How to combat temptation, laziness & self-sabotage on your weight loss journey.

I don’t understand why people don’t teach this to us, because it has been the ONLY reason I’ve been able to lose weight. What most coaches and weight loss experts teach us to do is to count calories, exercise, eat a clean diet, weigh, measure, rinse and repeat. But not many teach that while that may get us to a thinner frame, the struggle is real. Temptation, sabotage, cravings, stress, emotional eating, bad habits, boredom and even LACK of willpower and motivation are seldom mentioned. How many diets have you been on where you’ve been told to just push through it, to be 'self-motivated'? But what do you do when your motivation to lose weight is gone? The willpower you had at day 1 has worn off and you’re staring a bag of Doritos in the eye? Where do you get the strength to say no? And what do you do when NO doesn’t come easily? If you’re anything like me, saying no to wrong foods is hard. Sacrificing your favorite munchies or dinners is NOT something you enjoy, and the sacrifice becomes TOO difficult until you finally give in. But WHAT IF it doesn’t have to be that hard? What if I told you that my faith is the SOLE reason I’m finally living in my goal pants? For so long I prayed for strength to say NO to the foods I loved. I sacrificed and tried to get the strength to say no to food because I wanted to lose the weight so badly. For.So.long. But then I started to read the bible and I learned that God doesn’t want our sacrifices for anything. He wants OBEDIENT hearts, seeking HIM for strength! What I’ve learned is that if obedience is hard; you’re out of balance in your disciplines. Here’s what I mean: If you're hungry; you eat. If you’re thirsty; you drink. If you’re tired; you sleep. God designed our bodies perfectly to know WHAT we need when we have a physical feeling. But what about when you’re anxious? Or stressed, overwhelmed, fearful, sad, depressed, tempted, lonely or confused? SHOULD our natural reaction be to eat? No. Our natural reaction SHOULD be to pray. But we're not taught to link these emotions/feelings with God. We're taught to feed our emotions/feelings with food. Matthew 4:4 says that “We do not live by bread alone.” Our emotions are just the hunger pangs of life. <