Hey everybody. Welcome to How to Not Gain Weight Over the Holidays. I’m Denise Jelinek. I’m so excited that you’re here today. This is going to help you really enjoy the holidays. And you guys, what’s crazy is the things that we love about the holidays are the same things that we dread. It’s just more. 

There’s just more of everything, which means more of the good and then also more of the stress. I am so glad that you are here, so that you can really learn how to celebrate the holidays in a way that’s enjoyable for you without guilt or without fear of overeating and without sacrificing your own health and your weight.

And the way that you feel about yourself and your confidence so that you aren’t starting January. Feeling behind. The way to do that is we’re going to stop living on autopilot and we’re gonna start creating new patterns. And the way that we create new patterns is we just use the things that the Lord designed in our bodies. He gave us brains that can actually be retrained. 

And so I want you to know that your brain is just doing what it’s always been doing because that’s what human brains do. Your brain has been working perfectly for you and it just hasn’t known a different way. But that doesn’t mean it can’t change. That’s how beautifully designed your brain is. Your habits are, you are certainly not a lost cause. You haven’t gone too far. It is never too far. Our brains are always able to change.

And I want you to know that he can renew you. He will renew you because I’m going to show you what you need to do. And as long as you know your part and you just keep practicing that, he does heal us. And that’s what I wanna talk to you today. I just wanna talk to you about the three things that are really causing you to gain weight over the holidays and how to do it differently this year.

My hope for you today is that you see, number one, that you’re not destined to repeat your past. Your future does not have anything to do with your past if it’s not helpful. And then I hope that you feel capable. I want you to really leave here being like, oh yeah, I got this. I know my next steps.

So before we dive in, let me tell you just a little bit about me if we haven’t met. My name is Denise Jelinek. Today I’ll be your Catholic health and weight loss coach. I’m 48 years old and I’ve been married for 22 years. We have two teenage sons that are adopted. When we first got married, we tried for five years to get pregnant and it never happened. Isn’t that crazy? 

So like I hear of people who have like six kids or they’re pregnant, and I’m just like, oh my gosh, you’re so fertile. Literally, that’s the first thing. I think it’s crazy for a while. So I didn’t get married as a Catholic, although I got married in a Catholic church.Thank you Jesus for that. I gave my husband such a hard time about that. Why would we even get married in a church if you don’t even go to church? 

But the Lord knew. I grew up with no faith influence. So I’m a convert from nothing.  I didn’t have like a problem with God. I just thought God was for other people. However, I did have a grandmother who would take me to mass probably three times a year when I would spend the weekend with her. 

And I want to just pause and just recognize the power of grandmother’s prayers. So all of you grandmas out there, or women who will be grandmas or who are spiritual grandmas, you guys just keep your prayers going because I went from nothing to here and I talk about Jesus all day long. It’s insane. 

Okay, so that’s sort of my story on that end. But I want you to know that 12 years ago, I found myself stuck in a cycle and probably the cycle that you are very familiar with, where you see yourself overeat. Feel horrible promise, you’ll never do it again. And then all of a sudden you’re right back doing it again.

And you can white. What I found was that I could kind of white knuckle my way through eating normally for probably, I don’t know, four and a half days. And then the weekends would hit, and then I would just overeat and then I would feel horrible and I promised I would never do it again. And I was just stuck in this cycle. 

And what I started to find was that the times of feeling normal, or in charge, or in control of my eating kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And it was so confusing to me because as I told you, we tried to get pregnant so we ended up adopting our sons. I had these two sons that I tried really hard to get and had to make an effort to get. It wasn’t like we accidentally had them. 

I had a husband who treated me really well, and I just was so confused. Why was I wanting to spend my evenings hiding in my pantry, dumping chocolate chips in a jar of peanut butter, eating in them with a spoon? My husband at one point was like, why do we have so much peanut butter?  

And I would just constantly be looking to see where he was watching tv, if he was watching me, if he could see,  and then I couldn’t wait for my kids and my husband to go to bed so I could stay up and eat like I wanted. It was just so confusing because on the outside I had absolutely everything that I wanted.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but what I have to tell you is that nothing was wrong with me and nothing is wrong with you. I just didn’t have any tools. What I had gotten into was this cycle where my brain believed that if you felt anything, whether it was anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, fear, offended.

I would, those feelings. I didn’t know what to do with them, and the only thing that I didn’t know what to do is to not feel them by putting food in my mouth, which, hello. The reason we do that is because it’s super effective. It just numbs us out to the feelings. Nothing was wrong with me. I just didn’t have tools. And what I’ve learned are three things that I want you to hear me so clearly on this.

Okay? Number one, it doesn’t have to take years for you to have this freedom, and it didn’t take me years. But number two, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are only a few skills away from being able to have peace and freedom with food and peace and freedom in your body, and to feel comfortable in your body.

All the while that you are going toward your healthy weight. You do not have to wait to feel comfortable in your body to be at your healthy weight, or you don’t have to wait to be at your healthy weight to be comfortable. And it is only some skills. I will teach that to you. I’ll give you a little snippet of it today.

So you’re a few skills away. I hope you know that it’s skills and diets don’t teach you skills, so that’s why you just keep feeling like you’re back in the same place. You just haven’t learned the skills, not a problem. You can learn skills, and I know you can learn skills because everything that you’ve ever learned in your life you didn’t know how to do.

Skills are things that you weren’t born knowing how to do, right? You had to learn it. So I know that you’re really good at learning things and skills you can practice and get better at. The very third thing that you need to know is that this has absolutely nothing to do with your intelligence and it has nothing to do with your knowledge.

You all know how to lose weight. You all know what to eat to lose weight. I did. You guys don’t know this if you haven’t heard my story, but I was a personal trainer. I mean, I still am, but at the time that I was finding myself stuck in that cycle, I was writing diet plans for people and they would follow them and they would lose weight, and I, when they followed them, I thought they were lying to me because I couldn’t follow anything.

So I hope you see that people professionally were paying me to help them lose weight and I couldn’t do it for myself. So it has nothing to do with knowledge. It is that you just need to be shown a new way and how to practice that new way. That’s all. 

So this is my family and I wanted to just show you that. That’s my two boys and my husband Tom. And I want you to know that my promise to you as your coach today and for all the women that I work with, I will not waste your time and I will not waste your energy. I think those are the two most precious things we have as women is time and energy.

And what I mean by that is I will tell you and continue to refocus you on what will make a difference so that you don’t get distracted on what won’t make a difference. And I think diets are distracting because they don’t make a difference. If they made a difference long term, you wouldn’t be here. So I’ll always try to retrain your brain back to focusing on what will help you.

The other thing that I promised you is that I’m going to just love you and wherever you are in your journey, and know that our journeys have ups and downs and rights and lefts, and we walk backward and forward and our journeys are all over the place. But I promise, no matter where you are in your journey. I will always tell you the truth. I will always tell you the truth.  

I can’t really tell you why that’s important to you right now. I just wanted to say that because I feel the Lord telling me that all the time. He’s like, just tell her the truth. All right, so let me tell you the truth. Let’s dive into this. 

So with the thousands of women that I have helped, I see that there are three common themes that really lead them to overeat, especially during this time of the year. But this can also happen like at weddings or any sort of special occasion. But let’s just go with during the holidays. 

The first one is that you are eating on autopilot and that autopilot, the root of it is some flavor of, well, this only comes once a year. I never get this. It only comes once a year. And so that really keeps you in constant celebration mode. 

Although if you really step back and look at your holidays, there’s only a few true events. So we’re gonna talk about that. The second thing is that we’re really filling our calendar with things that we don’t even wanna do. And until now, no one’s given you permission to not do that, or even how do you not do that? 

And the third thing that I see women fall into, is they just have this brain pattern. This automatic default brain pattern of when they’re feeling a negative emotion, their brain automatically says, oh, food. Oh food, oh food. And that’s where I was, I mean, I was stuck in that jar of peanut butter because my brain just knew that was such a great solution. And it was until it wasn’t. 

So let’s start with it only comes once a year. I am gonna go through each one of these three things. I’m gonna tell you, what it looks like and then I’m gonna tell you what it can look like, and then how to get to the better part. So what to do instead, and then how to do that. 

So, what I see most often is that we go through the holidays with planning to not overeat. Okay? Nobody goes into the holidays, planning not to overeat, and then of course you’re kind of thinking, well, on Thanksgiving I’ll probably eat a little bit, but you’re not gonna eat the rest. You’re not gonna like overeat all the weekend. 

Well then you kind of overeat a lot on the weekend and you think, you know what? The Monday after Thanksgiving, it’s off where, I mean, I’m gonna be on it and on it and on it. And we start to do this like white knuckle thing. We start white knuckling through everyday life. And you will see that you have a lot of success. Like you’re resisting the Christmas candy when you go to the bank. 

But the more and more you get into the holidays. The more your resilience starts to deplete and your energy and resistance starts to wane. And as the holiday parties pick up and the excitement picks up and the stress picks up, you get to this point where you decide about mid-December that you know what, it doesn’t really matter. ’cause the holidays only come once a year and I am just done fighting this. 

And so in an odd sort of like, Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, just join them. That’s kinda where you go. You end up not discerning anything. And so everything feels like a celebration. But as we’re talking right now, we can see that it’s more than just the celebrations that have the goodies, the Christmas cookies, and all of the things. Are like everywhere in life. 

And we’re not necessarily celebrating Christmas, it’s just we have the Christmas cookies all around us in things like the teacher’s lounge, the break room at work. You go to your Bible study and it’s a special one because it’s Christmas if you’re a nurse, the cookies that the patients bring in.

And if you’re a nurse, well that’s present all year long, and probably you have goodies in your break room all year long and in the teacher’s lounge, but let’s just say it’s two x this time of year, so let’s just double the food. So you’re looking at double the food.

But your brain wants to keep saying, oh, I only get this once a year. And it just starts to feel so overwhelmed with the fight that you just give in to the point where you’re not even discerning, like you go get your tires rotated and they’ve got like a bowl of candy. I just got something done at the car place the other day and I was like, that is a huge bowl of Halloween candy. 

And I realized, oh my gosh, it is going to be everywhere from now until January. And this is one of the things that leads to you gaining weight is because it’s everywhere. And your resilience is down every day. Feels like it. Well, it only comes once a year, but I promise you what’s possible is that you can be around Christmas foods and feel completely at peace without feeling obligated or really driven to put it in your mouth.

You can decide ahead of time what’s truly special. And I’m not saying you don’t enjoy the special things, but you enjoy what’s truly special. Like the Dollar Store candy probably isn’t truly special. The store-bought cookies at the Bible study isn’t truly special. that you get to discern ahead of time what is truly special, the foods and the moments that matter most to you, not to everybody else, but to you. 

And I want you to know that’s not about willpower. It’s not about white knuckling, it’s just about discernment. And the way that you do that is very simple, okay? This is part of the skills. No one’s slowed you down enough to even tell you that it’s this simple. 

So to do this, you slow down and I have people do this weekly. You take a few minutes to look ahead at your week, which events matter most? Which events do I want to splurge on? Which events will actually have my favorite holiday foods?

When you know that and you’re planning, you know what, on Thursday I’m going to that special luncheon with my friends. Saturday night we have a party, and then, okay, so you feel like chosen those two things. Then on Sunday when it’s like, oh, it’s fellowship time. You’re like, oh, do I really want the store-bought donuts? Even though they might be from the best bakery in town, you’ve already enjoyed your favorite favorites. 

If those donuts were the best, let’s say they’re from the best bakery in town, you know that they’re one of your favorites if you purchase them and they’re just, and you would’ve had it like you would’ve driven to the bakery to have it. Do you see the discernment there where you’re like, you know what, these are just here. I’m only wanting to eat them because I see them, but they’re not one of my favorites. 

I have a client who talks about these fig scones at a bakery and she will drive to the bakery to get the fig scones. So probably if she were at fellowship time and there was a fig scone there unexpectedly, she would make an allowance and totally have it. ’cause it’s one of her favorites. She knows that. 

But when you know your favorites, that random candy dish, it just loses its pull and you’ve retrained your brain to question, is this one of my favorites? So I suggest doing it weekly, looking at the events on your calendar and deciding ahead of time.

The second thing that really causes a lot of people to gain weight is their calendar. So let’s talk about your calendar. So you get an invitation and you really feel the urge to say yes right away. And we say yes on autopilot. Because someone asked a question.

Okay, we say yes because they asked a question that required yes or no, and no felt so uncomfortable. We just said yes. We say yes because, well, we always go to that. We say yes because, well, it’s a tradition. We say yes because, well, I went last year, or we say yes to simply avoid feeling uncomfortable with the thought. I disappointed them.

This isn’t a problem. But what happens is suddenly your schedule is packed with things that you don’t even wanna do. Your schedule, your schedule that you are in charge of is packed with things you don’t wanna do, and you find yourself eating through the stress. 

And what I mean by that is when you have a schedule that feels like. Sort of put on you and you feel like a victim of your schedule. So not only are you having things on your schedule that you don’t like, but now we’re overeating them. Because what happens is sometimes we regret saying yes and we feel horrible. So we eat. 

Sometimes we’re so stressed and dreading the event , that even thinking about going to, it feels heavy and stressful. And we eat and then we’re at the event not enjoying it. And to make it more pleasant and tolerable, we eat. 

And afterwards, once we see ourselves overeat, when we told ourselves we wouldn’t do it again, and we did, we feel horrible and we say, well, forget it. I’m just going to eat all the things this weekend and I’ll start again on Monday.

Isn’t that crazy? How invitations and filling your calendar is one of the ways that will lead you to overeat. Knowing that here’s what’s possible though. What’s possible is a calendar that feels like you, that feels like yours, that’s full of the things that you truly want to be doing. What’s possible is a holiday season full of meaning and balance instead of obligation and dread.

And I know we can’t love every event we go to, but if you can at least love your reasons for each commitment, that alone would decrease the resentment and overeating. The way that we do this is before the holiday season even starts. We’re gonna talk to the Lord and we’re gonna say, Lord, what do you want this season to look like?

What do you want the next two months to look like? How do you want me to celebrate your birthday? Right? Because we’re doing this all for him. All of this fun and frivolity, is that a word, is to celebrate the Lord’s birth. Prepare hearts. I like to say, Lord, how do you want me to celebrate your birthday? What would truly be a gift to you?

And then what we do is we look at each of the invitations that people give us. And here’s a little hack game. When people invite you somewhere and it’s verbally or you’re right in front of them, your brain wants to say yes right away, and I want you to challenge yourself to say, let me get back to you and really discern this with the Lord.

So I want you to look at each event on your calendar and see what aligns with what he told you. Okay? So what does it align with what the Lord told you? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s an automatic no. Or maybe it isn’t automatic. Yes. 

And if it’s an automatic no and you still feel drawn to go, I want you to ask yourself, well, do I love my reasons for going? So for example, let’s say there’s a piano recital or something and you’re like, oh, I’m not gonna miss my daughter’s piano recital. Oh my gosh, she’s been practicing this song. 

Okay, so you don’t wanna go to the piano recital, but you do wanna be the mom who’s there. And maybe it’s for a neighbor or a grandchild and you’re like, do I really wanna spend two and a half hours listening to someone clink around on a piano? No. And my kid only plays like 90 seconds. But I do love that I can support her. See, that’s how you love your reasons. 

My husband’s work party. I feel this that way. Actually last year was a lot of fun, but the year before, I wasn’t willing to not go. I mean, it’s kind of a big event like where you have to like drive somewhere, go to a hotel, and I didn’t love being there, but I loved that I could be the wife that could be there.

And I just kept saying that to myself. I’m so glad I can be here for him, this is important to him. And that helped me see that this was my choice to be there. Hey guys. Being willing to be uncomfortable by saying no will give you long-term satisfaction, will decrease your cortisol and your stress level. 

And I don’t think the Lord’s asking us to be stressed out over his birthday saying, no will sting for like, what, five minutes. But it gives you hours and days of peace. Again, it’s a skill to learn how to say, I’ll get back to you. It’s a skill to be able to say no. It’s a skill to say yes and love your reasons. All of that can be practiced. 

The third reason that you are gaining weight over the holidays is that for decades, our brain has learned that when we feel stress or loneliness or offended or all the feelings, our brains have been conditioned that if we eat food, we feel better. And it does. I mean, it’s super effective. It does in the moment.

But then afterward we’re left with more stress, less confidence, and we just wanna hide. It’s just a brain pattern. Your brain does think it makes you feel better, but it’s just temporary. I like to call it an illusion. But the truth is, it’s not an illusion because it actually does help you feel better. It’s just very temporary. 

And then when you get done, it actually makes you feel worse. So if you start feeling bad at like a five, like on a scale of one to 10, then because you layered on overeating now it feels like you’re down at a two. But knowing that we still do it ’cause our brain doesn’t know a different way.

And we need to know that food isn’t the enemy, it’s just being misused. It’s being used as a tool that it’s not meant to be like food is not supposed to be an emotional tool, not supposed to help us manage our emotions. And the real enemy is not knowing, sorry. The real enemy is not knowing that there’s a different way. It’s just believing. You have to live that way. 

The real enemy. Is not giving ourselves a chance to know a different way, the real enemy that keeps you stuck of those feelings of despair and hopelessness. But like I said, there’s a totally different way because what’s possible is being able to eat your favorite foods. I want you to imagine that. 

Imagine being able to eat your favorite foods, savor them calmly without guilt to know when you’ve had enough to know that being overstuffed isn’t fun. It actually doesn’t make you feel special. It actually doesn’t bring anything better to your life, and you know that ahead of time.

I’ll tell you, if there’s one thing I could teach women from everything that I do, if I could teach you. To enjoy your favorite foods, to stop dieting, but enjoy your favorite foods without fear or guilt. I just think that would be like a massive, huge win that would be incredible. Back to your brain. 

So your brain is in a pattern of feeling a negative. Feeling like I was standing in the corner of my pantry with my peanut butter and chocolate chips, and I would automatically go to food, like I said, because it’s effective. 

But the only thing that was standing in my way, or the only thing standing in your way of interrupting that cycle and interrupting that pattern is being able to practice something different.  There’s many different things you can practice, but I want to teach you one thing today. 

I wanna teach you how to calm your brain. To where you detect, oh my gosh, I’m feeling stressed, I’m feeling anxious, I’m feeling worried, allowing a feeling and being able to calm your brain. And this is so important because a calm brain does not stress eat. I’m gonna say it again. A calm brain does not stress eat. Have you guys ever over eaten when you’re calm?

And that calm comes from practicing, from noticing that you’re stressed. Okay? So that’s the first thing. You have to notice that you’re stressed or anxious or lonely or having a feeling. And then I want you to practice a new tool, a new pattern.  

Okay? So the way that we do this is, and again, this is one tool. There’s a million out there I could teach you, but we’re just gonna walk away with one. This is what we call the ten second pause. The ten second pause. Helps your brain recalibrate to be able to access the best thinking part of your brain. 

And what I mean by that is when we’re in a stress response, we are only acting in fight, flight, or freeze or fawn or all the other things. Food. Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. Fight, flight, freeze fawn or food. And that’s usually we’re just trying to like flee. I think that like the flee, like fight, flight or freeze, I think it’s the flight that leaves us like we just have to get out of this. And that’s always when we use the tool of food.

Okay. But you’re using the emotional part of your brain when you react that way. And what I’d like to teach you how to do is to access the best part of your brain. When you’re in a stress response. 90% of your blood is shunted away from your best thinking brain. 

So can I even access that? It’s why out of the moment, like later on you’re like, gosh, why didn’t I do something different? Because you had no access to your best thinking brain. That’s why. Okay. 

So I wanna teach you one of the things that will help calm your brain. It will give you access to the best thinking part of your brain, and recalibrate your brain to calm. And you’ll have a fighting chance then to choose something different other than food.

All right. So this is what we’re going to do and we’re all gonna practice this together. We’re going to say, think and feel as we inhale for three, and then we’re going to exhale for seven with an extended choose. I can’t hear you. I want you to do this. I’m gonna do it once on my own and then we’re going to do it five times together.

Okay. Are you guys ready? So here’s what it looks like. Think, feel,  exhale, choose. Just do it with me. Think. Yeah. Exhale. Choose. Inhale. Think. Exhale. Choose. Just inhale. Think. Exhale. Choose. One more time. Inhale. Think. Feel. Exhale. Choose. 

Okay. What are you feeling? In one word, what are you feeling? Relaxed. Calm? Focused. Empowered. This is called using our God-Given like when you understand how the Lord made our brain. We can work with it. Isn’t this just incredible? 

Okay. So you are experiencing it. You can see that something so simple can be very powerful. , So you can take that with you. You’re welcome. That’s my free gift to you today. It, and it may take up to 90 seconds, so you may need to repeat it nine times, but this is scientifically proven. I love Dr. Carolyn Leaf’s work, and that’s where I learned that,

Okay? Remember how I told you knowing something isn’t enough? Because we all have lots and lots of weight loss information. The truth is that knowing why you overeat is exceptionally powerful. I know you were just shaking your head this whole time. But unfortunately, unless you listen to this every single day and practice these things, change just doesn’t automatically happen when we know something.

Tony Robbins says that knowledge is not change. It’s potential change, which is so true. We just need to practice things. Real transformation happens when you practice it daily, and it’s really hard to practice something daily because we often forget. So having support and structure and accountability is really important.

But I’ll tell you what is also really important for you guys, is to have somebody to celebrate with, to have other people who are like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing you did that ten second pause. Because out in the world, other people aren’t necessarily celebrating our ten second pauses. 

Recently I wanted to start something new, and I just kept asking my husband and son. Because I wanted to start this new workout program. I was like, every day I want you to ask me, how was your workout mom? How was your workout mom? How was your workout? To just start showing my brain, oh wait, I like that. I get a dopamine hit. I’m being acknowledged. So I was trying to put in a structure so that I could have some like celebration.  

But that’s why you need help to see when your brain is progressing. You don’t need another plan. You guys, there is no holiday plan that you need to follow in terms of food plan. You need a process, a process that will help you live this out with God. 

The number one thing I see women struggle with is trying to do this alone, and it’s absolutely impossible to change without continued practice, without continued reminders, and without continually redirecting you.

I told you, I will not let you get distracted. You guys all know how to diet. You don’t know how to really address or practice the skills necessary to help you not overeat and diets, don’t solve for that. Everything we just talked about cannot be solved with a diet. White knuckling works for a little bit, but then it leaves you exhausted and wishing the holidays away.

Have you guys ever said that where you’re like, I feel so bad saying this, but I just wish January would come. That’s how you know you’re white knuckling, and I don’t want you to celebrate this holiday season like that. 

That’s why I created celebrate not sabotage, so you don’t have to guess, so you don’t have to figure anything out so you have the exact process that you need so that you’re not wasting your precious time and energy so that you use that time and energy on what really matters. What’s going to stop your battle with food? 

I want you to have guidance and support to practice these new methods that I just told you about, surrounded by the other hundreds of Catholic women who are doing it with you. So celebrate, not sabotage. Lemme tell you a little bit about what it is.

Celebrate not sabotage is an eight week challenge and this, and I like to say the word challenge. I don’t know. I mean like it’s just an eight week journey, honestly, that teaches you how to stop battling food over the holiday season and teaches you instead how to celebrate, truly celebrate, but without sacrificing your peace, without sabotaging your weight loss.

Celebrating a sabotage isn’t a diet, it’s a sacred healing. I just like to say it’s like a reordering, it’s a refocus. In a reframing of what celebration is, right? You know, the decades of celebrating the other way. I wanna just teach you a new way so you’ll have it for the rest of your life so that you’re using your time and your effort and your energy on a new way.

A hundred percent united with the Lord. So we’re just done. We’re done eating our favorite foods out of fear and guilt, and we’re just learning how to do it in a calm way that truly feels natural and we’re savoring the foods

So inside celebrate, not sabotage. You will have exactly what to do. One of my favorite things about the women when I work with women is I never want you guessing. I want you to wake up every morning and know exactly what to focus on and exactly what to do each day. We have four daily disciplines that are very short in time to do. They’re skills that you learn. That’s what they are. They’re skills. 

And then each week that we get together, I will give you homework so you’ll know exactly what to focus on that week. So every day you’ll know what to focus on, and every week you’ll know what to focus on. 

Remember I told you these are skills, so I teach you a skill and let you practice it, and then I teach you another skill and let you practice that you have a workbook and a journal that will help you apply everything.

You guys will not get lost. You just start at page one and we go through it all together. I’m just done having you guys try to figure things out on your own. It’s a very simple process. Okay? The other things that we have are each day we’ll be saying the surrender novena, and you’ll have that daily devotion to do that.

We have a private podcast, which I love, ’cause then I don’t have to get online to listen to things. Each week we get together live. Listen, and if you can’t be there live, no problem. The replays are there. But one of the most exciting parts is that you’re surrounded by other women. In our online community, we use an app called Slack. It’s not Facebook, but kind of like a Facebook group, but there’s no ads and it’s just our group. 

So you have 24 access to the group as well as all of our coaches, which I think is really exciting. So that you can put, oh my gosh, I’ve got this event, or This is what I’m planning this week. And you’ve got that accountability. So let’s be honest, all of you have come to a workshop before and you feel super inspired, and then what life happens. 

But you guys, it’s not, it’s not a you problem. I just want you to know that without continued guidance. And direction. Your brain will just naturally go back to what it’s always done. It’s not a you problem, it’s just the way the human brain works. We just go back to the default. 

But with celebrate not sabotage, you’ll be continually retraining your brain, intentionally, prayerfully, because we’re all doing it together. You’ll know exactly what to focus on each day, and you don’t have to do anything alone. 

So I want you to see this is what happens. I’m gonna read this slide to you because it’s so true. Oh my gosh. It’s just so true. Without celebrating, not sabotage, your brain only knows what it’s always done. The old habits, the old patterns. But with celebrate not sabotage, you’re taught what to practice and supported to retrain your brain to create those new brain patterns. 

Without celebrate, not sabotage. You get it, you understand the concepts, but it’s easy to forget. It’s really easy to forget once life hits with celebrate not sabotage. I’m gonna tell you what to do in a very doable, clear, daily focus that keeps you making progress, but not expecting perfection. Perfection does not exist the sight of heaven, nor is it helpful without celebrate, not sabotage on your own. After today.

There’s nobody to ask when life gets messy. But with us, with celebrate not sabotage, you’ll have live weekly coaching and 24/7 access to our coaches and the other women in the program. This goes on and on, but I’m just afraid you guys, without this, you’re going to face all of your challenges alone.

But with this, you get the answers, you get the encouragement, you get solving, you get ideas, you get truth from the women walking the same road. You won’t relive last year on your own. You’re going to make progress quietly and there’s nobody there to celebrate with you. 

That just stinks ’cause I see what you’re doing well and it’s so fun to not only have someone encourage you, but for you to see the progress in someone else, for you to build up someone else. It’s just so motivating.

And it’s just so easy to drift back into old cycles because the life that we live right now is just so noisy and distracting, and that’s why Celebrate Not sabotage meets you weekly and daily. It gives you exactly what to focus on every day and every week so that no matter how noisy the world is, you know exactly where to focus your attention.

So this is what last year’s women said. So at the end of Celebrate Not Sabotage, I asked them, Hey, where do you think you’d be if you hadn’t joined? They say, I would’ve gained eight pounds for the holidays  instead, I lost eight pounds. Another woman said, a lot more frustrated and heavier in weight and spirit. 

Another woman said, I would not have the peace of knowing that God has this. Another woman says that if she hadn’t joined, she says, I really think that I would still be struggling to get back on track, and I probably would’ve put on a few pounds through the holiday season, but instead I’m down 9.8 pounds and have found so much peace in my life in so many ways.

Celebrating that sabotage is a new way to not battle food, to potentially even lose weight through the holidays. Many women have. It’s not about white knuckling your way through the holidays, but it’s about ending the food battles. It’s about letting God teach you how to celebrate the birth of his son in a way that brings you into that new woman where you can be calm and peaceful and feel really good about yourself.

I asked the women last year, what was your biggest surprise from this program? One woman said that I lost weight during the holidays, also that I chose what meals will be, and there was no list of what to eat and not eat. 

Another woman said the biggest surprise that I could actually be excited to eat and enjoy food without guilt. And another woman said, the biggest surprise for me was that not only was I able to lose weight on this program without feeling deprived. But it’s done so much for my relationship with the Lord in all aspects, not just food and losing weight. Isn’t that incredible? What a gift we can give the Lord. 

So I encourage you, this is your window before the chaos starts, before your calendar fills up. You don’t need to wait until January. You can start now and let God guide you through a peaceful, holy, joy filled holiday season. ’cause you don’t need more willpower. You don’t need another diet, you don’t need another plan. Just need a simple process.

And I hope you see how simple it is and doable it is for you to not repeat the holidays of the years past and you can do that. So I hope you join me inside. Celebrate not sabotage. All right, everybody. Go to weight loss with the Holy spirit.com and get signed up today. Have a blessed day.