Proverbs 29:25 says: “The fear of man brings a snare: but who so puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe.” Sometimes we fear what men can do to us. We should never fear this way because God is greater than man. Man does not hold your eternity. Man does not even hold your tomorrow. Man does not hold your well-being; only God does. So don't fear men anymore because God is your helper.

I got this in email from my Pastor today...and I thought it was a good place to start with the new me concept. I can just see the wheels turning and you're wondering how this ties in with weight loss?

Well, I think fear is a huge, huge factor in weight loss. We're afraid to go out or where clothes we like because we've gained weight and we're afraid of how people will think we look in them. Let's face it...people can be nasty so we tend to be afraid we're going to have people talking about us either directly (which is always humiliating) or behind our backs.

And once you've declared that you're dieting or working out, I think we tend to be afraid to go admit when we're having problems and aren't doing as well as we'd like with it.

I think the biggest fear involved with weight loss is failure. We psych ourselves out before we even get started. Magazines tell us to put up pics from magazines showing how you want to look and use them for inspiration. The only problem with that is for some of us we have a long way to go and the end goal seems so far out of reach that we never even get started!

Here's what I've discovered about the process and myself in the last two years:

• I'm afraid I won't get to where I want/need to be
• I'm afraid of disappointing family and friends
• I'm afraid I won't know how to live as the new person I want to be
• I have control issues
• I don't like to exercise
• I don't like to exercise
• I don't like to exercise
• I don't like to exercise

I've had some major life changes in the past year, and each one has taken adjustment and time. Now I'm working on another major change - living on my own - and it's going to take some adjustment too.

I'm recognizing past bad habits and trying not to fall back into them...and it's tough.

But I'm also recognizing that this is a process and it won't happen overnight...so I'm trying to not be afraid of failing one day and letting that shoot me in the foot for the whole rest of my life. That might be my biggest lesson that I have to keep learning and reinforcing on a daily basis. That even if I lose a daily skirmish, I can still go on and win the war.






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