Dear Family.
Are you familiar with the statement “you don’t know what you don’t know?” This concept was a profound thought about seven years ago when I started an eating plan called “Whole 30.” This concept is not to eat processed food.
This idea reads way more straightforward than it is to implement. The Whole 30 lifestyle takes a long time to grasp. To name a few rules on the eating plan, it would go like this: no dairy, no legumes, no soy, no corn, no alcohol, and no added sugar. Some other things are not tracking calories or getting on the scale until thirty days have passed.
You will find some interesting terms once you get involved in the Whole 30 community. One term that stands out to me today is “non-scale victories.” These things one notices in their bodies as they progress through the thirty days of this elimination diet. I can still remember my “non-scale victories.” I started sleeping better, my dreams returned, my concentration improved, the foot fungus disappeared, and the most significant victory was getting off all prescription allergy medicine I had been on for ten years.
This way of eating was radical and brutal to implement. We had to read every label, and shopping took forever to find foods that were not processed. Finding food with soy or sugar seemed possible. Then, about day twenty, it hit me that everything worth doing is difficult.
Abiding in the Lord takes work, just like learning the Whole 30 way of healthy eating. Like Whole 30, anything worth doing takes tremendous effort to retrain old habits and break free from past mindsets. I pray as you learn to Abide in the Vine, you can see new fruit in your life. God is with and in you. Keep abiding! See you this Sunday as we see Service as one more example in Abiding.
In Him,
Pastor Chris