Denise: (00:35)
Hi, Lorissa. Thank you so much. I am fantastic. It is such an honor to be part of the master’s team and I am still literally pinching myself that I am part of this to be colleagues with. All of you is just amazing.

Lorissa: (00:50)
Yes. Oh my gosh. Well, Sterling and I are pinching ourselves and you’ve already been in masters now as a coach for a couple weeks. You’ve had a few coaching calls. We’re hearing great things from our members and it’s just, it’s really cool to just have you and your heart for God is so beautiful. Your love for our Catholic faith is amazing. And so we’re gonna just hear more about that. So why don’t you kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your faith, your family, just share with us a few things.

Denise: (01:25)
Yeah. Okay. So my name is Denise Jelinek. I’ve been married for 20 years. Oh no, 19 actually. We tried for five years to get pregnant. We were never able to get pregnant. So we have two adopted boys. Both of them were born in Russia. They’ve been in our care since they were 18 months old and they’re three years apart. So we did it once and then we did it again. So that’s amazing. Now what’s fascinating about my faith journey is that I literally had no faith growing up. We weren’t even Christs, not even on Christmas and Easter. The only faith in what really happened was both of my spouse. Both of my parents had lost their first spouse. And then when we came together as a step family, they just really never found their faith back. And I only had one influence, faith influence in my life and it was my grandmother.

Denise: (02:17)
And she would take me to mass about three times a year when I’d spend the weekend with her. And I’m gonna tell you don’t underestimate the power of the prayers of a grandmother. Yes, because this whole eating journey led me back to my faith. And it’s, it’s crazy because I’m a convert from nothing from nothing, not even like Priester. So I fell in love with the Catholic faith through a very big series of events. And the funniest part is when I got married, I just feel like God’s hand has always been on me when I got married. My husband wanted to get married in the Catholic church and I was like, I don’t get it. Why do you wanna get married in a church? You don’t even go to church, but he insisted. And I did know that I wanted my dad to walk me down the aisle and I also wanted my grandmother to be there. And I knew that she would be so happy, but isn’t that amazing. Like God totally took care of me that I had a Catholic wedding, even, even when I didn’t want it.

Lorissa: (03:16)
I think it speaks to the fact that God knows our hearts even better than we do. And he just is setting up these beautiful moments for us that we look back and go, oh my gosh. Even before I knew he was working. So that’s beautiful. So you got married and then when did you

Denise: (03:36)
We got married. The cliff notes version is that I was an emotional eater and I was seeing a therapist and one of the ways that he recommended that I get, you know, look at why you’re eating and then find a replacement habit. So I recognized I was eating in my car on my way to work. And so I was like, well, I must be bored in my car. And this was before cell phones. So I found a different radio station. I was like, well, I better listen to a different radio station. Cause I love talk radio. And I found a Catholic radio station. awesome. And I loved it. I thought it was so fascinating and interesting. It was just like literally entertainment for me.

Lorissa: (04:14)
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So then that kinda got, you started on your fake journey. You came into the church and oh my gosh. So cool. All right. So I wanna ask you before we even get into your weight loss journey, we Sterling and I met you because you joined masters. You’ve been in our master’s program as a member for a while. Can you share with me a little bit about your experience in Masters?

Denise: (04:38)
Yeah. Well, I found Masters because I was looking for some support to be a Catholic business prior to the pandemic. I was a personal trainer and I was after the pandemic. I was like, Ooh, I’m gonna turn my business into a virtual business. And I’m going to help women, not just with exercise, with all the things I’m gonna be a coach. And then God hit me on the head and was like, you think you’re gonna help them with exercise? Hehehe, you are gonna bring souls to me. And I’m like, what? He was training me to be a coach and having me go through that training. So I could be a Christian coach and bring souls to him, which is a very scary thing. When all you had is a secular business. So I was Googling different things about Christian businesses. And then I got daring and started looking for Catholic business resources and I found Sterling

Denise: (05:34)
I started listening to her podcasts and loving the things that she was saying. She started talking about masters and I will tell you I joined Masters and I love it. It has totally changed my life. I haven’t even been a member for an entire year. I love that it’s rooted in the Catholic faith. I love that. What you guys teach is so simple, but extremely effective since then. It’s totally improved my ability to have clarity and peace in my life. But because you guys teach this next level, I soon realized, oh, this is gonna make me a better coach. So I go to what you guys have for your normal people, your normal members. And it has made me even better capable of helping the women that I work with. It has totally made me a next level coach.

Lorissa: (06:27)
Awesome. Ah,

Denise: (06:29)
In, in 50 bucks a month and you guys have all of the, I can go get coached on my family stuff. I love it.

Lorissa: (06:35)
Yeah. Yes. I know. That’s what our hope is, is I love what you said. Our goal with masters is to help Catholic moms have more clarity in their life, more peace, sort through the mental clutter and drama that comes up so that they can focus on the things that God is calling them to do. And I love that you said that God is calling you to be a coach to lead souls to him. Yes. Oh my gosh. That is, I mean, that is exactly how Sterling and I feel, I know some of the other coaches that work with us that is it it’s, this is why we do what we do at the end of the day. Yes. It’s to help lighten the load a little bit, it’s to help us, you know, figure things out. And when we’re going through a hard time work through that.

But ultimately all of this, everything we do is to lead souls to Christ and every time I’ve, you know, I’ve never physically been in your presence, but been on calls with you and, and in the last few weeks had the chance to really get to know you better. I just feel that coming from you, you just have this light and a joy and a, and a calm and a presence that just says, let’s go, let’s do this. Let’s grow closer to Christ in what we’re doing. And I think that when women can gain freedom with their food and when they can feel like they’ve got some control over that, where food doesn’t control them. I mean, that is so powerful. And I think that it helps us, even in our spiritual life.

Denise: (08:14)
I mean, I really believe, I think, I don’t know if it was on this, the coaching call recently, but I was talking about how weight loss is a holy work and the reason it’s a holy work is it helps us get rid of the distractions from Christ period,

Lorissa: (08:29)
Period. Yes, that’s it. Okay. So I wanna hear a little bit about your own health and weight loss journey and how you, how God brought you to this point.

Denise: (08:40)
Yeah. So I have always been an exerciser only since I was 18, but interesting enough, I’ve never been a sports person. So if you asked me what I played in high school, I’d be like, I played the piano. In fact, I was a music major when I first went to college. So then I started, so I was at college and I needed to find a part-time job. And this was back in the days where they had index cards, and there was an aerobics instructor – well trained. And I was like, oh, that’s what I wanna do. I wanna be an aerobics instructor. So I started, it was a little part-time job teaching aerobics, but I went to a couple conferences and I saw something different than the music. People, nothing wrong with music people, but there was this energy, this lightness, this positivity. And I was like, this feels really great.

Denise: (09:30)
Like it feels super affirming. So I was hooked. So I started exercising, strength, training, everything. Once I went to college and I haven’t stopped since, which is one of the reasons I think I’m not 200 pounds or haven’t been 200 pounds in my life because I have eaten. Like I have. Now ironically, the heaviest weight that I ever was was when I was training for a marathon . So it was between a year between graduate programs, but I was working professionally full time. And when you work professionally, you go to work. I was working as a fitness director, went to work and had a ton of free time. I was spending all of my free time, either running, eating, or cooking. Wow. The thing is, I was in a college town away from anybody. I really knew. And my few friends already had relationships.

Denise: (10:24)
So I just didn’t have anybody to hang out with. And I was so lonely during that time, I just looked back, I was just in so much denial. My clothes were getting tighter and the scale was creeping up. I finally stopped weighing at 155. And I know you guys that are listening. There’s a point where you’re like, well, my top weight was duh, duh, but you know, that’s really not your top weight. Cause you just literally stopped weighing. Right. Right. And it, I just felt like crap about myself, but I just was in so much denial. I’m like, well, at least I’m running. At least I’m exercising. I’m a fitness person, it doesn’t matter how much I weigh. And what’s so fascinating is I never intentionally lost weight. When people ask me about my weight loss journey, it’s like it was this up and down and yoyo that I never, I never intentionally lost weight, but I now see that I just used food to cope with life.

Denise: (11:23)
So what happened was when I would, when I would feel crappy about myself, I would start, like I knew it because I would start looking online for like programs and I would buy these workout programs or diets where I’d write programs for myself or journal pages and pages and pages. But it was never like I could stick to anything. That’s the thing it’s like, I would buy these really expensive programs and it would last like three or four days, maybe two weeks. Right? What is wrong with me? Like I wanna be different. What is wrong with me? And then I got my really big first wake up call when I was eating cookie dough. It was my first, it was like a couple months after I got married, I’m eating cookie dough. Can’t stop myself, eating cookie dough. And I had the brilliant idea. I was like, oh, I could just go in the bath in the garage.

Denise: (12:16)
I don’t know why I say garage, but for some reason I thought the garage garbage would be the best place to vomit. And I literally thought to myself, oh my gosh, Denise, you’re brilliant. How have you not thought of this before? And then my next thought was like, oh my gosh, I think I’ve got a problem. so, it would get worse. It will get better. It would get worse, but it was never something clinical. And when I decided I wanted to get pregnant, I was working as a fitness director. This was years later and I got a magazine on my desk. It was a fit pregnancy magazine. And I was like, oh, that’s great. And they said, one of the top 10 things you need to do before you get pregnant. Well, one of them was to deal with your emotional issues because you’re just gonna pass’em on to your kids.

Denise: (13:01)
And I’ve got issues from my childhood that came to me and I was like, oh, heck no, I’m not doing this to my kid. So I reached out to a therapist again, rollercoaster a therapist, worked for a vet, and stopped the baby number one, went back to the therapist, baby number two. Finally, it got to the point after I had my two kids. You guys, I never got help. I never finally got real help to lose weight. I got help because I was in so much pain. I was thinking about food like 85 to 90% of my day. And I have an awesome husband and great kids. I’m like, what is wrong with me? Why am I thinking about food all the time? I can’t do what I know I should do. I’m working as a personal trainer for goodness sakes. People are paying me to like, get them fed and lose weight.

Denise: (13:53)
In fact, when I’d write diets plans for people and they followed them, I thought they were lying. cause I could never stick to anything. So there came a day when I said, Denise, what’s wrong with you? You’re thinking about food all the time. You have an awesome husband, but you’d rather be in the corner of your kitchen with a spoon in a jar full of peanut butter dumping chocolate chips in you’d rather be waiting until your husband goes to bed so you can stay up and eat and you’ve got awesome kids what’s going on. So I finally got help. I ended up joining a 12 step group, put food down. Here’s the thing, Lorissa, when you’re dealing with not the real issues, you put the substance down and then you just replace it. So I started over drinking and then I had to put that down. Then I would just start this like crazy gum chewing. My point is, is that I have tried to not address the real issue and it just gets filled with other things. You guys call it buffering.

Lorissa: (14:55)
Yes, absolutely.

Denise: (14:56)
It just gets filled with buffering.

Lorissa: (14:58)
Yeah,

Denise: (14:59)
I’m done with that. I’m done letting women think that just because I follow a diet, I’m okay. That’s not the truth. The truth is that if we can get to your real needs and help you turn an eye to yourself and tune into yourself, then you meet your needs.

Lorissa: (15:16)
Yes.

Denise: (15:17)
Absolutely. You have lasting peace. I mean, I’ve learned to make God my all, and I’ve learned those times when I’m not, and I know what to do about it.

Lorissa: (15:31)
Yes. I think that, I mean, probably every woman that’s listening to this that has struggled with overeating or even possibly over drinking or buffering in some other capacity can understand that. And this is really what we do and talk about in masters and why we knew that Denise was so in alignment with what we teach, because it’s always peeling back those layers to really uncover the real issues that are happening underneath the surface. And, and you know, what is the pain there? What, what are we trying to mask when we overeat and what do we need to do to heal ultimately, it’s that healing of our heart, our soul, our body, that things can kind of fall into their right order. So can you, so is that kind of, that’s obviously what happened with you?

Denise: (16:25)
It is. And what’s so funny about you saying that, like that sounds like really heavy and really hard, but I’ve been through that and it was really heavy and really hard that now I can give women what I believe and what you, I mean, I, what we’re trying to do is teach them the shortcuts. Because it doesn’t have to be really big and really hard. It can be very simple

Lorissa: (16:52)
And it doesn’t have to take years. I mean, even maybe I have been struggling with this for years. It doesn’t have to take years to reverse that or to just, you know, to start to bring healing. And so much of it is self-awareness and having that self-awareness of what’s really going on. And then knowing how to, like you said to, how do we meet our needs? I think for me, when coaching women, a lot of times the thing that’s so fascinating is there’s this deeper pain or there’s something there’s a root cause of all of this. But then when you ask women, what, what do you, what do you need? A lot of women say, I don’t know, like there’s almost like this. I don’t even know. And the reason why there’s the, I don’t know is because women are so busy taking care of everyone else that they don’t check in with themselves enough to really know what’s going on and what they need and how to ask for it and how to ask for help and stuff. So I dunno if you can speak to that a little bit,

Denise: (17:51)
A hundred percent, I’m actually on day five of a five day challenge that I maybe will run with Masters someday. It’s called meet your needs, not eat your needs. It’s a five day challenge where women are literally checking in with themselves every single hour. It’s a checkbox. What do I feel? And what do I need every hour.

Lorissa: (18:10)
Yes. And if you start to do that and start training your brain, it becomes a habit. And then throughout the day, if you’re just checking in with yourself, to me, it’s like three things. It’s like checking in, what do I need? And then actually getting the answer and then following through with it. like,

Denise: (18:29)
I mean, but literally even if women don’t follow through just gaining those pieces of information is huge because if you don’t follow through, that’s even great information too,

Lorissa: (18:41)
Right. As to why you’re not.

Denise: (18:43)
Yes,

Lorissa: (18:44)
Yes. Yeah. So just gaining that information. Okay. So here you are. So you kind, you worked through those, you worked through some of the pain and you’ve gotten to this place where instead of turning to food or over drinking or whatever those other things are, you really kind of found through God, the answer is that kind of like, so where, so you don’t feel like you struggle anymore with food or I would

Denise: (19:11)
Love to say that I would love to say I’m not human anymore. I love to, I love to say to women, like, you know, what they call people like that, that still struggle with human food. HUMAN.

Lorissa: (19:23)
Right.

Denise: (19:24)
Because that’s the easiest thing for me to go through. I’m gonna have feelings. There’s gonna be times where I’m like, oh, chocolate would really feel good, so I can, so I know that that’s so awesome. I love when I love that I can choose to do it. I love that I can choose to not make it mean anything. And I love that I can choose, that too doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it sometimes.

Lorissa: (19:47)
Right, right.

Denise: (19:47)
It’s just like, definitely say the goal is to create so much more control so much more. I can usually see where I’m allowing chaos to come in my life and where I’m not using my tools before that. Yeah. And it’s just great information when I wanna overeat. It’s great information. That doesn’t mean I have to overeat, but wanting to it’s like, Ooh, I must be really stressed right now.

Lorissa: (20:16)
Yeah. And again, yeah. It’s just that having that, that self awareness and then being able to really look at it, step back with curiosity, not judgment and just kind of seeing what’s going on and then yeah. Ask yourself, what do I need?

Denise: (20:31)
We had a family party last week and it started at two and ended at 10 o’clock and there were times I had to go lay in my bed and just relax. I’m a very big introvert. I’m like, I’m gonna, I could just tell, I need to go take care of myself.

Lorissa: (20:47)
Oh my gosh. I love that. I love that because that’s really a lot of times what we need, especially for those of us that are introverts. We just need a little time out. a little step away to recharge and then go back instead of just turning into the food and just to try to ease that, those emotions. All right. So here you are, you obviously have a passion for helping women. understand this. And what has it been like for you to work with women in this journey?

Denise: (21:26)
What it’s like for me or for?

Lorissa: (21:32)
Yeah. I mean, how, like the passion that you have for helping women? What, how, I mean, obviously I, you can, I can tell from you that this is a deep calling

Denise: (21:41)
And oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I’ve had several different businesses. In fact, I have another business on the side. Well, the point is, God’s like, this is what you were creating for Denise. Have you ever seen that father stew movie in father stew? There’s this point where, you know, father stew there his friend turns to him and says, God saw something and you were saving it’s up to you. What you’ve got to offer. And I literally feel like that every morning I open my eyes. God’s like, I see something and you were saving every morning. We open our eyes. We’re being saved. It’s up to us, what we have to offer. But he was very clear because, you know, as a, what I would like to call myself as, like a high achieving woman, you are the same way. Lorissa. So is Sterling. And all the other coaches you have, like, there’s a lot of things we could be doing and we’d be really great at them.

Denise: (22:46)
But God’s like, this is what I created you for. Like, if you don’t do this, nobody’s gonna help these women. There’s so many of my daughters that are hurting Denise, and it’s your voice, it’s your experience? It’s your talent. That’s going to attract them.

Lorissa: (23:07)
Yeah.

Denise: (23:08)
This is what I need to use for Denise. It is like waking up to a calling and there’s just so much sureness, like, because I get pulled in different directions and I can say, that’s not what God needs. Like there’s other people to do those other things.

Lorissa: (23:26)
Yes. Yes. Well, I wanna thank you so much for saying yes to this calling because you’re helping a lot of us already, and I’m so excited for the many women that God is gonna put in your path to, to help as well. And that’s one of the things we are really excited about because Denise is gonna be doing a free workshop for first of all, I mean, for all of our masters members, but for even any woman that is not in masters, anyone listening to this podcast or, you know, out there, and that workshop is gonna be next week, next Wednesday. It’s called winning at weight loss and Denise is gonna dive into more of this goodness. And so Denise, tell us about this workshop.

Denise: (24:17)
So winning at weight loss. So it’s gonna be 60 minutes of a workshop and then we’ll have some coaching afterwards. I’ll be teaching you guys the nuts and bolts in general. You see, we all know how to lose weight, but I wanna teach you some novel yet very effective approaches that I’m using right now to help women lose 15 pounds in 12 weeks. Awesome. Okay. And they’re not feeling deprived. I just finished up with one woman who was just, she’s lost 15 pounds. She’s like that, but I’m not feeling deprived. I’m like, it’s amazing. Isn’t it. I wanna teach you how to eat your favorite foods and lose weight. I wanna teach you my two food rules. Okay. I’ll just tell you my two food rules. My two food rules right now are you have to love the food you eat, but you have to feel really good about yourself after you eat it.

Denise: (25:11)
So I’m gonna teach you how to eat the foods that you love and feel great about yourself and lose weight. I’m gonna teach you how to gain control over foods that you feel like might be controlling you right now. I like to call them chaos-causing foods. And then what people always love is meal planning. So I’m gonna teach you my super simple system that I teach people. And then also how to eat with your family yet support your goals and not feel like you’re making several meals. And then finally, I wanna just touch a little bit on what exercise, got to do with it, the role of exercise and weight loss.

Lorissa: (25:49)
I love it. I love it. It’s all so good. And I think, especially for those of us that are moms, that’s the big challenge when we are trying to, you know, eat well. It just feels like so much more work. Yeah. You know, that’s the thought we have anyways, like it’s so much more work. Like I make, you know, the kids are gonna eat separately or, I mean, there’s some women that their kids they’ll, they’ll make different foods for their kids. They’ll make something different for their husbands and they have to make something different for themselves. It feels overwhelming. And and so it’s those types of thoughts like, oh, this is too hard or it’s too much work. Those are the thoughts that will stop us in our tracks and keep us from moving forward. So I love that you have some simple strategies to make that a little bit easier. It sounds like.

Denise: (26:39)
Yeah. And what I love about it being a workshop. I was just coaching a women woman yesterday on a group thing and she’s like, oh, it’s just so hard. Okay. So what’s hard. And she was talking about meal planning. So we literally made a meal plan for her and it took under 10 minutes. It’s so simple. You guys, and I wanna show you how simple it can be.

Lorissa: (27:02)
Okay. All right. So ladies, this is what you need to do head over to Made for Greatness. And there will be a link to sign up for Denise’s free workshop. Again, it’s gonna be on August 31st. We will post the time. So it’ll be said 11 time. And so whatever time on your end, we’ll have all those time zones listed. Of course, just go and sign up. If for some reason you are unavailable to make it live, then we’ll send you the replay. But we love it when, when everyone can join life, because then people can ask questions, engage with Denise and you know, really make it interactive because she is showing up for all of us. She’s saying, okay, I’m gonna give my time, my expertise. I’m gonna give you all of these amazing resources to help you win at weight loss. This is our goal. Here in masters, in, at made for greatness, we want to help women succeed with their goals when their dreams. And we know that if we can take this struggle and like Denise said, like make it so that we can focus more on God and what God is calling us to do. I mean, that changes everything to have that freedom, to have that joy of knowing that you’re you have control gosh, what a gift. So Denise, do you have anything else you wanna say about this?

Denise: (28:40)
There’s an easy way. It doesn’t have to be hard and I wanna show you the easy way

Lorissa: (28:45)
I love it. I love it. I love your confidence with that. Like, there’s an easy way. We don’t have to make this so hard. And I think a lot of us have done that over the years. We just make it so hard and it feels so hard. It feels so heavy. It feels like we have to give up so much. And I do believe, I do believe that there is an easier way. And especially when God’s at the center of it and it just, everything else falls into place. So Denise, thank you so much for coming on this podcast, sharing is sharing with us your, a little bit about your life, your heart, your journey, and this incredible workshop. That’s coming up again, August 31st winning at weight loss. Amazing things that Denise is gonna share. You don’t wanna miss it and thank you again, Denise. You’re amazing. Yeah. Have a blessed day. Thank you. Alright ladies. We will see you soon. I hope you have a great week and remember that you are Made for Greatness.