Today, after reflecting on how much this app has changed my thinking about food and exercise, God put on my heart that the changes I am seeing in my thinking is much like how he wants to see the changes in my thinking while daily walking with him. This is what I understood God to mean. Instead of going on a diet and trying to change myself quickly, I just kept track of what I ate and let the app tell me the truth about what I ate (in calories) and the truth about exercising (the calories I burned). This truth changed the way I thought about the food I put in my mouth and about exercise.
Instead of trying to change ourselves, God wants us to read his Word (the truth) every day and spend time in prayer with him, and as we start keeping track of the truths we learn, our mind will start seeing things God's way. Our mind will start changing slowly.
You see, when I first became a Christian, after every sermon I heard, I would go home and try to change myself. Sometimes I succeeded, but more often, I failed. But even when I succeeded, it never lasted long. You see, my mind was still the same. We need to change our mind first, and then the body will follow. The sayings, "It's all in the mind," and "The battle is in the mind" are so true. Change your mind and you will change your life. But how do you change your mind? By seeing the truth. My fitness app told me the truth about the calories in the food I was eating. The Bible tells you the truth about everything else. The Bible is full of God's wisdom, truth. All your life you have been taught the world's way, but the world's way will only lead you down the path of destruction. You need to have a change of mind. So read God's truth every day and you will slowly start seeing the changes you have always wanted to see, but this time they will stick because you first had a change of mind.
P.S. - For those of you interested in hearing about the changes in my thinking that I noticed after using this app, here they are:
1) I started eating only half of what I usually eat because I didn't want to enter all those calories into my app.
2) I started avoiding certain foods because the calorie count was shocking. For example, when I go to Barnes and Noble with my daughter, I always eat a red velvet cheesecake from the cafe, but after I found out one piece of that cake is 1250 calories, I could never look at the cake the same way again.
3) After not eating as much at every meal because I didn't want to enter that many calories into my app, I started getting fuller quicker. Actually, I started not liking that full feeling.
4) After getting fuller quicker, I realized that I really don't need as much food in a day as I thought.
5) I actually started not finishing my plate after I felt full, because I didn't want to feel fuller (This is a miracle for me, because I never do this. I always eat everything on my plate!)
6) I started looking for ways to get more exercise into my day, because I wanted to add the calories I burned into my app.
