Emotional Eating: The REAL Reason Stress Makes Overwhelmed Moms Overeat (with Denise Jelinek)

You know better but the stress from long, exhausting days as a busy mom still makes you turn to food for comfort. This episode will help you finally understand why no weight loss program or strategy has worked: because it hasn’t begun to get at the nervous system roots of your bingeing and emotional eating.

In this deeply honest and hope-filled conversation, guest expert Denise Jelinek and I unpack the REAL root causes of stress eating, perfectionism, overwhelm, and nervous system dysregulation in motherhood. We explore why so many high-achieving women feel stuck in cycles of people-pleasing, overworking, burnout, shame, and self-neglect that lead them to binge or buffer with food or alcohol—even when they desperately want to change.

This episode goes far beyond diet, calories, exercise, or “just being more disciplined.” Instead, it reveals how your nervous system, childhood conditioning, chronic stress, and subconscious survival patterns are driving the habits you wish you could break. With Denise’s wisdom, you finally can.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why stress eating is NOT a discipline problem 
• The surprising reason high-achieving women often struggle most with emotional eating
• What “chaos eating” is and how to identify your own hidden food triggers
• The connection between nervous system regulation, emotional healing, and sustainable weight loss  and why calm can actually feel unsafe for perfectionist, anxious moms
• What it looks like to heal your relationship with food from the inside out so you can finally have peace in your everyday life

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

Check out all Denise has to offer: 

• Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit podcast: https://weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com/podcast/ 
• Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit program: https://weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com/
• Follow Denise on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catholicweightloss/ 

Join the next round of Moms Made NewTM so stress no longer sabotages you—or your relationships: https://momsmadenew.com 

Book a free consult with Dr. Amber 1:1: https://tidycal.com/solutionsforsimplicity/free-consult

HOMEWORK:

Reach out to me via email or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to share your thoughts on this episode. 

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next Tuesday at 5am Eastern to keep unpacking the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy.

Loving this podcast? Please help it get found by more listeners by taking quick minute to leave a rating & review in Apple Podcasts. Take a screenshot of your text review before you submit it, then email that to help@solutionsforsimplicity.com and I'll send you my powerful Happy Mom Protocol™ (a $297 value) FOR FREE!

CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn 

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Transcript

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The more stressed you are and the more we're stress eating, the farther we get from actually solving for anything. Our lives will not improve. We are so distracted and focused on the food that we can't be focused on the solution. The calm brain does not stress eat. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. Right now summer is about to start and one of the biggest things on every mom's mind is how can I feel good in my body when I have to put on that swimming suit and take my kids to the pool or when it's so hot outside but I don't want to wear shorts or tank tops or other clothing that reveals part of my body that I don't love. Your worth has nothing to do with what you look like, especially your weight or how you fit in your clothes. But the reality is that how you feel in your body has major implications for how you show up, not just for yourself, but for your family, in your home, for the world. As moms, it's so important to realize that the way you think about your body, the words you say about how you look, and the habits that you have for your health, they are modeling crucial things for your kids. So if we want to raise a generation of people who love who they are, we need to show them what healthy self-love looks like, no matter your size. My incredible guest today is going to help you think of yourself a whole new way and give you simple tools to catch yourself in the moments that you are most tempted to stress eat or shame yourself or engage in unhealthy self-sabotaging behaviors. Denise Jelinek is an expert in helping women finally, finally lose the weight that they have been trying to lose for years. After a long battle with binge eating and over drinking, Denise found the key that helps you stop your harmful stress behaviors. As the creator and founder of Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, Denise has helped hundreds of other women find true lasting peace so you too can live free from food and weight struggles. I couldn't wait to bring Denise on because not only have I personally wrestled with my own weight loss journey since having kids, but because as a certified trauma-informed life coach, I speak with women all the time who reveal how ashamed they are of their beautiful bodies. It's time to end that shame for good. This episode will help you see how all these disparate pieces of your life fit together and why everything else you've tried to lose weight hasn't worked until now. One thing I want to quickly draw your attention to before I play the episode is that Denise has mastered the skill of regulating your emotions. As you listen to her voice, I want you to feel her peace coming through and I want you to really see what is available to you when you have done the work to repair and heal your nervous system so that everything you do is with calmness and self-love. There are so many incredible golden nuggets in this episode. Without further ado, let's jump straight in. Denise, thank you so much for being on the More Time for Mom podcast. I cannot wait to share all of your wisdom with my listeners. I have been debating where to jump in because you do so much and you have such a wealth of information to share. I guess where it makes the most sense to me to start is for the busy, overwhelmed mom who always feels like she's taking care of everyone else, never has time for herself, She doesn't mean to, quote unquote, let herself go or engage in habits that are sabotaging her own wellness and sanity. But what would you say to the busy mom who then is wanting to be intentional about her life, but not loving her habits, loving her body? Can we just start with what goes through a mom's mind when she's so consumed caring for her family and then needs to start making more time for herself? The very first thing I want every mom to hear is that it is not a discipline thing, and it is not an intelligence thing. The women who are listening to this, I know that she is very ambitious. I know that she's very high achieving, and I know that she has a really high capacity and does a lot of amazing things. She's very disciplined. She has lots of self-control. She has lots of willpower. We all know that. So let's stop telling ourselves that we aren't disciplined. The second thing is that it has nothing to do with intelligence. A lot of moms could even write books about nutrition and self-care and actually, like, teach all of us many great lessons. So it's not about intelligence. And I say that because I found myself as a young mom, stress eating and binge eating while I was during the day working as a personal trainer and writing meal plans for people. I knew everything what to do. But what happens when we are so busy, I like to just say the word distracted, when we are so distracted and focused. So people are like, I'm so busy. No, what the truth is, is that we're focused on other people, which is fine. Because, you know, we're the mom, we're caring for other people. So that's our focus. And we're distracted from our own well-being. Again, it's totally meant to be that way. The reason why we don't have the focus on us is because, number one, our brains believe it's unsafe. We've never been taught, probably growing up, that, hey, having a balanced life, taking care of yourself is exactly what you're supposed to do when you're a mom. It was never modeled for us. ever. In fact, what was probably modeled for us was if someone did take care of themselves, perhaps we were taught the thought of, oh, must be nice. They must have a nanny or they must have help. We've really been ingrained with that concept of taking care of yourself is selfish, but taking care of yourself is only selfish if it's at the expense of other people or what your main priority is or your job. So if you're taking care of yourself and neglecting your family, well, then we could call that selfish. But so often than not, I love the concept of a nurtured mom is actually better able to nurture. Mm-hmm. That is the lesson I have sure learned the hard way. And ditto. I mean, my boys are teenagers now and one is in college. So I think it's a lesson that we learn the longer we're momming. I know we're talking about stress eating today, and I just want women to understand what's happening in their brain. And number one, they haven't learned to create balance in their life. No one's ever modeled that for them. And it's a skill. You weren't born knowing it. and you have never lived this season of your life before, and no one's helped you understand how to create balance in your life in this season, okay? So let's just all get that no one's helping us do this. So because we don't have balance and tools, which is what you're helping women do, Amber, what tends to happen is women are living in a chronic survival mode. in a chronic stress response. And it could be a low level stress response, but we know we're living in a chronic low level stress response because we're rushing. Yes. Because we always feel like there's this hurriness. Yes. We don't feel a settledness. And when we are in a chronic stress response, the body's working in survival mode. So we're not thinking with our best thinking brain. We're not thinking in our prefrontal cortex. And what our brains have often learned will make us feel better is food. That's when we turn to buffering. And buffering means I feel horrible, I feel stressed, I feel overwhelmed. and I don't wanna feel that way. Therefore, I want to do an activity so I don't feel that way. That's when we over drink, we over scroll, that's when we overeat. I think it's important for women to know, and you probably teach this all over the place, is that their brain has three functions, and those functions are to seek pleasure. So that's why we're always turning to food. It makes our brain so darn happy, and it's really effective. I love the dopamine, yes. It's to avoid danger. And although a lot of women aren't physically in danger now, what feels dangerous to moms is the screaming kid running late, not remembering it's pajama day. having dinner on the table at the right time, all of that feels dangerous. And that's why the brain, again, doesn't want to feel that way. So it will turn to food. And then finally, the one thing that's working against us, but also works for us. is that our brain likes to do the easy thing. So our brain is fabulous at doing one thing really well, which is what it knows. So in a sense, that's working against us because we start to go on autopilot and just do the habits that we maybe don't want to be doing, but we're familiar with doing. The reason it works for us is because we can retrain our brain. And I hope I give some tips today that can help women start to retrain their brain so that they can start to truly look at the things they're doing and learn how to care and support themselves as much as they are caring and supporting for their family. Yes. I have said it in a few different places, including previous episodes here, but I am a firm believer that we will never lose weight or create any actual change from a place of shame. And when we are so well-trained in criticizing and shaming ourselves, then all of our best intentions to get healthy or be a better mom or stop this habit, start a new one, whatever it is, we are just going to sabotage ourselves because we are so miserable feeling the shame that we are going to do exactly what you said and go search for something to buffer away that pain. And then it's such a vicious cycle. So I love the reframe that you offered that we are not busy, which of course, like, yes, we are. But the busyness comes because we are focused on everyone outside of ourselves and again from beautiful intentions. We are good moms. We are the moms who just naturally are selfless. We naturally see what others need. We feel their pain in our bodies. We are good moms. But that constant external focus then distracts us from how we need to fill our own proverbial cup in order to be an even better mom and be around for our kids. So this is that rock in a hard place. How can we really help women break free of that shame so that they recognize there's nothing wrong with them. Whatever they have been doing is not because they're undisciplined. But again, we need them to not feel the shame about their habits and about their current circumstances so that their brain can actually come at change from a place of desire instead of pressure. What would you recommend? The very first place is in awareness. Someone may be listening to you, Amber, and say, I don't shame myself. I don't even know what you're talking about. And here's how you know if you're shaming yourself. Start looking at the way you're talking to yourself. Start listening to the words you say. When I've had clients, And we've challenged them to use kind words, not even loving words, but just if we could even start to speak civilly, like you would to a stranger or kindly. I like to also use the word tenderly. What's fascinating is you can take decades. I've had women in their 70s that I've done this with. You can take somebody who's been practicing self-deprecating speaking, or we call it the mean girl voice, and once you start to listen to the way that you're talking to yourself, you can turn it around in under 10 days to two weeks. I believe it. You start noticing when you make a mistake and you say, oh, you're so stupid. Oh, wow. You start to catch yourself. And that's just the first place to start. It really it's so simple. but just noticing the words that you're using. And if you can at least stop yourself and say, mm, I spilled milk. Just name what you did instead of a judgment on it. Mm-hmm. Oh, I forgot it was pajama day. Oh, I didn't write such and such in my calendar. If we can start to say the exact thing, it just takes a little bit of the edge off. Yes. Now we're not like, you're such a bad mom. You do this all the time. This one time I did not write that I had a call at 2 p.m. in the calendar. It's so true. I love starting with awareness. and coming at awareness from this place of curiosity instead of judgment. I'm curious where you think some of the buffering or coping behaviors start. What are some of the things that women do without even realizing it, that our actions they take when they're in this subconscious state of shame or discouragement or anger or whatever else they're not allowing themselves to feel. What are some common behaviors that would present in moms as ways that they are not doing what they need to do to feel their emotions and take this great care of themselves? How do you know? Out of the moment, after we've done it, we can clearly see, oh, I was really like using food for comfort there. I always call it chaos eating. In my program, one of the things that we do is we think of times when we've done what's called chaos eating. Chaos eating is when you haven't been eating calmly or intentionally. I just have women do a little sketch. It's a little mind map. And let's say it's when I'm cooking dinner. So they take that and then they put that in a little bubble in the middle. It's called a chaos eating metacog. Oh, no, no. I have a better example. eating chocolate chip cookies on the way home from the grocery store. So you'd put that in the middle of the bubble and then you'd have lines out from the bubble. And one would be the behavior. One would be my thoughts. One would be the environment. One would be just like the other details. And you start to see what are the details of it. Well, what was I eating? I was eating chocolate chip cookies. What else would I see? The kids were screaming. If I were watching a movie, what would I see? Well, I might see that there was lots of traffic. It was happening at 6 p.m. We didn't have dinner. I went to the grocery store at 4.30. What are the details that we can see of the scene? When women start to notice their chaos behaviors, there's just a pattern. I'll tell you what my chaos behaviors are. And this is my indication to me, uh oh, I'm chaos eating. Standing and eating is always a chaos behavior for me. I'm always unintentionally eating. Some of my other chaos behaviors are eating off of other people's plates, taking seconds, eating while I'm cleaning up or preparing a meal. So anytime I do that, I know that I'm going into a stress response. The benefit of knowing your chaos behaviors is again, that neon red light that says, oh, there's a problem. And trust me, it takes some time to start to develop and understand and know your chaos behaviors. But honestly, everyone listening right now could list five things. When I'm going to the snack bag, I'm stressed out. When I grab the box of Cheez-Its, I'm stressed out. When I'm taking my 15th piece of bread, I'm stressed out. So what's super cool about that is that not in the moment, but out of the moment, we get to learn how to care and support ourselves through that. And again, it's a journey, but we get to say, how can I care and support myself through that situation? One of the most challenging times for me, oh gosh, was dinner. And I think it is for a lot of women. So once I learned my chaos behaviors, I got pretty good at not eating while I was making dinner. So I'd make sure I had a snack before, you know, at least an hour before so that I wasn't starving and totally depleted. And I went into making dinner as like, all right, I'm going into like, this is my, this is my obstacle for the day. You know, like this is the event, we're doing something here. So I would make dinner, eat dinner, that's fine. But I'll tell you, by the time dinner got over, I just wanted more of a break. And I found through many, I mean, it took me a really long time to be able to identify how to care and support myself through after dinner. because I just, I now know I just wanted to extend that break. And so to do that, I would just keep eating everyone else's plates. I would also like eat more of the leftovers that were on the table. And I was even trying things like, okay, well, we'll just plate the food and bring it to the table. So then that would decrease that. But I started to have to experiment with giving myself, so hard. Number one, give myself permission to stay at the table if I wanted to. Without eating like bring a book bring some tea. I think if I had to go back to my earlier self my younger self I would have said You can go hang out in your room for 30 minutes before you clean up dinner you do not need to clean up dinner and I would give myself permission to just Let it stay like nothing's gonna happen. If the kids are fine, like I just wanted a break and Yes. The point is this, when we see ourselves stress eating, it is an indication that we need care and support. I love it. Once we identify that, we can start to care and support for ourselves and solve and experiment. I think that's super fun. I can't tell you how many times I experimented with, well, maybe I'll just bring some tea to dinner and then I'll enjoy that afterward. but then that didn't work. Maybe I'll bring a book. Maybe I'll bring, so you just experiment, see what you can do. But I'll tell you, one of the biggest obstacles to all of us is giving ourselves permission to do that. I am so curious as to why. I would love to expand on that. But really quickly, I'm just such a fan of looking at the data to then let them reveal these patterns to us. Because if you ask a busy mom, what do you do when you're stressed? Or why do you do this? she might not be drawing these connections already. But if she then looks at a few days or a week's worth of information, that I did this and then I did this, then I ate this at this time in this place, like you're suggesting, then it becomes so much more clear and she doesn't have to really dig that hard to find the truth. She's more confronted in the best possible way with these tendencies that she probably is doing mindlessly because she's distracted and subconsciously wanting to avoid feeling other hard things in those moments. It's just a wonderful idea that you've offered us to track and notice what the behaviors are so that we can then backwards induce the moments where we're more susceptible to be stressed and engage in those same behaviors in the future. Love it. If I can offer one actual technique that would be helpful for a mom is I call them food notes. And I know many women are used to planning their food or keeping a food log, and this is way different. This is just what you said, becoming a scientist, observing our lives, and we keep food notes. And you don't have to do it for every meal, but one meal, even if you just did one meal a day would be helpful. You note the time, you note your hunger level, you note the food you eat, but that's not really that important. You ask your brain, what am I thinking? What's going on in my brain? And you just write other details, like the location. And you just, again, start to see what patterns am I noticing? And then your hunger level after. You're right. When we just stop living on autopilot, oh my gosh, everything we need to know is revealed. God has given us so many simple things that we just forget are available to us. So I'm grateful that you have helped bring that back to the front of our minds. We were talking about when women are avoiding stress and then they're engaging in these everyday habits, but you've alluded to the fact that because they are doing these things and not even aware of why they're doing them, they're actually adding more stress to their nervous system. Could you speak a little bit more about how all of this is ultimately harming moms when they don't even realize it? I say this with so much love, my friends. I want to say this so that I can really sell you hard on how important it is to learn how to calm your brain and to care for yourself and to check in with yourself because a calm brain does not stress eat. One of the very first practices I have women do is to ask themselves, what do I feel and what do I need? What do I feel in this moment? And what do I need? And often the what do I need, it doesn't even have to be realistic. It could just be, I need to let time stop so I can just hear quiet. Okay, so now I'm going to convince you why that simple practice is necessary. Remember when I said that your brain is great at doing one thing, which is what it knows. So the more and more we practice stress eating, the more and more our brain believes that's normal. That's the pattern. Kids screaming, go to food. Don't want to fold the laundry, go to food. Need a break? Go to food. Can't get through this? Feeling stressed out? Go to food. It solidifies and gives evidence to your brain that that's the answer. It's one of the reasons I like to do the what do I need and what do I feel exercise at least three times a day. Because you're asking your brain, what do you need? And the answer is often not food. So you're starting to build the evidence for your brain that what you need is quiet. What you need is for someone to return your phone call. What you need is for the laundry to be finished. to be folded and all put away for you. So that's creating that new pathway in your brain. The other thing, and again, this, I'm saying this only because I love you so much, whoever is listening, and I want to convince you that a calm brain is worth the effort. I want to say the word fight, like you're worth fighting for because the more stressed you are, And the more we're stress eating, the farther we get from actually solving for anything. Our lives will not improve. We are so distracted and focused on the food that we can't be focused on the solution. We're focused on the problem. We're also in that chronic stress state, which as you know, is keeping us in high chronic cortisol. And anytime our cortisol is released, insulin is released, which puts us automatically in fat storage mode. And cortisol does not create fat, but what cortisol does is it tells fat how to function. And because you have lots of cortisol receptors in your visceral fat, which is around your organs and in your abdomen, your visceral fat storage will increase. And visceral fat is more damaging to your health than the fat on the outside of your organs. Which, if you can pinch it, that's called subcutaneous fat. That's the fat that's just underneath your skin. The fat that's inside your organs, like a man's beer belly, that feels hard, that's called visceral fat. Again, I'm simply saying this because I want to use words that perk up your ears and make you say, Oh, actually I don't want that. Maybe a calm brain would be the antidote because I promise you it is. I am so enthralled hearing you speak and the way that you model such calm for us. So many of my listeners are like me. They come, even unknowing, but from this background that trained them to be full of high-functioning anxiety. They are super ambitious. They get it done. They're perfectionists. They're people pleasers. They go, go, go. to the point that then calmness feels unsafe because it is so new and different and they have for so long tied their sense of self-worth to what they can accomplish or what others think and how they get validated through their behaviors. So on the one hand, I light up seeing you model this calm and showing us that it is possible. And then I'm noticing in myself how so often it is for me when I am calm or I definitely stress eat, don't get me wrong, but it is then the moments of stillness where I might be bored or feel a lack of connection or have open time on my calendar that then I guess those are also some moments where I'm realizing I want to reach for a special treat or for me it's like a coffee drink or something that is a buffering tool because the stillness feels unsafe. Do you have any experience with women who are not used to slowing down and feeling the calm? How can we create safety around feeling calm? We know we need to calm down. We don't like this frenetic feeling in our body. And we certainly don't like the distractedness and the mindlessness that leads us to sabotage our health and our goals with bad behavior. But, wow, I'm wondering if there's this first step of creating safety around feeling calm so that we can achieve all the incredible benefits you're describing. Yeah. I'm so glad you asked that, Amber. You know, again, I hope you hear in my voice that if I could go back to my former self and when I tell people, if I could go back to me as a young mom, when my boys were younger, I would just say, you're doing a great job. You are trying your best. I love you so much. I would just want to hold her because she was striving and chasing and striving and chasing and just would never give herself a break. It was so hard and it was nobody else putting that on her. So I would just say the first step is to just so tenderly see that you're really trying your best. Yes. And our culture conditions us to do more, be more, do more, be more, do more, be more. I have so much to say about this. If the woman who's listening says, I want out of this. I'm exhausted. I'm depleted. I can't keep going like this. I can feel it already. I would ask her to be very tender and gentle with herself, to consider what she's allowing herself to be exposed to. And it's important that we start to protect our interior piece. Part of that is by limiting the external exposure, which means that if we're getting our entertainment from social media, I want you to start looking at where you're feeling bad and limit that. Now, some social media is life-giving. You were like, oh my gosh, I just saw this post and it was like this prayer and it like really hit home. It is very life-giving. But you also know when it makes you feel bad about yourself. I recently had to unsubscribe from a woman who I loved her content. And then I noticed when I got an email from her, I always felt bad about myself. It's just, just trust your intuition that just unsubscribe. Clean it up. Clean it up. So if you are a person who likes to scroll, then just do a decluttering of your social media. Okay. So I think that that's important because that will then minimize what she's comparing herself to. Secondly, just start to notice that feeling of, oh, I'm feeling calm. This feels uncomfortable. Ooh, this feels uncomfortable. And what I'd like for you to start thinking is increasing your tolerance for that discomfort. Your brain wants to make discomfort mean there's something wrong. That's why being busy feels normal and it feels good and it feels productive, dopamine hits. So calm just feels unfamiliar. So let's start saying that to our brain. Of course you feel a little discomfort. This is unfamiliar. Remember, our brains resist what feels unfamiliar. And you can just be aware of that and curious, like you were saying, Amber. Oh, that's interesting. My brain really doesn't like this. My brain really feels uncomfortable with this. Okay. So some little ways to do that are is intentionally setting quiet for like 60 seconds. Just like 60 seconds, I'm gonna sit with total quiet, no phone, nothing. The longest 60 seconds of our day, but I love that micro-dosing calm. Right, and I'm going to not have you, I'm gonna have you micro-dose it in a very familiar place. Sitting in the kids' lines at pickup. Waiting while your kids are, maybe if you're a homeschooling mom or you're helping your kids with their homework, while they're doing the homework, don't pick up your phone. Do that 60 second pause while they're doing the thing. And just notice what's happening in your body. And you're just, yeah, micro dosing calm and quiet. It'll just retrain that brain pattern. Amazing. Those are brilliant. A while back, you were mentioning how important it is to stop and ask ourselves, what do I feel? What do I need? What came up for me when you offered that was how quick I am to reject both my feelings and my needs, or at least former versions of myself. didn't want to feel deep things or was trained from a young age that feeling especially negative emotions was not allowed. So I don't even realize sometimes when I'm feeling negative things. But then I was also very much trained to think that my needs should come last. No, I love that you offered these two questions. I see incredible power in them. And yet I'm wondering if there are other women like me who would hear those and instantly kind of not reject them, but deflect them away thinking, well, I'm not feeling anything. Or again, subconsciously, it's not safe to feel my feelings. So I don't even want to go to that place of bringing awareness to what I feel. And then a woman who has this pre-patterned belief that her needs should come last. How can we just work with both of those elements? Yeah, I love that you said this. The first thing that we need to realize is that we are a human being. And we are not more important than the other humans that are walking this earth, but we are as important. I'm mind blown. Yes, it's so true. And yet not what we think of, not what we realize when, again, we so naturally put others above ourselves. And I had a shift in my young momming when I learned the and concept. Which means I used to think I'm either taking care of my kids or I'm taking care of myself. I'm taking care of my husband or I'm taking care of myself. And I thought what my mind was blown when I thought and like I can take care of my kids while meeting my own needs. I can be with my husband while meeting my own needs. And I realized we can all get our needs met at the same time. It's not either or, it's and. It's so true. And we forget that. I don't know why. So the final piece that you asked was the mom who is judging her feelings. I shouldn't be feeling this way. I should be this way. Okay, so know that that's common, totally common. We resist what our brain thinks is dangerous. And if we see a version of ourselves. that, and like me, I used to hate the version of me that was sad or tired. I only liked the happy, energetic version of me. So anything that was sad or low or tired, I would eat over it, or I would drink over it, honestly. I just didn't like that version, so I'd want to change it. Or I would chronic people please over it. Like if I just do more, then I'll feel better. Then I won't be sad and lonely or sad and low or tired. Just do more. So it's common. Just know that she will resist that. And what we get to do is just, again, get curious about that. When we resist something, especially a feeling, like resisting, like judging other humans, when we resist that, we just keep pushing it down and pushing it down. When we resist sadness, when we resist anger, when we resist loneliness, it doesn't go away, friends. it gets stuck in our nervous system. The way our nervous system is supposed to work is I feel angry. That anger leads me to do something. Maybe it's to speak my mind. Maybe it's to slam something. Maybe we can't do that, so we express it in a different way, like we walk outside. It is meant to be expressed or we write a letter to someone. It needs to come out of our bodies, process through, and then we return to safety. If we don't, we get stuck and it just piles on and piles on and piles on and piles on And then it comes out sideways. And we've all done that when we haven't really processed feeling frustrated or overwhelmed or incapable of doing something. And then it comes out sideways on our kids or our husbands or ourselves. And part of that is stress eating. So by this, what do I need or what do I feel? Doesn't matter. I feel angry. Allowing yourself, I like the word allow. You don't have to accept it. You don't have to like it. But if you allow the feeling to exist, it's here. I feel angry. I feel tired. I feel fatigued. I feel left out. I feel offended. Whatever. The other piece that you said was some women may not know what they feel. Welcome to being a woman. I just want you to know that's 100% normal. When women start this practice, I give them full permission to put a question mark. When they do it, I have them pull up a feelings wheel. I provide them a feelings wheel, but anybody can pull up a feelings wheel online or ask ChatGPT. I'm feeling this, this, and this, and this. What would you call that one word emotion? It doesn't matter. The point is, is that you won't be good at it at first, because you don't have the vocabulary. Mm-hmm. Do it. Do it for 10 days. Do it for five days. Love it. Those are such brilliant, simple things. And just again, allowing ourselves to tread gently and tenderly as we're not used to doing these things to begin with, but we want to start building awareness and allowing ourselves to feel things, to express those emotions, to observe the patterns of our behavior that might get associated with different feelings, and then love ourselves from that place because there's nothing wrong with us. It's just that we don't often realize the reason why we do these things that we don't want to do anymore. Or we realize that even if we enjoy these actions, like eating the chocolate or for me drinking the lattes and so forth. Like, oh, I get pleasure out of that. My brain loves the pleasure, but I know it's not good for me long-term or in excess. And so such amazing, simple tips. It's so easy to look at our life and all the things going wrong. And I want moms to look at the things that they see that are going well, where she is just trying her best, where she is caring for herself. And when you notice yourself do something that you'd like to change, saying, you know what? I'd like to support myself a little more in that way. I'd like to show myself some of that momming that I'm so good at in that one area. Because the thing is, Amber, is both you and I, I could sit here and tell you all the things that I've got to grow in. There's so many areas of my life that can improve. And I don't think about that all day. I only think about the thing that I'm called to today. what I'm working on now, where the Lord's asked my attention to be now. And when I noticed my brain wanting to go down the, and this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong, and this is wrong, we just take a break. And that's where women come back to the tools that you're teaching, because we can retrain our brains to look for the positive while we're improving. Yes. Oh, such hope. I love it. What would you say to the woman who has tried so many different things? She has sought out every answer she can find. She has tried a million diets. She's gone to therapy. She's done all these other things. What would you say to the woman who just has resigned herself to thinking this is just the way it is? And especially after having kids, like she has no hope. What could you offer her in this moment? I wish I could speak directly to her so that she can see my face when I say this. Your life is not an accident. God knew what your life would be like right now in this season of your life. He knew the kids you would have. He knew the marriage you would have or not have or the singleness that you have. He knew the job you would have or the profession. He knew all of the circumstances of your life. And He would never give that to you. If it required you to live in self-neglect, if it required you to live in harm to yourself, in chronic stress, in burden, in heaviness, He just wouldn't do it. And I just know that our Lord loves you so much that He wouldn't do that. So that is my evidence for knowing that there is a way that all of the things that you have in your life that are not optional, right? Because there's a lot of stuff that's optional. So all the unoptional stuff can stay and you can thrive. You can be calm. You can feel joy. You can feel hope. And that might mean that for the season, some of the optional things are going to go away. I like to call it the holy not now. It doesn't mean forever, just a holy not now. If I can say one thing, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you need to do it. I can think of so many women who need to hear that right now. Another saying that I love is that not all good things are God things. That has been a good touchstone for me to come back to many times because we want to do it all. And sometimes All the things are very good, but they're always there for us. Yes. Yeah. So to be able to discern what is for you and what is not for you, I like to ask two questions. The first one is where are you irreplaceable? Okay. That pretty much clears it up. You're irreplaceable in your family. Yes. Everywhere else you could die tomorrow and they're going to figure it out. And then what are you created for? I used to have this other business. It was a network marketing company. And when I started doing more of the work with women and helping them with their emotional eating and getting to their healthy weight, I stopped doing the multi-level marketing thing, and I would get calls from those people, like my upline, asking, well, Denise, because I used to be really active in it, And I would say, but there's many other humans that were created to do that. But I am the only one that's created for this work. And if you look at that, even if you're good at things, right, I was good at that, but it wasn't the God thing like you said. And one helpful practical thing for women, when you get an invitation, I want you to simply practice a few words. I'll get back to you." And really challenge yourself to give the decision at least 24 to 48 hours and never answer, if you can, until you're very calm about it. Mm-hmm. And I want to reiterate how you know if something is for you in this season of your life is where you're irreplaceable. Definitely not optional. And what you are created for in this season, what will bring you peace in this season? I needed that. I'm sure there are so many other women who needed this as well, but oh, thank you. Could you give us a little rundown of what has led you to your work and your personal journey with weight loss or stopping these habits that you realized were sabotaging your well-being? Tell us more. The first time that I ever realized the size of my body, I was about five or six and I was trying on a rainbow swimsuit. And a very well-meaning family member said, oh, it was a two-piece suit. And she goes, are you sure you're going to wear that? Because your stomach's sticking out. And Amber, I had no idea that my stomach was sticking out. I love the swimsuit. And I'm sure there were other things that contributed to that. But that's one of the first moments that I realized that the size of my body was not OK. what my body looked like wasn't okay. And slowly by slowly, you know, other things that, you know, I had a mom who was a chronic dieter. I just realized that when things aren't okay, if you eat, they'll be okay. Or if not eat, that'll like make your body okay. And so not being okay, that was the way to fix it. And I grew up in a situation where I just didn't know how to express my own feelings. I would open my mouth to either put on the face that I thought somebody else wanted, so I could get that approval and that attention. or I would open my mouth to eat. I was never opening my mouth to share my own feelings or to express myself because the truth is that I'd stuffed it so far down, I didn't even know. So I get all of you moms out there who don't even know. It's so relatable. Now, my relationship with food and weight was not really healthy, but pretty typical of high school and college age girls. But it didn't become a big problem and into binge eating until I got married. And when you are a woman who has no idea what you're even thinking or being able to express yourself, being in a relationship with another human becomes very challenging because all I did was then, okay, well, whatever you want, you know, my chronic people pleasing, like took off even more and chronic people pleasing is just a way to feel safe. And then the binge eating because then horrible feelings would come up, but I didn't know how to deal with them. Okay. We struggled with infertility for the first five years of our marriage and within a three-year span after that we were able to adopt our two boys three years apart and The stress and overwhelm of that my binge eating kept taking off and even over drinking and by this time though I had converted to my faith, which was really great and I'll tell you I was stuck, though, in this cycle of when my family would be home at night, I would rather, instead of being with this family that I prayed for, I prayed for a husband, I prayed for kids, and I would rather be in my pantry dumping chocolate chips in a jar of peanut butter, eating them with a spoon, than hanging out with them. And then when they would go to bed, I would sneak back downstairs to eat in the dark. And then I would hide my wrappers and hide my dishes. And I just didn't know what was wrong with me. And I was just stuck in the cycle of overeating, feeling horrible about myself, waking up in the morning praying, Lord, please help me not do this again. But I would do it again. And I couldn't get more than four days of not being able. to overeat or binge eat. I could get four days in and then Thursday would hit. And I tried trainers and I tried hired nutritionists. I tried therapy. I tried even different diets. And what I was really trying to solve for wasn't weight loss, but the mental food noise was so extreme. 85 to 90% of my thoughts were consumed by food. Food was my solution to feeling tired, lonely, overwhelmed, stressed, offended, procrastinating. It was just the answer to everything. And until I learned how to surrender my food and weight struggles to God, nothing changed. But that's when it all changed. And that's how you can see the calm that you see now. That's how you see the woman that I am now, where I stopped the chronic people-pleasing. And trust me, it's been a journey and I'm not like at 0%, but I stopped the over-drinking. Again, that's at 0%. I stopped the binge eating. I'll overeat a meal, but very little. The point is, is that the Lord had given me so much peace and so much freedom. And I had this very private journey. I was loving my life. It was amazing. My life went from black and white to Technicolor. My husband, of course, knew what I was doing, but it was private. And then during the pandemic, the Lord called me to be more public. And he said, Denise, go find my hurting daughters and bring them to me. And I was, you know, you don't really have a choice. I wasn't willing to say no. And I know it was his voice because up until then, I would say, I help women, dot, dot, dot. And he didn't say that. He said, go find them and bring them to me. And so to do that, I had to be very public about my journey so that women would know that I get it. I had to talk about eating out of garbage cans. I had to talk about waking up in the middle of the night to vomit icing, not because I was trying to purge, but because my body was rejecting that amount of sugar. I had to talk about all the things that prior to that I felt shame about. And now I knew it was the way that women would feel my hand to them and feel the Lord's hand to them, that they would say, Oh, she gets it. And there's, I don't have to live this way. Yes. Wow. And so that's what I get to do all day. I mean, all day long, I teach women how to surrender their food and weight struggles to the Lord. I have a program, it's called 63 Surrendered. It's four daily disciplines that actually teach them what to do instead of, here's a diet plan. So it's the initial steps on their way to freedom. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible journey with us. That is so relatable. I know there will be so many women listening that can resonate in whole and at least in part with so much of what you said. And even if it's not food related, I speak quite a bit about how we all have our various addictions. We all have something that we do without even realizing why we do it, but it is the thing that has become our protective adaptation that keeps us safe and makes us feel like we are good enough in that moment. For me, it's the overworking the chronic people-pleasing like you, or it was. There's always just, there's so much goodness. God designed our bodies so perfectly. And I really want women to know that between their hormones and their nervous system and everything that's happened in their life, like, it's all pointing them to a better way. But first, we've got to just start raising awareness, as you said in the very beginning. So, ah, yes, thank you for being this beautiful open door for women who want to learn more about everything that you do. Denise, where can women get in touch with you? You can go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com, and I also have a podcast called Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit. Amazing. I will have all of those links in the show notes. Thank you for being here, and thank you for blessing all of the women who are listening. This was wonderful. Thank you so much, Amber. I appreciate it. It's been so fun. Oh, I hope you needed this episode as much as I did. I want every mom to know how incredible your brain and your body are and how to work with instead of against them so that stress no longer sabotages you or your relationships. Your homework for this episode is to go follow Denise if her wisdom resonated with you. And then don't forget to reach out to me through the booking link in the show notes to schedule your free consult call so that we can get to the root of your stress and what is actually happening in your nervous system when you engage in behaviors like stress eating. Join me back next episode to keep unpacking the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. Until then, remember nothing you do, and certainly not the way you look, changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.