The Pound of Cure Weight Loss Podcast
Hosted by obesity specialist Matthew Weiner, MD and dietitian Zoe Schroeder, RD, The Pound of Cure Weight Loss Podcast provides a comprehensive approach to weight loss. We cover nutrition, the new GLP-1 medications, and Bariatric Surgery in depth and answer tons of questions from our audience every week. Check out our website for video versions of the podcast: www.poundofcureweightloss.com/podcast
The Pound of Cure Weight Loss Podcast
A Conversation with the Crunchy Sleever
This episode of the Pound of Cure Weight Loss podcast follows Denise’s inspiring journey through bariatric surgery, bodybuilding, and discovering the transformative power of muscle and strength. Joined by Dr. Weiner and Zoe, Denise shares how she’s redefined her goals and found lasting wellness, showing that post-surgery life is about much more than just weight loss—it’s about building resilience and confidence.
A Fresh Start with Bariatric Surgery
Denise’s journey began in 2018, six years ago, when she moved to North Carolina and sought bariatric surgery to improve her health. She invested time in therapy beforehand to address anxiety and its impact on her relationship with food, which helped her approach surgery with full commitment. Within a year, she lost 110 pounds and transformed her mindset about food and body image.
Shifting Focus: From Weight Loss to Building Muscle and Strength
As Denise reached her lowest weight, she realized her new goal was not just to stay lean but to build a strong, muscular physique that reflected her resilience. She shifted from focusing on the scale to prioritizing muscle growth, redefining her goals based on body composition and the satisfaction of seeing her body change. By accepting a slight increase on the scale as a sign of muscle gain, Denise embraced her evolving body and set the foundation for a balanced, sustainable fitness journey.
Creating a Consistent Bodybuilding Routine for Success
Supported by her husband, a personal trainer, Denise started with three full-body workouts per week and a daily walking goal of 10,000 steps. This gradual start allowed her to build confidence, focusing on proper form and avoiding injury. As she progressed, Denise increased her workout frequency and noticed significant changes in her muscle tone and strength, finding new motivation as her goals evolved.
Nutrition for Muscle and Strength After Bariatric Surgery
Achieving muscle and strength after bariatric surgery required a new approach to nutrition. Denise learned to incorporate carbs strategically, pairing them with protein and healthy fats to fuel her workouts. Tracking her food intake helped her develop a balanced relationship with food and allowed her to fuel her body for optimal strength gains.
Long-Term Goals: Muscle and Strength for Healthy Aging
Now nearly 50, Denise continues to set and achieve fitness goals with the long-term view of staying healthy as she ages. She trains four days a week, with muscle-building as her strategy for healthy aging. Dr. Weiner calls muscle “the fountain of youth,” noting how Denise’s commitment to strength training will help her maintain her health and vitality for years to come.
Denise’s journey is a powerful reminder that bariatric surgery can be a gateway to lasting health and strength. Her experience shows that muscle-building and mindfulness can help post-surgery patients thrive, offering them a foundation for confidence, resilience, and a strong future.
The importance of having muscle, especially as you get older and you start aging, is so critical.
Dr. Weiner:Muscle is the fountain of youth. Having muscle, building it, using it regularly, is probably the single most important thing you can do to slow the aging process down.
Zoe:Welcome back to the Found of Cure Weight Loss Podcast. We are here with Denise today, the conversation with the crunchy sleever. Welcome, denise.
Denise:Well, thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me, thanks for inviting me. I'm very excited to speak to both of you today.
Zoe:So we were talking a little bit earlier. Even though you live in North Carolina right now, where's your accent? From what accent?
Denise:I don't know Well, I'm from Brooklyn, New York, originally born and raised I think Dr Weiner and I spoke about being in Brooklyn a little bit last time we chatted but born and raised and I'm here for eight years now, so my accent, unfortunately, is still here. It's still Brooklyn. Well, there's a lot of.
Dr. Weiner:New Yorkers everywhere, so you're probably at home. Yes, I did my residency in New York, so I lived in New York. My wife's from Jersey yes, it sticks with you. Yeah, my daughter's at Syracuse. There's plenty of New Yorkers there, yeah, so we're a New York-friendly family.
Denise:I love it.
Zoe:I love it. So we would really love to hear about your journey, denise, obviously you're a bit farther out from surgery, which I think is really interesting. We'll dig into that a little bit more in a minute but why don't you just go ahead and go back as far as you desire to and and tell us your bariatric?
Denise:journey. Sure, thank you. So, um, you know, I uh I got surgery, uh, six years ago, so in 18, when I moved to North Carolina. It was kind of like a little bit of a fresh start for me, um, away from family and distraction and all of these things, so I was able to really focus on me in 2018. I did do a little bit of prep work before I went ahead and decided to schedule surgery.
Denise:I knew that I had existing anxiety issues which would result in overeating, and that's how I coped with anxiety. I didn't know about all of that at first. So I went to therapy, I sought out therapy with a therapist that specialized in eating disorders even though I didn't think I had an eating disorder disorders even though I didn't think I had an eating disorder but we discussed for a great length, for around eight months of time, and then it was kind of like an aha moment and I'm like wait a minute, this is anxiety and this is how I cope with it, because I never like sitting with these feelings. So I did a lot of that work beforehand, so I kind of had an idea of what the trigger was. So knowing what my trigger was made going into surgery a lot easier and I had more understanding, and it also gave me a lot more grace for myself and understanding the trigger and now understanding how I'm going to change my lifestyle being a bariatric patient and by kind of like marrying it together.
Denise:So I had surgery in North Carolina in 2018 and I was so on board I out psychology exam. Um, I had tried to get bariatric surgery once before in New York. When, in around 2014, went to NYU, I failed the psychiatric portion and she said I do not recommend that you have surgery. Um, and she gave me all the reasons why and I almost I was testing her because I was being very real and I was saying just exactly how I felt and she said I'm not approving you. So it was a big eye opener. So I had a lot of work to do, which I did, and, um, I committed to the program Um and I was just determined. I just knew if I was going to have the surgery, if I was going to have part of my anatomy removed, then I'm going to take this serious.
Denise:So, which I did, and I committed and I lost my weight within a year. A little less than a year, I lost 110 pounds. I was originally at 250 pounds. I got down to about 139 and I'm five three. So for my body frame I I felt it was a little too lean for for for me, um, so then I was okay, I got as low as I could and now I need to find my happy spot, my happy place.
Denise:So, which is scary for a bariatric patient because normally we've been on diets and up and down, and up and down and trying to find that little happy weight is going to see an, you know, an increase in on the scale and that could be a bit of a panic for bariatric patients. But I was really committed to my behavior change and understanding the why, really tapping into my hunger and my fullness really saved me. To this day. I'm still able to pause, take a second, but let let the brain and my stomach connect for a second. Am I still hungry? Do I still have room? Um, so that's really the, those behaviors that I really committed to in the beginning and in that first year truly changed my life and it truly changed my relationship with food and how I use it, how I view it, how I approach it, and it's carried me all these years moving forward.
Zoe:That's amazing. Will you talk a little bit more about how you were able to shift your feeling of success or progress even from no longer wanting to see that lowest weight, and did your shift towards fitness happen around that time? And what were you using as non-scale measures of success to help you not feel so scared of seeing that number go up?
Denise:Well, developing strength in the gym and seeing my body respond to my fitness program. So I went from being very lean to I don't want to say more of like a hollow kind of look to my body to a more rounded, filled out, muscular physique. That's what I was more going for. Everyone has their ideal. My ideal is a shapely figure. I want to have shape. I don't want to just be straight up and down. And if you want to be straight up and down, that's fine. That's, you know, to each their own, you know.
Denise:But I like to have shape and curves. So, understanding when you want to have shape and curves, that's going to Allocate. You know, weight differently and it's going to show a little bit differently up on the scale. Um, as long as my pants still fit me, and weight differently, and it's going to show a little bit differently up on the scale as long as my pants still fit me, even at my 139 pound weight, and it still fit me when I was up to the 150, to me that means I was recomping the right way. If I wasn't moving into different sizes, even though my body was changing and growing muscle, I was okay with that.
Zoe:And I just want to back up for a second. You said recomping, so for those who are listening, who are maybe not familiar with that term, that's short for body recomposition, which is basically building muscle, losing body fat to change the composition of your body, which you've, you've clearly done.
Denise:Yeah. And then you know, doing that along with you know, eating, um, carbs again, you know you, ha, you have to hide, you have to fuel your body in a certain way, so that's going to have that result that you want. And so you know it's. It's scary to say, all right, I'm going to have, you know, some, uh, let's, let's say quinoa, that's a carb. So in our diet culture, trained brain, oh no.
Denise:And you get your little packet from your bariatric surgeon. You can't have carbs. And it's like, oh my God, what am I going to do? The whole world is you know, I you don't, you just don't know. And then, once you understand and you learn how to eat, okay, yes, you're going to have some carb, but you're also going to pair it with protein and you're also going to pair it with some fat so that it does what it's supposed to do. That was the biggest learning for me was, if I want to have a carb, let's say a rice cracker Trader Joe's has these great rice crackers, right, they're very, very tasty. But I know if I just eat those I'm going to be hungry again in a matter of minutes. But if I pair it with a little fat and a little protein, I'm set for a couple hours, so allowing myself to eat food. That was scary, but with a new understanding that it's going to help fuel my body and shape it the way I want.
Zoe:Yeah, that's really great. My body and shape it the way I want. Yeah, that's really great. That speaks to the work that you've done to change your relationship with food.
Dr. Weiner:There's so many things I love about your story, Denise. I think, first of all, you really trusted the process. You kind of went through it and you were honest with the psychologist.
Dr. Weiner:It sounds to me like you weren't failed, but maybe they were like hey, listen, maybe you got a little bit of work to do before this happens. That's usually how that conversation goes. It doesn't go. I'm sorry you failed. You can't have bariatric surgery. It's usually a little friendly and kinder and I'm hopeful that yours was.
Dr. Weiner:Nyu is where I trained, so I know that that plays. I know that the program it's a quality program. But I love, first of all, that you trusted the process and I think the other thing that I really love that I'm hearing is that you're very intentional and very present with your decisions, with how you've chosen to use fitness, and we haven't gotten there. I think that's going to be interesting to talk about how you've used fitness, how you've adjusted to use fitness, and we haven't gotten there. I think that's going to be interesting to talk about, um, how you've used fitness, how you've adjusted your diet away from kind of the, the, the no carbs ever packet that people give, um. So I love all that intentional stuff, so I gotta, I gotta turn that off.
Zoe:Yeah, thank you, it was.
Dr. Weiner:I knew that I had to wow. I gotta turn that off.
Denise:Yeah, thank you. I knew that I had to make a shift for this to be long lasting. I just had to do the work and just execute, you know, and if you don't get it that one day, then you do it the next day. So, um, but what were?
Dr. Weiner:some things that made. That was the most helpful about that process, about that shift. Like you started out and you're like, okay, I'm not ready, I have anxiety. And then you got to the place where, all of a sudden, you were ready for surgery and then have really demonstrated you know kind of ideal postoperative behaviors. What helped you get there? How'd you get from point A to point B?
Denise:So, from point A to point B really was having that identifying factor of my trigger was anxiety and identifying how I coped with it. So understanding how to deal with, so understanding how to deal with those uncomfortable moments that we all have throughout the day. If I count them on my hand, you know countless uncomfortable moments throughout the day that, just as human beings have, it's just how we respond to them. So I was. I trained my body to always, you know, seek out comfort, because if it hurts just a little bit, I don't want to feel that. So I would seek out oh, I need a snack, I need this, whatever you know, always chasing, I guess, the dopamine, you know effects to, you know, kind of calm it down.
Denise:But for me, the biggest thing was instituting a no eating in my car, no drive-thru, and I also calculated how much I spent on drive-thru and it was not pretty. So it was a financial type of aha like oh my gosh, what is going on Eating secretly in my car? That's a behavior that I didn't want to continue and eliminating, you know, drive through, because no one knows about it. So you know what you don't see, no one knows. So it's only between me and the and the drive-through parts.
Denise:But, um, working on that first really helped separate myself from the feeling, the moment, and pushing the pause button I was able to start learning to hold on a second, what's going on, what am I nervous about, what's the anxiety for? And then learning to kind of like dissect it. Is this something I can do? Is this something I can change? Is this something that I can take care of at this moment? If it's not in my control, then I have to let it go. So understanding those four like tenets for me and practicing those really helped me prepare myself going into surgery, because why do I have to destroy my body over something that's out of my control?
Dr. Weiner:I think anxiety is really the result of taking a caveman brain and sticking it in a modern world. And since all of us have, to some degree caveman brain and all of us live in a modern world, the cor all of us have to some degree caveman brain and all of us live in a modern world. The corollary of that is that all of us have anxiety. There's not a person on the planet who doesn't struggle with anxiety. I struggle with it, everybody has it. If you don't have it, I don't know, there's probably a few people out there, but very few. And so what else I'm hearing that I really love about your experience is that you apply discipline and you were kind of very thoughtful and applied essentially a modern day approach. And you know, the first was discipline I'm not going to eat my car. You came up with a financial reason. There were obviously health reasons as well, and you made that promise to yourself. And that's something that's, I think, so important about discipline is that you know with, if you live your life in a very undisciplined way, just kind of giving into that caveman brain, then you're going to it's going to make the anxiety worse, and it's that discipline, that promise you make to yourself. That sometimes is one of the best ways to really manage anxiety, and I love how thoughtful you were about that and I also love this idea of just being present.
Dr. Weiner:And you know, anxiety is a problem that you can't solve and so torturing yourself over an unsolvable problem, recognizing, hey, this isn't something I can fix right now, so just stop worrying about it Exactly Right Cause it just makes it worse. It doesn't help. Freaking out about a problem that you can't change Doesn't help. It actually makes you far less able to solve the problem when it does come your way, absolutely the problem when it does come your way. That intentionality is just. It's so hard, it's so. You put a lot of effort into this, didn't you? Oh yeah.
Denise:I mean, developing self-awareness is hard, you know, because we don't. We don't want to be wrong, we don't want to be, we don't want to think of ourselves in a light that's wait, wait, a minute, maybe I'm not doing, maybe it's me, you know, we don't want to be, we don't want to think of ourselves in a light that's wait, wait, a minute, maybe I'm not doing, maybe it's me, you know, we don't want to think that, you know. But I was so tired of quitting. I was a professional quitter and when you get to that point, you just don't want to do that anymore, you know. So, with the big stakes of having surgery and I mean there's risks involved you have a family and you know you you better take it serious. So for me, it's like this is it, this is showtime. There's no, there's no, there is no going back. And I took it super serious and I promised myself that I was not going to quit on myself. And thank God, you know, thank God we're here.
Zoe:So talk to us about how you came into fitness, obviously with the intention of building muscle, creating the shape that you wanted. But what? What was that transition Like? How did you get to the place that you're at now and what is what does your fitness look like now?
Denise:so I've been. I'm very blessed and I'm very fortunate to be married to a personal trainer, so he was in charge of it from day one. Um, and he is, uh, he's been a trainer for over 20 years and train people in shows and competitions and things like that. And, and you know, when you're married, it's like, oh yeah, leave me alone. Yeah, I got it and leave me alone. But when? When it was, you know, now time for me to like, kind of like, take everything seriously, and he wrote out every plan that I've ever been and he started off slowly. He didn't give me anything crazy. He didn't have me bouncing off the walls or doing combination moves. I was a 250 pound body that needed to learn technique, how to, how to move it, how to move weight and do it safely. His major key was safety. I don't want you getting hurt and you're going to learn how to do things correctly and I do things to this day that I still did on day one, because when you learn certain core movements, it will be a part of your routine pretty much all the time. So just developing that those, those rules, was let's learn to do movement safely, and then we just keep building and building and building upon that.
Denise:So you know, my beginning program was, I think, three days a week and it was full body for three. You know, full body, three days a week. And I walked. Walking helped me so much in the beginning. Um, I dedicated, uh, 10,000 steps a day for five days a week. That kept me really motivated and going, because even on the days I didn't train I still made sure I got out there and walk and that was a huge commitment. So that was around um.
Denise:So I had surgery in August and around October, I think, was when it was, I got full clearance to do, you know, more weight than what I was given. Um, and then from October to January, I started to see like a significant change in my body. I never thought I'd see any muscle development or anything. And then, by January of 19, I started to see, oh, there's some possibility here. So then I said, okay, let's do five days a week. So we had a five day training split.
Denise:So it was all organized a certain way. I had a plan let's lose weight, let's gain muscle, and that's what I did. And so that was in the beginning. I trained way more aggressively in the beginning. I still did cardio, I did fit before I would train and all this stuff, and I got real lean and very muscular. And it was like an alien. I didn't know who I was looking at and, um, I wasn't. I was just so like surreal, like I've never seen my body, in that you know condition before. So when you get super lean, um, certain areas of your body also become very, very lean and flat, um, so I was like, okay, let's do a little backtracking and I want to fill in certain areas. So it was important to create the shape that I want Get them glutes back huh Booty back Cause it went away, went somewhere else.
Denise:Um, so you know that was, and again that, and that's when the nutrition piece ties into that, and when you purposely want to, you know, create that shape, you have to eat a little bit differently and, um, and it's been the same. You know that's what I've been doing all along. Um, I'm older now, I will be 50 in three weeks, so I was younger I was.
Denise:Uh, you know your body's different at 44 than it is at 50. So, but so far so good. I'm still as strong or stronger than I was when I first started. So that's just the key. For me it's not so much about. You know. Obviously, health reasons and the importance of having muscle, especially as you get older and you start aging, is so critical. And my parents, you know they've broken bones. My mom has broken both her hips and I want to have a different outcome when I'm 80. You know I'm doing this now for when I'm 80.
Dr. Weiner:Muscle is the fountain of youth. Having muscle, building it, using it regularly, is probably the single most important thing you can do to slow the aging process down. And so you know, it sounds like you've really kind of dialed in on that. I'd love to see that.
Denise:Yeah, I'm sold out for it, I really am. But so my training schedule now is kind of like four days a week and you know, we change things up a little bit. When I first started training, I was at a plan of fitness, which is fine and it suited me very well. I went to a plan of fitness that had more equipment than most, so I think that was very helpful. And then at one point I switched to a more um bodybuilding gym and that's where, uh, I was able to, you know, utilize more equipment, that more fancy stuff, and I was. I saw, you know, different types of results there, which I really like and um.
Denise:But one thing I think is important is that understanding where you are in your fitness journey. If you do like to go to the gym not everybody likes to go to the gym and not everyone likes to work out. You know some people are dedicated walkers and that's totally fine. But if you are someone that likes to lift weights and you like to go to the gym, your environment is so important, especially for the morale, for your own self, for your own workout, like who you surround yourself with. You may not know these people, but their intention, the people that you work out surrounding with their intention, can sort of influence you as well.
Denise:You know, you can kind of have like a silent community in your head like, oh, I know that girl and oh, she's lifting that today and I remember last week. You know, you create this little team in your head. Maybe you don't speak to these people, but you see them all the time. So it's like I have my own CrossFit family in my head but I don't want to talk to anybody. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I could lift more than that, but you know that type of a thing. But, um, if you feel like you're getting bored, like with a place, or it's just like, oh, this is, this isn't, this isn't for me, look at other places, look at other gyms. Like, change the scene. Because just changing the scene, changing the environment and the people that are around you, is such a boost and can really help you move forward in your fitness.
Dr. Weiner:Yeah, a workout partner too. Workout is invaluable. You keep each other motivated. You push each other yeah, makes time go by faster. Um, you gotta have two heads instead of one working on this problem. So so do you work out alone, or do you work out with your husband, or do you have a workout partner? How does that work?
Denise:I pretty much work out alone. But, um, if we go to the gym together, we're not like tag teaming on the on the, on the on the uh machine too much. He does his thing and I do my thing and we're like, hey, hi, you know whatever. Um, he he print, he gives me out my plan for for the six weeks and I just put it in my notes and I just follow it along and if I'm being really good then I'll write down like the sets and how much weight I'm using, and that becomes a little too much. But I like to have structure, I like rules, I like to follow a plan.
Denise:Um, having a plan when you go to the gym really makes a big difference Instead of just willy-nilly. Let me see what this does, let me see what we do here. If you really want to see a difference and keep track of your progression and how strong you're getting, it's very important to consistently do the same thing for a certain amount of time, to be like oh, when I first started this I was at 20 pounds and now, at the end of six weeks, I'm at 35 pounds. That's wonderful, it keeps you going, it keeps you motivated.
Zoe:You can't see that progressive overload that's required for building muscle if you're doing a bunch of different things every time.
Denise:Yeah, exactly, and try not to people get caught up with like trendy workouts. Or there's a video I saw on TikTok or this is you know this crazy thing. You know, no, you're going to hurt yourself and don't do that. So you know, if you're 300 pounds and you're starting on your journey, you should not be jumping on. You know things and jumping up and down and you know doing burpees and that you you gonna hurt yourself and it's okay that you're. You can't do that right now and you know, maybe don't ever do that. I don't, you know, I don't know. But but along with the fitness, part of what I wanted to mention is in regarding nutrition and how it has been able to get me from point a in the beginning into now and was tracking my food in the beginning was essential, absolutely For me. It helped me greatly and I tracked for many years, even afterwards.
Denise:My assumptions were always the worst thing imaginable. So if you gave me something to eat and I was like, oh, I don't know, I would always assume the worst this has got a ton of fat in it. This has a ton of carbs. This is, this is terrible. It's gonna ruin my whole day. This has got a ton of fat in it. This has a ton of carbs. This is, this is terrible. This is going to ruin my whole day.
Denise:But if I actually stopped for a second and plugged it in and put in what I'm eating, and then I see black and white the number, I'm like, oh, it's really not that bad at all and this can totally fit into my day. Um, so if, if you are a huge assumer, if you're assuming all of all of the, the caloric values of food and you think the worst, and if your head goes to the worst and then you say, well, I just blew the day without knowing the black and white evidence of what you're selecting. You know, don't do that. Just see what, see what it's actually worth, and and then then move on with your day Like, oh, this really isn't a deal breaker, Throw it.
Dr. Weiner:you know, throw in an analogy I sometimes use is like if you dropped your phone and had a little crack in the corner, would you then be like, oh, this phone is wasted and stomp on it and shatter the screen? No, you try to salvage it. And we have to do the same thing because we're not going to be perfect every day, and that's going to happen. We're not going to be perfect with our exercise routine, we're not going to be perfect with our eating, and we just have to accept that sometimes, you know, we might get a little nick in the corner of the screen and as long as we don't shatter it, we're probably going to be fine.
Zoe:And going to be fine. And awareness precedes change. So you were able to use the tracking as a tool to gain awareness around what you were doing so you could make that mindful, intentional choice and the changes that you were wanting to make into your nutrition.
Denise:Absolutely. It gave me. It's like a superpower. It gave me that factual grace that I needed, like, okay, let's say you go to a party or something and you're not going to. I mean, early on I did bring my own food because I really didn't want to go astray, but eventually you're not going to be doing that. Um, so you know, you have, you have to enjoy life too, you know, and you can do your best bet. But if you've already done your homework and you know what four ounces of chicken kind of looks like and you could assume like all right, factor in maybe another tablespoon or something of fat because it's outside food, maybe another tablespoon or something of fat because it's outside food, and you know, you start learning how to um, assess these times and then, okay, this is what I had, and then enjoy it and move on. You know, then tomorrow is a new day.
Zoe:Don't dwell on it. So I want to know we need the story behind your Instagram handle the crunchy sleever. Talk to us about what the crunchy sleever is.
Denise:So, um one, I like crunchy foods, that's obvious there Sleever, because I had the sleeve, the VSG, bariatric sleeve because I had the sleeve, the VSG bariatric sleeve, and I'm probably around 80% organic living. Let's say I don't have a garden yet because I don't think I can handle it. I'm still from Brooklyn and I'm an expert in cement and watering down the cement. So let's not get crazy on the cement, you know. So let's not get crazy. But so they say crunchy and organic, you know living kind of like, goes together. So that's where that all came from. So I tried, I try as best as I can. Does it make a difference? I hope so. If it doesn't, then I'm just out extra couple bucks, right, all the organic food.
Zoe:Well, this was really great. I feel like you had so many wonderful nuggets the whole story was wonderful but so many really wonderful nuggets and takeaways that I think all play a huge role into your very obvious success. And now, eight years later, you're living the life that you've created for yourself and the body that you love and feel good in and are proud of. So I'm just so grateful that you shared your story with us today. Thanks so much.
Denise:Thank you, thank you so much, thank you.
Dr. Weiner:Denise, you should be proud of yourself. I think you know this was clearly a plan put in action.
Zoe:Executed to perfection.
Dr. Weiner:Executed to perfection, and I think that's you know, for some people that's daunting, but I think, on the other hand, it also shows you that it is possible to do that and you were just very intentional about it, very thoughtful about it. You put a lot of energy and effort into it and you know you've managed to be consistent and kept those promises that you made to yourself, you know, before surgery. You've kept them to this day and I think that's really amazing and I'm really proud of you for everything you've accomplished. Congrats on that.
Denise:Thank you, I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks for inviting me and, um, you know, anyone needs to talk or chat or whatever. They can always reach out to me on Instagram and I'm happy to chat with anybody.
Dr. Weiner:Love it.
Zoe:Thank you so much. Okay, all right, have a great rest of your day, denise. Thanks for chatting with you. Thanks, denise.
