The following page contains articles and short readings that we have found helpful in daily Christian living:

"The Biggest Obstacle to a Healthy Lifestyle" - An article from Dr. Paul Reiser on the importance of creating "margins" in your life (used by permission from the November 2006 issue of FOCUS ON THE FAMILY Magazine).

Question: “What do you see as the biggest obstacle to a healthy lifestyle?”

Dr. Paul Reiser (family medical doctor in Thousand Oaks, CA, and a member of Focus on the Families’ Physicians Resource Council) answered:

“Here’s a pop quiz: Do you have too little time to get eight hours of sleep, a half-hour of exercise, a half-hour of quiet time, and at least one unhurried meal shared with family or friends everyday? If so, your greatest obstacle to good health may not be a family history of heart disease or cancer or a love of fatty food, but rather your calendar.

“Wall-to-wall commitments, a frantic life-style, two or three jobs (or one job with the demands of two or three), constant noise, too much stuff, mounting debt, nonstop messages flooding your mental in-box, and a constant state of fatigue and anxiety–these are manifestations of living without margin. Author Dr. Richard Swenson defines margin as ‘the space between our load and our limits,’ ‘the gap between rest and exhaustion,’ and ‘the space between breathing freely and suffocating.’

“Can you guess what usually gets shoved aside when the schedule is jammed? Not only sleep, exercise and good nutrition, but also the time we need to nurture relationships with spouse, children, friends, and God. Bottom line: Creating margin in your life may be your most important health project.”