Another thing that is so Catholic is truth. And so that is why I’m here today. Let’s talk about what the difference is between visceral fat and belly fat. All right, so if you lift up your shirt and you can pinch an inch, if whatever you can pinch, that is what’s called subcutaneous fat. 

So the fat that is directly underneath your skin. So this is your skin and the fat that’s directly underneath of that is called subcutaneous fat. You can pinch that and although it’s distressing to you, it’s pretty much a cosmetic issue. Underneath that subcutaneous fat, you have your layer of muscle. You know what, let’s use red.

You have your layer of muscle. This is your abdominal wall. If that fat weren’t there, you’d see a six pack, but you have fat there because you’re a normal human. And the majority of people that you can see six packs are exceptionally lean or perhaps only look that way for a few days during the photo shoot.

Okay? So your six pack is there, and that’s your abdominal wall. Now behind your abdominal wall, and you have all of your organs, you have your liver, your kidneys. All of the organs that are there. That’s my attempt at drawing a liver, we’ll call it a liver. And then around that though, this is what you have that’s called visceral fat. Visceral fat is the fat that is around your organs. 

So remember, the subcutaneous fat is although very emotionally distressing to many women because they don’t have a flat stomach. It’s the visceral fat that’s actually damaging to your health. It’s inflammatory. Visceral fat contributes to many diseases.

So today I wanna talk to you about visceral fat. So if you can pinch your inch, that means that it’s subcutaneous fat, and that is a different sort of weight loss. It’s about the same thing in terms of how you would go about that, but that’s more of a calories and calories out sort of thing. Visceral fat is very prone to even thin people when they’re in chronic stress.

So the four things to decrease visceral fat. The four things that you want to do is sleep. You guys, I wish I had a sexier answer for you, but it’s sleep. Reduce cortisol by decreasing stress. We’re gonna talk a lot about that and what that looks like. Stable blood sugar and strength training, stable blood sugar by eating stable regular meals and strength training. 

I’m not telling you anything that you don’t know. One of the things that makes it challenging for women is that they know the things to do. They just aren’t doing them. And that’s one of the reasons we have 63 surrendered, 63 surrendered to 63 days that you follow four daily disciplines where you can say, oh Lord, yes, I know I should decrease my visceral fat for my health. 

Give me the strength to do that. And those four daily disciplines are what allow you to surrender your food and wait to the Lord. Okay. So that is my overview of visceral fat. And now I want to go ahead and get to specific questions. How do you know if your blood sugars’? Okay, great question. 

One of the ways that you can know, they do have what are called continuous glucose monitors, CGMs. I know at one point you had to get them. Through your doctor, but your doctor can also do a fasting blood glucose test just to see in general, how is your pancreas reacting to your blood sugar.

Now they can also do an insulin sensitivity test where they measure your fasting blood glucose, then give you a sugary drink to drink and then measure how your body responds. You can talk to your doctor about that. If you are concerned about that.

Some people notice that if you go long bits of time without eating, that their blood sugar could plummet. And then when you do eat, that sends your blood sugar spiking, which increases your insulin. So a couple things if you want to not worry about going to the doctor quite yet. A couple things that you can do is eat regular meals and eat meals that are protein forward. 

So I would suggest, you know, meals that have at least 25 to 30 grams of protein, and I say 25 to 30. Mostly because I know that the women who listen to me are my age or even older and we just don’t absorb protein. 

And so what protein allows you to do is to maintain your muscle mass, of course,  but it also slows the absorption of your food so that you don’t have high glucose spikes. Blood sugar, blood glucose synonymous.

Okay. The categories that I’m going to talk to you guys about are stress, cortisol in your body. Then we’ll get into a little bit about emotional eating, food noise, and your food habits. Other people had questions about blood sugar and metabolic tools. More specific about visceral and belly fat, and then any practical eating habits.  

All right. So the first one is, does cortisol get released continually when you are stressed over a long period of time? Okay, so if you are just joining in and you did not see my email series about how cortisol reacts in the body, just know this when you’re stressed out or your body senses danger. And here’s the coolest thing you need to know, is that your body may sense danger on something that’s really not even dangerous.

And although a lot of us are not experiencing physical danger, the danger that our body is sensing as dangerous are things like embarrassment, not getting things done. Feeling behind, feeling rushed, feeling stressed. So know that modern world is really kind of put us in this chronic state of hypervigilance and chronic stress.

And what happens is when you release cortisol, it’s a signal to your body and that signal will be picked up by anywhere that there are receptors to cortisol and there are lots of cortisol receptors in your visceral fat. 

And so although cortisol doesn’t create fat, what it does is it changes the way your fat will respond and how it behaves. And so it’ll preferentially be stored around your organs, in the abdominal cavity. 

And there’s a real evolutionary reason for this, is that anytime there was a stress or threat to your life, if we have stored fat right near our liver and right where we need to access and create energy, then we can stay alive longer. So our bodies want to stay alive longer. 

Again, in modern life, this amount of stress is not improving our lifespan and it’s increasing our abdominal fat, which just adds to even more health issues. So the question, does cortisol get released continually when you are stressed over a long period of time? And the answer is yes. 

When you are under long-term stress, cortisol doesn’t release just in one constant stream. It’s repeated spikes throughout the day. ’cause your brain just keeps believing there’s something wrong. Oh, I’m behind. 

And if you’re a person who lives in chronic stress, you have those chronic stress glasses on and there’s, you’re always probably rushing around. My body and I, my brain is already thinking about instances where I’m around people like that, and I start to feel that stress myself. 

So over time, when you have those repeated spikes, it just disrupts the ability for you to metabolize your cortisol and return back to rest. So you’re just always releasing it. So that ends up chronic stress ends up not only interrupting our sleep, but your hunger cues. 

And you guys just need to know this. Anytime that your cortisol is released, you release insulin and anytime your insulin is released, you’re automatically in fast storage mode. And it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. I mean, this is exactly what we needed to stay alive, but that is not your reality. 

And this is why it is just so key for you to learn how to have a calm brain and in our community, weight loss with the Holy Spirit. The first thing that we teach in our introductory program, 63 surrendered, is how to have a calm brain. Because unless you can teach your brain how to be calm, this cannot get better. You cannot over-exercise this. I say that with so much love.

And I say that with so much hope because learning how to have a calm brain is just a skill. And all you have to do is practice it. And just remember that chronic stress is your brain responding to anything that it perceives as a danger. It might not even be real. It might not even be a real thing.  

Okay, so the next question, does irregular sleep contribute to increases in cortisol, and can you repair cortisol damage? Okay. So the first one is absolutely when you have irregular sleep, it disrupts your normal cortisol rhythm. So your cortisol rises in the morning to wake you up. So normally cortisol’s high in the morning  and then it goes low at night so you can rest. 

But when you have poor or inconsistent sleep, the cortisol can stay elevated or release at the wrong time. So yes, sleep. Remember the four things that help decrease your visceral fat are sleep, decreasing cortisol by decreasing stress, by learning how to have a calm brain strength training, and then stable blood sugar.

The second part was can you repair cortisol damage? Yes, you guys, I don’t know that there’s anything that you could say, can you repair, fill in the blank that you cannot repair? There may. I mean, of course there are things, but I want you to know that your body is always working towards healing. Your body is always working towards repairing.

And just, for example, having a calm brain. When we start to not continue to create cortisol, then our body can start to heal and release that visceral fat. So your body’s very resilient. Improving sleep, managing stress, eating regularly, calming down, all of those will reverse the effects of cortisol.

Okay, so the next question. Does exercise help? Reduce visceral fat. Yes, exercise does help. But what’s super important is that one of the reasons that visceral fat increases as we age is that we lose estrogen. And during your childbearing years, estrogen is what preferentially had fat accumulate around your hips.

Well, once we remove that, then now fat can accumulate more around your waist. Now if you can pinch it, it’s not a dangerous thing, but it can go into the that visceral fat, especially when you have states of chronic stress. So what we want to make sure that we do is that we are not over cardio, eating ourselves.

So intense and excessive cardio increases cortisol so longer, slower walks. And I’m not saying. Longer, slower walks so that you stay in zone two or zone one, or you stay in fat burning. I’m saying it because your nervous system is fritzed out already, and when we put intense cardio on top of it, your body experience is more stress. It’s just not helpful. 

What would be more helpful are more calm cardio exercises. Yes, it’s important to get your heart rate up and breathe heavy, but not excessive and not super intense,  especially if you’re in a season of nervous system healing. So strength training is so fabulous. Strength training is really great because it increases your lean muscle mass.

Lean muscle mass. You guys is the most important tissue on your human body. Lean muscle mass is metabolically active. It is anti-inflammatory, so metabolically active means that it’s burning calories while you’re sleeping. It’s working for you and it’s reducing inflammation. It also, I think it’s just really fantastic to know that the stronger you are, the more independent you’ll be throughout your life.

You can get up and down off the toilet seat. I mean, I used to say that all the time to women. When I teach group exercise, we want to be become women who do not break bones and strength training strengthens your bones. We do want to be women. We don’t want to be women who trip over a rug and can’t catch ourselves.

Right? That’s what strength training does, is it increases. Not always your reflexes, but it increases your strength and if you fall, you won’t break things as much. So yes, and strength training is very helpful in reducing visceral fat. 

Okay, this is a great question. So somebody asks about eating when they’re stressed. And if you didn’t see my email series I talked about, it’s very important for you to not eat stressed out. Why? Because what you’re eating will automatically be stored as fat and it reduces digestion. 

And when you’re stressed out, listen to this. When you’re stressed out, there isn’t blood in your digestive system to actually even digest your food. So this is where you have bloating and gas and it just feels horrible. 

But let me read her question specifically. She says, doesn’t make sense to just fast from food when you’re stressed. For example, she said, I have company coming over. I’m in a hurry to get out the door, or really upset about something. In those situations, I’ve noticed that if I eat, the food doesn’t settle well.

Right? Because what I just told you, you’re not resting and digesting. You do not have enough blood in your digestive track for  digestion to occur optimally. She says, and then in her words, she says, put another way. Would you say, I shouldn’t eat even if it’s time to eat, if I cannot get to a place of calm?

Okay. I wanna offer you a couple suggestions and then you just get to experiment with what works for your life. Did you guys hear me? I said, experiment with what works for your life. And you get to discover what works in this season of your life. 

So your life now is different than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, last year even, which is different than it’s going to be five or 10 years from now. So this is sort of a mini lesson inside this lesson, which just is, you don’t know, experiment. Try some things. See what works for you in this season of your life. 

So one of the things, if you know predictably that you’re going to be busy during a certain time, she said, for example, companies coming over in our program, I have women create what’s called an easy to stick to meal plan.

And the point that I’m trying to make is they think through their day and then they plan what they’re going to eat. You can eat any food. We’re not talking about food rules right now, but if you know that people are coming, then you would think through your day and when would be a time that you could sit down and eat calmly.

And so I’ll do this when I make my easy to stick to meal plan. If I see I’m coaching three to four hours, or I’m going to be doing some teaching and I don’t have any time to eat, I make sure that I just schedule eating time, and I don’t care if I’m hungry or not hungry. That’s just the time that I know I need to take care of myself because the next time won’t be for a few hours.

In fact, right before this, I had a little snack knowing that I won’t be able to eat for a couple more hours calmly, I could shove food in my face, but I just don’t do that anymore. Okay, so looking ahead at your day, scheduling times when you can eat. Don’t worry if you’re not hungry, it’s not a problem.

People believe that you won’t be able to lose weight if you eat when you’re not hungry. That’s not when you gain weight. The only time that you have excessive weight is when you eat because you’re tired, lonely, sad, frustrated. Don’t give yourself a break. Need to celebrate or afraid. You’re never going to get this thing again, okay? 

That is one of the ways that you will gain weight. But if you are strategically choosing when you’re going to eat and you are calm, the Lord will take care of you. Doesn’t that sound ordered? Can’t you just hear the way I’m talking? It’s peaceful, it’s ordered.

And you know, another mini lesson in here, I think this is the importance of having Catholic weight loss, where we truly say, Hey Lord, this is very ordered and we put God as our God, not some crazy diet, food rules. 

And that’s not to say that these food rules haven’t served you before, but the truth is that secular dieting can really screw up our brain and really make all of these rules that somebody else made, make us believe we’re supposed to follow them or they become our false gods. So my friend who is stressed out, number one, you can go ahead and just think through your day plan when you can calmly eat.

The other thing is that if you find that you might just be in that state of chronic stress, whatever that means or you only have a short window to eat, I would suggest eating what I would call easy to digest foods. Things like oatmeal, things like yogurt. Things that other tools that I have used before are smoothies. 

So if I have a long day and I’m choosing not to sit down and eat, maybe I’ll have a smoothie while I’m doing things. But that last question, if I cannot calm down, should I not eat? You get to practice and you get to experiment with what you want.

I personally have found that anytime I am not calm and I eat. I will feel it for a few hours and it never goes well. But these are the things you get to practice with. And the other thing that you get to learn is, hey, maybe this calming method isn’t working for me. Why don’t I start experimenting with different calming methods? And that’s one of the things that will teach you in 63 surrendered. 

Okay. Alright, so moving on to emotional eating, food, noise, and habits. I’m a diabetic and my chaos foods are any kind of baked goods, especially sweet ones. Okay? If you don’t know our work, chaos foods are foods that you have a strong reaction to that you are craving even when you’re not eating them. And typically when you eat them, you are eating more than you plan to eat and you’re overeating them. 

She says, how can I learn to handle treats like baked goods, especially sweet ones, and not be so scared? Okay, so when you come into 63 surrendered, we’ll help you identify your chaos foods. It’s just a, it’s like a sketch. It’s like a first pass. These things may be chaos foods. Are they really a chaos food? I dunno. 

So one of the ways that you can decide if something is truly a chaos food is that if you make an easy to stick to meal plan and you put an amount on there, that is a reasonable amount. And the, here’s what I mean by a reasonable amount. We have three food rules. The food rules are that you eat food that you love, that you can feel peaceful about before, during, and after you eat it.  And that works for your day. 

So let’s take the first two food rules. This person, you would take a baked good and you would say what do I feel peaceful about eating before, during, and after? And you might say, I feel peaceful about eating. I don’t know why croissant just came in my brain, I feel peaceful about eating two croissants. 

Okay, so you’d put two croissants on your plan. And then you get to see how was that and how did it go? Did I want more? Did I crave more? Did I eat 15? Then you’ll know. So here’s what I say, a chaos food. When you first put it down, it may be a chaos food, or maybe you just haven’t learned the skill of how to have a calm brain while you’re eating your food.  

My friend, if you want to go through 63 surrendered, that will teach you how to eat your favorite foods without gaining weight and without being scared, then I suggest you go through and learn that process. But if you eat 15 croissants, then we get to look back and say, what was that about? Was it the food? Was it my brain? What was going on? 

Sometimes food is so triggering that I’ve had some women who say, you know what? The croissant thing right now, I’m just having a super strong reaction to it. I’m gonna set it over here for now, and maybe for two weeks I’m not going to have croissants.

I’m gonna learn some skills and then I’m gonna see if I can try the croissant thing again. It’s really just about being able to create your own create safety with that food. Also to create a calm brain because it’s never really about the food. Our body and our brains are telling us something about the croissants.

What did the croissants mean? And what the croissants might mean is I never get croissants. They’re my favorite. Well, maybe we should have croissants more. Okay, I’m gonna keep going. She says, can I order one and have it after lunch? Absolutely. Just experiment. Try it out. You have my permission.

She says, how can I calm down so my cortisol levels don’t spike? All right, one of the things that we teach in 63 surrendered is something called a ten second pause, and it looks like this. You inhale for three saying the words, think and feel, and you exhale for seven saying the word choose. Okay, this is something that I learned from a neuroscientist Dr. Carolyn Leaf, and it looks like this.

Think, feel, exhale, choose.

Inhale, think, feel, exhale, choose.

So you’ll want to do that anywhere from one to nine times. And it creates calming brain waves and will allow your barking dog that danger part of your brain that says, oh no, this is a problem. Your brain is sensing that croissant or whatever that baked good is a problem. And so that will calm your brain down and then you can calmly eat it.

Now, that might not happen the first time, but go up to nine times and just see, just practice it, see how it goes. Okay, next person. So far, I have not been able to break my habit of eating out too often by myself. This goes beyond eating out as an event or using takeout as a tool. 

Okay, so it could, can be a tool. She said I see it as an escape and a stress relief to sit down with a book and order a meal. It makes no sense because I feel stressed that I shouldn’t be doing this a few times a week. The extra calories, extra money, soothing with food, et cetera. 

So there’s more to our question, but here’s what I wanna say, that we’re gonna just, I’m gonna pause here and then answer this part of her question. She’s using this as an escape. So when you are feeling good friend, when you’re in a good part of your brain, I want you to write down four to five other ways that you can get relief and escape and other things that you can do. 

Chances are you just haven’t thought of other things that you can do, other ways that you find stress relief, and now you’re not gonna do it in the moment while you’re ordering takeout, but you can do it when you’re thinking in your best thinking brain, okay. And then start intentionally practicing those things at other times.

Okay? Often what I find is that many women are not giving themselves permission to take breaks until all the things are done. And then the way they take a break is with food, book will just show your brain, Hey, I’ll give you breaks other times. 

Now, know that it will take some time because your brain knows this pathway and you will have to practice it and it will be a little uncomfortable, but no worries on that. Okay, so the other question she says is, why am I doing this and how do I stop? 

Okay, why are you doing this? You’re doing this because it feels good. Your brain has three functions. It. Two of them are why you’re doing it. Number one, to seek pleasure, and number two, to do the easy thing. So your brain says, Hey, I know how to give you pleasure. You love this, so your brain’s trying to take care of you. 

The second thing is that it does the easy thing. So because you’ve been doing it over and over and over, just know that your human brain is doing exactly what brains are supposed to do. Brains are designed to do one thing very well, and that is do what they know.

So since you already know this, you’re going to do it over and over and over unless we interrupt that brain pattern and give you something else to do. So it is very, very effective. The other thing is to keep you safe so you don’t die and anything uncomfortable your brain thinks is unsafe.

So just know that you are running to this very, very pleasurable thing because something unpleasant is happening. And changing that your brain is going to think is unpleasant, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. And that doesn’t mean we can’t create new pathways. Just know that it will be a little uncomfortable. 

And your brain senses anything unfamiliar as being dangerous or uncomfortable. Okay. So just know that you are meeting a need. There’s some need that’s being met probably for relaxation. There’s probably other things, maybe affirmation, just to see that you did a good job as a reward. So there is a need that is being met. So we just need to start practicing different ways to meet that need. 

Okay. She says, I’m gonna keep going this. This is why it’s so important for you guys to do Catholic weight loss and stop doing secular dieting. Listen to this next question. She says, for example, if I plan to go to morning mass and come home and eat breakfast, I have food noise around going out to breakfast after mass.

And if you don’t know what food noise is, it just means you’re thinking about food when it doesn’t make sense to be thinking about food. It’s very intrusive, and it also sounds like it’s very condemning. She said, this is a double dose of stress when I’m at mass. 

Okay. So what I hear you saying is that you are distracted during mass about food. Okay? I just wanna hug you and tell you there’s nothing wrong with you. So many women notice that their thoughts, I like to call it daydreaming about food or food noise in mass, and then they judge themselves for having those feelings. 

Okay? So let’s just recognize that your brain is doing what it does really well, which is what it knows and it’s thinking about food. Okay, totally fine. And what I’d suggest is that you understand that this isn’t a sin. Just become aware of it. There I’m thinking about food. I’m having that thought about breakfast and allow the Lord to say, Lord, will you help me think about you? Or, Lord, will you hold this thought for me? 

And maybe you can say, the Lord is there. And this thought they’re together. I find that what we do so often is we judge ourselves and resist things from happening, and then it just becomes really big and then we’re thinking about it more. So I think it’s amazing that you’re aware of that. Okay. Just know that you can retrain your brain so that you aren’t always thinking about food at mass. 

Okay? One of the really beautiful tools that we use in 63 surrendered, I’ve already mentioned, it’s called the Easy to Stick to Meal Plan. And why I think that’s a great tool, especially for this for this situation, is that it’s already told your brain, Hey, we’ve already thought about that. We’ve already planned for that. We know what we’re gonna do. 

We don’t have to think about it. And that really creates safety in your brain. So that’s one thing that will really help you. Okay. She says, how do you control yourself from overeating foods you love

And enjoy peacefully? So how do you control yourself? It is a practice. It is very, very simple. It is not white knuckling. It is a practice that you learn how to do. 63 surrendered has four daily disciplines that will teach you how to do that. But essentially what we get to do is we eat the foods that we love.

And by creating unconditional permission and safety in your body to eat any food, you slowly by, slowly, by slowly allow the Lord to reorder your relationship with food. See, we put God as our God first, and he reorders our relationship with food. And when you recognize how the Lord created you to eat, you need to recognize that he gave you taste buds, okay?

And he gave you, your unique taste buds. ’cause they’re different than mine. So he expects you to enjoy food. What he doesn’t want for you though. It’s for you to use food for reasons that he didn’t create food for. He created food for you to enjoy. He created food, of course, to nourish you. Okay? So we know that. But he also created food to fill your belly. 

But he did not create food to soothe you when you’re lonely and sad. He did not create food to bring you comfort when you’re stressed and overwhelmed. He gave us food to celebrate, yes, but not as the only way to celebrate, and he didn’t make food as the only way that we give ourselves permission to take a rest and to take a break.

So once we start to recognize, wow, there’s a lot of ways that are out of order with the Lord, and we start to learn to meet those other needs in ways that the Lord gave us ways to meet those needs, then food becomes an enjoyable experience and you can eat it peacefully. It’s so cool. 

Okay, so somebody says, I’m struggling with mindless eating. I was cutting up brownies and I cooked them too long and cut off the edges, and I’m stuffing them in. I don’t realize I’m even doing it until after, and I’m mad. Why do I do this? Why did I just do it subconsciously? It makes me crazy. Okay, so everybody, brains are very good at doing one thing very well.

Brains are very good at doing what they always know. And remember those three things that our brain does? It does the pleasurable thing, it does the easy thing, and it does what keeps us safe. So let’s just look at pleasurable and easy. 

When we’re doing things subconsciously, it’s because our brains have gotten so used to it that it’s like we don’t even need a waste energy on knowing how to do that. Like you don’t know that your heart is beating. Hey, and how about this? Have you ever gone in and brushed your teeth? Brush your teeth and not even remembered if you brushed your teeth until you were like, did I brush my teeth? 

Have you ever been in the shower and washed your hair but not remembered if you washed your hair because you were just on autopilot? See, that’s how efficient our lives can be.  So when we go into 63 surrendered, it’s an opportunity for us to open our eyes and stop living on autopilot.

 One part of the program is we not only identify, I told you about chaos foods, but we look at chaos behaviors, and this would be an example of a chaos behavior. And I say it’s a chaos behavior because she obviously doesn’t wanna be doing it. It’s creating chaos in her life and it’s not calm. 

And so once we identify what our chaos behaviors are, we create what’s called a safe eating plan, and it’s how we eat and choose to eat that keeps us aligned and eating in the Holy Spirit. Friends, you clearly see it’s not about the brownies. It’s identifying those chaos behaviors. 

One woman that I talked to who had something very similar to this, but it was with a birthday cake. We made the plan that when the birthday situation and after serving the cake was done, she would just take the cake and take it off the counter. And it was just amazing how that small shift prevented her from taking spoonfuls of the cake. And it’s simple things like this. 

So now this friend who makes brownies, she can choose to stop making brownies, or she can just decide that she has a brownie protocol, which means once the brownies are done, we’re gonna put them in a certain place where they where they cool, right. Nobody’s gonna go in their garage and eat. Brownies. 

Now if she does, then we have something else to solve for, then that’s not a problem. Then we just notice there’s something else going on. It’s not the location of the brownies and we just keep solving for whatever it is until she feels peace about that. So let’s keep going.

The next question is about blood sugar and metabolic tools. Okay, she says, do you feel like continuous glucose monitors are a good tool to help with weight loss? And do you have any resources you would recommend? I have one, but I really don’t understand how to interpret the readings. I don’t have time to dig into it.

Okay. So the first thing is I think continuous glucose monitors are super cool. I really wanna get one. I currently don’t have one, so I don’t have one to recommend. I’d probably go to chat GBT and ask, but she has one already, so there you go. 

So let me tell you, the benefit of a continuous glucose monitor is that it will tell you when your glucose or your blood sugar spikes. But what’s so cool is your blood glucose spikes for a variety of reasons. Sleep, food, stress. Exercise and you can just start to look at the patterns of your specific life. 

I think it’s amazing. I think it would be so fun to do. I really wanna do one for me and my husband. I really just wanna do it just as a fun experiment because I’m kind of a science nerd like that.

Okay, the second question is, she said, how do I interpret the results now? She said, I don’t have time to dig into it. Okay, friend, let’s watch our brains. Because if your friend said, I really need to talk, and your friend came over for two hours, you would listen to her. And I have to talk to myself like this.

So we do have time, but what is the problem is that we don’t have time on the fly. So I just want you to schedule the time, maybe Saturday morning, where you’re in some good brain space and you want to find out, maybe you say, I’m gonna spend 30 minutes, or I’m gonna spend 45 minutes or one hour and just see how much I can learn.

I also love chat gpt for research. I also love YouTube. So you can put your specific, CGM continuous glucose monitor in your YouTube search and then maybe you’ll find a video on that. Also, watch everyone you use, you could probably go to that website and they may have how to use it. Videos on that. 

And if you say, I just wanna spend 30 minutes and see what I can find out, great. If this isn’t something that you want to use right now, that’s fine too. I’m curious why you have one. If it was prescribed by your doctor. If so, perhaps the nurse could explain it to you and you could make an appointment with the nurse.

Okay. The next question, how do doctors determine if a person has visceral fat? Does a blood test determine it? No. I’ll just say no. And she said, I know a body composition scale will. Yes. Bioelectrical impedance scales will tell you doctors would have to use a CT scan or an MRI, which will show you the stored fat that’s around your organs.

Blood tests will not do it. I think they can also do a DEXA scan too. Okay. Someone else said, I had one of those body compositions done where you stand on it and hold the sensors. It said that she was 5% visceral fat. Can you speak to that? Does that sound okay? Can you trust those machines and how can I get it lower? That type of thing. 

All right. So 5%. I’m curious if, so you say it says 5% on the machines that I have, it just gives me a rating that’s five. So either way you could probably look on whatever printout they gave you and find out what the healthy range was. But if it’s truly 5%, then that’s great. We usually say it’s healthy to be under 10%. That’s fantastic. 

And then the question is, how do I decrease it? Well, if you’re already in a healthy range, you don’t need to. But if you want to become healthier, then improving your sleep, decreasing stress, having stable blood sugar and strength training are the four ways to do it. Okay, so the question says, what is the difference between visceral fat and fatty liver disease?

Okay, so visceral fat is that fat that’s stored deep around your organs, like your intestines and your liver and your pancreas. But fatty liver disease is when there’s excess fat specifically in the liver. And that can happen when you have visceral fat or you have a lot of metabolic stress in your body. Okay, so two separate things. 

Next question. Is it true that the only way to lose belly fat is by not eating gluten? That is not true. There are four ways that you can decrease visceral fat. You can improve your sleep, you can decrease your stress and decrease cortisol. You can strength train and you can have stable blood sugar.

Okay? So let’s say you have a gluten sensitivity and you’re eating gluten and then your intestines are like, I hate that you just did that, and your intestines are inflamed. You may have a distended or a protruding abdomen because your intestines are inflamed.

That has nothing to do with belly fat. That’s not even the subcutaneous fat that is inflamed organs. But you may find that you have a flatter stomach or a happier intestine. Without gluten, right? You might be that person. So you get to discover what works for you in this season of your life.

Next person says, I’m not sure whether I should just accept that it won’t be completely flat, meaning her stomach as I’m 53 and I have five children, or whether it’s still possible to lose weight there. Do you have any suggestions? 

Okay, here’s the cool thing. Friends, women are designed to have fat in their abdomen, especially around their belly button. And if you can pinch it and grab it, that’s called subcutaneous fat. That is totally normal. 

Okay, here’s how you know if you’re at your healthy weight, you can eat regular meals that are balanced and you can move regularly. And I really. If you’re 53, please be strength training. Please, please, please be strength training at a level where the weight, you can’t lift it more than 12 times. 

Okay? So if we’re doing like two to three pound weights, no. If you can get to 12 repetitions, the weight is too light for you. So when you’re doing those two things, eating, balanced, and with enough protein, okay, so you’re 53, so you need to be having 30 grams at least per meal or yeah, per meal because it’s not absorbing.

And you’re moving regularly, especially strength training. Then you’ll know what you’re at, your healthy weight. Now after that, if you wanna tweak some things, you totally can. So yes, you get to look at what you can control and you can change things.

What I find often is that women are listening to this and they hear,  I should be doing these four things, but I cannot do them. If I could do them, I would be doing them. Or if it worked for my life, I would be doing them. And that’s why we have 63 Surrendered. 63 surrendered helps you surrender your food and weight struggles to the Lord so he can guide you.

Because I’m telling you, if you went through 63 surrendered and if the Holy Spirit kept saying, Hey, you know what? I really need you to start strength training, or, Hey, you know what? We really need to cut back on ice cream at night, or whatever it is, or, Hey, we need to stop stress eating, you would start doing that because you would have his strength.

So I want to just give so much hope to women who hear me say what I’m saying and say, yeah, but I’ve tried that. You’ve tried it but not been able to sustain it, and it’s because you’ve been trying to do it on your own will and you haven’t been doing it in a way that’s sustainable for your life. No one’s given you permission to discover what works for you in this season of your life.

So my friend, will you have a flat belly? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s a problem. I was coaching a woman the other day and she said she had an issue. She was in her, I think in her like early forties, probably late thirties, and she had a lot of mind drama about her stomach was protruding more than her breasts.

And I thought, that’s so interesting because that’s how my body looks and that’s not a problem for me. And that’s how we know it’s just a mindset thing. And we can teach you to have peace with your body. And be comfortable in your own skin without changing any health habit. And that’s one of the things that I help women do too.

Okay, so if you can pinch it, know that that’s the subcutaneous fat. And the visceral fat really responds very, very well to strength training, improving sleep, stable meals, and decreasing cortisol. And that stable meals is exactly why restrictive dieting doesn’t work because your body is so afraid it will not get the nourishment and it feels stressed out.

Okay, so one person asked me, just out of curiosity, did you eat the biscotti? Okay. So I sent an email that was telling about how I was at the coffee shop the other day and I saw biscotti. I’ve never seen biscotti there. And it was gorgeous biscotti. It was called like your grandma’s biscotti. And it’s one of my favorite things to do is to drink coffee and either dip something in it or have something sweet with it.

I’m really into these different protein bars right now. I’m kind of experimenting with which one I like. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Yeah, like I would eat every meal like that, but then I wouldn’t feel really good about that. I don’t feel peaceful about that. 

Anyway, so I saw the biscotti and it wasn’t on my easy to stick to meal plan and I could have had it, but I was saying that it’s really important that if I choose to have it comes from a place of calm. Choice and not from stress or guilt because that leads then to storing it as body fat. 

To answer your question, I did not have the biscotti. I had my planned snack.  Okay, so let’s keep going. We are getting through there. Listen for you busy moms, this is a beautiful one. Or you people who are trying to do a lot of things at once.

She said, am I understanding this correctly? She said, it seems like stress eating increases cortisol and is a big contributing factor to visceral fat. All of you right now can say yes, that is true. She says, and even if I’m eating great food, maybe something like salad with spring mixed tomatoes, grilled chicken, avocado, oil and vinegar, sometimes with the little black beans and rice.

Okay, so beautiful meal. She said it can still cause a spike in cortisol if I’m shoveling it in as quick as I can after feeding toddlers lunch and before I have to nurse a baby, before picking up kids from school. Like, aren’t we all just wanna go give that mom a hug? Because we can totally imagine here she is trying to take care of herself eating this healthy meal, and it’s happening so quickly.

So I just wanna say, I love you. I love you so much. She goes on to say, oh, and I’m probably too hungry because I’m late for lunch after feeding toddlers and doing chores, and this kind of lunch is a good day. Often there’s a lot of chaos eating because I need to grab something easy before changing that diaper, getting a load of laundry in, loading up for school pickup, et cetera.

So I timed my salad lunch one day and ate slowly and calmly. Amazing. So she practiced that. She said, I emptied my hands, I chewed. And in our community, those are three practices that we do. We empty our hands while we’re chewing and we chew 20 times, and then we empty our mouth before we put the next bite in.

She said, I emptied my hands, I chewed, I breathed. I didn’t scroll on my phone, which by the way, that’s not a problem. You can scroll on your phone. She said it was 10 minutes to eat a salad, which she puts an exclamation more point, which I’m like, that would take me like 30, but that’s okay. 

She said a lot longer to prepare and eat than an RX bar takes, and I couldn’t eat it while driving. But I guess one of my takeaways is visceral fat is another reason. It’s so important to eat deliberately and calmly.I love that word deliberately. Thank you. I’m gonna start using that. 

She said it’s going to take more planning and time to prep and eat, but it’s worth it. Yes, it is worth it. So as I told you, when cortisol is released because you are stressed, that signal is sent and received wherever there’s a receptor and there’s receptors in your visceral fat. And so cortisol goes up, insulin goes up, fat storage happens, and it will preferentially be stored in your visceral fat. 

Okay? So mom, what we get to do is in this season of your life, take a breath. If we are going to eat a salad, it may happen when we plan a little bit more, make sure the kids are doing the thing. What I’ve seen some moms do is they feed toddlers first and then they put on screen time. So this is when they’re leveraging screen time to have that break and eat their meal. 

Okay. Also noticing when you’re in the car, so then maybe you’re eating some meals in the car and of course an RX bar that works beautifully in a car. Smoothies work beautifully in a car. Anything that’s grab and go, but I will you to hear my voice.  We’re not shoving it in our mouth while we’re driving. 

We can be calm, we can eat anything calmly, and it is totally fine if you need to. Wait, and you’re going to experiment because in this season of your life, there are lots of moving parts, but here’s what I know is that the Lord would not give you the life that you have. He would not give you the toddler and the baby and the picking kids up from school.

If it required you to not be able to care for yourself reasonably well. If it required you to destroy his favorite creation, you know, between you and the Lord, you are his favorite and he wants so badly to help you learn how to get through this season of your life caring for yourself and you are, look, you have this beautiful, long email that’s incredible.

I want you to just say, I’m doing such an amazing job and you are. I’m so proud of you. And yeah, you’re right. The cortisol is increasing visceral fat.  Okay. The next person says, I get this. I gave up junk food for Lent, but I’m one of those people who always believed it’s okay on Sunday. 

So on Sunday, I ate big bakery cookies along with my husband, who’s 75 and still can eat whatever he wants and not gain a pound. She said, I can’t let them go bad and they won’t be good next Sunday. So yes, I enjoyed them, but I felt guilty. Absolutely. 

Okay, so hey, let’s talk about Lent. This is being released during Lent, and that is a very common thing that whatever we’re giving up for Lent, then we some people say that we have it then on Sunday. Totally a personal thing because Sundays are feast days. 

All right? So what we get to learn in our community is what is a feast? What is truly us enjoying it? Because I’m guessing that eight bakery cookies was not you enjoying them. And I know you didn’t enjoy them because you didn’t eat them because you wanted them. You ate them because you were afraid they would go bad or not. Last till next Sunday. 

And I am pointing for not to shame you and not to guilt you. I’m just showing you and everyone else what their human brains do. And this is why it’s so important to do weight loss in a Catholic way where we can say, it’s totally fine to eat cookies.We can eat as many cookies as we want for the reasons that the Lord wants for us. 

The Lord doesn’t want us shoving cookies in our mouths that we’re not enjoying. I want you to learn how to enjoy those cookies. Go to 63 Surrender. Just go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and you can start 63 surrendered now.

Here’s the thing is that we see something that we don’t, anytime we see ourselves doing something that we don’t wanna be doing, we get to slow down and just recognize we’re doing it because there’s a need that’s not being met. Think about that. 

There’s something inside you that’s not being met and eating the ATE cookies and maybe it’s, you don’t wanna be a wasteful person. I have a podcast. You can go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com  in a podcast on wasting food and that, and how to change that mindset. 

Okay. So the other thing, my friend with the cookies next Sunday, if you choose to have them, I want you to decide how many you would feel good about and then just decide, and it might and not how many you should have. We’re not saying that. What do you love the cookies? What would you feel peaceful about before, during, and after? 

And when we give ourselves unconditional permission to eat that and care for ourselves, it’s just beautiful. I mean, you will have whatever amount of cookies you have and you’ll feel so satisfied. It’s just amazing. 

The other thing for all of us during Lent, I want you to ask your brain. Brain, did God tell me to give up cookies? Because one of the reasons we fall during fall air quotes or go back to the thing that we’re fasting from during Lent is because we are doing something that the Lord didn’t ask us to do. 

So what I want you to do is to just go back and say, Lord, is this what you want me to do? I started this Lent without giving up anything because I was like, I don’t, is there something you want me to give up? What he really wanted me to give up was like doubt and doubt and second guessing him, right? He wanted blind obedience. 

But then when I got in a few days, he made it very clear that he wanted me to work on my salt. I know that’s crazy, but I am a copious, excessive salter until now. And he wanted me to decrease my amount of salt. And I know that’s from him. 

So go back and ask him if that’s what he wants for you. All right, we’re gonna keep going. Is the body composition scale accurate? The body composition scale that I use is, I have used a couple different ones. And they are. They’re relatively accurate. I have two

I bought a fancy one to see if it was accurate and they were relatively close, it’s Arbo leaf, the Arbo leaf Smart scale. How do I get your emails? You can email our team at [email protected] and ask if you can get the the series,  the Belly Fat Series team at Weight Loss with the Holy spirit.com. 

Okay. So a few other ones that we are wrapping up very soon. The first one is, she said, so you’re saving big if you have a calm mind that you can eat the Biscoti Gil free. She said, I’m not buying that. I love this one. This is my favorite question. 

Alright, so you guys, she said, I’m guilt free. She said, I’m not buying that. Okay, so here’s the thing. Guilt, this is again, why it’s so important for you if you’re a Catholic woman to do weight loss, the Catholic way okay, we’re just gonna play around with this. Why would I have guilt about eating biscotti? Let’s just think about that in our brain. Why would I feel guilt?

Okay. Why do you think I should feel guilt? See, the Lord gave us guilt to let our conscious know when we’re sinning and if I believe I’m sinning, if I’m having guilt for something that I’m not sinning from, I’m believing something that is not the Lord’s truth. To see how the world and secular dieting can really twist and distract the Lord’s truth can really twisted.

And so if we feel guilt for eating food that the Lord created, that gave me taste buds to enjoy. What would the Lord say? Would he say, Denise, you should feel guilty. No, that’s not his voice. The Lord’s voice is affirming as loving, as gentle, as peaceful. He’s not critical and chaotic. That’s not his voice.

That’s somebody else’s voice. And that’s what secular dieting, years of secular dieting, if not decades. And the majority of women that I work with went on their first diet in their pre-teen years. Isn’t that crazy? Their pre-teen years. And when I asked them the question, did you think you were overweight? They often say, no. Someone else told them they were.

And then they get this whole life. But the Lord is always there to reorder your relationship with food, to release you from excess weight. I want you to have that freedom too. And you can do that in 63, surrendered. You can go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. You can get signed up and get started okay. 

So the very last question is, she said, since starting weight loss with the Holy Spirit, I feel quite happy with the weight I’ve lost on all parts of my body, but my belly seems to still carry a bit of excess fat. And my question to you would be, how do you know it’s excess?

Okay, I’m teasing your brain right now. How do you know that’s not exactly how your body should look? And b, remember if you can pinch it, it’s safe fat, it’s safe. If it’s hard, that means it’s behind the abdominal wall. And you think of like that beer belly of men. 

So my friend, if you are in weight loss with the Holy Spirit and you are not at peace and comfortable with your body. You are doing the Four Daily Disciplines. There is a course in there called Letting Yourself Love Your Body. And a lot of women have found peace and comfort in their body through that course. 

Okay, my friends, so here’s the thing. What we want to do is to make sure that we’re caring for ourselves, stewarding our bodies well. I hope that these questions have been helpful for you. You can ask any more questions to me. Just reach out to [email protected]. And if you would love to get started in 63, surrendered, go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and get your spot. 

All right, everybody.weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Where we are making God our God again, not the scale, not our body, and not magic foods. Have a blessed day.