Physical Health

I was overweight. I ate too much unhealthy food and didn’t exercise enough. I wasn’t grossly overweight, but the spare tire above my belt was slowly getting bigger.

I hadn’t seen Dave for about a year. When we met for a coffee, I could believe how much weight he had lost. He looked healthy. I asked him what had happened.

Dave shared how he had had started tracking his eating and exercising with MyFitnessPal. I was intrigued and decided to try it.

With the program, you set a weight loss or weight-maintaining goal. You then enter the food you eat and the exercise you get. The program tracks your number of calories (or other things you want to measure).

My initial goal was to lose one pound per week. I still remember the first time I entered that I had eaten a piece of chocolate cake. To my utter amazement, I learned that I had just eaten one-quarter of my calories for the entire day!

I carefully entered the information for a month until I intuitively knew what I needed to do to stay on track with my eating and fitness goals. Within six months, I was at a good weight. More importantly, I had established healthier eating and exercise patterns that I have maintained (for the most part) for the past three years. I still hop on the weigh scale each night to make sure that I’m on track and make adjustments, if necessary.

Since getting more serious about my health, I read an amazing book by Gary Thomas, “Every Body Matters: Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul.” Thomas talks about how physical health connects with spiritual health. Based on my understanding of Scripture and what I gleaned from Thomas’ book, I would suggest three ways that physical health connects with spiritual health:

All of life is a spiritual discipline