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51: Faith + Fitness = Freedom
207 Plays2 years ago
For way too long, the way Steph Darst viewed and used her body swung on a pendulum between obsession and neglect. Finally, in 2013, she began to invite the Lord into the conversation surrounding her health and wellness for the first time in her life. As she learned to honor Him with her body, she found freedom in the middle: No longer obsessing OR neglecting... but enjoying life in freedom! It didn't take long for her to realize this freedom was meant to be shared. She began her journey as a group fitness instructor, personal trainer, & yoga teacher, and has never looked back.
Steph is committed to empowering women to honor God in the areas of fitness and wellness, to be ready for whatever adventures the Lord may call them to. She can be found teaching classes in-person at Lifepoint Fitness in O'Fallon, MO; and virtually at FitCrew.Online. All of Steph's classes weave together biblical teaching with movement, for an encouraging experience that will quickly become a welcome addition to your fitness routine.
Take a listen to this week’s episode as Jill Devine talks with Steph about her journey.
https://www.instagram.com/steph.darst/
https://www.facebook.com/fitcrew.online/
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production.
Introduction to Jill Devine
00:00:04
Speaker
Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation. Welcome to this week's episode of Normal Goes Along
God's View on Our Bodies
00:00:45
Speaker
Way. I'm Jill Devine. And one thing that I don't think that we've really tackled in this podcast is
00:00:53
Speaker
your body and more of a how God sees our body, the struggle that we have. We talked in the faith-filled parenting series about sex and how God made your body, but I specifically wanted to talk about this
00:01:12
Speaker
I don't know, lack of self-confidence, this imaging that we're seeing on social media, on TV, and I wanted to bring Steph Darston.
00:01:25
Speaker
You have a story yourself that has led to where you are now. I will say that Steph and I know each other because she started this online fitness platform. I'm gonna let you talk about
Steph Darston's Faith Journey
00:01:39
Speaker
all of that. But first, let's talk about Steph. Let's talk about how you grew up. Were you always a part of the church? Where you are now in regard to faith? And then we're gonna get into the body situation.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, sounds good. I definitely, Jesus has always been a big part of my life. I grew up in the church. My parents became Christians when I was six and found us a gospel center church. And I have all of the happy, warm, fuzzy memories when I think about growing up in that lifestyle. So parents, listen, it matters. It matters. And parents who came to Christ later,
00:02:22
Speaker
Adult children teenage children listen, they're still watching you I promise you that and so your your faith it is not it is not in void All right So did grow up in the church as many people who do who grow up in the church though I got a little bit older and needed to figure out what I believed because my parents believed it and what was my own and I
00:02:46
Speaker
I will say I'm thankful for praying mama because I definitely branched out on my own, walked away from the, not so much the church. I still went through the motions, but definitely walked away from Jesus forest and in my life and lived in the world, lived for myself and thought for sure it would be extremely satisfying. It was not. And in his patience and grace and love towards me and Jesus, he drew me back and
00:03:16
Speaker
So I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for him. And when I was in college, I got involved with a college ministry that I loved and
00:03:26
Speaker
was a strong part of that, found a church that I loved separate from the church that my family, that I had grown up in. And that was a good move for me. It was a good move for me. And again, I'm thankful for praying parents who trusted the Lord with that because that was probably really scary for them. So I found a church that I loved, found a college ministry that I loved, met my husband in college.
Trusting God with Family Faith
00:03:50
Speaker
He got saved through that college ministry, started attending the same church as I did.
00:03:55
Speaker
And shortly after he met Jesus, he and I started dating each other and we were, we were discipled really well at the church that we were a part of together. He actually felt called into ministry.
00:04:10
Speaker
Our pastor helped guide us through that, and we stayed at that church until we'd been married about four years, and then Eric took a pastoring position across the state from us, and we've been in full-time ministry ever since then, so for about 20 years in full-time ministry. So again, parents, listen, trust the Lord with the heart of your child. Give them a foundation in the Lord. They may go their own way for a while, but listen.
00:04:38
Speaker
God loves them even more than you do. And he's writing their story. And my story, I can see how he took the ugly parts and used it for his glory and for his, with his redemptive purposes. So even that, I can look back and say I'm thankful and I'm grateful for. Do you want to talk a little bit about the ugly stories?
Fitness as Ministry
00:05:01
Speaker
Some of it. You know, it's interesting because
00:05:06
Speaker
Fitness and wellness, that is my lifestyle now. I consider myself a fitness missionary. I use fitness and wellness, health coaching, nutrition coaching as a bridge to bring people the good news of the gospel. And so they come to me for a workout or they come to me for health or nutritional coaching, but it is going to point them to Jesus through every workout or through every coaching session.
00:05:32
Speaker
And, um, but that, that came about through a really ugly part of my own story that actually started while I was still walking with
Struggles with Disordered Eating
00:05:43
Speaker
the Lord. I, um, as a young, young kid, I was, I was at about nine years old when I learned, uh, that calories in and calories out had anything to do with weight loss. And I thought that was kind of cool. And I was.
00:05:59
Speaker
not large or unhealthy in any way, which I mean, those are two separate things, size and health. But I was a thin, active child. And yet I learned that there are these little things on the back of packages called calories. And as long as you eat less of them, then
00:06:18
Speaker
what you're burning in the day, then wow, that's really cool. You can be skinny forever. And here I was nine and all of a sudden skinny was my idea of good. And I started unhealthily pushing my body as a young child and didn't, didn't think it was bad. Didn't think even growing as a teenager and as a college student, I didn't understand disordered eating and
00:06:47
Speaker
didn't know there was anything wrong with it. I never looked at any, in any way unhealthy. And so people constantly would ask me like, Hey, what do you do? And I would completely lie to them and make up stuff and say it with confidence. And they would listen to me. They'd be like, Oh, I'm going to eat that way. It was not how I was eating. I wasn't eating. Um, but I started drawing up plans for people based on what I knew was healthy, which means at some point I knew what I was doing wasn't healthy.
00:07:15
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But I never looked on healthy. So no one was ever afraid of that for me. No one ever looked at me and thought wow Stephanie's got an issue.
00:07:22
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It was just, wow, Stephanie looks great. I wonder how she does it. And so I tell them what they should do and they do, and they looked great. And it was great. And it was all about aesthetics for me. So that continued. It was a very unhealthy lifestyle. And that continued while I was not walking with Jesus. It continued once I was walking with Jesus. It continued once I was a pastor's wife. My husband had no idea. I never lived unhealthy and no idea.
00:07:51
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And so somewhere along the line, I think I really started to realize if I'm having to make stuff up and lie to people, this is probably not right because honesty is a huge core value of mine. And it really was eye-opening because it had been part of my life for so long when Jesus was like, you're being dishonest about that.
00:08:12
Speaker
I don't like being dishonest. Why am I being dishonest about that? And so I started realizing something's not actually good here. Something's probably a little bit broken here. And one day my kids were both at school. So keep in mind, this has been going on since I'm nine. If both of my kids were in school, then by now I'm in my 30s.
00:08:34
Speaker
One day my kids were both at school and my husband was away at work. I was not working that day and I was in the middle of whatever my latest obsessional thing around my body was and had not been nourishing well and was working out for hours a day. So basically my family would leave, they go to work in school, I would work out for hours a day and then I'd eat one meal and they came home for dinner. So for all outward appearances, healthy dinner with the family,
00:09:02
Speaker
Fit mom, I never looked sick. I always looked very healthy. And that was the pattern I lived in day in, day out. My husband came home in the middle of the day one day and I had finished obsessively working out for hours and then gotten on the scale. That's not a good idea, by the way. Everybody don't do that. Gotten on the scale, saw that I was up a couple of ounces from that morning.
A New Perspective on Health
00:09:25
Speaker
Again, don't do that. And also totally normal.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I freaked out. I freaked out. I was in the middle of a complete freak out because I was allowed to have a freak out. No one was home to see it. Poised, put together, Stephanie doesn't freak out. So my husband comes home and I'm in the middle of freaking out. And he's like, what is happening? Like this was a completely different woman than he knew because I'd lived a life of hiding who I was, right? Even from the one who I love more than anything who I feel safest with.
00:09:56
Speaker
And he's like, what is going on? And everything came out, you guys. Like 20 plus years came out. And he's like, okay. Well, first he said,
00:10:06
Speaker
what level of help are we talking about that you need to get me? Let me tell you something. I said, none. It's fine. I don't need any help. I'm fine on my own. He's like, okay, well, clearly that's not it. And so he didn't say a word. He threw my scale away though. I didn't know he threw my scale away. I walk in the bathroom. There's no scale. I freaked out. He's like, you don't need that. Like, what do you mean? I don't need it. Threw my scale away. And he started not leaving for work until after we'd all had a good breakfast together.
00:10:36
Speaker
And he started coming home at lunch and we would eat breakfast together or lunch together and like little things that he didn't, he didn't nag. He didn't check in. He, you know, it wasn't, it was love. It was love. And so, um, we started having conversations about like, what are you doing that brings you joy in your workouts? How, you know, and, um,
00:11:02
Speaker
I think the biggest thing though, Jill, is that what had been in the darkness for almost three decades came into the light for the first time, for the first time ever. And you know, sin and shame, they hide in the darkness. They thrive there, but you bring them into the light and now there's accountability. There's people praying and Jesus is like, let's do business. So at this point I was not a trainer. I was not a coach and, um,
00:11:27
Speaker
but I was really broken and I didn't know what to do. Um, the Lord, he put an amazing woman in my life at the same time. She moved into our neighborhood and, uh, moved into our neighborhood, started attending our church, gave her life to Jesus and we were running together. And it was interesting because this was on her end. She viewed this as discipleship time, like my pastor's wife slash friends slash neighbors discipling me as we're running together. And, um,
00:11:57
Speaker
But she says to me one day as we're running, she's like, you know, it's never occurred to me to bring Jesus into this conversation surrounding my body. And it's really just changed everything, like giving my life to him and my workouts to him and my nutrition. And I just stopped. I said, what'd you just say? And she's like, well, you know, he's going to be Lord of my life. That includes how I work out and how I eat. Never had it occurred to me in my entire life that Jesus was interested in how I ate.
00:12:27
Speaker
or in how I moved, never it occurred to me. And this woman had been a
Wellness as a Spiritual Journey
00:12:31
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Christian for like two weeks and she didn't know much, but she knew that. And I had been walking with the Lord since I was six years old, little hiatus for a while, but for the majority of the time since I was six, it had never occurred to me. And so listen, in that moment, she's discipling me. And so I said, what does it look like? How do you do that? And so she started discipling me and
00:12:54
Speaker
She taught me how to eat to nourish my body, not to hit a number on a scale. She taught me how to fuel my workouts with food. Things I hadn't thought about, how to rejoice in God's nature and the nutrients that he's provided. He's given us everything we need for survival and we try to hack the system. He's like, just use what I gave you. And so that changed things for me.
00:13:17
Speaker
fell in love with moving with joy and freedom for the glory of God and nourishing my body with joy and freedom for the glory of God. And it's like I've got to share this message with everyone. So that's a very long and long story of how I eventually became a fitness and health coach and focused on centering our hearts on Jesus through fitness and wellness.
00:13:40
Speaker
and also a little bit of the darkness, but how I see that God used it because I wouldn't have the passion I had if I hadn't walked a very, very long journey in the wrong direction. When it came to my health, my wellness and my fitness. It's easy for me to ask, how do you get the freedom to move your body and
00:14:09
Speaker
eat the things for the glory of God. I mean, I don't think that there's an answer. I think that maybe, and this is something that you and I have talked outside of this podcast, and also with Laura Fleetwood, it's a journey. I have never looked at my body the way that I believe God does.
00:14:39
Speaker
And that's hard. I am in a journey with you personally because I have joined your online platform. And actually like last night I was doing a workout and I was thinking,
00:14:56
Speaker
you know, sometimes those harder workouts, you are talking about Jesus and I might not hear him because I'm panting. And I'm like, I can't do this. How many more seconds? But then I think, Oh, it's gonna go in my subconscious like that's it's gonna happen. I just want to talk a little bit more about that. I want to talk about
00:15:21
Speaker
How do we see what God sees? How do we know that it is about moving our body? I can talk personally for me and just say that I am nowhere
00:15:38
Speaker
near where I would like to be as far as how I see myself, but I can definitely, I'm starting to change that mind shift of working out has to equal losing weight. And that's a hard one because I'll go back and I'll know. It's one of those things, you know, do you ever really feel bad coming out of a workout? You may not want to go into it, but afterwards you're not like,
00:16:08
Speaker
That was the worst decision of my life. I wish I'd stayed in bed. I don't know if there's something that I just said that you want to speak on directly, just to start helping with that. One word you said that I think is a key word you said personally. You said for me personally, and that's really key because that personally component
00:16:33
Speaker
that hits the nail on the head. It's gonna be so different for everyone. So like the friend and the jogging, listen, I hate running. I loved her and it was a discipleship situation. And so I'm like, sure, I'll run with you if that's the only time we can get together, let's do it. I hate running. I will never run for joy. I will run because a bear is chasing your Jesus. I go disciple that woman during a run, right? Like I hate running. I love lifting heavy things and moving them around though.
00:17:01
Speaker
I love yoga. There are ways that I love to move. There are ways that I do not love to move. Ultimately, our bodies were made to move. If you think about our ancestors, their whole day was moving. They're hunting, they're gathering. Movement was their life. You move or you die. We were designed with bodies that are meant to move. That's why when we move, endorphins are released. God gave us these gifts.
00:17:29
Speaker
But for a lot of us, we don't know how we would like to, we don't know how to safely do it. We haven't done it for so long that we assume we don't like it, we don't know. But ultimately, God did design your body to crave these things, to crave movement, to crave a job well done, right? To look back and say, hey, I did this, to crave a challenge. These are things that we might in our nature,
00:17:56
Speaker
in our flesh shy back from, but God's called us to do hard things. And so in a workout, when we push ourselves and we do something that is hard, something that how many more seconds are left? Oh, okay, I did it. I didn't know I could do it.
00:18:11
Speaker
It's really a parallel to the next time God calls us to do something hard outside of that workout. We've already gotten used to saying yes. Like, okay, I didn't think I could hold a plank for 35 seconds either, but I did it today. So God wants me to go talk to my neighbor. It's uncomfortable. It's hard, but I'm getting comfortable being uncomfortable. So I'm going to walk in obedience. So I think a few things when it comes to glorifying God with our movement,
00:18:40
Speaker
We need to first just realize that he's designed us for movement. Now, how we move, are we moving out of a punishment? Are we moving with joy? Are we moving because we're grateful for a body that is able? I have one client who, when she came to me, she said, her sister is bedridden, different story, different issues. And she said, here I am with a fully functioning body that I do not do anything with.
00:19:10
Speaker
And I just realized God's given me this gift of a body that is able. And I said, I don't care about your gift. And I neglected it for 50 years. And so she came in in her seventies and said, I don't want to neglect the gift anymore. That's honoring God with your body. That's honoring God with your body. You know, the first few things she worked on was just being able to rotate through her spine and just such a small thing.
00:19:35
Speaker
We, a little bit of mobility training and now she's been working with me two years. She does purpose, right? I mean, that's honoring God with your body. God, you've given me this body. I'm not going to hate it. I'm not going to rate it. I'm not going to abuse it anymore. I'm not going to look at it in judgment anymore. And some of these things, like we can declare it. We can make a line in a sand saying, I used to be this person I'm not going to anymore.
00:19:58
Speaker
but ultimately it's not our actions, it's our heart, right? And so Jesus is always after our
Joy in Movement and Aging
00:20:05
Speaker
heart. He's not after our actions or our begrudging submission. He's after our heart change, but sometimes discipline has to proceed delight. And so it's through discipline sometimes that says, okay, God's given me a body that is able. I'm going to choose to move it today. This is my discipline. My discipline is going to show up.
00:20:27
Speaker
I looked at my body, I grabbed my my belly and thought, oh, I don't like this excess here. I caught myself judging it. And I decided not today, I'm not judging my body today. And so I let go of my belly and I smiled in the mirror and I said, thank you, God, that you gave me a belly. And so sometimes it's a baby step at a time.
00:20:50
Speaker
Learning to honor God with the way that you view yourself, his creation, right? And I cannot imagine looking at another woman. Now listen, I know people do it to each other all the time, but the thought of doing this makes me sick. God, your creation is horrible. Look at that. I mean, essentially that's what we do. And we do it to each other. We do it to ourselves often. We look in the mirror or we, you know, and I'm,
00:21:17
Speaker
I'm aging, I'm 44. Things are different now than they were 10 years ago. Things are different now. There are times I have to baby my knee. There are times I have to baby my foot. I'm like, how many more things am I going to have to baby? So I change. I don't work out like I used to. It's different. But that's also part of honoring the Lord. I'm not trying to be a 35-year-old or a 25-year-old anymore. So in this 45-year-old body, how do I honor God with it?
00:21:46
Speaker
And the same with our food and the things, because you know that was a big thing for me, a big hang up for me, was that nutrition component.
Beyond the Scale
00:21:54
Speaker
And as someone who works out, I hear often as a fitness coach, like, oh, I gotta earn my meals today, I gotta earn my calories, I've gotta earn my apple pie, right? That's one mindset. A totally different mindset is, what am I gonna eat today to fuel my workout?
00:22:14
Speaker
Right. And so they're two totally different mindsets. Both of them mean I need to make sure I've got fuel in my body. One of them is, oh, good. I can reward myself by fueling myself. And the other is.
00:22:27
Speaker
I need to make sure I fuel myself. At the end of the day, they both equal eating more because of a strong workout, but one of them is as a punishment and one of them is to honor the Lord and to honor our own body by giving it what it needs, which is nutrition. It's a heart and a mindset shift and it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen overnight.
00:22:52
Speaker
Sometimes you have to hear the same message over and over and over again, and then one day you're like, oh, why did I never think of that? And so you take one tiny step in the right direction. And I also want to say that, again, back to personally, things work different for different people.
00:23:14
Speaker
me working out online through your platform, some people are like, I cannot work online. I don't have the discipline. For me, it's working. It is working because I am hearing these amazing things that you're saying that I need to be mindful of with myself. But I have noticed that sometimes when I get on
00:23:40
Speaker
my bike, my stationary bike, and I listen to that trainer, I'll pick up on certain things about the calories or skinny or fat. And those are words I don't want in my life. And I definitely don't want them in my daughter's lives. And so that now has become
00:24:05
Speaker
something for me. And so if I'm working out and I hear that trainer, I will try to say whatever and then maybe not work out with them anymore. I mean, and I also know that they're not specific to the Christian aspect that I'm looking for, my faith component. But I think that it goes beyond just that too. You could teach the same class without talking scripture at all,
00:24:35
Speaker
And we're starting to learn exactly what it is that Jesus wants from us or, you know, I don't know. It's just one of those things that once you start hearing it, I mean, I have improved for sure. I have definitely
00:24:51
Speaker
me and when I feel strong, I'm like, damn, I feel strong. I just, I feel so much stronger. I feel good. I can't go and like step on a scale and be like, I didn't lose a new eight though. Like I can't combine those two things. There are times that comes back up, but that's what I would love for our mindset to be moving forward.
00:25:21
Speaker
Of course, with my background, I'm not a giant fan of people getting on the scales anyway, but how are you eating? How are you sleeping? How are your bathroom habits? How is your mood? Has it been stable? There are a lot of other markers of health that can tell us how we're eating and how we're moving are working for us.
00:25:45
Speaker
right? Is one happening too much or one happening not enough, right? There are a lot of markers we can look at without stepping on a scale. I work with my health coaching and nutrition coaching clients a lot on that because there are more one-on-one relationship. But you know, scales are meant to be a measurement tool, but they're only measuring how much you weigh. That is all they're measuring. They're not measuring how much
00:26:09
Speaker
fat loss versus muscle gain you've had, right? And I actually, like I weigh more now than I weighed when I was a larger size because now my body is more dense, right? Or I weigh about the exact same, several sizes smaller. Because once I started stopped starving myself, I didn't know what to do. And I just,
00:26:35
Speaker
ballooned in the other direction. Also not healthy, right? I went from one extreme to the other. So it was then that the friend came in and like taught me how, how to eat in a way that nourished. I really like it's a simple process, but it was mind blowing to me. Um, and so what's interesting though, is I probably weigh about the same now as I did at that. What I would look at a picture and say that was my heaviest. My weight was actually the same. My size was considerably larger, but it was,
00:27:04
Speaker
it was a large amount of fat versus a large amount of muscle. So that's why scales, I'm like, eh, scales. There are other biomarkers we can use. Okay, as we wrap up, obviously I want to get your information out and I'll also have it on the show notes so anybody can go there and look at that.
Starting Your Health Journey
00:27:24
Speaker
last minute thoughts. Yeah. Um, you know, you're talking to someone like me who struggles, still struggles, but I'm not giving up, but maybe there's somebody who hasn't even started, hasn't even played. Like what does Steph D'Arce say to that person? Well, www.
00:27:52
Speaker
If the Lord is poking on your heart saying, Hey, listen up. This is about you. This is about you today. Then know that there's never a point that you're like, no, it's too late for me.
00:28:05
Speaker
I'm too far gone or I'm too out of shape or I've never exercised. You know, like I mentioned my, my 70 year old, she, when I met her, she said, I've not exercised since my freshman year in high school.
00:28:17
Speaker
right? And she was in her seventies, but she decided she wanted to rewrite her story. Like there's never a point that you can't rewrite your story. And Jesus is in the redemption business. So he wants to redeem the story around your body. He wants to redeem the story around your fitness or lack of it, your nutrition or lack of it.
00:28:37
Speaker
And ultimately, ultimately, my heart is to give women the tools to be as healthy and strong as they possibly can be to say yes to whatever adventure the Lord has for them next. Because He wants you to go and make disciples of all nations. So who knows if that means you're going to be down on the floor with great grand babies someday, reading them board books about Jesus, and you want to be able to get down on that floor and up again.
00:29:02
Speaker
or you know in a couple months I'm taking a team to Costa Rica and we're going to be hiking all over the place on a missions trip getting in into some dark places to share the gospel where the light has not been shined yet so whatever adventure means for you you want to be ready physically as strong as you can to say okay God I'm ready go send me so um
00:29:24
Speaker
There are there are tools I would love to chat with anybody and I mean I laughed when I said my website but truly click the link below because I would love to chat with anybody about it and sometimes like my 15-minute calls are they're they're free they're just free I or an email I really seriously love to chat with you help you get started on your journey
00:29:45
Speaker
Find what works for you. Find what you've maybe tried that hasn't or things that you've never even considered. To me, this is discipleship and this is the specific ministry that has called me into to use what I've learned about fitness, wholeness, wellness to share the gospel with people and help them see that the Lord is interested in it.
00:30:07
Speaker
Um, yeah, finding somebody who's already maybe started on that journey, whether it's me or someone else and asking them, how do I, how do I get started? Don't be afraid to tell. And I'll back that up. I have seen it work with me so far. I am on this journey and.
00:30:26
Speaker
I hope to continue and stay on this journey. And I am so appreciative of your stuff, not only personally, but for what you're doing for the kingdom because it's really freaking awesome. Yeah. So go to the show notes to check out how you can get ahold of stuff, all that good stuff. And again, thank you for joining us on this episode of normal goes a long way. Thanks.