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Picture this: a skeptical, bacon-loving, Hebrew-speaking Jew, embarking on a quest to explore faith after a transformative 100-pound weight loss and a series of "quarter-life crisis".
It began with a whisper in my heart: "I think I might want God?!"
But not wanting to go back to the old days of temple and rabbi sermons, I found a non-denominational church in vibrant Nashville, TN that turned into a miraculous journey that filled a void in my spiritual landscape and met ME in my skepticism, doubt, and curiosity in all aspects of life.
All of a sudden this "God guy" that everyone ELSE was talking about that I had never met, and frankly never cared to meet…
...suddenly appeared to ME --and revealed, completed, and healed parts of my story I didn't even know needed attention.
When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and it's Spiritual Brain Surgery.
I'm really excited to share this week's episode with you.
We've got, for the first time ever, a takeover guest host episode.
Leanne Ellington is going to be here today and next week to bring you her incredible
story of how she found the Lord and transformed her life, changed her thinking,
And found her true calling.
I'm going to let her tell her own story. Leanne is the host of two podcasts
on the iHeartRadio network.
She is heard every week by millions of people on the Outweigh and the What's
God Got to Do With It podcasts.
I've been honored to be her guest on both of those shows. Met Leanne digitally
through our mutual friend, Maddie Jackson-Smith, who you know and love.
And I'm just so honored and grateful that Leanne was able to take over the mic
and give us these two episodes.
Without further ado, for Spiritual Brain Surgery today and next week,
I'm going to give you your host, my friend, and incredible person, Leanne Ellington.
Let's get after it. This is the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast,
where we take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it and how science
and faith smash together to help us share it, defend it, and live it out.
You can't change your life until you change your mind and spiritual brain surgery
will help you get it done.
So let's get after it. And I'm your takeover host for today's episode of Spiritual Brain Surgery.
My name is Leanne Ellington, and I'm honored that Dr.
Warren asked me to be here and share my journey as a bacon-loving Hebrew-speaking
Jew who had no connection to God or faith, but neuroscience actually led me
to the Lord. And that's one of the reasons Dr.
Warren asked me to share my journey of how science and faith smashed together for me.
So let's dive on in. So if you asked me 10 years ago, if I ever thought I would be talking about God,
let alone be sharing it on a podcast talking about God, well,
I probably would have thought you were joking or that I was on one of those
hidden camera shows because this bacon and loving Jew, even though she was super
proud of her Jewish heritage and culture,
lived in Israel a total of three times, and even speaks mediocre at best but
can totally get by Hebrew,
it was never a God thing to me.
In fact, I put God and Jesus Christ and any other deity in the category of the
tooth fairy or the Easter bunny or that file in my brain labeled make-believe or fantasy.
And And I absolutely mean no offense to anyone listening to this,
but this is truly where my heart and my head were postured.
And God, in this concept of faith in general, just wasn't something that I was
looking for or interested or even aware that I was missing.
Judaism was never a connection to God for me. It was never faith.
In my eyes, it was a culture and simply part of who I am, like a really proud part.
But in my eyes, I wasn't religious or very Jewish, as I used to say as a kid.
And God wasn't even a topic in conversations that I remember.
Bottom line, until a few years ago, I didn't even know that I didn't have God
in my life. It just wasn't even in my consciousness.
But what was definitely in my consciousness was shame, lots and lots of shame.
So let me rewind a bit first, because the reason I was way more intimately involved
with shame than I was with God is because of the war I was in with myself and
with my body for most of my life.
So I was taken to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was eight.
And from there on out, food and my body became this very personal and emotional thing.
More importantly, toxic shame became a very integrated character in the story of my life.
And it's also when I started viewing food and my body as something that needed
to be weighed or measured or accounted for or obsessed over or just kind of
fit into this category of good, bad, right, wrong, healthy, unhealthy,
on plan, off plan. And it just kind of got worse from there.
And so I carried all of that with me into my teenage years.
And all the way into adulthood. And so there I was, and I was, you know, 25 years old.
And not only was I extremely overweight for my age by societal standards,
but I had developed this really addictive and controlling and shameful relationship
with food and a judgmental, self-critical, shameful relationship with myself.
And depression and anxiety had just become a part of my life.
And you can imagine how this impacted my confidence and self-esteem.
And so eventually, Eventually, though, I hit my first enough is enough point
and through a lot of wrong ways and some of the right ways, I went on and lost
a lot of weight, close to 100 pounds.
And this even inspired me to start my first business working with women on their
own weight loss journeys.
But here's the thing. I learned the same eat less, move more equation that a
lot of the mainstream teaches to young women who think that losing weight will
magically solve all their problems.
Problems and even though yes I did technically lose
the weight like yes I got there I lost 100
pounds I got to my lowest weight and I could finally
wear sleeveless halter tops any day of the week but I
never addressed my addiction like pull to food and sugar so I still felt like
I was a slave to dieting or a slave to exercise because I would bounce from
one extreme to the other I mean I would diet and restrict until I couldn't take
it anymore and then I would rebound to the opposite,
like carefree abandonment, eating whatever I could get my hands on.
And then I would feel guilty or go try to out exercise my overeating.
And so I was the opposite of free. I was also the opposite of happy.
I mean, you would think that after I lost a third of my body weight,
I would feel beautiful and happy and free and, you know, all the things the magazines promised me.
But because I didn't address the self image and the body image and the wiring
in my brain that was causing me to think and act and feel and behave like I
was fat or unworthy or a failure or just destined to stay this way forever or
whatever other painful words I was using.
Yes, I lost the weight, but I never transformed my identity.
And I brought all of my old habits and thinking and behaviors with me.
OK, now keep in mind at this point, I still didn't have God in my life,
or at At least I didn't know that I did.
But by some divine miracle, I eventually had the insight and awareness to realize
that I was never going to be able to out diet or out work or outsmart the wiring
in my brain and in my self image.
And that I was always going to end up right back in alignment with the story
that I was telling myself about myself.
And yeah, it was super scary at first to take that leap and ditch all the band-aids
and quick fixes and motivational rah-rah-rah and really finally take a more
scientific approach to my struggles.
Because it's like, wait a minute, you mean stop trying to control or hyper-obsess
over the one thing I've always tried to control, even though ironically,
the more I tried to control and perfect myself, the more out of control and broken I felt.
But it was the devil that I knew versus the devil that I didn't know,
as they say. And finally, I got to that point where I was ready,
even though I was so scared.
But that's what I did. I made a firm commitment to myself that day that I would
just never be in a place of crazy restriction or obsession ever again.
And I decided to examine my habits and my mindset and my thinking around food
in my body rather than just the food or my body. Right.
But that's only one side of it, because, yes, I definitely had to go heal my
relationship with food and my body image. So that's what I did.
And that's ironically what God had in store for me to help other women do for themselves as well.
And what really paved the way for my stressless eating curriculum that I've
been teaching for over a decade, which I promised to explain how that all comes into play as well.
But like I started to say, that was only one side of it, right?
There was another curveball in the mix that took place essentially smack dab
in the middle of the part of the story that I was just sharing.
So now I want to rewind back about 16, 17 years ago. So 2007,
2008, something like that.
And my anesthesiologist had me counting backwards from 100 as the surgical team
was getting ready to go in and microscopically remove the calcified hardened
disc fluid that had been sitting on my nerves,
the lumbar spine nerves for the past eight months.
Okay. And now it's a procedure that I I endearingly call the cost of skinny.
And I lovingly call it that because I was so focused on getting skinny or lean
or toned or whatever words ruled my brain at the time.
I didn't pay attention to or tune
into what my body needed and what it was actually screaming at me to do.
And now I see that if only I had listened to the screams from my body to slow
down and chill out and actually take care of it, maybe it could have all been avoided.
But I didn't care, right? At the time, I just wanted to be skinny and beautiful
or whatever vision I had in my mind kind of the thing that would make me happy
and no back pain or injury or pesky flare up was going to stop me until it finally
did stop me. And it didn't just stop me.
It landed me on an operating table
at Cleveland Metro for major spine surgery at the ripe old age of 25.
So now picture this. If you take a girl or a woman who already feels unworthy
and unlovable and undesirable because because all she's ever known is seeing
herself through what I now lovingly call the fat goggles of her self-image.
And now you throw on the story that she is now also damaged goods or broken because of her body.
You can only imagine how low my inner world got at that point.
But God redeemed all of that too, as you're going to come to learn,
because major spine surgery and what I now call the face-off between my fat
head and my skinny head is really what drove me to to start obsessively studying the female brain,
more specifically the science of the self-image.
And that's what caused me to dive head deep into studying and getting to know
this little thing called the nervous system, which also completely transformed my life.
So yeah, that's probably something else I should mention now and another very
important part of this journey.
So I am by all definitions considered a scientist, but it's not in the conventional
way that most scientists operate.
I'm more of a streets of the hard knocks kind of scientist.
And so the word nerd in me really wants you to know that the etymology or word
origin of the word scientist literally means a person versed in or devoted to science.
And the word origin of the word science literally means acquired by study or
assurance or certainty of knowledge.
And so by those definitions, I most definitely identify as a scientist.
But for obvious reasons, it's not the typical kind that you find in a classroom or lab.
I'm one of those didn't mean to, but had to in order to solve my own deepest
struggles kinds of scientists. So specifically, I've dedicated my life's work
to studying the female brain and nervous system.
And as you'll come to learn, a semi-obsession with studying the part of the
brain that houses the female self-image, which I promise to also share because
it connects a lot of dots.
And it will bring us full circle to understand what this has to do with a bacon-loving
Jew walking into a church and finding God.
And yes, you'll soon see it has everything to do with it.
Because once I unlocked that, OK,
the magic and the possibility that I was awakened to when it comes to the human
body and nervous system, and because of the neuroplastic, malleable,
pliable nature of this machine of possibility that we all have access to,
combined with the law of cause and effect programming that we can all feed our
brains in order for it to transform.
Form and then, you know, slap on some understanding, like understanding why
we do what we do and why we say what we say and why we feel how we feel and
why we cope with those emotions however we cope with them.
And heck, there is no judgment and full transparency.
I've used everything from food and Netflix to social media and weed to cope with my own.
And I am not perfect and I'm not trying to be perfect. And really, who wants to be perfect?
But that being said, being exposed to all of the magic and miracles of the nervous
system on a science level, and trust me when I say that this non-believer was
not using words like magic and miracles 15 years ago either,
well, all of that brain stuff that I just described essentially just primed
my mind and my heart and my soul and my spirit for seeing what I couldn't yet see.
But again, as you can imagine for any curious science-driven gal that all of
a sudden after after 30 years, decided she wanted to go find God,
it made me extremely skeptical and cynical about the whole faith side of things.
Because if there wasn't a research paper on it or I couldn't see it with my
own human eyes, I didn't believe it.
And so this whole faith thing, which now I partially define as believing in
the possibility of what you cannot see or taste or smell or touch or measure
in a lab, that was definitely a stretch for me.
So that's why I can only imagine that when you hear me share that a bacon-loving,
Hebrew-speaking Jewish scientist suddenly walked into a Christian church searching
for the word surrender and instead found God and it completely transformed her life.
Yeah, I can see how that might sound like the beginning of a riddle or a knock-knock
joke, but as you'll learn, it completed the story that I had no idea at the
time, but God had been writing inside of me all along.
But I'll get into all of that. And so faith is something I didn't always have.
And like I said, it's something I didn't even know that I didn't have in the
first place or that I could have.
And now that I have it, I can't not share about it.
Like I can't not share about its impact on my life and the love and compassion
and acceptance that my heart has been opened up to that I never thought was possible.
And I can't not share about the peace that came over me that was truly beyond understanding.
But I also can't not share about the deepest, darkest deposits of residual toxic
shame that no matter how hard I tried,
I couldn't personal development or rewire my brain or self-image my way through.
And instead, the peace and acceptance that overcame me that again was beyond my understanding.
Because as you'll learn, I wasn't looking for God. I wasn't even looking for
faith. It actually started out with me searching for the word surrender.
And my search for surrender, which ended up causing me to search for God,
took me on a journey that I could have never expected or predicted.
And I'm going to share the ins and outs of that with you here on Spiritual Brain Surgery.
But know this. Yes, my active faith started about five years ago,
but little did I know, and you'll learn this from my story, I've had something
with me and inside me all along, even if I wasn't calling it faith.
And something was pushing and protecting and safeguarding and loving me all
along, even if I didn't call it God.
And so how did I get from there to here? And how did this bacon-loving Hebrew-speaking
Jew end up stumbling into a church and more or less accidentally find God?
Well, that's where I'm going to connect some dots for you.
So growing up in Florida, there were always other Jewish kids around.
But when I moved to Tennessee back in 2016, I started realizing that I was the
only Jewish person that I knew.
In fact, I lost count of how many times people told me that I was the first
Jewish person they had ever even met.
And as it would be for anyone new to the Bible Belt, I started seeing churches
on every corner I turned and hearing terms like God fearing and giving your
life over to Jesus and stuff like that.
So when I went seeking God and being really the music lover that I've always
been, it makes sense that my first thought was, OK, Nashville is a music city.
I wonder if they have good worship music.
But again, remember, I wasn't looking for God and I wasn't looking for faith.
For whatever reason, I was searching for the word surrender.
OK, now, just for context, I've never been a religious Jew by any sense.
So just like most Jewish Americans, I was sent to Sunday school and Hebrew school
and had a bat mitzvah, but it was never anything that I was really interested
in or sought out for myself.
I just kind of went because that's what we did in my family.
But I will say this, being Jewish was definitely always a source of pride for
our family and for me, for sure.
Like the culture, the sacrifice of the Jewish people, the history,
the Holocaust, especially, you know, I had family that died and escaped Europe
during World War II, but also, you know, the heritage and the customs and the
holidays and the Hebrew language.
And yes, I speak a decent amount of Hebrew, which I'll explain.
And in Israel, I love Israel. I lived there three times, but God,
not even a little bit, okay?
Judaism was never a connection to God for me. It was never faith.
In my eyes, it was kind of a culture and simply part of who I am, a really proud part.
But in my eyes, I wasn't religious or very Jewish as we said as kids.
And God, it wasn't even a topic in conversations that I remember.
I know that I just said that I speak Hebrew and I lived in Israel three times,
but I'm not that Jewish. So for clarity's sake, let me address that.
So full transparency, the reason I know Hebrew is because I was kind of a slacker
in college or I'll just call it disinterested, right?
Maybe I wasn't studying the right thing. But that being said,
I was at the University of Florida and my brothers told me that if you already
know how to read and write Hebrew, which I did from my Hebrew school days,
that Hebrew was an easy A for college credit. it.
And so you better believe I signed up and I took Hebrew one.
But then I honestly just loved it. And I went on to take Hebrew two and Hebrew three.
And then after college, I was
one of those people that didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
So for a few years, I would just work odds and ends jobs and save up enough
money to buy one way tickets to live and work overseas.
And I would just do that until I ran out of money, essentially.
And then I'd come back to the USA and get a job to make more money and just do that again.
And so I did that a total of three times, just, you know, working and traveling
around the world as a broke backpacker and living on a shoestring and eating
a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until I finally was ready to,
you know, become an adult, as I remember saying.
And I moved back to the U.S. and I started my first business.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
But during those nomadic years, one of my side hustles was working at a Jewish
summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains
in Massachusetts, where half the international staff was Israeli.
And so not only did I make a ton of Israeli friends, but I also got to practice
my mediocre at best Hebrew with them.
And, you know, I'm not going to lie. It was also kind of fun to have conversations
without the campers knowing what we were saying. But yes, that's how Hebrew came into play for me.
Again, though, no connection to God or faith at this point in my life,
okay? So then why Israel?
Well, when I was, I think, in about fourth grade, my oldest brother was in 10th
and he was getting into trouble.
So nothing crazy, but just, you know, getting bad grades and hanging out with
the wrong crowd, like that kind of thing.
And it did get to the point where my parents wanted to do something kind of
extreme to wake him up and grow him up or mature him or, you know,
whatever things parents try to do when they're concerned about their teenage
son and they're just trying to figure out what to do. Right.
But not wanting to do anything drastic like send him to boarding school.
And since my parents were always trying to get us to hang out with more Jewish
kids, they sent my brother to this program called High School in Israel.
And so HSI or High School in Israel is a study abroad where you learn about
the history of Israel, but it's not a religious program, it's secular.
And so you live in these co-ed dorms with other high schoolers and it's part
classroom, but you're also part using the land of Israel as the classroom,
right? You're traveling around Israel.
And so, yeah, my parents kind of use this program as this attempt to straighten
him out. And according to them, he came back this changed man,
like he was all grown up and they were so happy that they sent him.
And that made them decide then and there that all four of us kids would go for various reasons.
And so I always kind of knew since I was pretty young that my junior year of
high school, I would be going to Israel.
And if I'm totally honest, I was not super excited about it.
And I know that might sound weird or ungrateful, but as a kid and teenager,
it didn't excite me, right? I pictured deserts and camels because I had no idea
what Israel was actually like, but it had been decided.
And I went, and no surprise here, it was life-changing for me in my own way as well.
And that is when I absolutely fell in love with Israel.
But still, no God, no faith, none of that, okay?
So on the program, we had these college age counselors that were kind of like dorm RAs.
And I remember thinking, like, I want to do that when I'm their age. I want to be an RA.
And so it was kind of like a camp counselor, but overseas, which was totally up my alley.
So many moons later, after I graduated from college, and remember,
by this point, I had had all these amazing experiences with Hebrew and a ton
of Israeli friends from camp.
And I was already in that nomadic traveler mode.
So I did it. I applied to work there. I applied to work at HSI. I.
And they said no.
I know, right? Like, how dare they? But they said no, because they wanted somebody
who spoke Hebrew and who already lived in Israel so that they could interview
them in person because it was an important role. They wanted to meet him in person.
But I was not taking no for an answer. And I was at least going to fight for it.
So I reached back out to them and I was like, hey, I'm not fluent,
but I definitely know a good amount of Hebrew.
And if you want, I'll fly there and interview in person. Like,
that's how serious I am about getting this job.
And that actually worked like they actually appreciated my persistence and they
made it clear that they were going out on a limb to offer me the position without meeting me in person.
But you better believe I accepted it right away. I mean, come on.
I was so excited. And so now I got to go back to Israel as an adult.
Let's be honest, I was probably still more girl than a woman,
but it was super cool to go there as a 20 something and a college grad out in the real world. Right.
And I went back and worked for them a total of three times. And one of those
times I went a few months early and I went to Haifa, which is in the north,
and I found an apartment and I enrolled in this thing called an Ulpan,
which is an intensive Hebrew study at the University of Haifa.
So I had this amazing life in Israel. I had a job that I loved.
I had friends from camp. So I had this amazing social circle.
I had an Israeli boyfriend, which is a subject for another episode on its own.
But this absolute love for Israel and the Jewish people and Hebrew, but still no God.
Okay. None of this was God or faith for me. And like I said,
I didn't even realize at the time that I didn't have God. Okay.
So there's your context.
I'm a full blown as in, you know, both my parents are Jewish,
Israel loving Hebrew speaking Jew with no connection to God.
But yes, here I am talking about God and sharing how my newfound relationship
with God has completely transformed my life and literally sharing it all here
on the spiritual virtual brain surgery podcast.
And so you might be wondering what happened in between to get me to this point.
Like, that's a really big jump, right?
But that's where I see now that it wasn't a big jump and that God had been planting
those seeds the whole time without me knowing it.
And that's why I actually I want to take a little detour right now,
to be honest, for just a minute. And I want to tell you about bamboo.
OK, so random. I know, but I promise it'll all make sense and come full circle.
So there's this idea of being an overnight success or an overnight anything.
And bamboo is actually a plant that people think grows really, really fast.
And it does actually grow really, really fast at its prime.
But it's deceiving, OK, because legend has it or you can just Google it that
apparently Apparently, if you plant bamboo seeds,
the first three to five years, it almost looks like there's nothing there and
that nothing is happening because everything is happening underground.
OK, but any wise bamboo farmer would know to keep watering the bamboo and making
sure it has daylight and nutrient rich soil and all of that good stuff,
because apparently around the third to fifth year, depending on the type of bamboo,
the bamboo finally peeps its head out from underground and starts growing.
Growing and then in its prime it grows
really fast like sometimes growing an inch
and a half an hour I mean really really fast
and so again to an outsider it looks like it grew overnight but what you can't
see is everything that's been happening underground and how long it actually
took so for example to a lot of people it looked like I just made over my body
and lost 100 pounds and that I had this joyous relationship with food in my
body and it was some overnight success success.
And yes, weight loss can happen really fast when you do it in all the wrong ways like I did.
But learning how to heal my relationship with food or my relationship with my
body was absolutely a product of the bamboo principle.
Or I've had people tell me that my business and my professional accomplishments
all just kind of seem like they just happened overnight.
And now my faith journey, it looks like it all just suddenly appeared.
But here's what I say about that. OK, the seeds get planted and the growth often happens underground.
OK, so, for example, when it comes to my body, I haven't been,
you know, society's definition of overweight in a long time.
It's been something like 20 years.
But 20 years ago, when I lost the weight, you would probably have looked at
my body and you wouldn't have known that I wasn't happy and that I wasn't confident
after losing a large majority of my body weight.
But I lost all this weight, but I still never shifted my identity and my self-image
and my body image that was causing me to think and act and feel and behave like
I was still carrying around a lot more weight on my body than I actually was.
Was and so my self-image was still wearing
those fat goggles filled with toxic
shame even though my appearance was dramatically different
it was kind of like this body dysmorphia that I
didn't know how to deal with and I went underground to
go heal that but that's the part that you don't see and that a lot of people
don't talk about when they share the highlight reels of their lives but it's
also the part of our stories that if there is toxic shame present it will keep
you from sharing those parts of you because the one thing that shame loves is secrecy, okay?
And now I'm here sharing my truthful experiences and you're getting to see the
fruits of my labor and going on that healing journey, but it's all that stuff
that you didn't see that made it all possible.
And so here I am today and trust me, I still have my own stuff and I'm still
on my own journey with my self-image and my own body, but now I see that as
this miraculous opportunity opportunity, rather than a burden. Okay.
Now my business, that's another great example of this, you know,
people looked at me today, and they're like, wow, she just, you know, exploded overnight.
And I'm like, nope, where were you 15 years ago, when I was going through everything
that I was going through, and failing 1000 different times before I found what worked.
And what most people don't know is that, yeah, my first business was seemingly
successful overnight because before I was doing what I do now,
I actually started out in the fitness industry.
And for that, I didn't have to reinvent the wheel. I just, you know,
I could take a business model.
It was proven and make it better or just, you know, kind of make it my own or leanize it.
And that's exactly what I did. And so, yeah, that first chapter of my business
did kind of move forward pretty quickly.
But what happened after that was absolutely a product of the bamboo principle,
because Because what I do today and the messages that I'm sharing in my stressless
eating curriculum, there was no proven model.
There was no system that I could follow.
In fact, there was a multi-billion dollar industry spreading the exact opposite
of what I was sharing and that dieting and weight loss will magically solve all of your problems.
But the work that I do with women to help them heal the bigger problem and rewire
their their relationship with food and their bodies and themselves.
Nope. That came from new seeds that I had to start over with and plant and water
and tend to every day for years before I could see the fruits of its labor.
But also, and here's where I'll come back to this faith conversation,
even though I didn't have God necessarily or didn't know that I did,
I can look back at everything that happened and see where God had my back and
see where he was filling in the gaps for me and I was never alone even when I felt like I was.
So, for example, you know, continuing with the faith that was needed to transition
from what I used to do professionally to what I do now,
basically what happened was I got to that point where I realized for myself
that I was following a broken and a very toxic and unhealthy model and really
teaching it to a lot of women and really teaching them a dangerous mindset like
this whole eat less, move more, harder, faster, more mentality.
It really messed me up and kept me from healing what needed to be healed in
the long run. And now I also know it kept me so far away from God and pursuing
idols and chasing words like skinny, right?
And this is not dogging the health and fitness industry at all,
because there is a lot of good there.
And, you know, everything can be used as a tool or a weapon.
And really who I was at the time was just using food and exercise as a weapon. And it harmed me.
But it wasn't the food or the exercise, right?
It was my thoughts and my beliefs and the wiring in my brain around those things.
But I didn't know any of that at the time. And I wasn't just teaching it.
I had become a recognized expert in all of that stuff.
Now, you know, this was before the times of Instagram, but I was all over TV
and magazines and newspaper and radio shows, which also caused me to chase things
like fame as an idol, right?
So I was very deeply entrenched in that industry.
And at the height of it, after realizing how out of alignment I was with myself
and who I wanted to be as a teacher and a mentor and a coach,
I decided to shut everything down.
OK, and people thought I was crazy.
I mean, I even thought I was a little bit crazy.
But here's the part of the story that I never really shared at the time,
because, again, I didn't necessarily know how to explain it. OK.
So rewind about 10, 11 years ago, and I'm living in Florida still.
And I had this moment where I'm on a paddleboard on Lake Orienta,
which was my backyard at the time.
And I was listening to Sara Bareilles, okay?
And on came this song, Hercules, that I had probably heard a hundred times before that.
Like so many times that I took it upon myself to Google to learn more about
Hercules because I had no idea who Hercules was.
And among other things, the one thing I remember reading that stuck out to me
was, yeah, he was a warrior and a fighter, but he didn't fight for the sake of fighting, okay?
He fought when he needed to, like to save or defend lives. Like in my mind,
he was a warrior with purpose, okay?
And so even though I had heard that same song, Hercules, it wasn't new to me.
I'd heard it about a hundred times probably, but this particular day,
the words hit me like a ton of bricks.
And it sent me straight down to my knees as in it wasn't this voluntary thing.
Like all of a sudden I'm on my knees weeping and I am bawling my eyes out. Okay.
And I actually want to read some of the lyrics specifically that hit me so hard that day.
So it went, I miss the days my mind would just rest quiet.
My imagination hadn't turned on me yet. I want to disappear and just start over.
So here we are and I'll breathe again.
Another verse went, I lost a grip on where I started from. I wish I'd thought
ahead and left a few crumbs.
I'm on the hunt for who I've not yet become, but I'd settle for a little equilibrium.
And then she sings, there is a war inside my heart gone silent,
both sides dissatisfied and somewhat violent.
The issue I have now begun to see, I am the only lonely casualty.
This is not the end though.
And then the chorus went, because I have sent for a warrior from on my knees, make me a Hercules.
I was meant to be a warrior, please make me a Hercules.
And so this time, the probably 100th time, the words of that song sent me crashing
straight down to my knees, bawling, sobbing, and left kneeling on a paddleboard
in a puddle of my own tears because I knew it.
I had to go find the version of myself that I had not yet become.
And the war inside my head gone silent because I didn't wanna fight the weight
loss battle or the battle of the bulge anymore.
My heart was for the heart. I wanted to help women with the battle in their
minds and the battle in their hearts.
And now I know I had to first end the battle in my own mind, body, and spirit.
And it's like, that was my surrender. That line from on my knees, make me a Hercules.
That song to me was my way of talking to God, asking for help, begging for a lifeline.
And it was through music. Okay. And so there I was down on my knees,
sobbing and praying for help, even though, yes, I didn't call it praying then. Right.
And I wouldn't have told you I was talking to God, but now I know I was.
And my search for surrender, which I mentioned at the beginning of this,
that's truly the day that lit a fire in me.
OK, so after I was done, I paddled back to shore and I walked in my house and I made a bold decision.
And it was probably the hardest decision of my life at that time.
And to some people, they probably wouldn't have called it bold.
They probably would have called it stupid or some other expletives.
But just to paint that picture, like I said, at this time in my life,
I was at the top of my game. Right.
So it was a shock to anyone that knew me. You know, I had this successful fitness
studio. I had a six figure income.
I had a team working for me. I had this amazing community of women that I was a leader of.
I also had a weekly TV segment that I was there, you know, air quotes fitness
guru for nearly four years every
single Saturday, even though deep down I did not feel like one at all.
And it wasn't just TV. I was in magazines and newspapers and also being called
a fitness expert. And so I went from that to suddenly realizing that I was part of the problem.
Like I was teaching women the diet mentality and the eat less, move more mentality.
And in general, this conversation that I knew didn't even equate to true and
lasting peace of mind and freedom.
And in that moment on my knees, on my paddleboard,
in a puddle of my own tears is when I decided to shut it all down and step out
into the unknown and at least take the first step into to my future,
having no idea that it would lead to what I'm doing now.
I just knew I had to take a different path. And that was not easy,
like leaving my place of certainty for total uncertainty.
And so, you know, people would ask me, they're like, Leanne,
what are you going to do? And I would just answer, I don't know,
but I'm going to figure it out.
And they were like, how are you going to make money? And I was just like,
I don't know, but I'll figure it out.
And I see now that that was faith, even if I didn't call it that, right?
And that knowingness in the midst of it all, I didn't call it faith back then,
but that was me trusting in God.
And that was me having faith and believing in what I couldn't yet see or taste
or smell or touch or even comprehend with my human mind.
And so now, you know, fast forward to October 2018. So this is about five years
after the paddleboard incident.
And a lot of amazing things transpired in between that were absolutely a part
of that underground bamboo principle that doesn't feel like growth at the time.
But I look back and I absolutely know that God was doing a work in my heart
and my soul and spirit to really prime me for what was going to happen next.
But, you know, because I'm human and really that's how transformation works.
I found myself back on my knees in surrender once again, the details of which
are not relevant right now, but this time it was different, right?
But nonetheless, I was back on my knees in tears and something again inside
of me was like, I need to surrender.
But this time, the idea of, hmm, maybe I want God crossed my mind,
but I hadn't fully gotten there yet. It was just kind of, I was tinkering with it, right?
But the word surrender just kept coming up, like surrender, surrender.
But this time it was this feeling of please save me. Like I can't do this on my own anymore.
And I don't want to do it on my own anymore. Right.
And so there I was looking for the word surrender yet again.
And it was probably the Sara Bareilles version of it. And I went looking for
it and I went looking for God this time now for the first time ever.
And so for whatever reason, I didn't want to go to a temple or a synagogue.
And, you know, living in Nashville, I was like, whoa, like I bet they have insanely good church music here.
So I just asked around to some friends, like who has the best worship music in town?
And a few different people said I should go check out this place called Crosspoint.
So, of course, my first natural response was, are Jews just allowed to walk into a church?
And they laughed and were like, yes, of course, their tagline is everybody's
welcome and nobody's perfect.
And I was like, OK, everybody's welcome. That means Jews are welcome, too.
Yes, I can get in. And we all obviously had a chuckle about that.
But so I immediately called my friend, Kevin, who I've known for nearly 15 years.
And he's not only one of the wisest and most influential people in my life,
but ironically, he's one person who has been speaking to me since I've known
him about scripture and the power of Jesus.
And I always regarded him as insanely wise and gifted and crazy intelligent.
But in all honesty, I just wasn't interested in all the Jesus stuff that he was talking to me about.
So I called him and I was like, hey, I want to go to church,
but I'm scared to just walk in. Will you come with me? And so I went on to share,
you know, there's this place.
Called Crosspoint. They're supposed to have the best worship music.
And I just want to check it out. And it was a big heck yes from him. Like he was so excited.
He was honored and he would never push faith on me. He was just always inviting
me into bigger conversations, but he was so excited that I wanted to go.
So we walked into Crosspoint and I immediately got goosebumps,
like just walking into the auditorium, hearing the worship music and simply
being there just moved me.
But that wasn't enough for heaven. He wanted me to experience it from up front.
And so he He walked me right up to the second row where there were two empty
seats and plopped me down.
And like I said, I loved the music immediately, but I have to admit,
because I wasn't really raised around the word Jesus and, you know,
songs about Jesus and the story of Jesus.
So for me to be praying to Jesus and hearing the word Jesus in all the songs,
at first it felt a bit weird.
So I just met myself where I
was and I replaced the word Jesus in all the songs with the word universe.
And with that little tweak, it all totally resonated with me.
Like big time resonance.
And the messages themselves all resonated, but the word Jesus was just simply new to me, right?
Regardless, I was totally intrigued and completely moved, like goosebumps all over my body moved.
I can't even describe it. And so after the worship team sang a few songs.
Pastor Kevin Queen, so that's the second Kevin in the story, came out to preach.
And so I say now that I came for the music and stayed for Pastor Kevin's sermon
because wow, like it just spoke to me. Right?
And now I've never had a pastor before, so obviously he was my first one,
and I just immediately loved his message,
and I loved his self-deprecating humor, and he wasn't afraid to make fun of
himself, and I love how he shared about his family, and I could learn through
the eyes of his own experiences.
And I love that to me, he was just showing me this picture of Jesus and essentially
just saying, try it on, right?
Or at least that's how I took it, like, just try this on. And so keep in mind,
too, as you're listening, you know, to us Jewish kids growing up,
we didn't really hear about Jesus.
Or if we did, it was always kind of in this context of Jesus being like the Easter Bunny, right?
And so for me, that's exactly what my first step had to be. Like I had to try
on, I had to meet myself where I was and simply try it all on.
So that's what I did. I tried on this story and like this idea that God sent
his son to die for our sins and take Take away our shame and our guilt and our self-condemnation.
And I tried on this idea that there is a way to allow me to kind of rebirth
myself and not have to walk around with all of that shame any longer and to
really step into this idea that I'm whole and complete right now and that I
don't have to work for it or lose weight for it or create more business or financial success for it,
that I am just whole and complete right now and that God loves me right now.
And it's this kind of love that I cannot even fathom with my own eyes.
Like, that's basically the gist of the story that I started trying on.
So when I heard all of that, I was like, yeah, I will try that on.
Like, give that all to me right now. Right.
And so from there on out, I immersed myself in these concepts for the months to come.
Like, I didn't care about labels or whether I was a good Jew or a bad Jew or
doing Christianity right or
wrong. Like I just immersed myself in the scripture and the worship music.
And I went to church every chance I could get. And Sundays became my favorite
day. Like I never missed a service.
And I just felt at home there, okay? Now, here is where I'll be the first to
say, like, yes, could I have found God through Judaism or temple?
Yes, I'm sure I could have, but I didn't. Or maybe I wasn't ready to,
or whatever it was, Judaism just never equated to God or faith to me.
And the God that I pray to, he doesn't
care if I get it from a church or a temple, from a pastor or a rabbi.
He's just glad that after 35 years, I was there and I was showing up and I was
starting a conversation with him now. Now, like, at least that's what I say about it anyways.
So that is where I'll actually leave off for right now.
But I promise to come back and tell you all about what happened next when I
just dipped my toes into Christianity and got to know this guy called Jesus.
And in the meantime, if you want to learn more about the work that I do or listen
to my podcast, there's a couple of ways that you can do that.
So first, if you want to learn how to turn off the part of your brain that is
obsessed with food or obsessed with your weight and rewire your own brain for
peace and freedom, then you can head on over to StresslessEating.com and feel free.
You can sign up to watch the Stressless Eating sneak preview where I've just
literally peeled back the curtain and walked you through the exact strategy
I teach my clients to heal themselves from the all or nothing diet mentality for good,
but without restricting themselves or punishing their bodies and And definitely
without ever having to use words like macros, low carb or calorie burn.
So it's there for you to access over on StresslessEating.com.
And I actually have two of my own podcasts with iHeartRadio.
So one is called Outweigh, which I co-host with radio personality Amy Brown,
where we help women break themselves out of the food and body prison and end
the dieting madness and take control of their health for good.
But without all that restriction, obsession and shame and without dragging it
out for years to address it.
So it's called Outweigh and you can find it wherever podcasts are streamed.
And then my solo podcast with iHeart is called What's God Got to Do With It,
where I talk all about all of this self-image and body image stuff,
but from the perspective of where brain science intersects faith.
OK, so it's called What's God Got to Do With It. And you can also access it
on iHeart or wherever you get your podcast.
So that is it for this episode of Spiritual Brain Surgery.
I'm your guest takeover host, Leanne Ellington, and I'm so grateful to get the
chance to do this. and this isn't goodbye.
It's just see you later because I'll be back for part two of this story that
could only have been orchestrated by God and you'll see what I mean. So bye for now.
Music.
Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my
brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering
from trauma, tragedy and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold.
And I narrated the audio books. Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up
by my friend Tommy Walker, available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.
They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.
And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.
If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,
WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.
And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,
every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60-plus countries
around the world. I'm Dr.
Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your
life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.
Music.