#50 How Faith-Filled Fasting Heals Our Attachments --- With Denise Jelinek

What if the moment fasting feels hardest is the moment you’re closest to freedom? We sit down with Catholic weight loss coach Denise Jelinek to unpack why cravings spike, motivation dips, and self-judgment roars right when we try to detach from food, screens, wine, or the bathroom scale. Denise shares her journey from secret bingeing and shame to a surrendered, grace-led approach that honors both neuroscience and the soul, and she explains how to recognize spiritual attacks without fear or drama.

Across our conversation, we map five common traps—intensified cravings, subtle vainglory, burnout and discouragement, identity lies, and ungodly self-reliance—and pair each with concrete practices. You’ll learn how to pre-plan gentle replacements for trigger times, add physical comfort to reduce friction, and use a simple reframe—by the grace of God—to keep wins rooted in humility. Denise’s two rescue questions, “What do I know now?” and “Where do I need more care and support?” turn setbacks into formation and end the shame spiral that keeps so many stuck. We also dive into emotional literacy with 60-second pauses that ask, “What do I feel?” and “What do I need?” so true needs can be met without running back to old habits.

Lent becomes a training ground for lifelong freedom: check with God first about what to fast from, replace white-knuckled rules with patient detachment, and consider fasting from the scale if it has become a noisy idol. Surrender shifts the focus from outcomes to obedience, from striving to trust, from control to communion. Listen to find practical tools, spiritual clarity, and a calmer way to pursue temperance that lasts well beyond Easter. If this speaks to you, subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show.

To find out more about Denise and her work:
https://weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com/

Click the link below to set up a free discovery call to begin your transformation today.  Or email me @ smurph923.sm@gmail.com to find out more about how I can help.  

https://calendly.com/smurph923-sm/discovery-call

https://sharonkcoaching.com/

https://subscribepage.io/The-Five-Things-Your-Adult-Child-Needs-to-Hear-From-You

Transcript

Temperance And The Call To Fast

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Temperance and in that the power of fasting as a means to overcome gluttony and to grow in the virtue of temperance. So today I am super excited to dive more deeply into fasting and why we can find it difficult to follow through when we've determined a time of fast and fasting from food, yes, but also from other things in our lives. So at the time of this episode release, Ash Wednesday is less than a week away. And for those of you who may not be familiar with that, Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent. For Catholics, all Christians really, but Catholics especially, Lent is a time in which we're asked to turn to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as a means of repentance and growing closer to God. So today I am thrilled to be able to have a dear friend, Denise Jelinek. And Denise is a Catholic weight loss coach who specializes in helping women lose weight, eating the foods they like without feeling deprived. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The name of her business is Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit. And I know so many women who have tried all the things, right? And maybe have found some success, or maybe just many successes along the way, followed by many rebounds or setbacks, and we find ourselves back where we don't want to be, right? And we're at a place where we really don't know what else to do. And Denise, as I'm sure you're going to share here shortly, you have your own story, your own past, much like many of us and many of my listeners, which has led you to this place of helping women finally find freedom in this area of their lives. So, with that, do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got here?

Conversion Story And Food Struggles

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Oh no. Thanks, Sharon, for having me. It's such an honor to speak with you and all of your listeners. So, how I got here and how you and I met is just a whole God thing. But how I got to this work is a little bit of a different story. So I'll make it brief. And I think it's important to tell your listeners that I am a convert. I grew up with zero faith. We weren't even creatures, we never went to church ever, not even for Christmas or Easter. The only faith influence I had in my life was my grandmother. And she would take me to Mass a couple times a year when I'd spend the weekend with her. And she was a daily mass goer. And that is, it seemed so foreign to me that I would go to Mass, but I did. And I do know that her prayers are what brought me to the faith. So I always say, do not underestimate the power of a grandmother's prayers because they are so strong. I didn't come to convert until I was in my late 20s and my grandmother was actually able to be my sponsor, which was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Oh, that's so beautiful. So beautiful.

Obsession, Shame, And Surrender

SPEAKER_02 2:53

But my food journey has been, I think I've always had a disordered relationship with my body, with food. Nothing ever clinical, but I could definitely tell that I used food to not feel feelings or to feel more feelings. If things were boring, I would eat to have more fun. If I felt sad, then I would eat to not feel sad. And this was fine. It never really took a real turn until I got married. And then I think the stress and overwhelm of you know new marriage, married life, and no one ever really taught me that it would be as difficult as it was. Not because my husband was difficult, it was just I had no tools to deal with my feelings. So I so I could tell my my eating became something I relied on to deal with my feelings. Keep going forward, we were not able to get pregnant right away. We struggled with five years of infertility before we were really called to adoption. And both my boys are adopted. They were adopted three years apart internationally. And it was when I had my second son, when I got my second son home, that's when my eating and overdrinking actually really took off. I mean, I've got these two kids, I still have no tools on how to deal with my life. After several years, I realized it was just getting worse and worse and worse. And I had to do something. I had tried diets and I had tried therapy, and I knew it wasn't a weight loss issue as much as I was thinking about food 85 to 90% of the day. I would what can I eat? When can I eat? What can I eat? When can I eat? And I just knew there was something more to life. And by this time I'd come to my faith and I loved it. I was on fire. You know how converts are. And so I thought prayer was the answer. And I prayed novena after novena after novena. I would found myself just stuck in this cycle of hiding in my pantry, dumping peanut butter or dumping chocolate chips in a jar of peanut butter, eating it, not knowing why I'm eating it, but I can't stop hating myself for it, waiting for my kids and my husband to go to bed just so I could stay up and eat, feeling horrible the next morning, praying, Lord, please help me not do that again. I promise I won't do it, feeling so guilty, and I would do it again. I mean, I couldn't go three or four days without really overeating. I could kind of keep it together and like eating clean, if you will, for like three or four days. Come on, Thursday night, Friday night, I just was off the rails. And I just say that because I was doing all the things. Oh, P.S. I was a personal trainer. So it wasn't that I didn't know what to eat. And we all know what to eat. So true. And I was making like diet plans for people. And when they would follow them and lose weight, I thought they were lying to me. I was like, how can you stick to something? Through all the secular things that I tried, the Lord finally placed in front of me a solution that involved him, where I could truly open my hands, and it wasn't a food plan, it was surrendering my food and life to him. And I thought I was surrendering my food to him, but I really wasn't. I was just praying for forgiveness. And so that began that journey. I had a very beautiful private recovery from food obsession for six years until the pandemic. And that's when the Lord called me to be public. And that's when he said, Denise, go find my hurting daughters and bring them to me. And I'll tell you, oh man, Sharon, I did not want to share the ugliness, what I called ugliness of eating out of garbage cans and eating vats of icene while I was making my kids' birthday cakes, waking up in the middle of the night to throw up vomiting because my body's rejecting the amount of sugar I had. It wasn't because I tried to purge, that just never worked for me. And I only say these graphic details because I want women to know there is nothing wrong with them. They just haven't been shown a different way. Younger me, if I had a different way, I would have done it. And so that is how the Lord blossomed and created weight loss with the Holy Spirit. Now, what I do all day long is be able to help women who were where I was, or maybe in a different part of their journey, but they're finally saying, I'm done carrying this on my own. And I teach them how to allow the Lord to come in, heal their relationship with food. There's no foods that we don't eat. We can eat all the foods, and we just do it in a way that's peaceful and calm. And it's just skills. I really say that so that whoever's listening, that sounds like a huge mountain, but there's a systematic way that we do this. It is very, very simple because we don't do the heavy lifting. The Lord does. He's the one that comes in, he heals us, he reorders us, and we just learn some skills. So that's what's brought me to this work. That's what's brought me to what I believe the Lord has called me to go find his hurting daughters, as I said, and bring them to him. What is so cool about that is in my life before that, I always thought that Denise was going to help people. But he's not calling me to help anyone. He's saying just go find them. Go find those those women so that he can help them. Because then my work is just chitty McCaxter about all the amazing things he's gonna do for them. It just becomes just so freeing, right? So that's what we do now.

From Private Recovery To Public Ministry

Naming False Gods Beyond Food

SPEAKER_01 9:00

That is beautiful. That's beautiful. A couple of things stick out to me when you're talking about that is just not having the tools to deal with the emotions, right? And I think that is so true. You know, for you, it was food and maybe some other things, but I think each one of us has that challenge. And it's different things that we turn to, right? And there's different things that we struggle with. You're right, it's it's not us, and we try harder and we try different things. What you're saying, and I completely get is it is it's basically, you know, giving it all to God. And we think we're doing that sometimes. We really think we are, and we pray more and we pray more. I know so many people who are struggling with things, and we just think if we turn to prayer more, and yet what we need is to just really surrender everything and and to have the right tools to be able to help help us on that journey. So that that's great. And I I know that this is gonna resonate with so many people that are listening because your story, as I'm listening to it, I don't know, I'm I'm thinking we're similar in age. I definitely you're definitely younger than I am, but I know our era, our generations, and I know when I think of my friends and the people that I are dear to me, the struggles that we've had. And it's your your story is definitely unique to you, but there's such common threads that run through all of it. And you know, and I can't help but think about how when you talked about you had your six-year private private recovery, and that was probably a beautiful thing, and it was probably a time where the Lord was just helping you individually, and then he calls you out, right? Which is the call he has for all of us at some point in our lives, is you know, when it's time is right that we're called out to do that. So thank you for thank you for answering that call. Let's dive into what we're here to talk about today, which is fasting. And again, in Lent, I think this is just such a great time because in Lent we are called to observe this as part of our practice as Catholics. And we know that it can be difficult. We know that it can be difficult. We think we're gonna do this, even as you talked about being a personal trainer and how you would set plans for people and you say, Well, how are you sticking with them? Because we we have good intentions and we really, really want to do these things. And yet then we come upon these blocks, right? These things and these challenges. And it it's it's more difficult than we think it's going to be at times. I even think about my own life when I've set out to do things, you talk about the weight loss things, very similar stories. I would do really well for several days, and then all of a sudden it was like I just used up all my willpower, right? And I thought I was doing, I was praying and I would, whatever, and then you would cave. And that was with food, but with other things as well. And I don't think what I realized for a lot of years, and I'm I'm beginning to understand, I still am not great at it, but I'm beginning to realize is that I never really considered that one of the reasons it can be so difficult is not just because we're flawed or we're weak, right? That we just can't, because we're wondering why we can't seem to get it together. Why can't I do this? Why can't I figure this out? But that there might be a spiritual component in all of this and that we might be under attack, right? And so you teach that spiritual attacks during fasting aren't a sign that something's gone wrong, but that something is actually going right. Now, can you explain why women often experience intensified struggle during Lent and what this tells us about their spiritual growth?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Yes, absolutely. I think Sharon, I want to say one thing before I tell women why they're experiencing spiritual attacks. The first, but you guys, what you had said was so beautiful about how you saw me turn to food, but we can all turn to something. And I think as Lent is upon us, really connecting with the Lord and finding and asking the Lord, hey, and from your point of view, God, what's standing in the way of me being closer to you? Because as you said, we all have good intentions, and sometimes our good intentions aren't what the Lord really wants us to work on. And so if at the beginning of Lent we can check in with Him so that we are crystal clear that this is what the Lord wants us to fast from, because I'm using fasting as a very broad term. We could fast from screens, Facebook, wine, chocolate, sugar, swearing, anything that the Lord's saying, this is standing in the way of us being closer. So number one, please check in with him. I find sometimes people think I'm gonna fast from sugar, but in the back of their mind, thinking, I'm gonna lose 10 pounds this land.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

So true. So true.

Why Attacks Intensify During Lent

SPEAKER_02 13:52

So that's gonna really set you up for a spiritual attack because it's not even for him. It's not even for God. So number one, it's my little pro tip: check in with God. And one of the reasons that fasting is a target for the enemy is because the enemy's tactics are to get us attached to things, to get us distracted, to have disorder or false gods. So if we have a false god of say wine, which is what we turn to when we need comfort, or food, or yelling, or screens, something that we love more than God, as much as we hate to truly admit it, the enemy is loving that. And fasting becomes a target for the enemy because when we fast, uh it reorders our life. It puts God as our God again. Fasting or at a spiritual attack during whatever your fast is also an amazing sign. Because just as the Lord is always pursuing your soul, Sharon, He's not the only one pursuing your soul. And I want every woman who hears this to know how precious and chosen that she is, that the enemy is pursuing her soul. And as she gets closer to God, he's gonna try even harder. So spiritual attacks are A, a great sign that you're getting closer to the Lord, and B, normal, totally normal. And that's why I wanted to have this discussion so that whoever is listening can spot it easier and say, of course, this is happening, of course, and then know what to do easily, and not make it mean that they're weak or a failure.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

And I love what you said about you know, false God, because it's so true, it can be any number of things. And you're absolutely right. It does. We talk about fasting in our mind immediately, it just assumes we're talking about food, right? We've talked about that, but fasting from whatever it is that God is calling us to fast from, and that's different for each one of us. And it's gonna be different at different times in our lives, at different moments. We need to just constantly be in in communion with God, asking him what it is at this time, what is it that's keeping, what is what is the barrier from from keeping me from you right now? That's what he's asking us to fast from from most of the times, right? And when you made a comment about earlier about food and how 85 to 90 percent of the time, like you were focusing on it, we could even feel like, okay, our weight, that scale might look a certain way. There might be things and we might feel like we look okay, or that from all outward appearances, we're doing just fine. But where is where are we spending, where is our mind 85 to 90 percent of the time? Like that can be the thing that is keeping us, that's the thing that's keeping us from a closer relationship with God, right? It may not even appear disordered by any any other circumstances other than where is our thoughts 85 for 90% of the time. That's a really good point.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

I like that you said that, Sharon, because the women that I work with, I can tell you that they are uh let me just speak for myself personally. There have been times where the Lord has revealed to me, Denise, you're making your way to God, you're making your thin body a God, you're making the what you see in the mirror a God, you're making the scale a God. And I mean, it's just what are we finding our value and our identity and our worth in that isn't God? Where are we saying, oh, I'll be okay as long as the scale says a certain number?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Right. And we can do that with everything, we can do that with our careers, we can do that with you know our homes, our children. We can even do that kind of thing as parents sometimes, right? We're looking at we placing all of that. Yeah, it's such a big topic. What are some of the common spiritual attacks that you see? And how how can we spot them? We talk about the spiritual attacks. How do we know if we're under attack? What does that look like? And what do we do about it?

Spotting Spiritual Attacks

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Keep this so simple, Sharon, because I want everyone to think, oh, okay, that makes sense. And then here's what I'll do about it. So the first one, and these are not separate ones, you might go from one to the next to the next, and you might find that you fall that the enemy knows that that one is a really good tactic for you. So again, just think of this as like your your your personalized enemy detector. Okay, so the first one is whatever you decide to fast from, you will start to have intensified cravings and obsessive thoughts. Okay, just know that your body will notice that you're not doing the thing or having the thing. So, what I mean by having, so maybe you're not ingesting the substance, so your body will notice it's missing, or maybe you're not scrolling. And so your body will notice, oh my gosh, it'll want to pick up your phone and say you decided to take off apps from your phone, it might start compulsively checking the weather app or stops. So notice you'll have that obsessive obsession to fill it with something maybe slightly disordered as well. Just know it, it's totally fine. The way that you can help yourself ahead of time, though, is to plan for it. I want you to think ahead. Because if the Lord said, Hey, I want you to start separating yourself from whatever it is, plan ahead that you will notice the missing thing. What can you do instead? How can you bring physical comfort to your body? How can we increase self-care? So, for example, if you are giving up an eight o'clock ice cream, what can we do at eight o'clock that is still really pleasurable, but maybe different? So maybe we're not gonna sit on the couch during Lent. We're gonna go to bed and we're gonna put on some comfy socks and take some tea up to our bed and watch some YouTube in bed. Still pleasurable, but creating a separation between that disordered thing, but still giving yourself like true enjoyment. I think also often in Lent we want a cold turkey. And my theory is that whatever's standing in the way of us being closer to to God isn't something that on Easter Monday he wants us to pick back up. So if that truly is the case and he wants us to eventually eliminate whatever it is from our life, a gradual decrease in whatever it is would probably eventually lead to long-term detachment from the thing. So if we're talking about scrolling, maybe you allow yourself 15 minutes in Facebook, and we just keep making it smaller and smaller and smaller instead of the cold turkey.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

More of a progression versus a perfection, especially from the get-go, right? We kind of that's probably the enemy probably loves it when we say, I'm never doing this again or I'm never touching that again. Because, you know, it's like, wow, we kind of set ourselves up possibly to be an easy target. And I know what you're saying about the intensified cravings or the obsessions, right? Because whenever we tell ourselves that we can't have something or we're not going to do something, it's crazy how that's the only thing we think about. At least for me. I know in the past, whatever it is I've talked about giving up or not doing, then it's like, wow, I've never wanted a bagel so bad in my life, or whatever if I was gonna give up, you know, it's like that thing seems so good. So yeah, that's so true.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

I like to use the analogy in with the women that I work with, is that our brains are so conditioned to do something really great, what they know. They do what they know really well, and so we all go brush our teeth with one hand. And if we said, hey, listen, the path to heaven is to brush your teeth with your non dominant hand, you'd be like, Really? It's that simple? Yes, it's that simple. But we would still all our brain would want to go down that pathway, and we would still grab our toothbrush with our dominant hand. So it's not an Matter of not wanting to please the Lord. It's just our brains are wired that way. And that is why I said start creating new pathways, creating new patterns that support you, expecting to not want the bagel or to be thinking only about the bagel. But can we now have an English muffin that we really are excited to have?

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yeah. That's that's what I talk about here a lot on the podcast is about rewiring our brain, right? The mental aspect and and just understanding that it's just it's the way our brains are wired and not being bothered or, you know, all flustered by the fact that we're having these thoughts or that it's we're we're conditioned to to do what we've always done. It's not a problem.

Cravings, Compulsions, And Planning

SPEAKER_02 22:41

How amazing is it to live in the time that we do where we know so much about brain science and neuroscience that we can truly work in cooperation with the Lord and how He designed us. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

So the second spiritual attack is pride and being glory, which is look at me, I'm so amazing. And the enemy can't create anything, but he can twist something, even virtue, which we are doing amazing things that we love the Lord. And if we have that sneaky thought that comes in that says, Oh wow, I fasted all day from my Facebook or from chocolate, and we think, oh, I made it through. If we hear ourselves say that, then the easiest way out of it is to say, by the grace of God, Lord, thank you for giving me the strength. That one's a simple one.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I love that. I love that. Kind of reminds me of how, you know, and you're just even talking about thinking about it, but how we can use that when we we know the scripture, and I don't know exactly which one of it is, but when you fast, when you're fasting, you know, wash your face, don't, you know, don't let everybody know what you're doing, right? And so sometimes you I I know in circumstances where somebody's like, I fasted for I I didn't break my fast the whole Lent, and you know, kind of, and it becomes about them. You're even saying, even more specifically, even the thoughts that we might have of like, wow, I did it, great, you know, and and we may not even know it, but we're kind of congratulating ourselves, and you know, and it just creates an opening for the enemy to step in. And so I love how you said to just add to that by the grace of God, because it's always by the grace of God that we're able to do anything that's of any worse. So I love that. And you can just add that to the end by the grace of God. That's beautiful.

Brain Wiring And New Pathways

SPEAKER_02 24:22

The third one is discouragement and loss of motivation. So in the first one, when we realize that our bodies noticed that something was different, the third one here that discouragement comes and loss of motivation comes because emotionally we're noticing something different. So, whatever we're fasting from, the reason why the Lord asked us to fast from it is because it was meeting an emotional need that he says, that should be me. That it's a disordered, it was used not in the way that he wanted it to. So instead of maybe enjoying wine, we're using it to get through the evening or to soothe our stress. And so emotionally, without the thing that we're fasting from, our emotions are gonna start bubbling up. And we are going to feel if we're white knuckling and just like, oh, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna drink the wine, I'm not gonna eat the chocolate, I'm not gonna scroll, and we're just white knuckling through it, we will get so exhausted. We will emotionally and mentally be fatigued to the point that we lose motivation. And so it's really, and then we usually just break our fast and have the thing. To prevent this, number one, always know that what you're doing is for the Lord and is the thing that He really wants you to fast from because that's how you'll get extra grace. Number two, whatever that emotional need is, let's start looking at it. As you start to feel sad or stressed or overwhelmed, like I used to just go to peanut butter. Now I'm going to have to learn a skill on how to deal with stressed, lonely, sad, overwhelm. And so being more gentle, more gentle with ourselves. I think fasting, I'm gonna just do a side note here. I think I think during Lent, it is very important for us to get clear on the good things in our life that aren't necessary during Lent. To start simplifying our life so that we have the energy to do these things, like meet our emotional needs, learn new skills. Now, uh if you uh fall in discouragement and loss of motivation and you break your fast and you eat the thing or you have the glass of wine or you scroll on Facebook, when I was preparing this talk, the Lord told me uh Denise, the enemy does not win by what you do. Okay, the enemy never wins, you guys. Like the Lord can redeem everything, but listen to me. The Lord said the enemy wins when we start believing who the enemy says we are.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

That's powerful. Can you say that again? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

We don't lose a spiritual attack by what we do. Overeating, over drinking, whatever. We lose the spiritual attack, and the enemy wins when we start believing who the enemy says we are.

Pride, Vainglory, And Giving Credit

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yeah, it's not-I mean, we're sinners, right? The Lord knows us, but when we start to believe this identity, when when he attacks our identity and we don't know whose we are or who we are, that's the whole motivation of the enemy. And so that's the key there. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. And I have to say that's true. You know, one of the things I think this is where it can be such an issue for us as we're doing this, you talked about the discouragement because all these emotions are going to bubble up, right? And we haven't dealt with this. And the the problem is that we have that the enemy, and what that can sound like is the enemy whispering in our, you know, that piece of chocolate, that'll take all this discomfort away right now. You know, that glass of wine will take all this discomfort away right now. So that work of looking at those emotions, in the moment, it may seem challenging, but the the benefits and the long-term results is really what we're seeking after, right? That's really what God is calling us to, and that's why it's a time of lent is such a great time to do this. You know, it's clearing everything else away so that we can actually do this work. We want to avoid it, but it's so necessary. It's absolutely necessary for us as humans to be able to do that work. And and it's the fruits are phenomenal. So, yeah.

Discouragement, Emotions, And Care

SPEAKER_02 28:34

So we know when we start to believe who the enemy says we are, we fall into spiritual attack number four, which is called despair and self-hate. But have no fear, my friends. I've got two questions that you can ask yourself to get out of that. So if we find ourselves falling into whatever we decided we'd fast from, instead of I'm horrible, I'm a failure, and we get into that shame spiral, we have two questions that are going to pull us and realign us back with the Lord. The first one is, what do I know now? So let's say I said I wouldn't get on Facebook, I had a really rough night, and I'm on Facebook and I'm scrolling and you guys you can tell my age, I'm saying Facebook. What did I learn from that? What did I learn? What do I know now? Okay. And the second question is, where do I need more care and support? Which just means that we would have never turned to the thing that we're fasting from if we have had had the care and support that we truly needed through that situation. So now we say, Lord, how can I care and support myself the next time that thing happens? So we're not making a plan when we're in this situation, which is never possible because our brains are all fried. But just going forward, that's how we make progress. That's how we realign with the Lord. That's how we get out of self-hate and we allow ourselves to be human.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

That's that's a great point. Because that's something I want to ask you. Is so, how can we tell the difference? We're in this, how can we tell the difference between a normal human struggle and a spiritual attack that needs to be handled a little differently? How can we tell the difference in that?

SPEAKER_02 30:19

I don't think it matters. I think either way, we're learning to care and support for ourselves. The answer is always the Lord. The all the answer is always treating ourselves and caring and supporting ourselves the way that the Lord would. And if we see ourselves do things that we don't want to be doing, we start finding help for that. And the truth is, is that the only reason why we do things that we that we regret is because we're we believe it's a tool that's helping us. So if we yell at our kids, we truly believe it's helping teach them something. Once we realize, wait, is there a different way to meet that need? Is there a different way to teach them the thing I wanted to teach them without the regretful behavior? Hmm, maybe. The only reason we're turning to half a gallon of ice cream is because we want to relax and we feel stress and overwhelm. Is there a different way to soothe stress and overwhelm that isn't the regretful behavior?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

How can women how can women learn to meet their emotional needs without returning to those coping mechanisms, right? Because you talk about that, and whether it's you know, trying to control or seeking comfort, whatever we're doing, how can you learn to meet those emotional needs? What are some things that they can do?

SPEAKER_02 31:42

So the the easiest example that I have for women is to do something that can be done all the time, is to do these pauses throughout the day. They're very small pauses where women ask themselves, What do I feel? What do I need? It's 60 seconds, and our brains hate doing it because we all hate to stop. But what I find is women don't have what's called an emotional literacy. You can say, What do I feel? And she's like, bad, good, bad. I give women a feelings wheel, which you can just get online, and to just pause and see, can I detect and put a name to this feeling?

SPEAKER_01 32:23

That is so true. And it it takes practice. I mean, I think for all of us, we weren't we weren't taught these tools. You talked about the tools in the very beginning of having tools. We weren't given these tools. Almost none of us were given these tools to even identify what emotions we're feeling. Because you're right. And that that can be something that maybe at at heart, at first it's hard. Do you see that? And then it gets easier as time goes on, as as they get used to it.

Identity Lies Versus God’s Truth

SPEAKER_02 32:48

And I also like asking, what do you need? And and I give women the permission to say what you need doesn't have to be realistic, and it doesn't have to be something that's even possible. You know, maybe what you need is for time to stop so you can. It's just checking in with your brain. What does your brain think you need? I need time to stop so I can get through my to-do list. I need all of these people to leave my house right now. And when we start asking ourselves what we need, we often see, at least for the women that I work with, because they are the ones that are turning to food for comfort, we often see that the answer is not food. And so we're just starting to give the brain an opportunity to ask for what it needs and to to start actually tuning into ourselves because I think women often don't feel seen, heard, known, acknowledged.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Which is our core, our core needs and our core desires as human beings, right? We all have them. And we just have turned to different things throughout our lives that have helped to get us through things, right? And it's not about judging ourselves either, right? Because then there's this shame and this judgment, and it's like just understanding that we were doing the best we could with what we had, but now we're gonna move forward and we're gonna do this in the way that's helpful to us.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

But I want to highlight the simplicity of those two questions. What do I feel and what do I need? Because your original question is how do women start to meet their own needs? First, it is pausing and saying, Oh, hi, I see you. I see you, human I'm live living as. And then we're we feel way more capable of saying, Oh, you're tired. Okay. And we might not actually take a rest, but simply acknowledging you're actually you're you're tired, or maybe you are so bored right now, you are just done with this task. You want to break, or you said no, or you said yes, but you really want to say no. And giving ourselves permission then to meet that need, which is several several skills down the road.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Right. That's a whole nother podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Totally. But the point is that being able to tune into ourselves is is step number one. And we just we're never taught that skill, and that's all it is. It's just a gap in our skill.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

And I would dare to say that that's the way I like to define self-care is actually giving ourselves what we need, not just, you know, self-care is being, you know, it's a totally different term in our secular world.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

But I call it, I call it authentic self-care because I I truly believe that second to loving the Lord, our number one job on this earth is to care for the human that we are living as. He has entrusted the care of ourselves with ourselves. No other human on this earth was created to take care of you. So if you're not doing it, that job's not getting done.

Two Questions To Break The Spiral

SPEAKER_01 36:07

And I don't think most of us even think of that. We never look at it that way. That's you know, we just neglect it. We we're everything is outward. We're looking to everything else, or or we're looking to everyone else. Sometimes as women or mothers or wives, we're just, you know, taking care of others and we're forgetting that one of the primary things, second to God, as you said, is taking care of ourselves. Yeah, that's beautiful. One one of your central messages is that the antidote to so many of these spiritual attacks is surrender. Surrender, right? And I believe you have a program called 63 Surrendered. We'll talk about that maybe in a little bit, but but surrendering rather than trying harder. What does surrender actually look like in a woman's daily life? Always, but also during Lent, right? You know, but even, you know, especially when it comes to when we're talking food or fasting or the expectations of herself, what does that look like to surrender?

Human Struggle Or Spiritual Attack

SPEAKER_02 37:02

So the fifth spiritual attack is ungodly self-reliance. And this is such a fine line because, as women, and I know every person listening to this podcast is very ambitious and a high-achieving woman who has a very high capacity to deal with life. And when we have ungodly self-reliance, we believe that it is all up to us because we look around and it's probably very true that the other humans in your life actually aren't helping you. But what we have to recognize is that ambition, that capacity, that ability to fast from things, the strength that you've been given, all the talents that you've been given are not yours, and that we didn't create them. And so being able to recognize, of course, like we said, all by the grace of God, but to also surrender, surrender means, and I think the simplest definition that I give to the women I work with is surrender means you're not focused on the outcome. Surrender means you showed up and the Lord said, This is your assignment today, and I'm gonna go for it. And that might mean the Lord said, Denise, I would like for you to fast from your negative self-talk. Okay, Lord, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna try with your strength. Maybe I put sticky notes that say, the Lord loves me. I am a beloved child of God. Denise, you are, you know, with the with God's grace, you are so kind and cheerful and loving. So the point is that surrender truly is we are doing things because uh it pleases the Lord, and that's what He wants for us. And it becomes so nuanced, it becomes very nuanced in our ambitious, goal-driven world when we are trying to do something to get a worldly outcome. And I think that it's so easy to recognize in weight loss when we are surrendered or not surrendered. Surrendering simply means I am caring for myself the way the Lord wants me to. I'm able to reorder my relationship with food. I eat food in a way that's peaceful, so we're eating the way that the Lord wants. And I truly think that the Lord wants us to enjoy all of our foods, so there are no foods that are bad. But when women start caring for themselves, talking to themselves, meeting their own needs, that is they're surrendered to whatever their body might look like after that, whatever weight loss might look like or not look like. And it reminds me of um seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. I'm totally gonna screw that up. I feel like it's like Matthew 6:33 or something like that, but that could be wrong. But it's this seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness just means in right order, the way he wants us to live. And that's all we want, the way he wants us to live. So we're not chasing outcomes, we're just showing up and being his faithful daughters.

Emotional Literacy And Pausing

SPEAKER_01 40:34

In our world, right now we live in a world that it's all about outcomes and results. But even just hearing you express it in that way just brought me a sense of like calm and peace. It's very freeing, right? I'm sure you find that. I'm sure you find that for a lot of the people you work with, that when they truly understand what it means to surrender, and it's a lifelong thing, right? We don't just, oh, I've learned to surrender, I'm good. It's something we this is the the work of our lives. But it you once you understand it, you probably become better able to know how to do that. But I'm sure that is really something that just frees us in so many areas of our lives to just be able to surrender it. Well, Denise, you have shared so many great points. I know for me, things that I'm gonna take with me in my Lent, because I've been thinking a little bit about what I want to fast from and what I what I've been working, you know, what I want to quote unquote work on, which implies that I'm gonna do the work, which I really need to take to prayer. You're right. Things I want to do for Lent, but also things that I plan to carry with me beyond Lent. And I know that it it is a difficult topic for some, but understanding that spiritual battle takes place, it's only for our benefit because we can't win a battle that we don't even know is taking place in the first place. So many people aren't even really thinking about it, and so it's just to bring even to awareness of the fact that there is a spiritual battle that's taking place, and we know that we should fast. You know, we're told we should fast, and yet it's hard. And what do we do? Well, we try harder, and then when we get frustrated or get discouraged, I've talked about we quit. So sharing all these things today is just super helpful, helpful to me and to my listeners as well. So thank you so much for sharing this. This is great stuff. So, but with that, if someone is wanting to go deeper in their own journey of fasting, and you know, it could be weight loss, but it could be other things, but you you specialize with weight loss as that's your area of expertise, and they want to take this beyond fasting for Lent. Is there something that you offer them, or where can they find out more about you?

SPEAKER_02 42:37

Okay, so for us, we have a program called 63 Surrendered. Do you remember when I said it's just sort of a gap in our skills? Many women love the idea of surrender, they love turning their food and weight struggles over to the Lord, and then they're like, but what does that mean? And so we have a program that is based on the surrender novena. So we use the surrender novena, but we also have three other spiritual disciplines that we practice every single day, and it just allows us to stay in contact with the Lord and allow him to take our food and weight struggles. I find so many women have surrendered their marriage and their parenting and their career, and maybe, you know, so many other areas of their life to the Lord, but they haven't truly surrendered their food and weight. And so 63 surrendered is that opportunity. Um for Lent, we specifically have a focus not only on those four daily disciplines, one including the surrender is the surrender novena, but we're also fasting from the scale. Fasting from stepping on the scale. So many women step on the scale for validation, affirmation, to know if I'm doing the right thing or not doing the right thing. And this line, we're going to turn to the Lord and let him be our God. Let him tell us when we're doing the right thing. What he wants. And so we start that the day before Ash Wednesday.

unknown 44:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

So that we are totally prepared. Fast from the scale. And truly make God our God again. So if women are interested in that, they can go to Weight LosswithTheHolyspirit.com.

Real Self-Care And Needs

SPEAKER_01 44:19

WeightlosswithTheHolyspirit.com. Jessica's and I'll put a link in the show notes for both of those if you're interested. Thank you so much. This has just been a great conversation. I feel like I could go on for another hour. There's just so much to dive into, but it's just such a big topic in our world. And I think about as you just mentioned that I thought came to my mind is you know, think about the scale is a fairly new invention throughout all of history. And it's we've used this technology to somehow be something that we sacrifice so much of our time and energy to. And so I I love it that you're you're doing this fasting from it. Thank you so much, Denise. And like I said, I'll put a link in the show notes for both of those, but it's been such a blessing for me and I know for all of our listeners to have you on here today. So thank you and and God bless you. Peace, Sharon. And to all my listeners, remember you never walk this journey alone. I'm on this journey with you, as are so many others. We're just going to continue onward and upward to the heights. Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon K Coaching.com. That's Sharon the LetterK Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.