hard.
No matter what choices you are making, there is hardship that comes from it. We always say that the pain of staying the same has to be greater than the pain of change. It’s really hard being overweight and unhealthy. It’s hard to be consistent and always make healthy choices. So which hard do you want more? This is a choice you have to make!
Which ABC of Weight Loss do you need to work on most? Let me know in the comments below!
I’m rooting for you, and I know you can do it. You have greatness within you. You are a woman chosen for greatness!
I believe in you!
Ruth Verbree
I. personally need to work harder on my consistency. I think it is one of hardest thing to do, but I believe that with my efforts and God’s and our community it’s possible. Together we are stronger and anything is possible.
Thank you !!! I need to be consistent!!! One day I’m so good and the next nit so much 😢
Consistency
Consistency is my problem. I can start off great and then something comes up and it just falls apart. Then it’s even harder to go back and try again
My belief in myself is hard. Iook at myself as a failure because I usually start something and then give up because I focus on others and not myself. 2022 will be the year for me!
Well there was argument today hurt me in it was true in way lazy and fat it hurt me was rude to me
A lot to think about. I am excited to start the program. Thanks for making this free. With God’s help I will get there.
Accountability when living alone can be tough.
Belief— this is brilliant! I need more self-love, more positive self-talk. I believe I can but I bash myself on why I should change rather than loving myself on every level.
I need to be consistent. I’m aware of eating the wrong foods but I do it anyway. I always say “I’ll do better tomorrow. I believe I can do it.
being consistent.
I can start out good but then it all falls apart. I need consistency.
By what I see in other comments I am not alone in lacking consistency and being hard on myself!! Without realizing it sometimes I eat because I have internal anger about the many things in my life I can't control and change because they revolve around other people in my life, I really know that abusing myself with food will not change these things, but it seems like a hidden mindset that I don't matter ,when in truth the only person who can help me treat me better is me and truly seeing my value in God!!
Late night eating. I can’t sleep! So I eat. Hardly exercise. Walking around like a zombie most times.,If I could sleep it would help.
Consistency is my biggest hard! I do good for several days with being aware of what I put into my mouth. then it is like snap, I start grazing and the whole time, I am aware of unhealthy foods I'm putting in my mouth, and not being hungry.. but I don't' care. Then regret starts after putting it in my mouth…. I like how the ABC's are tied into weight loss. After reading your article, I will use the three keys all the time. This concept reached me, while being simple to remember and understand. Awareness, Belief, and Consistency. I already Journal every day. so writing it down works for me as well.
Thank you,
Gina
For me, the hardest part of changing my eating habits to lose weight, by making healthier choices, is hitting a plateau. Then I tend to get discouraged. I've been praying and , believe me, God cares and it helps.
That is so right, you have to be consistent in what your doing! Starting this week I choose to make healthier choices on my meals. My intentions are always good and start out good. It something always changes my intentions.
Consistency is my hardest one
Consistency is my hard!
I guess to begin with, I need to talk more positively t myself. I am older and with that comes some changes in your body/health. I am hard on myself and figure I should see results more quickly than I do. After I was diagnosed with diabetes, I changed my whole eating habits and have lost weight and feel better about myself. The problem is, I want to get to a goal weight but I'm struggling with maintaining the strictness of the diabetic diet. My sugars have gone down considerably, so much so that I am now pre-diabetic. I know this is a great accomplishment but I am not where I want to be yet and tend to get down on myself about it
Consistency. I can loose the weight but then have trouble being consistent in making good choices to keep it off.
Such a good way to remember the categories. Love it!
Meal prepping and hopefully get weight under control.
I am here to change my mindset to getting healthy and weight loss is a must. But to pre and prepared for the day, need to learn how to get easy meals ready for the week
to be consistant
My problem is I’m never hungry and can go for a very long time without any food . Some days I might not eat til supper or even at all . Then days I will eat at noon then not again . Always was a junk food kid and was always skinny til I hit 58 then 40 lbs came from no where . I have a lot of stomach troubles with some foods maybe that’s why I’m fat .