Five More Tips to Get Healthy in the New Year 2025 [Podcast Transcript]

Title: Five More Tips to Get Healthy in the New Year 2025

Podcast Date: January 3, 2025

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Description

Are you looking to improve your health this year? Can you work on health goals without falling into a body image slump? Today, Heather suggests 5 ways you can get physically healthier this year that won't compete with or detract from your goals to improve your body image. In other words -- these are health tips you won't find anywhere else because they aren't all about how to get skinny fast. Instead, these are goals that can help you improve your physical health while keeping your mental, emotional, and spiritual health in tact. Likewise, these are also strategies that will help you grow emotionally as you grow physically healthier. If you want to find ways to be a  healthier version of you in 2025, this list of five tips will put you on the right path.

This episode is called "Five More Tips" because the first five tips were shared at a live webinar on January 2nd. If you'd like to access those tips, go to https://www.improvebodyimage.com

Learn more about Compared to Who?, body image coaching, and the 40-Day Journey here: https://www.improvebodyimage.com/40-day-challenge

Grab the 40-Day Body Image Workbook so you're ready for the 40-Day Journey: https://amzn.to/4glqbvS  (Amazon affiliate link - a tiny portion of your purchase will support this ministry.)

Learn more about Heather's latest release, The Comparison-Free Life: https://www.improvebodyimage.com/books-for-christian-women-body-image

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

[00:00:03]:

I have been so thankful to do the 40 day journey and the 40 day body image workbook. It's been great to have the accountability of the group to keep up with the book because I'm notorious for not finishing books, and I've learned so much. I've grown so much in having just a new perspective on myself and my life and seeing myself and my body through God's eyes and not through the eyes of diet culture or the world standards. And, I'm able to see other people differently and just renewing my mind with the scripture and all the truth that is, presented in the book. The workbook has been, hugely transformational, and I am super thankful for all the time that Heather has put into this and just it's so encouraging to meet with the ladies every week. I always look forward to it, and I'm I feel like I've grown in a lot of different ways and just having different priorities and a new perspective.

[00:01:05]:

Hello, friend. I'm glad you're listening to the compare to podcast today. I'm Heather Creekmore. Happy New Year. Hey. This episode is called 5 more health tips for the new year because yesterday, January 2nd, I did a webinar where I gave you five health tips for the new year that I think are health tips you're not gonna hear a lot of places. And they're health tips that I think should be sustainable and encouraging and see you as a holistic person, spiritual, physical, mental health, focused tips. And I shared them yesterday on the webinar.

[00:01:44]:

And if you weren't there, that's okay because I'm gonna make them available for you. You can watch the whole webinar, or you can just download these tips on my website at improve body image dot com. I made it a printable little thing for you to have. So go to improve body image dot com if you want those first five tips. But today, we're gonna dig into 5 more tips. And, again, I hope that these fall in this category. These should be encouraging, realistic, sustainable, and they're not gonna, like, rock your whole world to try to incorporate them, into your lifestyle. Right? The testimony you just heard before I started talking was a sweet gal who participated in our 40 day journey, which starts on January 7th.

[00:02:30]:

I would love for you to be a part of it. I think that's one of the healthiest things you could do for your body image this year is to participate in our 40 day journey. It's a 6 week Zoom adventure. And like I said, we start on Tuesday. But if you happen to be listening to this and January 7th has come and gone, go ahead and check the website improve body image.com. Look for the 40 day journey tab. We're running this every quarter. Actually, we're gonna run a winter version and a spring version for Lent.

[00:03:00]:

And if you're just, like, a week or so late, hey, join us. You can watch the replays. So go to improve body image.com. Look for the 40 day journey. Join us on that adventure. Throughout today's show, I'm gonna share some other testimonies from the 40 day journey. And if you're not a 40 day journey kinda person, still go grab a copy of my 40 day body image workbook because that could be exactly what you need to start transforming your body image this year in 2025. Hey.

[00:03:28]:

I'm glad you're here. Let's get to my 5 more tips for the new year. Welcome to compare to who, a podcast to help you make peace with your body so you can savor God's rest and feel his love. Here, you'll find real talk about our body image and food battles, but you'll also find real grace filled hope for the ways we all struggle. You can find great resources like my books, coaching programs, blog posts, and even podcast swag on my website improvebodyimage.com. And, hey, if this show blesses you, will you consider blessing us with a review or better yet, tell a friend about it? Now let's get to today's show. Hey, friend. Well, like I said, we're talking about 5 more ways that you can be healthy in the new year, and this first one is mighty controversial.

[00:04:16]:

But I'll tell you, it's kinda changed my life and my relationship with food. And yet, it is so so so basic that I'm pretty sure we all learned it in elementary school. Are you ready for this one? Here it is. Drumroll, please. Eat breakfast. All my intermittent fasters are ready to turn the show off now. Please please don't go anywhere. Hey.

[00:04:43]:

Let me just tell you what I've learned. Take it or leave it. I was on the intermittent fasting bandwagon for a while, but I was honestly on it before it was a thing. Because I had kinda figured out on my own that if I skipped breakfast, then I felt like I wasn't hungry, really for hours and hours. I felt like eating breakfast revved up my engine and made me hungrier all day long. And so operating from that belief, I used to skip breakfast and go as long as I could without eating my first meal of the day. Now add on to that the fact that for, you know, a good portion of my life, I had a career. And then after I had a career, I had kids, that had demands every morning or babies that had demands every morning.

[00:05:40]:

Right? And so breakfast is kind of inconvenient. It's kind of a problem. I didn't really have time where I was free to just, like, make myself what I wanted to make. And and so breakfast was a challenge anyway. So by not eating breakfast or by just having coffee or just grabbing something like a bar or whatever, I would, try to survive without it, really. And what I've recognized in the last several years is that eating breakfast changes everything. Now hear me out because some of you were like, no. No.

[00:06:19]:

No, Heather. I'm with you. When I start to rev up my engine, I'm hungry all day long. But let me tell you a secret, friend. You want to rev up that engine because that engine is your metabolism. Right? It's like think about, like, a like, a wood burning stove. Right? When you feed the wood burning stove wood, it consumes the wood. The fire keeps going.

[00:06:49]:

But what many of us have been taught to believe by the voices of our diet culture is that we are better off to not feed the wood burning stove, somehow starve the stove. But when you starve the stove, just like when you starve your body, the fire goes out just like your metabolism slows down. And what I've recognized is that even though I am hungrier in the morning and at lunchtime and in the early afternoon, when I honor my hunger, and that is something we talked about yesterday in the webinar, when I honor my hunger and I eat that breakfast, and sometimes I actually eat a second breakfast now, and I eat lunch. And if I eat real things, foods that satisfy me, not just bars or shakes, and I eat 3 times, let's say, before 2 o'clock in the afternoon, what I found is it completely has transformed, like, my day from the way it used to be. And and let me explain that a little bit further. I used to starve myself until noon, and then I would eat something, whatever I could find to kind of break that fast between noon and 2. But then I was starving from, let's call it, 3 o'clock until 8 or 9. And I was grabby, and I was bingy, and I just, you know, would eat seconds at dinner, and I would eat the whole time I was preparing dinner, and I would eat after dinner, and I would eat dinner and be thinking about what I, you know, dessert I could have, and I would eat dessert, and then I would eat dessert again, and then I would maybe go back for thirds of dessert, or I would be thinking about how I could have something else that would meet my hunger if it wasn't dessert, like, what that would be.

[00:08:40]:

And I was thinking about food all the time, and, oh, it took over my life. And what I've realized, this is very strange to say out loud, but what I've realized is eating breakfast changes everything. It kinda just calms me down. It gives me energy. I am hungry again 3 hours later, so I eat a second breakfast. But it balances out my day so that I actually have energy from food when I need energy because I'm busy in the morning and the early afternoon. And then later in the day when I'm not as busy, I'm not hungry. My body is satisfied and peaceful and satiated.

[00:09:28]:

And then I don't even eat all of my dinner a lot of times because I'm so full from the rest of the day. And I found it has completely changed my snacking after dinner. I don't feel like I have to have dessert or something sweet after dinner every night like I used to. It's just really helped my relationship with food in so many ways. And it's so ironic. Right? Because, right, like, we were taught in elementary school, eat a good breakfast. Right? But then I don't I was connected to a podcast at one point, and I just never got around to it, called The Devil stole my breakfast. Because I really do believe these lies of diet culture set me on this trajectory to eat in this, I'm gonna call it, like, jacked up way.

[00:10:09]:

Right? Eat in this manipulated, forced, like, strange way so that I could be skinny. But the way that it forced me to eat was harmful for my body. Because, friend, let me tell you, especially if you're a woman, I'm gonna call it, like, over the age of 35, but I don't know. I think this applies to all women. Right? If you don't wake up and eat something, your body has to use something for energy. And for most of us, what it's using is cortisol. Your stress hormones come in, and that's what you start running on. For some of us, that can feel kinda good because that cortisol kinda gives you a buzz and you're like, yeah.

[00:10:48]:

I'm running on energy. I feel great. And I'm not eating, but I feel great. But, friend, that's not a good way to feel great. A starving body that has to run on cortisol is not a healthy body. Your Cortisol is there for a reason to help you manage a stress response when you need a stress response. But if you are stressing your body out every single morning by skipping breakfast, friend, that is not good for your adrenal system. And there's so much talk about cortisol now.

[00:11:20]:

Right? Like, cortisol face and cortisol belly. Like, if you're on social media, you hear the word cortisol all the time. So just know if you want to help manage your cortisol versus, like, buying all these products or trying all these things. Alright. Just eat breakfast. Eat a good balanced breakfast. Yes. Eat your protein.

[00:11:41]:

Those of you women like me in perimenopause or menopause, you know about eating your protein. Yeah. Eat some protein, but also have some carbohydrates. Don't be afraid to have some fats because that's what's gonna make you feel satisfied. And and that's what can make breakfast enjoyable. If you've got a little bit of things that you enjoy on your plate, you are going to feel satisfied at that first meal of the day. And that satisfaction is gonna carry with you for the rest of the day. And it's gonna help you not be so grabby at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when your body's just been underfed and undersatisfied all day long.

[00:12:21]:

So that's tip number 1, eat breakfast. I'll have 4 more tips for you right after this quick break. Okay. Tip 2 is maybe a big right or left turn from eating breakfast. And I'm gonna call it find your agency. Now agency is something I was talking about on the show a lot in 2024. I did a couple episodes on agency. I also did episodes on attachment and your relationship with mom, mom issues that we carry into body image issues.

[00:12:53]:

Right? But agency, essentially, is just knowing you're allowed. Right? It's understanding that you can trust yourself and you can trust your body. And a lot of what most of us dieters have done is we have turned off the ability to trust our body. We only trust what an influencer says we can eat. Right? Or we completely mistrust our body. Like, wait, you're hungry? No. You're not hungry because I just ate the exact calculated formula of macros that I was supposed to eat, and now, body, you should be full. You know, I cannot trust you.

[00:13:33]:

I will not listen to you, body. I am going to listen to what this influencer said I should eat, and I will not eat anything more. I will ignore you hunger cues, and I'm going to go on with my life. And it always backfires. Right? And so the concept here of agency is recognizing okay. 1st, God did design your body with cues like hunger and fullness, and your body knows what it needs. Right? We recognize this around pregnancy, right? When a pregnant woman has cravings, it's like, oh, the baby must need that. Or the baby must need that.

[00:14:11]:

Right? Guess what? Your body works the same way when you're not pregnant. Your body knows what it needs. And so, sometimes, if you find yourself just really craving orange juice, and then you say to yourself, oh, I can't have orange juice. I can't have that much sugar. And, oh, juice is bad, and I need the extra fiber from actually eating the orange or whatever. And then you end up eating a bar, that would have been my life story. You're ignoring a signal that your body has sent you about what it needs. And friend, your body does better when you just pay attention to it.

[00:14:46]:

Now, agency though is hard because, like I already alluded to, we've given over to, I'm gonna say influencers of all sorts and kinds, this power over us to tell us how we should be eating in order to be healthy. Right? So that's one kind of challenge of our agency is that we've given it away to that group. But for a lot of us, we've also, like, never had it. Right? Like, mom told us what was good or or dad told us what was good or maybe an older sibling or an aunt or grandmother. This is how you eat. This is how you be a lady. This is how you keep your body looking a certain way, and this is what you do. And we followed their rules religiously without ever having the power in and of ourselves to say, no.

[00:15:41]:

I'm gonna decide. I'm gonna decide how I eat. I'm gonna decide how I exercise. For some of you, oh, this is a tough one. Some of you, you've given your husband that agency. Maybe mom had it, but you gave it away to your husband when you got married instead, and now he's your, quote, unquote, accountability partner, but he's the one who tells you when you're hungry or when to stop eating. Oh, that's a messy situation, friend. And so, one of the ways that you can get healthy this year is to find your agency to recognize that you are allowed to feed your body in a way that feels good to your body.

[00:16:28]:

You are allowed to move your body in a way that feels good to your body. You are allowed to rest your body when your body says it needs rest. You do not need permission to rest. You are valuable enough to rest. You don't have to earn rest, just like you don't have to earn food through exercise. And this might be really overwhelming to you today. You might be like, yeah, that's nice that you say that. I just, that's really uncomfortable.

[00:17:09]:

Like, I just, I don't think so. Or maybe you're thinking, oh, I have agency. I totally have agency. I make my own decisions. But then, if I were to coach you and I were to start asking you about all of your rules around food and eating, you'd be like, yeah. Well, I don't do this and I don't do this. I don't eat after 7 because, you know, that's what my mom always said to do. And I don't eat white foods because, you know, I read that in a magazine article somewhere.

[00:17:36]:

And I always make sure that I have an equal number of, you know, protein grams and whatever on my plate because that's what this influencer said to do. And my macros can never go over this number because that's what this influencer said to do. And if I really nailed you down on this, it would probably be a whole lot of other people's rules for you instead of rules that you've determined for yourself. So the question is, do you have agency, really? Do you trust yourself to make good decisions around food? And and let me just, like, clarify there. Right? The holy spirit is our counselor. And so if you are a believer and follower of Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living inside you, and he is great at at counseling us around these things. Right? The Holy Spirit can give us wisdom. It does not mean that we don't need people in our lives to also offer wisdom, for sure, for sure.

[00:18:38]:

Right? But when I talk about trusting yourself, I am talking about also relying on the wisdom of the holy spirit inside you. But is it okay to make a choice for yourself that might defy mom's choice? Like, let's just say mom is gluten free and not because she has celiac or anything else, but mom has just read all the books and believes that wheat is from the devil. Is it okay for you to have a sandwich with bread in front of her? Or do you have to eat the way mom says to eat? Or maybe your husband is a fitness fanatic. And, oh my goodness, he exercises in a certain way, and he thinks you should exercise in that certain way too. I may have one of them. I may hear you if this is your story, sister. And you know that for your body, that just doesn't feel good. Burpees do not feel good.

[00:19:34]:

I actually had my doctor say you shouldn't do burpees. And I was like, could you just write that down so I can tell my husband that you are suggesting I don't do burpees? Because he's pretty sure that they're the ultimate exercise that would fix everything. Friend, do you have agency? If not, let's work together in coaching. Like, that's something that we can totally help you navigate if this is a struggle for you.

Testimony [00:20:06]:

Thank you so much for the 40 day body image workbook. I have learned so much just in the short amount of time I have been studying this book. One of the things that I love is it peels back all of the layers, and gets to the heart of why I myself have been so immersed in the diet culture and felt the need to compare and, be accepted based on my appearance. And this book instead shows me that I am loved and accepted by God unconditionally and that I take care of my body because it is a gift from God who loves me. So thank you for this book. Thank you for the opportunity to be on Zoom calls with you once a week. And I have really thoroughly enjoyed it.

[00:21:02]:

We're gonna get to the 3rd health tip that I just wanted to throw in. One more quick endorsement for the 40 day journey. If you're not signed up for the 40 day journey that starts January 7th, go sign up because that story could be yours. Okay. Number 3, if you wanna be healthy. This one again, out of the box. Connect, really connect with at least one person every day. Did you know that connection and relationships, friendships, all of these kind of interpersonal relationship factors are key factors to your health? Yes.

[00:21:51]:

That's right. Who you spend time with, talk to, connect to every day could be more important to your health and longevity than what you eat or how much you exercise. And yet, this kind of makes me laugh because, like, we talked about in Tuesday's episode, where I talked about what to look for if you're gonna try to find a new health coach or health plan, Like, a lot of the things I've done for my health consumed my life so much that I didn't really have time for friends or good friends or deep meaningful friendships or relationships because I was really too busy working on my body or trying to get healthier. But what if just connecting with others, finding real friends, having those deeper authentic relationships could help your health more than all of the things you could do at the gym or with your food and meal prep and all the things. Right? Like, in some ways, that should encourage us. In other ways, goodness gracious. Let's just be honest. It can be hard to find friends.

[00:23:06]:

It can be hard to feel like you can trust other women around you. Life can be lonely depending on what season of your life you're in. Right? I just know there were seasons that were just lonely. I'm kind of in a weird season right now where I'm getting ready to graduate kids, and I'm thinking, You know, I'm not gonna have connections naturally through school. It's not like the days when we came together as a bunch of moms for play dates and we all had kids at the same age and stage. Right? It takes intentionality to find your people, and then it takes even more intentionality to make time and space to be with those people. So here's the challenge I'm gonna set before you. Do you have at least one person in your life you can connect with every day? And maybe it's your husband, right? And that's fine.

[00:24:08]:

Husbands are good. Okay? Not dismissing the power of the husband. But if you and husband don't actually get a chance to connect, to really talk, to share your hearts, if you're kinda just roommates and doing life together and doing the kids stuff and, you know, then he doesn't count as the person you connected with that day. Okay? Just because you're in the same house, that doesn't mean you can count them. So what would it look like to be intentional about reaching out to someone every day or scheduling in your schedule a lunch with someone at least once a week where you are connecting, looking someone in the face, eyeball to eyeball, or, like, I like to do walking dates. Okay? Dates is kind of a funny word. But, you know, lunch out can get expensive, and I can only drink coffee in the morning. So afternoon coffee dates, I don't really wanna get a cup of coffee then and, you know, $7 cup of coffee doing that once a week.

[00:25:09]:

That adds up. So what I like to do is I invite women to go for a walk. So if I'm gonna spend time with someone, I'm like, hey, let's go for a walk. Let's go, you know, take a 45 minute or hour walk together and we can chat and catch up. And that's worked really great. So I have one friend that I walk with once a week, and then I have other friends that I walk with, you know, maybe once a month, and then we kinda rotate through. So I get to see them all regularly. I also started playing pickleball.

[00:25:39]:

And so I have a group of friends that also happen to be my small group of friends from church. They're the women from our couple small group, and we get together and we play pickleball once a week. And having that time for friendship, for community makes a difference in how you feel about yourself, how you feel about life, how you view the world, and your health. Let me take this just one step further and then I'll stop harping on it. But, you know, a lot of us with body image issues, we really wonder if we're valuable. We really wonder if people will like us or love us if we don't look the way we believe we're supposed to look in order to be liked or loved. And what I've recognized over the years is that as I allow myself to get closer to people to develop real friendships, I started to see that, oh, people actually like me for me. And if I show up without makeup or if I show up with crazy hair or if I show up really puffy and bloated and not, you know, looking anywhere close to the way I would like to look as I show up in the world.

[00:27:02]:

They're still gonna talk to me. They're still gonna accept me. They're still gonna wanna hang out with me. And that does wonders for the way you feel about yourself. It helps you actually believe the truth, which is that you are more than a body. And so, friend, if you don't do anything else on this list, I want you to find a friend in 2025 or a couple of friends. And it's gonna take some work if you don't have them already. And maybe if you have them already, it's just gonna take some work to invest more time into developing those friendships.

[00:27:38]:

But who can you reach out to? If you don't have someone on that list, then join something. Go to an event at church. Look for who else is lonely there, or go to events at your kid's school, or join a community activity. Go play pickleball. That's my recommendation for 2025. But find some friends, and that will help you feel healthier in every way. Okay. Number 4 kinda goes in tandem with this.

[00:28:09]:

Especially in tandem with this concept of you have to understand that you are more than a body in order to truly be healthy and free and overcome body image issues. And one of the key ways that you can help understand how God made you, what he made you for, what purpose he has for you aside from everyone's great purpose, which is loving God and loving others, but how he designed you, what he made you for, is understanding your spiritual gifts. And so I would say it's the beginning of 2025. Hey. Take an online spiritual gifts test. I do not have one to recommend. Several of them require that you give your email address. So sorry about that.

[00:28:49]:

But I think it's worth it. You can always unsubscribe later. Find out what your spiritual gifts are, and then ask yourself, honestly, are you using your spiritual gifts? Because friend, God gave you those gifts for a reason. He wired you that way for a reason. And what you will find is that when you start operating in your spiritual gifts, you start to, again, feel like you are more than a body. You start to feel alive. You're like, oh, this is why I was made. I love this.

[00:29:22]:

I enjoy this. I'm thriving in this. This helps me feel energized. It helps me know why I'm here on this planet. And so take that spiritual gifts test and then do something about it. If you have the gift of encouragement, then you better start encouraging people and see how that changes things. If you have the gift of hospitality, you better start having people over. If you have the gift of administration, hey, what are you running? Go talk to your church and say, hey, do you have something you need organized? I'm here for it.

[00:29:56]:

Right? Start using your gifts and see how much healthier that makes you feel this year. So take that test. Take it right away. Take it this week and ask yourself, am I using these spiritual gifts that God gave me? And, oh, I'm gonna challenge you just a little bit more here, friend. You know, I've talked about this several times. Right? So many of us believe that, like, thou shall be a good steward of your body as part of the 10 Commandments. And it's not, by the way. Right? But we are commanded to be a part of the body of Christ and to use the gifts that God has given us.

[00:30:36]:

And I think when we get to heaven someday, God is gonna ask me what I did with the gifts he gave me more so than he's going to check and make sure that I kept my ideal weight. Right? Yes. Our bodies are a gift for sure, and we are supposed to steward them well. Okay. And so I can't trash my body like a hotel room that I'm gonna, like, check out of tomorrow. I'm not gonna trash my body because it's a good gift he gave me. But my life's purpose cannot be keeping my body good. My body is a vessel to be used to do these things that God has for me to do.

[00:31:19]:

It's a vessel through which I can do the things that he's called me to do. I can carry out the gifts he's given me. I can function in those gifts by using my body. But I can't just make the goal of my life improving my body. That's not healthy in any way. So find out your spiritual gifts and then get to work on them in 2025. Last one. Okay.

[00:31:49]:

You may be expecting this one. Let's talk about your relationship with social media, shall we? Okay. All the research out there shows that social media is just terrible for young girls and young boys too, but especially young girls. I think the data I read was it took 8 seconds on TikTok to destroy a girl's body image. Woah. Now friend, you and I, we're not girls anymore. But if it only takes 8 seconds on TikTok to destroy a girl's body image, what do you think it's doing to us when we spend 8 minutes or 3 hours on social media watching these videos, watching influencers. I mean, honestly, I wish I didn't have to have social media accounts.

[00:32:43]:

There is some responsibility as a published author to the publishers. They want you to have social media accounts so people can find you. It gives you credibility. People know who you are. They can find out what you're about. But I really wish I didn't have to be on there at all. I really wish I didn't have to have any staff members on there at all because I don't think it makes us healthier. I think it makes us more confused.

[00:33:08]:

In fact, I was interviewed for someone else's show yesterday, and she asked me, like, you know, well, how do I decide which of all the influencers I'm following? Like, how do I decide, like, what to do? Like, what's healthiest for my life? And I I forget the way she phrased the question, but there was some implication in it that, like, what she was doing, like, gathering all this information from a variety of different influencers was helping her be healthier. Right? Because she's getting so much input from all these different voices. And I was like, hey. Hold up a minute. If you've got a disordered eating or an eating disorder background, like, nothing could be more dangerous for you than to have to take in the opinions of 10 or 20 or 30 different fitness and health influencers and try to sort through all that information and decide what to keep and what not to keep. That's not what most of us with this disordered eating or an eating disorder background or body image issues frankly do. Instead, we take all of them. They're like, okay.

[00:34:13]:

You have 5 tips, and you have 5 tips. You I'm gonna take all these tips, and I'm gonna incorporate them all in my life. And and then we end up in a really bad place. Right? That's a really unhealthy thing to do. So I recommended on her show that you unfollow all of them. Right? Or you find 1. You find 1 that you feel like you can trust. But then going back to tip number 2, because you have agency, you know, oh, this tip would help me.

[00:34:40]:

This tip would not help me. And you don't feel any additional pressure that you're not doing that other tip. You just dismiss it because, you know, that's not good for you. You have the freedom and the agency to do that. And so let's talk about your social media habits. What does it look like? I want you to go check your screen time report right now. If social media is on your phone, I want you to look at your screen time report. And then I just wanna be real with you, friend.

[00:35:06]:

Write truth in love. Do you spend that much time thinking about meditating on reading the word of God? If you're normal, probably not. Right? How's your Bible reading? Are you reading anything else or even listening to anything else that's gonna, like, help you grow spiritually? Like, what are you doing with that social media time? What's it for? Is it helping you or hurting you? Why? Why do you do it? Is it adding to your life? And I just want you to think about it. Just think and, hopefully, even pray about your relationship with social media in 2025. Maybe God's calling you to get off altogether. Maybe it's you have to just do what I do. I take it off my phone. I have it on my computer.

[00:36:01]:

So if I need to check and see if someone messaged me or whatever, I can do it from my computer. But I find from my computer, I'm less tempted to spend a lot of time on it. It's just more awkward to scroll and it's just not as, you know, I guess, enticing as it is when I do it on my phone. Maybe that's what you need to do. Or maybe you just need to I've heard people who will just put it on on Saturdays and or leave it on on Saturdays, but then take it off the rest of the week. You gotta figure out what works for you, my friend, but consider it. As you think about other healthy habits for 2025, I want you to consider your social media habits. Are they helping you or are they hurting you? Well, friend, that's my 5 tips.

[00:36:44]:

My five more tips to be healthy in 2025. I hope they've helped you. Hey. I wanna leave you with one more cool testimony of the 40 day journey. And I wanna just invite you one more time to join us. If you really want to change the way you feel about your body and find some freedom, join us. January 7th. I know you won't regret it.

Testimony [00:37:04]:

I very much enjoyed this book and this class. I could have read the book on my own and and filled in the blanks and gone through the journey myself. It would have been very beneficial. But to join the class and be with other women who are experiencing the same types of things that I am and to hear their backgrounds and their own struggles as well kinda helped me realize that I'm not alone in this journey. And it, it was super beneficial. The, breakout sessions at the end where, we were put in small groups was really cool because, again, you can connect with other women who are going through some of the same things. So I'd like to thank Heather for first writing the book and putting it out there into women's hands and also, having the experience of walking through the 40 day, journey with her and other women.

[00:37:58]:

Well, that's all for today's show. Hey. I'm so glad you were here. Thank you for listening. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye bye. The comparative show is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to life audio.com.