PHSH40 (Physical Health and Spiritual Health- 40 Day Journey) Day 1!!!

Day 1

Weight: 142.8 lbs

BMI: 21.1 Normal (according to www.bmicalculator.org)

BMR: 1680.1 kcal/day (“ ”)

1-arm pushups (right): 15 with good form and no break

1-arm pushups (left): 14 “ ”

Pushups in 1 min: TBD

Rock Ring Pull-ups max w/o break: TBD

Day 1 Lesson:

Okay…so where to start? I’m kind of slamming my mind and schedule with a bunch of new ideas and thoughts. So much information, so many thoughts, so many distractions, so little time for so much!

Let me get you up-to-speed. This is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and the first official day of my new pursuit of physical health and spiritual health development. I am reading several books on these things as of today. On the spiritual front, I’m going through Forty Days of Fruitful Living: Practicing a Life of Grace by Robert Schnase and a little booklet that Martha Hagan, the Christian Education Dir. at my church in Uvalde, put together, called Journey to Jerusalem. Both are books intended for being read/utilized over the Lenten season. So, I just started reading those and will continue to read them daily as something to keep me reading something new and fresh.

On the physical front, I’ve purchased the Men’s Health Total Fitness Guide 2009: Power Training book by Robert Dos Remedios. It’s packed full of fitness tips, instruction on understanding power training, programs, exercises, workouts, nutrition, and more of the like. Sure, I’ve read tons of booklets, web pages, blogs, pamphlets, and taken classes on nutrition and physique development. Hopefully, this book will help me better understand how to develop my overall fitness, not just the same old routines and exercises designed to target specific muscles and muscle groups, with the intent to build mass and achieve a certain “look”. Sure, I like looking fit for my wife and feeling confident in the body God gave me, but I’m so over the mass need to fit into a certain mold of a particular celebrity. The truth is that the real athletes, the ones on the field, court, track, mountain, etc. have great physique, a great “look”, and are in much better health that the celebrity who just did the 6 week fat-loss, quick result, program and is just as quickly going to get out of shape as soon as the movie is over.

I want to be healthy! I want to feel good…no, great! I want to be confident in my strength and in my relationship with the LORD! This is not going to be easy, and it’s not a diet, quick-fix program. This is going to be a challenge and a development of a new mind.

There’s a theme today… From the Inside Out. Yes, it’s a worship song by Hillsong United, but it’s also the way that God transforms us and we transform our bodies. The change God makes starts with a new mind. Scripture says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ” (Philippians 2:5). God changes our mind and desires and moves outward to our actions in the world. Similarly, if we want our physical health to change, we start with a new mind, a new desire, against worldly pleasures, against the world’s opinion of the way we look. We change our habits, our eating, and our exercise. Then the outward changes begin to appear!

Day 1 Spiritual Development: Scriptures read- John 1:1-5, John 15:1-17

Day 1 Physical Development: I’m just going to put this out there now… I’m not starting the workouts until next week! I know this is Day 1, but I want to make goals and a plan before I start throwing my body and too much weight around, tiring myself out for nothing. Still, I will begin educating myself on better Physical Health today.

What I’m doing today is about water… Jesus is the “living water” and we know we need him. Duh, right? Well we also know our bodies need water. Again, duh. Today, I am going to start making sure I drink enough water! Take your body weight (mine’s 143), divide it by 2 (71.5), and drink that many ounces of water each day (a little over a half gallon)! So I’ll be drinking my 32 oz. “nalgene” bottle about 2 and ¼ times each day. I think we’ll be amazed at what that will do. (Caution: Drinking lots of fluids results in lots of bathroom trips…more exercise! Woo!)

I really appreciate it if you’ve read this whole thing! I could’ve gone longer, but I won’t. I hope you’ll join me in this process as we seek to improve ourselves over these 40 days. (Oh ya, technically, Lent’s 40 days don’t include Sundays. So I’ll be taking those off…or something like that. My schedule is going nuts this next week as I go skiing with 200 teenagers! I know, tough life, but it’s my job.)

Alongside you in the pursuit of something greater,

Brent