So this is the second part of a two-part podcast of my uncut story If you did not listen to last week, let me catch you up, but I totally expect you to go back and listen to number one, because I’m going to just kinda give you a little background of where this story picks up.

So I was raised with no faith. At this point, I am married,  and my emotional eating and binge eating had really taken off. If you go back and listen to part one, you will find out about the moment that I realized something was wrong, when I thought purging was the most brilliant idea ever, it just didn’t work for me, and then why I decided to seek help.

So I tried to seek help with the first therapist, and the concept was you just need to replace wherever you are eating and find a different behavior. So I was eating in my car on my one-hour commute to work, and I thought, “Well, I must just be bored. I better find a new radio station.”

And I found a new radio station, ’cause I love talk radio, and it just happened to be a Catholic radio. And then I would start to listen to Catholic radio even while I was doing runs or workouts, and I just really started enjoying it. I had no idea that I was being unintentionally catechized.

So that’s about where the story’s gonna pick up, but I wanna remind you that the recording of this happened eight months ago, and it almost didn’t come to fruition. It’s very uncut, unscripted. You’ll even hear that the audio is not as beautiful as my audio is now.

So if you wanna hear the story, I have a feeling you won’t really care that the audio isn’t great. And I promised a few of the women in our community that I would finally get this out, so you could hear the whole story. So enjoy part two.

About two years into this journey. I was on a run listening to my relevant radio, and I just stopped. I stopped on the bike path. I was struck, and I started crying, and I know I was struck by the Holy Spirit because I felt the stirring in me. And I looked up and I said, grandma, your prayers, yep, you stinker. You’ve been praying for me.

And I said, all right, I’ll come back to the church. You guys, I know that was the Holy Spirit because number one, I grew up with no faith. Oh, that was a part of my story too. I didn’t even go to, we weren’t even Chreesters. No Christmas, no Easter, nothing.

The only time that I went to church as a kid was I would spend the weekend with my grandma, my birth mom’s mom, like three times a year, and she was a daily mask goer, and she would take me to mass where I’d cry the whole time. I don’t even know why I was crying the whole time. I wonder if I was crying like during the Consecration, which would be super cool to find out.

But here I am on the bike path in tears, three miles from my destination and saying, alright, yeah, I’ll do it. So I came home and I told my husband, Hey, listen, I wanna start church shopping. I wanna go and find out some churches.

And what’s crazy at that point is, see, my brain still thought like, well, I don’t even know. It wasn’t about Catholic. I, but I was like, I wanna go to church. And I asked my husband, I go, will you help me find a church? Like, I don’t know. Do I wanna be Methodist Lutheran? There’s so many, what do I wanna do?

And he goes, no. I said, no, I won’t. And I was like, well, why? Like, I was so offended. He’s like, well, I know what church I wanna go to. Like, he wasn’t going to any church, but he said, I don’t know what church I want to go to. And I was like, roll my eyes. What church do you wanna go to? You don’t even go to church.

And he is like, well I wanna go to, you know, a Catholic church. And I was like, okay, fine. We’ll start there. So we went to, we have two local Parishes, I’m kinda like right in the middle of two. So we went to both of those and then he said, you know what, Denise, I’d really like to go to the one, the parish that I grew up in, which was a 25 minute drive. And I was like, okay.

And I’m gonna tell you, I walked into that church, you guys, and I was home. It’s this old church called St. Agnes in Chicago Heights. Oh my gosh. It’s just incredible and I think part of it is. I mean, the Lord is so good and that he took me to a place where there were four singers, amazing acoustics and just an acoustic piano, and I felt my soul was just filled with the Holy Spirit.

I felt my entire existence and my being just filled with that music. It was incredible. And they just had the beautiful statues. It was a simple church, but it was old. You know those simple old churches that just have all of the stuff. You could tell all of my senses were just consumed. And I said, yep, babe, this is it. Let’s stay here.

Couple weeks later he said, I called, we’re parishioners. Now, I signed us up as parishioners, and I told the associate pastor that you would, and she’ll be calling you about RCIA, which is the, I think they call it OCIA now, but essentially it’s so you can get your sacraments because I’d been baptized, but I never had communion or confirmation.

And I thought that was the most kind and loving thing that he ever could have done for me. I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to become Catholic if he hadn’t done it for me. ’cause you guys know I’m a people pleaser, so I had his stamp of approval. Look at, yeah, I’m still identifying as a people pleaser, but I’m gonna tell you at that point, if he had been like, oh, I don’t think you should do it, I wouldn’t have done it. No way. No way.

So I went through RCIA and as an adult, the Lord just snagged me, man. And we were, I was on fire. I just loved it. I loved it, loved it. So we decided we wanted to be parents. We didn’t get pregnant. I went off the pill. We didn’t get pregnant. We went through a couple rounds of fertility and thank God I had become Catholic during this process and had been catechized during with relevant radio.

So I knew how much fertility work we could do. I just didn’t have regular cycles. I had actually no cycles. And so I knew that we could get me to ovulate regularly, go about the old fashioned way, but we couldn’t remove anything from me or him. And I knew that.

So I was very clear on how far I was willing to go with fertility work, and my brother had adopted a little girl from Russia. He had, his first daughter was biological, the second daughter was adopted from Russia because my sister-in-law has such a heart for kids and animals. And so I saw my brother do it, and I was like, that’s a real thing. It can happen.

And I thought, okay, adoption is an option. So we ended up adopting our kids, my first son and my second son. We decided to adopt internationally because at the time we had a couple families that we knew really well were the adoptions domestically, never came to fruition.

And that was hard to see people that we love who had been on both ends, people who had an adopted child in their home for a bit of time, and then the birth parents changed their mind. Totally understandable.

And birth parents who placed their child for adoption and then changed their mind and then were back reunited with their child. And, remove them from being eligible to be adopted. And so it just felt like so many uncertainties and I thought, I won’t be able to survive having an empty nursery. I just won’t be able to do that.

And so we looked at international adoption, as the sure thing. We knew how to fill out papers. We had the funding to be able to do it. It felt like we could do all of that and we would end up with our child, and I just thought my marriage will never, ever be able to survive an empty nursery. I won’t be able to survive this.

But you know, the Lord is so good. So we adopted our first son, and we adapted our second son three years apart. They’re not biological brothers. It is after my second son, that I really noticed my drinking and eating taking off. I have two kids now, zero tools, and I feel like I have no idea how to handle things I can’t control.

And for all of you who have had children, you know that you cannot control children’s emotions and children have a lot of emotions and for somebody who can’t even deal with their own emotions. How am I gonna take care of this kid? I was fine as long as my kids were happy.

But if they were not getting their needs met or they were sad and I didn’t know how to make them happy again, I just, it was so stressful. I had such a high bar for what the perfect mom was.

And so finally that is what I ended up finding myself in that cycle. Of binge eating, overeating. And then looking back, I mean, my husband and I, we were just really trying, we really were, a lot of our recreation and our date nights were just eating and drinking.

Honestly. We were just trying to both probably get along, support each other, and also get some relief at the same time. And when you don’t have any other tools, but food and alcohol, it’s what you lean on. I just didn’t have any other tools, but the tools were like really diminishing my life, really, really diminishing my life. I’d gone into therapy again. I got to a place where I thought, boy, I’ve gotta try some things.

So I tried so many things to end, and what I was stuck in was this cycle of get through the day. I was a personal trainer during the day and a mom, so I only worked like three, four hours a day. W and not even every day of the week. Get through the day and then find some relief.

And the tool I had was food to like, just get some relief or reward myself for the day. I be able to handle the rest of the evening, and the cycle was then overeat at night, either while I was cleaning up the kitchen or after my husband and the kids went to bed and then feel horrible about it when I woke up for my prayer time in the morning.

Promise I’ll never do it again, and then go through the day being like, all right, we’re gonna like get it together. We’re gonna work out. We’re going to eat right. And I could probably string together four days, maybe five, four and a half, let’s say, and then Friday night would hit. And so then the weekends would be, you know, just kids all the time. Family all the time.

And I did so well during the week. So then the weekends would be, just more drinking, more eating. And I, Saturday morning was usually like, I had a buttoned up. And then Sunday, well, it’s the whole day and I was in this cycle for many, many months, maybe a year where it got really hardcore.

Where I was really reaching to hire other trainers or follow programs. I really just couldn’t trust myself around food. I remember my brother had even asked me to come babysit for him, and I was spending the night with my two nieces at their house. I don’t remember if we had kids or not, but I just couldn’t even trust myself to be in a house with food.

I mean, it was to the point where I’m like, I’ll house sit, but I couldn’t trust myself after the kids went to bed. What I would do, and I was so afraid. I remember buying an online program at like midnight, like, I’ve gotta stop this. I just is horrible.

I remember a dog sitting in college for my friend, my boss going through their pantry and just like eating food, and I had to go to the store and replace the food. I mean, it was just like, I was obviously having feelings, but I just had zero tools, zero, just looking back.

So fast forward to, I was stuck in this cycle and I had no idea how to get out of it, and I was looking for something else. I think I really hit my bottom was Christmas of 2013. My second son had been home for two and a half years.

And I’ve been a mom of two for two and a half years now, and my mother-in-law is amazing. She brought me my favorite, which is her homemade fudge, and I don’t know, it was a pound, two pounds. I don’t even know how much fudge it was.

But on Christmas day, I put it in the dining room with all of the other goodies. And I remember just sneak eating one piece at a time. I’d go upstairs, I’d come back down, I’d eat a piece, I would take a couple pieces. We were all watching a movie. It just felt like I was stealthily, like sneaking eating this. And in under 12 hours, I’d eaten all of it.

Unbeknownst to me because I was just taking one piece out of the dark room, so I had no idea that I ate the whole thing and I felt horrible physically. And then of course, emotionally, so that was my down point.

But I wanna tell you that some of my other down points before that. One was every year for my kids’ birthdays, I would make these super elaborate cakes again. ’cause that’s what good moms do, right? They have to be multi-tiered and they have to be three-dimensional and they have to at least be, you know, like very, very elaborate. I mean, that’s what my mom did for me.

My sister was doing that for her kids. And so I thought that’s what you did. You made your homemade the cake. And not just like a homemade cake, but it had to be like really, really. Exceptionally special, and especially stressful, and take a whole week to make.

And part of that making experience was I would decorate it with several different colors of icing. And if you know anything about cake decorating, you have several different bowls of icing. And boy, me and the icing, we just had a date during these cake decorating sessions.

I just ate so much icing. I remember waking up in the middle of the night one time to go vomit, not because I was trying to purge, but because my stomach couldn’t handle the amount of sugar in my body and it came out blue. I have talked about these cakes. I need to just pull some pictures together, as you guys see, they’re pretty cool. They’re really cool.

Once I got into food recovery, one of the first things I had to do was to decide, you know what? This cannot be part of my life anymore. We’re gonna go get a fancy cake from the bakery as fancy as my, I would let them pick out any cake, and it’s so crazy they picked out like these, like such boring cakes.

But I got to a place where I said, this is enough. I cannot do this on my own. I feel horrible about myself. I’m just, I need something. And then the next thought was, I don’t even know what I have. What do you even call this thing that I do? Is it bingeing? I don’t know.

And I remember at the time there was this commercial on TV for this drug that was supposed to help with binge eating. It was some sort of medication and it was for binge eating disorder. And I was like, oh, maybe that’s what I have. Binge eating disorder.
And when I Googled that, ’cause by this time now we have phones. When I Googled that as I was doing my workout on the recumbent bike, I totally remember the day this thing came up for a 12 step program. And I was like, oh, I’ve heard of this before.

And I was like, is this me? And they had a quiz on their website, 15 questions like, Hey, this is for you if. And I answered 14 out of the 15 questions. Yes. It was clear. It was for me. So the next thing was find a meeting near you and I was like, okay. It was one 20 minutes away. Crap.

But my brain’s like, yeah, but I’ve got my little guy with me. And then it said, childcare provided crap. And then I was like, yeah, but there’s gonna be strange people there. And it was like, and it’s at a church, and I was like, crap. Like everything my brain wanted to do to resist it, the Lord’s like, I already took care of that for you. I already took care of that.

And then my brain wanted to be like, yeah, but you’re not 200 pounds, because you guys, I really was never more than at my highest weight. But that was in graduate school. I think my highest, I stopped weighing at like 65. I don’t know really how much I got to, I’m sitting at about 125 now, and I remember when I went there, I was probably one 40 something, 145, 142. I don’t know. I don’t know. I probably stopped weight. I don’t even know.

I know within the first couple weeks though, I dropped like 15 pounds, like within the first couple weeks. I remember being like, wow, I was really eating. I was eating way more than I realized, and that’s why I just tell people, listen, you get in this, it is just so easy. It depends on, I guess, your level of how much hard eating you’ve been doing.

But when you can have a different tool other than binge eating, boy, that weight just like, it’s like, all right, it can just easily fall off. So my last thing my brain wanted to say was, oh, you’re not over 200 pounds. So I was like, well, I’m gonna call there was a contact lady and her name was Judy.

I don’t know if I ever met Judy in real life, but I called her and I was like, hi, my name is Denise. I was thinking of coming to this meeting, but, but I’m not overweight. I’m not really overweight. And she goes, oh honey, we got overeaters. We got undereaters. Everybody’s welcome.

And I was like, darn it. Okay. Well, Judy said, so I went to my first meeting. I took my son, put him in the childcare area. Normal. Everybody’s normal. When you get into your first meeting, they assign someone to go chat with you, take you in a different room and just sit with you one-on-one.

You guys, that woman couldn’t have been more like my grandma if I had recreated my grandma. Isn’t that amazing that it was this woman who I just automatically felt so safe with my brain and my body felt so safe? I never realized that until right now. I can see where the Lord was like, I already got that figured out for you. And that’s all I left there feeling. So much hope. So much hope.

And I said, well, I’m willing to do my part. I’m gonna do this thing. And I did it. I did it, I did. I mean, like I started then Googling how do you have the most success? How do you succeed? I mean, as you guys know, that was one of the things that really helped me get through life, was doing the right thing and I was gonna do this the right way.

I didn’t know I wasn’t doing it the right way for me. I was doing it the right way, because that’s what you do. And I honestly wanted the results and I wanted this as my tool to get the results right. You gotta find the right tool to get the results you want. And I wanna stop eating my face off at night.

So I started doing what they said. I didn’t eat my face off at night. I found somebody to talk to. I got my support network. I did what they said. And that is why I have so much confidence in the programs that I do. Because all you have to do is what we say. And I know that when people are desperate enough, they’ll do that.

And if they’re not desperate enough, that’s okay too. There will be a time when they’re desperate enough to do it or we’ll coach you through it. But I know that it is a hundred percent possible because when you are in so much pain and you’re willing to do the uncomfortable thing, because being uncomfortable is way better than the pain of where you were, it’s the biggest gift you’ve been given. It’s the biggest gift I was given.

And so through this I did what they said. I learned new tools to feel my feelings. I had new people to talk to to tell me the truth. I had new people to hug me. I had new people to sit with me. I knew people to teach me how to have a new relationship with myself. I had people teach me new tools, different things I could do instead of eat.

They taught me how to be safe with my feelings. They taught me how to express my feelings. They taught me how to access my feelings. I learned how to do all of that. Through that time, it became very apparent that my husband and I had gotten into a very rough spot.

Our dynamics had become so disordered that one day my son said to me, mom, I feel really bad about the way dad’s treating you or what he said to you. And my brain first went to, oh honey, it’s okay. He’s just mad because you guys, at that point, I believe that people could treat me however they wanted because hey, if you’re mad, spew your madness on me. That’s fine. I deserve it. I really believed that.

And through my food recovery journey, the veil was lifted and I realized, whoa, that’s not okay for me to treat anyone like that. And it’s not okay for anyone to treat me that way. You see, I stopped yelling at my kids as much as I was.

I had decided, wow, I don’t wanna be that mom. I had no other tools. But now that I have new tools. I could actually let my kids have their own feelings and not feel like I needed to control them. And this was another layer, was this relationship with my husband. We got help, we’ve healed. We can talk.

We’ve had so many things that we’ve gone through, you guys the CliffNotes version is we get uncomfortable and we know we’re safe to be uncomfortable. And I still avoid a lot of things. But I know I’m avoiding them and I create safety in my body and then I can address it.

But I’ve allowed that to happen. Through this process, I realized that there’s some foods that aren’t helpful for me and I’ve set those down and some of them I’ve added back in and I don’t have a problem with them at all ’cause they’re not the tool that I need to get through life. Alcohol used to be a tool I’d used to get through life.

I choose not to drink anymore, or at least in this season of my life ’cause I don’t need it as a tool. And I found things that I enjoy during events I don’t feel like I want to drink. The only times that I feel like I want to drink is when I’m bored. And then I don’t want that to be my tool that I use because I’m bored.

Because using alcohol because I’m bored or unable to say I’m ready to go, that only creates more problems. I just don’t want food and alcohol to be the tools that I use to get through life. I want it to be like accessing my feelings, being creative, finding new solutions, solving for the real problem.

And so the story continues to Denise, just healing and healing and healing. Until the pandemic hit. And the Lord then really used that time to draw me closer to him and to say, this is what I want your work to be like. Now I knew I didn’t wanna go back to the gym, I wanted to be home.

And he said, your next thing is that you’ve been training people on their bodies, and now I want you to go find souls and bring souls to me and start coaching them and bringing them to me. And I told you I did not want to do that.

A friend of mine who was helping me create this business, I called it turntogodnotfood.com. I love that. I thought that was so clever. She goes, you know what, Denise? I don’t believe you. I don’t want to get help losing weight from you. You don’t look like you can help me.

And that’s how I know I have to keep telling the story so that your brain doesn’t say, oh, look at her. She’s at a healthy weight. Look at her, she’s got a good marriage. Look at her. She’s got the kids. Look at her. And all the reasons that your brain wants to offer you. For the same reasons that my brain was offering me.

Like, oh, the people are weird. Oh, it’s in a church. Oh, they don’t have, oh, I’ve got a son. Oh wait, there’s childcare. Oh, I’m not too, I’m not heavy enough. Oh wait. They accept everyone. Our brains want to resist change. And that’s what your brain might be doing too. Look at Denise. She can do it, of course, because all the things.

But I want you to know you’re only listening. ’cause the Lord wants you to know that he’s calling you to that too. So when I had to just continue to be transparent and vulnerable and transparent and vulnerable and tell you all the things, it’s the same thing that I get to tell you all the amazing things.

And I know I really lean into the beauty, the beauty of what we get to live now. And I really lean into sharing the tools so that you’re equipped. But I have to say, unless you buy into the idea that this is even for you. That transformation is possible, that because of anything that’s not true.

I was gonna say, not because of anything that we do, but we do have to get to a place where we’re like, Lord, you have got to lead me. And in that 12 step group, that’s what I learned. I learned that my life needs to be a hundred percent set down so he can pick it up. I’ve gotta stop controlling the world. I gotta stop controlling it. That’s where I learned what surrender was.

That’s how I know it’s the key to lasting weight loss, being willing to surrender alcohol, being really willing to surrender to being uncomfortable. Being willing to choose to continue to create a home life. That my kids see without addressing it.

Now, it’s one thing if I’ve already talked to my husband and he says, oh, we’re not, I’m not changing. This is the way it’s gonna be. But I couldn’t not address it with him because I was too uncomfortable. I was like, oh no. I refuse to do this to my kids. I’m gonna do my part.

And now my husband may have chosen to not change, and then I would have. A different decision to make or not make, or stay, go, whatever it is, you know, but don’t believe that it’s sweeping it under the rug. Whatever the Lord is bringing up in your life, it’s not sweeping under the rug. And I promise you the tool is not food. The tool that he said for you to get through, the crosses that he’s given you is not food.

And I see that now. We have a family member who is probably in a same sex relationship, and I worry about him, but that’s not my job to worry. My job is to love him. My job is to be a safe place for him. He’s somebody that I care about. He’s somebody that I’ve been entrusted to care for.

And so, at this point, until the Lord tells me to say words or do something, this is what I feel like is right. I think I can stand before the Lord right now and say, I think I’m doing the right thing, Lord, maybe I’m not, but I know it’s not my job to control his future. My job is to keep my eyes on my own paper. My job is to do the work that the Lord asked me to do. My job is to walk with him.

And so I think one of the parts that I want to impart to you is that the Lord has had this all figured out. Once he decided that he wanted me to go find his hurting daughters, he allowed me to create this business called turntogodnotfood.com.

And when I was doing that, I was promoting it via Instagram and I caught the attention of another Catholic coach who said, Denise, I would love for you to come be our weight loss coach in our community. It was a Catholic, life coaching community.

Would you do that? She said, I’ve never heard anybody talk about weight loss the way that you do and about the Lord and starting with the Lord. And I said, yeah, like a hundred percent. And so I was so excited. You guys. I thought I won the lottery. I was so excited to come coach for them.

So I was coaching for them and that was wonderful. And then she said, can you create a, like a program that we can put in our community? That is, all of the things that you teach, can you create it and put it into one program? And I was like, sure. Yeah. So I went to adoration and I said, Lord, what does she need to know?

And he said, well, listen, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna make this program. And he told me what needs to come first, what needs to come second? And the whole goal is to make God your God. So remove anything that’s standing in the way of you removing food as your God and leaning on food as your tool.

So that was the primary focus of the program. And then the secondary focus was anything to make that easier. So like, how do we help you just reorder your relationship with food, be able to just like eat the food you love and not feel guilty and eat it in a way that you aren’t overeating it, right?

So it’s not causing any distress in your life.It’s not causing you to be at an unhealthy weight. How do we remove it from being the way that you cope with life? So we created that program.

And then the life coaching company that I was working for split up, which means that the two owners, one owner, decided to go back. She was called back to a professional job. Something in a high school or something.

And so that left the one owner and that one owner said, Denise, would you like to go in business with me and to just make this whole weight loss work, all the only message that we send and this one place. Because at the time they had been doing life coaching things. They’d been doing mom stuff, they’d been doing relationship stuff.

But now, what if we just help women with weight loss in a way that’s guided by the Lord? And I was like, heck yeah, let’s do it. And she said, the only thing is that you’re gonna have to close your other business. And I was like, oh no. She’s like, you cannot, you know, we can only promote one thing.

And I said, well, if I kept my other business, it would only be for ego only because this woman was inviting me to not only share this weight loss with the Holy Spirit message, but also it came with team of people who knew how to do like Facebook ads and podcasts and all these things. I had no idea what to do, and I was like, yes, because the Lord’s message needs to get out.

And so we started doing this when weight loss with the Holy Spirit was born. But I wanna tell you about what we do now because weight loss with the Holy Spirit was born in that way as this place where we’ve got many people who can get this message out, not just. So I say it. And then they use their tools and their skills to get it out to you in emails, in programs, in videos, in what hubs and workbooks, and it’s all these amazing things.

But then. Last year, one year ago now the Lord told me about a way to make it even easier, and that’s when 63 surrendered was born. So the way 63 surrendered was born is I told you about that program that was created and it was how to essentially like quiet the food noise, make sure that you can eat food, and then you get on with life. Like, let’s stop making food such an issue in our lives. Let’s give ourselves some other tools.

But what happened was people weren’t saying yes. They still didn’t feel that desperation, that I felt like I was all in from the beginning when I found food recovery. And I think the Lord created 63 surrendered as something that’s like a step. It’s like the baby step. It’s like the easy thing to say yes to so that he can come in and work the miracles in your life.

Without having women be at a serious, desperate sense to just be like, things aren’t great. I don’t like the way I’m going. I wanna reverse this trend. Hey, yeah, food is my only tool. I don’t really know how to do the rest. And this was 63 surrender days. It’s those four daily disciplines.

And what I think is great about the four daily disciplines is that they’re already, you’re doing them, you’re already praying in the morning. You’re already thinking about food all day and when you make changes and you’re already usually doing some sort of examination of conscience at night.

And so what this does is it just takes the life that you currently have and says, Hey, let’s tweak it just a titch so that you can start working on this other problem that you have, which is overeating, stress, eating. Being at an unhealthy weight coping with food. It just takes your current life and just let’s just let the tools that you have now, let’s just magnify them and target them so that you can open yourself up and the Lord can come in.

Because I think that’s really what happened. I think that I was so desperate that I was willing to do anything. And what I think when you meet my message here, as many women aren’t that desperate. They hear this and they want the tools. They want betterness. They want to be better. They want this to be removed from their life, but they’re not in that desperate, desperate, desperate place.

But the Lord doesn’t need you to be desperate. The Lord just needs you to be willing. If you are willing to do something, a step toward him, he’s like, all right, I’ll just take that as full permission to come in.

So I don’t think the desperation is what you need. I don’t think everybody needs that. I needed it. I needed to hit that painfulness. But there’s also this concept of a higher bottom. You don’t have to be in like, oh my gosh, I can’t go on another day. You can just be in, you know what? I’m just willing to not let this go deeper because the only thing that the Lord needs is an invitation, and all we have to do inside of us is to be willing.

And so if we’re willing. He’s like, thanks, I’ll take the rest. I’ve got it from here. I’ll do the rest. And I think when I created that first program with him, I was really reliving my experience and taking people from point A to him. And I think what he’s really shown me is, Denise, let’s make this available. To all the people, not just the desperate people. Just the people who want a tweak.

The people who are ready to pivot their life, to use 2020 language. The people who say, I just want something different. I’m not willing to let this get worse. I really think that’s the simplicity of 63 surrendered because the first iteration of it that we did.

I can tell it was a lot of me taking a secular experience I had with the challenge and thinking, how can I leverage this and the excitement and what that challenge had brought to my life and bring it to you guys and to your, the community, and it was very human. But I knew it was divinely inspired.

And over the last year, the Lord has continued to be like, Hey, let’s just get rid of everything that isn’t me. And he has simplified the program so much. So that has removed so many distractions. Like the first iteration we weighed now, there’s no weighing, you can’t get on the scale.

You can weigh in the beginning, you can weigh at the end. Other than that, we’re just distracting ourselves. Exercise, you know, there’s no requirement to exercise. People are getting so wrapped up in trying to exercise, which is great if you love exercising, but if you’re trying to change your life and exercise isn’t part of your life, it’s not helpful. It’s just distracting.

And we just keep distilling it down, distilling it down so it’s so pure. It’s like at its purest sense, it can only be about quieting the food noise, giving you new tools and letting him heal you and connecting you with him. That is the essence. And if there’s anything in it that’s distracting, that’s unnecessary, I think he makes that apparent to us.

And then we just dump it. We’re like, we don’t even wait anymore. We, even if it’s in the workbook, I’ll be like, you don’t even have to do that. Don’t do that. That’s not even necessary. ‘ cause the work is staying with him. I read something the other day that said silencing all that isn’t him is when the soul rests. And that’s what we’re trying to do, lead you to him so that your soul can rest.

Teaching you how to surrender so your soul can rest. You can have a vibrant life with a soul, a restful soul, and that peace. You know, and I wanted to do this. Because I hear myself say often, Lord, I just wanna be a good steward of this gift you’ve given me of your message of weight loss with the Holy Spirit. So much so that I have to be willing to lose it

And I don’t think he’s going to take this message away or take this community away. But I have to love him more than I love the community, which means that I have to do what he wants and to share his message. He said to me, Denise, build the net wide and cast it, and I feel like that’s what this is. It was a really long story, right? Cast it. Just let it go. And then it’s sort of like he’ll catch who he needs to catch. I might be catching you right now.

I do know that the Lord wants this message to live beyond my years, and I think I mistakenly believed that because it needs to live beyond my years, that it needs to be devoid of me right now. That I need to be unseen. That I need to be invisible, and I know that’s not right. That’s not what he meant.

He needs me to be more visible because in that prayer, Lord, help her to only see you. When people look at me, I want them to only see you, and he said, Denise, how are they gonna see me if they don’t see you?

And so I’m almost making a public promise to be more public for him to share his message. I know he is calling me to speak more. Speak at parishes. Speak at retreats. So that women know that they can be free from the prison, they can have peace.

I went on vacation recently was Buffets and the Lord helped me come up with something that was so profound. He said, Denise overeating is a prison. And stopping is the privilege, right? ’cause my brain wants to be like, I’m on vacation, I get to have all the things. And I’m like thinking that sounds like it’s nice to myself, but it’s horrible. I don’t ever wanna live that way again.

And the freedom comes and being able to easily stay, stopped easily to stop, to be detached. To enjoy food and not need it for a tool to show myself that I’m treating myself like I don’t need large amounts of food.

A woman in a coaching call the other day said, you know what? Three times the amount of food doesn’t mean three times the amount of fun. I was like, that is so true. This is an episode I’ve been wanting to do since the 100th episode of the weight loss with the Holy Spirit podcast.

And I didn’t do it. I don’t think I wanted to take the time. I thought it would be too long. I thought it would be all about me, and I know that is the sneaky way of the enemy from trying to keep you and me. From glorifying the Lord more and sitting in his might and just reveling in the yumminess of what he does.

And even if nothing happens from this podcast, your soul knows and has been touched by the Lord. I want you to know what’s possible for you. You know that he might be calling you. I don’t believe the Lord calls everyone to this work, but I’ll tell you what, John 15:16 is one of my favorite scriptures, and instead, it is not you who chose me. It is I who chose you.

And I felt that so much in my life looking back now, where he picked me up from that house and he said, and this one she’ll fight for me and put me over here. I just never thought that this would be the battle. I could have never believed that this fight would be so amazing that this fight would be just so exhilarating personally.

And so meaningful to witness the miracles that he is working in women’s lives through 63 Surrendered is such a privilege. I know it’s all because of him, but I hope for you that whatever you’re going through, I know that surrender is the answer. I know that he has the answer. And the only thing necessary from you at this moment that can happen right now is for you to be willing to invite him in and to be willing to invite him in. Just means you talk to him about it.

So if you’re not talking to him about your food and weight right now, start. Tell him how upset you are, how angry you are. Let him see you’re not so shiny side. He wants you to start talking to him about it. That’s the very first step.

I remember feeling really bad about doing that. I remember feeling like, Lord, I feel like I shouldn’t be doing this, but I really want this to work for me. So I’m gonna tell you all the things. Please forgive me if this is offensive, but I need this. I said I would do what they said and I believe that you know, I want healing more than I’m worried about offending you.

It’s okay. Just talk to him and we’re here. We’re not going anywhere. Weight loss with the Holy Spirit isn’t going anywhere. I will never get tired of telling his story. I’ll never get tired of telling his story into my own brain, into this microphone in front of groups. I hope to be on a big stage someday. ’cause if we have a big stage, we’ve got a lot of souls.

A lot of souls that are just being filled with him. A lot of willing women who say, Lord, come to me. I invite you in. I know you’re chosen because you’re still listening. When you’re ready, just say yes, and if you’re scared, it’s okay. I was scared too. Your brain’s gonna offer you a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t.

There’s no childcare. It’s weird people. It might be just another thing. I don’t have the time. It’s fine. Your brains are gonna offer you that. But if your heart is stirring, say yes to something and that might just be yes to a conversation with the Lord. That’s it. I promise you He wants healing for you. ’cause I absolutely know where you are is no mistake.

I know that He gave you the family. You have the profession you have. Your life circumstances. He knew all of it and he wouldn’t have given it to you if it would’ve required the tool of overeating to get through it.

And you know that’s true because it’s not helping you get through it. Ultimately, it’s making life harder. It’s making all of these things harder.When I overeat and I still do, it didn’t make anything better. It just made it harder. I say that all, just so you know it’s not an accident that the Lord gave you your life and there are different ways to handle it and there is hope.

Wow. There is hope. There is hope. Our hope is in the Lord. And so if you don’t wanna keep living the way that you are, and it’s not great, you can go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Take a quiz, a very fun, simple quiz, and it will show you what your spiral type is, which essentially means what spirals you into overeating, which is what is keeping you at your unhealthy weight.

And based on that, then I make a few recommendations of what your next steps would be so that you do know what to do. Because as you know, secular dieting is not the way to go. It’s never worked. And at Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, we do everything the Catholic way, including weight loss, which just means we keep God as our God.

Not the magic number on the scale, not the magic dress size, not the right food. No, God is our God. He’s a God of order. He’s a God of peace. He’s a God of healing. He’s a God of simplicity. And that’s what I want for you. So go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and take our quiz today.

All right, everybody, have a blessed day.