And, and, you know, just waking up early wasn’t really, that was not the problem. The problem was staying up to like nine 30, 10, 10:30, maybe even 11 o’clock at night. And when I got done I was just feeling so sleep deprived. And when I got done with this challenge, my 14 year old said to me, mom, what are you going to do to celebrate?

And I said, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to clean up my closet, which I did last Saturday, which was amazing having all this extra time. I wanted to put it to something else. So I’m not doing two 45 minute workouts every day. And I’m going to catch up on sleep. I’m going to sleep more. And so last night, you guys, I went to bed at 8: 30. 

It was dark. It was rainy.  And I woke up a few times in the middle of the night. And I always get so excited to wake up in the morning, but it was like 1:30. I’m like, no, gotta go back to sleep. Not ready yet. Finally, at like 3:54, I was like, Lord. Is it time? Can I get up? And I did the math. I’m like, okay, seven and a half hours.

Yes, let’s go. And I’m going to tell you, I’m recording this podcast at 10 in the morning, how to work out. It’s just like, my life is so good. You guys, my life is so good. And I can say that my life is so good  because  I really work hard on choosing to cultivate that belief and to focus on that.  You know, last night I was talking to my husband and I said, Oh, what an amazing day it was.  And he said something like, well, what makes it so amazing?

Or, and I was like, it’s Tuesday, honey. Can you believe it’s Tuesday? I’m recording this on a Wednesday  and I go, don’t you know what happens on Tuesday? And he’s like, no, what happens on Tuesday? And I’m like, opened your eyes this morning. We have breath in our lungs. And then I walked across the living room floor and like this robot motion. And I said, and my legs kept working. I’m like, it’s just an amazing Tuesday. And I was recently listening to a podcast about how managing our mind and being clear and observing our thoughts and choosing how we want to live and living with intention is such a gift to the world. Some people might say, oh, it’s such a luxury, but no, by being positive, clear, open people we’re better able to manage our minds. And I’m going to tell you soon after what I said to my husband, I started to cook dinner and I started to get into this whole pity party of how, oh no  I’ve got to cook this dinner and then I have to cook for tomorrow night because I’m working. I could tell that my brain was starting to go into tornado thinking and to end up a pity party. 

And I have to say, I kind of stuck in there for a little bit. And I was like, but Denise, you don’t want to not do this. No, you want to make sure that you have dinner made for two nights. Okay.  And then I was like, well, then I can’t eat my dinner till I’m done cooking. I had this thought, well, I have to cook for all these people.

All these people, all these people being my son and my 14 year old. Cause my 17 year old makes his own meal. I have to cook for all these people and I can’t stop and eat my dinner tonight until I do that. And then I was like, what are you saying? You could totally stop, eat dinner and then come back and cook or do none of it. 

You don’t have to do any of it, Denise. And then I realized, no, it’s my choice. I want to finish cooking dinner and have clients tomorrow night. I want there to be dinner for my son and my husband. I want to do this. Like I genuinely, I, I really do. I want to be that woman who plans ahead for her family. And if I don’t do that, and I’ve, there’s been plenty of times where I just say, get your own meal or you’re the one finding your own meal.

I’ve done that before too. But for some reason I really wanted to do it last night  and I really wanted to wait to eat my dinner until I could sit down.  And the kitchen was closed. I didn’t want to have to get back up  and I just wanted that to be the end of my night  and so I just kept managing my mind and managing my mind and managing my mind through that that I didn’t have to be huffy and grumpy and  Bang things around because guess what you guys half of the food that I was cooking last night was food for me Because today I have a very back to back coaching day, we have check ins, it’s Wednesday, and I wanted to make sure that all I had to do was go in the kitchen and to the refrigerator and pull my lunch out, pull my breakfast out.

I wanted all that ready for me to make my day easier.  Is that funny? And last night my brain was just focusing on cooking for all these people.  And what’s even funnier than that is that the food that I was mostly cooking, cooking, was the, again, the food for me. And all I was doing for my husband And my son was making salads to go with like the leftover pulled pork that I was going to give to my son. 

Isn’t that funny? And then putting like baked beans in a bowl for my son.  Oh my gosh, just brains, just brains. Aren’t they crazy? But what’s so cool is all of that, that was happening in my brain.  I still really enjoyed the cooking process.  I was not letting anyone else know that I was having these thoughts. 

And I was really just walking right next to me, not shaming me for feeling that way  and just recognizing, Oh my gosh, Denise,  you are having such a pity party  and that’s okay.  And I started to look at all the awesome things that I’d done, all the amazing things because  yesterday was a day that. 

I worked and then I pick up my son from school and the Lord gave me this nudge that said, Hey, listen, when you pick him up, pack his bag and take him to open gym because you know, you’re working tomorrow and you won’t be able to take him to open gym and you’ll want to do that. 

Now, what I don’t know if you know, is that every single day of my life, I’m going to say 90 percent of days of my life or more  like 95. I lay down and I take a nap.  I started doing this, uh, in 2017 or 18 when I was overcoming and healing from adrenal fatigue.  And now I just find that it refreshes me. It makes me so happy.

And every time I lay in my bed, I’m like, Oh, Oh, this feels so good and I just say it’s the nicest thing that I can do for myself. So I usually pick my son up from school. I come home, I lay down, I get back up again, and then I go on with what I call day part two.  Well yesterday, knowing that I wasn’t going to  be able to take him to open gym and I might have some thoughts about that, which I could coach myself through, but I wanted to take him to open gym Yesterday. So I took him to Open Gym while he was at Open Gym. Sometimes I work out, but because I didn’t have my nap, I did not force myself to do that.

So I went to a coffee shop, got some great cold brew, and I worked.  Oh, it was such a beautiful coffee shop. It was just, it was such an unexpected thing because in this coffee shop, it’s a local place. Um.  I almost hesitated going because it’s kind of loud and there’s a lot of people there and  I just find I’m very distracted.

Well, wouldn’t you know, I get there and they have created this little  nook, a little quiet room. It’s very quiet. You can barely even hear the music. And once I put my Air Pods in, I could barely hear anything. It was just lovely. It was lovely. It was lovely.  Afterwards, I went to go pick up my son and I know by experience that if I don’t have a nap, I know that my emotions are going to be a little bit more volatile and I can sink into negative thinking easier.

And I also know that physically, this is the way that I choose to say it, physically I can just tell him a little bit more compromised. And so it makes, of course, sense to me why I would be having negative feelings. While I’m trying to do something that is pretty much  Physically demanding for me anyway, which is cooking, standing on my feet and cooking for like an hour and a half to two hours.

And you guys, what’s physically demanding about cooking actually is not so much the cooking part, but when my husband is home,  he has the TV on. And so it’s the mental.  Really, it just challenges my mental capacity because thinking take cooking takes a lot of thinking and then what if I’m not in a quiet Room, it takes even more thinking so it’s not like I’m physically fatigued as much as emotionally and mentally fatigued From the noise and the mental load and I want you to know that’s a real thing  I remember looking that up one time about  The over, over being overly stimulated and that cooking is one of those  activities that requires so much of my mental focus to the point that to make it easier for me if I’m meal prepping,  which going into the kitchen last night and cooking as much as I did was not something that I.

Often do, but we were out on Sunday and we had a really fun family day on Sunday. And I just knew that I would have to put my meal prepping actually during the meals.  But if I do have a long stint, like an hour and a half to two hours of prepping for the week, what I do is I make a strategy and you know, I should do a podcast on this.

I strategize how I’m going to prep. For example, what goes, um, what do I need to chop, what goes on the stove, what goes in the oven, what do,  what needs to be prepped, what goes on the grill. So I kind of like batch  my tasks within the prepping. 

Which I think I’ll do a podcast on that. I should create a PDF for you guys on that. But anyway, that is my amazing day. Things are just going so well. All right. So now here’s what’s it. What what else is really amazing is that 

I had one on one personal coaching for myself and I was noodling over this idea about this podcast. This is what I actually want to talk to you guys about was about wasting food. And I talked to my coach a little bit and I said, listen, I want to do this podcast about wasting food. And I was hoping you could  noodle on some ideas?

And this, my friends, is the podcast that I really wanted to do.  This whole concept of wasting food.  As I go through this podcast, what I really want for you to do is to  realize  that whatever you believe about wasting food, like just me saying that I know, created some thoughts in your brain. 

So as you listen to me talk about wasting food.  After my  long description of my awesomeness day,

I want you to  just start to observe what your thoughts are as you listen to this podcast,  just start to observe your thoughts. Remember you are not your thoughts, you are the observer of your thoughts and realize whatever you believe.  Whatever your current habits are,  they are.

Let’s just have them without judgment. Just let them be present.  They’re there now. They’ve been there in your past.  But guess what?  You can drop them and change them at any time.  You might not know how to do that. right away. But as you listen to this podcast, you’ll get some ideas. And so I just want you to notice any feelings that come up for you and your body, any thoughts that are swimming through your brain  and know that you can change them anytime. 

The way that you believe things are and the things that you do, they’re not written in stone.  They’re also not written in your DNA. You probably have a, Part of your identity where you think, oh, I do this or I do that, but it is not written in your DNA gang. Your habits, your beliefs,  it’s not like you have blue eyes.

You might be someone who says, I don’t waste food.  I clean my plate.  Those are things you do. They aren’t who you are.  They’re habits that you’ve gotten into. Your brain knows that pathway.  It’s not who you are  and it can change and because it’s not written in your DNA, it can change.  You get to decide  how you live from this day forward. 

You get to decide what you think. You get to decide what you do. You get to decide what you say.  And truthfully, that’s kind of all you ever get to decide to do. You know, we talk about what we can control and the only things that you can control are what you think. And I’ll even give you an out on that because you can’t control your first thought, right?

Like if you  had a tree just come right through your window right now, you’d scream. 

So you won’t control your first thought and you might see someone and have a really negative thought about them. So I’m going to let you just go ahead and have whatever your first thought is,  but you can control your second thought.  So the only things you can control in this world are your second thought, what you say and what you do. 

Now I want to remind you that your brain is really good at doing certain things to the point that you don’t even know if you do them. For example,  Sometimes brushing your teeth or if you’ve ever gotten in the shower and you’re like, did I wash my hair? Did I not wash my hair? Because our brains have these pathways Where things start to become unconscious and that’s our brain’s job That’s what it is designed to do to make our lives so efficient  and not waste energy  And so that’s why it feels like these habits are part of your DNA These beliefs are part of you  But I promise you,  brains can be changed, habits can be changed,  , and new skills can be learned. 

So from this day forward, you get to decide what you want to do.  And part of changing that is just becoming aware. And so that’s what you get to do as you listen to this first pass of this podcast. Maybe you’ll listen to it two times, probably just the second part where I talk about the wasting food and not the first part. 

But I just  think I did that.  And then maybe the second time you listen to this, you’ll actually start to implement some of the techniques that I offer to you. Okay. So I thought a great place to start  would be with definitions. And when we’re talking about wasting food.  I want you to ask your brain, brain,  what do you mean by wasting food? 

Just,  just poke your brain a little bit. Brain, what do you mean when I say wasting food?  Does that mean not eating the food that’s on your plate?  Does that mean not eating leftovers?  Does that mean  Not eating food that other people didn’t eat that’s on their plate that they chose not to eat.  Just get real clear with your brain.

Brain, what do you mean wasting food? And it might mean different things in different scenarios.  This is such a fun place to start.  And if we say that wasting something is not using it To its maximum value, for example, somebody could say, you’re not using your time, you’re wasting time.  See, I like to challenge that concept.

Is it possible to even waste time?  Because I don’t think so.  I’ll tell you, recently I’ve started to get really clear, especially after I did that challenge with my sister.  On  the use of my time that gets me closer to what I want and the use of my time that doesn’t really get me what I want.  And I like to use those  terms for time.

It’s either getting me closer to what I want  or it’s not getting me closer to what I want.  So it’s how I use time.  But can time actually be wasted? Because let’s say for example.  I get on Facebook and I just scroll, scroll, scroll. And I was like, going to just check a few things and be off in 10 minutes.

And it’s like, let’s say something ridiculous, like two hours,  two hours passed by and I fell in the Facebook hole. That’s what I like to say. I fell in the Facebook hole.  Did I waste that time?  Well, two hours passed. So something was happening. I was using that time for something.  Perhaps on some level I was consciously getting what I wanted, which obviously I was, I was getting a break from life.

Apparently I was trying to get away from something and Facebook seemed like the better option. 

And so was I using that time to get closer to what I wanted? Yeah, on some level it could be. And maybe on another level it left some other things undone that now I have to schedule at a different time.  So let’s take this whole concept of food.  Can you waste food?  So if you don’t eat food, is that wasting it? 

Let’s say, for example, Oh, this is a very true example.  My neighbor plows our driveway in the winter.  And  If I bake him cookies to say thank you  and he gets the cookies  and although he appreciates them, knows that it’s really not great for his diabetes and chooses not to eat them,  and like his grandkids aren’t coming over and he just doesn’t know what to do with it and he just throws them away. 

Are the cookies wasted?  Because the intended purpose was to show appreciation. 

What about the food that’s left on other people’s plates? If they have had their fill and they got the nourishment they needed and they choose not to eat a portion of that food,  is that wasting?  I can specifically think of my 14 year old when he was little, it would drive me bananas.  I did not have mind management then that he would not eat the crust. 

Now, my older son ate the crust. It was not a big deal, but he would not eat the crust. And I cannot tell you how many times I want to just wrap it up and be like, well, if you’re hungry, you’re going to eat the crust.  I probably did that several times. I don’t remember doing it, but I’m, I’m sure like me being in the state of mind I was when I was a younger mom without any of these tools,  I probably did make him eat the crust, but it would drive me nuts.

But let’s say he doesn’t eat the crust.  Is that wasting? 

But let’s say it is wasting. Does it matter? See, that’s the thing that we get to go and ask ourselves.  Okay. Let’s say we do waste the food. Let’s say wasting food is not eating the food that’s leftover.  Whether it’s left over from the dinner and it’s in the fridge or it’s Left on our plate or someone else’s plate. 

What does it matter? What are we making?  Wasting food mean  you guys I struggle with this too. I mean, I’m talking to you just as much as I’m talking to me  So for example, I made this coleslaw and I’ve started to make less because I end up throwing so much away And my son, I gave it to him last night for dinner and he didn’t eat it.

He just ate the burgers, of course, cause he’s 14. He had two cheeseburgers and I’d made these sweet potato fries. And that’s what he ate. And he didn’t eat the coleslaw.  My brain was like,  Oh,  I know I’m going to end up throwing part of this coleslaw away. 

And what, what am I making that mean?  I’m making it mean. That was wasted effort,  but  remember that everything  is solvable by either mindset, which is what we’re doing right now and practical solutions.

So going forward, I will probably not make as much coleslaw.  But imagine that you made like an entire  casserole and only two pieces were eaten.  And you think, oh, it’s such a waste. One of the practical solutions that I love with leftovers is to go to Costco and buy individual containers and go ahead and portion it to individuals.

And then I’ve got my 14 year old who will eat leftovers all the time, all day long. He doesn’t even know they’re leftovers. Or I could pull it out  on a Sunday to make it easier.  But we’ve got these individual portions. So it’s just so fun to ask your brain, brain, what do you mean by waste?

And  let’s say 100 percent we’re wasting food.  What are you making that mean?  Okay, so let’s go there. And this is where we get to start to hear voices from our past.  So I want you guys to know a couple other things. Okay. First of all, all the things that you believe  are simply thoughts  that have been practiced over and over and over that become beliefs. 

I know that sounds really, what, what did she just say?  So when we’re born, we don’t know anything. 

And then we’re taught things, we’re taught things by our families, we’re taught things by society, we’re taught things by experience.  We’re taught saying, Oh my gosh, you look a little fat and that doesn’t get a positive result from someone. So we learn to not say those things. We learn it’s not polite to ask your age.

We learn it’s polite to say please and thank you. Again, these are things that we never knew.  They were taught to us.  We learned them somewhere that a thought was developed that it’s a good idea to do this. It’s a bad idea to do that.  And , we practice those things over and over. Here’s the thing is that when you have a thought about something, let’s say for example, it’s not polite to ask someone their age, having a thought is like putting on certain glasses and you start to look for all the evidence that it’s not polite to ask someone their age.  For example,  if you’re a kid, you might see another kid ask an adult how old they are and be corrected by another adult.

So that is confirmation that, see, you shouldn’t ask someone about their age.  Let’s put on the glasses of you shouldn’t waste food. 

So you start putting on the glasses, you shouldn’t waste food. It’s not a good thing to waste food. Now,  those beliefs that you have go unquestioned. We just think they’re truths. No one’s ever said, wait a minute, Hey, what do you mean by waste food? Well, what does it matter?  Well, what are you making that mean?  And you might say, well, it’s wasting money. 

Okay. Well then what’s the problem with wasting money?  How can we make it so that we aren’t wasting money?  Okay. We’ll talk more about that going forward,  but everything that you believe you don’t have to believe it’s optional.  So yes, of course  there’s the Lord’s truth.  And he teaches us things, and then we, as Catholics, choose to believe those. 

I want to believe them. I want to go to heaven  because that’s what I want.  Somebody who’s not Catholic might not say they want to believe that, but we’re not talking to them right now. We’re talking to you.  And everything else that you believe is optional.  I like to call them social should, where someone says, you should believe that.

That is polite. That’s the right thing to do. And you just get to decide, is it right for me? Do I like that? Does it get me closer to what I want? And I will tell you all, I definitely want children who say please and thank you.  I want children that are polite. I want to be someone who says please and thank you.

I want to be someone who shows my appreciation.  I want to be kind. Wait, maybe that is still a Lord thing. 

How about this? I want to wear makeup.  I feel really good about myself with makeup.  Does that mean that the Lord doesn’t love me if I don’t wear makeup?  No, but where I am in my life right now, I know I show up differently when I have my hair done and my makeup done.  And someone could make the argument that, well, Denise, you’re kind of in a public situation where you’re on camera. 

So you do want to look professional. You do want to look made up. And then another person might say, yeah, but you’re working with Catholic women  and they know   that your outward appearance  is earthly and unnecessary. And as long as we comb our hair and we’re clean,  that’s really all the Lord asks of us. 

And so that’s a social should that I like. Makes me feel good. I want to keep it.  It’s my choice to keep it.  So know that whatever you believe,  you can choose to keep it or not keep it.  And know that everything that you were taught  or you learned from experience became a thought. And when you don’t question that thought, you put those glasses on, you look for all the evidence to prove it true. 

You practice it over and over and then it becomes a belief.  And then from that belief, you shouldn’t waste food.  If you do the opposite, like you do waste food, you have feelings, right? And those feelings are guilt and shame,  but it’s  only because you have the thought, I shouldn’t do this. The  Lord didn’t tell you you shouldn’t do this.

Of course we want to steward our resources well,  but sometimes moldy food that people don’t want to eat. It’s just the way it’s going to be.  And I don’t think the Lord thinks we’re wasting or not stewarding our resources well. We can certainly learn from it, but maybe we just learn how to plan better next time.  Let’s look at what we were taught. Let’s go back to your childhood. If you clean your plate,  you probably got a reward, right? Some dessert. You also got another reward.  Praise.  Your brain loved that dopamine hit. Dessert, sugar, and praise, oh my gosh, the perfect combination.

So it started to become very ingrained in your brain that cleaning your plate was a great thing.  Let’s talk about the opposite. What if you didn’t clean your plate?  Yeah, you probably got that look,  that disapproval,  that shame. You were told you were wrong. You’re wasteful.  You felt guilty.  And during this whole time,  we were being trained  to not listen to our own hunger cues.

So does it make so much sense to you why hunger cues would be such a foreign concept and why it would have to be something that you’d have to learn?  Yeah. It totally makes sense, gang. Think of how  that was just  practiced over and over and over and over. You’d have the hunger cue. You probably don’t even remember ever being full  and thinking, I don’t want to eat anymore.

You probably just thought, Oh, I’m full.  But what does that matter? It probably wasn’t even given any value.  Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t it fun to just like really observe, like probably the way things were?  Again,  brains are plastic, there is neuroplasticity, which means our brains can be retrained,  body cues can be learned, we can tap into them,  everything can be different. 

But I love being able to say, Oh, of course it makes so much sense why I’m like I am.  Why have these habits? Why I have these patterns?  That doesn’t mean it can’t change.  One of the ways I see this change a lot is in the way that women talk to themselves and they will call themselves names or.   Have that real big mean girl voice in their head and it just became the way they talk to themselves Until it’s pointed out that oh, wow  talking that way is not getting you closer to the way that you want to Take care of yourself. 

It’s making you feel horrible. And when we feel horrible we go eat food  It’s one of those things that feels so ingrained that  this is just the way I am my self deprecating humor I had a client say it’s optional  You don’t have to do it.  And usually just becoming aware of it and stopping yourself, right? Cause you’re not responsible for your first thought, but you are responsible for your second thought.  Stopping yourself from even saying it has amazing results. I see women within seven to 10 days speak so much kindly to themselves by simply becoming aware of the mean things that they’re saying to themselves and saying, Oh, we’re not doing that.

No, no, no, we’re not doing that anymore.  And so I know that by looking at our thoughts and simply becoming aware,  we can make changes.  But like I said, I always love looking at, Oh, I wonder where that came from. Oh, of course I believe that because you guys, a thought that goes unquestioned  is now a belief. 

And although we say their beliefs, we believe them to be true now, but we can change that anytime.  And I’m intentionally talking like this so that you can get some distance from your past  so that you can start to be a detective, a scientist, and just look at the clues of where your thoughts came from  and why you might be believing what you believe. 

I want you to just say, Oh, that makes so much sense.  I want you to just make sense of it. 

You can see why you grew up believing what you grew up believing the glasses that you’ve had on your whole life. And when you have those glasses on or those thoughts that you keep practicing, you look for all the evidence that it’s true. And you just keep practicing it over and over and over. If you take nothing from this podcast, I want you to take that away.

Like, Oh my gosh, is that even true? 

But now let’s ask ourselves,  is this belief in the way that we’re viewing wastefulness? Has it outlived its usefulness?  Is it getting us closer to what we want,  or is it getting us farther from what we want?  So let’s step back again and take a real good look at where you are now.  If you have the thought,  Oh, I don’t waste food. And if you do waste food, you feel guilt and shame. 

Okay? You feel like, ugh, guilt and shame. But,  Let’s get clear on that.  If you throw  half a pie away, half a casserole away,  your neighbor brings you a plate of cookies and you just throw it away. I had one client who threw away a cake that her mom made her for her birthday. Just threw it away.  If you waste food and you have that momentary guilt and shame, it’s  momentary, right?

And it’s momentary and it feels really uncomfortable and it’s really unfamiliar.  Oh, it just feels weird and all of you can like shiver thinking about it  Okay but it goes away  and I can train you and you can retrain your brain on how to start to get comfortable by  Throwing food away  that is no longer useful  and you might start saying that  this is unnecessary This is food.

I don’t need  I’m learning to know what I need.  I’m learning  to get rid of things that are unnecessary.  You know, we do it with our homes. We declutter the unnecessary  when we declutter, we don’t call it wasteful. Even if we throw it in the trash,  it’s just outlived its usefulness.  Just like these thoughts have, and I know they’ve outlived their usefulness because you want to lose weight, my friends,  you want to lose weight and talking with another weight loss coach. She says, yeah,  You have to learn how to waste food if you want to lose weight.  Now, I would like to reframe that and just say it’s food that’s unnecessary. It’s food I no longer need. 

Now let’s say, for example, you don’t  waste the food and you eat it.  You still feel guilt and shame. That is the paradox. That’s the crazy thing is we think  I better not throw it away because I feel guilt and shame.  But when I, Denise Jelinek, was cleaning up and eating everybody’s leftovers that they left on their plate when I was cleaning up dinner when my kids were little,  I felt just as much guilt and shame. 

Not only about eating food that wasn’t mine, essentially trash,  but then the extra weight that I had.  And I felt guilt and shame about that.  It was just like a no win situation.  And then we get ourselves in these situations where we have this excess weight  and we have this excess weight for a variety of reasons, but one of the obstacles is this belief of wasting food  and eating food because we don’t want to waste it.

So I want to tell you  about, obstacles. When I help people lose weight. And the way that I do that is I say, here’s where you are and there’s your healthy weight. And I hold my hand out like arms length away. And I say, between where we are now and where we’re going to go, there’s obstacles that are standing in the way of you being at a healthy weight. 

And the majority of those obstacles are mindset,  are things like this,  are I eat food because I’m afraid I’m going to waste it.  So I want you to know this is one of those obstacles. So if we can overcome this, which you totally can, I have a hundred percent confidence that you can reframe your brain. If you’ve listened to this podcast this far, I know you want to do it. 

The other thing that you need to know is I want to make the point that the two food rules I have are that you eat food that you like and that you feel good about.  That you eat normal food that you like. that you feel good about.   The next thing that somebody says is, Oh, well, will I lose weight? 

Yeah.  Because the only thing that’s keeping you overweight is not eating normal food.  Eating normal food that you like  is not keeping you overweight.  What is keeping you overweight is eating food  because you’re afraid to waste it.  What is keeping you overweight is eating food because you’re sad, lonely,  Looking for comfort.

Don’t have enough pleasure in your life. So the only pleasure is food. That’s what’s keeping you overweight. 

So eat normal food, my friends. And then do the work  that you learn in this podcast that’s in the Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit program that teaches you how to separate your emotions from your food choices so that you can just eat food that you like when you want it  and stop when you want to. 

Because the only thing that’s making you overweight is food eaten for other reasons.   That’s the best news ever for you because that is one of those obstacles that’s standing in your way. And all we do is address it just like we’re doing in this podcast right now, which is  addressing the whole concept of overweight.

Wasting food.  Until you listened to this podcast, you just thought that was one of the things you were, you thought it was written in your DNA. You thought it was a moral choice.  And I hope by now you’re recognizing, huh, this actually is probably bringing more pain and suffering into my life by me eating food  because of this simple thought  that I might waste it. 

And what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen if you do waste it? 

It’s going to be uncomfortable,  but it’s going to be temporary. 

The flip side  is that you eat it, you still feel horrible and it’s not temporary.  It’s a more lingering pain.  It’s a lingering emotional pain and a physical pain. 

And so we get to decide today  if we want to work towards solidifying the belief. That’s not getting us what we want  in the name of, well, I’ve always done it. This is who I am. Trying to be morally good. 

So you get to solidify that belief. It’s not getting you what you want, but I guess it is because then you just make the choice that this is the human I want to be. I want to carry my past into the future and then still just keep saying, it’s really hard to change that belief.  Okay.  Or.  You begin to change the thought so that you can get closer to what you want.

Knowing that change is hard. Brains hate change,  but so has been living decades being a human garbage can.  That’s not been fun.  So what if we try for the next part of your life to not carry that forward? What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen?  Literally, what’s the worst thing? 

So let’s get clear on the beliefs and then we’re going to get to some practical solutions.  This is  one of the exercises I  think are just so amazing. So getting clear on the beliefs that you have now and how it’s affecting your life. So I want you to ask yourself, and I’ll put this in the, um, the notes.

I’ll put these  questions in the notes.  What does wasting food mean to me? 

What am I making it mean if I do waste food?  Is that true?  So if you say I, if I waste food, then I’m not stewarding my resources well. Is that true?  Well, yeah, you might say, and these are questions the next bit from Byron Katie.  Can you absolutely know that’s true? 

And let’s just go with your brain thinks it’s true. Okay. So I am not stewarding my resources well.  When you have that thought, how do you react when you have the thought?  Well, if I waste food, I’m just, I’m wasting my resources.  You probably feel shame,  guilt,  maybe a little hustly, like, like a little nervousness, like, Oh, I just can’t waste it.  Cause you’re making it mean like a lot. You’re resting a lot on that. 

You eat food  beyond fullness, you eat more food than you need.  That’s how you react.  The next question is what would I be without that thought?  What would you do without that thought?  If you didn’t think you were wasting food, what would you do? 

You’d probably just throw away the portions. You’d probably feel freer.  It’d be a lot easier to stay at a healthy weight.  The next question is  taking the original thought, if I waste food,  I’m wasting my resources.  How is the opposite true?  That you’re not wasting your resources. 

You want to look for the evidence of how that’s true. And I’m going to tell you guys right now, all of you listening to this podcast can tell me all of the mental and physical  things that you have done to the point of exhaustion, deprivation, and punishing yourself in the name of weight loss. 

And someone could make the argument that all of that has been expending your resources. 

And so you just get to see how is it not true? How is the opposite more true that I’m not wasting my resources   by throwing away food? Well, because then I don’t have to work it off.  I don’t have to expend the mental energy.  I just throw it away and then it’s over.  I don’t have to worry about if somebody gives you a plate of cookies, only having one, and then seeing that I have two to three, I don’t have to worry about the mental load. 

I just want you to see that’s just a way to noodle around in your brain to see what’s true for you.  So I want to make a note here about our scarcity brain and the primitive brain. As the primitive part of the brain can believe, I don’t know when my next meal is coming. 

I just want you to start looking at your thoughts 

and run it through the questions that I just asked. I don’t know when my next meal is coming. Is that true? I  mean, all of us likely have  never missed a meal.  Just start to observe the thoughts that come up. What that looks like for me now is when I have special occasions, that scarcity mindset or a special food where my brain wants to say, Oh, I never get that.

I only have it one time a year. Oh, it’s so and so special, blah, blah, blah.  Okay. Is that true? I never get this.  No, when I have that thought, I never get this.  How do I react? Well, I feel like I need to eat it all and I just eat a whole bunch.  What would I be without that thought? 

Well, I’d probably  eat a certain amount, enjoy it and move on. And then how is the opposite more true?  The opposite of I never get this to  I always get this.  Well, actually, whatever that special food is, chances are I could go to the grocery store and purchase it or have someone make it or make it myself any day of the week.

I could plan to have that special food every single day if I wanted to. I could ask that person to make a double batch during these times, take it home and freeze it. So I can always have this stuff. 

So the scarcity brain, the primitive brain, yes, it might be in there, but again, we are the ones who get to step back and observe our throats and see, are these thoughts getting me closer to what I want or not?  So as I said in the beginning, I believe everything is solvable through mindset, which you totally see how your mindset around wasting food can get you closer to what you want.

Or get you farther from what you want. Okay. So there’s the mindset piece.  And now let’s talk about some practical things, maybe you can start to be a little bit more conscious of how much food you’re making, how much food you’re purchasing, and get creative with some of the ways that you can save leftovers, whether an individual containers, whether gifting to an elderly neighbor or someone at your church. Ooh, that would even be a really great idea. Oh, this is one of the things that I like to do. Um, so my family makes tacos. We have tacos. And then what I will do is take the leftover taco meat and I buy corn tortillas and I will make pans of enchiladas and freeze them so that I have meals that I can either gift to someone who wants a meal or Or they, I’ll have freezer meals for later,  but we can be really creative.

Now, if you’re one of those people that seriously is like, I can do none of those things, but I still don’t want to throw food away, then you can investigate. Having a compost pile, whether that means that you put it outside in your garage or, well, actually I’ve never had a compost pile, so I don’t even know how it goes.

Other than I know that gardeners do it or they dig a hole or they have like a garbage can and then you have to like stir it.  I don’t know. Essentially it’s something where people who are really into gardening, they like to do it and then they use it as fertilizer. It’s just really like green thing to do and really good for the earth.

So you can always do that, you guys, and maybe that’s where you start. And maybe you have a neighbor who’s really good at gardening and you’re like, I’ve got some really amazing. leaf fertile soil, or maybe you yourself like to use it for your own flowers. There is always a way to get you closer to what you want and what you want us to be at a healthy weight  period. 

And you want to do it in a way that you feel good about in a way that’s not punitive or restrictive in a way  that glorifies the Lord. 

And so I hope you can see that there is always a way to get what you want. So some of the thoughts that you can start to practice are, I’m learning how much food we really need.  I’m learning to get a little more discerning with our portions.  I’m willing to try some new things. I’m learning to  let go of old thoughts about food. 

I’m learning how to not eat food I don’t need.  I’m learning how to not eat other people’s leftovers.  I’m still learning that wasting food is just part of weight loss.  I’m committed to learning new things to get what I want.  I’m willing to be uncomfortable to get what I want.  And being uncomfortable, I love that thought.

I use it all the time because it’s so generic. But when I say it, I know exactly what I mean. And I might say it when I’m throwing half a pan of a casserole away where I’m like, Oh, this is so uncomfortable.  But guess what?  It’s only momentary. It’s going to go away.  And I do have choices. I could make it an individual containers.

Yep. I could do that, but I’d rather just throw it away. Yep. I could do a compost pile, but I’d rather just throw it away.  And there I see, I do have choices,  but one of the choices that I don’t do is eat food because I’m afraid to waste it.  A few. Nuggets as we end is there is a weight loss coach and I will quote her.

Her name is Corinne Crabtree and she says, better in the trash. then on your ass.  And guess what, friends, you will have to learn to waste food or at least overcome your thoughts about wasting food if you want to be at a healthy weight for the rest of your life.  So I hope this has been helpful. I hope you have had so much fun and I hope that you are part of our 63 63 surrendered weight loss challenge where we are surrendering our weight.

Struggles to the Lord for 63 days by adhering to five simple spiritual disciplines 

And the best part for everyone hearing this today is that we still have a whole week before the challenge starts this whole week. We’ll be preparing, we have a. Few simple things that we’re doing to prepare. So that next week we can start. The challenge.

Part of that preparation is that  this Friday, september 13th, we’re going to be having a live Q and a session. So anyone who is doing the challenge, who has spent a few days getting ready for the challenge, although getting ready for the challenge, doesn’t take several days. But it does give you some time. 

So you can allow that in your schedule, the live Q and a session

is this Friday. So if you’d like more details about the challenge.  Or the live Q and a session, just go to weightless the holy spirit.com. And you can be part of our challenge where we will be spending 63 days learning how to surrender our food waste struggles to the Lord. 

All right, everybody have a blessed day.