Denise: Hey everybody. So today I have Mary and Loesja with me, who are two women who have graduated from 63 surrendered, and they raised their hand because they have a story to tell you about what the Lord has done in their life through this program. Welcome Mary, and welcome Loesja. 

Mary: Good to be here.

Loesja: Yeah. Great to be here.

Denise: Mary, tell our audience a little bit about you and where you are joining from.

Mary: Okay. I am Mary and I’m 70 years old and I’m joining you from. The nice snowy north in Milford, Ontario, Canada. We’ve had snow days already this year. And my story is I’m a retired physiotherapist and I live with my husband who’s paraplegic and has been for over 50 years, but very independent until the last three years.

So the last three years, he’s been stuck in bed, not really sick, just healing. And our youngest daughter also is quite autistic. We call her our autistic wonder. And but she’s been doing okay. She is at home full time goes to program during the day, but she had a reaction to medications.

So sort of when I hit on 63, surrender was hitting the bottom of having now to care for two people at home who are wonderful people. But suddenly whenever you got sick. Then my weight just went through the roof.

It was the timing was fabulous for me to try to examine what else is going on because I could have sworn at the time, I’d say, I don’t think it’s all that I’m eating, and I truly believe that now. So it was just a really wonder to be able to stumble on something that was, based on the faith I believe in.

Denise: Oh, I’m so intrigued. Mary. I cannot wait to hear the rest of your story now. Loesja, can you tell our audience a little bit about you and where you’re joining from?

Loesja: Yeah, so my name’s Loesja and I’m from Australia. I was actually born in the Netherlands, but my parents migrated over to Australia when I was two. I’m pretty Aussie but all my relatives are still in the Netherlands. I am 53 and I am married with five children.

Yeah. So, for the last 17 years before I moved into town, I lived on a property. I love nature, I love the beach. I love hiking with my dogs. I love, I’ve had horses in my life most of the time. And they’re my go-to to relax. So that’s kind of, yeah, who I am.

Denise: And can you give us the ages of your kids?

Loesja: My eldest is 24 and it goes down to 22, 21, 17 and 15.

Denise: Okay. So 15, 17, and 21 still?

Loesja: Yes.

Denise: Okay. You’re in it. My boys are 19 and 16, so we’re just getting just starting into that journey.

Loesja: Yeah.

Denise: Loesja, since we’ve got you here can you tell me, let’s just dive right in. Can you tell me a little bit about your history with food and weight?

Loesja: Okay. It’s been a struggle for a very long time. I would say 40 years. It started. I actually can’t remember quite how far back it started, but I can remember being 12 and my best friend and I would, this is, I’m ashamed to say this, but we would steal money from her grandma. I have confessed this since we would steal money from her grandma.

And we would go to the local shop like weekly and we would. Have what you call pig outs. And we would, because for a dollar you could buy a hundred lollies at the time and we would just yeah, sometimes we had a little bit more money, but sometimes we would have 200 lollies and we would just consume them really, really quickly and we would feel really sick.

And this just happened all the time. And I did go through a period of time where. A friend of mine down the road who was older than me was bulimic. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I didn’t know there was a word for it, but she would say to me if you don’t wanna put on weight when you eat all this food, you can just throw it back up.

My friend and I went through a period of doing that. We, after our pig outs, we would go into the bathroom and throw it all up. That didn’t last for too long because I didn’t really like the feeling of that. Like it was horrible. And I liked the feeling of the food in my belly, even though I was, felt really sick. But I did go through a few periods in my life where I did that. Again, it wasn’t very often.

So I remember that. And I remember like when I was young, food was just always an issue. Like I had three brothers and. For instance, at Easter time, we were given a whole bunch of Easter eggs for Easter, and my brothers could always just eat a few and then save it for a week. Whereas I just, I had to eat at all straight away and I’d make myself sick.

Like I had no concept of just having a normal relationship with food where you would just eat a little bit. And then I just always made myself sick and I just have a lot of memories of when I was young seeing other people with food and eating it normally in a rational way, whereas I just, it was particularly sweets. I just had this thing for sweets.

And, yeah it was really bad. And I ended up and this lasted for 40 years, I would just start diets because I knew eventually if I kept eating like this, I would gain weight. I wasn’t a big person at all, but I was comparing myself to my friends who were thinner than I was. So that body image thing came into play as well.

And I used to have a diary and for, until I was early twenties, and in the back of the diary I would write a diet plan and it would last about four weeks and I’d write the dates down and I’d cross them off as I was successful.

And I know everyone has different journeys with dieting, but I actually never followed secular diets. I just had my own thing and it was three meals a day. I was never allowed any snacks. And it always had to be healthy, like cereal salad sandwich for dinner for lunch, and then veggies and meat for dinner.

And I couldn’t eat anything in between. If I had like one lolly, like just one little lolly in my brain would tell me I’d blown it and I’d give up. Then all I would do was eat junk food until I started again on Monday. ’cause it was always, I always started again on Monday. That was my brain telling me that. I don’t know why I did that. I do hear that a lot listening to other people.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: Starting fresh and that stayed with me. Seriously for 40 years, that cycle of writing down a diet, and it was always the same. And I could never stick to it. It was too hard to stick to it. And it was either I was good and I ate all the healthy foods or I was bad. And then when I was bad, I was really bad. I just binged and there was no in-between for me at all. And it was just this cycle, and it actually lasted like the day before 63 surrendered.

Denise: Wow.

Loesja: It was really bad. Particularly towards the end, the last three years of my life, I came across a lot of trauma. A lot of things happened in a short amount of time and the food issue became really, really bad and I cried a lot. Because I couldn’t break that cycle.

Yeah. It’s been really horrible and, you talk to people and you might say, you have a problem with food. I never went into great detail about it ’cause I was very ashamed of it. There’s just so much shame with binge eating. I was very sneaky used to say things like that, Denise. I was extremely sneaky. I used to hide food and I’ve never binged in front of anyone.

But there’s this perception that food isn’t as bad as if you’re an alcoholic or you’re a drug addict or smoking, food just doesn’t seem as bad in a sense, like when you explain it to people, but it’s still an addiction and it still consumes you and enslaves you and it’s terrible. Yeah. So that’s my past with food.

Denise: And you alluded to this, but I’ve got to know before I ask Mary about her food history. So you said that continued until the day you started 63 surrendered. How did 63 Surrender find you?

Loesja: Funny enough, definitely a Holy Spirit moment. My friend bought it for me as a birthday gift. Yeah, I said to her several times, she’s a Catholic, and I said to her, she had a problem with smoking. She was always complaining about smoking.

And I would say to her like, I have a problem with food. I didn’t go into a lot of detail, but I did say that often to her. And I don’t think she believed I had a problem because I’m not hugely overweight.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: Just because I kept dieting as soon as I put on weight. So I don’t think she believed me, but she, I think she came across the program through social media. She was just listening to YouTube things and I think it came in her feed and she just randomly rang me and she said, oh, I’ve got an early birthday present for you.

Denise: Oh. Interesting.

Loesja: She, yeah she gave it to me that way, so that’s how I came across that. So I wasn’t searching for it in any way. Yeah.

Denise: Interesting. Okay, pause on that. Loesja. Mary, what is your history with food and weight?

Mary: Really I think up until I was about 16, I don’t think I thought a lot about it. I can’t, I’m the oldest of seven and everything seemed, as far as I know pretty normal. And when I was 16, we lived in Montreal and my mom decided, my sister and I needed to have finishing lessons. You know, how they used to send women to Switzerland, whatever. My mom wasn’t doing that.

But we did go down to a place in Montreal, it was actually a modeling agency that did kind of improvement courses. And because I walked funny at the time and my mom thought there were manners we needed, so she joined us. So it was fun in that way, but it was the first time I was introduced to a diet.

And then from that time on, it has been always watching my weight going up and down like a yo-yo, you’d be on a diet, off a diet, then suddenly more weight came on and you kind of wish you’d never done the first diet. And yeah. And now I’m 70 and I’m still in that cycle a little bit. Not so much anymore. When I had cancer about six years ago, thank God it was, everything’s fine.

But after that even though I was still doing kind of a diet program. I decided this just has to do with health. And I think it has more to do with getting out and moving. And I think after having the cancer I did, I really wanted to be healthy.

And, but the problem was from that time during COVID, we had lots and lots of time to think about things. And I have to say, things really fell into place. Lots of, getting out for walks and things like that. But then after COVID when life got busy again, all the problems to the food came back again. You know.

So I think my biggest problem is I like to pick, if there’s cheese in the fridge taking a piece of that cheese off. And I can remember doing that years ago. But the other thing I found out after that time was I really didn’t know how to eat anymore. I could tell you, I worked in stroke therapy so I could tell you what a healthy meal was and what you should be eating. I just wasn’t interested anymore.

I was sick and tired of thinking about food. I didn’t enjoy my food. There was no joy anymore unless somebody else cooked it and we went out. And of course. And then when my husband got sick three years ago life got a little bit harder ’cause a lot came onto me then, but it was like, I don’t even wanna think about it.

And it absolutely had nothing to do with my faith or my trust in God or anything. There seemed to be a big divide, and yet it was taking up a lot of my time, but also the joy outta my life. But I think what really scared me is when I realized I really just didn’t even know how to eat anymore.

I didn’t realize what was in my head. I knew what was healthy, but I just didn’t wanna do that anymore either. And it was sort of this total block with food. And so then you’re just eating. I’m hungry, I’ll just take whatever’s around and not plan things, just eating because that’s something you’re supposed to do. And I thought, I don’t think this is so good. This is not healthy.

And God gave us food. We should be enjoying it and having joy. And I wanted that back again. Yeah. And I was definitely the kind of dieter that I would lose weight, but then I would almost gain twice of it back and so I thought, Nope, dieting is not for me anymore. There’s something else going on. So yeah, so that’s why this attracted me.

Denise: And how did you find 63 surrendered, or how did it find you?

Loesja: I definitely found it on Facebook.

Denise: Okay.

Loesja: Yeah. And I have to say, I looked at it and I thought, oh, that this kind of sounds funny and yet I was really attracted that I made sure I could find it again. And yeah, I just prayed on it and I thought why wouldn’t I turn to God on this?

This is, I think you sometimes think, oh, this is such a little thing, but it is not a little thing. It’s actually enormous. And I think you really have to have a lot of trust in God and that’s why I thought, Nope, I’m going this way and I’m really glad I did.

Denise: Yeah. So when you saw that, what were your concerns before you started 63 surrendered about starting another weight loss program? ‘ cause you’ve been dieting for a long time.

Loesja: Oh yeah, I have been. I think more, I was more curious. It was like, how is this going to be different? But right away it wasn’t all about the food, you know?

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: It wasn’t counting points. It wasn’t, you know, take this outta your diet and take that. And I think for me at least when I was going through 63 surrender, I looked at it as a time of learning exactly what was I eating and what was I doing and how was I planning it.

And that’s why I liked that part of it. Plus it was very interactive. Listening to the podcast, listening to the coach calls and things like that, you just weren’t obeying what somebody else said.

And then I think the integration in with our faith and trusting in God that, yeah, maybe this is the part of it you’re doing right now. Because I can tell you there’s parts that I’m now going, yeah, I gotta get, I have to start doing that. But it was too much for me at first.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: You know, doing everything, but I did find for me, certainly starting my day with the surrender novena, wouldn’t wanna not do that anymore. If that’s the only thing that worked that day, that’s fine.

That’s huge. And I think it put you in perspective for the day. And my thing I think came, what came out of it, or right away was, boy, I’m thinking about this. I’m making choices. I’m not totally outta control.

So I think that was a big win for me. Looking at how things were set up. It wasn’t a diet, it was. Like a new way of life and integrating this thing that liked to be out at the side dominating my life, but not integrated into it. So I think that’s what really attracted me in it, and that’s exactly what it did.

And, I can tell right now, maybe this isn’t the place to say it, but did I lose tons of weight? No. And I’m glad I didn’t because I know it’s a journey and it’s gonna take me a while. And with all that’s happening in my family, I thought, Nope, this is good. This is where I should be right now. But do I stick to doing my surrender and doing my meal plans and that? Yep.

‘Cause that’s what I can do right now. I think that’s important. I think that whole really slow change of your lifestyle and trusting the Lord in that, I think that’s. To me that’s important. So it’s not oh, I didn’t lose weight this way. I haven’t been on my scale for years, so I do it by clothes to me, I have no doubt that this is going to make me healthy and that’s where I wanna be.

Denise: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. It is changing you, so it’s nothing that you ever have to stop. And I think it’s really great to hear that you are caretaking for two humans and still able to take care of you and do the things that are giving you these results. This piece, this connection with the Lord, it’s really inspiring to hear.

Loesja, when you started 63 surrendered and you were gifted 63 surrendered. What were your hesitations and your concerns about starting another weight loss program that wasn’t in the back of your journal?

Loesja: I actually didn’t think about it at all. She asked me if I wanted, ’cause my birthday hasn’t even come yet, and she asked me if I wanted to have the link to the 63 surrendered early, I was so in a state of nothing’s ever gonna change my pattern. I had no hope left at all. So when she said it I wasn’t even really excited or anything. I just thought, oh, I better do this because it’s been gifted to me.

And I was thinking it’s Catholic. So I love my faith. I thought, if anything, like I had no expectations of it helping me with food at all. I just thought it’s Catholic and maybe I’ll learn something about my faith. Maybe it would bring me closer to Jesus.

That’s all that was going through my head when I started the program. No expectations at all and just thinking, oh, I might just learn something about my faith. So that’s where my brain was at the time.

Denise: And so what have been some of the biggest surprises for you during 63 Surrendered?

Loesja: Okay. Surprises. First of all even though I knew it was Catholic, when you mentioned Jesus or the surrender novena, which I’ve done so many times in my life, or just when you mentioned something about our faith like that, just a light came up with me. Even though, like I said, I knew it was Catholic, I just still wasn’t expecting anyone to say something Catholic.

We live in a secular world and you just you do feel a bit isolated in your faith. And then when you say something religious, I was like, oh my gosh, this is Catholic. This is so good. And there’s even a video about confession and I thought. That’s so awesome because no one ever talks about confession anymore.

And a big part of my journey was having to confess gluttony, like weekly. I went to confession weekly and confess gluttony. It was, and you know, crying about that ’cause it was so embarrassing to have to say to the priest over and over again that I’ve over eaten. So hearing about confession was awesome. So that was always a surprise to me.

Hearing the other women, like in Slack just listen reading their comments and. Speaking the same language as me starting on Mondays and good and bad food and starting over and blowing it. That was my language in my head for 40 years. And I didn’t ever really hear anyone else talk like that because I kept it very secret.

And just hearing the other ladies speak my language and having the same issues as me was a surprise and it was just wonderful. I just felt like I was home there. Then another surprise was that when you said. Which really freaked me out. But you said there was, we could eat anything we wanted and there was no restrictions.

When you first said that yeah, my brain just went crazy. ’cause I thought I’m just gonna eat chocolate all day and I’ll just go, weight, how’s that gonna work? But there was a part of me that knew that was the only way, like something sat really well with me when you said that, even though my brain was freaking out.

So that did surprise me. Yeah. That initially yeah, that we could eat anything we wanted and foods we loved because I’d restricted myself so much with foods that I loved. Yeah. So they’re the things that surprised me.

Denise: Thank you. How about you, Mary? What were some of your biggest surprises?

Mary: I will totally agree with the eating, anything, everybody was huge. Yeah. Because it kind, what freedom all of a sudden, that’s what I found. Like, wow, I don’t have to not do this and that. But it also made me more thoughtful. Because you’re suddenly all this food you used to restrict yourself, you just started putting it back in, but you were thoughtful about it.

So I thought that was really great. But I think one day you talked about healing and I had never thought about my problems with food or my relationship with food as needing healing. And I think of it that way now. And I thought that was really powerful because again, we’re not separating it from a relationship with God. We’re really saying, I really need some healing here.

So that to me was a big sort of aha moment that I really didn’t expect and that I actually got it in my head that became my main name. So yeah, if I lost weight, that’s fine, but if I could, if be healed and my relationship with food was really important.

Denise: Yeah. Mary, what have been the top three highlights or results from your experience with 63 surrendered? Any physical changes?

Mary: Yeah. It hasn’t changed much yet , but I really, I am going to, so enjoy getting back to exercising. For some reason as I’m doing this, you do mention exercise in it, but it’s almost like now I kind of getting this into control. I need to get back to what I used to do. And that was exercising.

As I said with prayer time, it just has become part of my prayer time. I get up quite early in the morning ’cause it’s the only quiet time in this house. And now, you know, the surrender novenas part of it, that’s been really important to me that I could integrate that into my regular prayer time.

So I think that it was quite major and just being more mindful, like not eating mindlessly. I found that now, even though it’s not a lot of work, but I’m very much more mindful about what I’m eating, why I’m eating, if I’m having some problems.

On the other day it was quite tense here. We had a big Christmas market and I was volunteering at it and it was amazing. I came in and I haven’t for months, done some habits like, just eating outta the fridge and things like that.

And suddenly it was back and I was like, okay, let’s say a prayer about this and let’s just bring this back around. Where before just as Loesjan was saying, oh, I’ll start again on Monday, but I thought, Nope. Can’t wait till Monday.

Denise: Yeah. And that’s the thing is that you notice yourself overeat, but it stops.

Mary: Yeah.

Denise: And it’s you just get back on track a lot faster.

Mary: Yeah. And I think you’re not so condemning to yourself. Yeah. It’s okay, that’s a mistake. I love the idea that when you’re doing meal plans, you do the surrender. If you ever saw mine, most of my thing always change and it’s in the surrender column.

But I thought. Yeah, this is the way to do it because again, it makes you so mindful, and I’m sure as time goes on, I’ll get really much better at planning my mealtimes, but I’m not condemning myself. As soon as, you know, God’s in it, you’re kind of like, okay, I’m pretty sure you’ll forgive me on this one and let’s move on.

Denise: Yeah. We just allow ourselves to be human. We learn from it. We see where we need more support, we learn and we move forward with new information.

Mary: Yeah. And I do have to say too, I think it’s my physio background, but I love how all this also comes in with your mind science. That’s so helpful when you know, because you’re, oh, yep, that’s right. That is how my mind works.

And I think that was a really powerful part of this for me was when we talk about the way we think and about what’s being found in the research. And I think it’s really nice when those two things meld together.

Denise: I agree. When we understand how our brains work, we are better able to actually control them and use the power that God gave us, that free will in a way. That’s really helpful. How about you, Loesja? What have been the top three highlights or results from your experience and what physical change have you noticed?

Loesja: Okay I loved the worksheets and the videos, like they were real highlights for me because like you were just talking about how the brain works and everything it just really helped me understand why I was in that cycle for so long. It helped me break out of it. Just watching the videos, you explaining everything.

And the worksheets were really good for me. I really committed to it, like when I went into this I watched everything and I did all the worksheets all the time. ’cause I just knew they were helping me. So they were awesome. And like I said before, the community around me was yeah, really encouraging.

The thing that probably got to me the most I’m probably paraphrasing here, but you said at the beginning Jesus said to you go find my hurting daughters probably gonna cry. That really, really struck me. That was like a huge Holy Spirit moment because I just felt like that was me. ’cause I’d been hurting for so long and crying about it for so long, asking for help and nothing seemed to shift.

And when you said that, I just knew that God had called you to this ministry and it was authentic and therefore it would be guided by the Holy Spirit. So it wasn’t like you were using our, not that I thought that, but a lot of weight loss programs, I guess can use people’s vulnerability to make money out of them and things like that.

And I just knew instantly that it wasn’t gonna be like that this was gonna work if I put all my effort into it and that. Jesus had called me to this, like he’d pulled me out of that darkness that I was in and he’d given me some light.

I still wasn’t a hundred percent certain that it would all go away, but I had hope for the first time in forever. And that was just hearing you say that, like that was such a big moment. I actually burst into tears when you said that. Yeah, that was a real highlight for me. Yeah.

Denise: I really believe that you are called to this work. The Lord has said, you’re ready, you’re chosen. Your time is now. And he’s just holding his hands out. And I think everybody who goes through this program who can literally say, oh my gosh. Yeah, I was called. I just feel like, I don’t know what that scripture is, but it’s something about being set apart and specially trained.

I don’t even know what it is, but it’s something where we are being trained to be a useful instrument for him, and I just feel like that’s what this work is. I just feel like it’s just so special for each and every person.

And I say that so that you, Loesja and you Mary, and every person listening to this knows that it isn’t for everyone and there’s a lot of people who will never find this work, and it’s because the Lord didn’t make it for them or they aren’t ready. But yeah, you have been chosen for it

Loesja: I do think that like when you go on the community, you do notice that it’s a lot of older women. And like you said, once God caught you when you were quite young still.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: And you feel so blessed about that. So I feel a bit sad about that, but had I gone into this too early, I don’t think I would’ve been ready for it. I just feel like it come to a point where this just made sense to me. Had I been younger I don’t know whether, you know, God’s timing is perfect. So yeah, it was perfect, perfect timing for me. And I’d say it was for Mary as well.

Denise: Yeah.

Mary: I agree with you, Loesja. Every excuse not to do it, but I still, the Holy Spirit said, nope. You start now and.

Loesja: Yeah.

Mary: Which is pretty powerful when you feel that in your life. Yeah.

Denise: Yeah, I’ve started to ask myself the question when I know the Lord is prompting me to do something and I can feel resistance to it, and I just ask myself why wouldn’t I? So why wouldn’t I? And that just really helps me see my human fears and just helps show me where my work is.

Loesja: Yeah. Yeah.

Denise: Loesja, if you could go back to yourself before joining 63 Surrendered, although it wasn’t really your choice, but maybe it was, I think that’s so funny that somebody gave it to you as a gift. What advice would you give yourself before you joined, before you started?

Loesja: Before I say that, I just wanna say this because I really wanna encourage women from a practical side. I’ve lost heaps of weight. Yeah. It really worked for me from day one. I’ve just lost and I weighed myself before I went in. I actually hadn’t weighed myself maybe three years prior. I know women.

Denise: Oh gosh.

Loesja: Yeah. I know women have an issue with weighing, and I always did, but when I stepped on the scale, it messed with my head so badly. It would ruin my whole week. ’cause I’d get so upset by the number I’d want it to be a certain number and it never was.

So after a while, I stopped weighing myself. But I did weigh myself before 63 surrendered. And I was, I felt quite heavy. And I haven’t weighed myself since. Because I just don’t want to ever do that again, but I’ve lost a lot of weight. Like my clothes are really loose on me. I had to buy new pants for work and like people have commented on it. I just wanted to throw that in there.

Denise: So you had said that your pants were looser. And so you weighed yourself at the beginning of 63 Surrendered, but not since?

Loesja: No. I don’t want to weigh myself again. But we know our bodies and I’m, I know I’ve lost probably, you guys don’t go by kilos, but I would say I’ve lost about eight kilos. I don’t know what that is in pounds. But it’s, I feel like I’ve lost a significant amount of weight.

Denise: I think that may be around 15 pounds. Yeah. Isn’t that incredible?

Loesja: Yeah.

Denise: And I always love to ask, when people say that they’ve had weight loss, how deprived have you been feeling?

Loesja: Oh my gosh. Like I’ve had the most amount of desserts I’ve ever had. Like with losing weight, I just eat whatever I want. Like it’s very planned, but there are no restrictions. I never thought I’d be able to eat chocolate again.

And like all sorts of sweet, I allow myself to have sweets for dessert. I just have a portion and I’m okay with that. I’ve never been so free in food. It’s, yeah, it’s crazy. I never would’ve imagined it.

Denise: Yeah. Mary, you’re shaking your head. You’ve been feeling that food freedom too.

Mary: Oh, definitely. I think it’s because of other reasons that probably I haven’t lost a lot of weight, but some things are starting to feel, just that little bit looser. But the other thing is I’m not crabby. Like I used to get so upset, oh, I haven’t lost anything and this is too tight. And honestly, since I started doing this, I feel at peace. I just, as I said before, I think it’s just a healing journey and I have to trust.

Denise: Yeah, absolutely.

Mary: So that I’m sure my family is really happy.

Denise: Yeah. We’ve become a lot nicer to be around for sure.

Mary: Yeah.

Denise: So Loesja, if you could go back to yourself, your former self before starting the challenge, what advice would you give yourself?

Loesja: I’m very blessed ’cause I live in town and I am quite close to the church. I have a key to the church. I used to go into the chapel all the time and just pour my heart out to Jesus. And I would love to sit beside myself and put my arm around me.

And just to say that Jesus loves you. He hears your struggles, he sees your struggles, he sees your tears, he hears your prayers, and not to give up, to have faith and to know that it’s not your fault. It’s not a lack of discipline that causes you to fall. It’s just that you need to learn new skills. That’s right. And once you learn them, you’ll find freedom again and the cycle will break.

So just to trust in him in Jesus, and to ask him to show you the way and he’ll lead you. Because my prayers were always I didn’t really surrender to him. I didn’t know that there was another way. I just thought overcoming this would be to stick to the diet and never eat junk food again. I thought that was the solution.

And I used to pray for that. Jesus don’t let me eat bad food ever again. So my prayer was not open to a new way. So I’d love to go back and just say to myself, just ask Jesus to lead you on a different path, like his path, because. It was so beautiful, the whole 63 surrendered. It just blew my mind. And I just wish that yeah. Had known it. So that’s what I would say to myself.

Denise: Yeah. Oh, that’s beautiful. Mary, what would you say to yourself before starting the challenge?

Mary: I think for me, looking, going back I would probably tell myself to be just a little more attentive. I found that sometimes I let time get away from me, so I didn’t do as many of the videos I might have wanted to do or something like that.

So I would tell myself to take time. I’m one of these people that goes rush, rush, rush, rush, rush about everything. So just to take some time to be attentive and to look for the joy. I don’t think we look for joy in our life and really doing this whole thing has been really quite a joyous experience.

So I’m sure my old self wouldn’t have even thought that. And so I really do think that it’s learning and it’s time and it’s trusting in the Lord and look for that joy and that’s what I would tell myself.

Denise: And so Mary, for that woman out there and she’s unsure about joining 63, surrendered, what advice would you give her? What would you say to her heart?

Mary: I would say give it a try. Never bad to have a try. But I would say. To look at it as developing a better relationship with food, search for the joy, not the condemnation. I think that’s the worst thing in weight loss. We’re always condemning ourselves whether we lose, we don’t lose. We eat the wrong thing.

And God is good and we need to trust him in all that we do. And I think often weight loss is as I said before, in its own little area in our lives, but he wishes us to have a good life. So I would say that when you bring those together, the healing starts and life then is very much full of joy. So that’s what I would tell someone.

Denise: Yeah. How about you, Loesja? For that woman who’s out there who’s unsure about joining 63, surrendered, what do you want to her to hear?

Loesja: I want her to know that if she’s come across it, then it’s no coincidence. There are no coincidences with God. So I think she’s being called by name and she will feel overwhelmed. At the beginning, I felt overwhelmed. There’s a lot of information like different, the community and the videos and the workbook and yeah. Brain kind of goes a bit nuts at first.

And I do remember when I started, a few women were saying things like similar oh I can’t keep up. And but you always said yeah. You are never too late to start. ’cause I was actually six days late in starting and you also said you can’t fall behind. So like Mary said, you can take your time. The videos are always there, the workbook’s always there.

If God knows the state of life you’re in, he knows what you’re capable of and what you’re not capable of in your state of life. So he wouldn’t lead you to the program just for you to be overwhelmed and you can’t keep up with it. So just take your time.

You don’t have to follow it day by day. So don’t feel overwhelmed like that. Your brain will be saying it’s like too much and it’ll want you to give up. ’cause that’s just what our brain does.

Denise: Okay.

Loesja: So I really encourage you to stick with it and to really commit to it. We often give a hundred percent to our kids and our husbands and things like that, but this is your time to do something for yourself. So commit to it and do everything that you can.

And I also believe, like it is a whole, this is guided by the Holy Spirit it will work. It’s guaranteed, it really is guaranteed to work if you put yourself out there and you do the work in your time. I really believe that you’ve been called Nicole and Crystal like you guys are so lovely and beautiful and encouraging and you.

Yeah I really believe because it’s guided by the Holy Spirit it will work if you put the work into it and just trust in the process. There are things like when I hear certain things you need anything you want, your brain is gonna do certain things, but, there is a process to it, to untraining your brain in a certain way that it’s been going for so long.

So it does take a little bit of time, but it really works. I say this authentically it really worked for me and it’s changed my whole life. I feel so much freedom. Like I never think about food anymore. I haven’t binged since I started 63 Surrender. I have no desire to do it at all. The whole thing, for me, the whole problem with food is just completely gone.

Denise: Wow.

Loesja: And I cry thinking about it because.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: I struggled with it for so long.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: And I never thought that it would go away. And it really worked for me. And I’m so grateful to you guys for answering your call and I’m so grateful to Jesus for leading me to the program.

And I hope that our testimonies, Mary and myself and other women,, through all the horrible stuff we’ve gone through getting to this point, I hope we can help others to break from the cycle. Honestly, the whole 40 years of how horrible it was would be worth it if we can help break other women from that cycle earlier. Yeah.

Denise: Oh, and all of this work. That’s how, you know, it’s the Holy Spirit, you know, and this is where he takes our crosses and just brings so much glory and fruit from them.

Loesja: Yeah.

Denise: And Loesja, just because I’m so curious, how many days a week were you binging before and now you’re at zero?

Loesja: I would probably, I could probably sometimes last a week, like prior to maybe a year before I started 63 surrendered. But a lot of stuff was happening in the last year. I would maybe last two days or three days. And then, you know, I would last two days for being good, but because my mind told me I could only start on Monday, I would binge for the rest of the whole week.

Denise: Okay.

Loesja: It was really bad. It was really bad towards the end. And like I said, it’s completely gone. The whole desire to binge is completely gone. Like it’s.

Denise: That is a miracle.

Loesja: Yeah.

Denise: You are a miracle.

Loesja: Yeah. I feel I did put the work into it, so I really encourage people to do the work into it. Like all the Great Saints didn’t become great Saints overnight. They had to, I’m not saying I’m a saint at all, but I’m just using an analogy.

Denise: Yeah.

Loesja: They had to work for the Lord. They had to do the work.

Denise: They had to partner with the Lord. They had to do their human part.

Loesja: Yeah.

Denise: And that’s all this program is your human part. And then he is okay, I have permission to come in and make miracles happen.

Loesja: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what it is.

Denise: Wow. Well, I so appreciate this time with you guys. It’s just amazing to see what the Lord is doing in your life because of your Yes. Is there anything else that you’d like to leave our listener with?

Mary: Well, just, there were some words I had just that came to me and two that we haven’t really said much about is grace and peace. And I think when you’ve been on these, on weight loss journeys forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Like when I hit 70 and thought, oh my gosh, I’m still doing this, you know, it’s crazy.

When do you get to give this up? I think when I started 63 surrendered, that’s what came to me. When I was praying it was the need for grace and the need of peace. Peace with what’s going on with my food, which also then just spreads out peace throughout your family and your everyday life.

And I really think that’s where God wants us to be and we’re in such a chaotic world anyway. So, I think through this program you get a lot of grace and then through that you get peace. And I think that it means everything, the Holy Spirit’s right there.

Denise: That’s beautiful. How about you, Loesja?

Loesja: Thank you so much for answering your call in this ministry. I’m so grateful had you said no, a lot of women like you, you’re transforming women’s lives, so I’m so grateful to Nicole as well. And to Crystal, I just wanna say thank you and I’m so grateful.

Denise: Well, I wanna say. You’re welcome on behalf of the Lord, because I’ll tell you, you guys, he just pulls us outta the darkness. And when he pulls us outta that darkness, and then when he asked me to do this work, I’ll just tell you, I was so resistant. I just thought, ’cause it was such a private journey for me, it was just the, it was what you guys experienced, but nobody knew how bad it had gotten.

And a friend of mine said to me, who was helping me like, help women, she goes, I just don’t believe you, Denise. I don’t believe that you can help me. And I realized the only way to really help women is to tell them all the ugly parts of eating out of trash cans and throwing up blue icing and all the things that aren’t pretty.

And I remember being so scared to do that. And then I don’t know, this is the beauty that he has brought through. So this darkness and Loesja and Mary, your darkness and coming into his light will now bring so many other women out of darkness. It’s just, this is how he does it. It’s like I feel like he’s just starting to put light, you know?

Have you ever seen that like satellite view of the world? And like all the lights start coming on and that’s where I feel like this work is.

Loesja: Yeah. Definitely.

Mary: Definitely..

Denise: Yeah. We’re all just so blessed and called, so yeah, I’m so grateful. I do feel truly chosen and so honored to be his voice on earth and spread this message for sure.

Loesja: Beautiful.

Denise: Oh my gosh, you guys, I wish we could just like all give a big group hug. So thank you so much for being here. It’s just been a blessing to spend this time with you.

Mary: Thank you.

Loesja: Thank you so much.