episode #34 // Sacred Rhythms: Fitness Grounded in Faith with Courtney Foster
Friends, I am so excited to get to introduce you to my friend Courtney Foster today. She is a friend of mine from our time in Athens, Georgia, and she is a proponent of all things fitness and wellness through the lens of faith and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Today we chat all about how the Gospel influences how we care for our bodies and the decisions we make about the food we eat and how we pursue health in light of what God has done for us and what He has given us. Wherever you’re at on your journey today, I know you will be encouraged by this conversation.
In this episode, Courtney Foster and I chat about what it looks like to integrate your faith into your fitness journey. So many women struggle with what it looks like to pursue wellness in a Christlike way. Many voices are telling us the “right” way to be healthy, and many of these voices are conflicting. It can be hard to know which way to turn and how to take care of the temple God has given you. Courtney generously shares with us about her journey of being “the bigger girl” among her friends to accepting the body God gave her and learning how to nourish and care for it well. You will be SO encouraged by this episode, friends!
MEMORABLE QUOTES
I finally for the first time in my life was losing weight, and it became like an addiction for people to say “Wow you look so good!” even though I really wasn’t.
I’ve just always been the bigger girl…I always felt like boys [didn’t] like me because I was bigger. [These are] just lies that the enemy tells you.
Subconsciously I believed that once I got married all of my self-esteem issues would go away.
I heard His voice say, “You are living like you can never surrender this to me.”
Freedom in fitness is possible.
It’s so easy to know the right things to do and not do them.
The power of the simplicity of the Gospel applies to everything.
There is so much power in grace and discipline, and surrendering it to the cross.
The only way to find freedom, joy, and fulfillment…is for that to be an avenue through which you are fulfilling the Great Commission.
I stopped weighing myself for a year. I was at a healthy weight, but I was so obsessed with going down another pound. That number controlled my emotions.
There’s no diet plan in the back of the Bible. If there was a perfect way to eat, God would have told us.
For years, I was looking for that thing that would unlock my magical results and make me look like a fitness influencer on Instagram.
We can’t micromanage our health and work our way out of having a fallen body.
Nutrition is king, exercise is queen.
Nutrition is going to have a far greater impact not just on your external results but on how you feel internally.