Liquid Calories Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Psalm 107:8-9 (NIV) One thing you could do to dramatically improve your health and lose weight is this: Don’t drink liquid sugar calories. This means soda, sports drinks, flavored coffees or teas, energy drinks, juices (except fresh-made vegetable juices). Liquid calories get deposited directly as that dreaded belly fat. They turn your liver into a fat factory, triggering more insulin resistance and starting a vicious cycle. They mess with your head, increasing your appetite, and keep you from feeling full so you eat more than you normally would in a day. Bottom line: Stick to water or unsweetened, non-caffeinated teas. —Dr. Mark Hyman | | | Bible Gateway Recommendations | | | | |
| | | | | Copyright Information | | | | Today's reading is from The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life by Rick Warren, DMin; Daniel Amen, MD; & Mark Hyman, MD (Zondervan), winner of the 2015 Christian Book of the Year. © 2013 by The Daniel Plan. Used with permission. All rights reserved. The book's title must be included when sharing the above content on social media. | Subscription Information | | | | This email was sent to mucomacamucomaca.muco@blogger.com by Bible Gateway, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA. This email is part of a devotional or newsletter that you signed up for on BibleGateway.com. For information regarding our privacy policy, click here. If you have questions or comments about this newsletter, please contact us. Manage all Bible Gateway subscriptions — Opt Out of all Bible Gateway communication | | | | | | | | | | |           
| | Thank you for subscribing to one or more of the Bible Gateway email newsletters produced in partnership with the Zondervan publishing team. Once a month you can look forward to receiving this email with Christian life articles taken from books published by Zondervan. Enjoy! | | | | | | | When Truth Invades Your Brokenness By Sandi Patty (Bible Gateway Blog).
I pretended that I was good. Marriage was good. Life was good. Being a mom of young children was good. My career was good. I worked hard to make it look like I had it all together. I would sing from emotional depths, then leave the stage, go to my dressing room, where no one would see me, and sit in the corner and cry.... | | | | God, Why Arn't You Doing Something? By Craig Groeschel (Bible Gateway Blog). If only life were like a sitcom. When I was growing up, there wasn't so much graphic violence and corruption on TV—all those antiheroes we were just talking about. And that's probably just as well, because I imagine my parents wouldn't have let me watch those shows anyway. So I grew up on a steady diet of classic sitcoms ... | | | | The Hard Reality of Exclusivity in White Evangelicalism and What Can Be Done By Bryan Loritts (Bible Gateway Blog). On a Sunday in the late 1700s, a black man walked into a church and began praying. What he didn't realize was that he was doing so in the whites-only section of the church. Incensed by his audacity, the people around him immediately confronted him and tossed him outside onto the streets ... | | | | Dependence Is Not a Dirty Word By Hayley Morgan (Bible Gateway Blog). One day, my friend Page told me something that made me practically fall off my chair. I was shocked. I was moved. And I've been thinking about it for the last two years. We were sitting cross-legged at Bible study, and she wondered out loud whether in training our children to be independent, we were leading them to be less like Christ.... | | | | | | | | Want more? Subscribe to one or more of the following devotional email newsletters published jointly by Bible Gateway and Zondervan: | | | | join Zondervan on social media |     | | | | | | | 
| | Read Isaiah 55:8–9 God reminds us that his thoughts, choices, and intents are far superior to our own. Our humanness limits what we can see and know, but he sees and knows everything. Surviving DisappointmentDisappointment is a sad and terribly lonely place. We all land there at some point in life. Our children move away and never call. Colleagues betray us. The company to which we've devoted our years "downsizes," and we're on the layoff list right along with the newcomer and the slacker. The man we love doesn't love us back. The perfect child we dream about and tend in pregnancy is born with defects that will make the rest of our lives, and all our family members' lives, nothing less than challenging. We get a disease or suffer an injury for which there is no relief or cure. Our investments dwindle. Friends disappear. The one we've prayed to find Jesus never does. Our dreams shatter, and our best-laid plans go astray. Other Christians fail us. People disappoint us. We even disappoint ourselves. The long series of disappointments we accumulate in a lifetime can stop us from moving forward into all the goodness God has planned for us—and that means they'll be stopping not only us but also those God has destined us to reach along our life's journey. After all, how can anyone stuck in their own disappointment help others out of theirs? How can we convince others of the wonder of God's promises if we doubt them ourselves? How can we share how God has saved us when we don't feel saved at all? Why is it that we can know in our heads that God has our good in mind and that he can redeem any and every circumstance, and yet we can still feel hugely disappointed and deeply despondent? Our heads tell us God is trustworthy—but in a moment of aching disappointment, our hearts tell us he's not even there. In these places of deep disappointment, we must remind ourselves of those things about God that we know to be true, though they might not feel true at the moment. We must conclude for ourselves that the valley of death we are walking through isn't, to borrow an image from Pilgrim's Progress, a Slough of Despond from which we would never emerge, but simply a shadow, and that shadow does not define our lives. Christ does. There is so much we don't know. But we do know this: If we are to accept the disappointments that we cannot escape in life, we must turn to God's Word for hope and encouragement. Point to PonderGod knows things we don't know, and does things in ways we could never predict. He is infinite, and we are finite. In good times and bad, we must trust him to know what is best for us. | | | | | | Bible Gateway Recommendations | | | | | | | |
