“The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.” – Proverbs 13:20

My mom used to tell me that idle hands always led to trouble. Maybe that’s why she always tried to keep us busy. When we had nothing to do, we usually wound up misbehaving.

Teresa L. Phillips is a sports pioneer. A former Vanderbilt basketball player, Phillips spent time as the head women’s basketball coach at Fisk University (Tenn.) and Tennessee State University for a number of years before becoming the first woman to coach a Division I men’s basketball team, which she took over at TSU for a short time in 2003. Now the TSU athletic director, Phillips was named one of the 101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports by Sports Illustrated and Tennessee’s second-most influential sportswoman by The Tennessean—all this while becoming just one of a handful of female athletic directors in the country.

Once people find out that I serve in the FCA Health and Fitness Ministry, I get bombarded with questions about everything from food to fitness equipment, exercising to eating right, calories to carbohydrates. If I am eating out, people watch what I eat and ask me if it is OK to order certain entrees. And frankly, I love it! It gives me countless opportunities to help cut through the confusion and restore some basic truths about how to take care of our bodies the way God intends.

So, this month’s column is all about questions and answers.

The other day, I saw a billboard for one of the major fast-food chains that said “Eat what you crave” and showed a picture of a gigantic bacon, egg and cheese biscuit.That beautiful biscuit we were told to crave packed 560 calories, 38 grams of fat and 1360 mg of sodium. For the average person, that would be almost a day’s worth of salt and saturated fat in just one meal.

The majestic beauty of Niagara Falls is no secret to the world. Millions of tourists visit the falls every year to take in its resplendent sights and experience the grandeur of the 170-foot waterfalls that separate the United States and Canada. What few people know, however, is that the water cascading over the falls was first harnessed in 1759 as a way of supplying power to a small sawmill. Now, more than two centuries later, Niagara Falls still provides electricity, but on a much larger scale, serving as the largest power source for the entire state of New York.

Today is day 1. You can do this!

If you are good at making excuses you won’t be good at anything else.