Saturday, March 03, 2012

March's 30 day challenges

I'm sure many have been waiting on pins and needles to hear about the 30 day challenges I chose for March. ;)

I am aiming to drink no soda and memorize a Bible verse a day for 30 days. Good thing March has 31 days because I forgot about the no soda thing on March 1st and drank my usual diet caffeine free coke that afternoon.

I developed the soda habit when I did the South Beach diet several years ago. For those unfamiliar with SB, it restricts you from eating any sugar for the first phase of the diet which lasts 2 weeks or until your sugar cravings subside, which for me could have taken forever. I really don't know I can kick my sugar cravings, but that's for another post. Wanting to satiate that desire for sugar while "keeping the rules" of South Beach, I started drinking diet sodas. I have since read and learned that "fake" sugars send the same signals to one's brain as sugar does which makes clear why I can't kick my sugar cravings.

Nevertheless, I decided to do the 30 day challenge of no soda to seek to make no one and no thing my master but God alone. I want to make a tangible demonstration of that by taking a bit of a break from that daily ritual of downing a diet soda.

In addition, I want to memorize one Bible verse a day. I went back and forth on my approach for this. I considered selecting a variety of scriptures from an excellent series of CD's composed by Mark Altrogge that put scripture to music. You can find and purchase CD's from the "Hide the Word" series here: http://forevergratefulmusic.com/. I also considered choosing scriptures that pertain to an area of weakness for me in which I'd like to grow, for example passages from James that talk about taming the tongue.

But, where I landed as I was prayerfully paging through my Bible is where I think my heart will be most encouraged. Psalm 145 and 146 contain 31 verses and is a praise to the Lord. The best I can do for my soul is to spend extended time contemplating and giving thanks for the goodness and greatness of God. So, with that I'm jumping in with an effort to memorize these 31 God exalting verses.

2 comments:

Mandie said...

You can do it! You know I have a sweet tooth too and I've been soda free (aside from the occasional fountian soda every couple months) for a few years now. If I can do it you can too :)

Briana Almengor said...

Mandie, I think I can do it for 30 days...though unlike sugar it's actually getting harder as the days go by. My hubby is cruelly sipping on a CFA fountain soda infront of me. ;)
I don't know if I want to give it up permanently, but I think I will. I think I'll go back to where I was a few years back and just not have it in the house...if it's here, I drink it. I'll keep it out of the house and just get it as a treat. That's my goal. I don't like the idea of having to give up food/drink permanently. I like it all too much. Hopefully, I wont have to.