Do you ever find yourself saying, "I can't believe I'm still struggling with my weight! I should be over this by now!"? If you do, you're not the only one. That's one of the most frequent comments I hear from women about their weight. We think we should have it all together, but it's not surprising that we don't! After all, we love food. We eat for emotional reasons. And this isn't a goal we can check off our list and say, "There! That's done!" Instead, we need to keep following our boundaries day after day, month after month, and year after year. No wonder we feel like a weight loss failure at times! Here's the thing though: We're not weight loss failures. Let me say that again. We're. Not. Weight. Loss. Failures. Instead, we're people who broke our boundaries today. It's important that we make that distinction in how we talk to ourselves. Because if we're defined by failure, there's no use going on. We might as well give up right now and start eating what we want. But if we're just a person who failed at following her boundaries today, then it would be better to look at why we failed and correct our course so we'll be less likely to fail tomorrow. We can do that by looking at how we spend our days, what food is in the house, what we do when life is hard, and what we do when we break our boundaries. In this podcast episode, we'll look at what we do when we break our boundaries. Picture yourself following your boundaries. Life is going well and your weight loss program is going well, but then one day you break your boundaries. Majorly. You now have five options of what to do next. 5 Options When We Just Broke Our Boundaries and Think We're a Weight Loss Failure Give up. Quit trying to follow your boundaries. Eat what you want for the rest of the day or better yet for the rest of the week! Persevere in your own strength. Get up the next morning and say, "I'm going to follow my boundaries today!" but then don't go to God for help when you break them. (And I don't know about you but I am FAR more likely to break boundaries the next day if I broke them the previous day.) Persevere in God's strength by asking Him to change you. Keep trying to follow your boundaries and regularly ask God to help you follow your boundaries. Persevere in God's strength by asking God to help you follow your boundaries and then renew your mind every once in awhile. Renew your mind every once in awhile (but not often enough for the truth to really sink in), and visit with God about what you learned. Ask Him for wisdom, insight, and strength to follow our boundaries. Persevere in God's strength by asking God to help you follow your boundaries and then renew your mind either every time you feel like breaking our boundaries or several times a day. Renew your mind several times a day or every time you feel like breaking your boundaries (even though you don't feel like it and you're sick to death of doing it), and visit with God about what you learned. Ask Him for wisdom, insight, and strength to follow your boundaries. Now let me ask you a question. Which option do you think would give you the best hope of lasting success with following your boundaries--which translates to lasting success with weight loss? I think we'd all say the 5th option, but we also know how hard it is to take that 5th option. Our flesh doesn't want us to take it (because it wants to eat), we don't want to take it (because it takes too much time), and Satan doesn't want us to take it (because he likes to see us controlled by food). I'm hoping my new book Say Goodbye to Emotional Eating (on shelves November 1) will help you take the third option. In fact let's take that third option right now. Following is one of the renewing exercises from Say Goodbye to Emotional Eating. In this exercise I list five lies we believe when we feel like a weight loss failure. These lies come from lies women have told me in coaching sessions and also lies I've told myself! When You Feel Like a Weight Los