No Excuses- Control Your Mind

"Rule your mind or it will rule you."

Lately I’ve been realizing that when working towards health and fitness goals, one of the most over looked body parts is the brain. Your mind is where your motivation begins and ends, yet it is often the first part that gets overlooked. Getting up at 5am for a great workout- or –pressing the snooze button one too many times. Following your healthy eating plan- or –eating that midnight snack even when you know you’re not hungry. Controlling your mind is vital to getting the body that you want.

One aspect of controlling our minds involves setting aside excuses. Healthy lifestyle habits do not develop on their own- it takes persistence, dedication, and determination to create a healthy way of life. We must be determined make daily choices to do what is “right” for our bodies rather than simply what is “comfortable.” Going with the flow will not get us to our ultimate goal. We have to control our minds, stop making excuses, and start doing what it takes to get to where we want to be- spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

D.A. Carson said is perfectly, portraying the importance of setting aside excuses, when he wrote:

“People do not drift towards holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate towards godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide towards godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

You will not drift towards your goal weight or dream body- it takes dedication and sometimes, even restraint. Choose the apple when you want the cookie; get on a bike when you’d rather be on the couch; spend time in the gym even when you’d like those extra 30 minutes in your bed. The indiscipline of lost self-control is not relaxation, it is laziness, and it will not get you to where you want to be.

Getting the body that you want starts with controlling your mind.

No excuses.