I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I use The Daily Plate on livestrong.com to track my eating and exercise. I’ve found it very enlightening (see my previous post). Now that I’ve been using it a while, I’ve found myself thinking I can “cheat” the Daily Plate by not recording that piece of fudge I ate (because how in the world can I quantify that??) or entering 60 minutes of exercise when I really only exercised 55 minutes.

How ridiculous! It’s almost laughable! Like the system knows or cares if I enter everything accurately. The only person that I’m cheating is myself. I’m justifying eating like crap or not exercising a full 60 minutes. If I gain weight, I can’t look at the Daily Plate to show me why because I don’t record everything.

The same holds true for my quiet time of Bible study and prayer. Occasionally I’ll skip a morning because I’m tired or I’ll be going to church or BSF that day. Who’s going to know, anyway? The reality is, I’m only hurting myself by not spending time with God. Undoubtedly, those are the days that I will be crabby or impatient. I’ll look back on my day and realize that I didn’t start my day with God. I cheated myself out of God’s peace for the day.

So, it seems obvious that I need to stop cheating myself – both in my quiet time and with the Daily Plate. We’ll see how I do.