Denise: And the truth is that they said yes to this program, and once you say yes to the Lord, watch out. Because that gives him full permission to come in and just do some soul surgery and rearrange your life in the way that he absolutely wants it to be done. In a miraculous way. 

So they’re here to share with you what I just consider miracles. They would probably not say that they’re miracles, but I believe that every woman who is closer to the Lord and has more peace with her food, has experienced a miracle. Her life is a miracle. You wake up every morning rearranged. It’s just incredible.

But before I dive into our interview, I wanna tell you that The Miracle is a result of 63 surrendered. This is a program that helps you end the diet cycle. So if you’re ready to get off the scale rollercoaster and done with living on a diet and off a diet and ready to surrender your food and weight struggles to the Lord, then I invite you to come over to weightlosswiththeholy spirit.com.

We are starting our next round of 63 surrendered. May 7th right now. The doors are open and you can get your spot. Enjoy this interview and go to weight loss withtheholyspirit.com to get your spot today.

Denise: So Amy and Brido, welcome!

Amy: Hello. 

Denise: Let’s just jump right in. So let’s start with you Amy. So before starting 63 surrendered, which is probably a lot of the women who are listening to this, they haven’t started it yet, what were your concerns about trying another weight loss program?

Amy: I guess we can roll back a little bit and maybe you’ll address this later on, but I saw that your. Promotions on Facebook, and I do not buy anything off Facebook because I’ve been bitten. And so I saw it and I’m like, yeah, okay, that’s another one. And it just kind of kept popping up. And then you had that five day trial, you know, just go on our website. 

And I thought, okay, I really feel like she’s walking this with the Lord. Let’s just give it a try. What, what’s five days gonna do? The worst that’s gonna happen is that five days will be over and it won’t mean anything.

That was the most illuminating five days that I’ve had in a long time. I was very sincere, doing it, and I thought, okay, I’m gonna try the 63 days because as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and I saw the trajectory of what could be in that five days. And I have told many friends since then, just try the five days, see how it fits. So that’s how I got onto the 63 day. 

Denise: Okay. And so it apparently fit, 

Amy: It fit very well.

Denise: And you thought, oh well I’ll try this next thing. 

Amy: I want to be very organized person, but I was a mom of seven. They’re all grown up and they all live close by. And now I’m a grandmother of eight. And so there’s a lot of spontaneity in my life that I don’t plan only because they pop in and that sort of thing. 

And so, I started the 63 days, but the key thing for me in it was figuring out the chaos. And at the time I thought, oh yeah, chaos, you’re stressed. Well, I’m not working outside the house. I’m not stressed. And typically speaking, I’m not a stressed person. However, I was doing things very mindlessly because things were busy. Instead of me feeling stressed, it was just busy. 

And so a lot of the basic things, figuring out your chaos, figuring out how to slow down and eat. I am now in a habit where I’ll be out eating with someone and I’ll think You are not slowing down. You are just inhaling food. Stop. and it’s like I now have that mental break that says. Stop. Deep breath. Now eat like you’re supposed to. 

That was huge. But the pinnacle on all of this and will be for the rest of my life, is the surrender prayer and daily. Daily I will. Just say it because something is not feeling right. And before I got on to the zoom meeting for this. I said, Lord, just I surrender any pride that I might have and just use me as your mouthpiece. I will humble myself, I surrender this to you. I am doing that constantly in such a good way. 

Denise: Yeah. I just love that. Thank you Amy. It’s so good. How about you, Brido? Before starting, what were your concerns with another weight loss program and then really why did you choose to start? 

Brido: So my concern was I’ve had a history of weight going up and down and up and down. It just cycles around and then. The other thing about my history is weight loss programs work great until I fail, and then it’s like I can never get started again.

And so, I wasn’t really sure what I was gonna do. I was actually just trying to muddle along on my own and I wasn’t making any progress. And a friend who was. She was in the CNS.

Denise: Oh, celebrate not Sabotage, right? That’s our holiday program.

Brido: She was in it and she was giving me updates and she was talking about breakthroughs in her thinking about some thorny problems she had, and it just really sounded interesting and she hadn’t lost weight at that point, but she was, positive that she was going to, because she was breaking through these areas of stress in her life. 

And the more she got rid of the stress, the less she was focused on food. So, then what made me choose it, well, one was what she had come up with and also My past in the business world, I had done several courses about changing your thinking to get extraordinary results, and I’d had some extraordinary results from that, but I’d never been able to make the transition to how that applied to food.

I mean, I’d be very successful at work in monitoring and changing my thoughts, and then I’d apply it, fit to food, and it’s just, I’d still binge. And, but I thought, well. Here’s a program with a track record of working on that. So I know thinking about your thinking works, and I know you can change your thoughts, so let me see if I can do that in this program.

And then I was also interested in connecting more with God. I’ve felt the Lord calling me to prayer more. And I felt him asking to be part of my daily life more so the fact that. There’s prayer in it. And I just love the prayers that you start all of the coaching calls with. They’re powerful and they have a calming presence in them. So that was what I was interested in and why I ended up joining. 

Denise: Thanks Brito. So back to you, Amy. what has been the biggest surprise for you and what have been your top three highlights or the results that you’re like, oh, I would totally do this again for those. 

Amy: The biggest surprise would be that I like my body and that I’m so, absolutely, can I say freaking grateful? that I have this body. 

Denise: Wow. 

Amy: And when I started this, I would avoid the mirror. I’m 62 and I was comparing myself to when I was 42. 

Denise: I’m getting goosebumps. I cannot believe you just said that. That’s amazing. Okay, keep going. 

Amy: Oh, I’m glad. It really. Like I said I would avoid the mirror. I chastise myself. You could be better at this. You know what you need to do. You just need to do it. Just, ugh. And that’s not coming from God. It wasn’t ever coming from God. And so that was the biggest surprise that, and I think that goes back to that surrender prayer that I yeah, that was the biggest surprise that I was not expecting and so grateful for. 

Denise: And how about your top three highlights or the results that you had? 

Amy: Top three highlights. I am not controlled by a number anymore. I did give up the scale for Lent. And I’ve decided I don’t need it. I had two doctor appointments during Lent, and they were not like yearly checkups. Nothing serious. But of course, every time you go to the doctor, they wanna put you on the scale. 

And I said to them, I said, I’m fasting from the scale during Lent. If you really need to do this, I’m not looking at it. And you can write it down, but I’m not doing. And both of them said, oh, that’s fine. You don’t have to do it. 

And I thought, great. That’s great. I literally have no idea what that number is, and even better, I don’t really care. So that was the biggest surprise. I’m on a little bit of a personal journey to get, just, I hate to say eat healthy because everybody thinks eating healthy is not eating junk.

But I’m on a personal journey, which is a total different conversation to eliminate processed things out of my diet. And I know Brido. I don’t know if you experienced this, but I know a lot of the diets depend on things that are made in a chemistry setting. 

Brido: They’re not. 

Amy: Whole good foods. So the second surprise is how much I’m enjoying and feeling good about putting the food that God created into my body and not substitute food. I think it’s just all. I’m giving my body what it needs, what the Lord thinks it needs. Which side note, the Lord doesn’t think I need carrots. I don’t like carrots. Yeah. And the third one, just how powerful the surrender prayer is. That, yeah. 

Denise: And Brido. So what has been the biggest surprise for you during the challenge, and what are your top three results that you were like, I would totally do this again for those.

Brido: My biggest surprise was about two weeks in, after you coached me I stopped binging and this is the 51st day of not binging and. That just blew me away. Because that. 

Denise: I just wanna tell the people who are listening that you, we have now wrapped up 63 surrendered. So you stopped binging a few weeks into it and now you’re on day 51, which is incredible. 

Brido: Yes. And so my second big surprise was. When it occurred to me later, probably two or three weeks later, that it was the work of the Holy Spirit because there was really no human way that one call with the coaching should have caused my urges to just disappear.

So the reason I’m not binging is I’m not having urges to binge. Or if I do, I think I put in the chat on one of them. I did there was one day I just felt this overpowering urge to stop and get some kind of junk food on the way home from a errand. And I just started praying the surrender prayer and it went away.

But that’s really the only time. It’s such a freedom to be free from that. And so the third one is I think you remember Denise, that you coached me once on, I wasn’t feeling well. I was feeling kind of lightheaded and nauseous. And my childhood pattern from then on has always been that I need to eat. My mother would always say, well, you need to eat something when you feel sick. 

And that had turned into a kind of a trigger for binging, oh, I feel sick. Well I’ll eat something. Well, I still feel sick. Well, I’ll eat some more. And I learned to stop eating. But the other thing that I learned by surprise and again, I think it was the Holy Spirit, I figured out what was causing that.

And it was an artificial sweetener that I was using. I was using a new Stevia chocolate syrup, and that was. A great benefit to me ’cause I could give up chocolate, but I still had a way to have some chocolate that wasn’t too high calorie. 

And I stopped using that and all that. What I thought was vertigo went away and I just thought that had to be the spirit had, I’ve been using that stuff for 10 years. So why did it just suddenly stop me, start me feeling bad, and then it got me to the point where I realized. I shouldn’t use it.  Since I stopped using it, I don’t miss it at all. I mean it like my urge for chocolates gone away. 

Denise: Oh my gosh, that’s so incredible. Okay, you guys, when we started this interview, I had no idea what you guys were gonna say. And when I said the word miracle earlier, I had no idea how significant, like truly these are miracles. Oh wow. This is amazing. Okay, back to you Amy. If you could go back and talk to yourself before joining 63 surrendered, what advice would you give to yourself? 

Amy: Probably the advice I did give to myself, and that was, try the five days. Just explore it, open the door, try the five days and see. How you feel  and there was a little bit of well, you’ve tried everything else. The five days isn’t gonna cost you anything and if nothing else, you’re gonna get some prayer time in. 

That’s how I started. It was well, I’ve tried everything else, maybe this and in that five days I thought oh, this is a life thing and not in the sense of you have to change your habits and make a commitment for life. Not that it was so completely different that it wasn’t focused on dieting. 

It was let’s focus on your relationship with the Lord. ’cause the diet thing is just a symptom. All these, they’re symptoms of something else. Quit trying to get rid of the headache by taking care of the symptom. Let’s attack. What’s the problem? Oh, you can’t see well, let’s get glasses. That gets rid of the headache. 

And I think that, those five days, it was illuminating to me that, oh, it’s not you and the food that’s the problem. It’s you and your relationship with the Lord and walking. Down the journey that he has for you, not the journey that you think he should be making you walk down. 

Denise: That’s great. 

Amy: I heard once, don’t ever say God’s on my side. Always say you’re on God’s side. And I see that when you do something and you think, okay, Lord, help me be smarter, better, whatever at this ’cause this is.

No, what you need to be saying is, okay, Lord, what journey do you want me on? And help me with this and I’ll listen. You lead, I’ll follow. And that really is what that five days revealed to me. And after that it was a no brainer. It was, okay, I’m gonna try the 63 days because I see this is completely different.

Denise: Thanks Amy. How about you, Brido? What would you go back and tell your former self on day one? What advice would you give her? 

Brido: I think I would say that the reason you’re overweight is there are thoughts that you have that result in actions that are causing you to overeat and you need to work through those and transform them and then you will lose weight and the Holy Spirit will help.

And so you remember Denise, there was a point maybe two weeks in when I felt really stuck and I thought it wasn’t working. And that’s when we had the call that really transformed my thoughts, that so I guess that’s the other thing is when you do join. Be sure that you bring your failure thoughts into the coaching calls.

Because often we have the tendency to not wanna say, well, it’s not working for me, and then just kind of stop trying to drop out. But the beauty of this program is that’s when you need to say, I need coaching. I don’t think this is working. And then you’ll work through what it is that’s blocking you, and then you’ll get, eventually you’ll get the results you’re looking for. 

Denise: Right, because there’s only things that are standing in the way of you being at your healthy weight, and so we just address what those are and work through them.

Denise: And for everybody listening who might be a little confused or a little scared maybe of this concept of group coaching, I want you to recognize that it is totally optional. So group coaching is sort of like you come on a Zoom call. Nobody sees you unless you raise your hand and you want to come on and be coached individually.

The coaching is individual, but it is totally optional and you can just listen. If you come to the live coaching, and of course there are always replays available, so even if you can’t be on a coaching call live, that’s not a problem. You can have massive transformation simply by listening to the replays.

One of my favorite things that I’m saying now that I totally believe is true, the Lord revealed this to me, is that when we are emotionally balanced, right? When we’re at peace, when we have clarity, when we’re spiritually strong, right? Connected to the Lord, fortified through him, surrendered. 

Then we’re going to be at a healthy weight ’cause nothing is standing in the way of us being at a healthy weight. ’cause we’re emotionally balanced, we’re spiritually strong, we’re walking with the Lord. That’s all it takes, and that’s what this program helps us do just in a real concrete way by our four daily habits. 

I am glad you brought that up, Brido, about the coaching calls. Each week we have coaching calls and whatever you’re struggling with, you have somewhere to go. Like, we never need to live in a place of feeling despair. Now we get coached on it so that we learn how to overcome that. 

What’s happened in the past is so many women feel despair and quit now, wait, we’re not quitting. We’re gonna work through our stuff so that we don’t ever have to live in despair. Or hopelessness. We’re gonna just overcome all the obstacles. 

So as we wrap up, Amy, what would you say to the woman who is listening and who says, oh, that sounds interesting, but I’m not really sure. I always give up. I don’t know if I could really do that. What advice would you give to a woman who’s on the fence? 

Amy: A) don’t give up on the Lord? He’s not ever gonna give up on you. 

Denise: So true. 

Amy: B). Why not? Why not? But then I would emphasize this is not about a diet, but this is about being able to live your life with the Lord as your compass. 

Denise: I’m gonna interject here because I got a follow up email from Amy soon after this interview where she said she forgot to mention something and I thought this was so beautiful for all of you. She said, Denise, the diet mentality is usually based on quick fixes. For example, lose 10 pounds a week. 

She said, However, God. Doesn’t typically have quick fixes and that it’s in his timing. It allows for adjustment and discernment. She was essentially saying that his timing is just so perfect because it allows you the time to learn new habits, to learn the lessons, to become the new version of you that he wants to craft and create mold. 

She said another aspect of surrender is to be at peace with his time, not mine. I just thought that was so beautiful. All right, back to the interview. 

Amy: And I would say if anybody is well, I still don’t know. I would strongly recommend your five day challenge. I’ve, like I said, I’ve told many, many friends about it because I think it’s peeking the door open to what could be. 

Denise: That’s right. How about you brido for the woman who’s on the fence? She’s just not sure. What would you say to her?

Brido: I would say that the 63 surrendered program. Really can change your life. It really has the potential to do that, and it is in teaching you how to notice your thoughts, write it down, the thoughts that are making you unhappy or stressed or putting into chaos, and then work through the program to solve that and transform the thought.

So that you’re no longer stuck in that kind of thinking. And one of the thoughts in many of our heads is this thought of blame and shame from being overweight. And that’s a thought that isn’t helping you because the more you dwell and blame and shame, the more you wanna eat because you’ve been comforted by food before.

You can change your thinking. You can change it about binge eating. You can change it about eating when you’re not hungry and when you change your thinking, your results change. Your actions change. And then your results change and you can get coaching through this program to stop defeating yourself.

Denise: Yeah. And  I want you guys to both. Tell me if this is correct. The majority of the women who come into the program, and probably including you, are recognizing that you can change thoughts that you have believed your entire life for decades and decades. Would you agree? 

Amy: A hundred percent. 

Brido: Yeah. 

Denise: And if you guys don’t mind sharing your age so people know that you have been able in 63 days to change things that you’ve lived for many decades. Amy, how old are you? 

Amy: I’m 62. 

Denise: Brido? 

Brido: I’m 70.  

Denise: Yeah, you guys, I just wanna say it’s never too late so I came into food recovery and out of my binging lifestyle, if you will, when I was 37, and I just felt like I’d won the lottery. Like, oh my gosh, I have so many more decades to live free. 

And so the earlier you can start, you just have so much more life to live free. But it’s never too late to start either. Yeah. So thank you guys so much for being here. In closing, I’ll give you some last words. Amy, is there anything else you’d like to share with the woman who’s listening?

Amy: I love the 63 surrender. I will say I also have enjoyed having the one-to-one coaching. That has been a good piece for me personally. Starting through the 63 surrender, there were just little pieces that I wanted to fine tune, and that’s been very, very helpful. So if that’s something that somebody going through 63 and they just really want to drill down a little more, I would recommend that.

Denise: Yeah, so the people who are listening, our 63 surrendered program is 63 days for $63, and that includes group coaching one group coaching once a week. And that’s what Brido was talking about earlier. And then Amy just mentioned that if you do want to have your own private one-on-one coach, we have that available as well. How about you, Brito? Any last words? 

Brido: Well, I would say that the thing that’s really holding us back from losing weight is we don’t have peace in our minds. We’re stressed about something, we’re worried about something, and Jesus said, peace. I give you peace. I live with you. Not as the world gives, but as the Lord gives. And I love this program with the emphasis on prayer and the surrender novena, and always asking the Holy Spirit or Jesus to help me. 

Denise: So amazing, you guys. It is the one area of our lives. I feel like so many women have not turned over to him. They haven’t surrendered to him. They have surrendered their professions, their children, their marriages, their vocations, so many other areas of their life, and they just didn’t even know it was a thing to unite their food and weight struggles with the Lord. It is a thing. And we have a way to do that, and that’s what 63 surrendered is. 

And what’s so exciting is that our doors are open right now. Our next round of 63 surrendered starts May 7th. So if you’re listening to this, which you are, go to weight loss with the Holy spirit.com and get your spot in 63 surrendered today. So thank you both so much for being here. 

Amy: Thank you, Denise, 

Denise: Thank you so much. 

Brido: Thanks, Denise.  

Thank you for listening. If weight loss has felt hard, you aren’t doing it wrong. You’ve just been starting in the wrong place. Take our free five day weight loss challenge for Catholic women to discover what’s keeping you stuck. Visit weight loss withtheholyspirit.com.