Latest / Cortisol Coach / Weight Gain, Body Image, and Faith | A Biblical Perspective for Women Over 40 Who Are Struggling to Lose Weight

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Weight Gain, Body Image, and Faith | A Biblical Perspective for Women Over 40 Who Are Struggling to Lose Weight · Cortisol Coach

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Welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast. If you're exhausted, gaining weight,
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losing your hair, your anxiety is through the roof, or the depression and emotional
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overwhelm have completely consumed your life, or maybe you're not showing up
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as the wife and mom you want to be.
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You've spent years never feeling good enough, taking care of everyone else while
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you quietly fell apart, and your body has been keeping score of every single bit of it.
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The chronic stress, hormonal shifts, perimenopause, menopause,
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whatever season you're in, cortisol is making all of it worse.
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And until you heal the root, nothing changes. But this show here is about to change that.
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I'm your host, Christine Marie, Holy Spirit-led Biblical Mindset Coach,
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and I have helped thousands of women heal their hormones and cortisol levels.
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Every week, I bring you leading experts, doctors, and coaches who will help
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you heal your body, mind, emotions, and your spirit so that you can step into
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every kingdom purpose that God has planned for your life.
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So go grab your cup of coffee and let's jump in.
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My guest today has built a very successful fitness coaching business and by
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every outward measure, she was thriving.
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And then suddenly she gained 40 pounds, seemed like overnight,
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but that is not the most important part of her story.
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The most important part is what God did with that. Her name is Renee.
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I love to call her Coach Renee. She is founder of Rich Glow and creator of Fit
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for the Call, a coaching community helping Christian women stop treating their
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bodies like projects and start stewarding them as the temple that they are.
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When Renee's body changed, God did something so significant.
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He dismantled every identity marker that she had built her worth upon.
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Her fitness, her appearance, her expertise.
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All of it. And what felt like a breaking became her breakthrough.
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Today, she helps women move from body obsession to body stewardship through
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a framework that addresses identity, stewardship, and fruit,
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which is mind, body, and spirit as one integrated calling.
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Her approach is not about meal plans and macros. It's about becoming the healthiest,
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holiest version of yourself.
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So you are actually equipped for what God has called you to do.
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Can I say yes and amen to that?
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This episode is for every woman who has been treating her body like a project
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instead of the temple that it is.
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Renee, welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast.
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Thanks for having me. I'm so freaking excited. So when Renee and I first met,
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I will tell you, hands down, Holy Spirit Fire was happening in that Zoom.
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And I knew within moments, you know this girl is discernment strong.
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I knew She needed to be on this episode, and you all needed to hear from her.
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So take us back. Tell us your story. Tell us what led here. I want to hear all the things.
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Yeah. So I think a cool part about what I do now is you would never expect me
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to do this. I didn't grow up in a religious household.
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My parents didn't know the faith. They didn't talk about God at all.
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And so I was always after God in my own way, but I didn't know how to navigate
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it. And so when I got into fitness, I kind of started my fitness journey with
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a really big lack perspective.
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I was never super small and skinny. I did gymnastics, cheer and diving sports
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that all like emphasize your body.
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And I was never the girl who really had a super fit body. And I always saw my
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stomach as big. And so I really wanted to change that.
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And that was a big insecurity that drove my fitness journey.
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So when you start with that perspective of I have to change myself to be worthy,
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to be beautiful, to be desired, it's a rocky start.
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And then I was kind of in fitness when no one, a lot of women weren't really in there.
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And so I would get people asking questions and I was like, oh my gosh,
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I've been an underdog my entire life.
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And now people are asking me for my advice. That's so cool. And so I fed that.
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So not only was I feeding my insecurity and trying to gain confidence through
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my body, I also was gaining worth and performing because I was now having people.
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Think that I was doing cool things, which felt really cool. And so I built a
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business on it. I was about three and a half years in.
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You know, like when you build a business, you're building something,
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right? It's like your baby and that's your everything.
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I hit burnout for about a year. I was super burnt out, but I was like,
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I'm going to push through. It's just a season. It's a season.
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My body said, heck no, it's not.
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And in that about a year of burning out, I really was asking God.
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Lord, I thought this business was yours.
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I've been trying to do like what I think is biblical business ownership,
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but I don't know how to do it.
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And I was recognizing that what I had built, the body, the business,
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the money, everything was not aligned with God. And so I had a massive identity crisis.
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And in that moment, I kind of just like stopped everything and I freaked out
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and I started gaining weight.
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I gained 40 pounds within a year. I was losing the business because as a fitness
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coach, I can't sit there and tell people to be healthy when I look a hypocrite.
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So I'm like freaking out.
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I lost my identity because I lost what I put my identity in,
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which was the business and my body, which I was gone.
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I didn't get a serving job. Most humbling season of my life.
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40 pounds overweight, cortisol issues up the wazoo, gut health issues.
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Can't freaking stay away to save my life. I have a massive sugar crash that
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I just want to always feed.
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I'm living off energy drinks and venti freaking espresso drinks and minimal
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food. It was just a massive chaotic mess.
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I picked my Bible up and I was like, God, there's got to be a better way to do this.
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Like, I know you don't call me to be unhealthy, but right now I don't see a
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way out and I feel like I'm too far gone.
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And I start reading the Bible and I recognize a very stark thing.
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And that is identity, which God always develops everything from.
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You read any of the Bible, like whenever Paul's introducing himself,
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he's like, Paul, the apostle, it's always an identity perspective.
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And everything that everyone does is from identity. It's never from like,
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Like, it's just, that was the bigger thing for me was identity.
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And then I also recognized that, okay.
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Nowhere in the Bible to talk about how someone struggled with not being healthy
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or not having the capacity to do it or not having the energy to do something, right?
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It was always like an identity issue, but it was never a physical thing.
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And so I started to look in, for example, 1 Corinthians 10 31,
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where it says, whether you eat or drink, do it to glorify God. I wasn't doing that.
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It says in 1 Corinthians 9 24 through 27 talks about like biblical stewardship,
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training despite its training. So you are not going to get disqualified,
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like from your calling, from your race.
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And I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm not doing that. And I started to recognize,
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biblical body stewardship is a thing, but how I was approaching fitness was
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causing me to be an idolatry.
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And so I started recognizing the way that I've approached fitness is idolization
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and strife and insecurity and obsession. And that's not, none of God.
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So how do I do it biblically?
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And he started to reveal to me biblical frameworks. I started to implement That
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was my one-on-one coaching clients. And.
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The shifts that happen, I worked with these women for years and what happened
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in four months, six months with these women was incredible.
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And it's something that could never have happened with just doing fitness with
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an idolatry perspective. And that's whenever everything shifted.
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That's so amazing. It's so incredible. And, you know, I have a similar,
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similar journey in that I was trying to, the company that I partnered with is
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a network marketing company for the supplements.
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But I have been trying to build this in a worldly way.
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And then God took me on the journey to get my biblical mindset coaching certification,
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right? But it wasn't about the certifications.
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It was about the neuroscience that be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
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Because your mind is what your mind and your heart are where all things come from.
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And it says that God sees our heart. Mm-hmm.
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And truly, you stepping into this and helping women with biblical principles,
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talk to me about what are some of these principles?
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So we look at Genesis 128, where it says, be fruitful, multiply,
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fill the earth, so do it, have dominion, right?
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We look at what the before word could be, which is be, do, do,
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do, have. So I broke that down.
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The be, do, have framework is pretty common. and what I was looking at is how
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can I directly apply this to where it makes sense for fitness?
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And what I came up with was identity is first because again,
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identity is always the first component.
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Before you were even born, God knows your identity, he knows your calling.
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That is an insane thing to tap into. So first identity before anything else
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because we're not called to be unhealthy.
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So we're called to be our healthiest, holiest self. We have to now learn how
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to channel that from identity perspective and not from a I am in a lack perspective.
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And I have to change my body to reach that worth, right?
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So then we get into the B part, which is stewardship.
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I look at this as identity is the soil. Stewardship is the seed you're planting.
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It's the tending to the soil because Wendy Backlund has a book.
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It's called Victorious Emotions.
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Freaking love it. And she mentions when you see an apple tree,
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there's no other name but an apple tree.
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Even if the apple tree has no apples on it, it's still called an apple tree
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because it's known by the fruit it's called a bear.
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So we have unique fruit that we are called a bear. So a strawberry vine gets
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different stewardship than an apple tree or than a blueberry bush.
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So it's learning your unique identity, knowing how to steward that with a biblical
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context, which means we are training despite, so like we're not going to get
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a disqualified from our race.
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We are not just shadowboxing, right? We're training with intention.
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We are eating and drinking to glorify God. Our temple is our mind, body, and spirit.
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We are having a holistic approach to that. It's not just a fitness approach.
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It's not just a neural pathway approach
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it's not just like therapy and like i don't i'm gonna say therapy is not biblical
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but you have holy spirit like that's your counselor you can go there and get
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so much done in like literally 10 seconds that could be done in six months of
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therapy because you had to talk through things like you're going to the person
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who knows everything about you that is our superpower so,
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We then get into the have part, which is the bearing the fruit,
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which is where you see your fruit be bore.
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So what I say is that your body is just fruit.
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It's the evidence of what you've been planting and what you've been stewarding
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and what your uniqueness is.
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If that is not displayed properly, that's a planting issue. That's a stewardship
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issue. It's an identity issue.
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It's not anything else aside from the fact of the before stuff,
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the spiritual groundwork has to happen before you get into your healthiest,
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holiest self was not done yet. That's a word.
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Okay. I feel like you're kind of talking in circles a little bit,
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so I'm glad it made sense.
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No, it does. And I truly believe, so you and I had talked and I had shared that
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analogy that I've shared before that if God had given us one car to drive our
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entire lives, how would we treat that car?
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And I just I can imagine you know maybe we'd
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put it in a garage maybe we would also have a cover on
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it while it's in the garage maybe we would wax
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it with you know the kind of wax in the container every day
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we would be so careful where
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we drove we would be intentional about how fast we drove because we wouldn't
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want to put excess wear on that but with our bodies it's like YOLO and why we
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only have one body and I remember going in and my cortisol levels were through
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the roof I needed get a hysterectomy because I had so many fibroids.
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And then my kidney just died because of trauma from the hysterectomy.
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I had anxiety, panic attacks.
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They wanted to put me on medication for fibromyalgia because I,
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like you, loved me some cupcakes and I ate way too much sugar,
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wasn't sleeping properly.
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I mean, it's just this vicious cycle, but yet it was just my body. no big deal.
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And that's not even including drinking because I wanted to subdue the shame
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that I was feeling about what my body looked like,
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And I feel like, especially in the fitness space, the whole objective,
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lose the weight, hit the goal, and then you fix the problem.
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Which is never a true fixing of the problem.
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Right. And I truly believe this is a tactic of the enemy.
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Yeah. This is spiritual warfare that is hidden under a lamp so that nobody can see it and identify it.
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Because if we don't call it out, if we don't expose it, if we don't bring it
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into the light, it's not really happening.
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Because chronic stress is just what happens tell
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me about the spiritual warfare angle well what just came to
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my mind when you said that was what is the verse where it says like
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the lampshade we're called to be put up i don't know the
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exact verse there's like something about a lampshade right you're i just like
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visualized you said like there's a lampshade over it i've i visualize spiritual
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warfare as a lampshade that's blocking your light from being shown like your
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light cannot be shown when you're being blocked with spiritual warfare.
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It's a handicap. It's a counterfeit identity.
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So you don't know these things.
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Unless you have what we talk about right now, you have podcasts listened to,
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you have these different things that come to your mind.
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You probably, if it's a podcast, you feel probably like a attention point of,
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I know that God has so much more in store for me, but why can't I get there?
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The enemy will always give you the inverse of what your calling is.
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For me, my body was my biggest situation, biggest issue.
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It's still, because I do this for a living, it's still a problem.
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Like it's a problem area I have to always overcome. Like I want to go have the
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crumble cookie and I want to eat like five of them because they're so good I
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sometimes want to be on the couch watching netflix, but i'm not It's it's a
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consistent decision to be devoted to god.
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I heard this cool thing about discipline and devotion Discipline is like we
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always talk about discipline like just be disciplined be disciplined But my
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discipline was rooted in idolatry.
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It was rooted in how how hard can I work?
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How much can I prove myself and how much can I run myself to the ground until
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I can't go anymore? because I had the ability to work really hard at stuff and that fueled me.
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Devotion is a complete awe of the journey that you're on.
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It's a devotion to God. So whenever I have these thoughts of,
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I wanna go get caramel cookie, I can have those thoughts. They don't take over my mind anymore.
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I don't act on them anymore because I'm ready to my identity with Christ.
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And so spiritual warfare, 2 Corinthians 10 talks about this,
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how we are literally fighting false arguments and human reasoning.
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The Romans 12, two talks about how we have to renew our mind.
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The number one contested ground is your mind.
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That's where everything happens. That's where spiritual warfare is.
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Now, are there principalities and other things 1,000%?
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But if you can't get ahold of your mind first, those things don't care about you.
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The enemy plants something in you long ago. Whenever we're super young,
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the enemy's gonna give us something that's gonna happen that's gonna make us
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feel, again, the inverse effect of our calling.
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And we then build strongholds and we build loops. We build those neural pathways
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that are not correct pathways that feel like they can't be anything other than
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truth because we've rehearsed it so many times.
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I look at this as like those grassy fields. And you can see when people have
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like walked through some kind of passage a couple of times, right?
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You're like the grass has fallen down a little bit.
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These strongholds that are your counterfeit identity, your handicap,
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have great looking pathways.
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You can walk right through them. It feels so natural.
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So when you start to create these new neural pathways to totally deter you from
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this spiritual warfare and old strongholds that were made, you have to make a new path in the grass.
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You're going to have friction. You're going to have tension.
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It's going to feel uncomfortable because you don't know where you're going yet.
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You have to create those new neural pathways, which happens through repetition.
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And so I always say that fitness is the most spiritual journey you can go on
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because there is nowhere in life you will get more reps testing your identity
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than you will on your fitness journey.
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So the spiritual warfare aspect of things is if you can be a willing vessel all you want.
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People always tell me, I love God so much. God's got a way, God's got a plan,
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God will show me. God uses people.
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You cannot do it on your own. God can give you so much revelation,
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but it's also limited to your own mind.
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And the spiritual warfare, it has to be something that you are honestly consistently
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fighting. Like everything's spiritual, in my opinion.
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I agree with you. And I would almost say that the path almost feels good in some situations.
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The old path? Yes. A thousand percent. No one wants to go into uncertainty.
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Yes. We will sit in our pain because we know it. It's known.
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The unknown is what's terrifying. Even if the unknown is the next level,
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We don't want to do that because we don't know what to expect.
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I remember when I wasn't able, like I've lost quite a bit of weight,
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but there was, I kept hitting the same plateau.
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And I was so frustrated. And I was like, my food's dialed in,
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I'm drinking the water, I'm walking. And I feel like a lot of women hit this wall. Yeah.
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And you'll gain a few pounds and they'll say, oh my gosh, I've gained so much
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weight. I'm like, well, unless you ate 10,000 extra calories yesterday, it's not fat.
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This is what your body is giving you clues that you need to dial in and say what's going on here.
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And for me, it was my biggest wounding as my childhood was worthiness and significance in this world.
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Same. And so it's been this battle of trying to outproduce, outdo myself consistently
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so that I could feel worldly significance—.
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And so ultimately that turned into people-pleasing and all kinds of these emotional
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battles and strongholds.
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And so when I realized I'm carrying around so much chronic stress because I,
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me, myself, I'm trying to control the outcome.
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Yeah. That's wild to me because I need to surrender and lay these burdens down at the foot of the cross.
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And as soon as i realized that was the the pinch point that's when i could say
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you know what i need to take my thoughts captive i need to say no more i need
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to see not on my dime because god has a plan and a purpose for me and it's not
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just about the number on the scale it's about,
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longevity it's about the future of my life it's about how energized do i feel
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during the day it's There's so much at play here that the enemy will make you
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feel like, oh, it's just five pounds. Does it really matter?
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It's so frustrating. Even going further along with that, I'm going to read the whole verse.
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So 2 Corinthians 10, 4 through 5, because what you said is so huge.
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We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons.
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What I looked at in this verse is the two weapons that are used are different terms.
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We look in the Greek. The weapons used for God's mighty weapons are a true weapon.
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It is like a weapon to fight things.
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We look at here, it says a warfare. It's an instrument of an offensive tool for war.
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The other weapons used is in the context of pertaining to the flesh.
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Very different kind of weapons. I always recommend everybody literally look
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at verses and look at the Greek, look at the Hebrew, look at what the true meaning
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is of these words because it totally reveals different levels of scripture.
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So we use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons.
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When you're fighting a battle with your flesh, you feel like you cannot win because you cannot.
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Because your weapon is made of flesh and it's not strong enough.
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We need God's mighty weapons to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning
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and destroy false arguments.
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Those are those pathways through the grass that feel really good because what
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you've rehearsed so much that it feels like it's a truth.
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Verse five says, we tear down arguments and every presumption.
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Presumption means to put above. It is to put on a hierarchy.
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So whenever we have these strongholds that are not godly, we are putting our
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words, our lies, our kind of identity above the word of God.
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So we hold all the presumption, set it up against the knowledge of God.
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And we take, like you said, every thought captive and make
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it obedient to christ so every thought that you have
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if it's not found in scripture it's not your identity that is
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how you fight the spiritual warfare it's really freaking hard
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it sounds simple when i'm saying this it's so hard you guys so when you're going
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through it just know it's it's freaking challenge but this is the power of when
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you know the word when you know who god called you to be because in these moments
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where you have this unworthiness come up or you have this comparison or you
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have this i'm not doing enough because you're trying to perform.
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You go to the word and you knock down that stronghold. You knock down that false
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argument because human reasoning and false arguments are fighting against.
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That's the number one spiritual warfare.
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Then we get to the other, the big dogs. But until we can handle our own mind,
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we're not going to be in the big leagues.
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It's truly master your mind and you will change your life. Literally.
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So talk to me about who are the primary women who come to you and say,
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help, help me. Like, who is this woman? Tell me more about her.
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Gosh, I would say that there is two different kind of women that really come to me.
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One, there is a quiz that I do. It's a body audit. And there's three different
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kind of identities. And I would say that there's the called but awakened woman.
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And then there's the cycling woman. These are kind of one and the same.
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The awakened woman more is an idolization. This is who I was before I really
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understood God and biblical fitness and gained my weight.
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I was just like, fitness and faith don't go together.
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I'm gonna analyze myself. It's how I get results. I don't wanna let go of that control.
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The cycling woman is somebody who is all in or all out.
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She is so stuck in these cycles of, I'm gonna diet really, really hard.
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I'm gonna be super disciplined and then I'm going to have life happen.
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I'm gonna fall off, get back on track, fall off.
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And in that cycling situation, you still are idolizing yourself because to be
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very frank, the fitness industry teaches you to idolize yourself. That's just what...
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What we're taught to do. Right. And it's sad, but it works.
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You know, like it worked for me. It worked really well for me until I thought
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it was like, hey, bro, I got a big plan for you. Can't keep doing this.
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And I had to fall on my face and meet him because he knew how stubborn I was.
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So that's why my story is the way that it was. Everyone has to be that way.
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So I would say somebody who knows they're idolizing themselves,
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but they get stuck in these cycles of these diets, these workout programs,
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they get really excited and they have the surge of
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motivation and then they kind of fall off track really easily that's
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one woman the other one is the one who is really spiritually in
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it like she knows god she loves god she's
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devoted to god however her body does not display that so they're called they
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know the massive calling over their life they love god they're in prayer and
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they feel like they're really really good but their body's not reflecting that
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and that's one of the most dangerous things to be in because that is going to
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be a passive way of faith.
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And you, if you're in a situation, you are likely giving yourself reasons and
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excuses as to why that's vanity, why it doesn't matter, and that's the enemy lying to you.
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That was me, 100%. Because I will say, everything is stressful.
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It doesn't... And I used to even think things like, I can't believe that these
23:30
women are wearing workout clothes on their social media because that is just...
23:36
Not who I am. That's not who I want to be.
23:39
I feel like as believers, we should be fully covered up.
23:42
But that was just me allowing myself to choose the life of emotionally subduing
23:51
my body with carbs, sugar, and alcohol.
23:54
It was just simply an excuse.
23:57
And so was it really about the clothes or what people are wearing?
24:00
No, it had nothing to do with that. It was just easier. Yeah.
24:04
Our triggers and our emotions just reveal our deep beliefs. And it reveals also
24:08
what we are trying to enable.
24:10
So in that mindset, even when I was 40 pounds overweight, I would have the same
24:12
perspective of like, oh, I'm going to be more modest. Like, it's so easy to
24:15
be modest whenever you don't love your body.
24:17
Right. It's hard to be modest whenever you do love your body.
24:20
And there's an in-between because when you are in a spot where you are very
24:25
uncomfortable in your skin, you have no energy, you have no capacity,
24:28
you're going to have these thoughts that are going to come up that are going
24:31
to try and enable you to stay stuck.
24:32
Like, oh, it's okay. God doesn't care about your body. God's not looking at
24:36
that. He looks at your heart. That's very true.
24:38
I told you when I first talked, trust is earned with God.
24:43
Not everyone believes that. It's a very staunch stance that I'm gonna stand
24:46
on. I believe that salvation is given so freely.
24:51
God wants you to be saved. He wants you to go to heaven. That is his number one desire for you.
24:56
But God does not use everybody.
24:58
In Matthew, it says, many are called, few are chosen.
25:01
I will not be someone who's not chosen because I have not devoted my everything
25:05
to God, my temple, my mind, my body, and my spirit.
25:09
So when you are so spiritually in it with God, what I say too is you cannot
25:16
serve God with an unhealthy temple.
25:18
So the women who feel like they are serving God because they're serving at church,
25:22
they're leading Bible studies, they're praying over women, they're doing all of these things.
25:27
You are not serving at the capacity you could be serving at if you were healthy.
25:30
Wow. There is a very real issue there. I love, and this is what we talked about
25:34
when we first met, is I love that you just hit it on.
25:37
You just hit it head on. And I'll tell you, you know, I was at an event this
25:41
past week and there was desserts and cookies and alcohol, everything you could,
25:46
even just down to bread on the sandwiches.
25:48
For me, my body does best eating a certain way.
25:54
God created me that way with intention and.
25:59
So it wasn't about, and this has been a journey for sure, but it wasn't about
26:04
I'm tempted by those things because I'm not tempted by those things anymore.
26:09
Because there's a cost and there's a cost to every single thing that we do in this life.
26:14
And the cost is my mind will not be operating at 100%. My body isn't operating.
26:20
Maybe I'm more tired. Maybe I'm not sleeping well. Maybe I'm emotionally overwhelmed.
26:24
Maybe I'm struggling with anxiety. All of these things that are just symptoms
26:27
that your body is saying, bro, why'd you put that in me? Yeah.
26:31
I think too, even in James 1 14, it says that temptation comes from our own
26:35
desires. They say, God will never test you.
26:38
The word does not say that. The word says that God will test you.
26:42
That faith is built in testing. It's built when you have patient endurance.
26:46
He does say in the word that he is not going to tempt you.
26:51
Temptation comes from your own fleshly desires. We are not called to overindulge.
26:57
We're not called to idolize our body.
26:59
We look at 2 Timothy 1.7, we have a spirit of self-control.
27:02
So like you, you displayed that spirit.
27:05
Also, discipline is a fruit of the spirit. So when people say they don't have
27:09
these things, again, it's a counterfeit identity because it's already in you.
27:13
You have all the fruits of the spirit.
27:15
These other counterfeit handicaps are something you came into agreement with,
27:20
which now is what you speak out, which makes your reality, which is why you
27:23
are at where you're at today because
27:25
your words have power, but your words start with the belief inside.
27:29
And that's why we look at emotions. Like, where are you getting triggered?
27:31
Is it the girls wearing those clothes? Is it like, what is the triggers?
27:35
Because those triggers reveal an emotion you're feeling because of a belief that you have.
27:38
And that belief has to shift to align with God.
27:41
This is so powerful. And if you go back to the Bible, it tells you.
27:46
It tells you all of these things.
27:48
But I love that your gifting through Holy Spirit, through this breaking.
27:56
Allowed you to go back to your Bible and say,
28:00
this verse is highlighted to me. Well, let's dig deeper.
28:04
And I truly believe what you're saying is few are called because are you really
28:10
willing to die to yourself so that Christ can use you? How do you work with women?
28:18
Like they come to you, like, just tell us what is the first starting point?
28:22
So one thing I do not do is I do not give you workout programming.
28:26
I do not give you macros. like you have access to those things, that's not the focus.
28:31
Like I mentioned before, there is very real spiritual groundwork that has to
28:35
happen first. We have to understand who God calls you to be.
28:39
We have to align your actions with your belief of yourself.
28:42
Because whenever you are inconsistent, it's because you have a belief you are inconsistent.
28:46
When you overeat, it's because you have a belief you cannot control yourself
28:49
around food. Let me ask you this.
28:51
Whenever you were on like your weight loss journey, did you have to release
28:54
the control and the result and things started happening? or how did you start?
28:58
How did that happen for you?
28:59
So for me, it was when I realized that I was trying to solve and control all
29:05
of my stress within me, a hundred percent, I had to release it and say,
29:11
I can do nothing on my own.
29:15
And my body kept a score of me trying to do it on my own. And I had to say, you know what, Lord?
29:22
And it was minute by minute when I was first starting of, am I trying to control
29:28
this? Is this something I can control?
29:30
Is this something I need to surrender to God? And it was intentionally all day
29:35
long throughout the day until I got to this place where I would tell my kids
29:39
jokingly, I'm in my peaceful era.
29:43
Because it was truly...
29:45
I have to everything that would cause me any amount of
29:48
stress i just have to surrender it to god like god you've got to take this
29:51
show me give me wisdom and praying through it and leaning on holy spirit inside
29:56
of me to say what do i what can i do because i do believe we are co-laboring
30:01
with christ and i have accountability and i have responsibility to do my part
30:06
yeah but i can't control that.
30:10
And so it was when I finally said, let me be renewed in my mind on God's word
30:17
that the weight started coming off.
30:20
Yeah, very similar to you.
30:22
So as a fitness coach, I knew what to do.
30:26
I did all the right things, tracked the macros. I was in a deficit and I was
30:29
gaining weight. I was doing all of the quote unquote right things. I got the coach.
30:33
I did the gut testing. I did the hormone testing it at everything.
30:36
And I only continued to gain weight. What I had to recognize in this was there
30:41
is a very real aspect of a balance between control and a release.
30:45
We should control the variables we can't control.
30:48
We're not just, I'm not saying you're going to sit there and do fitness with
30:50
God and you're going to be able to eat whatever you want and you're going to
30:52
lose the weight. It's not going to happen.
30:53
There's consequences for your actions. They can be good or bad, ultimately.
30:58
Right. So what I had to recognize was when I controlled what I could control,
31:04
how I showed up, how I thought, and I released what I thought the results should
31:09
look like. That's when results started happening for me.
31:11
So what I teach women is they're, what I even learned too with my hormone and gut stuff.
31:17
There is a cross above like across the line a protocol you can follow to see
31:23
progress whether you have hormone issues gut issues they all really have similar
31:27
things to follow now you may need to go a step further once you get that foundation
31:31
laid out but most women don't even do the basics,
31:34
eating whole foods training three to four times a week strength training getting
31:38
up about eight to ten thousand steps a day it's not that hard drinking enough
31:43
water getting enough sleep Like there are basic bare bone things that we should be doing already.
31:47
That's not a protocol to follow. That's a lifestyle.
31:50
The lifestyle shifts have to happen first. Then the next stuff happens.
31:54
Then you can dial in more some supplements. If you want to use peptides,
31:57
if you want to use different, whatever you want to use, totally fine.
32:01
Maybe you want to get more testing done. I do blood work every six months.
32:04
Like there's things that you can do to keep up with stuff.
32:06
But there is a foundational principle to follow. So they come in and they have
32:09
that foundational principle of what is going to move the needle for you.
32:14
Three months of this, you're going to see insane progress. And it feels effortless,
32:20
not because you're not working, but because you are so fueled and fired up by who you are.
32:26
It's no longer something you have to do. It's what you get to do.
32:28
It's who you are. It just naturally happens.
32:31
That's the shift that happens when you do identity fitness. So they come in,
32:35
they have those protocols follow. I have two different trainings that they go through first.
32:39
It is a biblical fitness training and a biblical framework training.
32:45
So there are two frameworks I teach. I teach what I just talked about,
32:48
the identity, stewardship, and fruitfulness.
32:49
There's also a rich framework. A rich framework is more of a sanctification
32:52
process that's like mind, body, spirit, not just like body.
32:56
The identity, stewardship, fruitfulness is literally the fitness foundation
33:00
that we touch on. And it changes everything.
33:03
I love that. So I do have one final question for you, but before I ask the question,
33:07
I need to ask our listeners,
33:09
a question first okay so if you are listening to this podcast episode and you
33:14
are saying yes yes and yes i want
33:17
to step into true healing and transformation so i can run the race that,
33:24
the Lord has set before me, I'm going to ask your permission right now for some
33:29
tough love. If you are open to some tough love, if you're open to some truth,
33:34
and if you are, keep listening.
33:35
And if you're not, just a hit pause right now. Come back to it.
33:39
Allow the Holy Spirit to work on your heart a little bit more.
33:42
But I would ask you, Renee, what would you say to the woman if you were just
33:46
speaking truth and love, and this was maybe the piece she needs to hear so desperately?
33:52
What would you say to her? I think that we have a lot of women.
33:56
What God's placed on my heart the last, this honestly last few months this year
34:00
is we have a lot of Esther, it's God's calling to rise up.
34:03
But a lot of those women he's calling to rise up cannot rise up.
34:06
When you are not stewarding your temple, when you are not honoring God with
34:09
everything that you do, you will have hiccups.
34:11
I'm not saying be perfect, but there is a true posture in your heart when you're
34:15
serving God and you're devoted to God.
34:17
If your body is not fully aligned with Christ, you are walking in disobedience.
34:21
That's a problem. So Esther 414 says that you're here for a time as this.
34:26
I believe many women are here for a time as this and a massive shift can happen
34:29
and that you are the chain breaker, that you are the legacy creator,
34:33
that you are the nurturer, that you are the wife, the mom.
34:37
You are so many things, but if you are not first, you're best for God,
34:40
you cannot be the best in any other area of your life. We have massive callings over our life.
34:44
If our body's a bottleneck, we will never reach that.
34:46
My biggest fear is meeting God one day and him showing me what life could have
34:50
been like if my body wasn't holding me back, if fear wasn't holding me back,
34:54
if insecurity, if unworthiness, if these things were not holding me back because
34:57
I walked in my true identity.
34:58
Fitness is not about your body. It's not about vanity.
35:03
It is about being a willing and able vessel for God. Your temples,
35:06
your mind, your body, and your spirit, fitness encompasses all of those.
35:09
Identity fitness will transform how you view yourself. Therefore,
35:12
your obedience, your discipline, your ability to act on conviction then opens
35:17
the gate for someone else's destiny, for your children, for your friends, for your husband.
35:21
There are things that cannot be done without your obedience.
35:24
So I'll spin it back to what I said earlier.
35:27
You cannot serve God with an unhealthy temple.
35:30
Your healthiest self is your holiest self. And if you are not training in identity,
35:34
you will never have the health God wants you to have or the kingdom impact he calls you to create.
35:38
I want our listeners to breathe that in.
35:44
Try it on. See how it feels. because I firmly believe you just spoke prophecy
35:52
over so many women listening to this podcast right now.
35:57
Those who have felt that desire in their heart, that they are called for more
36:02
and they have been making excuses and they have been allowing these strongholds
36:08
to just say just one more day.
36:10
Tomorrow is not promised. You can make the decision right now that you're going
36:14
to take one step and you are going to surrender this journey to Christ and you
36:19
are going to not know the future,
36:22
but accept it doesn't matter because he's a known God.
36:26
And I would love for you to connect with Renee. Tell us where people can find you.
36:31
Instagram, TikTok, it's at coach.renee. There's a body audit quiz I think everyone should take.
36:38
It's going to give you what your struggle is, how to overcome it,
36:41
and literally give you verbiage to what you've been struggling with and how to walk through that.
36:45
So richglow.org is where you can take that audit as well.
36:50
Amazing. And we will put all of this information in the show notes.
36:53
So please go back to the show notes. go find coach renee click follow her content
37:00
is incredible and i love so much that she is just truly authentic and wants
37:07
for you to step forward because this is not just about her or i.
37:12
This is about every single woman in this kingdom as a puzzle piece that we need
37:17
to fit together so that we can accomplish the will and the heart of the father
37:22
thank you so much for being on here today.
37:24
I am certain you are going to bless so many women and.
37:29
Truly step into their kingdom purpose.
37:34
Friend, I am so thankful that you are here today. I pray this episode blessed you big time.
37:39
And if it did, would you do me a favor and leave me a review on Apple podcasts?
37:42
It helps more women just like you find the show. And it may be the very reason
37:46
that somebody else gets the answers that they need.
37:49
I would also love to connect with you personally on Instagram.
37:51
You can find me by searching cortisol underscore coach. That's where I show up every single day.
37:56
And send me a DM. I would love to connect with you. I'll see you next time.