Reflex response

Lord, give me the guidance and courage to follow You today. In every decision I encounter, let me see it through Your eyes, and respond as You would respond.

Every time we put something in our mouths, we are making a decision. Sometimes that decision is conscious, sometimes it’s a reflex response, generally made out of force of habit.

I’m challenged by the sheer number of times I eat based on reflex - the food is there, so my hand reaches out & I grab it. Done. Over. Very little thought went into the decision, yet it was a decision nonetheless.

This reflex response has improved for me over the course of the past 6 months, primarily because in my current eating plan I’ve chosen to dramatically lower my intake of carbohydrates. What this has done, in addition to eliminating a whole lot of carloies and unneeded sugar from my diet, has been to put up a type of ’speed bump’ in my reflex response. Now when I go to eat something, I have to ask myself the question, “Does this contain enough carbs to be detrimental to my weight loss goals, and if so, should I be eating it?” Asking this question naturally slows down the reflex, and nearly every time, it stops me from eating something I shouldn’t.

So even if you’re not retricting your diet in any way, you can still put a couple of speed bumps in your path to aid you in this process. Practice this over the next week, and let me know how it goes:

When tempted to put something in your mouth, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Will this help me meet my current weight loos and/or healthful living goals?
2. Am I eating this food to fuel my body’s energy needs, or am I doing it for another reason (boredom, stress, anger, comfort, etc.)?
3. Will eating this impact my obedience to what the Lord has called me to? (1st Corinthians 10:23)

Even if you only ask one of these questions, you’ve delayed the reflex response long enough to know that should you choose to eat, it’s not just instinctual, but thoughtful.

To see the impact of these decisions, I challenge you to keep a running total of the number of calories you’ve saved each time you employed this technique successfully, and said ‘no’ to whatever you were going to eat. (Fitday has an extensive list of calorie and nutritional information, if you want to be really precise.) I think you’ll be amazed at the potential impact this can have on meeting your healthy living goals.