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Jendayi Harris - The Chubby Church · Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman

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Vox Novus, the New Voice, Vox Novus, the New Dimension. Vox
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Novus thought and movement leaders who will share from their experience and offer tools to
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help us navigate our rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Fermont. Welcome
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to Vox Novus, the New Voice. What are grubology, chubbology and gluten
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ectomy? These are words coined by my guest this week on Vox Novs,
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Gendai Harris. Gendai Harris is a licensed professional counselor and board certified health coach
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who knows what it's like to grapple with body, image and eating issues.
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She blends her own deeply personal stories peppered with humor, extensive research, practical
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strategies, and biblical and spiritual insights to deliver a holistic approach to healing mind,
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body, and spirit. Her website is Jendai Harris dot com, and
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she joins me this week to share her path and books, The Chubby Church
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Book one, The Chubby Church Book two, and Whole and Free Health your
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guide to a healthy weight and happier you in body, soul, and spirit.
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Please join me in welcoming to Vox Novis Jendai Harris welcome Jendai. Hello
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Victor, happy to meet you, and hello everyone joining us today. Jendi,
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please share with us your path and how it led to the work and
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wisdom you share with our world. Thank you. I will say that it's
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really a calling. I felt led to this work years ago. I knew
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I was going to be an author, and I wasn't really sure what I
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was going to write about. And then I had this divine experience in my
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room, my bedroom, I was watching TD Jake's on the television, and
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somehow, all of a sudden, I was jumping out of bed, which
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I don't advocate a TV in your bedroom, by the way, But when
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I jumped out of bed, I started praising God, and I got this
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really amazing vision and had a sensation of hearing your call to lift the bondage
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off the people and establish the Kingdom of God. It was a very amazing
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experience and moment, and I didn't realize that I'm first going to start writing
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on my own biggest, most grueling area of bondage in my life, which
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was weight and eating something I call weight and eating bondage and gain freedom.
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Weight and eating bondage is that obsessions with how you look, obsessions with your
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body image, feeling shame about your body, struggling with food weight, you
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know, and eating behavior, spinge eating, overeating, eating the wrong foods.
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And you share the analogy of going over a mountain and the plight of
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the Israelites in the Book of Exodus in your book and why you related to
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Moses, please tell us, Yeah, I felt like Moses because I felt
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so inadequate, flabby, and just not like why be okay? Still,
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you know, I'm still a purse. I work in progress, always so,
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and I always say I lost like seven hundred pounds, but that's all
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my ups and downs over the years. And so for people who've struggled,
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you know, with gaining or losing about twenty pounds or more over the years,
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or just really really struggle with that weight area and have had trauma,
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That's why I felt like Moses, just super inadequate to do my job.
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When God called Moses, Moses was like me, I can't even speak,
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I can't even talk, like you know, he felt really nervous about it,
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but yet he was the right leader of the people to lead them to
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freedom and the promised land. And while he didn't enter the promised Land himself,
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which was honestly probably a gift to him letting go. He was able
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to work with the Israelites to help them get there. And I feel like
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our promised land and weight in eating world, which I was able to get
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to, is really looking at permanent weight release, allowing yourself to really let
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go from an inner transformation that will produce that body revelation. And we'll talk
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more about that. I had a wonderful spiritual teacher who used to share that
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when all of these great people were called, they would respond in Hebrew with
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the word henany, which the literal translation is I am here, But my
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teacher said it means more. It means I am ready. And when you
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receive the call, you were ready. That's right. And you know,
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sometimes we're not ready, but we're willing and we're gonna just take it out,
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I mean, and that's really true in this journey. It's like we
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may want to lose weight, or we may want to get healthier, but
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we're not necessarily ready. Okay, and you never really are because you're always
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going to enjoy junk food and problem foods. But if you're willing and you
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allow this place of surrender that here I am sensation you can really work with
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God and spirit to move a lot of mountains in your life, including this
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one. What inspired your books the Chubby Church Book one and the Chubby Church
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Book two just the same. So just that same calling, Just feeling inspired
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to do it in my own journey and just wow, like I didn't know,
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um, you know, how to walk this out really fully and holistically.
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A lot of times we approach weight and eating from like a you know,
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eat lettuce for breakfast type of thing, or you know, count your
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calories or go to go get a personal train, and all those things are
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really legitimate and true, and not eating lettuce for breakfast, but you know
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what I mean, like you're really legitimately need to look at the science and
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doing the workouts and things of that nature. However, it wasn't the whole
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picture. Food predicts ninety percent of our outcome, for example, and food
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is the behavior relationship that really leads us to love. If we're loving ourselves
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through food and what we eat and loving our organs, right, it's going
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to help us produce those results. So for Chubby Church, I was really
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inspired because the church kind of has this sense of like, you know,
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I'm not drinking, I'm not drugging, I'm not you know, oversexing or
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partying. But eating, yeah, let's do it. You know. So
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glut me and church picnics and all of that and donuts in the lobby are
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all very acceptable behaviors. Yet is it true love? Is it truly walking
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out spirit? These problems, toxic foods, that real cult of a disease,
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lethargy, procrastination. And so it was my hope to offer a real
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pointed message to people who believe in God and trust God might yet want to
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improve their health and see the Biblical and kind of toa based understanding of health.
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And you've also written a version for secular readers entitled Whole and Free Health,
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Your Guide to a healthy weight and a happier you and body, soul
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and spirit. Why did you were you called to write the secular version?
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Mainly because of my therapy practice. I would attract people who are nonbelievers or
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didn't resonate with the church messages or audience, or who had church hurt.
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You know, they went to church, they had a bad experience and that
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affected their walk in that way, so they didn't quite resonate with that audience,
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so the whole in free health is more general audience. It still has
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a lot of love, a lot of wisdom from biblical truth, but it
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also allows for people who you know, want that information and insight to handle
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this area of their life and get some freedom, but not with all of
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the others contacts. So holand free health includes loxology, which is from Chubby
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Church too, but it's mostly based on Chubby Church one and is a secular
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version for people who just want whole ind free health, want to get their
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health in order from a holistic perspective. In your book, you share the
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story that really was the beginning of your transformation, Burger King and the temptation
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of chocolate chip cookies. Please tell us what happened. Well, we all
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have had that experience where you may have not been able to stop eating something,
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and that was mine. I had this obsession with chocolate chip cookies from
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Burger King. Oh my goodness. I would eat him for breakfast, lunch,
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and dinner. I was a slave to the Burger King in every single
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way and go get what on my way to work, on my way dooring
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work, and then after work eating these cookies that I just could not stop,
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and I was like, what is going on here? And finally I
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did get free. I moved to another area. But I realized that underneath
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the cookie was really a lot of pain. It was also food addiction.
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The concoction of chocolate, you know, the fat, the flour. I'm
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very addicted to wheat, so I had to stop eating wheat because it was
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very addictive for me. Sugar right that combination was just intoxicating, was very
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numbing. Would help me kind of disassociate with what was happening in my emotional
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body or life that I couldn't handle. So there was a food addiction component,
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and yeah, an emotional component because underneath the chocolate chip cookies was some
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devastation I had. My dad was murdered and prior to that was some just
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toxidity and addiction and things like that for him. So when that happened at
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twelve, I started twelve years old, when he was murdered, I started
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to really hone in too my food addiction and bake chocolate, chif cookies and
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things like that. And I would bake these cookie cakes and all of that.
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So it was a way to help me kind of nurture, losing you
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know, the first man I ever love, which is my dad, that
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sense of protection and food can become like ah, like the food can be
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like a comfort right from your mother right or that protection. That weight can
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be like a protection like a father. So they work hand in hand to
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nurture those emotional wounds. And and that is true emotional eating, you know,
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is getting getting that under healing of happening. So yeah, that's that's
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my story. And it caused me to have weight was you know, most
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of my life and going up and down, up and down and up and
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down and really having these battles that I didn't understand how to fix. You
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know, you try to fix it with food, try to fix it with
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with exercise. You try to fix it, you know, with us trees
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and things in that nature. But at the end of the day, it's
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a sole issue. It's a sole space, and it's growing in healing some
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of our traumas, our issues, our character of working things out, and
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God is using our food and weight story, our health in order to work
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out our best self, our best life. So this is an area to
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look at for spiritual transformation. As I shared with you before, we started
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the interview. I had experiences like that when I was a kid, not
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not as dramatic as what you just shared. But I had a grandmother.
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I was raised in the nineteen fifties, and I had a grandmother who was
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in her early eighties when I was a child, and every time I would
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come to visit her, she'd be wearing an apron and in the pocket she
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would have something and she would smile and give me a hug and a kiss
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and say, you know where it is. And in that apron pocket was
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a chocolate bar. And this started wiring in my young mind, this concept
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of wood, especially sweets, that's love, that's an expression of love.
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And that sort of started my process. And because of certain behavior that I
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was punished for as a kid, I started gaining weight as a form of
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armoring, protecting myself from the pain of being punished. And that was something
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that lasted with me well into my forties when I made a decision to have
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a weight loss procedure and I had surgery and I lost two hundred pounds.
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Yeah, and you know, it's really powerful that you had that experience,
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and I'm glad you took hold of it and got the support that you needed,
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and that is a necessary thing for some people. But still what we
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find and you've probably found this is maintaining the laws. Even for many people
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who have bariactive surgery or other types of surgery gasard bypassed and other things,
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we find that they gain weight back because the sole issue was still under or
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unaddressed, and that for me was healed because I recognized after the surgery that
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I really didn't need the surgery, that the reduction of the amount that I
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could eat and also the quality of the food that I could eat, was
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something that I had. I had the mentality had I had your book spoyed
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back when I might not have had to have gone through that process. And
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to this day I have not had again regaining of any of the weight,
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and my eating is moderate and healthy and it's it's worked out well for me,
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and I'm grateful. I'm really grateful for the fact that at seventy years
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old, I'm still here because I don't think I would have been had I
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not gone through that process. Oh my goodness, that's amazing, Victor.
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So that leads us to the question about childhood struggles leading to overeating, is
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that for most overeaters. The source m for I would say most, but
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in today's day and age, there's also so that there's also like an I
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write in my book, so there's a chapter called chobology. There's another chapter
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in and so in either book Church one or whole in Free Health, you'll
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get chabology, which looks at the psychological components of how we use weight,
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okay, and one of them is absolutely some of those threats to feeling safe
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and healthy and energetic in our bodies. And when we've had childhood traumas and
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other like sexual abuse, you're going to see, like especially emotional abuse or
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emotional neglect, you're going to see some overeating tendencies inside of the child.
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There's also an us right. We grow up into these habits where food again
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can be much more reliable than some of the people in our lives. The
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food is always there, and those junk foods and snacks are at every other
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corner that you can get access to this kind of drug of choice to fill
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those places. So in our chubology, we have chubological triggers and definitely we
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can feel that to eat and use weight as a self protection to cover when
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we do not feel safe in our bodies and the world and our bodies.
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A lot of women have this experience where they've been sexually a sold or had
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some issues and that's going to cause them to feel like, oh my gosh,
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or I don't know how to deal with the opposite sex. You know,
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different types of things where their lust or sexuality. So they tend to
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pack on the pounds, you know, because of the attention, the unwanted
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attention. So there's different types of psychological areas like that that need to be
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addressed for permanent weight release. I'm curious as to whether in your work,
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in your studies you've ever encountered any scientific studies that show that not only is
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this an emotional component, but somehow gets programmed into our genes. Yeah.
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Absolutely, there's a ton of research and epigenetics that looks at certain genes that
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are definitely kind of supportive to addictive behavior, So addictive food behavior, sugar
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wheat, like refined flour. Certain people have a fat addiction, and you
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know that if you kind of overeat like French fries or potato chips, things
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like that, you know, So there is absolute research on epigenetics and certain
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geno grams that are genotypes that are going to show a propensity to severe you
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know, food addiction, which is going to lead to usually like obesity,
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more of obesity, things of that nature, binge eating behaviors, different eating
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disorders. And then you also have that component of just general like some people
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for example, some of the research done where some people have like a lesser
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hunger sensation, so like they don't feel hunger or fool as much as other
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people. So if I don't have the like a certain geno type that says,
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Okay, I'm full after I eat, then that's going to be a
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problem. Other people are really prone to like sweet tooth, you know,
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or sawty tooth, And that's kind of proven as well in genetics and research.
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And does that also tie into those who suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction?
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Yeah, absolutely absolutely. And what about spending addiction people who go out
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and have to spend constantly. Yeah, those are also but again in addictive
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areas and centers of the brain and the different genes associated with that. With
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that addictive tendency is overall. I love the way you create interesting words in
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your writing. You had mentioned hubbology. What's grubology. Grobology speaks to why
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we overeat. So it looks at I am I identifying myself and my needs.
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Many times when you're overeating, you're actually what's called disassociating. You're disconnecting
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with your soul and yourself. This soul is your sense of mind, your
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volition, your choice, your sense of mentality, thinking, intellect. It's
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also your psyche you know, psychology, your personality. Your soul is your
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emotions, your feelings. And when we're overeating a lot of times, like
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for example, I would go from zero to food, right so if there
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was an emotion, any kind of emotion, I would literally just go to
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food. I was not thinking and slowing down that process of what am I
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feeling? What am I needing right now? So we want to begin to
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learn how to identify our needs. Their example, you have needs for leisure,
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you have needs for affection, physical affection, you have needs for you
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know, communication, connection. Sometimes we have needs for leading or control as
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another actual need in certain spaces, and even though letting go of control is
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always good, but we sometimes are feeling that sense of out of control that
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can cause us to overeat. So growbology is going to look at the psychology
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around why we're overeating and helping you identify what your even needs are. And
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when you've had emotional neglect, as many overeaters have had, you know,
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you don't really know or you feel a shame around your needs. You may
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not identify with them, and sometimes their physical needs, sometimes their emotional needs.
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But learning to get in touch with those needs, being able to share
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or request your needs to be met from your partner or others in your life,
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trusting needs to be met by God, by life. So that's what
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grobology is all about. It's a really supportive chapter to getting to know yourself.
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That self awareness is critical in permanent weight release and in your counseling and
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coaching works. You had mentioned about being willing to advocate for oneself, to
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ask for what we truly need in this life. A lot of people suffer
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from that. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I'm sure you've seen that
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in your work. It's just so many people, right we just feel like
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we just feel like alone in the world, and that's a spiritual kind of
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thing, and yet we're so connected to everything else around us. And yeah,
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we do need to advocate for ourselves. We do need to learn how
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to speak up for ourselves and find our voice in this in this very you
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know, crowded world because you're just one in eight billion people, which is
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pretty remarkable as far as a unique creation of one. But yeah, it's
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so interconnected and learning how to support and advocate yourself in it. I had
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a dear spiritual friend who used to say, in the other world, we
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get what we need. In this world, you have to ask for what
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you need. Uh huh, and it come. It's still comes sometimes.
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We you know. It's that gratitude journey as well, right, Like the
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gratitude seems to attract more and more of us getting what we need to Absolutely
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my guest Jendai Harris. Her books are The Chubby Church Book one, The
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Chubby Church Book two, and Whole and Free Health Your Guide to a healthy
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weight and happier you in Body, Soul and Spirit. Jendai, please tell
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our listeners when it get your books and find out more about you and your
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wonderful work. Yeah, thank you. You can just go to www dot
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Chubby Church dot com the www Dot the Chubby Church dot com and we'll be
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back with more of Jendai after these words on the Ome Times Radio network Free
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your Mind with HOMETIMES Radio IOMFM. Home Times Magazine is one of the leading
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States, and the ad Council. Black On box O. My guest this
23:00
week is Jendai Harris. We're talking about her books, The Chubby Church Book
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one, The Chubby Church Book two, and Whole and Free Health Your Guide
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to a Healthy Weight and Happier You in Body, Soul and Spirit. Jenda
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you share that there are three secret reasons that we really don't want to lose
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weight. What are those secrets? Well, that goes back to the chubiology,
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you know. But one of those is that you just want to do
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what you want to do. I mean, you're human and you like that
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you get to eat what you want, Okay, So just knowing that we
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don't always want to let go. That's the nature of food addiction is we
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want to because we see the negative effects that these problems foods may be causing.
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But then we don't want to because our biochemistry, our emotional chemistry is
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connected to the foods. Another reason is because us that we is a self
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protection, you know, it really is a self protection against the world and
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against feeling unsafe. So when we have to deal with our psychology and wait
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psychology, it can bring up some pain. Which is the third reason that
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we don't want to is we don't want to deal with the pain. We
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don't want to deal with the actual inner child within that still needs your love
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and attention. And that is true emotional eating. Is that there, It's
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really speaking to a place where this inner child in you is needing comfort,
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understanding truth versus lies. You know, she or he may believe you know
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they're unappreciated or inadequate. And we got to speak to these places within our
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soul, those inner child places, and that's going to bring forth real,
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true healing, and we just want to address it kind of this topical mind
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point of view, But long term wholeness and reedom is a path of really
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looking at all aspects of self. What is the difference between overeating and unhealthy
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eating and binge eating and what is the stimuli for binge eating? Yeah,
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binge eating comes from again these emotional areas where we just have been we have
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overwhelmed. So identifying your emotions as a person is super important, right,
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Our emotions, our needs, like what do I feel what do I need?
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What do I want? What's going on with me? So that kind
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of self awareness is going to be important. But but binge eating is stimulated
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by this emotional side, which has to do with the maybe trauma, maybe
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inner child stuff, maybe chaotic stuff going on in your life right now.
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That's triggering that those deep emotional spaces or things you haven't even been through,
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and that can trigger, you know, just that binge eating and overeating.
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Whereas your binges are also stimulated by those addictive food ingredients, and there's a
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lot of them, Like it's actually statistic proven and research that your sugar,
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for example, is just as powerful as cocaine or heroin in the brain.
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And so it's like, no, I don't want you to use in cocaine
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or heroin of course, but food can do that type of powerful protection of
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emotional you know, drama, right, It can really numb you out for
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a moment and give you an elation feeling or powerful happy feeling that can get
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people through and that's why they rely on it so much. And there's these
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addictive food ingredients like sawt for example, we eleven percent more when we have
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sawt fat, like fried stuff you know, you may be addicted to like
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the fried chicken or fried chicken burgers, or a lot of junk foods that
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are fried. We look at ingredients like, you know, wheat frank and
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wheat is a high and cheese are both opioid direct opioid centers in the brain,
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which means that it's going to numb you make you feel really good for
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a moment. And those types of addictive ingredients don't work, you know,
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don't work in all brains that way, but some brains. If you feel
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like you've struggled and you notice your problem, foods have like the food you
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binge on or overeat or tend to crave. Those foods usually have an addictive
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kind of component, so you're going to eat more of them and maybe overeat
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them or choose the wrong stuff. So binge eating, just so you're clear,
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is an episode of eating where you eat noticeably more in a short period
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of time. A binge is a quick process, meaning you eat a lot
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like it can be, Oh, let me just nibbalance peanut butter. Oh,
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let me have a little bit of chips over here, Let me eat
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some of these nuts, and then before you know it, you have a
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noticeably large amount of caloric intake in a short period of time, like when
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then a short period of time, and that's how you know it's a binge.
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I've seen it as severe as going from restaurant to restaurant, up to
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three or four restaurants in one evening to have big dinner meal. Some people
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have had that. Or in one of my episodes, I talk about where
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I ate like a whole people like I have like two big, huge slices
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of pizza and a pint of ice cream and you know, a sticky bun,
28:11
all within a short period of time, and that's how you know it's
28:15
a binge. Overeating can be somewhat like Thanksgiving and you do want to have
28:18
feast. You know, there's feasts mentioned in many biblical texts, but you
28:23
know you want to There is times for overeating, But when you're doing that
28:27
on a consistent basis, like eating to a point of fullness that's like off
28:33
the fullness scale of you know, one to ten, you're eating at a
28:37
level like eleven or twelve on a consistent basis, or just extra full,
28:41
or your pants your buttons about the pop, or your stomach feels full that's
28:45
going to tell you that that meal, even though it wasn't binge eating behavior,
28:51
was still just a lot of intake for your physical body and stomach.
28:56
So those are the differences between like binge eating and over eating, but they
29:00
can be of course overlapping. And when you have multiple issues around binge eating
29:06
per week, you are looking at a eating disorder psychologically, So there's different
29:11
eating disorders that could be present. And again when I say that it's all
29:15
healable, it's just a matter of really honing in what are those problem food
29:19
ingredients, dealing with your emotions, getting psychotherapy, working with a professional to
29:26
support you through what your emotional regulation and processing thinking in her child work.
29:33
And it's a pretty powerful combination when you are having a healthy food plan as
29:37
well as getting regular activity and cleansing your organs and things of that nature.
29:42
Getting back to biblical reference, I know that in the Book of Genesis there's
29:47
a reference to eating these types of seeds and grains and things of that nature,
29:51
which all sound to be very healthy. And then later on there's regulations
29:55
about eating different types of meat and so on and so forth. Is there
29:57
a biblical diet, Yeah, it's your great question. Genesis one twenty nine.
30:03
It really does and two through thirty one and does speak to you know,
30:07
we really are Like the primary instruction around eating was please, you know,
30:12
eat lots of seed bearing you know, fruits and vegetables, and lots
30:18
of greens. Now, greens are all over, They're easy to grow.
30:21
You know, we have them for access all the time, and they your
30:25
organs love them. Like your liver is like koe, come on and give
30:29
it to me. You know, it loves these types of foods. It
30:33
loves those bitter herbs and greens. Your taste buds, however, may not.
30:37
Okay, your taste buds love the ice cream and the steaks and all
30:41
of that. But for your body to be healthiest, you need a diet
30:45
that does include a large amount of fruits and vegetables. And that's kind of
30:49
your basics basis for healthy eating and any food plan. So I call it
30:56
food truth because no matter what diet plan you use, you will see a
31:00
need to increase your vegetable and fruit intake. They say, actually, one
31:06
of the reasons if the BCD epidemic is a lack of fruits. It's like,
31:10
we have this weird mindset, all this confusion of oh, I can't
31:15
eat I can't seem to eat fruits because they're carbs and or sugar, but
31:19
yet I binge on you know, candy bars and you know, chips.
31:26
So it's really this kind of strange mindset happening right now. When we if
31:30
we just ate the fruit, which has a lot more holistic vitamin, mineral
31:34
balance, fiber um, we're going to actually get more impact and our health
31:41
overall and in our weight versus you know, trying to shun the fruit and
31:45
eat you know, the junk food binges that we may get on our fast
31:49
food. So yeah, eating from the tree of life. Yeah, eating
31:53
from the tree of life. But also biblically, when Noah was in the
31:56
arc and all of that afterwards, God said, okay, you can go
32:00
ahead and eat whatever, you know, eat meat. But in Leviticus eleven
32:06
and think Deuteronomy fourteen, there is a biblical food plan. They call it
32:09
kosher, meaning fit for consumption. Now, today's world is different when it
32:15
comes to meat care and all of that animal care, and we do you
32:19
know, some people do prefer meat in their diet, some don't, right,
32:23
so either way is fine. Now, Biblically, it's okay to eat
32:28
meat, you know, Leviticus tells us, you know, God loves a
32:30
good steak too, a bird offering at the time. But I will tell
32:36
you that today's world, we eat way more than we need, and the
32:38
type of meat we're eating is pumped with hormones, antibiotics, lots of pharmaceuticals.
32:44
In fact, the reason why we sell most partical pharmaceuticals is for the
32:49
meat. And how the animals are treated is certainly not right. It's not
32:52
inhumane scripturally, it's inhumane overall. That's why we can't even see how where
32:58
the animals are. We used to go round the corner and see a bunch
33:00
of cows and dairy cows. Now you really don't see that many animals outside.
33:07
And there's reasons for that, and that needs to be studied and nurtured
33:09
and where your meat is coming from. So you just want to eat the
33:13
highest quality meat. If you eat meat or fish, highest quality wild type
33:19
of wild caught fish, like, just do your best for the quality and
33:22
then kind of reduce it because all meat has cholesterol and saturated fat and lots
33:27
more sodium, so that you want to if you need to really get your
33:30
health and order. Meats really the first thing to go, and there's so
33:34
much research on this for diabetics and heart disease. I mean, it's a
33:38
really powerful thing for your liver your organs to have less fat to digest,
33:45
and that's how you're going to do it fastest and cutting out saturated fat.
33:49
Not that saturated fat is bad, it's just the quantities and quality that we're
33:52
eating is not the best, especially if you have chronic disease or obesity things
33:58
like that. So I do have acy. The biblical kind of way of
34:01
eating is going to be a lot more fruits and vegetables. In fact,
34:06
there's such abundance like for example, five hundred calories is a whole watermelon,
34:12
I mean that's huge versus a donut and a coffee with a lot of cream
34:15
and sugar. That's going to get you easily, you know, five six
34:19
hundred calories, right, and it's going to be less satiating. So you're
34:22
looking for a lot more fiber. Those whole grains, like instead of white
34:27
rice, choose brown rice. Instead of just white bread, choose like the
34:30
whole grain or ezekiel type of bread. That's gonna be sprouted grains, a
34:35
lot more holistic, a lot more fiber, and much more you know,
34:38
nutrients for you. Yeah, I also look at it in terms of how
34:43
do I get more nutrition into my system because obesity and all chronic diseases is
34:49
a sign of malnourishment. The fat is storing because it was collaries we did
34:53
not need, a food we did not need or couldn't pronounce in the body,
34:59
so it stores in the adipose tissue. Now, if you decide to
35:02
help strengthen your health, you're gonna want to go to spiritual truth, which
35:07
is food made with love and light of the sun, and more of it
35:12
in its raw form, so you're getting that highest nutrient potency. And I
35:16
recommend to do this. The best thing is to nutrient load, So getting
35:22
nutrients in the morning, like a huge smoothie sometime before lunch, right sometime
35:28
early in the day, because that's when you're most your will, let's say,
35:31
from the willpower component is highest and strongest. So get that smoothie in
35:37
and that looks like three to four cups of whatever green of choice. I
35:40
love, kale, I love spinach, like whatever green you love, a
35:45
banana or two. For sweetening, you can use a whole pack of frozen
35:49
fruit and pop that into a vitamix or blender and really get that down.
35:54
You know, some people like a vegan or regular protein pow or mix,
36:00
but that's going to be a wonderful way for your body, your cells,
36:05
your nutrition to get in there in the morning. And when you have these
36:08
like greens, it's actually going to prevent you from craving some of the thylacoids
36:14
inside the greens. So my whole point here is Biblically, there's certain meat
36:20
that is not recommended in God's grocery store. It's just not it's not there.
36:23
It's there's something wrong. For example, the pig okay bacon, And
36:28
there's a huge bacon dilemma because we love bacon in our culture. We love
36:31
it. But and when it comes to pork, for example, it's one
36:36
of many areas like we don't eat snake for dinner in the United States usually,
36:40
right, it's not our particular meat of toys for a reason, right,
36:45
for not for many reasons. Because they're scavengers. So when you look
36:49
at the pork or pig, they eat anything, I mean, they'll eat
36:52
another pig if you allow them to. So they are very much a cannibalistic
36:59
type of animal and they don't have discretion. So within the meat there's different
37:02
types of parasites and things of that nature that can cause some major problems.
37:07
And you can actually see it when you're cooking pork chops like I did for
37:09
my grandparents. So I would just encourage you to start fundamentally in your nutrition,
37:15
start your day really well, multi whole foods, vitamin A liquid vitamin,
37:21
starting with some digestive enzymes, and a huge huge smoothie getting that nutrition
37:27
in, working to reduce some of the meat overall in your diet and just
37:31
increase your fruits and vegetables. So for a long time, I stopped eating
37:35
cake and I would eat watermelon instead and it actually satisfied me a lot more.
37:40
So that was helpful to transition off of like refined sugars into more complex
37:46
or real carbohydrate type of helpful sugars for the body. And it actually had
37:52
a slimming effect because of all that hydration. So I can talk about these
37:54
nutritional things forever as a holistic health coach, but I will tell you that
37:59
is your basis for a biblical nutrition, and many faith traditions have periods of
38:06
fasting. Is fasting healthy for us? Absolutely? Fasting I highly recommend periodically
38:13
for to break the stronghold psychologically and physically. Nowadays you hear a lot about
38:19
intermittent fasting, which is a real powerful practice. I mean, we used
38:22
to just not eat after dinner, okay. We used to eat three meals
38:25
a day and call it a day. We didn't have all the snacking.
38:30
But the food industry has sold us on snacking and has sold us on how
38:34
we need more, and we necessarily don't don't really, okay, But when
38:39
you just stop eating after dinner and then you eat at breakfast, that's called,
38:44
you know, nowadays, intermittent fasting. So you take breaks from eating
38:47
between meals and or especially after dinner time, and that is going to help
38:52
you to balance your blood sugar. And that's why, you know, twenty
38:57
years ago we weren't dealing with as much health issues as we are right now.
39:00
When we look at other areas of fasting, you know, Jesus fasted,
39:05
you know, he fasted forty days, forty nights. He fasted for
39:07
spiritual breakthrough, and that is another reason to fast and in Chubby Church book
39:13
too, where I really go into the seven battles of the way you're eating
39:15
war, you'll see like fasting for me, I was a huge game changer
39:22
in my whole life. God led me, and I do recommend being spirit
39:25
led. I do not recommend water based fasting unless you're under clinical supervision,
39:30
and there are places that do that. But I was led for a forty
39:35
one day fast and this fast was juice water, lots of juice, of
39:38
course, and fresh juices. And this fast I was like, it was
39:43
a very audible voice of fast for the curses of your family and generation.
39:50
I mean I was just like, what's a fast and what's a curse and
39:52
what is this? I never ever took a break from food, folks,
39:57
ever, I mean never, I never even thought about taking a break from
40:01
food. But your body physically absolutely loves to have a break from eating.
40:09
It actually gives you more time back, right, it helps your body start
40:13
to balance because your body is this incredible divine machine. Right, it is
40:20
a divine cleanser. It always wants It's made and rooted in love. Therefore
40:25
it always wants to cleanse it for the highest good. The problem is we
40:30
keep putting so much junk in it doesn't get the space to actually cleanse.
40:34
So the fasting period is going to allow you to really allow for your body
40:38
to get back into its highest best form of energy, get rid of toxins,
40:44
heal and there's the research is profound. There's lots of it in my
40:47
book. There's other books, of course, that talk about the power of
40:51
fasting. There's a really good one by Jason Fung who wrote The Obesity Code
40:55
and other great books and on complete the Complete Guide for fasting. But I
41:00
will tell you that you're going to reduce usually high blood pressure. You're going
41:04
to reduce at a one c for a diabetic metrics, You're gonna balance out
41:08
blood sugar, you're going to start to slim down because you're getting your bodies
41:13
allowed to processing the fat. So I highly recommend a juice fast, a
41:16
smoothie fast without the protein. And I don't recommend I recommend you hear from
41:22
God. I recommend you pray and ask God, you know, what is
41:27
it, how long is should my fast being kind of get a sense for
41:30
how long, what type. There's lots of types of fasting, whether it's
41:36
you know from caffeine or the problem foods, which we recommend obviously eliminating,
41:39
but just you know, that can be a start to the elimination, but
41:44
getting your brain and your body back. You know, I recommend praying about
41:47
you know what else you're trying to break true right now. You know there's
41:52
areas of my life right now I'm breaking true in terms of relational health and
41:58
what's going on, you know with me. So like you have areas that
42:01
you want to break through. And for me, I was like, wow,
42:04
a forty one day fast. This is back in two thousand and four
42:07
and five, and it was so powerful what I saw an experience during that
42:14
time and I'm still reaping today. So fasting is a powerful thing. Jesus
42:20
fasted and and other people. You're right, he said, you know you're
42:23
going to fasten the days to come. Fasting is a spiritual practice. It's
42:28
also a liberator emotionally from different forms of bondage or situations or breakthroughs. And
42:35
there's lots of reasons which I outline in my book The Chubby Church Too,
42:39
The Wisdom of Jendai. Harris will be back with more after these words on
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us dot org. Brought to you by the ACT Council. Welcome Mile in
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Machine Back on box nobis. My guest this week is Jendai Harris. She's
44:52
the author of The Chubby Church Book one, the Chubby Church Book two,
44:57
and persecular readers, Whole and Free help your guide to a healthy weight and
45:01
happier you in body, soul, and spirit. Jan What does weight and
45:07
eating freedom look like? Yeah, great question, Victor. Weight and eating
45:14
freedom looks like no guilt when you eat something you really enjoy. It looks
45:22
like choosing much healthier for yourself and feeling really good about it, making healthier
45:29
choices on a consistent basis. It looks like not overdoing exercise or having the
45:36
mindset of exercise to lose weight and drive the body to thinness or even have
45:45
thinness as a soul motivation for you. Taking great care of yourself. It
45:52
looks like exercise would look like more. I'm doing this because I love myself.
45:58
I'm doing this because I want to feel my best. I want to
46:00
be in my emotional and mental best state. I want to feel good about
46:04
my body. Hold and free health looks like loving your only one and only
46:10
home you never move from, which is your physical body. And having a
46:14
really positive, encouraging, compassionate relationship with self since again you're married to you
46:21
your whole life right and beyond. So it looks like welcoming gratitude, God
46:30
spirit right into your life and into this area when you struggle. It's allowing
46:37
this as a place of surrender and learning and insight and information. It's feeling
46:44
really good and energetic in your physical space and body and not having disease mindsets
46:51
and thinking and toxic emotions that could bring you down, like bitterness or unforgiveness
46:57
or a sense of hatred or other hatred or and negative emotions that haven't been
47:06
resolved or dealt with. It's dealing with them and clearing them from your energetic
47:10
space, and your body does hold on to emotions that you need to breathe
47:15
and feel to release. So that's what it looks like. It looks like
47:22
this sense of joy, of happiness, of wholeness. And I want a
47:27
reader just yesterday text or put my message in them for me that she just
47:32
felt like this was so much more than just health. And this has helped
47:37
me in every area to become much more emotionally regulated, to be able to
47:44
know myself better and feel like I'm worthy of health and worthy of good life
47:49
and worthy of you know, enjoyment. And I feel like that's what holy
47:53
and free health is. It's this powerful force to say, I want to
47:58
be free. I don't want to just lose weight. I want to be
48:01
whole. I want to be free for my whole life. I want to
48:06
demonstrate that, build a legacy of it. I want to become it,
48:09
become love and allow for love. And from a spiritual standpoint, these bodies
48:16
are the homes of our soul. Yeah. Absolutely, there's a scripture and
48:22
First Christian three sixteen it says your body is a temple of the Living God.
48:28
It's like, oh wow, that's big, because that brings. I
48:30
bring God wherever I go. That means I bring love. God is love.
48:36
I bring love wherever I go. And if I'm not bringing love,
48:38
perhaps I'm out of divine alignment, you know, and getting ourselves and our
48:43
physical space in divine alignment. When we're in our truest, when we're in
48:46
our right form, first of all, we get a lot of joy,
48:51
the joy you know when you're when you're very overweight, you don't feel as
48:54
much joy simply because you're lugging around a feeling of heaviness. Right. It
49:00
doesn't feel great, it doesn't feel it may feel comforting like your self.
49:05
Concept can be based on Big Jim, But at the end of the day,
49:08
you really want to feel good. You want to be able to get
49:12
up out of your seat or buy one airline seat ticket. You want to
49:15
feel freedom to go to the beach and just be in your bathing suit.
49:20
When we are in our best physical form and health, there's nothing like it,
49:24
because it's actually you being in your true divine essence and feeling that greatness
49:30
and feeling that good. Not that you have to be a size too or
49:32
looking like hercules, but just that you want to feel and do your best
49:37
right feeling that sense of happiness and enjoy. There's nothing like putting energy into
49:43
this space and area of life because it pays off the biggest in terms of
49:46
your happiness and joy. Absolutely. We have talked about the words that you
49:52
have coined tchibology and grubology, and you've coined another one called glutton ectomy.
49:58
What is a glutt CoNEXT to me? Yeah, performing a glottenectomy is looking
50:02
at what we talked about already in the sense of, you know, getting
50:07
out of us this sense of gluttony, the sense of like overeating that part
50:10
of us and dealing with it. And we have to deal with it emotionally,
50:15
like again asking ourselves why it's there, letting go of being willing to
50:21
do it. It's allowing ourselves to stop having a hunger meter, things of
50:24
that nature. But we also need to look at it from a healing perspective
50:29
in our inner child and where this glottenectomy is coming from, that inner glutton
50:34
So that's what that is. We want to perform a glottenectomy stat and really
50:38
reduce and eliminate the behaviors of binge and overeating. You share that there's a
50:45
top predictor to wait and eating freedom that every diet and health book leaves out.
50:50
What is that? I'm so glad you asked, Victor. It is
50:52
our body image. We got to look at how we feel about our body.
50:58
If you are negatively evaluating your body, like, for example, you
51:01
criticize like one of my Helen Very Health course participants was criticizing herself twenty one
51:07
times a day. She counted twenty one body criticisms where she's just like,
51:12
oh, my thighs are too big, or my butt's too big or you
51:15
know, and I say, people are worried about their own boy butt first
51:16
of all, to worry about yours. But we got to get to a
51:20
space of freedom and get out of body shame. So body shame and body
51:24
negative evaluation as it's called technically, is really going to cause you to overeat
51:31
and eat poor choices, because why I feel bad about my body, so
51:35
I'm gonna eat what quote unquote bad food. There is really no such thing
51:37
as a bad food. They're all foods that are non nutritious, there are,
51:42
but we project our badness onto the food. So this is why we
51:45
need to get shame out. Shame. Generally, toxic shame is when you
51:50
feel that you're defective, that you're you know, something's wrong with you and
51:53
you're the problem and everything's your fault. That's toxic shame that has to be
51:58
healed and work through with therapy. But they're in different programs, but there
52:02
is a sense of body shame too that that transfers to. And body shame
52:07
is like this hard to reach place built in the deep attic. I mean,
52:12
listen, writing a book like chubby Church, people think you're calling the
52:15
church fat, and I'm like, no, no, no, I'm the
52:15
pastor. I'm the pastor. I had to I had to be the chubby
52:20
church member. I had to him myself, you know. And you know,
52:22
you start judging yourself, Oh my gosh, well it's my body's small
52:25
enough or big enough, you know, to do this right, you got
52:29
to kind of work through all that. And body shame is exactly that.
52:31
So it's when I start teaching on eating disorders, and was when I was
52:35
at my heaviest as somebody called and I knew I was supposed to teach in
52:38
this space. And this is way back in twenty ten. And so if
52:42
someone said to me, you know, I want you to teach on the
52:45
We had a cancelation from the eating disorders teacher at the congregation and she's like,
52:50
would you do it? I'm like, oh, my gosh, God,
52:52
oh yes, yes, of course. But it was just the weirdest
52:54
thing. And then over the time and years, I was telling people I'm
52:57
gonna write a book on chubby Church because it was an inner it was an
53:00
inner transformation thing. It was an inner out matter to work this sue out
53:07
in body shame? Is you allowing yourself to love yourself? You know,
53:12
thinking to the body, like, what is my relationship? Do I love
53:15
it? Do I thank it? Am I even grateful for all the things
53:17
my organs and legs and feet are doing for me. Miss you miss a
53:22
finger, You'll you'll see exactly how powerful that one finger is. So really
53:27
being grateful, I really highly recommend in the shower or in the bath to
53:31
really take a moment and just thank God for every part of your body and
53:37
whatever form it's in that you may have added to or enhanced it, and
53:40
your chubby choices, it's still at the core a body that looks like it
53:45
just walked out the garden of Eden. You know, we just at the
53:47
core your body is still pretty amazing. It's just sometimes we protect it with
53:52
what we're doing to it, but it's still something you want to be grateful
53:55
for. So the body and the male and female form is absolutely magnificent and
54:00
it is worthy of appreciation. So as you accept the body, learn how
54:04
to appreciate it, love it, trust it, trust it to work for
54:07
you. Sometimes people's backs have been out or you've had childbirth issues, and
54:12
so just learning how to trust it, learning how to really see it for
54:19
what it is like, accept it, you know, accept your body since
54:22
it's all you have. And yeah, we can get plastic surgery, but
54:24
you know those people sometimes really have problems or and get addicted to plastic surgery
54:29
and trying to be a pleaser to everybody else in the world. Right now,
54:32
it's just really learning how to accept what you do have and that it's
54:36
good and you can work with it as well to put it in its best.
54:40
So that's what is the number one predictor of eating issues is actually how
54:45
we feel about our body. So body image is very important and it affects
54:50
men and women, and once you deal with this, it's pretty powerful for
54:54
what you can can do as far as your health choices and an extension of
55:00
the Golden rule, love thy neighbor as thyself, and also love thyself as
55:04
thyself. Yes, yes, yes, my guest, Jendi Harris, her
55:07
books The Chubby Church Book one and Book two and Whole and Free Health your
55:14
guide to a healthy wait and happier you in body, soul and spirit.
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Jendai one more time, please tell our listeners with it, get your books
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and find out more about you and your wonderful work. Absolutely, and most
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people call me j but it's Jendai Harris dot com, j e n d
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A Yi Harris dot com, j e n d A Yi Harris dot com
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or UM. You can also reach me at www dot the Chubby Church dot
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com www dot dot Chubby Church dot com and if you're interested in Holy Free
55:45
Health, that ll be a link there too, So I would love to
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speak to your congregations. UM. If you need support, you can definitely
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reach out and contact me on the website. Otherwise on my books are right
55:57
on Amazon or Audible and Kindle. Jendi Jay, thank you so much for
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joining us and sharing your experience, your message and your wisdom. My pleasure.
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Thank you, Victor, You're just incredible. I love this show.
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I love your heart and all you've gone through. You're really remarkable. Thank
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you for having me and thank you for joining us on Box Novis. I'm
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Victor the Voice Verman. Have a wonderful weekend