How NOT to gain weight during this quarantine.

"COVID19 can be your REASON or your EXCUSE." I heard this as I was praying this morning. And I immediately wrote it down. In so many different ways, this pandemic can be the turning point that makes or breaks each of us. There’s an undercurrent to this pandemic. You may have noticed it too. Many are sharing how they are turning to food and alcohol for relief because it’s a HARD season! Some of us are seeing the stress of this new unknown world that we find ourselves in as the perfect excuse to fix our worries with whatever is immediately available to offer relief or escape. I get it. I’ve been there. I have fixed many problems with Mexican food and Cabernet Franc. And in those moments of "relief", everything “was fixed!" If I experienced emotional stress, I fixed it with food and alcohol. It was my easy button of sorts. But then those choices all led me down the painful path of weight gain and a blueness that I carried around like a heavy purse. No one really ever talks about the blueness that comes from feeling uncomfortable in your pants, or in a bra that is cutting into your rib cage. But I remember it like it was yesterday! I remember the CONSTANT searching for the NEXT thing to get the weight off of me once and for all. And the minute I found the next weight loss plan, I put ALL of my faith and HOPE in it. Until I wasn’t skinny in a month. Then, I was up, shopping for the next solution. Until nothing worked. My blueness deepened as I surrendered to defeat. I couldn’t succeed at ANY weight loss program. My excuses often got the best of me. Then things changed. I started stepping deeper into my faith and suddenly I had REASONS to overcome the difficult things that had previously plagued me. Those new reasons were different than anything I had ever considered or thought about before too. My reasons for pushing through the discomfort were because I was suddenly aware of the FACT that God was trying to develop me, mature me and draw me closer to HIM. The minute GOD became my reason to push through the hard things, to lay down my dieters’ mentality, and to FACE every worry with prayer, I became unstoppable. When I dieted, I depended on my own understanding. But when I stood up as a Seeker, I trusted in His will for my life. (