Saturday, October 31, 2009

The ELEM-6 Diet, Part-5: Haven't Got a Prayer?


[Please excuse the rough-draft nature of this post. I'll come back to it in the next few days and clean it up. I just wanted to get it to you ASAP] --Allen


My dear still struggling friends. In the psychological /spiritual battle regarding weight, one needs every tool possible. For folks of faith, this means, among other things, prayer. Now don't go thinking (as us overweight folks so often do) that this will make things effortless or so easy one need not work very hard. No--prayer is not some spiritual magic diet pill that will enable you to lose weight while you sleep. Yet--yet, there is something to earnest prayer which connects us to God in a way which leads to victory when previous efforts--even valiant ones--have failed.

Let me tall you about how prayer was a significant element in my beginning to get real about losing weight. I work at my church and our ministry team holds a weekly staff meeting. Besides the church issues we discuss, staff members will often ask for prayer regarding someone or something in their area of ministry. Also, staff members will ask for prayer for a family member who is ill or for some other personal issue. I'm a fairly private person and do not readily share my personal problems and struggles. Last year though, in April or may, at one particular staff meeting, I felt like I should illicit the help of others with my struggle to lose weight (or, perhaps I should say, my lack of being willing to really struggle meaningfully about my weight). So when it came my turn to ask for prayers, I told them how much my excess weight bothered me and how I had failed time and again to control my eating. I confessed that it was an embarrassment to me and a further embarrassment to tell them this. At any rate, no one made a big deal of it or commented much. nonetheless, I now believe that my prayer request to my co-workers that day somehow played a vital role in my eventual success. For all I know, it was the prayers and faith of one of them which really made the difference--and not so much my own.

I should mention here that this happened a full six months before I began to get serious about my weight. However, having asked people to pray for me made me all the more aware that something had to happen and it needed to happen sooner rather than later. One great thing which came of my confession to my co-workers is that one of them, our church's youth leader, would pop into my office every week or two and ask me how my dieting was going. This made me feel guilty when I had to tell him I wasn't yet making much--or any--progress. I was walking a bit (EM), but had not begun to EL yet.

My suggestion: Either in person or perhaps by email, select a handful of people who care about you and tell them how frustrated you are with trying to lose weight. Tell them you know you really must find a way and need all the help you can get. Ask them to remember you in their prayers in this regard. If you are really brave, you might invite them to ask you form time to time how it's going.

O.K. I have now revealed you one of the secret strategies of the ELEM-6 diet which is not contained in the acronym. Perhaps I should have called it ELEM-6+P.

That's all for now. Keep checking back in the weeks ahead as I share more and get into some real detail about how I began in earnest and what that was like.

PS-- You CAN do this! You must, you can, you will!

--Allen

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