It's January 19th, and many of us have already given up on our commitment to "Be Healthy This Year!!!!" It's not that we don't want to be healthy. We do! We're just demoralized by the constant failures that go along with working on a be-healthy habit. So what do we do to get out of that slump? Pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make a commitment to try again tomorrow? I don't think so; I used to do that all the time and it didn't work. I didn't have enough self-control to make myself do the things that would lead me toward health or not do the things that kept me unhealthy. If we really want to be healthy--and we're not one of those people who love exercising and eating healthy--we need to renew our minds. The Bible tells us we're transformed by the renewing of the mind. This works for anything we do in life, including becoming healthy. The more we get God's perspective on life and food, the more we'll want to do things that will lead us toward health. If you'd like to become healthy this year, here is what I would suggest. 5 Steps to Becoming Healthy if You Don't Have Oodles of Self-Control Renew your mind about food 2-3 times a day by doing 1) the questions in I Deserve a Donut (app or book), 2) the questions in Renewing of the Mind Project, or 3) truth journaling. I would suggest renewing at lunch and again sometime between 3:00 and 5:30 to prepare you with enough truth to make it through the evening. Make a commitment to exercise. If you don't already have a habit, make this a really short commitment: 5-15 minutes or 3000 steps a day. Then increase it as you gain more self-control in that area. Renew your mind when you can't make yourself exercise. You can use the questions in Renewing of the Mind Project in the Starting a Habit section for this. Here are some of the thought in that section of the book that have corresponding questions and Bible verses: This is so boring. I really don't want to do this. I shouldn't have to do this. There's a good reason I can't do this again. This is no fun. I'll do it later. I'm too busy. Will this be worth all the work? Memorize a few Bible verses and meditate on them throughout the day. In the Bible we see Jesus use Scripture to battle temptation. If Jesus used Scripture to walk the straight and narrow, how much more do we need to use it? Here are a few suggestions of Bible verses you could memorize: Luke 12:15, Romans 13:14, 1 Corinthians 6:12, 1 Timothy 4:7b, Philippians 4:11-13, Hebrews 12:11. JULIE - could you ad links to these maybe using the ESV translation?  Do a weight loss Bible study. Renewing will help you with the lies that make you overeat and avoid exercise. But it also helps to have a biblical foundation for the truths that will set us free from an unhealthy lifestyle. Bible study will help with that. People often ask me which of my Bible studies to do first. I recommend Freedom from Emotional Eating first if you struggle with emotional eating or entitlement. And Taste for Truth if you're more of an indulgent, careless, or bored overeater. If you like variety, I'd recommend doing the first six lessons in Taste for Truth, then switch over to Freedom from Emotional Eating and go back and forth between the two. But What If I Can't Make Myself Do Those Things? Now you may have noticed one tiny little problem. All the things I just mentioned also require discipline! This is where you need some friendship or group support--to make yourself renew your mind. Usually we use accountability to make us follow our eating guidelines or make ourselves exercise. This is nice, but it doesn't change the way we think about eating and exercise. And we need to change the way we think if we want to have lifelong change. So I would suggest finding a little group. In my last podcast episode with Dr. Melanie Wilson, called How to Achieve Your Goals - 10 Tips, we talked about how to gather a couple of people for the purpose of following through with goals. This would be the perfect thing to