If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. 1 John 1:8-10 (NKJV)
Low-Carb Diets. The Paleo Diet. The Atkins Diet. The Mediterranean Diet. Serial dieters may try them all in an effort to shed excess weight. I read recently that there is a new diet that is all the rage. You can eat all you see of everything you don’t like. I’m not sure it will take off.
One of the most common pieces of dieting advice is to eat “everything in moderation”. But many people have a skewed sense of what ‘moderation’ means. According to a new British study, we under-report the number of calories we eat each day. That’s right. We are all lying – both to ourselves and to others – about how much we eat… by quite a lot. Researchers found that we underestimate how many calories we’re eating by 30% to 50%. That means we’re chowing down on an extra thousand calories per person, per day – on top on the average of two thousand.
Here are some of the lies we tell ourselves:
- “I’ll burn it all off in the gym.”
- “I’ll keep it light by ordering a diet Coke with my double cheese Big Mac and extra large fries.”
- “Biscuit pieces and crumbs contain no calories; the process of breaking causes calorie leakage.”
- “Things licked off spoons have no calories, especially whipped cream.”
- “A balanced diet is a burger in both hands.”
- “Chocolate chips are fattening. So are chocolate chip cookies! However, chocolate chips eaten while making chocolate chip cookies have no calories whatsoever.”
- “If no one saw you polish off half the packet of triple chocolate digestives, it didn’t really happen.”
- “If you eat something and no-one sees you eating it, it has no calories.”
- “Food used for medicinal purposes never counts, e.g. barley sugar sweets, hot chocolate, cough syrup.”
The Bible tells us that we can deceive ourselves in other ways, as in today’s reading. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Beware of self-deception. Self-deception is our ability to justify things we know are not right. It can cause a local church to think they are great when actually God sees them as wretched, poor and blind. Stop excusing. Stop tolerating. We can come up with many pretexts to justify our actions, but if they don’t tally with the precepts of God’s Word they are simply ways we deceive ourselves. What self-destructive behaviour in your life are you pretending isn’t there? What activity or attitude is unhealthy? What are the lies you are telling yourself that keep you from making lasting changes in your life? It’s time to admit and quit.