Healthy Voice: Life Beyond the Weight

By Meredith Terpeluk

Healthy Voice: Life Beyond the Weight is a journey of transformation that goes beyond before and after pictures to a life reborn from the inside out. Despite the title of the book that may make the reader think it’s about how the author lost the weight and then found a life, the content is the exact opposite. The author could never find a life when she was obsessively focused on the weight. She only found it when she put down her obsession with the weight and got help for what was going on inside.
Meredith experienced something in her childhood that many children experience. Her parents got a divorce. As an only child, she lived in between two worlds in cities three hours apart. There was only one thing that would help her navigate this life. That was the food. So at age eight, she began a love affair with food that would last twenty-three years and a love affair with diets to cope with it. But her insecurities never went away. Even though she grew up in a Catholic household, she never felt close to God. In fact, she felt God had to be mad at her if he’d allow her parents to divorce and her to be overweight. When the time came for her to go away to college, Meredith found herself adding drinking to the list. Despite her habits behind the scenes, Meredith was able to achieve a degree from the University of Notre Dame and land a job on a Presidential campaign which would eventually help her start a successful career at the White House. As a White House employee in her twenties, Meredith balanced a high stress job with eating, dieting, running marathons, drinking and everything else she could do to escape the stress. Except, it caught up with her. She began having panic attacks every day at the White House and eventually chose to leave to work at a federal agency. The pain inside still wasn’t going away. So she did what she had left to do - she chose to escape and found a geographical cure. She left Washington D.C. To pursue a graduate degree at her alma mater, the University of Notre Dame.
What she wouldn’t find out until halfway through, was that God had a different plan. At thirty-one, she would have a quarter-life crisis that would have her come to the end of herself where she would cry out to God for help and begin an entirely new journey of life. It was through returning to God that she would finally receive the love He’d always wanted to give her and find the grace to begin a new life where God would guide her down a road of recovery from her addictions and new life in Christ.
In the first part of the book, Meredith shares intimately with the reader how it all unfolded to show the reader that whatever they’ve gone through, they are not alone and they can overcome. But she takes the second part of the book to actually guide the reader on the journey to finding their own personal Healthy Voice by providing twelve steps and ten tools for walking the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meredith Terpeluk
• Release date: Jul 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781945975189

Meredith Terpeluk

Meredith Terpeluk is an Author, Life Coach, Speaker and Blogger who loves to encourage brokenhearted women on their faith journey and help them grow closer to God. She is also founder of an initiative called Healthy Voice that seeks to bring the next generation to Christ and teach them how to listen for his voice. Meredith gets what it’s like to look like you have it all together on the outside, but feel as if you are falling apart on the inside. In her work, Meredith is not afraid to speak openly and honestly about the tough stuff of life in order to help someone else. A self-proclaimed Midwest girl at heart, Meredith is a transplant from the East Coast where she was born, raised and worked in national politics. She now lives in Granger, Indiana with her husband Mike, and is an active stepparent to his three young adult children. Their two cats Ariel and Simba keep life interesting.

Book preview

Foreword To the Second Edition: Life Status Update

Welcome to the journey toward your Healthy Voice. I am so glad you are here. Just you reading this tells me that you are a woman who is willing to look within. It takes guts to stop striving and you, my courageous friend, are doing just that. So I commend you, and I promise you that it will be a fascinating journey.

This is the second edition of Healthy Voice: Life Beyond the Weight. The first edition, published over five years ago, still holds relevant tools for you to find your own Healthy Voice. I’m keeping the original text intact so that you get the same basic message that women received the first time because you have a Healthy Voice, and you deserve to know it. The only difference is this introduction, which was important for me to write so that you could have an idea of my process of growth and change.

For those of you who read the first edition, since its publication you’ve probably seen my message become more about trusting God than about anything else. It’s no longer focused on simply living a healthy life but on living a healthy, spiritual life. It’s not so much about physical fitness as it is about spiritual fitness. It’s about growing up with God on the inside and maturing in your faith because that’s exactly what I’ve had to do. On the journey I’ve had to learn that it isn’t about me or what I want; it’s about what God wants for my life. Each time my plans haven’t worked, I saw the hand of God: He was removing the me from the equation so that He could add the He.

When I started writing Healthy Voice: Life Beyond the Weight I had just lost my dad, and writing it was grief therapy. I shared how I felt closer to my dad than ever, and I still do. The recovery journey still remains a big part of my life. I believe God meets me where I’m at, so it’s up to me to do my part. My heart has expanded as I married my husband—who I spoke of getting engaged to—and became a stepmom to three awesome kids, who’d been in my life before, but not to such an extent they are now. For a season, shortly after we were married, my role as stepmom became full-time. I felt God calling me to focus less on coaching and more on the kids that he had placed in my path to walk beside. I am so glad that I listened, because I learned so much in that season. Now they have all left the house—two in college, one living with his mom out East. But I am a richer person because of them, and now my husband and I get to enjoy the time alone we didn’t have during those first few years. God just worked in reverse.

God has used many things to slow me down and keep me still in his presence. Someone once said God will wreck your plans when he knows your plans are about to wreck you. I truly believe this. He takes care of us even when we don’t know we need it. He protects us from what may destroy us so that He can preserve His purpose for us—a purpose that is so much greater than anything we could have planned.

I want to share with you a few ways that he changed my plan to work his plan so that you can see how he’s transformed my life in the last five years. I published Healthy Voice ahead of schedule in order to present it at a Curves International conference in Vegas. It was an amazing event, and I loved getting connected to each and every woman I got to meet.

These women had found their Healthy Voice through video messages I had done for their Curves Complete program. Sadly, the weekend of the conference I found out that I wouldn't be working with Curves anymore. Instead of feeling down, I chose to see the good. Although I'm grateful to God for giving me the chance to impact so many women's lives, I know that his ways are higher than ours and sometimes he does things for our good that we can't see at the time. I didn't get it, but I chose to trust him. I now see that God was readjusting my sails, protecting me from what may have been. I believe today that my work was meant to reach women’s hearts on their faith walk. Healthy Voice wasn't meant to stay in corporate culture because the message was deeper. I thank God for removing me from it when I needed to be, for his greater purposes.

Another change since the first edition is that I used to have a big, big vision for Healthy Voice (emphasis on the I). I was determined to make Healthy Voice a movement, to have a community, and to grow the brand. If you’ve read the first edition, you may remember the plans that I laid out at the end. I know that when we are called to be ambassadors for Christ, our vision has to be big. But I think this plan was more about me than him; otherwise it would have worked out in my time. But it didn't. Thank God. I still believe. I still have a vision. But I trust God with the outcomes. Having my great big plans not work out in my time was another gift. Only God can carry out the big vision—in his time.

Back then I was still very early in recovery. I suffered from multiple substance and behavior addictions, and God has restored my soul. But I have to be honest with you, like I had to be with myself. In the book, I talked so matter-of-factly about how I just knew that I didn’t need sugar or flour anymore, and how I had to push through the fact that I had been putting food before God.

But this is not a journey I walk perfectly. If there is any perfection, it’s in my being totally surrendered to God and knowing that he will take care of me. God is the one who guides me to make the best food choices and protects me from my fears when I can’t do it. As I’ve come to know him as a loving God, it no longer makes sense for me to see God as expecting my food to be perfect in order to be loved. He is not a performance God.

I make the best possible choices based on my food plan, but God is God; my food plan is not. It’s God I rest in when I falter, not a structured plan. The food plan I follow is simply a complement to my recovery journey. I know many readers may not agree with these statements, but I believe there are many things that have the potential to become false gods—including diets or food plans, especially in a world that is constantly telling us to perfect our eating. I choose to keep God first in my life. For the first three years I was doing everything to a T, but the food plan was becoming the focus of my life. When changes started to occur—losing my dad, married with three kids to feed—it just couldn’t be all about me anymore. I had to do my best and let God take care of the rest. I still do.

That brings me to another change since this book was first published. When I was writing I believed that my weight would never fluctuate again. I had a bit of the I got this attitude, which makes me cringe when I hear someone use that phrase today because I don’t believe anybody’s got this.

My body is the body that God fearfully and wonderfully made for me. My weight is not my ruler or my judge of whether or not my life is good. My weight is no longer the center or focus of my life. What freedom! But this peace did not come without trials. It took numerous injuries, surgeries, and situations out of my control for God to remind me that I am not defined by my weight and that going on a diet will not make everything better.

The first test was cooking for the kids every night. I always tried to make a more abstinent version of a meal for myself, but it wasn’t perfect. Then—on January 4, 2014, a little over six months into our marriage—came an injury while I was sleeping: a shoulder dislocation that would require surgery, six weeks of recovery, and another eight months of physical therapy three times per week. That meant no working out for a year. Talk about surrender. The only exercise I got that year was rebuilding my strength in my arm.

During that time, my father-in-law was diagnosed with ALS. In fact, we chose to postpone the surgery one month so that we could go out to Iowa to be with him for what would be his last birthday. I don’t know if you’ve ever been beside someone in hospice, but food is not your focus. If there is food, you take what you can get. If there is a time when it isn’t about you, it’s then.

In January of 2015 I was finally on the mend and decided to run a half marathon with my husband in Grand Teton National Park in early June. Two weeks after we returned home from the race, my appendix had to be removed. For the rest of the summer I was unable to work out—again. In the spring of 2016 I began walking and taking some barre classes. Then at the end of the year I had a laparoscopy for the removal of endometriosis, got the flu over Christmas, and then broke my elbow two days before the New Year. Little did I know, God would use that last event to slow me down, so that I could be present to our beloved cat Ed, who would pass away just two weeks later. Everything we go through God will use for our good if we simply trust him.

I tell you all this because I want you to know that if I didn’t have God in my life, I could have let all of these trials utterly defeat me. Between the injuries and the weight gain, I could have thought my world was ending. But I didn’t because I have God in my life. My love and adoration for him just became stronger as he walked me through it all. I was beginning to realize even more how much Healthy Voice was about my relationship with Him, not my own abilities or a simple healthy lifestyle message. One simple Scripture defined this season of my life, and it repeated in my head over and over:

Be still and know that I am God.

—Psalm 46:10

Then I realized God was taking me even deeper. He didn’t just want me to get healthy from the inside out. He wanted me to be healed from the inside out. He wanted to heal me as only he could. I started to really see the truth in Psalm 34:18: The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Through all of these trials he was healing me at such a deep level that I became more and more amazed by his power and presence in my life. Whenever a storm came, I reached the point where I actually looked forward to whatever God would teach me. I’d say, Okay God, I know You are going to use this, and I’m just going to trust that You know how!

It’s through these trials that He not only healed me but brought me closer to Him. My faith walk grew deeper and deeper. As you'll read in this book, I had recently been baptized—just before my Dad passed, actually. I had no idea what God would do in my life once I surrendered. I still don’t know what He will do as I continue to live surrendered. Just as I was practically a baby in recovery, I was a baby in my walk with Christ.

I could feel God’s hand on my life from the moment I came out of the water. I could also feel the enemy working overtime in all those circumstances and in my mind to bring me down. Only one thing brought me strength. It wasn’t a positive affirmation or re-reading my book. It was simply the Word of God. Ironically, in the process of writing my first book I was nervous to include Scripture, worried about those I might turn off. I will never forget my husband saying, You put it in there, Meredith. Don’t worry about those who don’t like it. They don’t want your stuff anyway. He helped give me the courage to include the Scripture, and now I am in the Word every single day. Not as a duty—it’s because I love to be close to God, to get to know God, to get to know why Jesus came and what His plans are for my life. In fact, I’ve come to believe Hebrews 4:12: For the Word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrated even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

If you are in a difficult season, go to the Word. I promise you will not be disappointed. You can read my book, yes. But my book is only a complement to the Bible on your journey. Whatever else you do, come to know Christ through the Word of God. When you go through deep waters, you will know God is with you. When you are out of hope, God will restore you. When you feel like a coward, God will make you courageous. When you feel weak, God will be your strength. Hebrews 10:22 says it best: Come near to God and he will come near to you.

You may be someone who has been in the Word since you were a kid. You may be someone who is afraid of it. You may be someone who was told never to pick it up. None of that matters. What matters is that you drop all of your stories and defenses about the Bible. Don’t go into reading it viewing it like a rule book. Go into it like it’s a treasure hunt where you are going to find out your true worth and value. Don’t think there is a certain way to read it. If you do, you’ll block yourself. Open your heart to God. Ask Him to guide you. If you are going through something, google scriptures about that topic or issue to give you strength in your trial. Pick up some devotionals that are filled with Scripture to help you go to and learn from it. Try whatever way you learn best and see what God says about you. The Word has truly transformed my mind, changed my heart, and given me a kingdom perspective over a worldly perspective on my life—all of which gives me great strength in the mess of a world we live in today.

That brings me to the most important thing I want you to know before you dive into this book. I’ll use a modern metaphor to explain it to you.

Imagine that you are about to take a road trip. You don’t know exactly where you are going, but you know you are meant to go. You go to the GPS to type in your destination, and it doesn’t work. You resign yourself to the fact that you aren’t in charge of the directions. God is calling you and you just have to go, not knowing exactly where you are going. But you can’t go anywhere until you put the car in drive because you are still in park.

But you want to take a selfie before you start your road trip. You’re taking it again and again to look perfect, checking your hair in the rearview mirror. You haven’t put the car in drive yet. So I ask you: What will get you going on your journey? Looking at yourself in the mirror and taking selfies? Or putting the car in drive? Because once you put the car in drive, you won’t be able to see what’s ahead of you if you are only looking at yourself and worried about how you look.

We live in a world of selfies, which is teaching us to be constantly focused on ourselves, to believe in ourselves, and to narcissistically love ourselves. You've got to change your perspective. You need to find out first what God believes about you, and the only way you are going to do that—or truly believe it in your gut—is if you come to know how much he loves you through the Word. You won’t find that out if you are constantly focused on or trying to fix yourself.

Think of your GPS as God in the form of the Holy Spirit. You can’t see him, but you know he is close. All you can do is have faith that he's taking you in the right direction for you. It doesn’t matter if there is terrible weather or huge potholes on the road—He will keep you on course. Yes, it will often seem like there are many detours, but He will always do it for your ultimate good. You just keep your eyes looking ahead at the road in front of you, and trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding you, Jeremiah 29:13 says it best: You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Keep seeking Him. Keep finding him.

Okay, this is what I want you to know as you navigate this book: your Healthy Voice in its truest and purest voice is the Holy Spirit. It is the voice of God. It’s not your voice. It’s not a positive voice. It’s an even bigger and more powerful voice of strength and love for you than you can imagine. But you have to listen for it—I mean really listen for it. Getting in the Word will help you with this more than anything. The rest of this book will help too.

My friend, your Healthy Voice is a voice of absolute love. First John 4:20 says that This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. It’s like God is saying, I love you. Will you let me? Whenever you have a negative thought or you are beating yourself up, that is not God. That’s the enemy, your Unhealthy Voice, working hard to keep you from hearing your Healthy Voice. Your Healthy Voice is greater than your thoughts, feelings, struggles, victories, abilities, anything, Isaiah 55:9 says, For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. I’m not saying Healthy Voice is God. I’m saying Healthy Voice is a metaphor to help you hear the voice of God in your life. I am not really your Healthy Voice; it’s just a gift that was given to me so I could be a vessel to offer it to you and you could find your own. It’s the Holy Spirit guiding your life and the power of God working in your life.

I know it can be difficult to believe in plans other than your own. But I can tell you from experience that when you surrender your life to Christ and the Holy Spirit comes into your heart, you will be given a life that is more amazing than anything you could ever imagine or create for yourself.

When I first wrote this I spoke quite a bit about God; the book was about my journey from a life focused on physical fitness to a life strengthened by spiritual fitness. But now, more than ever, my life is about spiritual growth and deepening my relationship with God. He has shown me on so many levels that He truly is my Healthy Voice, and it was important for me to tell you so that you can believe for it too.

If you believe in God but aren’t sure if you want Him to be part of your Healthy Voice, that’s okay. He meets you exactly where you are at. Even if you have a mustard seed of faith (which is pretty small), He wants to welcome you to the journey of following Him. I know it can be hard when you’ve been beaten down in life by various forms of an Unhealthy Voice, and you probably felt that God wasn’t there. It can be hard when you can’t yet tell the difference between your Healthy and Unhealthy Voice. I get it. I thought God wasn’t there and that He was waiting for me to get good enough. But it wasn’t true. Whatever you believe, He wants to have more of you than just a Sunday visit to church. He wants your whole heart.

So, my friend, this journey is about your spiritual life and—if you’ll accept it—a journey with the loving God who created you. Above all, we have to seek Him first before we gain the strength to do anything else. Otherwise we’re depending on our strength.

I wrote the first step of the journey to your Healthy Voice as, Get beyond the weight and go beneath the surface. But I’ve realized that the order of steps is different. We have to fix our eyes on Him first. The Bible talks about the call to endurance in Hebrews 12, which you’ll see written at the end of this book. But I believe that today it’s the start. So here you go:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, corning it’s shame, and sat down on the right hand of the throne of God."

—Hebrews 12:1-2

Then we will have the courage to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. If we focus on Jesus and follow Him, we will find the courage we need to go within and address our deepest pain. I know it’s scary. Nobody wants to deal with their issues. In a world that is constantly telling us that what counts is what’s on the outside and that we have to hide our pain, God is telling us that what’s on the inside counts.

When you have the guts to seek God first, He gives you the courage, the power, and the strength to go beneath the surface: to deal with your broken heart, disempowering thoughts, and overwhelming emotions. He gives you the grace to walk through all the stuff you’ve got to walk through so that you can grow spiritually. He transforms your mind. He helps you see who you truly are in Christ when you can’t see it for yourself. He comes into your life when you need Him the most and shows you that He is right here. Not only that, He’s never left your side, and He’s here to walk beside you and comfort you. It’s just this time you see Him. This time you’re ready for Him.

Together we can seek Him with all of our hearts. That’s what I wanted you to know the most: this is a spiritual journey about seeking God and depending on Him more for your life. Don’t worry about where you are at or how far you have left to go. We’re all on this journey together. We’re all growing up with God together. We’re all at different points. We all have different levels of faith. But the beauty is that God designed us so we wouldn’t have to walk it alone.

So whether this is the first or the tenth time that you are reading this book, I pray that you’ll find your Healthy Voice and a deeper, trusting relationship with God the Father. I pray you’ll be open to what God wants to show you. I promise He’s not doing it to throw you, but to grow you. Be patient with yourself. Healing takes time; don’t rush. Process where you need to and just take it slow. Remember I’ve been where you are. I wouldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t wanted to meet you there to help guide you.

I leave you with:

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know that this love surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we all ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. "

—Ephesians 3:16–21

Godspeed.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my Dad who taught me how to live life to the fullest, love fully, have a positive attitude, and be passionate about my purpose in life.

A special shout-out goes to my husband Mike, who has stood by me. To every person I’ve come across in the process of finding my Healthy Voice, I dedicate it as well. It’s dedicated to my family and friends and to all those who have shared their experience, strength, and hope. Thanks to Milestones in Recovery for getting me started on my journey. There is no way I would be here today without your courage. To the Healthy Voice Community, you know who you are—thanks for inspiring my Healthy Voice!

Finally, thank you God! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have found this path. You are the creator of all the good in my life and you’ve given me this gift of the Healthy Voice to share with the world! May it shine in their hearts and may I always remember you are my main Healthy Voice.

Your Invitation to the Healthy Voice Community

There is a Healthy Voice Community of people that have already started walking the journey in their own way. They get it, in their own way and I want you to join us. We all have our stories and a way we got to our change. Not all of us got to it through a physical change or weight-loss. Yet all of us have found our Healthy Voice in our own way. We recognize there is a light inside of us and we’re part of a group that chooses not to sign up for society’s labels telling us our worth lies in our weight. We haven’t got life all figured out. We just realize that life is a lot more than weight-loss. We don’t let society define us. We let a power greater than us do that and we let it empower our lives. We’re on the path—learning, growing, leading, and becoming the people we are meant to be. We don’t focus on the before and after shots. We focus on how we got there, what it took, and what keeps us strong. We share our stories and what inspires us so we can inspire you. This is bigger than us, and we know it. We know this is for you.

This book and the journey it entails will help you meet yourself where you are at, without having to fix yourself every time you struggle. You will transform in ways you never knew you could, just because you are willing to change whenever and wherever you are ready to do it, and you will do it again and again. Losing the next pound won’t be anywhere as cool as the revelations you’ll find on this path.

I hope that whatever God does with this book in your life and in the lives of all those it touches, will be a beacon of life, a channel for peace and