Week 1: A Spiritual Solution to a Physical Problem

I wasn't going to do it again.  Not again.  Not another year when my ambitious hopes for weight loss turn heavy {no pun intended} and get tossed aside.  But as I made my goals for 2013, I couldn't seem to leave goals for weight loss out of my head.  If it didn't matter so much to me, why would I come back to it year after year?  So I consulted my mother.

 "Meilina," she said.  "What in your life have you ever given up on something once you put your mind to it?"

"That's the point! Losing weight-- every year!"

"Besides that." 

Silence. 

I really couldn't think of anything. 

"See?" said Mom.  "That's why you have to do it!  You don't give up!"

That thought empowered me.

 "Heavenly Father will help you," she said. "You can turn to Him for strength." 

And that thought humbled me. 

I think I will never be as good as my mother until I can see, like she does, that every problem has a Gospel solution. 

Perhaps my self-righteous pride is one reason that I quit so easily-- I think I can do this on my own.  Instead, I'm starting here this time: "Admit that you, of yourself, are powerless to overcome your addictions and that your life has become unmanageable.Come to believe that the power of God can restore you to complete spiritual health."

"The Lord is in the details of our lives," President Thomas S. Monson said.  So I'm going to pray for strength to resist the deserts at ward activities.  I'm going to study the scriptures for insights about overcoming cravings.  I'm going to search the words of the prophets for how to deal constructively with emotions (instead of self-medicating with food).  I'm going to weary the Lord with my pleadings.  Also, I will seek help and support from other sources as needed (family, roommates, friends, nutritionists, counselors).  I must expect resistance, challenges, outright opposition, but I must trust that He will help me through it.  

I have adopted as my motto the quote at the end of the video I've inserted above: "Don't you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying.  There is help and happiness ahead.  Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come 'til heaven, but for those who embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end.  Trust God and believe in good things to come."