St. Joan of Arc and the Courage to Start Over — Again

There is a moment that every woman in my program knows well. It is not the moment she decides to start. It is the moment — usually somewhere around Week 3 or Week 4 — when the novelty has worn off, the results are not visible yet, and everything in her says: what is even the point.

That is the moment I always think of Joan of Arc.

Who Was Joan of Arc?

Joan of Arc was seventeen years old when she led the French army to victory at Orléans in 1429, turning the tide of a war that had been going badly for a century. She was nineteen when she was captured, put on trial by a church tribunal, and burned at the stake. She was canonized five hundred years later. She is the patron saint of France, of soldiers, and - the patron of my program and possibly of every Catholic woman who has ever stood at the edge of a hard thing and wondered whether she had what it takes.

Her words are the battle cry of everything I teach:

“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” — St. Joan of Arc

What Joan Has to Do with Weight Loss

Everything.

Joan did not feel brave every day. She did not wake up every morning filled with confidence and clarity. She was a teenage peasant girl with no military training who was hearing voices that no one else could hear and being asked to do something that had never been done before. She was afraid. She had every reason to quit.

And she didn’t. Not because she was fearless — but because her courage was rooted in something deeper than her feelings on any given day.

That is the kind of courage your health journey requires. Not the dramatic kind. Not the kind that shows up on Day 1 when the motivation is fresh and the program is new. The quiet, rooted, unglamorous courage that shows up on a hard Tuesday in Week 4 when nothing feels inspiring and you do it anyway.

The Courage to Start Over

One of the questions I get most often from the women I work with is some version of: I have failed at this so many times. What makes you think this time will be different?

And I always say the same thing: starting over is not failure. Starting over is the practice. Every saint in the calendar has a version of starting over in their story — the conversion, the moment of turning, the decision to get back up after the fall. The Church calls it metanoia.

We call it Monday. Same thing.

Joan of Arc was nineteen years old when she died. She did not live to see the end of the war she started. She did not get to see France united or her king crowned or her own name cleared by the Church that condemned her. But she did the work anyway, trusting that the outcome was in God’s hands and her job was just to show up.

Your job is the same. Show up. Track the food. Lift the weights. Practice the Pause & Pivot. Trust that the work is working even when the mirror hasn’t caught up yet.

You were not born to shrink. You were born for this.

“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” — St. Joan of Arc, Feast Day: May 30

→ Walk with Joan and 59 other saints through Weight Loss with the Saints at coachmaura.com

Coach Maura is a NASM-certified personal trainer and nutrition coach serving Catholic women 50–70 online and in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. · coachmaura.com