244. The TRUTH About Women’s Weight Loss & Hormones (Shocking!)

Well, welcome, Terri, to the Fast of Faith podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you.

Thank you, Dr. T. I am very excited to be here as well, especially since it's your birthday.

Yes, happy 50th to me. It's crazy to think it's a huge milestone, right? But it really is just a number. Like, I don't feel hugely different or anything, but I do feel accomplished. Like, I made it into some Kind of special club. And all of a sudden, I just don't care about a lot of stuff anymore. So I'm really excited about the future. And you are like a shining example of a woman thriving over 50. So I'm excited to kick off this conversation with you, girl. So my listeners need to hear from you because when you came to me, you were doing okay, but you just weren't like living your best life and feeling your greatest. What would you say is like the number one reason you sought me out decided to work with my team.

The fatigue that I was feeling, and especially the weight loss that I could not achieve. I felt like I had been doing everything right. I felt like I had done all my research and I was doing everything that had been recommended, especially for a woman my age. And I still had this nagging little bit of weight, menopausal weight. That had come on that I could not get rid of. I needed to heal my gut. And even though I had worked with functional practitioners, I had never had anyone who really specialized in that and specialized in balancing my hormones. And I knew there was some work to do there, although I was already using bioidentical hormones and I was already doing some things to help my gut. I've said this before, but I felt like I had collected all the puzzle pieces, but that they were turned face down. And I could not figure out how to put them together.

I love that. That is so right on. I hear that all the time. I'm doing all the right things. Why am I not seeing the shift? Why am I stuck in the mud? And so you're saying, like, you had all these right puzzle pieces. You felt like you were working on your gut. You felt like you were getting your hormones back into balance, or at least getting some kind of hormone replacement and, and dialing in your diet. But somehow the pieces weren't coming together. You weren't seeing the full picture, right?

Correct, correct. Exactly.

What was that turning point, do you think? It was just the Healthy Her program where we finally brought in the food sensitivity pieces and the mindset pieces and the stress management pieces, or what Was there one thing or was it a combination?

Well, it was definitely a combination of several things. Your program was the first one that I found that had the faith piece in it that I was looking for. I've been very health and wellness-minded for a long time. And in fact, I have lots of friends who come to me with situations because they know that I have done a lot for my health through nutrition, through lifestyle. And so I was already kind of coaching people, but I I was looking for a way to integrate my faith as well. When I read your book, it resonated very deeply with me. I had already been intermittent fasting for almost 4 years when I came to you. I never really lost a significant amount of weight doing intermittent fasting, although I had been doing it all that time. So I look back on that and I think most people would have walked away because I did come to intermittent fasting thinking that would be a weight-loss program. For me, and weight loss was not one of the benefits I had, but I had a lot of other benefits. And one thing that intermittent fasting did for me was it cleared my mind, which made the faith piece better for me. And your program kind of just tied it all up with a really pretty bow and put it all together for me. Now, with that being said, I'm not sure that I would have had the success if I had only read the book. And gone through the program on my own. I have no doubt that I have the discipline that I could have done exactly what was said in the book. However, the Community that you have built is phenomenal.

Mm-hmm.

The encouragement— I want to do what's best so that I can bring that to the table when I'm in the Community. And it makes me feel good to be able to share my experience With other people that are in the Community, with other women. Sharing my experience with other women is something that has been just a piece of my heart for a long time. I entered recovery from alcoholism a little over 15 years ago. As I recovered, I began working with other women who were broken, quote unquote. I just gained a heart for women who were hurting. That was something, in fact, when I had my very first welcome call with Ashley, to coach me. I shared with her that I was the facilitator of the women's ministry at my church, and I was looking for a way to bring health and wellness to that group of women. And I thought I would be considering maybe doing a book study with your book and making it into a small group Bible study and that sort of thing. I don't even know if the coaching academy was on your radar at that point. But it's really interesting to me that it came together really quickly after that. And so that's one of the things that really attracted me to the coaching program as well. But in signing up for Healthy Her, the testing that you do is so beneficial. I had had food sensitivity tests before, and actually my food sensitivity test came back pretty good. I didn't have anything that I was— highly sensitive to. All of it was low. But working with Morgan and finding out that I needed to take everything that I was sensitive to out for a small period of time in order to allow my gut to heal was very, very beneficial. The stool sampling was very beneficial as well, to know what bacteria we were truly fighting and what bacteria we needed to feed. I understood that whole concept beforehand, but not knowing what Bacterias I was looking at, you're still just a stab in the dark. So yeah, you really gave me a way to hone in on all of that.

I love that. So much to unpack, so much goodness. You know, we talk about the Healthy Her program and it is, you know, comprehensive. You're all getting the same testing, but the results are so individualized. You actually get to see your microbiome and your digestive function and what struggles you have, what foods you're reacting to. So it's not a one-size-fits-all, it's not a guessing game. And that really is why you were able to make that shift and the transition. You got to see the front of the puzzle pieces and put them all together. So that's super cool. And it excites me when women have these ahas, it all comes together. And what you touched on was Once you had that aha and you started to heal and things started to shift, all of a sudden you weren't in survival mode and you were like having all of these dreams of what you could do with your life now.

Mm-hmm.

How you could go out and help other women because you felt better. And so that is so exciting to me that I'm giving women back hope and possibilities to go out and do stuff with their life because we're not meant to just be in survival mode and be struggling and feeling So tired that like, when is our next nap? You're like, let me start a Bible group, let me run this ministry, let me, you know, cheerlead these other women. So bravo to you, that's so amazing. But you are a true testament to what is happening inside Fast to Faith. And you are right, I had no idea what God was planning. You know, you're over here getting these downloads from God, I'm over here getting these downloads. Ashley, the other women in the— Original coaching cohort, but they're all funneling into the same bigger purpose that he has for us to impact other women and show them that they can truly heal themselves and go out and be Christ's hands to serve. So I think it's so amazing, and you're exactly right, like, it came together so quickly and so beautifully. We've already had our first cohort of coaches graduate. You're out there helping women. Like, how does that Tell me about that. Tell me what impact you're having.

I've had so many women who are at a point of just being hopeless. They've given up. It's like, just like I felt in the fact that I felt like I was doing everything that they say we should be doing. What I've learned over the years is that they are telling us a lot of things that are not right, and that the first thing that I'm having to do with most women that I'm working with is undo years of diet brain thinking, taking away that idea of calories in, calories out. I mean, if it were that simple, we would not have an obesity crisis in this country.

Exactly.

What I have found is even in the best of the health and wellness world, what is typically touted by anyone in that world who's written a book, who's got a podcast, who does interviews and that sort of thing, is they found out what works for them and they I don't think that will work for everyone. One of the things I love about your philosophy is that if you found the eating plan, the nutrition plan that already works for you, that's fine. Put all the other pieces with it. That's one of the very first things that I have women ask me. So are we going to be doing ketogenic? Are we going to be doing whole food plant-based? Are we going to be doing vegetarian? What are we going to be doing? And I'm like, we're going to be finding out what foods you love, That love you back. And we're going to build a lifestyle for you that is sustainable, that aligns with your health and wellness goals.

Yeah.

So how cool is that? You don't have to do anything that you hate.

Yes.

You don't have to do anything that you're dreading every day getting up and doing. With every diet that I've ever tried, it has always been, you have to have this for breakfast. And I've never been a breakfast eater, but I would force myself to have these things they are telling me I have to have for breakfast. And then here my body is having to digest food that I never even really wanted.

Mm-hmm.

And digestion is such a huge process that it takes so much energy away from other things. Having a way to embrace not eating breakfast at the conventional breakfast time— I mean, you know, the word is break fast, so yes, break fast is important, what you have for breaking your fast, but it doesn't matter the time of day that that happens. That was one thing that I really, really enjoyed about just in reading your book. You know, there is a suggestion for macros, and when we're trying to get people from that SAD American diet, it is important to look at those macros and to use that, but it's a framework.

Yeah.

It's not something that's written in stone. And we're all so individual. You know, God created us that way. And you are honoring what God has created.

I love that. I'm so glad that you touched on that because you're right, women are doing things that they absolutely feel miserable doing and they aren't realizing that is producing such inflammatory chemical processes in their body, such destructive processes. And I see it over and over in our medical practice. Someone is living a miserable life, or they're just in survival mode, or they go through some trauma—they get divorced, they have a parent pass away, things like that—and they get cancer six months later. It's just this setup for disease manifesting in your body, and we're not connecting those dots. We think that it's okay for us to mentally feel miserable, have negative thoughts, but expect our body to function like a high-performing athlete and like not age, you know? It's like it doesn't even make any sense. So many health professionals are not addressing the mental and spiritual piece of it. So, you know, when I first started putting these programs together, what I kept seeing in my patients was women have lost their intuition. They don't even know what their body is saying to them because they have been trained to Cover it up with Band-Aid medicine, disregard it, push it down, ignore it. Or they're getting such mixed signals because they're filling their body with such toxic stuff like the sad American diet that all you feel is miserable symptoms. And so you just think, okay, this is my new norm. I'm just going to feel miserable all the time. And it's not until you clean that up and you're not feeling miserable constantly that you really can start to hear what your body loves and what it— what's angering it. And hear from God, right? That piece of it. I think it's so incredible that you'd fasted, you know, with Jim Stevens and those people for so long, even though you weren't losing weight. Like, God was still leading you. God was like, you need to do this, but we got to get you the faith piece. Talk about that, because that is how you are impacting women now in your book club with Fasts of Faith and in your ministry. And I just think— I wanna hear, are women having these ahas just like you did?

Yes, absolutely. In fact, that is one of the things the book club that I did earlier this year, it started out with a lot of people and it kind of dwindled down. And I have a little core group. They embraced the 40-day challenge. They were in the middle of, or not in the middle, we're toward the end of it now. You know, one of the things that the majority of them that are really participating in it talk to me about is how much Lectio Divina has inspired them, how How it has become a habit, a daily habit, and how it puts them in the right mindset at the beginning of their day. And that is one thing that attracted me to your program as well, is this— the emphasis on the mindset. Because here's the thing, we can all take any diet and follow the rules.

Yep.

But if we're still talking negatively to ourselves all the time telling ourselves how much we hate our body, our body's never going to heal. And if we don't nourish our soul, our body can't heal either. Our mind won't heal. So nourishing the soul is really the piece to help the mental health as well as the physical health. And I say a lot of times, if you nourish the soul, the body will follow.

Yeah.

And I just believe that that's the truth. And we're finding so much truth in scripture. The experience that I've had with the Faith Builder calls is that here we are, there can be, you know, 20 of us on that call. We all hear the same scripture, we all journal about it, and the Holy Spirit has spoken differently to each one of us. Isn't that an amazing God?

Yeah.

Who— he can speak to each one of our individual needs in a corporate setting where we're all hearing it at the same time, and— but we all get what we need from it. That is a God that's unexplainable. And who wants a God that is explainable?

Yes. Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And I'll be honest, for so long I didn't understand that the Bible was a living, nourishing word. It was the living truth. That Scripture transforms your life in the here and the now. I really thought of it as a history book. I really thought of it like, oh, here are the lessons you need to learn and, and the ways you need to live. But I didn't understand the magical transformational aspects that God uses that to talk to us and to touch our soul, you know. But it's right there in the beginning. God is the Word. Like, he—

Mm-hmm.

It says it right at the beginning, but I didn't put the pieces together. You know, it was ingrained in me that you follow these doctrines. It was very religious-based. It was follow the rules. And so I never had that personal understanding of I can go to the Bible for answers in any moment of any part of my day, and God will talk to me. The Holy Spirit will like direct me. And really understanding that and taking ownership of that power and that authority Has been my game changer. And watching you ladies do it just blows my mind. It fills my heart up. Like you said, we're on these calls and we're all having different ahas and impacts in, but we can all resonate because like I probably felt that last year and you felt that last week.

Mm-hmm.

And like we all connected. It's just so beautiful and incredible. And yeah, you can't get that from the book like that. piece of this program is— that is the magic. For those of you who are listening, I know a lot of this is new. Like, we just created the Fast to Faith Coaching Academy last fall. We've had our first group of coaches graduate. They are certified to run the Fast to Faith 40-day program with women. Terri's running her group of women. And Terri became a coach because she had the transformation from our medical practice and she felt compelled to go out and help women do the same thing. Like, that is so powerful. When we first launched the Coaching Academy, did you have some reservations? Were you like, I don't know if I'm qualified, or like, if I could do this? Or what was appealing to you? And let me just preface this by saying, you know, when I created the Fast Faith Coaching Academy, I knew you ladies needed to understand functional medicine. You needed to understand the root cause of why you were struggling. Because women are more apt to change their diet and their lifestyle and take on new ways of living and shift their mindset if they know why things are happening in their body. So for you to be able to understand the microbiome and the digestive tract and the thyroid and the hormones, do you feel like that's been a huge benefit in you being able to lead other women through this transition?

It absolutely has. I knew the moment that you announced the Coaching Academy that I really wasn't even looking at it as, I want to have a coaching business. I was looking at it as, if I never do anything else with this, I will understand my own health and I'll be able to help my daughter and my mother. It would have been worth it if I didn't do anything else. You know, I've had a love for functional medicine for a very long time. I had been working with functional practitioners for a long time, but like I said, none were specialized in women's health in the way that you are. I have found a lot of of benefit in the fact that you were an MD as well as a functional practitioner, so you could see both sides. You would, you would be able to understand what conventional medicine had told me, or what conventional medicine had told anyone, and be able to debunk whatever it was that was not right. You know, I don't demonize medical doctors by any means. I believe that there is place for conventional medicine, and it's for when we're in a crisis. It's for when there is a critical situation, an acute situation. But I truly believe that our medical system, our hospital systems, are going to go bankrupt in trying to treat people for chronic things that only diet and lifestyle are going to change. I have a lot of hope in the future. Maybe that's going to change. But I knew that if I did this coaching program, that I would have the tools to be able to guide some women. There's so many people out there that don't understand functional medicine and don't understand the financial cost of it, but that can be helped with just some simple functional practices. And so being able to share those foundational things through coaching Testing may be the only thing that someone needs, and then it may also be a way for them to reveal that, yes, they need more and they need to invest in their health by becoming a part of your practice. You know, I think it's a good stepping stone, especially for someone who has no idea what functional medicine is about and who has only heard, you know, if you take this, it will lower your cholesterol. And understanding that artificially lowering your cholesterol, it's not treating the cause as to why your cholesterol is high. So there's just so much to be said for finding the root cause. Biblically, it tells us where to find the root and where to get rid of it so that the— so that the good plant can flourish. That's one thing I find in functional medicine is that there's a biblical principle behind almost everything. So understanding the creation and how God designed us to work is incredibly important to me. Mm-hmm.

Oh, I love that so much. Yeah, I think we give our power to the white coats. It was definitely my belief that I was the healer as the surgeon. These hands were what was healing women, and that's just not true. Like, it's inside of us. God gives us the ability to heal, and we need to take back that power and that control. I feel very fortunate to have come from conventional medicine because You're right. There's a time and a place. If you have a broken arm, you're in a car accident, you have to have emergency life-saving surgery. We need those things. That's why God gave us that, you know. But it's not the answer to everything. There's so much chronically that is from our daily choices all day long, and pills are not the answer. You know, you mentioned the cholesterol. Yeah, you might take the statin to bring down the cholesterol levels. But that root cause that's driving that problem is also driving other problems. And so you could still potentially go on to have a stroke or Alzheimer's or osteoporosis because you're not treating the root cause of the issue. It's like an infected tree, right? It's right. You gotta pull it out at the root.

Yes, absolutely. It's amazing. It truly is amazing. The power that conventional medicine has had over people and how many— I run into so many people that don't question anything their doctor says. I'm probably labeled somewhere as the one you don't want to mess with because I ask all the questions. My husband has been in some pretty critical situations with his health, and I just would say that no one needs to be in the hospital without someone else there to advocate for them. There would have been a lot of of things that probably would have been done to him if I had not been there to stop that. And I don't think that anybody was maliciously out trying to harm my husband, but just questioning things. Another is a hospital is a business and they're looking at a bottom line. And so when you're there and you have medical coverage, then you have lots of testing that is ordered simply because the insurance will pay for it. So one of the best lines that I learned a long time ago when we were offered any kind of testing or offered any kind of medication is, how is this going to change my course of treatment? And if they say it's not, then there's no reason to have the testing done unless you just want that information. There's so many testing that I have to wonder, is the exposure to whatever worth the thing you're going to find out?

Right.

And if it's not going to change the course of treatment, then why expose me to Radiology, you know, and that sort of thing. So I think that we are equipping women to be able to talk intelligently with their medical doctor rather than being intimidated by them.

Yeah. And it's— we need to do this as women because we are usually the head of the household when it comes to our medical health. Most women are making the doctor's appointments, are taking their children, even taking their husbands and making those appointments. And if you just let your husband go to that appointment, you're probably not going to get a lot of information when he comes back. You know, like, what happened? What'd they say? I don't know. Here's my pill. You know, it is up to us women to be the caretakers in that regard. That is what we are called to do. And that is a form of loving and caring for our family. And so helping ourselves understand that, wait a second, we do have some say in this. We don't have to just be quiet. We can use our voice, ask for other choices, ask for the risks and the benefits. Is this actually going to change the outcome, the treatment outcome? You know, I get a lot of women asking, should I do mammograms? By and large, the standard of care in this country is determined based on how much money is it going to cost to diagnose one thing in this large group of people. So if you do a mammogram for 10 million people, how many people are gonna get a diagnosis of breast cancer? And where is that ratio that makes sense economically for the insurance company? For the hospitals. It is not for your best individual decision. And so being told that you need to undergo radiation on your breasts every year so that we can detect these breast cancers might not be what you personally need, right? And so having these critical thinking skills to be able to say, wait, maybe I don't need that every year, or maybe I need a different test. I think it's so powerful because we're just no longer drinking the Kool-Aid. We're no longer just giving them all of the power, and I think that is what needs to happen. That's why I love this coaching program as well. It's like we're meeting every month after you graduate, and we're going to continue the education and have these conversations of like, oh, this came up. Now how do I address this with my clients and help them navigate the system or navigate hormones or navigate— they got a bone density scan back and now they need to be on these dangerous drugs that, you know, they can only be on for 2 years for their bones and like all the things. So I just think that if women don't hear anything else today, it's like, you have choices, you have power to shift not only your health and your life and your future But everyone around you that you impact, right?

Absolutely. And one thing I want to say, you were talking about how the woman is typically the— well, we are— I mean, yeah, Proverbs 31, we're the managers of the home. We are the— they— we are biblically directed to be the managers of our home. We're the caretakers of the people who live here. With that being said, that means that the majority of us Buy the groceries.

Yep, yep.

We get to choose what's available in our home. Just yesterday, my grandson who lives with me said— he calls me Sweet Tea— he says, Sweet Tea, I want you to get me some cereal. And I said, really? What kind of cereal would you like? He said, Golden Grahams. And I said, well, Sweet Tea's not buying Golden Grahams. And he said, why? I said, because cereal is junk. We've got fresh eggs, We have bacon. We have other things that you can have, but we're not going to have cereal here. He may get cereal somewhere else. I'm not trying to control that, but what I can control is what is in my house and available. That's the power. You know, I hear that from women a lot of times is, I can't throw away all that stuff. I have to have it here for my kids. Trust me, your kids will get it somewhere else. They'll go to a birthday party and have whatever. You know, is available there. And there are certain foods that I don't have any breaks with. If I start to eat them, I'm gonna eat all of it until it's gone. So I don't keep them in my house. The majority of those foods are not foods that are nutritious foods for anybody else in my house as well. One of the things I learned from one of your podcasts was asking the question whenever a doctor wants to prescribe a medication is, what is the number to treat? And knowing that It takes so many people in order for there to be one person to be helped.

Mm-hmm.

So why— I mean, statins are an example of that. Why, you know, that's the most widely prescribed drug in the United States, and I think that it probably causes more problems than it does good. And so just being empowered with what are the questions you can ask your doctor is huge.

Yeah.

It is absolutely huge. You also were talking about the Academy and the meetings that we have, and I just want to shout out your whole team because the support that you give us coaches, the support you give your patients, the support you give anyone who buys into any of the programs is phenomenal. You give away so much that it's priceless. I cannot put a price on it.

Yeah, thank you for shouting them out. I am beyond blessed. God really did bring these women to me and create this program. I have just simply been a vehicle. I've been obedient to his calling and open and receptive. As scared as I was, he's like, this is what we're doing, and here are the women that you need. And You're right, they're phenomenal. Like, we are supporting the coaches, our clients, our patients 24/7. Like, it's constantly just thinking about you, praying over you, pouring into you. And that's why it's been such a huge success. So thank you for mentioning that.

Yeah.

And I just want to say, you know, as a woman, as in just a person in general, you are going to pay for your health. You're either going to pay now or you're going to pay later. In a different way. And if your house is full of junk food and you don't want to throw it away because it costs you so much, it is going to cost you way more in all of your doctor's bills, going through all of those appointments, trying to figure out what's wrong, being hospitalized. I mean, year after year, as my parents get older and my friends' parents, like, someone is always in the hospital for weeks on end. There is always a health crisis going on. And so I'm acutely aware that they're paying later for all of their previous choices. And so I take a step back and I say, what can I do now so I don't have to pay later? Let me just pay upfront because it's so much cheaper.

Yeah.

You think it's more expensive, but it's not. I promise you, it's so much cheaper upfront than it is later. And it's only finances or shifting your mindset. Later is like, heartache and despair and pain in so many other ways and huge losses of like loved ones. And just, oh, it's like devastating how many people that I continue to have to say goodbye to and the funerals and just supporting my friends through all of that. So yeah, you get to choose what's in the pantry, what's feeding your family, what they're eating. A lot of the time. Don't worry about what they're doing outside of the home, but if you can at least direct what's going on in the home, it's a huge impact right there. And they know that you care, and they might have this little moment when they are out somewhere else going, man, Grandma Sweet Tea doesn't think that's good for me. Maybe I shouldn't choose that today. You know, you plant these seeds.

Yeah.

That's what Christ tells you to do. Just plant the seeds. And the Holy Spirit will do the work. So that's what we're called to do. And I'm just so proud of you. You're an incredible woman, and I'm just beyond blessed that you are one of our first coaching cohorts. You're— I can't wait to see everything you do this year. It's gonna be incredible.

It is. I'm really excited about it as well. And I wanna share one thing too, that is really a motivation for me to continue with the discipline that I'm developing and the lifestyle that I'm building is my biggest why. is I do not want to be a burden to my children and my grandchildren. I want to be their mom and their grandmother as I age. I don't want my care to be handed over to them because of anything I could have changed in my lifestyle. That's the big why. You know, I hear people many, many times talk about not wanting to be a burden to their children. And this is where you do it. This is where the rubber meets the road, is you make the choices now. So they don't have to make those choices later.

Yeah, that is absolutely the most beautiful gift you could ever give people you love is your health. It's hands down, there's nothing else. You cannot buy them anything better than you having your health and not being a burden on them. Of course they're going to take care of you, but I look at my friends and the people I love missing work And going through their own stressful situations because they're caring for their ailing parents who have these chronic lifestyle diseases that were from their choices that could have been prevented, and it breaks my heart. So thank you for saying that. I know somebody needed to hear that today. That was like a major golden nugget. So are there any parting words? This has been an incredible interview, and I know that. I think that there's so many women out there right now feeling really just inspired and excited because you're just a regular woman out there doing your thing. You were in an intermittent fasting group for a long time.

Right.

And God was like, okay, let's use you to do some incredible things.

So the thing I would say is that if you're sitting there and you're skeptical, the first thing to do is get the book and read the book. If the book resonates with you, then consider purchasing one of the packages and become part of the Community. Go in and check out the app. The free part of the app has a ton of information. And so when you see that, know that if you're a part of the programs, you're going— just imagine that is like exponential what you get. Then consider one-on-one coaching. If one-on-one coaching doesn't get you to where your health goals are, then that's when you go on to Healthy Her. Or you may be somebody who dives right in with Healthy Her like I did. And you end up becoming part of the coaching community. When you see the success you can have with just small changes being made, it is amazing the things I see happen. For instance, I have a client, she's one of my best friends, and she's had horrible, horrible health issues. And she has started the 40-Day Awakening and she is feeling phenomenal. She's feeling the best. that she has felt in years. Even though she still has some very critical health issues going on, the improvement that she is seeing is so inspiring. And I mean, when she started, she was really at the end of her rope. She was feeling very, very hopeless. Seeing those kind of things happen is just— if you only see one of those, it's worth all of the work. I mean, it really is. It really is. You're changing lives, Dr. T. You are really changing lives, and you are equipping us to change lives as well. And not only are we changing lives physically and improving medical conditions, we're improving spiritual conditions, and we're winning souls for the kingdom. And that is the greatest purpose there is.

Absolutely. That is so incredible. And you were talking about how she was like at the end of her rope. I feel like so many women have lost hope. Because they have tried all the things. They've done what their doctors have told them, or they've even gone to functional medicine specialists like you did, and they just couldn't put those pieces together. And I think about the story of the bleeding woman in the Bible, bleeding for 12 years, and she touched the hem of Jesus's garment. Like, that's all she had left was that little tiny thread to hold on to. 2 of hope. So, if you have a thread of hope, that is enough faith to heal you. Honestly and truly, God says, your faith has made you well. Like, go into Mark and read that story, and you will be inspired to say, okay, God, I heard this podcast for a reason. Let me trust you one more time to just reach out for your hem, right? I think that as soon as you just lose hope and no longer believe that God is constantly trying to work for your good and show you the options and the plans, like, that is where you will stay stuck. So it's not an accident that you heard this episode. You have to do something with this. I don't know what it is. It's going to be different for everybody.

Mm-hmm.

But that is God reaching out to you. You have been praying and asking for things, and here you go, you know. Like, that's just the truth of it. So thank you for being such an amazing blessing. I'm so excited for the year.

Oh, me too. Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed this so much.

Yay! Awesome. And if you guys want to reach out to Terri and work with her one-on-one as a Fast to Faith coach, she's incredible. She will pray over you and pour life into you and guide you and answer all of your You know, functional questions, your fasting questions, and more importantly, like how to eat and love and give up alcohol and all the good stuff. Like, you just— you're so awesome. So thank you, Terri.

Thank you, Dr. T.