Hey, everybody. So today I wanna talk to you about being a good Catholic, and loving the Lord, and knowing so many things about His Word, His truth, and fully believing every word of the Bible, and it just not being enough to solve your food and weight issues. 

And this came up for me because I was doing an interview, which I’m going to release next week. Next week, you’re going to hear a woman who’s been in 63 Surrendered, which teaches you how to lose weight the Catholic way, and she lost a lot of weight. 

And we were talking about other things that she’s tried, some other programs that were Catholic, and we just got into a conversation that loving God isn’t enough. And I just want you to not feel like a bad Catholic, to not believe that you don’t love God enough, that your faith is too small.

Because for so long, before I truly surrendered my food and weight to the Lord, I would say novena after novena, and I would pray and pray and pray. You know, I was a convert. I was really on fire for my faith. I was seeing the way that I was eating, and I knew God didn’t like it. And I thought the only thing that would truly help me was a miracle.

And I thought part of that was getting some supernatural strength. And the way I was going about it was through prayer and novenas, which sounds really smart. I mean, I had no other idea how to access the Lord’s strength.

But it wasn’t until I got flat on my back, and I say flat on my back because I got to a place of I’d tried so many things and got to the gift of desperation that I had no other option than to say, “Lord, you take it. I have no idea.” Like, I even took my hands off the prayer.

So it’s sort of a nuance. So hear what I’m saying is I just decided, even praying, I’m not even gonna pretend like I know that my prayers are going to be answered. I’m not even going to put my effort into believing if I pray, then this will happen. I simply said, “God, I don’t know what to do. I’m out of options, and you’re gonna have to take this.”

And I don’t believe you need to get to that level of desperation. But I do want you to simply hear that you can love the Lord, and you can know His word, and it’s not gonna solve your problem, because you’re a human being. This isn’t a spiritual formation issue. This is a, I don’t know how to deal with my food in a way that feels ordered and sane.

This is a, I have emotional needs that need tools and skills on how to meet them without food. This is a. My life feels stressful, and the way for me to not feel that stress is I eat, so I need a way to either decrease the stress or how to deal with the stress without food. And it’s those tools. I don’t believe that our food and weight issues are just a spiritual issue.

Yes, I think there’s a spiritual component, and that’s why I’m saying surrendering and saying, “Lord, I have no clue. You take it,” is step one. But step two, then we have to know what the heck to do. We are human beings living on this earth, and we have to know how to eat, how to let our food be reordered.

And that’s why the tools work. And it’s also why we don’t need tools on nutrition. We all have tons of nutrition information. All of the women who are listening to me right now and you hear my voice could teach a whole seminar on nutrition. And so what we need is not rules, but what we need is just a way to let God reorder our relationship with food.

How do we get food back to being the way God intended? Which just means it’s gonna fill our bellies, of course it’s gonna nourish us, but we’re going to enjoy it. And what I need for women to do in Weight Loss the Catholic way, is to take the food rules that you’ve been taught and let them not be your god.

We’re going to return God as our God and not these food rules as our God. God is our sense of security, not these food rules as our sense of security. God is our God who tells us who we are and gives us our worth, not these food rules of saying, “Well, you’re good if you eat this way, and you’re bad if you don’t eat this way.”

So the way that we approach food is in more of an ordered, peaceful way. You’ve heard me say it millions of times, that our food rules are that you choose foods that you enjoy, that you feel peaceful about before, during, and after, and foods that work for your day. So you’re not just taking a food plan and saying, “Well, this is what I’m gonna eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

No, we’re gonna think through your day, the day that you are living as, and see if that truly fits for your day. But then the other piece is you don’t need more nutrition information. You need tools to handle your emotions, to care and support yourself emotionally. To also teach you how to decrease the stress in your life.

You guys, there’s a lot of stress in your life that you’re putting on your own life. It’s self-imposed. This is a long pause for a real reason, ’cause I want that to land. You’re putting a lot of stress on your own life that’s optional.

And I say that ’cause I do the same thing. I make problems out of things that aren’t problems. I turn people’s words. I make it mean things that maybe they meant it that way, maybe they didn’t, but it’s my choice to decide what I want to believe. We are causing so much unnecessary stress and hardship and burden in our own lives.

And when you lose weight the Catholic way, I teach you how to identify, “Oh, wait, I’m actually making this harder than I need to,” and how to change that I just want you to see that this is the only place that exists, the only Catholic weight loss method that exists that says, “Oh, you as an individual, you have your own life?

You have your own tastes, you have your own preferences, you have your own demands of your life and your own schedule? Why don’t we teach you how to eat food in a way that works for you, that meets the tastes that you like?”

Novel idea, huh? This is the only Catholic weight loss method that teaches you emotional regulation, that teaches you how to care and support for yourself emotionally. That teaches you how you’re creating stress in your own life that’s optional and what to do instead. Isn’t that incredible? That teaches you that you can ditch all of those diet rules because they don’t help anyway.

Side note. I did so much coaching today. I did, I don’t know, I think three hours of group coaching, and then three to four hours of individual coaching. I don’t even know. Just I’ve been coaching a lot today, and the theme that has come up so much is this concept of deprivation.

And what I got a chance to say several times today was that when we are living in a state of deprivation or our brain is perceiving deprivation or restriction, it’s creating lack of safety. Because our number one thing that our human brain does is meant to keep us alive.

And because food keeps us alive, if the brain perceives that it’s restricted or being deprived, it feels unsafe, and so it seeks safety in food, and usually excess food. And so then when you give yourself permission to eat something, which is usually the, “Oh, forget it, I’m just gonna eat all the things,” then your brain says, “Oh, good. Finally.” It feels like relief. “She’s letting us eat all of those things.”

And I say all of that because all of you right now are nodding your head. And when you can be taught things like that where you understand your brain better, you can then work with your brain and understand why food rules aren’t helpful, why creating safety in your body and in your brain by giving yourself unconditional permission to eat any food is the path to stop binging and restricting. That is the path.

We create unconditional permission in your body by allowing all foods to be safe, by learning how to eat any food without overeating it. And yes, we identify some chaos foods that you choose not to eat, but you choose not to eat them because they don’t feel safe.

And so I say all of this because loving Jesus isn’t enough. And I love you, Jesus. I love you, Jesus, so much. And it wasn’t enough. And thank God it wasn’t enough because this program wouldn’t be here if it was enough. If loving him and praying hard was enough, we wouldn’t have this, what he has given us now.

He’s given a place for women to come who love him and who just don’t know what to do, but are teachable and willing, who say, “Well, if you just tell me what to do, I’ll try it.” And I’m gonna tell you the hardest part of doing this work is letting go of the food rules.

It’s crazy. The women who have that struggle the most in this program are simply the women who have the hardest time believing that the food rules are actually making the problem worse. They believe that the food rules are safety. They believe that the food rules are their security, and they’re making a false god out of those food rules.

But when you can learn that God is your God, and you can ditch those food rules, and you understand that keeping those food rules is actually what’s leading you to binge, I mean, my goodness, isn’t that just, like, that little nugget of information just creates so much freedom for you.

And so I wanted this to be an intentionally short podcast for you because I do wanna give you some next steps. So I’ve created a very short, two-minute free quiz. You can do it at Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, where you can identify what your spiral type is. What’s leading you to spiral into overeating? Are you a binger restrictor? And that’s my MO.

Are you a person that gets on the scale, and then you can’t let that number go? Is that what’s keeping you chained to feeling so much restriction and fear? Is the scale a false god? Is that what is throwing you off? Are you a person that gets really thrown off by other people’s comments, or maybe what they’re not saying, they’re not showing their appreciation?

Are you a perfectionist? Are you someone who has to do it the right way, and if you don’t do it exactly the right way, then you just won’t do it at all? Okay, so you can see how you might be a mix of all of these. But depending on what your spiral type is, I’m going to then send you a free, short, mini workshop, so that you’ll know what your next steps are.

So go take the quiz. After you take the quiz, you get a mini workshop from me about all of your next steps, how to do it the Catholic way. So go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and take that quiz, and just know you’re not a bad Catholic. Jesus knows you love him, and I truly believe that even taking that quiz is just a tiny act of worship that says, “Lord, I want to do this your way.

I want to do this the Catholic way. I want to do this in a way that glorifies you and that walks so closely with you,” and you just don’t know how to do it, but I’m gonna teach you that. So go take that free quiz, weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com, and then next week, I want you to come back to the podcast so you can hear a miraculous story of what God did in a woman’s life who decided to do weight loss the Catholic way.

All right, everybody. Go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com, where we keep God as our God. Not the scale, not our pants size, not the magic food plan, but God, returning God as your God. Have your blessed day, everybody.