Or you feel like you’re thinking about food most of the day, food and weight. So stay tuned. I’ll tell you about the program, but before I do that, I wanna tell you a little bit about myself and how I got to be the health and weight loss coach for Made for Greatness. So my name is Denise Nik. I am 45 years old. I have been married nearly 20 years this September and I got married in the Catholic Church. However, I was quite opposed to that. In fact, I’m a convert. It took me about five years once I was married to become a convert, which I truly believe proves that you cannot outrun God. And I say that because although I got married in a Catholic church, it was because my husband insisted and I thought it was the silliest thing ever. I was like, well, why would we even get married in a church? You don’t even go to church.

But I’m so grateful for that. I had a sacramental marriage for the first years of our marriage. We struggled with infertility. I prayed and prayed and prayed to get pregnant. And then God hit me on the head with a two by four and was like, Hey, you’re not gonna have a family by a pregnancy. You’re gonna be a mom, but you’re gonna adopt your boys. So I have two boys that are now 13 and 16. Both were adopted at 18 months old from Russia, three years apart. They are not biological brothers. I just thought you might wanna know that. So that’s my f that’s my awesome family right now. I can tell you that teenage years are not my favorite parenting stage. Just learning a new way, just learning a new way. That’s all. So my history and why should you even listen to Denise?

My history in food with food and weight started when I was seven years old. It was the very first time that I ever hid food in grade school and high school. I was always very conscious of my weight and I considered myself to be one of the chubby kids. Although looking back, I was definitely normal weight. When I got into college, I started playing. When I got into college, I started exercising for the very first time in my life. Had you asked me what I played when I was in high school, I would’ve said I play the p and l because I started college as a music major, which is kind of interesting. However, my very first job in undergraduate school was teaching aerobics and it was there that I really fell in love with fitness and I just loved the energy and just the amazing attitude. So I ended up switching my major and have always been in the fitness industry. Since then, the majority of my career has been as a one-on-one personal trainer and now as a health and weight loss coach.

So I started strength training in college and have always been an exerciser since. And I really believe that that’s one of the reasons I’ve never gotten over 200 pounds because the way I’ve eaten would definitely tell you that she should be over 200 pounds. So there’s a couple reasons I believe that I’ve never gotten over 200 pounds. Number one is because I’ve always been an exerciser. And so I’ve always maintained a lot of muscle masks. The other reason is I’ve never had a pregnancy. Hmm. So I do believe that had I gotten pregnant, if my boys weren’t adopted, I would be well over 200 pounds. And I’m not sure I’d be where I am today because I am, I don’t know if that would’ve been a hole I could have dug myself out of. What’s really ironic is that speaking of exercise and weight, the heaviest I ever was was in graduate school when I was training for a marathon.

Isn’t that interesting? I was like exercising over 30 miles a week and it was the heaviest I ever was. And I realized that my history with food and weight really took off when I started living alone. And it wasn’t until graduate school, until I started living alone. And that feeling of loneliness was only dampened by lots of food. I mean lots of food. And then after I got married, looking back, the times that I would really binge what times that I felt alone, I now see that I started to turn to food for so many of my needs. When I was happy, I would eat. When I’m sad, I would eat when I was lonely, I would eat. Then when I was stressed I would eat. And then when we’d celebrate, I would eat. I would eat from when I got married to a year later I gained 20 pounds that quickly and I just didn’t know what was wrong with me and there was nothing wrong with me.

And if this sounds familiar, there’s nothing wrong with you either. If you don’t take anything else away from today, know that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. What happens is that we don’t learn how to handle our feelings and we get into patterns of turning to food when we have really uncomfortable feelings or to meet our needs, to give us the comfort that God wants us to give us. And you know that’s true because you see that pattern in yourself. You’re happy, you eat, you’re sad, you’re eating, you’re stressed, you eat, you’re anxious, you eat, you celebrate, you eat. It’s like everything starts to become food is the solution. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, it’s just the nature of what happens when we are emotional eaters. And I finally got help not because I wanted to lose weight cause I told you, I mean like I’ve never been more than my heaviest weight.

I was probably 35 to 40 pounds. But when I finally got help, I had about 15 to 20 pounds to lose to be at a healthy weight. And that was it. What made me finally get help was the constant mental torment, the mental gymnastics of what can I eat? When can I eat, what can I eat, when can I eat? What can I eat, when can I eat? I was thinking about food 85 to 90% of the days and I didn’t know, like I said, what was wrong with me? I thought something was wrong with me. I had an awesome family, I had a great husband. I had these two great kids that I worked really, really hard to get. When you adopt kids that you don’t just like happen to get them, I was finding instead of being with my family, I wanted to stand in the corner of my kitchen, the jar of peanut butter, dumping chocolate chips in them into the jar, just eating it with a spoon.

I was so preoccupied with my children’s plates whether or not they’d finished their dinner cuz I wanted to finish it. It was a human garbage can. Part of my story is that I used to make these super elaborate cakes for my boys’ birthdays. My mom did that and I thought that was really awesome. What I found is that I was binging on pounds of icing. I would wake up in the middle of the night to vomit. Not because I was trying to purge, but because I was so sick. I would see myself do these things with food and it’d made no sense to me. I couldn’t wait for my husband to go to bed so I could stay up and eat. And I tried so many things, you guys. I tried therapy two times. I was on my way to number three. I tried diets. I just thought if I had the magic diet, maybe if I just hired the right trainer, maybe if I just got the right dietician, maybe I got the right program. Nothing had lasting results. And what I mean by results was relief from focusing my whole life on food and weight. I would wake up in the morning and I couldn’t tell you how I felt until I stepped on the scale or looked in the mirror.

Everything was about what I looked like, my weight and food. What I learned was that all the therapy, the diets, the trainers, all of that just never got to the root of why I was eating. And that’s why it wasn’t working. Then one Christmas, I was absolutely done. I was done. I could see myself more and more in this pattern of secret eating and it confused me. I couldn’t make it through a week without binging. In fact, I would be so happy if I could go for three or four days. Remember I was a personal trainer. I was an overweight personal trainer. It was so embarrassing. I finally got the help that I needed and I started my journey to food freedom eight years ago. And what I’ve learned, okay, is number one, it doesn’t need to take years. Friends, I’ve taken the most effective, most useful pieces and put them in the program I’m gonna tell you about. So it doesn’t need to take years. It takes weeks to learn everything you need for a lifetime of how to live at a healthy weight and have freedom from food obsession, feeling controlled by food, confused by food. Ugh.

Number one, it doesn’t need to take years. Number two, it has absolutely nothing to do with knowing what to do. You guys, we’re not stupid. There’s nothing wrong with us. I was a personal trainer for goodness sakes. I am a personal trainer. I write diet plans for people, for the right people. And when people used to follow them, I thought they were lying to me because I literally couldn’t follow anything for longer than three or four days, especially once it got to like Thursday night I’m like, woo, I made it through Thursday. There’s nothing wrong with you. Emotional eaters, just start to look for all of their solutions in food. It’s totally okay because this is something you’ve learned. It can be unlearned and that’s what this program’s going to teach you. I have found that it boils down to three things, knowing yourself and your own needs, knowing them. Okay? That’s number one. Number two is learning how to meet those needs. Like really meeting them because food is only the answer if we’re hungry.

I mean there’s reasons to eat other than just hunger. Like don’t get me wrong, we enjoy food but it’s certainly not the answer to everything. Especially when it packs on the pounds and we feel horrible about ourselves. See what happens is that we are eating when we feel something life is happening. This is what Denise did. Life would be happening. I didn’t like it. So if I just ate then I would feel better. But then what would happen is it was so fake. So this problem would still exist. But now I’d eat over it and have two problems. So now I feel horrible about myself. And then whatever the issue is is still there. I had no idea how many marriage problems I had, I had no idea about all the other things. But once I took the food away, woo, you get God’s spotlight like hey, take care of this and you won’t need to eat.

That’s what I wanna do for you. You guys. If weight loss has been hard for you, it’s not because you’re doing it wrong. You’ve just started in the wrong place. And of course you’ve started in the wrong place. The whole world tells us all you need is the magic diet plan. You know that’s not true. If it were true, it would work and you wouldn’t still be listening. So in this program, I showed you exactly what to focus on each moment so you’re not focusing in the wrong place. So there’s no guessing on where to spend your time. You don’t have time to waste and best yet, you don’t need a diet and you don’t need willpower. What you do need is to treat your willpower for willingness. That’s it. You need three things for this program. You need willingness, you need the Holy Spirit and you need a pen.

You do the work, the divine physician will come in and change you and you think you can do it wrong. You cannot do it wrong. That’s why you don’t try things. You can’t do it wrong because all you need is a pen, the Holy Spirit and willingness. You’re not gonna change you but the Lord will. All you can do is show up and do what the program tells you to do. All right? So you might be asking yourself, does God even care about what I weigh? Well, let me answer this. In Romans 12:2, we’re told, do not conform to the ways of this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So what does the world tell you? The world says all you need is the magic diet. All you need to do is be the magic size. Well, if you just had the right exercise program, you’d be okay guys. I had that. I’ve had the magic diet. I’ve been the magic size. And of course the exercise program’s been super dialed in at times I’ve had that and so have you. And we still didn’t have peace. I didn’t have peace. The program that we’re offering you brings peace and healing with food and weight.

So does God care about what you weigh? Well no, not necessarily. But what does God care about? He does care about being fully united with you. Would you agree? You know what else God cares about? He cares about the way you think about yourself, about the way you feel about your weight and body image and you know when he cares about it. If it’s distracting you from life, if it’s preventing you from being closer to him than you are, the eight week program that we have is for you. If you’re self-conscious about your weight and it’s straining your closest relationships with my husband, that was me anyway. You know what kids do too? Because at the end of the night I was done and I wanted to eat. And if you were gonna bother me, I was a mean and angry mom. Mean and angry . So it was definitely hurting my closest relationships. Yes, that’s very true. This program is for you. If you see comfort in food rather than God when you’re stressed, sad, overwhelmed, like it’s causing you excess weight. You know, even if you don’t have excess weight, I mean this program is for you.

If the way that you feel about your weight is affecting the way you talk to yourself, maybe you’re not very nice, overly critical and you’re not only overly critical of your body, you’re overly critical about your whole life. You just can’t do anything right in your eyes. It’s a horrible place to live. This program will help you with that. And maybe if your weight is draining your physical and your emotional energy, either because you’re carrying excess weight or because you’re thinking about your weight all the time, okay, let’s just say most of the time it’s no accident that you’re still listening and you’re going to know that you’re called to this eight week program over Lent. If you know that improving the way that you feel about your weight and not feeling controlled and confused by food, if you could find freedom from feeling controlled and confused by food and from the excess weight that’s weighing on your mind, you know the rest of your life would get better.

You know that. That’s how you know if the state week program is for you. What you’ll learn during these eight weeks will not only bring you peace with food, you won’t feel controlled by food, but we’ll teach you everything that you need to know to live at a healthy weight for the rest of your life. Bonus, eating the foods that you love and then a program that you never have to stop or restart. Yes you guys, it’s totally possible. I promise that you can not only eat the foods that you love, but this program is impossible to do wrong. I’m gonna show you exactly what to focus on and other hacks so that you can save time and energy, have extra time, friends, you don’t need another thing.

Plus you guys can leave feeling deprived and left out of fun events in the past. I promise you. I’m gonna teach you how you can enjoy food, family parties, family dinners, weekends and restaurants and trust yourself around food. So you have two options because you know at some point you’re gonna try to lose weight again. You know you’re gonna try something. And you know what that looks like. The old way of losing weight is complicated, lonely. There’s nobody to ask. You spend so much time trying to figure it out on your own, you don’t really enjoy the food. And if you do, it’s very short term, and I feel confused. It feels so stinking hard. And guess what? Life or weekends or family parties, they throw you off. Maybe not for a day. Maybe it’ll be for a week or a month. Some of the women I work with were like, I was doing great until, and it’s always like one event for the rest of like years and months.

It throws you off. It’s not gonna happen when you learn this new way to live and you won’t have to restart after pregnancy. You know how that stinks? Feels like, oh, gotta try again. Get myself all geared up. Mm-Hmm , I’m gonna teach you a way that you can live for the rest of your life that feels comfortable, that isn’t a drag isn’t another thing that you need to do. So you know what traditional weight loss looks like or you can try this program called Food Freedom Weight Loss Intensive. It’s eight weeks. You’re surrounded by other Catholic moms just like you, where everything we do we’re bringing you more peace and closer to the Lord. Have you ever been in a weight loss group like that where we focus on food freedom and peace, where you’re going to get 27, 24 7 access to me as your personal weight loss coach to help you with your life, not just a general program. By the way, I don’t tell anybody what to eat.

You want what will work for you, not someone else. It’s time to live the way that you want. And guess what, you guys, you were way too busy to figure out one more thing. There’s nothing to figure out in this program. I tell you exactly where to put your focus so that you get the results that you want. Don’t you feel like it’s time somebody actually helped you, supported you, told you what to do for your life so you aren’t wasting time? Aren’t you done with that? It’s a step-by-step approach. Each part is so carefully placed in the order, in this specific order that feels very natural and simple and easy. I just don’t do complicated things if we haven’t met you don’t know, I don’t do complicated things. Although your worrying will really wanna complicate things and we’re not gonna do that. I’ll remind you over and over to just trust the process. Because when you do that, you’re gonna have amazing results. And I want you to go to the page so you can learn about this program just so you can read the testimonials of the women who have gone through it. It is amazing. Weekends away, people are having so much fun. Girls weekends trust themselves around food, having a few drinks and not going overboard, feeling amazing about themselves, weakening away with their husbands or they feel the woman said, light and clean.

There’s zero deprivation here. Zero deprivation. See the thing is, is because you cannot fail in this program or you can’t fall off of it, aren’t you tired of being on or off a diet feeling left out were like me when you’d go to family parties or restaurants afraid that I would leave feeling roll me outta here or at family parties sneak eating. I always helped in the kitchen afterwards and then I would eat all the food and feel horrible about myself cause I never did it in front of anybody. I’d hate myself the next day. Aren’t you tired of that?

Finally eating the foods you love? Wouldn’t you love a program or you can actually eat the foods you love? What’s so great is I ask the women I work with when we’re done, how much deprivation did you feel? And they often say very little. And do you know why? Because this program is so natural. It’s the natural progression of how our brains work. We slowly introduce things so that the Lord can come and fix our souls and change our brain. It’s so natural and gentle. I will never tell you when to give up food or that you have to give up food, but you’re going to know when you’re ready. It’s amazing because I am, I’ve been the same way where I’m like, no, never. I’m never gonna give that food up. And then I’m like, I’m tired of that food controlling me. And if the time is right, there will be a time when you do choose to have some food that’s no longer part of your life for a short amount of time. But I’ll never tell you to do that. I’ll never tell you to do that. You’ll just be ready for that. I could give you so many stories of women like that. I just wanna tell you there’s zero pressure to do that at any time. And finally the best part of this program is that it’s a way of life. You get to keep doing this while you’re pregnant. Nursing after the baby, before the baby. Once the babies leave, you never have to stop and restart. This supports you during holidays.

Okay, so how about a little bit about this program. This program begins February 13th. It’s called the Food Freedom Weight Loss Intensive. It is eight weeks. We are running two groups. One is in the morning at 11:00 AM central time and one is in the evening at 6:00 PM central time. Each group is limited in size cuz we like to keep these very small and intimate. You can visit both of the groups but we do ask that you choose one so that you can start to create some community. Okay? So here’s how it goes. So for eight weeks each week we will have a group coaching call. Each week you’ll also get a video that will tell you what to focus on for that week and it will correspond to your workbook. Very simple, right? You have weekly group coaching, daily accountability 24 7 access to me as your weight loss coach. And if you’d like to upgrade to one-on-one coaching, we can do that as well.

Let me ask you, if all you got from these eight weeks was to learn how to not fall off on weekends, would it be worth devoting eight weeks to learning how to do that? This lent, if all you got was to learn a program that you never had to start or restart or could fall off of, would that be worth learning for these eight weeks? If all you got was to learn how to eat your favorite foods and lose weight, wow, would that be worth voting eight weeks to learning? If all you got from this was to learn how to feel not left out and alone at your family dinners and parties, I’m gonna teach you how to handle those stressful parties. Well they don’t feel stressed. Would that be worth learning these eight weeks? What if you could finally trust yourself around food?

Imagine when you’re longer feeling controlled by food. Love the way your body looks and feels. You feel great about the way you eat when you have space in your brain to pursue other things. Let’s just think about food and weight. When you walk confidently in family parties or aren’t worried about overeating at restaurants, we’re not grouchy with your husband and kids. That’s me. Cause you don’t feel horrible about yourself. Who’s this program for? Okay, this program is for women who are ready. Now you’re done pushing this off. You want in and you want in now. So we start February 13th and it’s a super exciting time because what gets traveled through Lent together and you know you’re looking for something to do for Lent anyway, this is gonna deepen your relationship with God and with yourself. The intensive will do that. Plus it’s gonna give you a ton of solutions for emotional eating, a new way to live and a path to lasting weight loss so you can live at a healthy weight for the rest of your life.

And bonus, it’s gonna bring you a lot more peace in your life. This is for you if you know that all the other areas of your life will improve when you’re feeling free from feeling controlled by food and consumed by weight. This is for you. If you know that you deserve someone to finally take care of you and show you exactly what to do so you stop wasting time and your energy. This is for you if you’re willing to have that loving accountability. And I mean that I’m a trainer. I’m gonna remind you while you started, I’m not gonna be mean but I’m gonna keep you focused cuz you deserve it and you’ll be so happy. I tell you the things that you need to hear. I live in truth. That’s what’s so fun about being a Catholic health and weight loss coach. Can’t lie.

I need to tell you what you need to hear. It’s not what I need to tell you. It’s what the Lord needs you to hear. And I can say that. Doesn’t that sound amazing? So if you would love to do this and you’re ready to pursue a little bit more, I want you to go to Maid for Greatness co. And we’ll also have the link in the show notes. I want you to go there even if you’re not really sure, just so you can read the testimonials. It’s amazing what happens in women’s lives and how much closer they get to God. You guys, I told you this is something you have never done before. This is your Catholic health and weight loss program. You’re Catholic and you want weight loss and you want food freedom. There’s nowhere else to go. It’s eight weeks. Can you imagine 2023 lent of 2023 will be remembered as a turning point in your life.

You’ll never have to look back except to say that’s the day I said yes. Finally to myself. If you have no idea how amazing your life will get, no idea. I’m gonna record my story someday. It just gets better than this. Okay, so you were asking, you weren’t asking, but I’ll tell you. So how did I get to Maid for greatness as the health and weight loss coach? Well you guys, I have had many other businesses and they have all been secular. And then when the pandemic hit and I decided to stay home and to only do virtual one-on-one personal training, God was like, I, I want you to be a coach so that you can help women with everything. Like all the things, the diet, the exercise, the sleep, the all the things. And I was like, yeah, let’s do this. I’m gonna get recertified as a coach.

It’s gonna be great. Then I just felt him one day say, ha ha ha, you think that I wanted you to get recertified as a coach? Cause I kind of let that lapse while I was just doing one-on-one training. You think that I wanted you to do that so that you’d have this new business? And he’s like, I want you to do it to bring more souls to me. And I was like, what? Because I had a fully secular business. I had no like integration of my faith and my business and then Lord’s like yeah, I wanna be fully integrated into everything of your life. Oh man, you guys, I was so scared but I was led to masters and if you don’t know what masters is, masters is the monthly membership for Catholic moms. I was led to their business work and I thought, dare I, dare I be a Christian coach, much less a Catholic coach. Is that even a real thing? Is that professional suicide?

And God led me to Made for greatness and to masters and to Sterling and I started working with her as my business coach and I loved it and I got so much confidence. Well along the way I was also a master’s member just like you may or may not be. And there was another woman named Larissa and you guys know Sterling and Larissa and Larissa didn’t know that I was working with Sterling, which is very interesting cuz I was doing my own Catholic weight loss coaching, food freedom thing. And Larissa saw my stuff on Instagram and she also saw my stuff when I would post in Masters in Facebook group and she thought, Hey, I think, I think this would be a good fit. Our team, Hey, do you know this girl Denise? She says to Sterling one day and Sterling’s kind of like, yeah, yeah I do. But Larissa didn’t know that I had the relationship I had with Sterling. To make a long story short, it’s when we launched the food freedom, weight loss intensive for these women and all Catholic moms to have the freedom that I’ve enjoyed and that the other women who are graduates of this program enjoy.

And I wanna be your Catholic Weight Loss Coach. So join us this Lent to finally learn how to live at a healthy weight for the rest of your life and have peace and healing with food. Have a blessed day and I look forward to seeing you in the intensive.