Hey everybody, welcome to today’s podcast. This is the Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit Podcast. My name is Denise Jelinek, and if you happen to be a very first new listener, then welcome. 

But if this isn’t the first time of listening, I wanna ask you a favor. If you found that this podcast has helped you be closer to the Lord, would you mind writing a review? Just give us five stars saying yes. This is truly authentically Catholic. 

And you know, when the Lord called me a few years ago, he said, Denise, go find my hurting daughters and bring them to me. And he didn’t say, Denise, go find my hurting daughters and help them. No, he said, bring them to me. 

And I want you to know that all of the work that we do in 63 surrendered, the weight loss with the Holy Spirit Program, or even this podcast is all geared towards taking your soul, you, your soul, closer to him, cutting through the noise of the world so that you can see his ways and what he wants for you.

And I hope that each time that you listen. You ask yourself, Lord, what do you want me to hear? ’cause he has a special message for you in these podcasts. And so today I do have something really special for you. I have a free walking challenge that we’ll be doing in October, but I also wanna share with you this new concept that’s been developing of Catholic weight loss.

I wanna talk to you about the concept of giving the Lord your first fruits, which is integrated into this weight loss challenge. And I wanna share with you a beautiful, beautiful quote from Mother Teresa that I know a lot of us have heard and how it applies to your soul. So this is all about you and your soul.

Can we start with the concept of Catholic weight loss? What is Catholic weight loss? This concept the Lord is really revealing to me is essentially there’s the Catholic way to do things and then there’s everybody else. There’s the Catholic way to live, and then there’s the secular way to live. There’s the Catholic way to pursue health and weight loss and food in our body.

And then there’s everybody else the secular way, and I’m not saying one is bad or good, but I want you to think about you and your soul and what you want and what the Lord is calling you to and chances are, if you’re a Catholic woman listening to this podcast, the Lord is calling you to do things the Catholic way, which just means hand in hand with him, arm in arm with him letting him lead you. Believing that his ways are the better ways.

And I think we can all look at something in our lives that we used to not surrender to the Lord, or we used to not allow the Lord into whether it was our professions or tithing, or our marriage or parenting, where things just felt hard and it felt so hard that finally we were broken down into surrender.

And then when we started to surrender it. The Lord is so faithful. We felt that peace rush in. Maybe not immediately, but eventually, and now you can see you have peace around that, and that’s what he does. He makes things so painful for us as an act of love, because we’re not surrendering it to him. But when we do, he’ll take it. He’ll lead us. He’ll show us how to walk with surrender and peace.  

And I truly believe that that is the number one thing that we need to do as Catholic women pursuing Catholic weight loss, which is just the Lord is leading us. We are doing things his way, allowing him to reorder our relationship with food. So we are no longer afraid of food or feel guilty for eating our favorite foods. 

We can enjoy it. We can savor it. And we don’t need it to get through life. We don’t need it when stress encounters our lives, when life feels overwhelming. And that’s what I mean by walking with him. He reorders us, but we have to turn to him.  

So the number one thing to be able to start pursuing Catholic weight loss or even progress your Catholic weight loss is talking to the Lord. Is talking to the Lord. And since that is the number one thing, and if you are in our community or you’re in 63 surrendered, you can see that’s already built into the program. But what if you’re not in one of those programs? How do we even start talking to the Lord?  

Well, you don’t have to answer that question on your own because I created this free walking challenge. That is designed to help you start talking to the Lord, this walking challenge that helps you make your walking worship. I really want to make sure that every single Catholic woman, no matter where she is in her journey, has something, has a way to take her first steps in surrendering her food and weight struggles to the Lord.

And so he gave me this concept of this walking challenge. And the coolest part of the walking challenge is that you will get this free app. So it’s a free walking challenge with a free app, and each day you’ll have a scripture that you’ll listen to audio. Of course, if you want to read it, you can read it as well, but you have audio of the scripture, a short prayer. And then a reflection question.

And as you’re walking, this audio will have music, the challenge will be to talk with the Lord for three minutes and just have conversation, listening and talking for three minutes. At the first part of your walk. After those three minutes, feel free to put in any other podcast. Listen to your own music. It doesn’t matter.

But after the first seven days, then each time you walk, it will progressively get longer and longer and longer to by the time you are done with the 30 days, you’ll be talking with the Lord. 15 minutes. And this whole concept is to slowly integrate you into giving him your first fruits of the walk.

And I always thought, what the heck is the first fruit? And the first fruits are the first and best. And in the Old Testament, that’s what they would do. They would give the Lord their first and best part of their harvest as a way to say, you know what, Lord? Thank you, as a way to show gratitude and a way for them to show trust that the Lord will continue to provide.

And I thought, isn’t that just bananas? Like the first fruits of the harvest are given to the Lord. But if you think about it, it’s not just the harvest. The harvest doesn’t come, I come from a farming community, so I know it starts like nearly an entire year. Before the harvest. To even reap the harvest, first you have to find the land.

And you may own the land. You may need to lease the land, but you have to find the land, finding a plot of land to then prepare to till it, to prepare it and get it ready for planting. And then you have to plant the seeds, and then you have to wait on the seeds to grow, nurture them and all of this, and then you reap the harvest and then you’re giving it to the Lord.

And it’s just so crazy in a way for me to think about how in the Old Testament, they just trusted the Lord and they knew that it was all his. And I’m sure there were unbelievers. I just think of all the areas in my life that I just hold onto and grip to thinking that the Lord won’t provide or fear that it won’t come, or believing that the results and what I have were because I did it and I did the hard work. It’s all up to me. 

And so I’m really challenging myself to look at this whole first fruits concept. And that’s what I want you to do with this walking challenge to give the Lord your first moments. It’s your first minutes, and it doesn’t have to be the first minutes of the day, but it’s the first minutes of the walk where you say, Lord, this is my first and best, and it’s yours.

I’m really excited about this challenge. I’m excited because I feel like it’s going to pull so many Catholic women into not only talking with the Lord, but enjoying nature, enjoying this beautiful fall season. I live in the Chicago suburbs, and so it’s the most amazing time of year for us. We all live for fall in Chicago. It feels so short. But this is a way to get out.

And we are calling this the walk October challenge, but I want you to know it’s not 30 consecutive days. It’s 30 walks, and so it doesn’t really matter when you start the challenge. You may start October 31st, and that’s fine. It just start in October. And the days don’t have to be consecutive. It’s just 30 moments where you’re walking with the Lord and talking with him.

So I hope you are as excited as I am and I hope you get some girlfriends together and you guys do this together as a way to glorify the Lord and enjoy whatever he wants to reveal to you. I promise you start talking to him, you’ll be amazed at what he tells you that he wanted you to know. Changing gears just a little bit. Gang, this is my little gift to you. 

In my bathroom, I have this quote from Mother Theresa, and I thought, oh my gosh, this applies so much to our weight loss journey and what I believe the Lord wants us to know about self care and weight loss. So I’m going to read to you the Mother Teresa quote. It’s often called the paradoxical commandments. So let me read this to you. 

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you’re kind, people may accuse you of selfish. Ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you’ll win some false friends and some true enemies, succeed anyway. If you’re honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, some could destroy overnight, build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.    

You see in the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. And I read that in my bathroom nearly every day, and I thought just the other day, this is what our journey is like. And so I rewrote it. I rewrote it to be the paradoxical commandments of Catholic weight loss.

And as you listen, ask the Lord to reveal what he wants you to know for your journey. Secular diets will tell you to eat less and move more. Allow yourself to eat the food you love anyway.  The world will say you just need willpower, discipline, and control. Focus on cultivating the skills of support and care for yourself anyway.

Diets will promise fast results. Choose peace and patience, anyway. You may follow your plan and the scale won’t move. Stick to your plan anyway. You may eat your easy to stick to meal plan and still feel cravings, support yourself anyway. You may think you have so far to go. Remember that today is the only thing that matters and live it surrendered anyway.  

You may lose weight and make progress and still feel unworthy, celebrate, and allow deeper healing. Anyway, the good you do for your body today may be forgotten by tomorrow. Do good for your body, anyway. Give yourself the best care you can and it may never look like enough by the world standards. Give yourself the best you’ve got, anyway.  

You see in the final analysis, this is between you and God. It was never between you and the scale. It was never between you and losing weight the world’s way. It was always between you and God, anyway. And I trust that in this podcast the Lord found you  and I trust that in some small or not so small way, he pulled you closer to him.  

Alright everybody, to join our walk-tober Challenge, simply go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com you’ll see a banner at the top that says Walking Challenge. Join us. Because in the end, and today, and now and forever, it is always between you and the Lord. Never between you and me, never between you and the scale, never between you and your food, always between you and the Lord. Anyway, have a blessed day.