It’s particularly helpful in self care. Even if you don’t listen to the rest of this podcast, I want you to start to become aware of all the things that you’re saying in your brain. I have to do this. I have to do that.

You should do this. You should do that.  Become aware of it and just start to question it. Think, do I have to do this? No, no, you don’t have to do it. No matter what it is, you do not have to do it. And I hope that it starts to help you relieve some pressure in your life. Now initially your brain will start to offer you all the reasons that you have to do it. 

But truthfully, they’re likely the reasons that you want to do it. Because if you didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t think those reasons were good reasons. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast, especially at the beginning of 2025, is I thought it would be so fun to start practicing this thought as you start a new year.

So that you can start to see, just like me, that everything in your life is your choice. And it’s ultimately what you actually do want. Even if it’s not fun; it is ultimately what you want, what you want over another thing, what you would rather have rather than another thing. A very simple example is I find myself sometimes doing this when I would ultimately rather unload the dishwasher myself than to ask teenagers to do it and deal with their reaction. 

I would rather not deal with all the shenanigans and their reactions, which are just words, maybe a look, maybe a tone of voice, but I’d rather just do it myself. I’d rather unload the dishwasher in peace. I don’t make it mean that I’m a bad mom or that I’m not teaching them good lessons.

It’s just I recognize, you know what Denise, you would rather just do this yourself so then it’s done. My kitchen can be tidy when I want it. I don’t have to wait on someone else. Okay, so that’s just an example of  would I prefer as someone else to do it for me? Absolutely. Do I want to go through what I know will happen because I’ve lived with these children for years, yes.

Do I want to take the time to train my children so that they have a consequence if they react a certain way? No. I don’t want to do that. My boys are 15 and 18 and we have bigger fish to fry. In my home. That might not be your home. So, let’s get into some examples that I know your brain is offering you that you absolutely have to do. And the things that we’ll cover in this podcast are: I have to exercise to lose weight. I have to give up, fill in the blank favorite food, to lose weight. And Oh, I’ve got to clean my plate or I can’t waste food. So we’ll talk about those three flavors of I have to, with regard to weight loss.

And just give you permission that nope, you don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to. Ultimately, you may decide to do that and that’s fine, but it won’t be because you have to.  

Okay, so let’s start with, I have to exercise to lose weight. How do you feel when you say that?  Are you excited to exercise? No, it feels so demotivating. It feels like very defeating. Just the thought of that. You have to exercise. I’m like, well, I don’t want to do that. And I actually really enjoy exercising, but I hate that thought.

You have to exercise, especially if you think you have to exercise to lose weight. Exercise doesn’t sound fun. It doesn’t sound exciting. I just want to offer you, no, you don’t. And then your brain will offer all the reasons why you do have to exercise. Well, it’ll help me burn calories. It’ll increase my muscle mass. It’ll increase my resting metabolic rate.

So I’ll be burning more calories at rest. It makes me feel better. My joints feel better. I like it. It’s actually fun. It lifts my mood, Okay.  But you don’t have to exercise. And then your brain might go on to say something, yeah, but if I do exercise, it’ll help my weight loss. Okay.  But you don’t have to exercise to lose weight.

You just don’t have to. And as you continue to give your brain permission to not do it, it may continue to offer you all the reasons to do it. That it actually does want to exercise, and once you start to see that exercise is something that you want to do, or at least consider that it’s something that would help you, you can tell your brain the truth.

The exercise would be helpful for my weight loss. Maybe someday I’ll start exercising. Exercising makes me feel better. It makes my bones stronger, gives me more energy. But like I said, I promise you, you do not have to exercise to lose weight. You just don’t have to. There are infinite ways to lose weight, so tell yourself the truth. 

I don’t have to exercise to lose weight, but you might choose to. It might have other benefits in addition to helping you lose weight. It might be the way that you want to lose weight. It might be a way that brings good things into your life that you enjoy. But you don’t have to do it. Do you see how different that feels? 

Let’s take another example. I have to give up sugar to lose weight. I have to give up fried food to lose weight. I have to give up mayonnaise to lose weight. I don’t know. Fill in the blank with whatever your favorite food is. And most of the people who come into our community will start to say this once they’ve identified what we call a chaos food.

Now a chaos food is a food that at least at this point in your life, or perhaps in your history, when you ingest it, intense cravings for more of that food, or maybe just more food in general. The other characteristic of a chaos food is that it expends a lot of energy around consuming it, either in resisting consuming it or over consuming it and then the guilt and regret after you’ve over consumed it. And then of course the weight gain and or it’s just preventing you from losing weight. So given all of that scenario, and that can be a very real thing for many women, is they will fill in the blank with that chaos food. I have to give up sugar to lose weight. I have to give up fried chicken to lose weight.

I have to give up  pizza to lose weight. And I just say, no, you don’t. And your brain thinks that there are a lot of reasons that you should give up your chaos foods. And I’m going to offer you,  no, you don’t. You don’t have to give up your chaos foods. You don’t have to give up any food to lose weight. And then your brain says, yeah, but how am I gonna lose weight if I continue to eat my chaos foods. That creates so much cravings for them. Okay.  But Denise, I’m going to have so many cravings.

I’ll always be overeating if I don’t give up those foods. It’s just going to be harder to lose weight.  Okay, but you don’t have to give them up. You just don’t. And we can continue to go down the rabbit hole over and over and your brain will offer you all the reasons why you do have to give them up. And if you don’t, it’s going to be harder to lose weight.

And if you don’t, you’re just going to have intense cravings. Okay. So you can start to see that you do not have to give them up. You may choose to experiment with not having them. You may choose temporarily to not have them, but you don’t have to give them up. You just don’t. There’s no chaos food police.

Will it make your weight loss easier by not having chaos food in your life? Yeah. I will tell you when women choose that for themselves, that they do not eat their chaos foods, they say they find freedom. It feels peaceful. They feel unchained. They feel so much more in control of their food. It does help them lose weight. 

But you don’t have to do it  and you might choose to, but I want you to again, see that everything in your life is your choice  and when your brain wants to offer you, you have to do it. I want you to say, no, I don’t. No, I don’t. But one of the things about choice friends  is that we get to choose what we say.

We get to choose what we do. We get to choose what we think. And we don’t get to choose our first thought because those just automatically come into our brain. But we do get to choose our second thought and what we think about a lot. Some people would call it ruminating, but ruminating has a negative connotation.

It’s just what we choose to think about a lot, what we choose to believe. And a belief is a thought that you’ve practiced over and over. So I want to reiterate what I just said. You get to choose what you say. You get to choose what you do. You get to choose what you think, your second thought. You do not get to choose the consequence of what you choose. 

Natural consequences are just natural consequences. So recognizing that if you choose to keep chaos foods in your life, that’s your choice. The consequence will likely, potentially, I don’t know, maybe it won’t cause intense cravings. But if history repeats itself, it may cause intense cravings. And then you just get to choose what you do with those consequences. 

But you do not have to give up any food. Alright, so let’s move on to my final example. And I   like this one. Actually, I love all of these. Here’s what I love. I love hearing myself say, I have to fill in the blank and questioning that. It just is a fun exercise to wiggle around with these beliefs of these things that feel pressure and heavy and hard in my life and show me that my life can feel lighter.

You guys, I think it’s so interesting that the concept of the Lord gives us so much grace to endure our suffering. But it’s the suffering that he gives to us to form us and refine us and make us more like him. He does not give us suffering that we put on ourselves, that we create ourselves. And part of the suffering that I can create in my own life is the belief of I have to do this, I should be this way being Judgy McJudgster on the way I should be which just creates a Heaviness and a burden in my life and the Lord’s like I didn’t tell you you have to be that way. 

I can’t give you grace to overcome that. I Can’t yoke myself to that. That’s not from me and that’s why I think this is so fun. And it’s the way that the Lord likes to play with us. Play in our brains to help us start questioning the thoughts that come in our brain. And that we can start to align them more with him.

Because he’s never wagging his finger at us saying, You have to do this. When he tells us things that he wants for us, he doesn’t do it in a critical and condemning way. He’s more like, I want this for you. This is for your best. I’ve got something in this for you. I love you so much. I made this for you. I want this for you.

And that’s how he speaks to us in a tender, calm, gentle, inviting way. Okay, so the last example is, I have to clean my plate. And then we’re going to transition into, you have to save this, which is kind of like you can’t waste it. But let’s start with, I have to clean my plate. And what do you think I’m going to say?

Of course you know what I’m going to say. No you don’t. And then your brain is going to offer me how it’s really good. It’s really good food. You want to eat more. I’m just going to eat it all.  Okay. But you don’t have to. You don’t have to clean your plate. You don’t have to finish it. You may say, yeah, but I want to.

It’s so good. I want to. Okay. That feels way different than I have to clean my plate. But the majority of your brains are offering you a different reason for why you have to clean your plate. And it’s usually something like you should clean your plate. It’s the way I was raised.

It makes me feel like I’m not wasting lots and lots of other things. It’s the responsible thing to do,  but ultimately no, you don’t. You can choose to clean your plate if you want. Just recognize it’s your choice and love your reasons for it. You guys, you are not obligated to continue to believe things that you learned in your childhood. 

You just aren’t. At any point, you can choose to change your belief. You can keep a thought, a belief, a habit. You can keep anything in your life that makes your life better. That’s the way you want things to be, that is helpful for you. You can even choose to keep things in your life that aren’t helpful for you. 

But what I want you to start doing is living with your eyes wide open and you choosing what you keep in your life. So if you have a habit of cleaning your plate and you can trace that back to it’s the way I was raised, it’s responsible, it’s not wasting food. But you don’t want to keep that and you don’t want to think that anymore.

That’s totally fine. You can start to practice new ways. You can consider that you don’t have to clean your plate because you don’t. You can start to become a woman who leaves a few bites behind just to prove to yourself that you don’t have to clean your plate. And just even that thought, clean my plate, what does that even mean?

Do you mean finish all the food? Then let’s start saying that.

I really need to finish all the food on my plate. No, you don’t. You could even start to have your brain see all the reasons that you don’t have to finish all the food on your plate. I’m full. I don’t really like it. It wasn’t that good. 

Just don’t tell yourself you have to, because that is not the truth. There’s no one standing over you saying you have to clean your plate. You get to choose if you want to. Now, the sister to this is, I have to save it or truly what I believe your brain is really offering you is don’t waste food. But let’s imagine that you have leftovers.

Whether it’s from a restaurant, you went to someone’s house, they sent you home with food, you made food, it’s a leftover dinner, and you think, I have to save this. And maybe it’s on day five or six in your refrigerator and you’re like, I have to save this. I can’t waste it. I have to save this. No, you don’t. 

And your brain will offer you thoughts like, well, I don’t want to waste food. I have to save it. This is the responsible thing to do. 

I did a whole podcast episode on what wasting food even means September 9th of 2024. So that you can go back and listen to that if this is something that you struggle with. But let’s just look at the thought that I have to save this. No, you don’t, but I’m wasting food. I’m wasting money.

I’m wasting all that effort. Okay.  But you can throw it away. You don’t have to save it. And just by wiggling this belief of I have to save it, I can’t waste it, even questioning it allows your brain to open up to other possibilities because literally, you guys, there are infinite possibilities to everything your brain thinks. 

And you get to choose what works for you. I really, really wanted to do a whole podcast episode based on this thought of you don’t have to, because I feel like so many women are walking around all day long saying to themselves, you have to do this, you have to do that. And I’ve even found myself doing that.

But when I do, now I start to question that. I became aware of that and that feeling of pressure and heavy. It keeps me in this victim mentality that I’m a victim of my life and that I don’t get to choose what I have in my life. It feels like I’m a big taskmaster walking around all day saying, you have to do this, you have to do that.

And that’s just not the way that I want to treat myself. And it’s not the way I want you to treat you as you go into this new year. I just thought this would be so fun for you to become aware of when you say that. And your brain offers you that thought  and you can start to question it because there’s many, many, many infinite possibilities to everything your brain says that you have to do because you don’t. 

You have choices in your life and that you get to create them. And One of the hacks that I have for myself is when I know it is something that eventually I do want to do. I do want to end my life, but at this point I just can’t get my brain to think you don’t have to do it. I will say to myself,  it’s okay to not do it until I’m ready. 

I just don’t pressure myself to be ready right now. And you might find yourself right there in this weight loss journey. You’re just not ready. And that’s fine. It’s okay not to do it until you’re ready.  But if you find yourself saying, yeah, but I actually do want to lose weight. I just don’t know how  I am feeling ready, but I am feeling scared.

I don’t want to try something new and fail at it. And I invite you to come to weight loss with the Holy Spirit, weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Here you’ll find a program that’s very gentle and natural because it is guided 100 percent by the Holy Spirit. It’s nothing you can fail at. It’s the one thing you haven’t tried, turning your weight loss over to the Lord.

And that’s what we have to offer you a way to lose weight. Guided by the Holy Spirit that feels gentle and natural and an entire process and what a process is, is a step by step method in how to do that. A step-by-step method and how to lose weight eating the foods that you love. Yeah, we’re gonna help you identify what foods are causing you chaos, but you don’t have to give them up.

If you choose to keep them in your life, you can still lose weight. I promise you. So come check us out! It is the last thing that you have tried and the only thing that you can’t feel at. I had one client say after our first week working together, she said, this is the first program that I don’t feel like I’m cheating or failing by eating the foods I enjoy. 

And she, my friends are losing weight. So come find out the secret for yourself. This is the way that the Lord wants to help you get to your healthy weight. All right, everybody see you at weightlosswithaholyspirit.com. Have a blessed day.