The way you feel about your body effects the way you live your life, it shapes the way that you parent your kids, it influences the way you impact the world.

I have seen a woman after woman struggle with their self esteem, struggle with having confidence, struggle with not feeling like they’re enough.

10 Things to Stop Doing so you can Love the Body God Gave You

We everything we have to juggle, we add to it the burden of not loving our bodies, not accepting the bodies that God has given us. So today I want to give you 10 things to stop doing so that you can love the body that God gave you.

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There are so many messages out there that tell us what we need to be, what we need to look like, how we need to act. All these different requirements and expectations come from worldly sources, and at the end of the day we have an audience of One.

There are no opinions out there that should matter more to us than what God thinks of us. I pray that you can start to discover that God made your body and it’s possible to love the body that He gave you.

And we can do that with some simple tweaks in our daily lives and in our mindset and thinking. Follow along with each of these tips, build some confidence, and experience the freedom and the joy that comes from knowing who you are in Christ.

#1: Stop Allowing the Number on the Scale to Define Who You Are.

So the first thing you need to stop doing, if you want to love the body God gave you, is stop allowing the number on the scale to define who you are.

I gave up the scale years ago, and it changed the way that I live my life. Every single day, I would step on the scale (more than once a day usually), and I would let it decide how I was going to spend my day and how I felt about myself.

The scale dictated if I was going to have a good day or a bad day just based on those numbers that were on showed back to me. Instead of letting the scale decide who we are, it’s time for us as Christian women, as daughters of God to rise up and embrace the truth of who God says we are.

The world is going to say that to cultivate self confidence, that we need to have a massive change. That we need to change what we’re doing, what we look like, where we’re spending our money, that we need this massive change in ourselves.

But what we really need, if we want to experience the confidence that comes from knowing who we are in Christ, we need to have a movement. We need to have women who rise up and say, I am not the number on a scale.

I’m more than a number. I am who God says I am, and I have confidence in who He is more than just who I am.

#2: Stop trying to make your body fit the exercise mold.

The second thing that you need to stop doing, if you want to love the body that God gave you, is to stop trying to make your body fit the exercise mold. I struggled with this for decades to be honest.

I would think, “if I need to get healthy, there’s only one way to do it. I need to sweat it out. I need to be doing exactly this checklist of things.” And some of those things didn’t work with my body.

You have to really find out what works for your body and make exercise more about the way that you feel than about the numbers that are showing up on a treadmill or the speed on a bike that you’re on or how many weights that you’re lifting.

Let it be more about how your body feels after you exercise. Base your exercise on the movements and the strength that you know you need in order to live out what God has called you to do.

Ultimately that’s the reason why we get healthy.

That’s the reason why we want to be fit and strong is so that anything that God calls us to do, we can do with confidence because we have the physical strength to do that.

And one thing that I’ve learned and that I share with the ladies in the Faith Food Freedom course is that you can find a soulmate workout.

Find something that you love to do. Something that your body responds to. (And that can be different every single day!) Awhile back, I was doing a boxing workout and I loved it. I was really enjoying the strength. I was feeling really empowered.

Then there were other days that I needed to have more peace in my life. I needed to have a calm workout. So if I needed to have a peaceful day, I really couldn’t choose boxing. Even though I loved that workout. I had to choose something quieter. Something like pilates for instance. There are other times that I need to go out and conquer the world, and so on those days I chose running or boxing or something similar.

Don’t have to try and make your body fit the exercise mold that says that this is the only way that you’re going to have success.

You can find out what works for you and really make it more about the way that you feel.

#3: Stop being mean to yourself.

Remember how we learned to use nice words in Kindergarten? No one told us that applies to the way we talk about ourselves too.

If you are saying things to yourself that you wouldn’t say to your mother or your daughter, your sister, or you wouldn’t allow them to say about themselves, then please stop saying it to yourself.

We can be so cruel with our inner voices and the way that we think about our bodies. The way we talk about our bodies is demeaning and defeating.  Ladies, it’s time to stop beating ourselves up.

The enemy wants you to hate the body that you live in.

The devil knows that if he can keep you focused on what you don’t like about yourself, then you’re less likely to make an impact for the Kingdom of God.

That’s the entire reason why he is so invested in us not liking who we are. He wants us focusing too much on the things that we don’t like about our bodies because he knows that if we could reach past that, if we can start walking in this God confidence, then we are going to be able to have more of an impact for God’s Kingdom.

It’s time that we choose to believe God’s truth.

We have to take the thoughts that we’re listening to and start replacing the thoughts that we have about our bodies, with God’s thoughts about us.

#4: Stop Putting the Emphasis on your outward appearance.

The fourth thing that we need to stop doing in order to love the bodies that God has given us is to stop putting the emphasis on our outward appearance.

There’s a quote by author J.K. Rowling where she says, “Is being heavy, really the worst thing a human being could be? Is it worse than being vindictive, jealous, shallow vein, boring, evil or cruel?” And she said, “not to me.”

It’s time that we really start focusing on what we have inside. The beauty of a quiet spirit, like the Bible says in 1 Peter 3:4.

When the prophet Samuel was choosing David to be the king of Israel, it seemed like all of David’s brothers were better suited for the job.

They were bigger, they were stronger, but God saw the heart of David. And that’s what made all the difference. It was less about the outward appearance and had everything to do with the heart. Read the whole story HERE.

#5: Stop Waiting for Life to happen after “Skinny” does

We need to stop waiting for life to happen after skinny does.

God wants you to have an abundant life and that promise isn’t just for whenever you hit your goal weight.

Here’s the truth: God meant for food to be a nice side dish to your life, but He never meant for it to be the main dish.

He wants you to have a full life, a life full of impact, and a life full of joy and freedom and none of those things have to wait until after you’ve gotten to be a certain size.

In fact, I would even venture to say that if you’re waiting for those things to happen, once you get to a certain size, you’re going to be disappointed.

Too often we believe these myths that, “As soon as I’m a size six, then I’m going to be happy.” Or “as soon as I get under this amount of weight, then I’m going to be able to go to the beach with my family.

We get these misconceptions into our minds and we wait to live until we get to a certain weight and that’s not the way that God wants us to live.

#6: Stop Comaring Yourself with other People

The sixth thing is to stop comparing yourself with other people. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says “when they compare themselves with themselves, they’re not wise.” Comparison doesn’t help anyone. Mainly because it changes quickly. It’s so fickle.

You can walk in a store and someone could be walking out that is just a hot mess and you feel great about yourself. Then as you’re walking out of that same store, you see someone coming in that you think is so much prettier, so much more put together than you and you have just taken a rollercoaster ride because you’re comparing yourself with other people.

Comparison doesn’t help anything and most of the time it’s because we compare our before pictures with someone else’s after pictures.

We compare our real life with someone’s instagram life. We compare our struggle with someone who has already been through more than we could ever imagine.

When we compare ourselves with other people, it makes it really hard to love our unique body, because all we’re looking at is, someone else being better used by God or prettier or smarter. What we’re really doing is tearing down the One who made us in the first place.

#7: Stop believing the lie that you don’t matter because of the number on the scale.

Next up: stop believing the lie that you don’t matter because of the number on the scale or the number on your jeans.

You are significant in the Kingdom of God right now.

You can be used by Him right now.

Whatever size your jeans say, whatever the number on the scale says, no matter what state you’re in, you can be used by God.

I would even go a step further to say that those things we struggle with the most: things like self esteem, body image issues, whatever your struggle is, that can be the very thing that God uses to reach other people through you.

Body image was the struggle that I could never get over, and finally I decided, “Lord, You’ve made me. You are walking me through this journey. I want my health journey to bring me closer to You. Not further away. I want to be running to You not hating what You’ve made.”

And once I made that shift, I realized that’s when I become more significant in the Kingdom of God. That’s when I can really start making a difference for Him because my confidence doesn’t come from myself

That’s the problem with self-esteem or self-confidence.

It’s always dependent on yourself and whenever we start to make that shift and start thinking in terms of God-confidence, we know that we’re basing our confidence on Someone who’s never going to fail us.

#8: Stop Letting the Scale Dictate Your Success

Ladies, we need to stop letting the scale dictate our success.

We talked about how the scale dictates our day, how it changes the way that we feel, but so often we think that we are only successful in our health journey if we’ve lost weight, if we see inches lost.

But the scale can’t see the successes that aren’t related to pounds. And there are SO many more successes!

There’s no way the scale can measure you passing up a donut when you want to have 5. The scale can’t tell if you upped your water intake and met your goal. The number doesn’t go down when you get a great night’s rest.

And all those things are HUGE successes!

So I want you to start letting obedience dictate your success. Your obedience to the Lord should be your definition of success for anything. For your work, for your family, and for your health journey.

If you decide you wake up and say, I am going to honor God by putting healthy foods into my body, I’m going to honor Him by getting enough to water to drink by getting enough rest by choosing Him first. That equals success.

You can choose to let your obedience to the Lord dictate your success and really allow your health journey to bring you closer to Him in the process.

#9: Stop treating your body like it doesn’t matter.

Your body is God’s Temple and here’s the real truth: it is harder to be mindful of your body and learn how God made it than it is to just punch a time clock at the gym.

There’s nothing wrong with going to the gym. There’s nothing wrong with putting in the time and exercise. Definitely nothing wrong with that, but it is harder to:

• be mindful of how foods are affecting your body
• pay attention to when you’re actually hungry
• make decisions based on the truth that your body is God’s Temple

The foods that we put into our bodies matter, the way that we treat our bodies matters, whether it’s by lack of exercise or even too much exercise, we have to start treating our bodies like they matter because they do.

They matter to God.

#10: Stop Believing the Enemy’s Lie that Freedom isn’t Possible for You

The last thing is to stop believing the enemy’s lie. That freedom isn’t possible for you. This was the number one thing that changed me personally.

I had to stop believing that I would always be on this roller coaster of dieting and binging. The cycle of dieting and feeling bad about myself and spiraling into emotional eating.

I was on that roller coaster for so long. There were so many diets that ended up just making me feel worse than whenever I started, and it wasn’t until I sat down and said, “Lord, I want freedom. I want to experience the way that You want me to eat.”

I wanted to have the confidence that could only come from knowing who I was in Christ. I wanted to be confident, not because of anything I’ve done, but because of everything that He has done.

His freedom was available to me, and it’s available for you.

You’re not alone.

I want you to know that you’re not alone in this struggle. If you are struggling to love the body that God gave you, you’re not alone. We all do it. There is no size that is exempt.

There’s no size that is going to give you the peace and freedom you want. But there is hope. I want you to know that you’re not on your own.

I have created a 21 day devotional guide for women who want to learn how to walk in confidence. We’re going to talk about physical confidence. We’re going to talk about emotional confidence.

You will grow in the knowledge of who you are in Christ. And that will change the way that you live every aspect of your life, the way that you live your health journey, the way that you parent your kids, the way that you respond to the people around you are confidence.

GET INSTANT ACCESS TO WALKING IN CONFIDENCE!

Once we know where our confidence comes from, it starts to change our entire life.

Make sure that you grab your copy!

If you don’t want to waste another day hating your body…

If everything that I said today hit home with you. You’ve felt the pain of not loving your body, even feeling angry at God for the body that you’re in.

If that spoke to your heart and you know that you NEED to get started moving towards that freedom, then please check out Faith Food Freedom. It’s a 12 week course that helps you say goodbye to dieting and body hate and say yes to God’s freedom with eating.

You will:

• find out how to eat the way that God intended for you to eat in the first place
• let go of fears that have been holding you back from really experiencing joy and peace in your life
• learn how to make better choices, but make them with different motivations
• find a sense of purpose that makes you excited

Because that’s what it’s all about! I want you to wake up everyday excited about how you will live out God’s purpose for your life. I want you living a passionate life full of joy and excitement.  The kind of sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat excited.

So if that’s you, if you are just ready to jump in and say, “I refuse to live in bondage for one more day.”

If you are ready to start living in freedom, then join FAITH FOOD FREEDOM. You’ll get instant access to videos, worksheets, and a community who cares about you. Can’t wait to see you there!