Food Noise and Weight Loss for Christian Women

Food noise can leave many women feeling stuck in a constant cycle of cravings, even when they’re not physically hungry, and it’s not something willpower alone can fix. In this episode, Dr. Laurette Willis gently walks through how to quiet food noise using brain-based tools alongside faith-based mind renewal. This conversation is for christian women who feel worn down by emotional eating, repeated dieting, and are ready for a more peaceful, sustainable way forward.

You’ll hear why deprivation often makes cravings stronger, how your inner dialogue influences your habits, and how simple practices like Scripture-based thought resets and bilateral tapping can help calm the noise. Instead of pushing harder, this approach invites you to renew your mind, care for your body with intention, and build lasting change from a place of peace.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Food Noise Defined
4:34 Why Dieting Traps Keep You Stuck
7:05 Self Talk And The Five Step Chain
9:42 Faith Based Thought Reset Exercise
13:14 Cutting Cravings With Bilateral Tapping
18:00 Creatine Lemon Water And Muscle Longevity
23:13 Fear Anxiety And Finding Real Comfort
29:46 The Five Dailies For Lasting Change

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Transcript

Food Noise Defined

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So let's talk about food noise and emotional eating. For anyone who's never experienced this, help me understand what people are going through.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

It's a craving for food when you're not physically hungry. And it's a desire to put something in the mouth to distract. I've got to get my fix, in other words. It's going to the comfort food instead of to the comforter. It could be a comfort activity. I've worked with the women who have, in their words, that I'm addicted to games on my phone or other habits. And what we do is that we start instead to retrain our thoughts, renew our mind, and that's based on Romans 12, 2. So don't be conformed to this world and the world's ways of doing things, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. What do you renew your mind on? The word of God. For what purpose? So that you can prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. You can transform your whole life through the Word of God.

Meet Dr. Lorette Willis

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome to the New Normal Big Life Podcast. We bring you natural and integrative health information and stories about nature that we hope will inspire you to get outside an adventure, along with the step-by-step plan to help you practice what you've learned to create your own new normal and live the biggest life you can dream. I'm your host, Antoinette Berafato, the wellness warrior. Let's get into today's topic. Welcome, Dr. Lorette Willis to New Normal Big Life. Why don't you tell us who you are, what you do, and the one big idea you want to leave us with from the expertise you plan to share today?

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, thank you, Antoinette. It is a blessing to be here today. I'm the founder of Praise Moves Fitness Ministry and also Weight Loss Without Willpower, the W3 Sisterhood. I'm blessed to be a cognitive behavioral therapist, helping people to renew the mind on the Word of God and retrain the brain using neuroscience principles and techniques based on Scripture. I want to let you know that you can be all that the Lord has called you to be. This is your day, this is your year, this is your time. So let's renew the mind and retrain the brain and watch what the Lord does with you. Amen.

Her Story Behind Emotional Eating

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I'm so excited for this conversation because today we're going to talk about the three W's weight loss without willpower. But Dr. Willis, I find that the best innovators solve a problem they wish they had answers to when they were on their journey. Can you tell us a little bit about your weight loss journey?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Well, that's exactly it, Antoinette. You know, it's just amazing how the Lord can take the negatives in our lives and turn them around in such a way to become a platform of health, help, healing, and empowerment for others. I started as an emotional eater, compulsive overeater when I was all of six years old as a way to cope with some trauma and a lot of emotional things going on in our household growing up. I remember at the age of six running into the bedroom, my mom was taking a nap. I don't know if she'd been drinking or was just tired. See, my mom had three nervous breakdowns when I was growing up, and she was diagnosed schizophrenic. She was brilliant. Also, she was the first woman assistant district attorney on Long Island. She also taught at the local university. She was a mensa. My dad was an attorney, was a judge, also. Everything seemed, you know, lovely on the outside, but a lot of trauma and things on the inside. So to cope, that's where I found food. So I ran into the bedroom, six years old, touched my mother on the cheeks, and I said, Mommy, mommy, I can't stop eating. For the previous hour, I had just been stuffing my face with food. And that continued for for decades. And then when I was 13, actually, I found alcohol, and the alcohol kind of kept some of the overeating at bay, and then I found cigarettes when I was 15. Oh, it was just one thing after another. Plus, new age spirituality through the door of yoga, thinking it was just exercise, my mom and I from the age of seven till I was twenty nine. So there was a lot going on in my life, and using food was one way that I coped with the emotional the feelings, I guess you could say, because it really wasn't a food problem, Antoinette. It was overeating problem, you could say, but perhaps an underfeeling problem.

Why Dieting Traps Keep You Stuck

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Well, that that's an excellent way of putting it, because food can be kind of like dopamine that you get from drugs or alcohol or other things. But as a cognitive behavioral therapist, how does your approach help women break free from traditional dieting traps? And can you tell us a few of those traps in your experience?

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yes. So glad that you called them dieting traps, because they really are. They start a cycle. That's where that yo-yo comes in. The weight goes up and down, up and down, because we think, okay, the problem is physical, so the answer's gotta be physical. Well, that's just a small part of it, because you are an entire being, spirit, soul, and body. Your spirit made in the image of God, Genesis 1, 26 and 27. You have a soul, which is your mind, your will, and your emotions, and you live in a body, your earth suit or the temple of the Holy Spirit, as it says in 1 Corinthians 6.19. So to make changes, we have to look at who you are on the inside. Let's look at making the changes from the inside. And we see that answer, and you'll find I go to the scripture a lot, because I ain't that smart, but I know one who is in the Word of God, and I'm holding up the Bible right now because that's where I look. In Romans 8, 11 says, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also quicken or give life to your mortal body. How? How does he do that? Through a special diet, a special cream, a special pill or injection or something like that, or a special exercise routine? No. How does he make those changes? How does he quicken your mortal body through his spirit who lives in you? So the changes you want to have on the outside come from the inside first. We call it changing your want to. I can have all the alcohol cookies, roundies, all the every you know, cigarettes that I want to. But now because of this work, because of the changes happening from the inside out, I don't want to. So we love to say, don't diet, live it. That's how we do it one day at a time.

Self Talk And The Five Step Chain

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Oh, I love that. And I love change your want-to. When people think of weight loss, they think of all the ways they have to deprive themselves and the challenge and pain that comes along with a deprivation program. And it causes a lot of people to not try to reach their optimal health or optimal fitness or the way that they want to look in their bodies. What are your thoughts about this phenomenon?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Well, a lot of what our society says is to judge ourselves from the outside in. And we start comparing ourselves with others, our confidence then being developed on how we look, how others we think perceive us, which may be correct or incorrect. What we say to ourselves. If you want to change the results that you have in your life, there are five steps. It has to do with your self-talk. I invite my clients when I'm working with them to pay attention to your thoughts, start being objective, start watching your thoughts almost as if they're birds flying overhead. Birds will fly over your head. You don't have to let them make a nest in your hair. So if you want to change your self-talk, there are five steps. Because when you start changing what you say to yourself, when you change your self-talk, you change what you believe about yourself. When you change what you believe about yourself, you change your attitude. When you change your attitude, you change your feelings. Now here's where it comes from the inside to the outside. When you change your feelings, you change your actions. And when you change your actions, you change your results. So if you want to change the results that you're getting, you have to go all the way back to what is it that I'm saying to myself? And Antoinette, when I was a kid, and I know this was inspired by the enemy, not by the Lord, from the ages of six to sixteen, I would look at myself in the mirror and I would say, You're fat, you're ugly, you're stupid, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. What does that do to a kid? Looking themselves in the eyes and saying that, I started to go in those directions. I started to feel that I was fat, ugly, stupid, I hated myself. And a lot of the things that I did in my life reflected that. But God, I would say, when I turned my life over to Jesus Christ when I was 29 years old, after years in new age spirituality leading me nowhere, looking for God in all the wrong places, that's when my life really started to change.

Faith Based Thought Reset Exercise

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Wow, you bring up an interesting point. Author Shad Helmsletter said, We hear no over a hundred thousand times by the time we're an adult. No, you can't, no, you won't, you'll never. And then that becomes our negative self-talk that we carry with us through our entire lives unless we change that. So, as a Christian woman, I'm curious to learn more about how you weave faith and biblical principles into cognitive tools for weight loss.

Cutting Cravings With Bilateral Tapping

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yes. Well, there are some different exercises that we do, and also we start really paying attention to our thoughts. As I said, being more objective about them. And there's an exercise that we do, and it's based on 2 Corinthians 10 verses 4 and 5 that talks about casting down vain imaginations, you know, any high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And I look at that obedience to the word of the living God. If I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm stupid, if that's contrary to what God says about me, I don't want that junk in my head. And I had a lot of junk in my head from years of negative self-talk and also from years in New Age spirituality. And so this was an exercise that the Lord showed me many years ago, even before I learned anything about neuroscience. And what was so telling was that the the actions that go with it, Antoinette, just mirror and and fit in like hand and glove so perfectly with neuroscience. Now, I don't know if this is opposite to you, but I'm taking my right hand and putting it on the right side of my forehead. Is it on the right side to you? No, it's on the left, but that's right. Okay. So you have to think backwards a little bit for me. But what I do is it's called the casting down imaginations exercise. And for this, you have to kind of be like a uh four-year-old child to do this. So I'm going to do an example of it. And then after this, in a little while, I'd like to share with you a quick exercise that cuts cravings in 10 to 15 seconds. And that's one we could do together. But since this is a little longer, I'm going to do this super quick just so that you can see it. So when I grab a thought, when you do something in neuroscience, when you're physically mirroring, if you will, something that's happening spiritually, emotionally, or mentally, it impresses upon your brain that something real is actually happening, which it is. And what we do is we're grabbing a thought, and this is from the right hand side of the hemisphere. It's this uh part of the brain has a lot of, let's say, negative thoughts, toxic thoughts. And what we're doing is we can actually, because of the brain being, let's say, plastic, you know, in a in a way, neuroplasticity, it's moldable, changeable, we can actually get rid of some of these thoughts, put in the word of God is how I see it instead, and clear some neural pathways and actually build some new neural pathways as well. So let's say I have a negative thought such as I'm I'm stupid, and I invite you who are watching with us today to think of maybe some negative thought that comes to your mind. Now, again, you've got to be like a four-year-old child to do this, all right? You have to be childlike, not childish. And so this is how it looks. Hmm. That thought, is that a gift from Jesus? No. And then taking my right hand right side my head, I grab that thought, as if you're grabbing the thought, and then say, I cast down that vain imagination, that high thing that's exalting itself against the knowledge of God, and I step on it, and I bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, obedience to the word of the living God, because the word of the living God says, and then you say, What is in the word instead? What does God say about you? And for this I would say, I have the mind of Christ. Christ has been made unto me wisdom from God. And you say those positive things. So what happens is you're reprogramming yourself with truth. The truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father but by me. So you're getting rid of that negative, putting in the positive, and you will start thinking differently. It's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

So let's talk about food noise and emotional eating. For anyone who's never experienced this, help me understand what people are going through because I actually don't really know what food noise is because I haven't experienced that. But explain it to someone who hasn't gone through that.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Well, it's a craving, it's a craving for food when you're not physically hungry. And it's a desire to put something in the mouth to distract oneself. And it's, I've just got to, I've got to get my fix, in other words, I've got to have my fix. And it's going to the comfort food instead of to the comforter. It could be a comfort activity. I've worked with the women who have had, well, in their words, they've said, I'm addicted to games on my phone, they would say, or other habits. And what we do is that we start instead to retrain our thoughts, renew our mind. And that's based on Romans 12, too. Don't be conformed to this world, like the water is conformed to the shape of this glass. The water's not coming out the sides and deciding, oh, I'm going to be a different shape. No, it's conformed to the shape of this glass. So don't you be conformed to this world and the world's ways of doing things, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. What do you renew your mind on? The word of God. For what purpose? So that you can prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. You can transform your whole life through the Word of God. Now I'm going to do a practical exercise right now that I'll invite you to do with me, Antoinette, and also those who are watching us today, but not if you're driving. Then you've got to come back and do it after you're driving because it involves holding something in your hand. Would you like to do that? Let's do it. All right. Now, this is a bilateral brain stimulation technique. All you need is a pen or a key or a stone, just something small to hold in your hand. And what we're going to do, that's perfect. What we're going to do is I want you to think of a food that you often go to when you aren't hungry, but you have a craving. You just want to be distracted or you're bored or you're happy or you're sad or you're angry or just whatever reason. I know for myself, like I'm about to work on a project or something, and all of a sudden I think I want a snack. And I have to remind myself, Lorette, you're not hungry. It's just, oh yeah, that's right. I'm supposed to only eat when I'm hungry. The food does not solve emotional problems or any other problem. Food is only for fuel. Oh yeah, that's right. Learning to get in touch with our hunger and enough or satiety signals. So now, taking this pen or whatever's in your hand, I want you to think of that food that you often go to. You know exactly where it is. It's in the cupboard or the pantry, maybe it's in the freezer or the refrigerator. I want you to see yourself going toward that food. You're going for it, using your sanctified imagination. Have your eyes opened or closed. Again, not when you're driving, but you know what it's like. And like Antoinette mentioned before, that dopamine rush is in the anticipation of it. You might even be salivating, thinking a little bit about it. Don't worry, we're going to cut that circuit in a moment. You will be amazed. So you see yourself reaching for it. You're getting a little excited. Actually, the addiction is in the anticipation, not in the eating of it, but the anticipation of it. That's why they put excitotoxins in many of those foods to get us addicted to them. But we're not ignorant of the devil's devices. We're smarter than that. You are reaching for that food. Now, right now, take that pen or whatever in your hand and go from one hand to the other, one hand to the other, one hand to the other, five, four, three, two, one. And now please repeat after me. All things are lawful for me. All things are lawful for me. But not all things are helpful. But not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me. All things are lawful for me. But I will not be brought under the power of any. But I will not be brought under the power of any. First Corinthians 6 12. First Corinthians 6 12. Where's the craving, Antoinette? Well, I was craving some chocolate and it's gone. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_01 17:37

That is amazing.

Creatine Lemon Water And Muscle Longevity

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yes, it's a bilateral brain stimulation technique. It cuts the circuit and it's a neuroscience principle and technique and exercise that I learned a number of years ago. But what we do is we then press truth into it. The word of God, this is what makes it truly stick and stay. I dropped 25 pounds, in part using that as a boundary scripture. And using that technique, it works. Wow, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

You know, I don't experience emotional eating, but I have a lot of health challenges. And when I'm not able to exercise, it's difficult for me to then cut portion size to match my limited exercise. And so that's what can send my weight up and down. One of the things that I used to lose weight during this time was a lemon water detox daily. And I now add to that a little secret that a neurologist told me about that is helping to stave off cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer's, which is adding five grams of creatine monohydrate to my daily lemon water. And that became part of my morning routine. So I squeeze half lemon into a glass, eight-ounce glass of water, add three pinches of sea salt, and then five grams of creatine monohydrate, stir that up, go outside and get some sunlight because that sunlight will help reset your circadian rhythms. The electrolyte water will give you great hydration since you haven't had anything to drink for the past eight hours or however long you've slept. And then I'm doing something good for my brain, and I can definitely tell the difference. And I do that again after dinner. And what I noticed was I was doing it for kidney health and for vitamin C and for my brain, but it also made me less hungry, and I had to force myself to maintain my portions for a healthy lifestyle because I was cutting those portions in half even more automatically because I felt full so quickly. So that's just another little tip. And then now I also during the day supplement an electrolyte water, which I'll drop in the show description. It's an electrolyte drink that I purchase that is great, especially if you are a migraine sufferer or if you need to better manage your blood sugar, high or low blood sugar. Little tips from the wellness warrior.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Yes, that is great. And creatin is also excellent for your muscles, especially after the age of 30 to maintain muscle mass. That's great. I use creatin 5 milligrams after a workout. In fact, I did that this morning after my weights workout because that's so good to add. And it has no taste, there's no flavor to it. So it's easy to add to anything. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

It's great. And you know, sarcop sarcopenia or muscle mass loss is a real problem for anyone. Once you reach the age of 30, you start to lose more and more muscle mass. And muscle mass and grip strength are key indicators of longevity. So the more muscle you have, and you don't necessarily have to go out and become a bodybuilder, but if you have a good ratio of muscle to fat to bone, then you have higher longevity. And one of the challenges with being on a GLP1 is that before it starts helping you burn fat, it's robbing you of bone mass and muscle mass. And it's one of the reasons your face becomes elongated and there are other challenges. So I really encourage you to try some natural ways to lose weight before you do something drastic that could have some side effects that last you a lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

That's a good point. You know, to find the natural way because these are things that you can continue to do. It's not a diet, it's something that you easily just add into your life. You know, one of the gals in our weight loss without willpower, Jessica, lives in Oklahoma City. She dropped 70 pounds. It's been off for over three years, and she's a young mom, has a couple of kids, and she was like, I had no idea I could. Just invite God into my weight loss journey. You know, this has become a part of my life. And another gal, Jen in Pittsburgh, she's a grandma, co-owner of a pizza restaurant, if you can imagine being able to lose weight and owning a pizza restaurant. And she's dropped 65 pounds, and it has been all incredible for almost, well, about three years now for her as well. And both without dieting. That's why we say you don't diet, you live it. And you know, it's a lifestyle.

Fear Anxiety And Finding Real Comfort

SPEAKER_01 22:31

When you make healthy choices, every area of your life gets better. You start to look better, you feel better, your mood is better, your relationships get better because it's hard to be a good human being when you don't feel well, when you're exhausted, when you feel sluggish, when you have brain fog. So what you put in your body, both mentally, physically, spiritually, is very important. And for those of you who don't have a particular faith, you might think of this as magical thinking, but I challenge you to practice it and see what happens in your life. That's a good way of putting it. That's true. Try for yourself. So, Dr. Willis, what are some common emotional eating patterns that you see in women? And how do they stop that cycle?

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Well, common emotional patterns, I would say, are whenever we have an emotion. It's like, well, wait a second. What do you mean, any emotion? It has become so ingrained, and I can speak this from experience, having been addicted, you could say, since the age of six to emotional eating, compulsive overeating. I was a member of Overeaters Anonymous of five years when I was in my thesis. I went through the 12-step program. Now, when I turned my life over to the Lord when I was 29 years old, he immediately delivered me from alcoholism. I was a high-functioning alcoholic. I was known as the woman of 101 voices as an actor off Broadway when I was in my 20s and traveled around the world. I did the Betty Boop show off Broadway. I was Betty Boop, I certainly was. Boop-boop bee-doop. The different voices I did. That's incredible. Yeah, I played uh 40 different characters in a one-woman show. If you're if you've ever seen like uh back in the day, Robin Williams or further back, Jonathan Winters, that was that kind of craziness. I was just, I was out there, I tell you. And it was just fun. It was fun for me. But I felt empty on the inside, you know, laughing on the outside, empty on the on the inside. And I was never too heavy into drugs. I did some, but here was the problem with like, you know, marijuana or something that I would would would smoke when, you know, before I came to Christ. It would create something called the munchies, they called it. And so I would eat even more, you know. So I realized, okay, this is not good. So I was mostly an alcoholic, you know, high-functioning alcoholic. But you see, I was ruled and riddled by fear most of my life, Antoinette. I had this horrible fear just with me all the time. I used to walk on the other side of the street to avoid people, you know, that I I knew. I just I didn't want to be around people. It was very difficult. People were difficult to anticipate what they were going to do, what they were going to say. And when I was alone, I would either drink or I would eat, because it would just calm me, I found. And I would smoke cigarettes too. And then when I came to the end of myself and I surrendered my life to the Lord, I found out in scripture 2 Timothy 1 7 said, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. I was like, whoa, fear is not an emotion. I thought it was an emotion. I thought it was me. I thought it was just me. But it says God has not given you a spirit of fear. Well, if God didn't give you a spirit of fear, where did that spirit come from? The enemy. And I learned how, through Jesus Christ, rebuke it, which means just tell it to go. Go in in the name and the authority of Jesus. And that fear would leave. Now, it keeps trying to come back sometimes in the beginning, especially like when you're trying to get rid of something on your computer. You know, we'll say, Are you sure you want to delete this? It's been part of a program for a long time. Are you sure? And it's like, yes, delete, delete. And you do that exercise like I shared with you, when those fear thoughts would come, you know, I would say, I cast down that vein of imagination. 2 Timothy, I mean 2nd 2 Corinthians 10 verses 4 and 5. And then instead, out of that fear, I'd say, no, instead I'm going to say the truth. 2 Timothy 1, 7. God's not given me a spirit of fear, but a power and of love and a sound mind. And I invite you to say that too. God's not given me a spirit of fear, but a power, love, and a sound mind. And watch what that does. You'll even just, you know, whether you're a believer or not, or whether you think this is magical thinking or not, I invite you to say that. Hey, God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Whoa, that feels kind of good. You know, it just feels kind of good because there's something in it, there's truth in it. So when people are eating emotionally, they're going to the comfort food or the comfort activity, the comfort whatever, in our case, the comfort food, instead of the comforter, which is the Lord. And what we find in weight loss without willpower, and when I'm working one-on-one with clients, is we learn how to instead go to the comforter, go to the word, and then add the missing element, which many, many people don't do. They do one or the other. They either renew the mind on the word of God, but they don't retrain the brain. Or they retrain the brain, but they don't renew the mind on the word of God. When you put those two together, it's an unstoppable combination. Wow, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

And, you know, to be clear, when you're speaking of fear, you're speaking of sort of that anxious fear, the fear that creates anxiety and stops you in your tracks and gets you looking for an escape route in food or people or social media or drugs. That's the fear you're talking about. The other fear that is real, which is there's a bear and it's running at me and it's growling. That's a that's a real fear. I I like to call it it's your lizard brain, you know, the brain before you had the ability, before humans had the ability to speak. That's your intuition and lizard brain saying human beings who have experienced a bear running towards them take action to protect themselves, right? So that that's a good in air quotes fear that you want to pay attention to because life can be dangerous sometimes, but that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about that anxious fear that stops you in your tracks, that keeps you making unhealthy choices and so forth.

The Five Dailies For Lasting Change

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Yes, exactly. Because when that's wisdom, you know, you you run away. And that's the fight or flight. Yeah. Where the the the blood goes from like the digestive system, the organs goes to the outer muscles. So you can, you know, run faster, run away from those things. But the problem happens when we're in traffic and someone cuts us off in traffic, and all of a sudden we have that stress response to that anxious, that anxiety, that fear response, that stress response. And we realize, okay, calm down, take a deep breath. And there are things that we do with breath as well and taking a pause, things like that that activate the parasympathetic nervous system so that we're not just always reacting, reacting. That affects our heart, our blood pressure, all this. So we learn to kind of be at peace, kind of chill, be alert, be alert, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

So, why does the concept of pushing through the food noise or pushing through the hunger, if you are depriving yourself of food to try to lose weight, why is that concept of pushing through with willpower often backfire on people?

Nature Story And Cold Water Benefits

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Well, because it's limited. The willpower is limited. It's amazing what humans can do. But there comes a point when, like, okay, a friend of mine was on the carnivore diet, and he was strict carnivore. I mean, nothing but meat. Meat, meat, meat. And he posted something on Facebook of this little girl going, I just want pancakes, please. I just want you know, you get to a place where you're deprived of something, and it creates such an emotional hunger for it. Where maybe before, if you had, you know, been having a little bit here and there and were balanced. See, this is this is why we have a step in, we have five dailies, we call it in weight loss without willpower. Five things that we do. Pray and plan is one step. We pray and we ask the Lord to inspire us. What's what's a what's a good thing for like today? I wrote down my breakfast snack, dinner snack. You know, just easy. I just write it down. And then what I do physically, I physically hold it up to the Lord. And I say, Lord, I'm just giving this to you today. I'm giving it to you. This is, again, neuroscience. It's impressing the brain that I'm doing something real. I am giving it into the Lord's hands. And what's so cool about that, there's a scripture that says, commit your works unto the Lord and your thoughts will be established. It takes the pressure off of me. The food's out of my hands now. It's it's in his hands. Now, what I what I do, my part is I pay attention to my hunger and enough signals. My hunger and my full are satiety signals. And when I see a food or I just want a food, I just check for a moment. Wait a second, what do I do? Well, pray and plan. Already did that. Water is the second one. Water. Drink a lot of water. Oftentimes when you think you're hungry, you're not. You're actually thirsty. So before we eat, we say, okay, drink a glass of water and then wait about 10 minutes and then see. Wow, I'm not hungry anymore. I was thirsty. Lorette, are you saying I don't know the difference between hunger and thirst? Yeah, a lot of times, a lot of times we don't. We're dehydrated. So true. Mm-hmm. It's true. And the the liver has taken over the job of the kidneys for a lot of people. So it's not metabolizing fat like it should. It's not getting rid of the toxins like it should. So drink half your body weight in ounces every day. If someone weighs 200 pounds, what's half of 200? 100. 100 ounces a day. That's a good ballpark right there. So pray and plan water. Then the third is move. Move every day. A lot of us don't like the word exercise. I don't like to exercise. So I say, do you like to move? Do you like to move your body? Well, yeah, I like to move my body. So it's okay, move. That's it. Whatever works for you. But I have to do a whole workout, go to the gym. Just move your body. Start with five minutes. Start with what you can do, not what you can't do. What can you do? Pray and plan, water, move, journal. The fourth is journal. That's basically just getting from what's in here through a pen. You know, when you write, it actually heals the brain. Writing, journaling heals the brain. Well, can I just type it out? It doesn't have the same effect as when you actually put it on a pen and write it out. Well, I don't know if I really want to take all that time. Take a moment. You have a feeling comes up. Grab a piece of paper, get it from here out. Otherwise, we're often tempted to stuff it with food or an activity or distraction or something. Pray and plan, water, move, journal, and then sleep. Make sure to get enough sleep. And there are many ways to be sure that we can do that. And I've got a great little song that goes with this. Can I sing it for you? Sure. All right. Pray and plan. Water, move, journal, sleep. For the Lord all my life, He will keep. When I pray and plan, drink water, move, and journal sleep. All my life, my precious Lord will keep. Now do you have to sing the song? No, of course not. But I do stuff like that because it helps keep me childlike. Not childish, but childlike. Except you receive the kingdom of God as a little child, Jesus said in Mark 10, 15, you will by no means enter it. So having little things like this that we do, being a child of the king, you will have the greatest freedom. And it's such a wonderful feeling of accepting that joy and moving in it.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Well, speaking of playing, I'm going to encourage you to play for the health and social benefits. So before we cover the next topic in this episode, I want to introduce you to the adventure sports lifestyle with a micro story about an adventure that I've had. The adventure sports lifestyle and my deep connection to nature is essential to my good health. So here's the story. In Midwestern American states and Canada, the walleye run is a springtime tradition. And many of the townspeople throughout these areas will come out and help their Department of Natural Resources to milk fish and join in on the walleye run. And milking the fish just helps to create more baby fish. So targeting a fun species like the walleye and being able to land it and show it off to your friends and family, it's a family-oriented community activity. Now, maybe standing in 5 to 50 degree water for however long you need to so that you can land that prized fish is possibly not something that you might find fun, but there's health and social benefits of the cool water. So if you have pain in your body, it's a form of therapy that can take away pain. And when I stand in water, 45 degree water or even colder for even just a few minutes, I have a couple of days that are pain-free from my broken back injury. So I hope this inspires you to get outside and adventure alone with friends, family, or the people you love most.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Now back to our topic. Hey, I do have to ask you though, Antoinette, when you're milking those fish, what kind of buckets do you use? They must be very small.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Well, we we actually don't use a bucket. You just run your hand gently down the fish, and the milk just drops right into the water, and you've done your part to help make more fish that you can catch and release and send back out into the water.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

That's amazing. That is amazing. You know, we have catfish where I live, northeastern Oklahoma, and I don't care for catfish myself, but that's uh about it, or crappie, as they say. That's a another type of fish that's real big out here in northeastern Oklahoma. But wow, that must be quite something. What a great way to get together with community, also. It's wonderful.

One Percent Level Up And Simple Success

SPEAKER_01 37:07

You'll see people from age four to, I don't know, 94 out there just enjoying this activity together, everyone smiling and laughing, and it's sort of our early spring tradition in these parts. So, Dr. Willis, what's a beginner-friendly way to practice and build up momentum towards your weight loss goals?

Free Gifts And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 37:29

I always look at Antoinette, it's about what can I do? Not what can't I do. Well, Lorette, she mentioned those five things that I don't know, I couldn't do it. What could you do? Could you drink one extra glass of water today? Well, I don't know if I could do half my body weight in ounces. I don't No, it's not about what you can't do. It's about what you can do. Oh, okay, what can I do? Well, we talk about the 1% level up in the W3 Sisterhood. We talk about 1% level up every week. And then at the end of we have a weekly Zoom every Thursday, every Thursday night. And we talk about okay, what's your 1% level up this week? Something that you could do one percent better this week. That's what I'd invite you to do. Not some huge, you know, tomorrow I'm going to do such and so. I'm going to go on this huge diet. It's always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. No, how about right now? Right now, what could you do? One thing you could do too is to change your definitions of success and failure. I invite you to do that. Make success extremely simple and make failure nigh difficult. Absolutely impossible. How do you do that? You do it by changing your definitions. And this is one thing I do with my clients. I say, okay, let's think about simple things that you can do that you equate success with. Well, what could that be? Well, when I used to do storytelling and shows in schools for a number of years, and I loved going into the schools and being with the kids, and I'd always look for ways that I could instill ideas of goal setting into them. You know, how to get the goals and the dreams and the things that they have in here and get them out on paper, whether they're they're they can't write yet and they just want to draw pictures or something, but getting it from out of here, having go down a pen or a or a crayon or something, so that now it's on a piece of paper. Look, I can see it. And then you put it in your favorite, you know, favorite book, if it's a Bible or you put it in your dresser, you put it on your wall. It's like, yeah, there's my dream, and I see it. It's a vision board, right? And I'd say to the kids, and this was back in the day when they had the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was on. And so I'd say that to the kids, and they'd all be in the gym, right, sitting on the floor, and I'd come in and I'd do a show and then some storytelling. I'd say, okay, who wants to be a millionaire? And they're like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I do everybody want to be a millionaire. And I said, Okay, do you want to know the number one secret to becoming a millionaire? And everyone, they'd lean in, and the teachers would be leaning in as well, like, yeah, what? Make your bed every morning. What? No. I said, if you can't make your bed, you can't make a million. What? It's about successful habits that become discipline, you know, that become a part of Million. Yeah. It just starts working like that. And so you find something you didn't. Now, what I've done, Antoinette, is I've equated drinking water with success. I've done this on purpose. There are about five or six things that I've chosen. But when I feel down, it's like, oh man, I blew it. That was so bad. It's like, wait a second. I make failure impossible. I'm a failure whenever I stay in bed for a year and don't speak to anyone except to yell at them and eat nothing but chocolate and ice cream for three months and don't pray and scream at everybody. You know, just I make it so impossible. And you have to do all of these things. Yeah, but I'd never do that. Exactly. I'm changing my definitions. But I'm successful whenever I drink water or pray or encourage someone or call someone on the phone or any kind of positive thing. So when I do something and I feel bad about myself, I go, okay, wait a second. I haven't done all those horrible things. That's not, I'm not a failure. Let me get a glass of water. And so I'm back on the success track. Because when you think of successful people, they have successful habits. You are that person. One successful habit at a time. This has been so insightful, Dr.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Willis. What more do you want listeners to know?

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Well, I have some free gifts if you'd like. We love free gifts. Okay, wonderful. Well, if you're someone that said, hmm, I like that idea of losing weight, how does that work? Well, I have Christianweightlosskit.com. It's totally free. It's a faith-fueled weight loss blueprint. And it is a quick guide and little video that shows you some of the things that we've learned today, and you can start applying that to your life at ChristianweightLossKit.com. If you say, well, I'm not really into weight loss, I'm good with that, but how do you meditate? I'd like to know about meditation. It's it's not the emptying the mind kind of a thing like you do in yoga and new age and stuff, but how do you renew your mind on the word of God, like you were saying? Well, I've got a free kit for that too, and it's Christian Meditation Kit.com. And you learn how to meditate in a moment in three simple steps. Wow, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Dr. Laurit Willis, how can people connect with you and find your work? You've mentioned a couple of places, but I will make sure they're all included in the show description.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Well, thank you so much, Antoinette. Yeah, if you'd like to learn more about Praise Moves, which is the Christian alternative to yoga, we have a fitness ministry with hundreds of certified praise moves instructors, fitness ministers we call them, women and men ages 18 to 80s all over the world. And we've got free workouts as well. And also, you can find out about uh weight loss without willpower. You'll see a tab there for it, or you can go to drlorette.net. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It was a blessed blast. I'm happy to be here today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

The information in this podcast is not medical advice and should not be treated as such. Always consult your physician or healthcare professional before pursuing any health related procedure or activity.