Beth: Thanks. I’m glad to be here.

Denise: So everybody can get to know you a little bit more and make sure that they’re hearing their story in you. Can you just tell us a little bit about your history with food and weight before you started weight loss with the Holy Spirit?

Beth: Sure. Just a little bit about me. I’m 63 years old and I’ve been married for about 40 years. And I have a couple sons, 37 years old. They’re twins and we live in Michigan and I grew up in a very large family. I have five sisters and a brother, and I was the only chubby child of the whole group.

No one else really struggled with her weight the way that I did. I was a middle child and I remember my very first diet was when my mom dragged me with her to Weight Watchers at age 11. And Weight Watchers at the time was crazy restrictive, had so many goofy rules that today you just like. Frown it.

You had to drink that blue skin milk once a day or three times a day I think, and you had to eat liver once a week and you had to make your own ketchup. Crazy stuff. And I still remember that imploding in a peanut butter binge in secret in shame. And that sort of set my stage for what my experience with the dieting was going to be.

And this 50 years later, I’ve got lots of experience of getting on a program, following and being very compliant only to have it fall apart on me whenever stress or uncomfortable feelings presented themselves. So that’s a horrible way to get your start. But that was my experience.

Denise: Beth, you bring up a good point and I think a lot of women who hear this will recognize that being recommended to be on a diet or their parents thought they should be on a diet or their mom or their physician or something, and it was in their preteen years.

Do you remember looking back, ever thinking, so now like you’re 63 and you’re saying I was the only one that had a weight problem, but when you were 11, do you ever remember thinking that you had a weight problem?

Beth: Not before I was dragged off to be part of this program with my mom. I think she might have wanted a buddy in it. I look back at pictures then and I clearly was chubbier than my siblings, but I was happy. I was healthy.

Denise: Yeah.

Beth: I was fine and I wouldn’t do that to a kid today.

Denise: You know, you see where I’m going and I kind of just wanna take this as an opportunity, maybe a nudge from the Holy Spirit to just recommend if you have any concerns, the women listening to this. If anybody has concerns about their grandkids or their kids having a weight problem. Don’t worry about it.

Let’s just teach that kid how to stay active and how to eat balanced and feel good about themselves and talk positively to themselves. And if they truly have a quote weight problem, your pediatrician will probably talk to you about it. Yeah, let’s just don’t even put things in people in kids’ brains.

Beth: Yeah. Because it does shape your future and it shapes your relationship with food. My experience with binging was always kind of secretly, I related so much. When you told stories about your own experience with peanut butter and chocolate chips, I would do things like, I would stop in the fast food and order two meals with two drinks so that people wouldn’t be judging me. That they would think I was buying it for somebody else too.

Or I would buy something telling myself at the time that I was buying it for the family, but then it’d be all gone before I even got home. And I would stop somewhere and destroy the evidence, you know, throw away the wrappers and things before, you know, anybody even knew that it had ever been in my hands.

And I could diet really well. I am an expert dieter. I’ve lost a hundred pounds once. I have lost 50 pounds countless times. And it always came back. And I have two main issues: social eating. Like if there’s food in the break room, I would think, oh, I gotta get that now. It’s some special treat. It’s a recipe I don’t make. It’s something that isn’t always there. Free food, and then the other one is just the secret binge eating and, they’ve plagued me throughout my adult years.

And sometimes I’m comfortable with weight loss. If I’m in a good space in my job and my family and all that I can lose weight pretty effortlessly. I say I used to, I walk my butt off. I walk my butt off plenty of times. I walk and walk and walk and walk and walk.

And somehow you feel virtuous about yourself that way. And you don’t wanna mess it up with food. Because you don’t wanna undo your physical work. But I was just frustrated ’cause I could never, ever crack the nut and make it last and make it stick.

Denise: I think a lot of people listening to you can relate to a couple things that you just said. You were able to identify a couple holes that you would fall into. Oh, I fell into the break room hole. Oh, I’d fall into the bench hole. Okay. But you didn’t know what to do about it or how you could overcome that.

You also noticed that, hey, when life was going well, I didn’t need food to cope with life. And so it felt easier to diet when life felt easier, or let’s just say when life was going the way you wanted it to go.

Beth: Right.

Denise: I think we can all relate to that. And then the third thing that you said is that mentality of, oh, I put in so much physical effort, I don’t wanna undo it with eating food. Okay. And I just want to point those three things out because by themselves it sounds like. That’s what you need to address, or that was the problem. Or by themselves, they seem reasonable.

But underlying it, we see that the truth is that we never really learn how to care and support for Beth to get through the ups and downs of life without going to food. And of course our results would be just so short-lived.

So what was it that made you decide to try the weight loss with the Holy Spirit program? ‘Cause it sounds like you, obviously in your last decades, five decades now since your first diet have tried many things. So what was it that made you try this?

Beth: So I kinda settled into this pattern. I knew that I knew what to eat. I had proven to myself, I know how to eat, I know how to feed myself and be healthy, but I had to deal with the emotional stuff, and I had to deal with the coping mechanisms.

And my son Brian has undergone an incredible medical trauma. He and his twin brother have both had kidney transplants two years ago, and they have had all kinds of medical complications from it. It was a very stressful time in our lives. He had multiple three or four hour ambulance rides back to his transplant center.

And then he’d come home and I could see him using the patterns of coping that I inadvertently taught him, he would be binging and not in front of me, but I could see the evidence. ’cause I could see the food that was gone. And I know I didn’t eat it. And I know my husband didn’t eat it, so he had to have eaten it.

And he was so frustrated and so upset and I thought, I’ve gotta be a better model for him. So that’s what set me on another search to try to find another program that would work. And I had done some weight loss programs in my 50 years of dieting that were Christian and faith-based.

But they weren’t true to me because they weren’t Catholic. And I don’t wanna sound bigoted about like that have something that Protestants can’t understand, but it wasn’t full enough for me. And…

Denise: But we have something that Protestants can’t understand.

Beth: Oh, yeah.

Denise: And that’s not a problem. And I think they would say, I don’t get it.

Beth: Yeah, exactly.

Denise: Yeah.

Beth: And I had been on one I recall. I went through their 40 day protocol and it all built up towards the end. And this was a mentor based program. Where at the end they’re trying to bring you in to be a mentor to someone else. And I got to the very end of this program and they rejected me totally outright because I was Catholic.

And I was like, oh, I felt so devastated that I was rejected ’cause I love the Lord and understood more about the Lord than they could. Possibly understand with, given the materials we were working with.

And so I knew there had to be a Catholic Sherpa out there that had been down this path before that could show me how to approach it. And I don’t know if I’d been talking to a girlfriend and expressing this or what. ’cause you know how the phones and Facebook are always listening.

Denise: Yes.

Beth: I had gotten very deep into my search and a weight loss for the Holy Spirit ad. popped up in Facebook and the words that caught my eye were peace with food. I don’t remember what else the ad said, peace with food was flashing like a neon sign to me, and I’m like, that’s what I need. And I signed up immediately. I think it was like Black Friday weekend maybe.

And then I didn’t hear anything until January 6th. There was like, no, like buildup, like when you join other programs, a lot of times they like bombard you oh, add on this. Oh, as long as you’re doing that, maybe you wanna pay for this. Like that.

And I didn’t hear anything. And I’m like, I caught myself a little bit in doubt, did I? What did I do? Is this a real thing? And then the first day, the kickoff meeting when you prayed for us, I’m like, I found my people. And I just knew right then. I just knew immediately from the very opening prayer that I was where I needed to be.

And I was one of the people that just kicked in immediately. The very first day that I said the surrender novena, there was this, the peace beyond understanding that the scripture promises it came over me in food. And I have not binged once in a year. And I know that may not be typical, but that’s my truth. It just totally calmed all the food toys.

And it gave me the strength to sit with uncomfortable feelings and not feel like I needed to solve everybody else’s problems and feeling like it was important for me to take care of me. And the worksheets that guide you through, okay, what are you gonna do to take care of yourself today? It really challenges me to think and not just write the same answer down that I wrote every other day, but what do I need now in this moment?

And I hear Denise’s voice in my head all the time. What’s the next right step? What’s the next right thing to do? You don’t have to solve it in your own storm. The Holy Spirit is there ahead of us, and he knows. He knows. If you calm down and let the chaos stop in your mind for a minute, you know what to do. We are taught not to trust ourselves. We just taught by the world that we couldn’t possibly have the answers. We need an expert. We need to pay for something.

And no it’s there. And I don’t know, I just have such an ability now to look at things and not think that I’m leading my way down to ruin it. It doesn’t matter what happens when, and it’ll be in God’s perfect timing, it doesn’t matter to me, but I’m just so content with the peace in my life. It’s amazing.

Denise: So Beth, let’s revisit a couple things and if you guys aren’t watching the video of this on YouTube, then you don’t see how Beth is like near tears this whole time. It tears of joy. You are not, the first woman that I’ve heard has started weight loss with the Holy Spirit started 63 surrendered, and they’ve never binged since.

So it is a truly a miracle when that happens and it does happen, and I hear it often. And if you could just give us a little glimpse before that, how many times a week or a month were you binging?

Beth: I probably, a couple times a week, and sometimes it’d be just total mindless. My husband, he’s tall, skinny, and can eat anything. I don’t know how he survives. He’s surviving on what I would consider crap. It’s food I won’t eat. And, he’d grab a bag of chips in the evening, so oh, here, give me some of those.

And I’d eat because he was eating and not because I was hungry or needed anything. It’s more of a social thing, like something we did together, or if I was mad at one of them, usually it’s the people you love the most, the husband and my son that would drive me over the edge.

And my food of choice was always something crunchy and it’s the absolutely wrong thing for me to eat because I’m an insulin dependent diabetic and numbers kinda rule my life. And you know if when you’re a good diabetic, a good girl, you’re checking your blood sugar to be for every meal, you’re calculating the carbs, you’re calculating how much insulin might be on board.

You’re calculating what you need to adjust because your blood sugar’s higher. You’re calculate, calculate, and it’s all about numbers and. It can take the joy out of food a little bit, but I know what foods I enjoy. I’ve never met a salad I didn’t like, I love a salad and potato chips don’t do anything for me, really. They were a tool to crush down anger, so I wouldn’t express it outwardly.

When you use food to change you, it doesn’t change you. You know, when the next morning the thing that made you mad is still there and you still are thinking about it the same way. It didn’t change anything. All it did was give you this spot of time where you stepped out of it. But the next morning, your problem is still there.

And by turning to the Lord instead and letting him calm your mind and let you hear his voice. You can solve for things. That’s another Denise thing I hear all the time in my head, how do we solve for that? And I’m okay with sitting in a little pain now, and I’m okay with sitting with somebody else’s discomfort and not feeling like I have to solve everything for them.

And I wasn’t before, I was always the cruise director that had to make everything, work out all right? And that’s not my job. My job is to love God, to love myself, care for myself, meet my needs, and then love my husband and my children into heaven. And you know what? I can love the rest of the world after that, but I have to start where my focus belongs, and that’s on God. And then food doesn’t seem to have a hold on you anymore.

Denise: So you’ve learned some skills. You’ve learned how to calm your human brain out of the chaos you’ve learned to recognize you’re not in charge of other people. You’ve learned how to truly care for yourself.

So many beautiful, beautiful things, and I think a lot of people are like, wait, you can watch other people be uncomfortable and be okay with that. I mean, that’s like a skill that you’ve learned, but tell me how much you’ve lost and then let’s talk about what kind of food you eat.

Beth: Okay. So I still remember the first Lent when you said, don’t step on the scale, and I thought. Why wouldn’t I step on the scale? That’s just another piece of data. Why wouldn’t I want that data? Why wouldn’t I wanna know that? That’s what works?

And I decided to just trust okay, I’m just gonna trust and I’m not gonna step on the scale. So I really haven’t stepped on the scale very often in a year. Maybe once a month, not even every month, but I just had my annual physical and the doctor said, wow, you lost 50 pounds. How’d you do it? I told him, with the help of the Lord, and he just smiled and laughed at me a little bit.

But it’s in my notes, in my after visit summary that I got a faith-based approach to losing weight and that it’s working for me. Now, I sit down in the morning and I do my scripture reading, which I was doing before, and now I add the morning connect time and surrender novena that we’re taught, and it’s an amazing prayer.

And it, you can pray it over and over again and get something different from it every single day. And then I set my meal plan for the day when my mind is calm and the day hasn’t started yet. And usually I’m the only one awake in the house except for the cats.

And usually morning is a simple something with protein because I know that if I have some protein, I’m not going to be ravenously hungry at 10 in the morning. And then I usually pack a lunch. I usually a salad. I love a salad. And I love my fresh homemade salad more than just buying a bag of salad. You rip open and spend factory chopped. I like to have my hands on the food and see ’em in the natural state.

And then dinner. My son, who I mentioned, was really struggling with his weight and the frustration of that. He’s home during the day. He does a lot of the cooking, but we have started planning out ahead of time, what’s our evening meal gonna be for the week, and we have. The magnetic board on the refrigerator doesn’t mean we can’t change the plan or switch a day around and everything, but it gives him the direction as to what we should have that night.

So I usually don’t have a lot of surprises in my life. If I’m gonna be out for an evening meeting and I am work where I do have evening meetings I might plan something really simple like. Just bring another lunch, bring some yogurt and fruit or something like that. Kind of don’t do much of the fast food world at all because it doesn’t taste fresh to me.

So it doesn’t appeal to me. It doesn’t call to me like it did, you know before. And we eat simply. And if we wanna treat, we just plan the treat. And I think my eating habits and how I’m planning are rubbing off on my son. He’s. Asked me, what, how do I approach this?

At first he was very like, resistant. I’d say, oh, I, what? He goes say, what are you doing? And I’m like, I’m surrendering everything to Jesus. And he’s what does that mean? And he just, he was mad ’cause I couldn’t express it in the way that he could grasp. He’s getting it now, and I see his life changing too, and that’s another silent miracle. Just seeing him come into grips with his eating issues.

Denise: Yeah. It’s true when one person in the family starts to change and heal everybody, everybody heals. So Beth I wanna just pause for just a second because for somebody who doesn’t know what this program and this work is about it’s all about truly being able to calm your human brain so that the Holy Spirit can speak to you. And we have many tools and teach you how to do that because no one was born knowing how to do that.

But I think that what feels miraculous probably to somebody is they’re like, but I don’t get it. How are you losing weight without dieting? Our three food rules are that you eat food that you like, that you feel peaceful about or feel good about and that work for your day, right? So you plan ahead and make sure it works for your day. So the person who just heard you say what you eat, how deprived or restrictive have you felt on this whole process?

Beth: Never. We wanna have pizza. Pizza’s on the board. We ordered a pizza. I just, I’m content with a piece or two pieces. I don’t go back and eat half a pizza.I see the leftovers the next day and they’re not on my plan. And I don’t, somebody else can eat ’em or they can go in the trash. I don’t care. They’re not in my plan.

Denise: It’s so detached.

Beth: Yeah. They don’t mean anything to me unless I plan though. My husband, I told you, he is skinny and eats anything. He has a great big basket by his chair. It’s full of cookies and chips and candy and nuts and all kinds of stuff. I don’t even look at it. I couldn’t tell you what’s in it today. I just doesn’t call me. It’s not my food. It’s his food. He wants to do that to himself. I wish he would eat more normal food, but he’s a grown man. I’ll let him come to his own conclusions.

Denise: Yeah. Look at that. Look at you. You’re like, that is, that’s your life. Here’s my life. This is what I need to do. Did that basket used to call your name? His little basket next to him.

Beth: Yeah, it has off and on throughout my life. When I’m on track, I don’t really think about that kinda junkie food. And part of what used to keep me on track was knowing I had to report into the endocrinologist twice a year.

And I think in a way I was substituting her approval for my own approval or God’s approval. I was just like if I can make Dr Putta happy, then everything will be okay. And then. A week after the appointment, I wasn’t so worried about her approval ’cause she wouldn’t see me the first another six months.

And you know that A1C measure tells how your blood sugars been for the 60 days. So I cleaned myself up real good those 60 days before my appointment, but then not worry so much about it in between.

And you can’t fool your body. Your body knows, and I’d feel crappy for part of the year, and I’d feel pretty good for a month of the year, and I didn’t wanna live that way anymore. I wanted to always feel positive about my body and about my strength. And I wanna grow old age gracefully,

Denise: So your A1C and your doctor used to be your measure of, am I doing this right, or kind of like your God, if you will, your mini God to say you’re doing okay. So you know if you’re doing okay now? What’s the measure?

Beth: You know, there are still some measures in my life being an insulin dependent person. I know how much insulin I’m using and I’m only using half the insulin I was using a year ago. And I just got my A1C and it’s six, which is a normal A1C.

Denise: What was it before you started?

Beth: I’ve varied over the years. I’ve been running around six for a few years, but you know, before that I was as high as eight. And you can’t fool your body, you know? It knows. And so I’ve lost three dress sizes and I’ve just, at the end of my wardrobe of, I’m one of those people who always kept the wardrobe coming down.

Denise: Yeah.

Beth: And then I had it to go back up into. Oh, okay. When I lose the next 20 pounds, I’m shopping ’cause I ran out of things. I haven’t been close to this point in quite a few years, probably 10 years. I’m looking forward to learning what Beth wants to wear too at age 63. Not what Beth used to wear at age 53.

Denise: Yeah. You seem like you have a hope that the other methods that you’ve used in the past, sort of like, they just stopped working and why. Yeah. Why do you have so much hope with this program?

Beth: I’m so tuned into what the Holy Spirit wants for me next, and I know he just wants me to keep going. We were built to. Be miserable the way that so many of us are, and I just know that. Is it in Jeremiah 29:11. I know the plans I have for you. I know his plans for me are that I’m gonna prosper and that I’m gonna be vital in my old age. I’m not gonna be a burden on my son.

I am not gonna be a burden on anybody because of my choices, if the way that things turn out, you know, I encounter some other future that has disease in it. It’s not gonna be because I made sloppy, lazy choices and stuffed food in my face where I should have been filling my heart with God. It’s gonna be because he gave me that a different trial for a different reason. It’s not gonna be self-inflicted.

Denise: And I wanna just pause for the woman who feels like, oh my gosh, that’s me. I am self-inflicting. And I think Beth and I would both agree, Hey, you just haven’t been taught a different way, but you can be, and we are here to teach you a different way because it can go to, you can totally turn this whole thing around.

Beth: Yeah.

Denise: And so Beth, for the woman who’s listening right now who might feel hopeless or afraid that nothing would work for her, she’s tried all the things, it’s been five decades, what would you want to say to her? What do you want her to know?

Beth: You know, saying yes to yourself could be a little scary. But you are just committing to doing the next right thing. And there’s nobody who’s saying here that you know, you’re never going to enjoy a chocolate cake again. There’s ways for you to be so happy and so fulfilled and put the food in the right place in your life.

And be just involved in your healing of so many hurts that you don’t even know are there yet. It’s like an onion that just keeps getting every layer gives you the strength to peel back another layer and. There’s no risk here really. It’s a totally risk-free thing to say yes to yourself here and to step out in faith and see where this will take you.

And I wish I’d learned about this program 30, 40 years ago. I wish it had existed then. Because boy, the pain that I would’ve avoided. The way my son’s future would’ve looked so different, if I had been in a better place when I was raising him, but I have hope for him too.

Denise: Beth, this has just been such a pleasure and joy to be able to hear your story and the work that the Lord is doing in your life. And it’s all because you said yes. I want you to know that he’s trying everybody who hears my voice.

The Lord is always pursuing us and if we don’t partner with him and cooperate with him, we don’t get his grace. We just can’t. And you said yes and looked at the miracle in your life. So is there anything else you wanna share with the woman listening before we go?

Beth: The Holy Spirit just can’t abide in you. If you aren’t turning your face to him. You have to cooperate here. You can’t do it on your own strength. Maybe you can for a while, but, put your hope in the Lord and don’t put your hope in any diet guru. Not even Denise.

Denise: No. Especially not Denise. It’s your own journey with the Lord.

Beth: But he’s there and he wants to meet you. He wants you. To turn to him. So turn to him.

Denise: Yeah. That’s beautiful. Beth, I really feel like this should be the very first part of a several part series where we continue to check in with you like every six months. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Beth: Yeah, that would be fun.

Denise: Yeah. We’ll plan on checking in in January then. I mean, not that I won’t see you in the community too.

Beth: Sure.

Denise: But, oh, thank you so much, Beth, for sharing your story.

Beth: I wanted to tell you something, Denise.

Denise: Yeah.

Beth: After you coached me like a week ago, I think it was. I really came to grips with what was going on in my brain in the basement and. It had little to do with exercise and I’ve started a process of cleaning up that space. It’s the wrong time of year to really like go at it, like do it on a weekend, but I’m going doing it very deliberately.

And in the meantime I’ve bought an exercise bike that I can use upstairs, and I found I can be in the basement. Now that I know what the issue was with me and I’ve exercised every single day with some sort of form since that coaching.

Denise: Wow.

Beth: And it’s just amazing. ’cause I had another problem with my foot with arthritis is kind of taking over and making that foot so stiff. It was making it hard for me to exercise, which is why. Another, the obstacles. My foot is so much more flexible. Just this week I know that’s the Lord stepping in and healing it bit by bit and I’m just really grateful that you pointed me towards the real issue so that I could solve on it.

Denise: Number one, you raised your hand to be coached. That’s all that happens is that the Lord starts to come in and unblock us and we don’t even know. You thought the issue was exercise. It’s clearly something else. So now you’ve removed the obstacle to exercise. So now you’re exercising, you said?

Beth: Yeah. Even in that space. Yeah.

Denise: Right. And now. And now you’re solving for the other thing. . And he’s healing you. That’s so beautiful.

Beth: I didn’t know I was gonna step up to talk about that day either.

Denise: I love it. It is such a privilege and honor to be able to do this work, and thank you so much for sharing that. It’s just a, yeah. ’cause often I don’t see the backside of it. And it sounds like you were open to receive something from him he wanted to reveal to you.

Beth: Absolutely.

Denise: That’s so cool.

Beth: And it’s nothing that a few days of hard labor and some paint won’t solve.

Denise: Yeah. You’re willing to do it.

Beth: Yeah.

Denise: Beth, thank you so much for your time. This has just been such a gift to me and I know everyone who heard your story. It’s very inspiring.

Beth: Thanks. Okay. Sorry I’m so teary, but it’s just very.

Denise: No. It is. It is miraculous.

Beth: I’ve still probably got 50 to go, but I’m hoping next January I’ll be down lower than I could even imagine. I mean, I gave up imagining where it would go.

Denise: It’s amazing. He is so good. He is so faithful. Okay, well, we’re gonna stay close so that we can stay in touch with your story.

Beth: Okay.

Denise: All right. Thanks Beth.

Beth: Bye.

Denise: Have a blessed day.

Beth: Thanks.

Denise: Bye.