Rick Warren - The Daniel Plan Jumpstart Guide: Daily Steps to a Healthier Life

ZONDERVAN

The Daniel Plan Jumpstart Guide

Copyright 2014 by The Daniel Plan

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ePub Edition May 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-34167-3

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Interior design: Sarah Johnson

Interior illustration: Sarah Johnson

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Contents

W elcome to The Daniel Plan. We are glad you picked up this 40-day guide. Its designed to help you jumpstart your journey to health. You will be introduced to The Daniel Plan Essentials: Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus, and Friends, which are the foundation for getting healthy in every area of your life.

Thousands of people have now experienced the life-changing benefits of The Daniel Plan lifestyle. We have been inundated with stories of transformation. Not only do participants feel better, but they are also able to finally lose weight, keep it off, and discover greater energy and better sleep. The Daniel Plan lifestyle has allowed many participants to get off medications and minimize chronic illnesses. We have asked them how the program worked best for them and what principles were key to their success. This guide reflects their answers: the proven, reallife tools and resources that will help you reclaim your health.

You will learn to rely on Gods power instead of your own willpower. Each day will provide biblical inspiration and practical tips and tools to help you make progress one step at a time. This journey is all about grace and peace. The goal is progress, not perfection.

As you begin to eat foods that love you back, you will start to feel better and you will be motivated to explore new foods and recipes that will infuse nutrition and goodness into your body and mind. You will discover movement you enjoy, and you will recognize that The Daniel Plan lifestyle is rooted in abundance, not deprivation. You will live out Romans 12:2 as you are renewed by the transforming of your mind.

This is not a journey to do alone. In fact, we encourage you to invite at least one friend to join you for support and encouragement, which you need to stay the course. We have discovered that friends are the secret sauce of The Daniel Plan. Every body needs a buddy.

Each day we will walk you through key principles related to faith, food, focus, or friends. For fitness, we will point you to our existing 40-day Fitness Plan in the book The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life and check in with you throughout the week to monitor your progress.

Every ten days has a main focus to set you up for success and give you a vision for whats coming. Then at the end of every 10 days, we will remind you to pause, celebrate, and recalibrate. This will give you a chance to celebrate your motivations, victories, and changes. You will also examine challenges and shift your perspective, so rather than viewing them as failures, you see them as opportunities.

We all have a different starting point on the journey toward better health. This guide gives you guidance and options so that this plan is yours. You design it based on your preferences and the pace you want to set for yourself. If you want an early win and want to set the stage for fast results, we highly encourage you to do the 10-Day Detox. We will tell you more about that on Day 9. If you decide you would rather take it slowly, your long-term success will ultimately depend on integrating the five Essentials of Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus, and Friends into your everyday life.

E ach of us is in a different place with our health, but the Essentials Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus, and Friends will hold up your life, enliven your body, enrich your mind, and fill your heart.

FAITH

Health comes from recognizing and using Gods power in your life and treating your body and mind with the care that he intended. When you learn to rely on Gods power, you have the key to lasting change. Spiritual health gives you a foundation for building habits and perspectives for health in any area.

FOOD

You can actually eat anything based on one rule: Eat real, whole food. Eat a colorful variety of real, whole foods from real ingredients that you can make yourself or that are made by another human nearby. If it was grown on a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, leave it on the shelf.

Simple, real, fresh, delicious, nutrient-packed foods that are easy to cook, foods that come from a farmers field not a factory, foods that traveled the shortest distance from the field to your fork that is what we should eat. A chicken, a vegetable, a bean, a nut, a grain, a fruit, an egg. Everything else is fake food that depletes energy and health. Real food heals and nourishes. So eat real, whole foods made by God.

FITNESS

Your body is designed to move and become Daniel Strong. What images come to mind when you think of the word strong? Do you think of the prophet Daniel? Daniel possessed strength that went well beyond the size of his muscles.

Daniel Strong = A pursuit of excellence in body, mind, and spirit for Gods glory.

Before you even start a fitness plan, the key to success is to choose activities you enjoy doing.

Take the Daniel Strong Challenge to improve your fitness, combining prayerful movements, loosening breaks, active games and aerobic activity, and youthful strength training into your life, and watch what happens! We encourage you to do the fitness challenge for 40 days to change your fitness habits. To begin even if you have never exercised regularly or havent in a long time go to chapter 9 in The Daniel Plan Book, where you will receive a play of the day and a plan that focuses on all the aspects of fitness you have just learned in small, doable steps.