The Death of the Diet

Have you ever experienced frustration with dieting, working out, or trying to quit smoking, drinking, whatever?

I believe everyone has their vices, and typically people would like to deal with those vices. But what in the hell makes it so hard? It is like I really want to diet. I really want to loose some weight. I really want to work out hard and build some muscle tone. But I always manage to find ways to take it easy on my workouts, or to sneak food, or to ignore my sense of self-discipline.

For a long time I was convinced it all came back to an issue with my heart. I believed that somewhere in my heart there was sin, and it kept me from dealing with these "strongholds" or vices. I call it a stronghold because it is a place the devil has made himself present in my life, and it seems difficult to get him out. They are strongholds of the devil, its just weird to think about it like that.

SO...I'm frustrated with dieting. Again. What's upsetting is I feel like I have been on a strict diet since February, but if you look at what I have been eating you can hardly tell I've been on a diet at all. So mentally I have been trying very hard, but physically I haven't been trying that much.

It is very freakin' frustrating to think about it like that. It is like there's this massive disconnect between my body, my mind, and my spirit. In my mind, I want so badly to do the right thing to meet my goals, but I'm rarely capable of pushing myself to my potential. This struggle makes my body suffer because I'm not pushing as hard, it makes my spirit weak because it is chocked up as another failure, and those both influence my mind. And I find that incredibly ironic because my new years resolution was to get my mind, body, and spirit back to a healthy equilibrium.

"21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

24I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different."

The resolve is always Christ. I am just finding that hard to be applicable. How is Jesus going to help me stay motivated to eat vegetables instead of M & Ms, eat turkey breast instead of red meat, or put down the caffeine for water? How in the world is my spiritual belief in Christ going to influence my weight loss plan?

I don't know. That's what I'm having trouble with. Maybe that is the issue of my heart. That I don't value Christ highly enough in my life that I find the motivation to keep going. So I momentarily give up. I give up when I sneak M & Ms into my lunch bag. I give up when I skip running on the treadmill. That goes back to Christ. I love God enough to realize I have to be healthy and make some difficult changes in my life, but not enough to follow through with those changes.

Oy, help me God. I want to value Christ more in my life.

iPhone Pic

Bored at work yesterday and I was a little frustrated.

Fun w/ Webcam

Current Dirt

Rather than not posting anything, which I normally do, I decided to post my current dirt. These are the things that are keeping me from God. Inspirational words of wisdom welcome, however your "understanding sympathy" is not. If you understand and sympathize, post your own dirt. Then we can all wallow around in the mess we've made of our lives and together we will realize the magnitude of forgiveness.

- Wishing I had the drive to diet again
- Another Lock-in Friday, I wish I was looking forward to it more
- Feeling lonely, nagging desire for female companionship
- Too many lustful sins and its only Tuesday
- The last thing on the planet I want to do, other than fold clothes, is work on a ministry plan for 2009
- Still trying to catch up on sleep from the Middle School Lock-in, this makes me grumpy
- Thinking about fasting, but I don't really want to
- Two interviews this week, which is ironic because I'm somewhat pleased with my current employer this week
- Rock Band 2 is coming out
- The house needs a good cleaning, which I won't do because I am lazy
- Still a couple thousand dollars floating on my credit card, money always stresses me out
- Setting up interviews while I am at work makes me feel un-ethical
- I cuss too much
- Something has to change about my workouts, because I'm no longer seeing results
- I can not remember the last time I renewed my mind
- I don't feel like talking to anybody
- Right now there is a good chance my mom's house is floating in the Gulf of Mexico
- I wish I had better idea for blog posts, rather than the random updates
- The church website sucks, and its my fault
- In fact, all websites I've ever worked on ever suck...and its all my fault
- I wish I would have gone to school for something else
- Realizing you would be happier working at an Arby's for less than half of what you currently make is depressing

Ahh...now I feel better to let that out. Sometimes it is hard to see God through all of the dirt. The dirty dry reality of our choices leads us down these empty paths of meaningless results. Yet somehow through His infinity we find hope, joy, peace, happiness, kindness, love. Its just hard sometimes to push the dirt out of the way long enough to realize it. Despite myself, I am blessed.

Grace and Peace, Zane

September 11, 2001

Ramblings

Strike Zone is playing the Fish tonight. I am really excited about it. There's a lot of hype surrounding the show because of All In's CD release and the new "cool" band Year One. We are playing first so if you're coming get there early. We've cut our set-list down considerably, and I'm not sure how that's going to go. In all, we probably only have about 20 minutes worth of music. We should either get on the ball with these new songs or keep playing some of the old favorites.

I am very tired. Not enough sleep the last couple of days.

This weekend I am going to be domestic. I was debating on working at my house or going to the leadership retreat. I feel like working in my yard/garage and then having a beer sounds like the right plan :) This is what I hope to accomplish: till up my garden, replant my garden, plant a tree, sweep the driveway, clean the garage, build workbench. I've been meaning to build that stupid bench for months. That is truly the project that may never be completed.

I've enjoyed my youth duties this week for the most part. We are making great progress on the lock-ins and we've come up with some really amazing/out-of-the-box ideas. The team is phenomenal, I could have never imagined some of this stuff.

I've been reading some of the classifieds on CraigsList. If you've ever been to CL you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I should put something on there, and if I did what would it say. Probably something like: insanely hot 24 year youth minister/software engineer looking for cool chick with no drama who wants to be friends first. Of course then I'd have to put my picture on there.

I'm worried about my brother, again. He lost his girlfriend, again. He's been very quiet and reserved, not wanting to talk to anyone about anything...again. Last time it was bad, but I was living with him so I felt like I could kinda keep an eye on him.

Grace and Peace, Zane