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Seven in ten Americans are overweight. That’s where The Daniel Plan comes in.
Dedicate your body to God. Ask for his help and get involved in a small group of some kind that will support you on your journey. Then start making healthy choices.
Physical health influences your mental health, your spiritual health, your emotional health, your relational health, and even your financial health.
God expects us to take care of our bodies. We are not the owners of our bodies, but we are the caretakers, or managers, of them. The word for manager in the Bible is steward. Taking care of our bodies is an issue of spiritual stewardship.
Everyone wants to be healthy, but very few people choose to be healthy. It takes more than desire or a dream to get healthy…it takes a decision. You won’t change until you choose to change.
The secret to self-control is to allow ourselves to be Spirit-controlled.
The Essentials
The Faith Essential
As Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom illustrates, it all depends on where your focus is; where you bring your mind’s attention determines how you feel.
The Food Essential
Real, whole food that comes from the earth—food that was created by God—heals, while industrial-processed food created in factories by man harms. Unfortunately, many of us don’t eat food anymore. We eat factory-made, industrially produced food-like substances. This should make us stop and think. Should we really be putting that stuff into our bodies?
The Daniel Plan is rooted in a very simple principle: Take the junk out and let abundance in. The Plan’s philosophy is that if it was grown on a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, leave it on the shelf.
The Fitness Essential
More than 70% of us are not exercising regularly enough to maintain our health.
Moving your body even just a little bit on a regular basis impacts not only your physical health, but also your intellectual, emotional, social, financial, and spiritual health.
The Focus Essential
Modern medical research reveals that when you consistently focus on your blessings and what you are grateful for each day, it has positive effects on your physical and mental health.
Psychologist Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania found that when people wrote down three things they were grateful for each day, within three weeks it significantly increased their level of happiness. As you will see, gratitude even helps your brain work better.
The Friends Essential
When it comes to your health, every body needs a buddy.
The New Testament uses the phrase one another over and over. It says love one another, encourage one another, serve one another, support one another. The word “support” literally means to increase one another’s potential.
The prophet Daniel understood this principle too. He didn’t make his commitment to God’s ways and healthy choices by himself. He did it with three friends. The four of them—together—were much stronger than any of them could have been alone.
Faith
I can do all this through him who gives me strength. – Philippians 4:13
The reason we eventually fail at all of our good resolutions is because we don’t depend on God. The key to a faith-filled life is not in trying harder. It’s not in psyching yourself up, but in relaxing in God’s grace, so he can do through you what he desires to do.
C.S. Lewis noted that God whispers to us in our pleasure but shouts to us in our pain. It often takes a painful situation to get our attention. We all know the truth of Proverbs 20:30: “Sometimes it take a painful experience to make us change our ways.”
It is often said, “You’re not what you think you are, but what you think about, you are!”
The biblical word for personal change is repentance. Most people completely understand the term. The popular conception of repentance is “Stop sinning! Quit doing bad things!” But the word actually means to change your mind. It comes from the Greek word metanoia, which means to change your perspective, think in a different way, make a mental U-turn.
The Bible teaches that the way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.
Learn to depend on God’s Spirit to guide you, strengthen you, empower you, and use you.
The fruitfulness of your life will depend on how dependent you are on the Holy Spirit. Attempting to bear fruit (and making positive changes) on your own power is as foolish as tying apples on the branches of a dead apple tree.
Food
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. – 1 Corinthians 10:31
Optimize your health. Love, enjoy, and celebrate food and use it to enrich and enliven you. Food has the power to heal us. It is the most potent tool we have to help prevent and treat many of our chronic diseases—including diabetes and obesity.
More than 95% of chronic illness is not related to your genes, but to what these genes are exposed to in your lifetime.
Unfortunately, less than 10% of Americans eat the recommended five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Yet scientific research overwhelmingly tells us that the single most important thing we can do for our health is to eat more vegetables and fruits.
Excess meat consumption has been associated with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
While you may not die in an hour when you get hungry, you will get sick and fat and live a shorter, poorer life if you regularly find yourself in a food emergency. You will repeatedly choose poor quality, high sugar, refined foods and eat more than you need.
In the book Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss reveals that the food industry has intentionally and scientifically designed the hyper-processed, hyper-palatable, sugar-laden food to make us addicted—not metaphorically, but actually physically addicted. Sugar is more addictive than cocaine. No wonder we have cravings!
We have been convinced that changing what we eat is hard. No wonder! In many communities in America there are ten times as many fast-food joints and convenience stores as supermarkets or produce markets. The average American consumes ten pounds of chemical additives a year. The more additives, typically the fewer the nutrients.
One of the biggest threats to our health is the dramatic increase of sugar in all forms in our diet in the last hundred years. Hunter-gatherer populations consumed about 22 teaspoons of sugar a year; now the average American consumes 22 to 30 teaspoons of sugar every single day. In 1800, the average person consumed 5 pounds per year; now we average 152 pounds a year.
Sugar-sweetened drinks like soda now make up 15% of the calories consumed by the average American. One can of soda a day increases a kid’s risk of obesity by 60% and women’s chance of getting diabetes by more than 80%.
Since low-fat dietary recommendations in the early 1980s (which we all thought were good for us at the time), we have doubled our rates of obesity in adults and tripled it in kids, and the rate of type 2 diabetes around the world has increased sevenfold. In fact, today in America, one in two people have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.
A fourteen-year study of more than 65,000 women found that diet drinks may be worse than sugar-sweetened drinks. There is no free ride. Diet drinks are not good substitutes for sugar-sweetened drinks. They increase cravings, weight gain, and type 2 diabetes. And they are addictive.
The two most common foods that trigger reactions are gluten (found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and oats) and dairy. These foods trigger inflammation, which is the root of autoimmune diseases (suffered by 24 to 50 million Americans), arthritic, allergic, and asthmatic diseases, which are all on a steep rise; diabetes; dementia; obesity; depression; heart disease; and autism.
Americans have been taught that we need milk, that without it kids will not grow up to be big and strong and old ladies’ bones will dissolve in a heap from osteoporosis. We have been taught that milk is nature’s perfect food. It is. For a calf!
More than 75% of the world’s population is lactose intolerant (having the inability to digest the sugar in milk), and dairy causes bloating, gas, and diarrhea.
Everyone needs to take a dairy holiday and eliminate dairy for at least ten days but up to forty days to see how you feel.
Low-level inflammation from gluten that is not celiac disease has been shown to increase heart attacks by more than 35% and cancer by more than 70%. That is why elimination of gluten and food allergens or sensitivities can be a powerful way to prevent and reverse obesity, diabetes, and so many other chronic diseases.
The sad reality is that it’s easy to eat poorly. Health is not something that happens automatically. We are very good at planning some areas of our life: vacation, parties, and maybe our financial future. But most of us rarely plan for our health.
If you are doing The Daniel Plan, it is still essential to try to find a buddy at work or in your neighborhood who can do it with you.
Follow the “hari hachi bu” rule. The Okinawans from Japan live well over 100 years old and eat until they are 80% full.
Eat on time. Don’t go into a restaurant really hungry. You will order and eat more. Share entrees, and bring leftovers home.
There are two reasons to be mindful when you eat. First, you will eat less and enjoy your food more. Second, you will metabolize and burn food better rather than store it in your belly. Study after study shows that when we eat unconsciously, we eat more.
Studies also show that when you eat in a stressed state, you store fat in your belly and don’t metabolize your food well. Same food, but more weight gain and inflammation.
Start with healthy foods first. Starting with a salad or grilled veggies will lead you to eat less.
Don’t reward exercise. If you have one 20-ounce soda, you have to walk 4.5 miles to burn it off. If you eat one super-sized meal, you have to run 4 miles a day for one week to burn off that one meal. You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.
Don’t shop hungry.
Most Americans spend less than about 6% of their income on food, while Europeans spend 9 to 13%. Rethinking your budget to include higher quality food is something that will pay off much greater dividends in energy, long-term health, and lower health care and prescriptions costs when you get older.
In supermarkets, the key is to shop around the perimeter of the store. That is where you will find the produce, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. It is not danger-free, but it is where you should spend most of your time. The aisles are “danger zones.” The ends of the aisles display the worst foods, such as 2-liter sodas, giant sugared box cereals, and worse. In the aisles, the worst food items are at eye level; the better-for-you foods are often on the bottom or top shelves.
Cooking is a transformational act. The closer we can get to the food we eat, the shorter the link between field and fork, the better off we will all be. We have outsourced our cooking to the industrial food system.
The most important food skill you have to create a rich, abundant, healthy life is this: cooking. Cooking at home can be faster and cheaper than eating out.
There are personal reasons to do The Daniel Plan: to feel better, to lose weight, to support those in your family or faith community. Food is a personal issue tied to our culture, habits, and preferences. But the implications of what we eat are much greater. How does what we eat connect to our values and purpose in life? How do the choices we make affect our family, our neighborhood, and our society?
Aligning what we eat with who we are and our core values will make it much easier to change our habits. That is why all five Essentials are so tightly connected.
Fitness
What images come to mind when you think of the word strong? Daniel possessed strength that went well beyond the size of his muscles. He had a strength of faith, courage, obedience, devotion, dedication, endurance, and discipline in his body, mind, and spirit. That is where we get the concept of Daniel Strong.
Daniel Strong = A pursuit of excellence in body, mind, and spirit for God’s glory
Only about half of us exercise three or more days a week. We are now in the age of the computer, cell phone, remote, escalator, and elevator. Movement has been slowly removed from our daily living, and we are, unfortunately, reaping the costs with compromised health, excess weight, aches and pains, pre-mature aging, and weak muscles.
Truth be told, you can make exercise a reality and discover movement you truly enjoy. When exercise is a part of your life because you want it, enjoy it, and are inspired by it, you will reap its benefits immensely.
Ask yourself, “If I could realize or accomplish anything related to my fitness and health, without fear of failure, what would it be?”
Identify your one word to move—your one reason to begin to move more:
- Look in to prepare your heart.
- Look up to God to help you discover your one word.
- Look out with the help of others to help you live your word.
To reach your health and fitness destination, it is important to begin mapping out a few markers or milestones along the way.
Today for our kids who have tablets, smart phones, and online games, they need to be coaxed to go outside. They spend much of their days sitting down and therefore experience some of the same health and fitness challenges as adults three times their age.
Back to the Joy of Play
Back when it was called play, we loved every minute of it. Today, for many, we call it exercise and count every minute of it, longing for it to be over. We frequently find it painful, boring, or dull, and we feel guilty about not doing it. Many of us won’t switch to an active lifestyle just because it’s good for us.
Believe it or not, the average American employee will sit anywhere from 7.7 to 15 hours a day without moving. Experts have coined the phrase “sitting disease” to describe it. The University of Missouri discovered that sitting for 3 to 4 hours at a time actually shuts off your body’s ability to burn fat efficiently.
According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting is the new smoking! Sitting too long, up to 3 to 4 hours at a time, is now equivalent to smoking a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes a day. Yikes!
PLAY
P – Prayerful Movements Throughout Your Day
Research proves that performing movements such as standing or fidgeting or lightly stretching or active games, aerobic activity, or strength training even for just a minute or two every hour throughout your day can make a big difference to your health and well-being—and combat sitting disease.
Set an alarm clock on your phone to remind you every hour to do two or three of the following:
- Stand up for 1 to 2 minutes, and thank God for the many blessings in your day and life.
- Stretch your shoulders and arms, but close your eyes to worship God in silence.
- Squat up and down 5 to 10 times while thinking about how you are becoming Daniel Strong.
- Perform deep breathing for a couple of minutes. Inhale God’s strength and goodness. Exhale any worry or concern you may be carrying, releasing it to him with each breath.
- Stand or pace when you are talking on the phone.
- Go for a walking meeting instead of sitting in a conference room.
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Use the time walking up the stairs to thank God for all he has done in your life.
- Stand when doing desk work. Every hour, stand for 2 minutes, and let this be a reminder to you to stand for God in everything you do.
L – Loosening Breaks
You can perform loosening breaks (e.g., standing arm circles or toe touches) throughout your day for 15 to 30 seconds anywhere, anytime.
A – Active Games & Aerobic Activity
When we think about aerobic exercise, we frequently think of things such as brisk walking, elliptical or stair climber machines, step classes, aqua aerobic classes, running, or interval training—which are all beneficial and will improve your health and fitness. But what about other activities we haven’t played in a while that may bring that youthfulness and movement back—games such as tennis, tag, handball, racquetball, and dodge ball?
Y – Youthful Strength Training
When it comes to exercise, researchers have found that those who exercise in the morning are much more likely to eat healthier, exercise more, and take better care of themselves throughout the day.
Get a Dog. Scientists from the University of Western Australia found that people walk 48 minutes more per week after they get a dog. Dogs are a natural fitness trainer—reminding you daily to take care of yourself, encouraging you to move, with every step and wag of their tail.
The key to fitness is discovering movement that you enjoy.
Focus
With one decision—an action made by your brain—you will begin a journey to wellness that will offer you increased energy, lower stress, and better sleep. We want that one decision to last for a lifetime, which requires a renewed mind and sustained focus.
The bottom line is that whatever gets your attention gets you.
Change you brain, and you will change your health. With a healthy brain, people are happier and physically healthier, because they make better decisions. It is your brain that pushes you away from the table, telling you that you have had enough.
A number of years ago, Dr. Cyrus Raji and his colleagues published a study reporting that as a person’s weight went up, the size of his or her brain went down.
Studies at the Amen Clinics found that as your weight goes up, your ability to think and reason goes down, which means that over time, if you don’t get your weight under control, it will become harder for you to use your own good judgment.
When people feel physically tired and have low energy, it is often due to low brain function.
There are now more than a hundred studies reporting that being overweight or obese damages brain tissue and function. Untreated depression, excessive stress, low hormone levels, such as thyroid or testosterone, and a lack of exercise or excessive exercise also hurt the brain.
Being at a healthy weight, being physically healthy, and getting adequate sleep enhances brain function, as does having regular prayer and stress management practices.
In a poll by the American Psychological Association, a whopping 80% of Americans say they feel significant stress. That spells trouble for your brain and body.
Don’t get us wrong—a little stress can be a good thing. Brief surges of stress hormones are normal and beneficial. They motivate you to do a good job at work, study hard, or pay your bills on time. Those short bursts of adrenaline and cortisol are not the problem with stress. The problem is that for many of us, the stress reactions never stop.
Chronic stress harms the brain. It constricts blood flow, which lowers overall brain function and prematurely ages your brain.
Chronic stress drains your emotional well-being and is associated with anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease, all of which can affect your body.
Stop the trickle-down effect and calm stress. Here are a few strategies that will boost your mood and your decision making.
- Pray on a regular basis. Decades of research have shown that prayer calms stress and enhances brain function. People who pray or read the Bible every day are 40% less likely to suffer from hypertension than others. A 1996 survey of 269 family physicians found that 99% believed prayer, meditation, or other spiritual and religious practices can be helpful in medical treatment; more than half said they currently incorporate those practices into treatment of patients.
- Learn to delegate. News flash! You don’t have to accept every invitation, take on every project, or volunteer for every activity that comes your way. Two of the greatest life skills you can learn are the art of delegation and the ability to say no.
- Laugh more. There is a growing body of scientific literature suggesting that laughter counteracts stress and is good for the immune system. The average child laughs hundreds of times a day. The average adult laughs only a dozen times a day. Inject more humor into your everyday life.
When you correct negative thought patterns, it is an effective treatment for anxiety disorders, depression, relationship problems, and even overeating.
To get and stay healthy, start by noticing your thoughts and questioning them. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, ask yourself if they are really true. It is often the little lies we tell ourselves that keep us fat, depressed, and feebleminded. Being overweight or unhappy is as much a “thinking disorder” as it is an eating or mood disorder.
“Is it true?” Carry these three words with you everywhere you go. They can interrupt your thoughts and short circuit an episode of bingeing, depression, or even panic.
Another way to discipline your mind—that feels good—is to bring your attention to the things you are grateful for in your life. Practice gratitude. Research reveals that being consistently grateful will have a positive effect on your health. God designed us in such a way that gratitude promotes healing.
A Yale University research study evaluated more than 2,000 veterans between the ages of 60 and 96 to assess which traits helped them age successfully. Gratitude and purpose were the most significant traits associated with successful aging. Your attitude matters.
Here is a helpful exercise: Write down three things you are grateful for every day. The act of writing down your grateful thoughts helps to bring your attention to them to enhance your brain. Research from University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman demonstrates that when people do this exercise, they notice a significant positive difference in their level of happiness in just three weeks. Other researchers have also found that people who express gratitude on a regular basis are healthier, more optimistic, make more progress toward their goals, have a greater sense of well-being, and are more helpful to others.
Notice the connection Philippians 4:6-7 makes between gratitude and peace of mind: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Identify your perceptions, starting with yourself. Do you see yourself as the child of God you are, dearly loved by the one who gave his life for you (John 3:16)?
In The Daniel Plan—or in life, for that matter—no one just gets better. You get better…have a slip up…move forward… Setbacks and comebacks are part of the journey, and graciousness must be part of both.
Supposedly, Thomas Edison had about 1,000 failures when he was inventing the lightbulb. When asked by a reporter how it felt to fail so many times, Edison is said to have replied, “I didn’t fail one thousand times. The lightbulb was an invention with one thousand steps.”
God uses failure to educate us. Mistakes are simply learning experiences.
Regardless of your circumstances and how you feel, focus on who God is—his unchanging nature. He is good, he loves me, he is for me. He knows my struggles and my circumstances, and I know he has a good plan for my life.
Write out your major goals and purpose. Use the following headings: Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus, and Friends. Next to each heading, write what you believe God wants for you and what you want for yourself. Be positive and use the first person.
Write down your motivation—why it is important for you to get healthy—and then look at it daily. We find it most effective if you approach it from two perspectives: To attain benefits, and to avoid negative consequences.
If you want to be healthy to be a great leader of your family, post your favorite picture of your family.
Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life!
Friends
God doesn’t want you to do it alone. He made you to thrive when you’re connected with others. That’s the gift of a loving community. Being engaged in community will improve your health—and not just physically. Friends can improve your emotional and spiritual health.
The opposite is also true: Isolation injures us. Our lack of community can keep us from being the healthiest we can be. In other words, the Friends Essential is the secret sauce for all the other Essentials.
In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that one of the strongest associations in the spread of obesity are the people you spent time with. Subjects who had a friend who was obese had a 57% chance of also being obese. If the two individuals identified each other as strong friends, that figure shot up to 171%. And this relationship held even if the subjects didn’t live in the same area.
You are not just receiving influence; you are an influence as well. If you develop and keep healthy habits, your friends and family are more likely to develop them.
Harvard-trained physician Dr. Dean Ornish discovered four steps to reverse heart disease:
- Exercise regularly.
- Eat a plant-based diet.
- Reduce your stress.
- Quit smoking.
It is love that transforms our health, fitness, and lives more than anything else.
Dr. Ornish wrote, “Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings us happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients.”
Set a weekly date—before the week begins—with your spouse, child, or parent to participate in a fun fitness activity together.
One day Jesus was having a lively debate with a bunch of religious leaders who asked him, “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matthew 26:36-40)
Jesus’ answer was radical in that culture when he essentially told them, “It’s not about rules at all; it’s about relationships. Life is all about love. It’s not about accomplishment. It’s not about acquisition. It’s not about popularity, power, or prestige. It’s about love. It’s about relationships.” If you want to have lasting change in your life, then you must fill your life with love.
Koinonia means far more than mere socializing or even gathering in a small group. It means love, intimacy, and joyful participation, deep communion with one another—putting others’ needs before your own. It’s a radical level of friendship and community, similar to that of the early church, described in Acts 2:42-47.
Working out with a friend can actually make exercise more effective and less difficult. Researchers from Oxford University discovered that when individuals exercise together they release more “happy hormones” (endorphins) than when they work out alone.
Whether you are trying to move forward with your mental health (focus), grow spiritually (faith), make better choices when it comes to what you eat (food), or stay committed to an exercise program (fitness), community gives you the support people need. Knowing you’re not alone, that others are cheering you on, keeps you motivated. Giving that same support to others gives you joy and a sense of purpose.
That cord of three strands is referring to you, God, and the other person. It ties together the Faith and Friends Essentials—the two components that make The Daniel Plan unique from any other health plan. Having God and friends with you as you make changes in your food, fitness, and focus habits is what makes all the difference.
Living the Lifestyle
Many began by simply trying a new health habit, just one small thing. They decided to start the day with breakfast, or add more veggies to their meals, or take a brisk walk each day, or invite a friend to work out. Small steps, yes. But the authors saw surprising life change. Simple changes started to add up. Small steps took them closer to their big dreams.
One important truth to remember: God has given you the power to change your life, to set new patterns and reactions.
Your daily choices, with God’s limitless power, done with a community of friends, can help you launch each day with intention and purpose. It begins with a shift in perspective: focusing on the good, acknowledging the abundance, and paying attention to who you are and the power within you to choose what is best. This new outlook leads the way to your transformation.
When it comes to our physical health, if we focus only on what we can’t eat or can’t do, we won’t be able to sustain the changes we want. But if we focus on bringing in the good and enjoying the abundance of what God has given us, our body, mind, and spirit will become stronger. We will begin to see that things like walking in the morning or reading our Bible and praying are not things we “have to do,” but opportunities we “get to take hold of” because they rejuvenate and restore us.
We bring in the good not because we “should,” but because we long for the benefits a healthy lifestyle brings.
Energy drains typically fall into one of three categories:
- Unhealthy habits such as not getting enough sleep, smoking, and eating junk food
- Unhealthy emotions such as worry, negativity, or anger
- Unhealthy relationships which could be toxic or codependent
Get in community and live there, welcoming God’s power into every area. This is the secret sauce of The Daniel Plan: getting healthy together, God’s way and with God’s power.
All five Essentials—faith, food, fitness, focus, and friends—are exactly that: essential. None of them is less important than another. And each supports the others.
May The Daniel Plan serve you well, as you shoot for the stars!