Chicken With Brown Rice

I’ve decided to try to boost my protein intake for a week and lower the carbs to see if I can get some more pounds off. I came up with this Recipe and that I would share it!

Chicken With Brown Rice>

Brown Rice Recipe
2 C. No Sodium Chicken Stock
1 C. Water
4 C. Brown Rice
1 Bag Frozen Mixed Vegetables
1 tsp. Onion Powder
1 tsp. Garlic Powder
2 1/2 T. Butter

Chicken
4 Boneless Chicken Breasts

Instructions:
Bring the chicken stock and water to a boil, add rice, reduce and cover, simmer for 5 minutes. Once rice has cooked take off heat and let rest for 5 minutes. While the rice is cooking cook one bag of frozen vegetables as per bag instructions. Once the vegetables have cooled add the butter and the garlic and onion powder. Let the butter melt over the vegetables. Once melted fluff the rice and mix in vegetables stir.

Prepare the chicken on a grill or grill pan. You can also use the precooked frozen breasts and prepare in the microwave.

Prepare:
Cut up one chicken breast and serve with 1 C. of the rice mixture.

Nutrition Information
308 Calories
29g Protein
5g Carbs

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The Problem

I have had the experience recently to begin to reflect on my being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. Having grown up in this environment has caused me to develop some negative character traits in my life that I have allowed myself to carry on into adulthood one of the more dangerous one is being a people pleaser. Being a people pleaser has caused me to yet again engage in addictive behavior, one might think of people pleasing as being an addictive behavior but it can become so ingrained in a persons character that it causes negative behaviors and actions. Some of the people pleasing activities can be seen as a loving of approval, for me this is not what people pleasing is, I tend to do anything I can do to help people out, go above and beyond the call of duty, even when they don’t ask for help. These actions can cause a dependency on the individual thus filling the need for me to feel like I deserve the person’s friendship. The idea of having a friend is that of mutual respect. You do not need to do anything to deserve the person’s friendship.
I have a feeling that this will be another issue that I will need to take the long road of recovery. I think when a person begins to take a look at oneself and begins to tackle issues in their life, they often times may experience an overwhelming flood of issues that surface. It is vital to admit to these issues when they do occur so the actions that you are taking to change your life will not be in vain. The principal that comes to my mind is that of a holistic change process that occurs, if an individual only begins to tackle on issue they may fail. Take recovery from alcoholism for example, in order to maintain long term sobriety you must take must make changes in your lifestyle it is simply not stoping to drink alcohol. Terry Gorski states that addiction is a Bio-Psycho-Social Disease and I agree with him as an addiction affects every aspect of a person’s life and you must deal with all three aspects of the disease in order to obtain recovery.
So does that mean that my characteristic of people pleasing is it’s own addiction or is it just a component of my food addiction. I believe that my food addiction and people pleasing are part of the same addiction and that in order for my to obtain recovery I will need to address all of these issues and any future issues that may come up. I am truly blessed that I have God in my life because he is able to provide me with the tools that I need to beat this addiction. The main tool that God has been able to provide me with is Jesus and the Holy Spirt. I have to remind myself that I have to use these tools, if I forget to pray throughout the day and ask for His guidance and grace in my life. The other tool that God has been able to provide me with is friends that will hold me accountable when I mess up and start to engage in negative behaviors again. It’s going to be a long journey but I am happy to be on the transformation.

Heavenly Father, thank you for enabling me to identify my idols and provide the tools necessary to beat them and become closer to you. It is through your glory and grace that you have accepted me into you kingdom and have provided me all that I need in my life. I ask that you continue to provide me with the tools that I need to overcome my idols, and thank you for bringing brothers and sisters into my life to hold me accountable. I love you lord, in your Son’s righteous and holy name. Amen.

Finals Week & The Power Of Prayer

As the Fall 2011 semester is coming to an end I’m begging to have a breath of relief of not having to worry about working on going to school at the same time.  I really don’t understand how people work full time and go to school full time.  I don’t think I could do that.  Towards the end of the semester I was wanting to pull my hair out by professors that were being frustrating.  All I can say is that I am so very glad that I have God in my life because He was able to provide the strength I needed to get through the semester.

I just recently finished a devotional book that I have had for a while but never followed it for the year.  I decided to pick up the book and just work through two or three a day to see what I was missing.  I came across this one on prayer last week and thought I would share it.  It helped me to remember through the power of prayer that God knows what we are going through even if we don’t ask him directly for help.

When a believing person prays great things happen. – John 5:16

Prayer is the recognition that if God had not engaged himself in our problems, we would still be lost in the blackness.  It is by this mercy that we have been lifted up. Prayer is that whole process that reminds us of who God is and who we are.  I believe there’s great power in prayer.  I believe God heals the wounded, and that he can raise the dead.  But I don’t believe we tell God what to do and when to do it.  God knows that we, with our limited vision don’t even know that for which we should pray.  When we entrust our requests to him, we trust him to honor our prayers with holy judgement.

- Grace for the Moment, Volume 1: Max Lucado

What can the power of prayer do for you?  Do you think that when we trust him to honor our prayers he uses holy judgement?

Feeling of Failure

I’m trying to figure out why I feel like a failure this week! I have worked out hard three days this week and planning on working out in the morning. I haven’t really lost my focus on my eating habits this week, I did have a couple of bad days this week but nothing to bad. (the extra exercise made up for it!) I’m debating if it was the stress of starting a new job and trying to go to school or was it family junk! I don’t know! The family stuff wasn’t to bad this week, just a few minor problems but nothing that out of the norm! I was able to share my testimony on Wednesday at Campus Crusade for Christ, it was emotional but felt great to me able to stand up and proclaim what God has done in my life! The only thing I know is that I woke up this morning and just felt bad, and self-critical! I’ve been praying all day for peace but it just was not came yet, which is ok! I’m feeling God has something for me to realize but I just can’t but my finger on it yet! I just don’t know! I’m feeling like I’m being lead into some time of prayer. I may just have to break down and spend the rest of today in prayer!

But I cry to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you. (Psalm 88:13 NIV)

Father, please guide me as I spend time in prayer and let it be pleasing to you! I ask that you help me figure out what in my heart is making me feel like a failure, if it is your will to make be stronger I ask that you allow me to rest in your marvelous love and grace! I love you! In your sons loving grace Amen!

My Addiction

I have been thinking a lot latterly about my life.  I have recently came to the conclusion that I suffer from an eating disorder.  I compulsively eat, I would eat at any time, when depressed, finding comfort, in the middle of the night, any time of the day really.   I had a love and hate relationship with Food!  Food was controlling my life and making me sick.  You might ask how it was making me sick, I have multiple health problems and developed diabetes because of my compulsive eating, add that to the fact that I am morbidly obese; (think of that world morbid generally thought of as being unhealthy, disease, unsound, ill, sickly), I was making myself unhealthy and sick.  Moreover, I was keeping myself from being with God!  When I accepted the Lord I thought that things would get better an “overnight fix” I was wrong, wanting to have a personal relationship with God and Jesus is a process.

I have always had this problem but the denial that went along with this kept me from seeing how bad the problem is.  The stupid thing is that I am a professional addictions counselor and help people on the road to recovery everyday, and I myself was not able to see that I had a problem (wow, the problem of denial is great!), the denial was killing me and preventing me from getting everything I wanted out of life.  Reflecting back I can see times in my life were God was working at my heart to admit to myself that I had a problem, I remember so many occasions when I was working with a client and my heart was aching for them and at the same time it was aching for me also.   One occasion comes to my mind know that I now reflect back and say to myself what was I doing, it was 2003, I was sitting in my car before class listening to Word of God Speak by MercyMe and this overwhelming feeling came over me being in the arms of Jesus, and I did was minimize this event and on the way back to work I stopped at some fast food restraint got a 2 quarter pound burgers, and a extra large fry.  Why was I rejecting Jesus?  It was because I did not want to admit that I was away from Him.  What was Jesus doing, He was trying to get me to open up and admit to myself that I had a problem.  I am a firm believer that God always leads you on the right path to go, even though you may not want to go down it!

You may ask what lead me to this clue that my life was going away from the Lord and not being in his presence.  I honestly believe that it was Jesus’s grace that lead me to come close to him, and His desire for me to have a personal relationship with him.  I am in now way of being close to being better, it’s going to be a long hard process but I am so very glad that I have Him on my side!  I will always have to remember that this is going to me impossible to do on my own, but with God’s grace and light I will be able to overcome and have a personal relationship with Him!  “Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:26

Gossip, Ethics, & Religion

The pastor who wrote that article about gossip does have some points that I identify with for example, once you become a Christian you are a part of a new family.   A church family, a body of believers, some theologians believe that once you become a believer you become a member of a much larger family not only the church that you attend but are part of the family of Christian believers in the whole.

He asserts that gossip is a critical part of a church.  I disagree with this point because the act of gossiping does not produce positive results (more bad then good).  Often times, when we do engage in gossip we are going behind people’s backs.  This act in itself is negative.

In an Internet blog post, Reaoch (2008) states that gossip can be seen as a sin.  I agree with his insight that the act of gossip is a sin, we are talking about another individual behind their backs often times not knowing all of the facts of a matter.  We gather further evidence from the 10 Commandments in baring false witness against our neighbor.  If we are not aware of all of the facts and are telling others second hand information that may not be correct we are baring false witness.  Therefore, I believe that this act of gossiping is immoral because gossip tends to create more bad then positive results, dealing with the principles of goodness and rightness, and truth-telling.

So what is the solution to the problem of gossip?  It is simple let us talk to the individual face to face and share what we see going on.  John Piper states in a blog post “Let’s not talk to others about people’s faults.  Let’s talk to them about their faults” (Piper, 2006, para. 2.)  I feel that if people start talking with each other instead of talking behind the backs of others a better relationship could be formed and we will grow as a Christian.

Source Article

Source:

Piper, J. (2006, August 9). Talking to People Rather Than About Them [Blog]. Message posted to http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/taste-see-articles/talking-to-people-rather-than-about-them

Reaoch, B. (2008, June 24). 12 Sins We Blame on Others [Blog]. Message posted to http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/12-sins-we-blame-on-others

Hello world!

I think Hello World is an excellent title for my first blog entry.  A little bit about myself.  My name is Matt Snyder and I am a 31 year old male who has been struggling with being morbidly obese for most of my life.  I’ve been trying to lose weight over and over again for many years.  I was even down the path of trying to get weight loss surgery and my insurance at the time ran me through the hoops of endless testing and appointments and then I finally thought I would get the okay to have the surgery then the heartbreaking news from the insurance company.  “…this is not a covered procedure…”.

You might be asking why start with this story on my blog.  The reason is simple my life never seems to be “simple” I think I get ahead with life and something always happens and it 10 steps back.  Through all the trials and tribulations in my life I have to remind myself that it’s not my will, it’s God’s will.  For the longest time I have been struggling with giving everything over to God.  I always want to have it my way!  Sound’s like many of you doesn’t it?

The reason I decided to start this blog is simple…I want to share my story!  You might be thinking “Oh…A hundred thousand people share their stories everyday on blogs.”  Your right!  I’m not promising for any mind breaking wisdom or wit and insight into life with my blog, I just want to share my story in hopes that it might help one person, and to serve as a reminder to me that life is simple.

I was at a funeral of a Great Uncle recently and the Pastor was reading the eulogy and one of my dear Second Cousin wrote some notes  for the pastor to read and he shared the he lived “a simple faith”.  The statement reminded me that is they way one should live a life with “a simple faith”.

Stay tuned to read why one should live life with “a simple faith.”