And if you struggle with food noise and you will know after you listen to this podcast, if you do, I want you to know that one of the solutions is to create a plan that you actually want to stick to because that is so important and all of the skills that come from learning how to make a plan. That you actually want to stick to.

I’m going to be offering an intensive, it’s going to be starting May 12th. The wait list is being formed, so if you wanna get on that wait list to be informed on the moment that the door is open, that you can join that, then just to go into the description and you can join that. But until then, listen to all of the details about where food noise came from. And the solutions. Enjoy.

Let’s just dive in. So today we’re gonna talk about something that I don’t think – really had a name until recently with the GLP-1s, and I really give them so much credit for bringing it to this concept of food noise to the conversation, to a popular conversation. It was something that I struggled with for several years, and I see it so much in the women that I work with.

And what’s cool is when we have a name for something, we don’t feel crazy. And when we have a name, we start investigating it. We start to understand it more. Today I want to talk all about food noise, where it comes from, why it’s not your fault you have it, why you have it, and then what we can do now to heal from it, because it really is a journey of healing.

All right. So let me share with you a little bit more about who I am. So for as long as I can remember, you guys, and I think a lot of you can relate to this, I was very much aware of the size of my body.

I was five years old, and I remember trying on a swimsuit. It was this rainbow swimsuit, and I just absolutely loved it.   And I remember a very well-meaning parent saying to me, ” Are you sure you’re gonna wear that? Because your stomach kind of sticks out.” And until that moment, I didn’t even realize my stomach was sticking out. 

And this is just one example of me being just so hyper-aware of my body, even as a four, five, six-year-old. And what I started to notice was that if my body wasn’t okay or I wasn’t okay- The answer was to either eat food or not eat food.

And so I just had this really disordered relationship with food. I was never clinically diagnosed with an eating disorder, but through my teenage years and into college years, I would call my relationship with food not necessarily healthy, but probably very typical. 

And then when I got into my profession, I of course chose fitness, and I think people choose fitness usually to kinda correct food issues that they have. And so I was living this very big fitness life. And after I’d gotten married was really when my binge eating took over, and the stress of being married. 

I was Miss Fitness by day, but I would come home, and I would spend my evenings hiding in the pantry. And I don’t have a pantry that you walk in. It’s just two doors. I would hide in the pantries, dumping chocolate chips in a jar of peanut butter and just eating them. And then when my family would go to bed, I would sneak back downstairs to eat more. 

And although during the day I could eat normally in front of other people, I had this constant, ” What can I eat? When can I eat? What can I eat? When can I eat?” And I just remember at one point realizing it is 85 to 90% of my day. 

And you know,  I just think that this is the example of how powerful this work is because when we have these internet issues, oh, boy. I just wanted to say that what allowed me to truly find freedom was learning how to surrender to the Lord. 

And for many years, I lived this very private, joyful, free life, and it was very private and nobody knew where I’d come from, the binge eating, the food noise. Nobody had known that until five years ago, the Lord said, “Denise, go find my hurting daughters and bring them to me.”

And I knew what He meant. He meant, “Go find the women who are hurt like you were and in the hole like you were, and now bring them to me, the Lord, so that I can bring them into this freedom and joy.”

And so that’s now what I do. For several years now, I’ve been helping women. I’ve led over five thousand Catholic women into this freedom in the Surrendered Method, so they are no longer in that pit, in that hole. And what you see on your screen right now is a healthy weight that I’m able to live with without food noise, and I do not diet. 

And I just want you to know that is totally available to you. And I feel like there’s something else that I wanna say here, and I wanna say this to your face.  Sometimes people look at me, or they see my picture, and they’re like, “Well, forty pounds overweight, like that’s just not a big deal.” But I wanna tell you why I think I never was more.

A couple reasons. I don’t think I gained an absorbent  amount of weight, ’cause I really should have been way over two hundred pounds, for a couple reasons. Number one, I never got pregnant. Both my boys are adopted, and I know if I would’ve gotten pregnant, I would have never lost that pregnancy weight, and I would have eaten for two. Literally, it would have given me permission to eat a bunch of food.  

So I really think that’s one of the reasons that I never gained more, because I did eat a lot. The other reason is that I came to food recovery at thirty-seven, and for many women, that saved me decades of being into my sixties or seventies. I also have never stopped exercising since I was eighteen. Sometimes not in a great way, but I’ve always just exercised and I just think genetics. 

And I just want you to know that because don’t let what I look like then or now. Make it feel like you can’t have so much joy and freedom because that is. And you all know that, that is exactly what the Lord wants for you, is joy and  freedom and healing. 

All right, so enough of that. Let’s go back to what exactly is food noise? Food noise, my friends, is thinking about food when you don’t even really wanna be thinking about food. I hear women feel so horrible, “Oh my gosh, Denise, I’m thinking about food when I’m at mass. I’m thinking about what I’m gonna have for breakfast.” 

It’s when your brain is thinking about food even when you’re trying to focus on something else. And I think if we can look at what life is without food noise, it makes it easier to really see what food noise is.

So if you don’t have food noise and you don’t struggle with food noise, you think about food when it makes sense, like when you’re planning your meals or you’re sitting down to eat, or like you have a whiff of something delicious, one of your favorite foods. Okay? That’s when it makes sense to think about food. But food noise is different. 

And without food noise, you just think about food and then move on. It’s just your thoughts and then they go away. But without food noise, food feels very urgent and like it’s an emergency, and it feels like you have no choice. The thoughts are very intrusive and distracting, even when you try to think about something else.

And like I said, I had kids, I had a husband. Things were good, and I still had thoughts about food, like, all the time. It was crazy. And I call this way of thinking tornado thinking, and tornado thinking is when you’re just having thoughts about food spin around and circle in your brain and pull your attention. It’s just so distracting, even when you’re trying to focus on something else. 

And I’m curious if you guys have ever felt that. What is the percentage of times that  you feel like in your life you’re thinking about food noise in one day? In one day. 50% of the time. 60. 20. I’m gonna talk to you about why it progressively gets worse as well.

 So other signs that you have food noise is that you are constantly judging your own eating. Every bite gets a label. It’s either good, bad, wrong, on your plan, off your plan. I should be eating this. I shouldn’t be eating this. It’s just that constant inner commentary. It’s like a play-by-play, running about everything that you eat and the way that you eat. 

This was me, too. This was me. I think it’s also interesting is that we’re also very much judging other people as well. So we’re very hyper-aware of other people’s eating and their bodies. And side note, I think a kin to food noise is also the constant hyper-awareness and judging our own bodies, and then we project that onto other people.

We look at what they’re eating, we judge it, and we also look at their bodies like, “Oh, she’s so thin, she can eat whatever she wants,” or, “She’s so heavy, she shouldn’t be eating that.” Or, especially when we have spouses or partners and we see them chow down at the end of the night, and we are secretly jealous “Why can’t I just eat all that food?”

Here’s what’s crazy. It’s not that we wanna eat all that food, but we feel jealous that they can eat it so freely without judging themselves. Isn’t that interesting? Do you guys? Can you relate to that, where you’re like, “Why can’t I just eat the food that I want without the noise, without the judgment, without the criticism?”

And because we are constantly judging ourselves, number three is we feel very much judged by other people. We feel judged about the way we eat. We feel judged about the way our bodies look. We think other people are watching us eat. And this was me. I was, like, fine when other people were around, but I would secretly eat and hide so I wouldn’t be judged.

Can you relate to this? Yeah. And I want you to see that this is so progressive. It’s so progressive and so pervasive which means, like, all of you are shaking your head. Oh my gosh, yeah, that makes sense. And then it even goes into our daily life. 

So food noise then starts to take over our lives. Let’s look at the left side. This is so me. Every event became about the food. And I want you to just know there is nothing wrong with you. I used to judge myself for this until I realized this was actually a condition that I didn’t cause. We’ll talk about the causes in a second. 

Birthday parties become about the cake. When someone invites you to coffee, you’re secretly thinking, “Oh, yes, and I can’t wait to have that pastry.” Bible studies, it’s the coffee cake. When you go to a movie, it’s more about the popcorn and the candy. 

A baby shower, it’s about the sweets table. Or if you go to a restaurant, you can find that you’re so preoccupied by the bread basket instead of the conversation. I know this makes sense to you.

Food noise sounds like, “What can I eat? When can I eat it? What should I eat? What shouldn’t I eat?” You might find it’s your first thought when you wake up in the morning or the last thought when you go to bed, almost like planning your food in the morning or in the evening rechecking back in, “How was I? Was I good or bad today?” 

Maybe you have apps and you’re checking your apps for the macros, “Is it okay to eat more? Should I eat less?” Or different food trackers. I saw it come up for me in a lot of compulsive research about food, the best foods to eat, but in a really compulsive way, not just for information. Or scrolling, spending recreational time in recipes. 

I’m not saying that these are bad things, but you know when it crosses the line and where food feels like, ” Is this the only thing that I’m thinking about?” Maybe even lingering in grocery stores just to look at food. Walking past the bakery just to see what’s there. Walking down the frozen treat aisle just to see what’s there. Looking down the candy aisle, going through the chip aisle just to see what’s there.

You feel like you’re missing out if you don’t have the latest. You’re spending your free time thinking about, researching, and planning food. I wanted to spend so much time on what it sounds like so that you can clearly see if you have food noise. So these are some questions, and just grab a piece of paper. Just write yes or no on these.

I think about food even when I’m not hungry and don’t want to be thinking about food. Yes or no. Food thoughts feel urgent, like I have to answer them right away. So you have a thought about food, and you’re like, “Oh, I really need to eat this right now,” or, “I need to get it,” or, “I need to research it,” or, “I need to make sure I get Yes or no. 

I judge what I’m eating as good, bad, on plan, off plan, should or shouldn’t. Yes or no. I notice what other people eat and I make comparisons. Yes or no? Or judgments. I sometimes eat differently in public than I would when I’m alone. Yes or no? Events and outings, I often think about the food first. Yes or no? 

And I’m not talking about for the women that I work with, we create an easy to stick to meal plan, and you might think, “Oh, I’m going to this wedding. What am I going to eat?” Well, that’s planning. That makes sense to think about food. That’s prudent. 

But not, “Oh my gosh, when I get there, I’m gonna have these many desserts,” and I just like… that’s daydreaming about food. I call that daydreaming. Okay. And then food is one of the first things I think about in the morning. Yes or no? How many said yes? How many yeses did you have? You guys are all in the right place. 

I want a high number for you to say, “Oh, I am in the right place at the right time.” That is what you should be thinking, “I am in the right place at the right time.” All right. You are in the right place at the right time. 

You know, in the work that I do, and, I’m sure I could have a debate with somebody, but I truly believe that food noise is the number one reason that women are overweight. It has nothing to do with your willpower. It has nothing to do with the food itself.

It has nothing to do with what you know you should or shouldn’t be eating. It is just food noise, and I just  got done. I wanna just say this to your face. I just got done teaching, teaching a group about how important our thoughts are, and if our thoughts are consumed by food, it makes sense, wouldn’t it, that we would be eating more food.

And that’s why I think the GLP-1s are so fantastic with regard to quieting that food noise. The unfortunate part is you want it to be forever, right? Nobody wants to just lose food noise for a couple of years, and then it comes back. We want it to be permanent. So I’m gonna tell you how to do that permanently.

But I guess I just want to say, of course, we’re overeating because we’re thinking about food all the time, and that’s just not a problem.  So let’s talk about where does food noise come from and why it is absolutely not your fault. When you hear this, I know it will make so much sense. There are three root causes, and I will say this and I will never get tired of saying this: it is not your fault. It is not your fault. 

So let’s begin. Somewhere in your life, earlier in your life And what I find with the women that I work with, it was in their preteen years, there was a moment when you recognized or someone told you that your body was not okay. 

And that moment for me was when I was five or six. Do you remember that moment for you? For the women that I work with, it’s often a well-meaning parent put them on a diet or took them to Weight Watchers in their preteen or teenage years.

And the solution for your body to be okay was over here, number one, that there are diet rules, and those diet rules would help your body be okay. If you ate the right foods, you were okay, and if you did not eat the right food, you were not okay. They became somewhat of a life raft for you.

And I want you to imagine that you’re in the middle of the ocean, like this picture, surrounded by sharks, and that life raft is the only safety that you have. And as long as you stay on the raft, which is staying within the food rules, eat this way, not that way, you feel safe. You feel okay. You feel like you’re doing the right thing.

Your nervous system is being taught that those rules equal safety, and we do what feels safe and best for us. And nobody wants to fall off the life raft because you’re surrounded by sharks, so you become very hypervigilant about the food. And over the years, and I know you can see this in yourself, you have just added more and more rules.

No sugar, no bread, only eat this food with that food. And the women that I work with, they just come, just like I did, carrying huge bags of food rules. And that hypervigilance on those food rules, that’s what food noise is. It’s your nervous system just trying to keep you safe. Say, “Stay on this little life raft, and you’re gonna be okay.”

The thing is that  you’re also working against your biology, you guys, is your body needs to stay safe by eating enough food to stay alive. And so when we start saying,” That food’s not okay, and that food’s not okay, and that food’s not okay,” your biology is thinking that food is not reliably available, that it becomes inconsistently available.

And so now it becomes even more hyper-aware of making sure that you’re getting food in. Let me say that one more time. When we start restricting the natural biology of our brain that is designed to keep us alive, is “Oh, no. Is this one of those weeks we’re gonna get food or not? I’m just not sure.”

So the weeks that you do allow yourself to eat, that’s why you are overeating now. Your body’s “We might as well get it because we don’t know what she’s doing next week.” It might be another no bread, no sugar, no this, no that. You guys, there was this time I went a whole week where I would only eat food that was raw.

Okay? So I would take fish, and I cooked it, “cooked it” with lemon juice. Oh my gosh. I- isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that funny?  Here’s the point is that just seemed like the right thing to do. Okay? So that makes sense to you. Oh, I just wanna cry sometimes when I think of this. 

The other root cause of our  food noise is because we were taught at some point that your emotions were not okay to be expressed. Somewhere along the line you had strong emotions, and I just wanna say human emotions. And the humans that you lived with, that was just not comfortable for them. 

And so that you learned that if you wanted to cry, defend yourself, stand up for yourself, express yourself, somewhere along the line you learned, either someone told you or you just got the vibe that it is not safe to express yourself.

And we know that the way that our stress response  and how our emotions work is that when you have an emotion, it inclines your body to do something. And that’s you’re, like, in a fight, flight, freeze, fawn, something state. And so then you go do the thing. 

So you have the desire to do it because you have the emotion, and then you go, you express yourself. You, you have this release. You go out. You do it. You say, ” Hey, that’s not fair,” or you cry. And then you come down and you return to normal.

But what happens so often for women who struggle with food noise is we have the, I’m having emotion, and we’re taught like, better stop, not allowed to express it. And so it just, we push it back down. And when we push it back down, the release that we’re using then is food.

Although it’s just a false relief because the emotion is still pushed down. And you all know it’s only a false relief because it’s pushed down and then it comes back. And it just never stops coming back. But because our brains have equated emotions, unsafe, push it down, go to food, over and over and over. Emotion, push down, food. Emotion, push down, food. Emotion, push down, food. 

And that is the third root cause. Because our brains  are so darn smart. Our brains are so darn smart that we just have a conditioned brain. And what that means is your brain is very good at doing one thing. Your brain is very good at doing what it knows.

And so you have the life raft scenario. Food rules equal safe. You have the, I feel emotion. That’s not safe. Eat food. I feel emotion. That’s not safe. Eat food. You have those two things that you continue to do over and over and over and over and over and over and over. 

And your brain is working for you just like it’s supposed to be. Which those grooves are created. Those neural pathways become so darn automatic that until now you probably didn’t even recognize, oh my gosh, that’s exactly what was happening. Because it becomes autopilot. So autopilot. 

But because our brains have neuroplasticity, which means that we can change them. You can change them. You can learn new skills. You can learn new ways. And we can create new grooves in our brain. 

So that automatic autopilot that we didn’t like before, where food noise is controlling us, we can learn new skills that create safety in our brain. Not with food noise, but with other things. We can learn how to express our emotions.  We can undo what caused our food noise.

But I’m not going to leave you there. I’m going to tell you exactly where to start, because you can’t just start all at once,  okay, ’cause this could be years and decades. I still have food noise, you guys, sometimes, but my food noise is 15 to 20% at the max. Sometimes it’s in a typical day, I might have 10 to 15. So that’s way better, right? From 90% to 10 to 15. 

And I tell the women in my community, we’re never, ever gonna get to zero. I don’t think we’ll ever get to zero, because we’re human. Maybe we’ll get to zero. I don’t know. But if we can get down to 10 to 15%, that’s so golden. 

So the reason I stopped the slide was just to tell you, don’t worry. I’m not saying you have to overhaul your life, okay? The Lord is the one who will heal you, and I’m gonna show you the first step so that you can allow His grace to come in and what you can focus on of what you can  do. 

The other reason that I wanted to show you this graphic is because this is exactly why the longer you have food noise, the older that you are, the more years you’ve been living with food noise, it will feel so part of you, because it progressively gets worse.  Hear me when I say this. It will not progressively get better unless you change something. 

And all of you are here because the Lord has called you to change that now. He wants to give you this peace and freedom. Nothing will change. I am telling you, I tried many things that didn’t get to the real solution, and my food noise just kept getting worse, because what makes it worse is restriction and chronic dieting.

So if you think that is the answer, I just promise you that is why your food noise is going to continue to get worse and worse and worse and control your life. And you hear my voice sound like this because I wish somebody would have taken me by the shoulders and said, “There’s a solution. Don’t get distracted over there. It’s just a false solution.”

Okay, let’s talk about the solutions then.  You have three skills that will change everything. Three skills that you weren’t born knowing. So know that skills are things that you aren’t born knowing, so I want you to just recognize “Oh, I don’t know how to do that.” Well, of course you don’t, ’cause you’ve never practiced it before. 

But they are things that you can be taught, you’ve learned many skills in your life. Everything that you do in your life, you’ve never known how to do, and you learn now. The only problem that I see in the women that I work with is that because they’re so high-achieving in other areas of their life, and they’re very good at many other things in their life, they feel like they should be good at this.

And when it becomes new and uncomfortable, they think they’re doing something wrong. But you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re just learning something new. You just haven’t practiced it enough. And the more you practice it, the easier it’ll get. 

All right. The first skill you need to learn. Oh, man, this is a hard one for every woman to swallow, but I promise you this is the key: giving yourself unconditional permission to eat any food. And that doesn’t mean eating everything all of the time. 

And I know it’s very terrifying for many women. You think, “Oh, my gosh, if I give myself permission to eat everything, I’ll just eat all the things all of the time.” But the truth is that it’s the restriction that is what’s creating the food noise. Because when something is forbidden, your brain is fixating on it.

So this doesn’t mean eating everything that you want without thought. It just means ending the war with food. So here are the three steps to being able to do that. Remember, you’ve never done this, and it will be challenging because you’ve never done it. But you can start even today.

You create what’s called an easy-to-stick-to meal plan. All that means is you look at the rest of your day and you say, “Hey, the next meal I’m gonna eat today, what’s easy to stick to? And I don’t care what you put on that plan. It could say 15 cookies, but what’s easy to stick to?

So let’s take a pause here if this is sounding very intriguing to you and yet slightly impossible. Trust me. It is not, it’s simply a skill that you haven’t learned how to make a plan that you can actually stick to because you’ve never been given unconditional permission to eat any food.

I will walk you through exactly how to do that in my six week intensive. How to make a plan you actually want to stick to, we’ll be starting May 12th, but to get on the wait list and be notified when the door is open so you can be one of the first to sign up. Go in the description and click that link now back to the workshop.

I have three food rules in my community that help put boundaries on this for women too. But just know that you will probably use that permission to overeat a little bit. But I’m just telling you, it will still heal your food noise. The three food rules are that you eat the food that you enjoy.

There are no should foods. There are no foods just because it’ll lead to weight loss. You only eat food that you genuinely enjoy. And your brain wants to be like. This is what I hear from women all the time: “ Well, then I would just be eating crackers and cookies and ice cream all day long.” And then I’m saying. Then I say to her, “Well, then why don’t you plan that?” 

And then she says, “Well, I wouldn’t feel very good if I ate that.” So then, “You really wanna eat that?” They’re like, “Well, no.” So allow yourself to eat crackers and cookies and ice cream. But the second food rule is, so you have to genuinely enjoy the food, but the second food rule is that you eat  food that you feel peaceful about. You feel peaceful about eating before, during, and after.

What that means, let me go back to my example. And you guys can screenshot this too. I like this little graphic here. I did not feel peaceful about standing in my pantry eating peanut butter out of a jar with a spoon. I do feel peaceful about eating peanut butter when I put it on bread or as a topping, when I melt it, and then I drizzle it on something, or put it in my oatmeal.

I don’t feel peaceful about standing and hiding in my pantry eating anything. I do feel peaceful sitting down and chewing my food. Your brain wants to pretend like you don’t know what feels peaceful, and just play around with your brain. Say like you really liked Oreos. You’d be like, “Oh my gosh, I’m putting Oreos on my plan.”

Okay, cool. How many Oreos? Do you feel peaceful about ten Oreos? And you might say, “Oh, no, that’s too many.” How about two? And you’re like, “Well, I’d really like to have four or five.” Okay, four or five then. Peaceful before, during, and after. And now let’s say that you plan five Oreos and you overeat them.

Okay. Maybe next time you won’t plan five Oreos. Maybe you’re like, “You know what? Maybe I just won’t have Oreos right now.” Like maybe Oreos just feel like it’s too much of a test. But. Or you might plan ten. You can just decide. There’s just no wrong way to do this. Or you might notice, “I don’t feel good when I eat Oreos. Maybe I’ll just mark it down to four.” You just get to plan. 

And then I just want you think about you and your day. And what I mean by that is I want you to become a  woman who thinks about her day. You know, it’s five o’clock is gonna come. What do I wanna eat? Okay. And so we’re going to just think about our day.

You’d plan meals for other people, whether you were babysitting or you had your own child. You would never send off someone to school without a lunch, and you’re still not thinking about what you’re gonna have for lunch, or if there’s even food for you to have for lunch until right before.

So when you think about your day, then you can do number  three, which is leverage convenience foods. ‘Cause you’ve already planned it. You might say, “You know what? Tonight’s a busy day. I’m totally doing drive-through. You know what? Tonight’s a busy day. I’m gonna make sure that I pack some yogurts and granola bars for my drive while I’m driving kids around.”

I want you to start using convenience foods like tools not as a emergency situation because you didn’t think about yourself. See, what you’re trying to do, and if you take nothing from this workshop, it is these things. Please screenshot this. Food noise will only be quieted when your brain knows that all foods are safe and that food is coming consistently. All foods are safe and food is coming consistently.  

Now, I know in this workshop you guys are gonna hear about inflammation and foods that are better for your body, healthier and unhealthier. But I want you, when you listen to all of this workshop, you ask yourself, “What is causing me the most distress in my life right now?”

And if it’s inflammation, then that’s what you’re gonna start working on first. If it’s food noise, then you’re gonna use the tools that Denise Jelinek mentioned about first. If it’s your insulin, then you’re going to use foods as a tool to heal that.

But what I find more often than not is that women are unable to truly use food as medicine for their physical conditions like diabetes, like inflammation, like weight loss. They’re unable to use food as treatment and because food noise is throwing them off. 

And if you can heal your food noise first, then no matter what your doctor says, no matter what Rita says, no matter what the other physicians say, you’re like, “Well, that’s not a problem. I can do that.”

Because you’re detached from food. Food noise isn’t controlling you anymore. You’ve set down your food rules. Your food rules aren’t safety anymore. You now find safety in the Lord. So I’m just giving you that as permission because I’m gonna tell you, I could not do anything. I could not stick to any plan. I could not heal my SIBO. I could not heal my adrenal fatigue. I could not do any of that when I was binging on food and overeating because I had so much food noise. 

But once the food noise went down, I could then take the recommendations from my physician and implement them well, and I was happy to do that.  These other things are extra. I’m going to briefly mention them, but I do not believe they’re the place to start. So I really believe the first place is to give yourself unconditional permission. The second skill, though, is to start seeing you, because the Lord does.

He sees you. If you are not talking to the Lord about your food noise, if you are not talking to Him about your struggle with your weight, start. He wants to be fully integrated into every single area of your life. He’s not asking you to carry this on your own. 

The women that I work with tell me, “Oh, I didn’t even know that God cared.” I didn’t know that was a thing, you could talk to God about your weight.” Yeah. I want you to talk to Him. I want you to even tell Him if you’re angry, if you’re upset, especially about if it’s a burden or you’re thinking, “Why am I this way?” Or you feel unworthy, or you hate that this is a problem in your life. I want you to talk to Him.

The second thing you can start to do is to just check in with you every once in a while. What do I feel? What do I need? What do I feel? What do I need? I like this because so often when we ask the question, “What do I feel?” You don’t know, so it starts to connect you with your body. 

But when you say, “What do I need?” And it doesn’t even have to be a realistic thing that you need. It could be, “I just need time to stop. I just need 15 hours to just sleep in my bed.” But what it does is it starts to show your brain that what you need is not usually food. The answer is usually not food, and it might be, but sometimes it’s not.

The third thing, and this is all down the road, friends, is you just start to become a woman who learns how to care and support herself. You see, right now, you’re caring and supporting yourself with food, and so you’re going to have to learn some new skills, and that’s not a problem. But that’s down the road. First is unconditional permission to eat any food. Okay. 

The skills that you will learn down the road, this is when you will learn them, is you will be able to soothe yourself when you’re lonely and scared. You’ll be able to calm yourself without food when you’re stressed out. You’ll be able to reward yourself without food. You’ll be able to give yourself permission to stop without guilt, permission to rest. 

And when you wanna have fun, yes, of course, food can be included, but it won’t be your only area of fun. And I just wanna show you that you’re going to learn all of this as you heal from food noise, and it’s just one of those natural things that once you start giving yourself unconditional permission to eat any food, these things naturally develop.

Now, I want to do a little plug for something I like to call Catholic weight loss. So that’s about food noise, and we’re going to answer more questions about this, but there’s two more things I wanna tell you. Number one is I encourage you, my friend, and invite you all. I’m gonna say this without a screen. 

I invite all of you to do weight loss like you do every other thing in your life, the Catholic way. And what the Catholic way is, you just put the Lord first.  You guys, I truly believe that secular dieting is so dangerous for our souls. It makes a false god out of the scale, out of food, out of our body. It’s very distracting. 

And all of us who have done secular weight loss, Denise Jelinek included, did not talk to the Lord while we were doing it, did we? what Catholic  weight loss is, which you probably have never heard of, but you can all start right now. 

All it means is that it makes God your God, not the scale, not food, not your body. It helps you truly. Because you’re talking to the Lord, He’ll say, “Start here. I want this. Do this.” Even just what I said, where should I start? Is it inflammation? Is it insulin resistance? Is it food noise? He will say, “This is what I want you to work on.” 

And you’re going to do it all with Him. And I promise you, no matter if you take something away from my work, from this presentation, or anything from this workshop, or anything going forward, when you bring the Lord into your weight loss journey, you will see that food noise is no longer the first thing that you think about in the morning, that you can eat something unplanned, and it’s just that. It’s just one thing.

You’re not just pacing around your kitchen and your pantry. I do not believe that women can be at a healthy weight for the rest of their life peacefully without the Lord being the driver for that. It is the biggest gift that you can  give to the people in your life, that when you are nurtured, when you are cared for, when you are full, it overflows.

A nurtured wife, a nurtured woman, a nurtured mother is able to nurture. Whether you’re a spiritual mother, whether you’re a biological mother, adopted mother, doesn’t matter. We must be nurtured, and the only person who can nurture you is the Lord. He nurtures you. He shows you what to do. So please start talking to Him about your whole journey.

And I want you to know two things going forward. The way to heal food noise is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat any food. Once the food noise. I know that’s so counter. It’s. I know your brain is really having a hard time believing that. But I promise you that once you retrain your nervous system and your brain to believe that food is consistent and that any food is allowed, right?

Because now we say everything’s safe. We can find safety everywhere. The food noise will quiet, and then you will feel more in charge, and that then you can choose to eat foods that will lead to weight loss. But the first thing is heal the food noise.

I hope that has really helped you see that you’re not crazy. This is a real thing, but I’ll tell you, it is a real thing that can be solved with the right tools, with the right skills, and this is a skill that you’ll need to learn whether you’re on a medication or not. Medications can’t teach you skills.

A skill is something that you haven’t been born with, but you can learn. And if you like this, learn the skill that will heal your food noise, which is being able to stick to a plan that you actually love and make that plan. Join my wait list so that you can get into that six week intensive and be notified the minute the door is open.

Okay, everybody, why don’t we just start doing weight loss the way that we do everything else in our life? The Catholic way, which simply means putting God first. Have a blessed day.