Do you struggle with being consistent in your weight loss efforts? What if I told you that it’s not you problem? What if I told you it’s not your fault? What if I told you it has nothing to do with discipline or willpower or self-control? I know you’re not really believing me right now, but all of that is true.

And today I’m going to dive into why it’s so challenging for humans to be consistent because of their human brain, and how traditional methods of staying motivated or disciplined just really are working against you, and what you can do instead. 

So let’s dive in right away. If you have that thought, “I can’t stick to it,” there is a biological reason. The human brain wants to quit. It wants to quit. Its job is to keep you alive, and its three functions to keep you alive are to do the easy thing, conserve energy, to seek pleasure, to do things that feel really yummy and good, and to avoid danger, because danger is what could kill you.

And if we look at goals, if we look at weight loss, that isn’t conserving energy. It takes effort. It means retraining your patterns. It means trying something new. It means doing something that isn’t autopilot. Because living on autopilot is what’s keeping you at your unhealthy weight.

And I say that for no judgment. It’s just to say that whatever you’re doing now is getting you what you have, so to change that, it will take energy. And it often is uncomfortable. Anytime we have change, the human brain believes it’s uncomfortable, and it’s uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar. So the human brain does not like unfamiliar.

And finally, it will view it as dangerous. Now, not dangerous like you could die, but there’s a bunch of mental shenanigans that can go on in the brain, things like, what if I fail? What if I’m doing it wrong? What if this doesn’t work? And all of that feels very emotionally dangerous to your brain.

So your brain is really just trying to protect you from disappointment or discouragement by saying, “Let’s just quit. If we quit, then we can guarantee one thing, and at least we’ll stay the same.” And that feels very familiar and feels very safe to your brain.

So you can see why, although that’s not helpful for you in your weight loss journey, it is very helpful for your brain keeping you alive and your brain doing its functions of conserving energy, of seeking pleasure, of avoiding danger.

So let’s just see that our human brains want to quit, and that’s not a problem. You see, until now, every time your brain wants to quit, you thought you didn’t have an option, or you thought it was a problem that your brain wanted to quit. But what if it isn’t a problem and you do have an option?

So often when we believe it’s a problem, then we wanna fight back. And so what you’ve normally been doing to fight back the urge to quit is you’ve been motivating yourself in a really not fun way.

You’ve been motivating yourself through shame or criticism or guilt, and it feels very heavy, and it feels like a mean girl, and it feels like you’re being punished for simply your brain doing what it wants to do. It wants to quit.

And so that fight energy is actually creating lots of heaviness and truly isn’t motivating you. You feel horrible, so of course it’s not working. Or we just quit. And what’s interesting, and I want you to see, that when we are shaming ourselves and guilting ourselves and trying to, quote, “motivate” from that criticism and that mean girl, God would never talk to you that way, ever.

And so he cannot bless that. He cannot give you the grace to treat yourself like a piece of garbage, and so it will not work. Instead, what I would like to offer you is a way to work with your human brain the way that God designed you in a method that I call the Stay Method.

And what’s so awesome about the Stay Method is that it’s three simple steps and that it allows you to be human. The first step is that you simply notice that your brain wants to quit. And instead of going on autopilot and following your brain out the door and giving up, you notice it and allow it to want to quit.

Expect your brain to want to quit. Human brains don’t like challenging things. Step two is allowing it. Isn’t this simple already? And the third thing is being able to redirect your brain with desire, to recalibrate to desire instead of getting the whip out with discipline and willpower. I want to teach you how to recalibrate to desire, renew your own desire, instead of just turning to discipline and shaming your brain for doing what it’s always meant to do.

So let me give you an example of this. Anytime that I am working on an experiment or an observation, and currently, God has called me to experiment with becoming a woman who eats in harmony with her body, which essentially means, hey, Denise, instead of eating all of what’s on your plate.

Let’s get in tune with you to make sure that you’re eating in harmony with your body. Maybe you’ll need more, maybe you’ll need less. But either way, let’s start to turn an eye on your human body and what you’re experiencing.

So anytime that He has called me to an experiment or an observation phase, I get very crystal clear on what is of Him. And what that means is I say, “All right, if I want to eat in harmony with my body, which means that I eat until I feel just right, what is the benefit of that to me?” And what is the spiritual significance of this?

So I get very clear on calibrating my thoughts to the Lord and on what He wants me to focus on while I’m going through this observation phase or an experiment. Anytime I am called to do something from the Lord.

For example, to be able to eat in harmony with my body, I go through an observation phase, and then I start running experiments, and this is called the Holy Spirit’s lab. I absolutely love doing this.

But before I begin the observation, I get very, very clear on what is the benefit of me doing this, what is the benefit to me, as well as what is the spiritual impact and significance of working on this. And so I wanna share with you some of the answers that came through me.

So for me to live in harmony with my body, to be able to eat in harmony with my body, how that would benefit me is that I would have no regrets. I would not be overstuffed. I would feel free and calm, not controlled by food, not finishing my plate. No, “It’s all mine. This is all I get,” or, “This is the only chance to…” Like, all that mind drama goes away.

When I’m able to eat in harmony with my body. I feel detached. I feel in total harmony with my body. I have no fear of eating, and I have no fear of stopping. I feel at peace and trust I will always have enough. I’ve truly addressed what’s underneath eating more or eating to relax more. So I see what’s underneath of it, and I find my real need, and I start to care for it.

And so that would be one of, some of many of the benefits to me. And then I have to ask myself, what is the spiritual significance or impact when I am a woman who eats in harmony with my body? It is I have freedom, detachment, no distraction from addressing the deeper issue. I have healing. I have restoration. I have growth. I have trust and safety with God.

And my thoughts are very calibrated and focused on why I’m doing this. I become so crystal clear, and then I take it one step further and ask myself a few questions. Things like, why is it important for me to be a woman who can eat in harmony with her body? How is this crucial for my salvation? And I keep these answers top of brain.

So then I go through a series of questions diving even deeper into why is it important for me to be a woman who eats in harmony with her body? Why is this crucial for my salvation? What would be possible when I’m this woman that’s not possible now? So I really align my thoughts with the Lord. It cultivates so much desire in me before I have even started my observation phase.

So then when I go into the observation, I keep those thoughts top of brain and I just observe, and I also keep them top of brain as I’m running experiments. And so when you can cultivate so much desire and alignment. And it becomes the next assignment from God. You can hear it in my voice that it becomes very exciting and part of my salvation journey.

And this comes very much in handy for the third piece of the STAY method, which the three steps again are you just notice when your brain wants to quit, you allow it, don’t make it a problem, and then you redirect it with desire.

And you just revisit what I just told you. But I do all of that and all of those questions and all of those questions before I even start my observation so that I am so clear as I go through it, knowing that my brain will want to pop out of it, I know what to tell it instead.

So let me give you an example. So the other day, I had just done about two and a half to three hours of meal prep, and I am in my observation phase, and I was going to sit down and do my observation sheet. And part of that is when I sit down for my meal, I ask myself several questions, just things like taking food notes. .

Okay, so what I’m observing right now is time that I’m eating, hunger level, what made my brain think it was time to eat, how did I know, other thoughts, patterns, or observations, at what point did I feel safe, if eating more wasn’t about the food, what is it about, my fullness afterwards, or any other notes. And so I’m just making these observations.

So the other day, I got done with my meal prep. I sit down, I’m going to eat my meal, and it should be the time that I would do my observation. And I sat down and I just wanted to journal something. I just wanted to sit down and write and journal about something else entirely. It was not even about this.

And I noticed it. I noticed my brain wanted to relax. My brain wanted to be like, “I’m too tired. I’m just not gonna do it this time. It doesn’t matter.” You guys can see that the, what I would write is very simple. It’s not like a thesis. But my brain didn’t even wanna pull out my workbook. And I noticed it, right? The three-step process in the STAY method.

I noticed it, I allowed it, and then I could just gently redirect it. Because one of the other guiding thoughts in this experiment and this observation phase was, I’m becoming a woman who deeply knows herself. I love that thought. And knowing that means that I have got to continue to look and ask the questions and answer the questions so that I can know myself.

And not to know grand Denise, but to know truly what is standing in the way of me being the next version of me. How am I, on autopilot living, actually part of the problem? And unless I make these observations, I won’t know.

And so I could gently redirect, cultivate that desire to say, “This will probably take about 30 seconds to write some words on this paper.” And I could remember I’m learning to be a woman who eats in harmony with her body, and I can’t do that any other way than this observation and writing it down.

And I said, “No, this is what I want. This is what God is calling me to.” And truly, that night it was, I want to be a woman who deeply knows herself, because I also know that there’s only one person who’s gonna stand in the way of me being close to God, and that’s me. And there’s only one person standing in the way of me being the next version of me that He wants me to be, and that’s me.

So I didn’t shame or guilt myself and had I not filled it out, that would’ve been information as well I could have solved for that. But that’s just a simple example of how simple it is to redirect your brain and recalibrate and renew your desire when you are so crystal clear on why in the world you’re doing this.

And it’s not a, “Just remember your why,” because it’s not your why. When you truly do something because God is calling you to, and you calibrate your thoughts to Him, and you dig inside and you find out, “Gosh, what will be possible when I live this way that’s not possible now? How is this so crucial to my salvation? How will this benefit me?”

When you are so crystal clear on that, you guys, renewing your desire is like a cakewalk. And doing that front-end work is so, so worth it. And I believe that if you are not at your healthy weight, it’s because you keep leaving the work or you’re working on the wrong thing. And I hope by now you see that you leaving the work is only a problem because you didn’t know you had a choice.

You didn’t know your human brain will want to quit. You didn’t know that you could simply notice it, allow it, and to do something else. And now you know you can. And like I said, if you’re not at your healthy weight, it’s because you keep leaving the work or you’re working on the wrong thing.

And so for all the women out there who find themselves either leaving the work or working on the wrong thing, which essentially means that where you are and your healthy weight, there’s something missing. You’re focusing on the wrong thing. Otherwise, you’d be at your healthy weight.

And so I’ve developed a new program to solve for both of these. And this program helps you straight on address truly what’s standing in the way of you being at your healthy weight. It’s either consistency or it’s an obvious reason, or you might not even know it.

But I promise you, in this program, what’s standing in the way of you being at your healthy weight will be revealed. Because there’s only two things that could be standing in the way. So if you are in the work, which you will be in this program, there’s only two hidden things that could be there. It’s either a behavior pattern or a thought pattern. Literally, it’s that simple. Your human brain wants to think it’s like a million things.

But let me just say it’s behavior patterns or thought patterns. And behavior patterns are things like. Nighttime eating or maybe even middle of the night eating, stress eating, boredom eating, lonely eating, comfort eating, people-pleasing eating, restaurant and social eating, eating while cooking, eating while you’re cleaning up or preparing a meal, fatigue eating, overeating certain foods, eating beyond fullness, feeling obligated to clean your plate.

Maybe you’re stuck in that binge restriction cycle. Maybe you’re just overeating healthy food. We had one woman who was eating all healthy food, but the way that she was eating was so chaotic. It was not planned. She was eating fast. She was shoving food in. She was eating all day long. She did not have any sort of calm eating pattern.

And when she simply, she didn’t change her food at all, she simply started eating with our three habits, which is chewing your food 20 times, emptying your hands between bites, emptying your mouth between bites. Within five months, she lost 35 pounds. You guys see it’s not about the food.

So that was a behavior pattern that had nothing to do with food. Or maybe you’re eating as a way to relax. Maybe it’s the only way that you give yourself permission to take a break. So many women say that once they sit down to eat, they cannot stop, and it’s because they’re not allowing themselves to relax any other time.

So this program is designed to help you identify what’s standing in the way of you being at your healthy weight, and it’s gonna be different for every single person. And we’re going to work on removing that by addressing it head-on.

We’ll be addressing it head-on in what I call the Holy Spirit’s lab, which is, I have already described it just a little bit. We take a behavior, we observe it, and we run experiments on it. It is that stinking simple.

And if you don’t know what’s keeping you at your unhealthy weight, you may not believe that will work, I’ve seen it over and over and over again with my clients, when we just say, “Well, I don’t know. Let’s just observe. Let’s take a week to observe.” They become very crystal clear on a few things. It might not be everything, and you don’t need everything to start. You just need a place to start. This program is 100% tailored to you.

In the past, I have taken one skill and I have said, “Okay, we’re gonna focus on this for six weeks.” But this program is not six weeks, it is six months, and we’re focusing on, gosh, whatever you need.

So whatever is standing in the way of you being at your healthy weight, we’re going to focus on whatever skill is lacking or whatever pattern needs to be changed, and we’ll probably work on several during these six months, but we’ll do them each one at a time.

And you will be learning all the while the STAY method. We’re going to be learning how to recalibrate your brain to desire, how to renew desire so that you stay in the work. And, you know, the fun part about that is it stays fun. It stays really exciting. It stays experimental and playful, and each week we’ll just be giving a new experiment.

How did it go? All right, what worked? What didn’t work? What do we need to tweak? And what’s so amazing is that we begin all of this work by being so crystal clear on God’s vision of the next version of you. And I’m not saying you in 10 years, I’m just saying the next version. You six months to a year from now. And I’ll show you how to do that in this program.

But what’s so fun about that vision exercise as well is that once you see what the Lord has in store for you, we keep bringing that up in your brain and things start to change just by that vision exercise. It’s pretty incredible. It’s almost like God said, “I’ll pull the veil back, and you’re willing to ask me?” And he just gets to work creating that next version of you.

And then these experiments are the things that we do as our part. Okay, Lord, you want me to experiment with this? All right, let’s see how this goes. This program is 100% focused on you and your journey. This will be me and my eyes on you. So I will help you strategize.

You might say, “Denise, what would you do in this situation?” I’ll help you strategize, but I’m also gonna coach you. I’m really gonna challenge you to maybe go a little farther than you feel comfortable going.

I’m gonna challenge you to step into that next version of you maybe a little bit earlier than you feel ready to, but I’m gonna teach you how to do that all with just your thoughts. Not a huge overhaul on your diet, not a huge overhaul on your life, but challenging you. Because you get results when you practice.

You get results when you have accountability. You get results when you try things, and then you keep what’s working, and you tweak what’s not. That’s how you get results, and you stay in the work. That’s all I have to say, is when you stay in the work, you get results.

But this program is more than just staying in the work. This program is head-on addressing the things that you’ve been stumbling with for decades. And part of mine, I’m doing this along with you guys, is I wanna be free from feeling like I have to eat everything that’s on my plate.

You know, I’ve been at my healthy weight, but it’s just not okay anymore for me to clean my plate every time. I don’t wanna feel controlled by the amount of food that I see on my plate. I’m done with that, and I can already tell God’s healing me of that. I haven’t overcome it yet. I’m still early on in this observation, starting my first experiment.

As you hear this, when I’m recording this, I’m actually starting my first day of experimenting. You’re gonna see that play out live with me. I’ll be using the methods that I use on myself in this program, and I’m gonna tell you, not everything that I try on myself makes it to a program. A lot of stuff gets left because it didn’t work.

If you don’t know, I initially started this lab experiment concept. It helped me lose 25 pounds that I gained during a gut healing protocol back in 2023, and it really helps me. And I’m honing it and refining it and simplifying it. That’s the truth. I just wanna keep saying, how do we make this easier?

How do we make this easier? How do we focus the brain on what truly makes a difference? And focusing it on what’s wrong is not the only way. We’ve gotta focus just as much time on your strengths and continuing to do what works well. So that’s a really fun part that I absolutely love that I have never added to the lab, and now it is added to the lab.

So how this program works is that it is six months. We start by preparing with confession. Because we’re going to be receiving a vision of ourselves from the Lord, and I’ll be taking you through that exercise, it’s important that you are as clean as you can be. And I think it just shows another element to the Lord, I’m ready to receive. I’m ready to receive, Lord.

So within the first 30 days, we’re going to get God’s vision for you, and like I said, it is surprisingly very effective for changing you without you even changing a thing. Within the first 30 days, you’ll also get your first assignment, and we’ll start your first observations.

By 60 days, you will have drastically diminished or eliminated one of your behaviors. Yeah, by 60 days. So in two months, that thing that you’ve been struggling with for decades, you will be doing it at a drastically lower percentage, if at all. And you may have an urge to do it, but it will be more of a whisper than a control, a controlling demand.

So for example, for me, as I clean my plate, I will more easily see food on my plate and not feel compelled to finish it. And if my brain thinks I should finish it, it will be a slight whisper. Right now I’m staring at my lunch with about 85% of it finished.

And I’m pretty satiated right now, and my body feels very safe right now in the amount of food that I’ve had. I don’t feel compelled to eat more to create more safety. I’ve recognized that that’s actually the problem in my brain, is my brain doesn’t feel safe with less food.

So it’s interesting that I’ve done the observation, and this is my first day of experimenting, and I set it aside. I’m not pressuring myself to not finish it. I can finish it if I want. But I feel safe to set it aside, and that’s a huge step for me.

Part of the reason that this works so well is because it will be weekly, and what that means is every single week when we come together, you will have some work that needs to be done. So this is not a program for women who aren’t ready to do the work, and I say that because I want you to know that this will take a good two hours outside of our coaching time.

But that said, people ask me, “Denise, will I get coached on the call?” Yes, you have got to raise your hand. This is a room of committed women that I expect people to raise your hand because when you get off that call, you need to know what’s going on, and I will stay on that call until everyone has been coached.

In the past, I’ve had 60-minute coaching calls, and I just can’t do that with this group. God is calling me to do more, and I’m all in on this program, which means that the women who are also all in, I’m showing up for. You show up for you, I show up for you. You raise your hand, I’m gonna make sure I get to you. You will know exactly what to do. And each person will be different.

Now, I have a feeling that we all might somewhat be working on similar things, but they’re all gonna be reasons that are holding us up. For example, my clean plate is that safety and wanting to feel special. Your clean plate might be something else. Maybe your challenging time is at 9:30 at night. We’re just gonna put eyes on your life. This is for the woman who wants to finally do that, to be free.

So I think I would be remiss in not acknowledging a couple truths that have recently been revealed to me. The first is that I have never run a six-month program purely based on me, and my ideas, and what God has brought to me.

And he revealed to me recently, “Denise, out of all of the women in the world, I have chosen you to bring this message,” his message, and this method to the public. We are the only Catholic weight loss method that recognizes that your life isn’t an accident, that you get to keep your life the way God designed you.

You get to keep the demands of your life, your schedule, your tastes, your preferences. You get to keep your vocation, and this method does not compete with your vocation. In fact, it makes you better at your vocation. And I know that’s true, because we’ve had women in this program of a variety of vocations, including religious sisters.

And so I know that this method that he gave me works for all women in all seasons of their life And that’s what you get in this program. That’s what you get in this six-month program. You get me, the woman that he called to bring this message to Earth.

And I don’t say that without recognizing, wow, Denise, that is such an honor and something to steward which I do, and I feel like I try to do it so honorably. And that’s what I’m bringing. And that’s why I feel like I am so confident that whoever God chooses to come into this six-month program, we’re gonna do some amazing things, and that I can walk with them.

I can be all in because I now know the word isn’t gravity, but it feels like gravity of the role that He’s asking me to play in His kingdom, and it’s to be His hands and feet in this struggle for women.

He said, “Denise, go find my hurting daughters and bring them to me.” And that’s what we’re doing in this six-month program. We’re going to Him, and we’re doing our part. And I wanna lead you through that. This is the method that I live imperfectly, totally imperfectly, totally imperfectly.

But I want to walk with you through this, and I fully trust that the woman who is going to be in the Stay Room, the Stay Room is our six-month program, it starts tomorrow. I believe that the women who will be in this program knew they would be in the program the minute they heard about it. We start tomorrow.

And if you’re hearing this podcast after July 14th of 2026, I want you to email me at [email protected] and ask when the next one is, because we run this every six months.

And I want you to know that I’ve been preparing my heart and mind for you. My heart, my mind, my life, getting ready to help you so that I can be 100% yours, to be a clear channel for His voice, to be all in for you so that I too can meet the other demands of my life but still be present for your experience and your journey.

And I believe that God will bring each woman that He wants. And I promise you I’m ready for you. This isn’t for the woman who wants a diet, but this is for the woman who’s willing to face the real problem. This isn’t for a woman who wants a self-paced program. This is for a woman who wants to be held accountable and on track and have weekly work.

This isn’t for you if you’re scared of change and close-minded right now, and that’s not a problem. It’s totally fine if that’s where you are, but this program is for that woman who’s feeling willing and open, open to receive. And this is for the woman who’s done living on autopilot, who’s ready to observe and learn, and then get to work.

So the question is, do you qualify? I really believe that the best person for this program is the woman who has had some weight loss experience, the Catholic method, in one of the programs that I’ve run before.

But if you’re hearing this and you have never done any of the programs that I’ve had, please just email me at [email protected] and we will see if you’re ready. If you aren’t ready, I will tell you what you can do instead and the next step that you can take.

But just know as soon as you join, you’re going to get instant access to, of how to prepare for this six-month program that I’m calling STAY, because we’re gonna stay in the work. We’re gonna stay with God, and we’re gonna get you to your healthy weight, and you’ll never leave again.

Tomorrow we start preparing. We’ll start that preparation period. You’ll know exactly what to do. So that you can stay in the work. So you know if you’re being called. I love John 15:16 that says, “It’s not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”

And I honestly believe that there are no accidents, that we hear things because God’s saying, “Oh, you’re spiritually ready to know this.” Otherwise, He would’ve protected us, and He wouldn’t have told us those things.

So to recap, if you aren’t consistent, it’s not a you problem. It’s just your brain has never known what else to do. But if you follow the three steps in the STAY method by noticing your brain wanting to kick out, not a problem, allowing it to happen, and being able to recalibrate it with desire and renew your desire, you’ll be able to stay in the work.

And if you want six months to create that consistency, if you want six months to remove the things that are standing in the way of you being at your healthy weight, even if you don’t know what they are now, then join me in STAY. I’ll put a link in the description. We start tomorrow, so get in now.

Again, if you’re hearing this after July 14th, 2026, I want you to email me, ’cause I’ll let you know when the next time the doors will open, and we’ll make sure that you get on the wait list. Okay, everybody. Here at Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, we keep God our God. Not our weight, not our pant size, not the magic food plan, not our scale. We keep God our God.

Have a blessed day.