Katrina Ubell, MD - SoundSage

This is it! My final episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians. Can you believe we’ve made it this far together?

In this bittersweet closing of the podcast, I’m getting real with you about why I’ve decided to close this chapter of my life and wind down my business. It’s a deeply personal episode where I bare my soul about my changing priorities, dreams for the future, and the profound lessons I’ve learned over these incredible 9 years.

I’m sharing the five most powerful insights I’ve gained from both coaching you wonderful folks and doing my own personal growth work. We’re talking about everything from the true value of self-improvement to finding genuine fulfillment in life (spoiler: it’s not about the fancy car or big house!).

This episode is packed with heartfelt reflections, a few tears (yep, I got emotional!), and hopefully, some wisdom that’ll resonate with you, whether you’re a doctor or not.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why I’m deciding to wind down my business after 9 successful years * New interests and priorities I’m looking to explore in this next chapter of my life * How my perspective on work-life balance has shifted, especially in relation to my children * The five key insights I’ve gained from my years of coaching and personal growth * Why working on yourself is one of the best investments you can make * How arranging your life around your true priorities leads to greater fulfillment * How I’m planning to keep in touch with my audience after the podcast ends

I hope you enjoyed this final ride and episode! It has been an amazing journey we’ve been on together over the years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being part of this story with me.

If you’ve read my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, it would mean the world to me if you would leave me a review letting other readers know what you thought! Click here to leave a review on Amazon.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #399: Creating an Equitable Home Through Fair Play with Coach Alison Jamison Copy

Ep #398: Part 3 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Ep #397: Part 2 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript BelowWell, hello there, friend. Welcome to the podcast. I’m super glad that you’re here. Welcome to episode 400. Can you believe that I have recorded 400 weekly episodes in a row? Never missed a week. Isn’t that crazy? It’s a long, long time. Something I’m actually really proud of. When I first started this, I never in a 1,000,000 years thought that I’d be going for so many years and that I would have this many episodes. I mean, it would be so overwhelming to think about it that way. I probably never would have started, but it’s really just been such an enjoyable part of the last many years of my life being able to think about things that I wanted to share on this podcast and knowing that what I’ve shared here has been so impactful for you. So I want to let you know that at least for the time being, this episode is gonna be my last. So before you panic and freak out, I have some things I wanna tell you. It’s okay. Maybe you’re not panicking. Maybe you’re like, okay, that makes sense. But I kinda liked like the round number, the 400 number.

But I want you to know I’m not actually taking this podcast down. I’m actually planning on keeping it up.

I don’t know. I kind of think of it as like a little bit of a public service. There’s really good stuff in these episodes, and I wanna make sure that as many people who want it have access to it, obviously, for free. So you will notice this podcast will stay up. I’m just gonna keep kind of track of what the downloads are like. And if it starts to seem in a while, like, nobody’s really listening anymore, then maybe I’ll take it down, or maybe it’ll just kinda keep living on for a while and really helping people. I know for a fact that these episodes are super helpful, even for me. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s true. There have been many times I’ve recorded an episode, maybe 6 weeks or something before it went out live.

When it came out live, I listened to it and needed to hear the message like it was the first time I was hearing it. So there’s good stuff here, and I wanna encourage you to take advantage of it for sure. But so I wanted to start off this episode, this final episode, at least final for a little while, to tell you a little bit more about why I am slowing down and stopping doing this business because it’s something that I think took a lot of people by surprise, and I’ve been actually thinking for a long, long time, like many, many, many weeks, like what specifically I’m gonna say. And obviously, there are some things that maybe just aren’t appropriate to share publicly on this podcast, but I am gonna just let you know a little bit more about this decision making process. And what I’ll tell you is that I don’t think it’s really a secret or a surprise to anybody that business ownership is like riding a roller coaster. It definitely has its highs, and when there are highs, they are high, and it can be exhilarating and really fun. And I think for some people, almost like a drug, how fun that can be. And then when there are lows, the lows can feel really low. It can feel really challenging and just super difficult.

You may know the business NVIDIA. They think they make a lot of the microchips, I think is what they do. They’re like a huge, huge tech company. And there’s something earlier this year circulating around that I think the CEO, the founder, visionary of NVIDIA was being interviewed. And the person the interviewer said, so, like, if you were to start this business over again, what would you do? And he said, I wouldn’t start it. Now this is arguably one of the very most top successful companies ever in history. He’s like, I wouldn’t start it. It’s been so horribly painful, and, like and he goes into this whole long list of, like, why it’s been so horrible and hard, and he was dead serious. And you could tell the interviewer was a little like, oh, And then, like, you’re like, no. He’s actually serious.

It’s like, I wouldn’t do it. And I wouldn’t say that I regret anything that I have done in this business or regret starting it by any stretch. I mean, the most growth I’ve ever done as a human being has been because of this business, and I’m super grateful for all that growth. It’s been very difficult at times, very painful at times as growth can often be, but I am so so glad of so many of the lessons that I’ve learned. I’ve really matured a lot just as a human being through the process of doing this, and I’ll be forever grateful for that for sure. But really what it comes down to is that, you know, behind every business, there needs to be at least one person who really is kind of leading the march, who is very excited about the direction the company is going, is very energetic about it, is really leading. And that has been me for the entire 9 years that this company has been in existence. And what I started to notice gradually is that I have had a little bit less of that fire in my belly, less of that energy just noticing that it feels, you know, just a bit harder

and then a bit even more hard than than harder than that. And in into a certain extent, less enjoyable.

And I’m not talking about the coaching part. In fact, I’ve said for many years that when I coach clients, it’s my favorite part of my week, and that remains. That’s for sure not the problem. The coaching is not the problem. It’s all the other things that make the coaching possible that starts to become more and more difficult. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to get into all the details in, this forum. I don’t think that that really makes a lot of sense.

But that’s been something that’s been weighing on me for quite some time. It just is really a challenge and something that I just don’t have the fire in my belly for it anymore. I just don’t. And running a business, a small business like this, it’s like all the marketing is me, all the sales is me, all the writing is me, all that, like, there’s so much. And of course, I had a team that helped, but and did a lot, but it’s just I don’t think that’s my greatest contribution is writing sales copy, to this world. Although, I have learned a lot and I’ve become a lot better at it. We’ll say that. So concurrently with that all happening though, there’s been some other things in my life that have made me consider this even more.

And one is that over the last several years, I’ve really just opened my eyes up to some other interests that I have. I think that’s the big thing is, like, yeah, but if you aren’t working doing that, like, what are you gonna do with your time? I have so many interests and there are so many things that I wanna do and try. I’m gonna have to be careful to not overbook myself, like, overly extend myself. I have so many things I wanna do, and not just like things I’ve never tried, although there are several things I’ve never tried. But I have been trying to learn French on my own for years now and haven’t made a ton of progress. I mean, I definitely have learned a lot, but I would really like to take a French class with an actual teacher and have the time and capacity and brain space to be able to do the homework and actually practice and, like, ask questions and things like that. And I’ve never even signed up because I just knew I didn’t have capacity. I just didn’t have capacity. Now the reason why this is important is because I would really like to live in France for a year or 2 at some point in my life, and I don’t think it makes sense to wait till I’m 60 or 65 or 70 to start trying to learn French.

I mean, I it just makes sense to to learn it earlier and keep practicing because that is a goal. That’s something that I really would like to do, and and I just don’t have time. And also with my oldest son graduating high school and going through the college application process, we went to the admitted students weekend for the place that he ultimately chose, and they were just talking about these amazing classes that they offer. It was just incredible. And they were talking, actually, at one point, this one student who was kinda touring us around, the parents, he said something along the lines of, like, this

is what’s so great. Like, this is why a general liberal arts education is so great. And I just thought to myself, yeah, I never had that. I never got a chance to have a general liberal arts education because I was an engineering major and then Iwas pre med on top of being an engineering major at the same time. And, I mean, just, like, I didn’t get to take some of those classes to just learn stuff. And I think definitely one thing I wanna do is become, like, a non degree student at one of our local universities. There are a lot of things I know nothing about, and I would love to know more about. I mean, just like as an example, like, you know, when we travel and they talk about architecture, I have no idea what they’re talking about, like, nothing. Do I need to become an architecture expert? No. But maybe 1 or 2 classes could be helpful. Or like art history, don’t know a thing.

I don’t know what they’re talking about. I would like to know more about that. I would like

to have the opportunity to read some of the classic literature that’s out there. Because, you know, people talk about it, like, so great. I’ve never read that stuff. I don’t know anything about it. And I’d love to do it without the pressure of, like, and you have to get a a good grade so that you can get into graduate school or whatever. It’s like just doing it for fun just because it’s something that’s interesting and will stretch me mentally. Those a lot of those things like English literature and other forms of literature, not my strongest suit. There’s a reason. I’m a math and sciences girl, but I still would like the opportunity to explore that more. And then also even from, like, a creative aspect, there’s, like, the physical arts and things like that.

Like, I I’m sure that I’ve gotten much more into the fiber arts, things like that recently over the last year or 2. I am interested in trying some other things, and maybe it’ll turn into something and maybe it won’t, but I would love to just have the time and space to explore that while I am still in a place of good health and able to do things and stuff like that. So I think it definitely has hit me, like, there’s just no guarantee. Like, a lot of people live a super long time, and not everybody does. And there’s just no guarantee of what your life is gonna be like, even when you take good care of yourself. So if there are things that you wanna do, by you, I mean, like, generally and kind of the way I’m thinking about myself is, if there’s things you wanna do, like, try to do them when you can. Now I also wanted to say that I’m in a position where financially, it’s okay for me to make this decision. And I’ll also say that the financial contributions that I’ve been

able to make to my family because of this business have been spend, like, way more than I would have been able to make as a pediatrician.

Like, a lot of ways, I think, like, the amount of money I would have contributed to the family if I had a full career as a pediatrician, like, I’ve already contributed that. That’s a privileged place to come from, and I just wanna acknowledge that. Like, for sure, that’s not everybody’s position. And so it’s just it’s just different. But even so, even if I did need to be actively making money, I still think I’d be ready for a change and thinking about something different.

And then on top of it, you know, with my son graduating, it really I think I’ve talked about a little bit more, but it it like, in previous episodes, but it’s just it really hit me about how short the time is before these kids leave. And I have 7 years left till the last one’s gone, and I I have been trying for years to be working less in this business. And it I I just haven’t been able to make that work. And so I want to be able to be present more, like, around and thinking about my actual kids and and present with them emotionally as much as I wanna be, rather than, like, listening, but also, like, oh my gosh, I need to get upstairs so that I can, you know, do this thing or that thing, or I have this call or that call. I just don’t want it to be like that. So I wanna change things up. I even thought about, like, well, what if you just do, like, just some one on one coaching? And I wasn’t really interested in doing that either, and that’s when I kinda realized, there might be a touch

of burnout going on here. Not in the sense that I can’t. I mean,

I still totally love coaching my clients and I the people that I have who are continuing with me all the way into January. Like, I’m absolutely so committed to helping them. I will absolutely deliver on what they were promised and what they signed up for and all of that. But also that’s different than 1 on 1 coaching. 1 on 1 coaching is a lot more coaching, actually. And so that’s not something I’m interested in. Am I interested in absolutely doing the group coaching that is a part of these programs? A 100%. Like, so all in, so excited for it.

But just was realizing, like, I don’t think that transitioning to that kind of, like, a 1 on 1 kind of model is probably the right thing right now. So what I’m doing is I am kind of keeping things very open ended. Oh, you may be wondering like, oh, she’s selling the business, and I know some people have had questions about that. And I’ll be honest, I did explore it. I looked into it and had some conversations and thought about it long and hard, and I just decided that it wasn’t the right thing for me as the business and me were pretty intertwined. And so I would really have to give up a lot of control over things like my name and my likeness and my image and maybe my voice or things like that. And just like with what AI can do and stuff, I just it just did not sit right with me. I felt a lot more comfortable just hanging on to my IP.

Maybe at some point, there’ll be an opportunity to license it out or something. Like, maybe that would be something, I would explore. I’m not like I’m shutting everything down and running the other direction. It’s not that so much as it’s just like, this as it currently stands is not what I want, and I’m gonna take a break, and I’m gonna just see what happens. One thing that really struck me was actually my husband who said, you had no idea when you left medicine and started this business that it would turn into what it became. And so he said, by winding down this business, you you have no idea what amazing things are still laying ahead for you because of this decision. And, I think he’s so right. Like, who really knows? I’m still working on getting my study published about the benefits of this because I really do want that to be, like, in the medical literature because I know that the work that we have done and continue to do is so impactful and meaningful and valuable.

It hasn’t quite found its home yet, but we’re still gonna keep working on it for a while. So you’re kinda keeping things afloat. Like I said, I’m gonna keep the podcast up for a while. Like, obviously, my book is out there. There’s things that can remain, and then I’ll just kinda decide, give myself some freedom there to see if anything that I’m interested in comes up and or or not, and then just kinda go on from there.

But I do wanna encourage you to stay subscribed to this podcast because this is probably my best way of communicating with you in the sense that I can still, on my own, add those little, what we call dynamic ads, those little blurbs that are at the beginning of the podcast to let you know about anything new that might be happening. So that’s all gonna be there. And so just letting you know, like, just if it’s still helpful, keep checking in. Then, of course, those dynamic ads play on every episode, so it won’t matter which one you listen to. I do wanna let you know that it does actually cost money though to keep a podcast up.

And so I am exploring the possibility of having some ads run on this podcast. And I just wanna let you know, I haven’t done that historically. But like I said, it does cost money. And if I’m not, you know, earning anything, then it’s just kind of like a perpetual drain. So I am planning to hold aside a little bit of money in the company to help pay for that. But I’m also gonna look into whether having some ads run can help. I mean, honestly, probably a few pennies, but just like a little bit of money. Like, if the podcast could even just, like, break even, that would be really super awesome.

So I just wanna let you know that if you start noticing some ads coming up, that is, what’s happening there. I need to do more exploring on that, but that’s something that’s on my list to look into. Okay. So finally for this episode, so I was thinking about, like, what should this episode be about? And it was actually one of the coaches on my team who suggested the topic, what I know for sure. And I’ve been thinking about that for a long time, and then it felt like very pressure y because that’s such like an Oprah thing. Like, what I know for sure. And I was like, you know what? Just like, what are the first five things that come to mind? That’s kinda how I did this. Like, first five things that come to mind, what do I know for sure? And then those are gonna be the things that I leave with you here on this last for now podcast episode.

So what I know for sure in 9 years of doing this, and just to be clear, like, as I have coached others, I have also done so much work on myself, tons of coaching therapy, so much work on myself as well. So a two way kind of perspective, right, from doing the work myself and then helping others do this work as well. So what I know for sure is that the more that you work on yourself, the better your life becomes overall. And what I mean by that is not like it was easier or you don’t have bad days or things don’t feel hard or painful, that you’re never angry, that you’ve somehow become so evolved that you just, like, are just happy all the time. I don’t mean that. But what I mean is that you’re more connected to yourself and what’s really going on for yourself, and you have such better relationships, I’ve found. Like, when you are so connected to yourself, you are able to connect better to others, and that really helps with all your relationships. All those really important ones, whether it’s like a partner or spouse, children, parents, siblings, also friends.

It’s just it has this added benefit. You go in trying to help yourself and ends up helping all these other areas of your life. It’s never just about that one thing. And I love that. I love that because it feels like so worth your while and your time when you’re investing in improving one area and you do improve that area. And as a result, all these other areas benefit as well. I love that.

Okay. What I know for sure is that the investment of working on yourself is a fabulous investment. Like, the returns you get on that investment are better than any other way you could invest. Like, if you think about spending the money to invest in someone who can help you, you being helped and you being whether it’s like a better version of yourself or some problem that you have being resolved or something like that, a much better relationship, a much better experience of a certain part of your life. Like, that money you spent, like, you can’t get that kind of financial return in the stock market or venture capital or, like, things like that. Like, it’s multiple fold how much it improves. And it’s just I think a lot of people are like, oh, that’s so much money and but in my mind, it’s like, oh my gosh, that’s the best money you could ever spend. No. With a caveat, within reason, of course. Right? There are definitely people who start going, like, down, maybe a bit of a dark path where they’re giving all their money to, like, all these supposed, like, gurus or teachers or leaders, guides, whatever, and that can turn into something that’s maybe not great and can sometimes even lead to financial ruin. So I’m obviously not talking about that.

I’m talking about this in the case of something that is within reason. But it’s like if you have no support and you’re talking about spending a couple $1,000 to get some support, it, in my opinion, is a really great investment, but then also be a thoughtful investor. Like, don’t just give your money to any old person. Like, ask questions, find out more, really understand what you’re purchasing, what is the promises, what’s actually being delivered, and how they’re gonna deliver that. Those are all important things. You wanna be an informed consumer, of course.

Okay. So what else I know for sure, I just don’t think you’re ever gonna regret arranging your life around your priorities. This is something that comes up sometimes even in the coaching sense, but often when we look at, like, what are our actual priorities, what’s most important to us, and then how we spend our time, we often do not spend our time or very much of our time on the things that are of most importance to us. And to a certain extent, I feel like that’s a bit of what I’m doing here is I’m doing a bit of a shift in that. Like, when I told my oldest son about my plans, he said, yeah. That kinda makes sense, because I do hear you say pretty often that you wish you could do something, but you don’t have time. Right? Like, time is so valuable. And when we readjust so that the time that we spend is an alignment with our priorities, I think we just never regret that. Even though maybe people won’t understand, maybe it means that some traditional forms of success need to go, like, by the wayside.

Maybe we don’t earn quite as much money or whatever that is, like, kind of those typical traditional things that people like to measure. But if we, at the end of the day, put our heads on the pillow and feel like, you know what? Like, that was how I wanna live my life. It’s all worth it. Super worth it. Alright.

What I know for sure. 4th thing, life is just too short to struggle with your food and your weight. Please do what you need to do to solve this for yourself, whatever that ends

up looking like. I can’t begin to guess what that might include, but keep working

on it because seriously, it is so worthwhile.

And I just even recently have had some reminders in the sense of experiences that I’ve had of like, oh, right. See? Because of that’s why I struggled so much with my food, because of that comment or whatever it may be. And it helps me because I’ve done this work on myself, helps me to understand. Right? Like, it makes so much sense when that was the way I thought about it or this was said, and then I took that to heart, and then this is how I’ve been living my life. Like, of course, I would end up where I did. So much more patience and compassion for myself who struggled. And also for me now, knowing that I mean, it is like night and day better. I can’t even begin to say I mean, it’s so much better.

But, like, there still are some times where it’s like, you know, like, that’s weird that I just ate that. Interesting. It’s not turning it into this whole big, oh my gosh, like, dramatic whatever. But, you know, just recognizing, like, doing this work is such a great investment of your time and effort. There’s so many things that you can work on to create in your life, but if you’re still just massively struggling with food and weight, it’s still just never gonna feel the way you wanted to feel. So I just wanna really encourage you. Just you don’t wanna be nearing the end of your life wishing that you could have lost those last £10 or whatever. Do you know what I mean?

Like, let’s just take care of it. Okay. Finally, when I know for sure. I really think that the best and arguably the most enjoyable parts of life cannot usually be bought with money, or if they do require some money, it’s actually a lot less money than you think. And so what I mean by that, it’s things like genuine connection with other humans, time together, time with people that you really care about. Maybe that does require a plane flight or a subscription to something so that you can talk to one another or whatever it may be. But, typically, it’s not gonna be like you need so much money moving your body, being outside in nature. Like, these things do not cost a lot of money. Enjoying music, reading. Like, some of these things that are just, like, good uses of our time, and we know this because humans have been doing it for so, so, so long.

Like, these are really great things. I think sometimes we get a little mixed up and we just start working so hard to try to create these things that we think are gonna be the thing that’s gonna make us feel so good. And then it’s just that’s just not the thing. And even travel, I mean, travel is something that I super, super love doing, but even travel doesn’t have to be expensive. I’ve done it all the different ways. I’ve traveled, like, totally on much more of a budget. I’ve traveled more luxuriously, and they’re all nice, and they’re all fine in their own ways. I mean, my son right now is traveling around the world by himself with a backpack on his back. And in some ways, I’m actually a little jealous of him. Look at it. His life is so simple.

He’s got, like, everything he needs in this backpack, and that’s it. Like, there’s something that’s is really special about that. And I think that it’s important for us to remember that. Like, more stuff, more memberships, fancier cars, more expensive schools for our kids, you know, stuff like that like that. It gives us that dopamine hit, but it doesn’t give that lasting life fulfillment and life satisfaction. So not that there’s not a place for that stuff, but just remembering, like, grounding yourself. Like, what really are the things that are most important to me? What do I really, really enjoy? And then how can I find time and space in my life for more of that? That’s really what I know for sure. And maybe the things that I shared aren’t the really the things that do it for you, but there’s probably other things and those also probably don’t cost that much. There’s a way that you can do it in a pretty affordable manner.

So like when it comes down to making decisions about your career and other things like that, like, I think it’s sometimes so it seems like, oh, it’s so obvious to try to do the thing that’s gonna get me more money.

But I just want you to really consider, like, what’s the trade off? Do you have to do more to get that money and then you have less time for those things. What we don’t wanna do is spend so much of our life trying to get to the place where we can now enjoy our lives. Right? That’s what I’m feeling like with me right now. It’s like, these are the things I wanna do right now. I don’t want to wait another 10, 15 years till I can do them. Who knows what my life will be like then?

I wanna take advantage of it now. And I think that’s something that’s available to all of us. Okay. Gosh. Wrapping up this last episode. So I I’ve actually put off recording this for a long time, just kind of like,

I gotta say the right thing. I gotta what what am I gonna say? And I do. I feel like a little emotional, like, wrapping this up, but it’s not a goodbye. It’s a see you for now. I’m still gonna be around. I think some people have been like, oh, what is she gonna do? She’s actually gonna start some other business, and I can promise you that was not what’s happening right now. Like, there’s no gotcha. There’s nothing fancy or special that behind the scenes I’m gonna do.

Like, I literally just wanna take a French class. You know, and, like, not have to race around every second of my life. That’s all. Alright, my friend. Well, seriously, I want you to know whether you’re new to this podcast or have been listening for years that I have always super, super valued whew. Gosh. Okay. Valued your attention.

I’ve always been super, super protective of the time that you have devoted to listening to me. And I hope that I’ve been a good steward of that time. I I feel that it was really special that there would be somebody out there who would be willing to listen to me talk about something for 20 or 30 minutes. And the fact that people would even find that it added a lot of value to their lives is just even more special. So I just really wanna thank you. Whether I ever worked with you as a client or maybe we’ve never communicated ever, I just really, really, really wanna thank you for being here and for everyone who’s always shared about this podcast with their friends and all that, I just really appreciate it. It’s been wow. What a wild ride. But also, it’s been talking about fulfilling, like, one of the most fulfilling things. Like, I really set out to make a difference in the lives of women physicians, and I think I’ve accomplished that and so much more.

I think I’ve, through this podcast and my book, been able to help so many others

as well, and it’s something that

I think I I’m trying to remind myself this is something to be really proud of. Like, this is this is I actually found my a thought I had a couple of days ago was like some brains offered just these silly thoughts. I wanted to call it a dumb thought, but, you know, we’ll call it silly. Where it’s just was like, yeah. But you didn’t even really do that much, and you could have done so much more, and so many other people are doing more, and, like, that kind of thing. Like, it’s just not enough what you did, like, that kind of thought. And I was like, oh, man. Okay.

Well, brains are still gonna brain. They’re still gonna do their thing. But also for myself, I wanna really try to have, like, the lasting memory be that that I really made a difference. And because you were willing to listen to me and be here for this podcast, I had the opportunity to do that. So I super appreciate you, and I just want you to know how amazing and special you are. And it’s really been such a joy in my life to be able to connect with so many of

the listeners of this podcast, work with so many of them. It’s just been really a true honor and privilege and joy. So with that, I’m gonna say thank you.

I need to go blow my nose. Tearing up. Okay. So thank you so much. I wish you the very best. And everything I’ve said, at least for the most part, I think there’s good stuff in there, and I hope you’ll return to it so that you can get even more out of this podcast.

Alright. Take care. Sending you all of my love. Bye.

The post Ep #400: What I Know For Sure appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you tired of having the same fights with your partner over and over about doing the dishes and taking the trash out?

So many couples find themselves in this position, which is why our special guest Alison Jamison is here to share a better way. In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, Alison is unpacking some of the common problems you might face in your home, whether you’re a physician or not, and how the Fair Play system can help.

You’ll learn what Fair Play is, how it works, and why we all need it.

Alison Jamison is a certified Fair Play Facilitator and relationship coach specializing in helping women create fulfilling relationships. She focuses on redefining traditional roles, improving communication, and achieving a balanced division of household labor. Whether you're navigating changes in your relationship or seeking more equitable partnerships, Alison offers personalized coaching and guidance to help you co-create the relationship you desire.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Problematic defaults that often occur in a home * Why one partner always seems to end up doing more home maintenance * One thing that is causing bad communication in your relationship * The surprising truth about why outsourcing doesn’t take much off your plate * How to divide tasks equitably, not equally * The four rules of Fair Play

If you’re unhappy with the division of labor in your home and the mental load you’re carrying, this episode has solutions for you. We get it, and we’ve been there too. The Fair Play system was developed based on the experiences of over 500 men and women, identifying what the invisible work really looks like in a family and how to tackle it in a more equitable way. Tune in to create a more equitable home for you and your family.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Check Out Fair Play

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #398: Part 3 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Ep #397: Part 2 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Ep #396: Part 1 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well hello there friend! Welcome to today's episode. I'm really excited to have a guest on with me today who is actually one of the coaches in my program. Her name is Alison Jamison. Alison, welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:49] Alison: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

[00:00:51] Katrina: Super excited to have you here. We're going to be talking today about something that you are a concept, a framework that you're actually certified in, and it's something that you've shared with our program members in the past, and people super loved it. And it's helped so many people. And that is the concept of Fair Play. But before we dig into that, let's just start off with talking about like the problems that exist for a lot of people, whether they're physicians or not, in the home. Like, why would we even need Fair Play? Like, who would be somebody like, what could somebody be going through that would maybe require them or not require them, but make them think that Fair Play, you know, why should they keep listening, I guess is what I'm saying. Like, what are the problems that people are dealing with?

[00:01:33] Alison: So I think when it comes down to like the brass tacks, you know, like the very essential part of it is people default into maintaining their homes. So whether that is because of the way that you were raised, whether it's the schedules that you and your spouse have when you first move in together, like oftentimes we default into doing things around the home, and that is only sustainable for as long as you both accept those defaults.

[00:02:05] Katrina: So just to be clear, what you mean is that in a hetero partnership, the woman tends to default into maintaining the home and in a same sex relationship, often there's one person who also defaults. Correct.

[00:02:19] Alison: Absolutely.

[00:02:20] Katrina: So it's like if no one's doing it, the woman's probably going to go and maintain the home.

[00:02:25] Alison: Or there might be some unspoken rule where, like, my job is more demanding than your job. And so even if we work the same amount of hours, like the person who has the less demanding job often is defaulted into being the person responsible for taking care of the home, or the parent who has to go pick up the kid when they are sick at school. And so it's about talking about those defaults and then deciding intentionally, how do we actually want to maintain our home? How do we actually want to handle the division of work in our household, that makes sense for us.

[00:03:04] Katrina: And I think we see this all the time. And you obviously are coaching in our programs and stuff. So you're talking about it and love, you know, for you to share any insight or, you know, kind of examples or things like, I think that this is often something that I mean, this is just known. I think that so many women struggle with this, but particularly professional women, where it's like, okay, you're working all day at your day job, and then you come home and you start your second job, you know, which is all the other things, like if there are children, all the things relating to the children and maintaining the home, whether it's, you know, doing laundry and cleaning and things like that yourself, or managing the people who are doing that, you know, hiring those people, it's a lot of like planning, right?

It's a lot of like holding things in your head. And I think it's totally right. It's like, I remember I graduated from residency two years before my husband did. My husband was still a resident, so it was like when he was a resident, it was like, well, I mean, he was there, so you know what I mean. Like, they owned him. And so, you know, we did have our first child during that time.

[00:04:04] Katrina: So it totally made sense that it was all on me to, you know, make sure that that everything was was handled and cared for. And then it was after that it was kind of like, like you said, the default plus the idea that, like, he's a surgeon, so, you know, if he's sick at school, is he canceling cases to go get our child? You know, so the idea, it was like kind of this, like it seemed like it was like, so obvious that obviously I would be the one who would figure that all out, as though it didn't strain me as well.

Like, you know, if I had to miss a day at work already being so jam packed and long waitlist and everything like that, like to figure out where to put those people. Right. Somehow, in my mind, because he was a surgeon that, like, trumped my work as a pediatrician. And then that was just. Yeah, like the way that we, you know, kind of functioned and, you know non two physician couples. So like in one physician couples you know I think that very much happens as well. So when we default into that what do you often see is like what's the problem. Like what's the complaint.

[00:05:11] Alison: I see a lot of resentment built up because eventually that default no longer works. And there hasn't been, again, that intentional conversation around it. So oftentimes partners come at each other about a problem and like it's you versus me versus we have a problem we need to solve. And so they almost create a battle, you know, a fight. I say my favorite fight with my husband was about the dishes. It's actually why I found coaching and then also why I found Fair Play, because when we would I'm the main cook of the household. And he was responsible for doing the dishes, and I felt like he needed to do them immediately after dinner was completed.

That's when dishes in my brain needed to be done, and I found coaching because I was also making him not doing the dishes mean like he doesn't love me, respect me, respect our house. Like I was creating a lot more drama about the dishes and coaching really helped me like eliminate that story. But the dishes still needed to get done and we needed to understand like where the timing was just misaligned and our expectations and why that mattered. And Fair Play kind of gave me the tools to navigate that part of the conversation.

[00:06:30] Katrina: Cool, right? Yeah, I love that because it's like it is different than our typical coaching that we talk about. It's like, yes, we can work on our own thinking. We can really figure out like, okay, what is the actual problem and what is, you know, additional problematic thoughts that I create in my mind that, you know, makes this mean so much more, but also, who's going to get the kid when they've got strep throat and they've got a fever in the office, you know, like how is that going to go? And it so it doesn't really fully, often fully solve the problem.

You know what I think is another element of this? I think often women end up going, well, if I'm working full time and doing all this stuff, it's just way too much. So I'm going to go down to some sort of part time so that I can have a little more breathing space. But I think what ends up often happening is that that space is just further consumed with more of those responsibilities because it's like, well, I'm not the one who's working full time, so I should be doing all these extra things. And then, you know, a lot of these women just really don't feel better. It's just different. It's not better. Yes.

[00:07:33] Alison: Yeah, exactly. Well, and even if you are fortunate enough to be able to outsource some of the the work in the home, or even if you can ask your partner to do more around the house, that's really only one third of doing anything, because one of the things that they talk about in the system is that for every task that we have to do, there's the conception piece, like keeping it in your brain, thinking about the thing that needs to be done. There's planning when and how and where we're going to do that thing, and then there's actually doing it. So if you're outsourcing the doing it, you're still only outsourcing one third of that task.

[00:08:11] Katrina: Yeah. And that assumes that the execution is done the way it needs to be done or the way you expect.

[00:08:17] Alison: Yeah, exactly. And so like oftentimes like when I talk to couples especially like one partner is like, well, I keep doing more and more and more. But they're not owning the conception and planning piece as well. And so the partner that still has that conception and planning piece doesn't actually feel like anything's been removed from their plate because they're still the one thinking about it, reminding like managing the work of the home. And that takes almost as much, if not more, sometimes energy than actually doing the task.

[00:08:49] Katrina: And I think then what a lot of women feel is then they feel guilty, you know, like, I've got this great partner and they do so much. They're so helpful and they do so many things. Basically, I can ask them, do anything and they'll say yes and they'll do it. So now I feel bad that I feel resentful. I shouldn't be feeling the way that I am. And what Fair Play helps you to discover is like, no, there's a legitimate reason why you feel that way.

[00:09:14] Alison: Yes, exactly, exactly.

[00:09:17] Katrina: So there are some I mean, we don't have time. The scope of this podcast is we're not going to get into, like every detail of Fair Play. There's obviously so much more to explore. What's the name of the woman who created Fair Play?

[00:09:27] Alison: So it was created by Eve Rodsky and she is a Harvard trained lawyer. I believe that she did organizational design and mediation before she got into this work and really basically asked, like, what happens when we treat our home as our most important organization? Through conversations with her own spouse, she went on to interview, I think, over 500 couples in the US to really understand, like what is actually involved in the invisible labor in a home, like, what are the actual tasks?

And basically through all of that data, they were able to kind of consolidate it into these 100 cards that are at play in the standard home. Now, this will differ if you have kids or not or if you're taking care, you know, work. A lot of us are in like that middle generation where we might have like elders that we're caring for and kids, but it really takes a look at all of the things at play in a home. There's 100 cards. And how do we split up these tasks equitably? Not equally. Because 5050 often isn't equitable like it really. We have to take into play. Like who has capacity?

Who has capability, you know, who does have the time, who has maybe more knowledge and can work through the thing. So it's really understanding, like what are my strengths, what are my partner's strengths, what are available to us, and then how can we find kind of agreement on what an equitable split would be for our home.

[00:11:01] Katrina: What it sounds like is like what you're really doing is you're just laying it all out and then making a deliberate decision together on how it's going to go. Not that it can't be changed. It's not like carved in stone. This is how it has to be forever. But at least for maybe for now or for this season or, you know, whatever it is, like, this is what we're going to do. And then everybody has the opportunity. Each person has the opportunity to take ownership for their pieces. Like you're agreeing that you are going to do this willfully, knowingly. You understand that and then, you know, ideally, what's the ideal outcome?

[00:11:36] Alison: The ideal outcome is that everyone in the home feels like it's an equitable division of labor, and everyone gets the chance to kind of live the life that they want to. So one of the non-negotiable cards like this card must be in your deck is Unicorn Time And that is about allowing each person, each adult in the home to pursue passions, like to pursue things that they find interesting, and also make them an interesting person.

Because one of the things that you found in her data was a lot of the couples who were in their 50s and 60s and getting divorced after, like, maybe the woman stayed home and cared for the children. Is a lot of the comments the husbands would be making are like, well, she's just not an interesting person anymore. But she had devoted her life to like, caring for the home and like, didn't have the capacity to go out and volunteer and pursue her interests outside. And so now every human like deserves the ability to be able to go out and pursue those passions so that you can still have something to talk to your partner about after you've been married for 30 years.

[00:12:46] Katrina: Right? And have some purpose in your life. You know, when there are those transitions and things like that, you know, you hear that so often that during big life transitions, but also particularly in retirement. You know, it's like, but who am I? You know, what do I even do with myself? It's like it gives you that opportunity to explore that a little bit, like just actually have some time for fun. Yeah. I'm curious. You know, one thing I haven't asked you about this is what if you have children or other humans who live with you, who are capable of taking some of those responsibilities, do they take cards, too? Do they come to this conversation as well?

[00:13:20] Alison: Yes, absolutely. So we have a nine year, almost nine year old, and while they cannot really communicate what their minimum like their minimum standard of care of like what completing a task might be, I, as the adult and my partner are still like kind of dictating what that is, but they can do a little bit of the outsourcing.

But if you have a teenager, like they can absolutely be involved in that conversation and you can agree upon, you know, you're going to own the conception, planning and execution of this card when it's smaller children, one adult usually is still owning that conception and planning piece, and then the smaller kids are working on the execution. But it can be a really useful tool to even help kids start organizing their brain around, like having to be responsible for their own homework and, and those sorts of things because like, homework is one of the cards.

[00:14:16] Katrina: Or like lunches or things like that. Like that is so interesting. Right? I'm just thinking about how, you know, our kids will, you know, make their own lunches, but it's rare that they would like, initiate, you know, we have to be like, okay, go make lunch now. And then they're like, okay. And then they go figure out what they're going to have. So they decide what they're going to have, and then they and they make it. But it's that first piece that they don't they you know, it's like kind of like the well, so what happens if you don't remember to make your lunch? Like I guess you just don't have lunch. Yeah, right. Natural consequences. My favorite kind. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. So there are four rules with Fair Play. What I love about it is like, it's pretty simple. You know what I mean? It like, doesn't have to get super involved. So what are those four rules?

[00:15:02] Alison: So the first rule is that all time is created equal. So you know we've already touched on this a little bit. But society has often treated women's time as infinite. And men's time is finite. It's like men's time is diamonds. Women's time is sand. And, you know, whether that is is male, female like demanding job, less demanding job, whatever that is. But all the time is created equal. Like we literally all have 24 hours in a day. And it's our thoughts about that time that create those expectations that, you know, that buy into those societal beliefs. And that's why I think coaching and Fair Play goes so well together, because it's like, these are the thoughts we want to adopt into creating a more equitable home.

So you think about like a task, like applying sunscreen might only take two minutes, but that's not actually just two minutes. It's a 15 minutes of negotiating with the six year old to get them to, like, agree that they're going to wear it, or what parts are you putting on and what parts are they putting on like that? 15 minutes is just as valuable as your partner being on a call with their boss for 15 minutes. Both of those 15 minute chunks of time are creating the life that you want to have together.

[00:16:16] Katrina: Mhm. I think that's really powerful that all time is equal because I really do that. The diamonds in the sand thing, I'm like oh man. Yeah. And I think though like when I'm just reflecting for myself, I think that we're socialized to believe this. Like there's a part of me that's like. But it's kind of true isn't it? Like, I hate to even say that, but, wow, I'm just realizing that's, you know, like that internalized sexism. Wow. So, yeah, that's something for us to even really work, to own and work through our own beliefs that it's any different.

[00:16:53] Alison: Exactly.

[00:16:54] Katrina: Yeah. Wow. That's super powerful. Okay, rule number two.

[00:16:57] Alison: Is reclaiming your right to be interesting. And again, this goes back to that unicorn card. It's like we really do all deserve time to pursue our passions. Like, we are not meant to just work and take care of a home like that is not living fully a life. And so we have every right to be interesting, not just to our partners, but to ourselves, to our friends, to our communities. And it's so important to reclaim some time for yourself. I will say, when people start trying to have more equitable rest and equitable pursuit of passions, even when the tasks may not have changed that much, the house feels so much more equitable.

[00:17:45] Katrina: Oh my gosh, okay. That's cool. So good. Okay. Rule number three.

[00:17:50] Alison: Is to start where you are now. This is a little bit of like the arrival fallacy at play is like, well, when school starts and we have a regular schedule, like then we can put this system into place because life will be normal or when the holidays are over, when summer break starts. You know, I'm sure you see this often with clients as I do too, in the program of like I can start losing weight when?

[00:18:16] Katrina: Yeah, after this vacation or something.

[00:18:18] Alison: Exactly. But this does not have to be like a far off daydream of creating a more equitable home. It's like, who am I? Who am I married to? What is our intention for trying to create this system? Like, why do we want to do this? And why is now the right time? Because tomorrow again never comes. It's like, how can we be invested in creating this change right now?

[00:18:40] Katrina: That's so smart. Yeah, because otherwise you just keep putting it off, looking for that perfect time. Yeah. Okay. And then the final fourth rule.

[00:18:48] Alison: Is to establish your values and standards. So this is kind of what I was alluding to with the dishes, with myself and my spouse, is that I thought that dishes needed to be done immediately, and they thought that dishes could be done, like at night or when they wake up in the morning. And it's like, why did I believe one way? And he believed a different way, and it's understanding how we came to those beliefs, why we believe those things, being able to talk about why it's important for it to be done at that time for us, and then working together to like, allow compromise and see the humanity in both of our choices, like no one's right or wrong, like there is no right time to take out the trash or to do the dishes. But it's like what time is right for us? And can we allow the person who holds that card to sometimes dictate that time and work through whatever thoughts and feelings we're going to have to, to allow them to own that level of care.

[00:19:48] Katrina: Mhm. That's so interesting. It just popped into my head as my husband is in charge of getting the garbage and the recycling cans out to the curb on garbage day. If I really think about it, I think my parents always put him out the night before, and a lot of our neighbors put him out the night before, too. So there have been times where I'm walking the dog kind of late, and I see that everybody else has their cans out and, you know, garbage. Maybe not so critical, but our recycling only comes every two weeks. So if you miss it, it's like a whole month. And that's just that's not good. So and you know that besides the point that probably most of it won't even be recycled, but that's, you know, outside the scope of this.

So the point is that there have been times where I thought, you know, I'll help him out and I'll just, you know, get the cans to the curb right now. And then I found out that he actually was like, oh, like kind of like, oh, why'd you do that? Like he still was planning on emptying the garbage in the kitchen one more time, or, you know, like he had some other, some other plan, like I, by trying to help, I actually threw a wrench in his plans. He would really prefer to do it when he's going out to work that morning.

And in my mind I'm like, why would you do that? Because then you're more likely to forget. And it's just like, one more stress as you're like trying to get out the door. But it's his thing to own. He does remember. The cans do get to the curb and it's just like, wait, there is no problem. Except the way that I was thinking about it. And it's not even my job or my task that I own. So it's his thing. Let him do it his own way. Yep.

[00:21:22] Alison: So it's like, okay, that is my work. And also so then there is also a natural consequence to that. And it might not be wonderful to have your recycling sit around for a month. But like in the grand scheme of things, maybe that's just something that he has to experience as well.

[00:21:38] Katrina: Yeah, and probably that has happened. But like it really doesn't happen. That's the thing I'm trying to think the last time I mean it's been a long, long time. So anyway, yeah, it is interesting to think about like where do we get these ideas about what is the right way to do something, or when something should be done, or how something should be done. And to your point about the standards, I remember when I had my daughter, so my third child, really just consciously thinking to myself, I'm going to need to drop my standards of like what I expect from everybody, from myself, from this, just the state of this home.

Because now we have three kids, you know what I mean? So yeah, it's like sometimes it's it's a good thing to just even recognize, like what standards fit with what we can do. You know, like, it can look like something else at what cost. Right. You know. And am I willing to pay that price. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. So while we kind of, like, wrap things up a little bit, there are some specific things that you super duper love about Fair Play. And I'd love it if you could share them.

[00:22:40] Alison: Yes. So the first reason I really love Fair Play is because I feel like it has done some of the pre-work of creating that to do list in the deck of cards, like it's not asking you to write down everything you do in the household, and to remember everything you do at the household. To be able to bring to the conversation with your partner. Like that piece is already done.

And really, the first step of playing with the Fair Play cards is to eliminate as many cards as you can from your deck. So if you don't have kids, any cards that relate to child care or taking care of children, you can just get those out of your deck like it is wonderful. And then there's so many fewer cards that you have to divvy up. So it kind of reduces, I think, some of the mental load of going into these conversations of maintaining a home because the to do list is already defined. So that's super helpful.

[00:23:34] Katrina: Yes, I agree that sounds yeah, so much better than like let me think of everything I do around here. Are you kidding me? Oh my gosh. No thanks. Yes.

[00:23:44] Alison: Exactly. The second reason why I love it is because it creates that shared language. So you're kind of talking about maintaining the home in a similar way. So again, we've already talked about like the conception, planning and execution of any task, but it also takes you through defining what that minimum standard of care is going to be like that the trash gets taken out daily, or does it get taken out when it's full? Like you get to have those conversations in a way of like, how do we solve getting this task done? And the final piece is that it shifts the focus from, like, you need to do this, and I need to do that like the you versus your partner to it's us playing against the house. And how do we win at the system versus at each other?

[00:24:35] Katrina: Yes. I think that's so huge. Right. It's like you're both on the same team. You both, you know, even if your standards are different or things like that, but you both want to feel happy and content and peaceful in your home. You know, like there are things that you can you can agree on that you you jointly are wanting. So yeah. I think that's so smart. That's so good. So there's different ways to kind of apply this to yourself, right. Like you can do it yourself. You can buy like the card deck and there's a book I think. Right. And you can go through it yourself. Or you can also, you know, hire a coach to help you and kind of facilitate. Is that correct way of describing that?

[00:25:12] Alison: Yeah. So the website is fairplaylife.com and their Instagram is @fairplaylife as well. They have so many resources. So on the website there is a documentary that you can watch. I think it's free on Hulu and YouTube right now. Any other streaming services? I know specifically in the US, I'm not sure as much abroad, but I know it's available there. There's a book, there are the deck of cards, and then on the social media, they also have a link to their certified facilitator. So there's a mixture of coaches and therapists that are trained in this facilitation. And so you can find someone who can work with you locally. Work with you virtually or again using the book and the cards yourself. You absolutely can go through and do this on your own, which.

[00:25:57] Katrina: Is really cool to know that you just have to know yourself. And it seems like, you know, like people are going to know. Or maybe they tried to do it themselves and it wasn't going well. It's like, okay, I need someone who can help walk us through it. Or sometimes, like if we hire this person to help us, then we know we're actually going to do it versus like, that book is just going to collect dust on the shelf and like, you know, sit on the nightstand for years, like, oh, that's right, we were going to do that. And then like never, never doing it. Yeah. Well, I think to me, Fair Play is the answer to what so many women struggle with, which is that division of labor.

You know, the mental load that comes with the organization of everything and, you know, making sure, you know, trains run on time, basically, and things like that. And then, you know, maybe taking an inordinate amount of responsibility for if they drop a ball, right. A train is late, a train breaks down, you know, to continue that metaphor, like you know, we're not perfect. We have a lot going on too. Like, you know, we get sick at times, like stuff happens. It is a great tool to use to help everybody to feel better and have the things get done that need to get done.

So like if it helps you feel better, it helps your relationship. I mean, I can only imagine how this helps to prevent a lot of marital strife. Let's just say, you know, or relationship strife and it's incredible. So I love that. Alison, thank you so much for coming on and sharing this information. Obviously, you're in the program and, you know, helping people through our program as well. And thanks, everybody. Go check out Fair Play.

[00:27:27] Alison: Thanks for having me.

[00:27:32] Katrina: Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #399: Creating an Equitable Home Through Fair Play with Coach Alison Jamison appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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What could weight-loss coaching look like for you?

This is the final installment of our three-part myth-busters series all about weight-loss coaching. In this episode, we’re getting into what it really looks like to participate in coaching and what myths you might have heard or told yourself about it.

If you want to hear first-hand from a weight-loss coach what weight-loss coaching is like, you’re in the right place. Listen to this episode if you’re curious about what kind of coaching would be the best fit for you and how it would fit into your life.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* What stories you’re telling yourself about people who go to coaching * The dangerous thought that is holding you back * Results you’ll get from coaching besides losing weight * How to stop using food to feel better * What you can do to feel more confident in your decisions * One thing that is keeping you stuck * A supportive thought process that has never failed me * The best time to work on your mindset * How to fit coaching into your already packed schedule * What you need to know about coaching during pregnancy

Don’t forget to listen to the last two episodes to hear even more myths about weight-loss coaching and what I think about them. My hope is that by the end of all three episodes, we’ll have busted any myths that are holding you back from getting the help that is right for you.

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #397: Part 2 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Ep #396: Part 1 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Ep #395: Weight Loss Success Story – Jenevieve Hughes, MD, FACS, CPE

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Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. It's part three of the Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Edition episode part three of the series, and I'm excited to kind of finish this up. Wrap it up with you.

Today we're going to be talking a little bit more about participating in coaching, participating in a weight loss coaching program, or just coaching in general, and just kind of talking about some of the resistance that sometimes folks have when they're thinking about this. And by resistance, I don't even mean that, like in a bad way. I mean, just kind of like apprehension, doubts, just not really sure. Trying to figure out if something is the right fit for them. And so my aim for this episode is to help you to figure out what will be the best fit for you, but also helping to clear up any myths that you might currently believe are true, that might be holding you back from getting whatever help is best for you. So again, not trying to convince anybody to do anything that they don't want to do or isn't right for them, but also just to clear up.

[00:01:40] Like I said, a lot of these myths, these misconceptions and things that people aren't quite clear on when it comes to this. So all right, let's talk about it. I'm going to start with some heavy hitters here. How about this one. Only people with problems need life coaching. And by problems like really like oh that person has problems. This is something that's common concern, right? Like if I go into a coaching program, then. Ooh, what does that mean about me? A lot of people have been raised to believe that being super self-sufficient and independent and not relying on anybody else is not only the right thing to do, but it's like ideal. Like, you definitely should just handle your own stuff.

Just don't get other people involved, Whatever concerns that might be about what potentially could possibly happen if you are involved in life coaching, it's understandable that if you've been raised with those concerns, that you would have to basically do an identity shift to be able to allow yourself to become somebody who needs life coaching, who's just like a normal human. Because guess what? We all have problems. We don't have to compare our problems. We don't have to. Another thing I hear from people is like, well, compared to other people, my life is amazing so I shouldn't complain. Like so. Sue. Everybody has challenges and struggles no matter what their life looks like.

[00:03:06] And yeah, some are probably more devastating than others. And also we don't have to compare what's not like. You don't get to feel the way you do or have the experience you do because somebody has it worse. That just doesn't make any sense and certainly doesn't help that other person. And it doesn't help you. So everyone loses when we think about it in that way. I also think that when it's like only people with problems need life coaching. I mean, and that's inherently steeped in judgment, just like it's something bad.

It says something negative about a person who decides to pursue life coaching or get help in that way. And any time that our thoughts are pretty judgmental in that way, we have the opportunity to look at that and go, okay, so we're worried that other people are going to be judgmental, but like, look at me. I'm judgmental. And not to get mad at ourselves or shame ourselves or anything, but just to go like, wow, I have some pretty negative thoughts maybe about this yet. Maybe there's part of me that wants this help and so how can I reconcile those things?

Could it be that, you know what I've heard about life coaching or my past experiences or, you know, maybe I know somebody who's done it, and just what I know about them makes me come to these conclusions that try to exclude me from getting this help that potentially could make a really big difference in my life, you know, really improve things a lot.

[00:04:31] So it's like only people with problems need life coaching. Well guess what then? Everyone needs life coaching. Because everybody has problems. Everyone. All of us. Sometimes they're big problems, sometimes they're small, sometimes they're in between. And all of them are important. And all of them deserve being dealt with and being supported through. So yeah, only people with problems need life coaching. Guess what? Yes they do. All of us need life coaching to help us. All of us could benefit for sure. All right, how about the next one?

I can't join the program if I only have a few pounds to lose. Right. Like. And I would say there may be programs where it's like, yeah, if you have a few pounds to lose, you shouldn't join because it's not the right fit. So it's a legitimate question to ask and something to explore, but to just decide in advance. Oh, I only have a couple pounds to lose, so it just doesn't make sense for me to join or I can't join. It's just. No. The one thing that a lot of people have done over the years that I always find interesting is they'll say, well, if I have 5 pounds to lose and the program costs X amount, that's X amount of dollars or Y amount of dollars per pound. And I always think to myself, that is the worst way to think about it.

[00:05:41] Like, why would you think about it in that way? Because it's not like it's not a price per pound. You can lose them for free by just not eating for a week. I mean, right, like it's that's not the goal. The goal is not to get those pounds off. There's a million ways you can do that that are free or very inexpensive. That's not the way to think about it. The way to think about it is I want to change my relationship with myself, my relationship with the food, the way I think about food, the way I think about my life and how food plays into that.

And the result of that will be I'll lose a few pounds, but there will also be several other, probably way more than several other results that will be life changing and way more beneficial and impactful to you than weighing a couple pounds less. I think when I hear that, I think about it like, oh my gosh, this person really thinks that these couple few pounds are so, so, so important and those couple of few pounds are just a manifestation of how food is used to help to counteract other issues in this person's life.

And what we're going to do is we're going to solve in other ways for those issues, so that food isn't relied on the same way. Those pounds can go away and they can stay away.

[00:06:51] That's the way to think about it. So what is the value of that experience? Right? I mean, a lot of people are like, I pay a lot of money for that. That's pretty priceless. Like to be able to feel totally better in my life, enjoy my life better so I don't need to use food to feel better. I mean, it's hard to put a price on that. Amazing. Okay, next one talking about my feelings is going to make me want to eat more. That's a really interesting one, right? Kind of that idea of like, yeah, but if I really start digging into this, it's actually going to get worse and I'm going to gain weight.

And I understand that concern, I really do. I actually really feel for somebody who has that concern. Like if I start looking at it, what am I going to find? It's going to be so bad. I'm going to just eat more and more and more. I can see if you believe that will be true about you, that you would be reluctant to look into that. And what I would say about that is anything could happen. Yeah, that could happen. But there are ways of going about this so that it is more manageable. It's like you don't have to rip off the entire, not even just the band aid, but like the entire wound dressing all at once. Like, you can do this in a step wise approach.

[00:08:01] I mean, I take people through a stepwise approach, and even if that is is too fast or too much, you can focus on just one area, one small area where it does feel more manageable and where you feel like you can work through it without feeling like you need to dive into food. And that will be so beneficial to you because the progress that you make in that one area, you start to extrapolate to the other areas in your life. That's one thing that I think a lot of. It's like a big misconception so many people don't realize about life coaching is you might be like, yeah, but there's like 17 different areas of my life where I want to make improvements.

How am I going to work on them all at once? Well, you're not you're going to pick one or maybe two if they kind of go hand in hand and you're going to work on those areas and you're going to make progress in those areas. So first of all, you're making progress there, which is amazing. And then you will have developed skills that you will start to apply to those other areas. It's not like it's 17 different things, right? You start in one place and then you build upon it and you apply what you learn to this area and that area and the other area. And it's kind of like the dominoes start to fall and it's much easier and it kind of flows.

[00:09:14] Once you've started doing that work. So I think even just recognizing that's a concern, like I'm afraid if I start talking about this, I'm going to eat everything like even that. We can coach on even that concern. We can coach on. We can work on figuring out a plan and a way to work through it all so you feel supported so you don't end up needing to do that. So good. All right. They in quotes, they don't know what it's like to struggle with weight. Right. So sometimes we are getting other people in our lives the proverbial they sometimes we are getting pressure from them that you don't need to sign up for life coaching.

Why would you need to do this whole program? Like you just need to eat less and move more and then you wouldn't have a problem. And so in terms of making the decision, getting that help could be opinions from other people or just what you've heard. You just kind of like, oh, like the fact that I'm even in a place where I need this help doesn't feel great. And even just recognizing that, I think is helpful, just recognizing like I don't feel understood. I feel like this is like a personal deficiency, that I can't figure this out on my own. And I really hate the fact that my next steps are to get help with some coaching. But I'm really kind of reluctant because I just really wish it wasn't this way.

[00:10:35] That's really good to recognize too, right? Even just like airing that out and going, like, I don't even want to be the person who needs this help. Then we can start going, like, okay, now we can soften to that a little bit, okay. Don't want to be that person. So how about I learn to be the person who no longer needs to struggle with weight and coaching will help me to do that, right? I want to be a different person. Cool.

We will help you to become that person that you want to be.

We can totally do that. So good. Okay, there's too much in the program for me to have time for it. I think a lot of people will worry about that. Like, how am I going to dedicate enough time? I mean, obviously it's something that you do need to dedicate some time to. I always say, does it need to be a part time job? No. Is it something you do have to devote some time to, though? Yeah, absolutely you do. And so are there times in life where it's not the right time? Most certainly, of course, I think definitely. But also a lot of us are like living in that kind of fallacy that we're going to arrive sometime. We're going to get to that place where things are so much better and things have settled down and it's quieter and like then I'm going to be able to dig in, and by that time never comes.

[00:11:42] There's always something. And so what we have to learn to do is this work while life is still happening, because that is life. If we could carve out a six month period where everything was calm and nothing was really going wrong and all of that like it would be pretty easy probably to lose that weight. But then when you went back into normal life, then what would happen? You wouldn't know how to keep doing all this stuff and supporting yourself actually, to a certain extent, kind of in a weird way, happened to a lot of people who tried to lose weight during Covid during 2020 and 2021.

They're like, hey, I can't go anywhere or do anything. I'm gonna lose weight. And it's a lot of people had a lot of great results. And then as soon as things started opening back up again, they were like, oh, I have not built any skills around traveling or going to events or going out with people or going to to fun stuff and doing things where there's people who have food and all of that. And then they really struggled. So we kind of have this idea of like, oh, I need to kind of have this time in my life where things are much more settled down. I mean, you can, but then you're also going to still have to learn how to do it when things aren't so calm.

[00:12:47] So I just kind of look at it like, yes. Are there times that it just doesn't make sense? Sure. But a lot of the time that we think that it doesn't make sense, we're not totally right. I think there's a lot of times when we could really be doing it, if that's what we want. And so, you know, we think there's too much in the program for me to have time for it. But we also have to recognize is that we don't have to do everything in the program. I mean, my program is structured so that people can get the help in the way that works for them.

Some people are going to enjoy this type of thing more than that type of thing, and others will be the reverse. And so we have both to suit both people, both types of people. But it doesn't mean that you need to do both to have success. That's the most important thing. I always like to think about joining any kind of program or anything like that with the following mindset, which is I'm here and I'm going to get out of this what I came for. It's my job to get out of this, what I came for. So what am I here for? And how can I go about getting what I need from this? And I has never failed me to think about it in that way, because then I'm not like, okay, well, this person says I have to do all these things.

[00:14:03] I'm like, yeah, that's not really for me, that thing or that's just not something I'm really want to focus on right now. Great, then I won't do that. I'll focus on this other thing. That is what I want to focus on. So I get what I came here for and I would encourage you to, whether you join me in my program or you do coaching with somebody else, I would encourage you to approach it in a similar way. And then that way you can do the amount of work or program content that you do have time for that does work for you and still get the results that you want. A simpler one is I don't have time with my kids activities and traveling, like I said.

I mean, that's life, right? Like what I've actually been finding, I kept thinking like, oh, the kids, when they get older, they don't need you so much. Well, they just need you in a different way. It's not less, it's just different. And it is maybe less physically taxing, but more mentally emotionally taxing. At times it's just different. It's just different. So again, figuring out ways to make it work is really important. What I will tell you is that during traveling is a great time to do this type of work. I've done tons of it while traveling because you're on a plane, or you're on a train, or in a car or whatever, there's so much that you can do when you're traveling.

[00:15:19] It's actually a great time to work through this. Also, with kids activities, often you are waiting, which is another great time. Like you've dropped them off and you're waiting. Another great time to be working on this stuff. So often you just have to kind of look at like, where is there potential space for me? Instead of sitting around talking to the other moms for an hour, maybe I could do that for 20 or 30 minutes and spend 20 or 30 minutes on this program. Right? Like there's absolutely ways that you can fit this in to your life. You just have to decide that you want to and that you're going to and get creative and solutions focused on how you can do all of that.

All right. Another one is I need to finish every worksheet to get my money's worth. So some people think of that like I have to. It's kind of similar to what I talked about before is like, I have to touch every single element and complete like dot every I cross every t, look at every single thing. In order for me to deem this experience a success and that I got what I came for And that is just a way to make sure that you're disappointed in yourself. I think if you think about it in that way, because really, the way you're going to know you got your money's worth is did you get the results you came for? Because it's not the doing of the things that means anything.

[00:16:33] You could finish every worksheet and have made zero progress. Would you still say that you got your money's worth? Like, and what I mean by doing them all and getting zero progress would be like, if you're just like, phoning it in and writing stuff down, but not really applying it to your life and actually taking action and stuff. So the way to get your money's worth is to create a result. And the way you create a result is by changing the way you think and feel and by taking action. And it has nothing to do with the number of things that you did, or how much of certain activities you did, or things like that.

What you're paying for is the transformation is the change, not the worksheets. Know what I mean? All right. I don't have the capacity for thought work right now. I mean, I think also there's a right time and a wrong time for things in our lives. So we again, we you have to filter this through like what is actually going on. But a lot of times I will find that people are like, oh, this one thing happened to me in my life, I can't do it now. And I would just argue that is the perfect time to do it right.

[00:17:38] Like that's the time to get that support. We've over the years, had so many people who have been so grateful that they've been in our program when some big life thing happened, because they ordinarily would have used that as an excuse to not sign up, but because they were in the program, they're like, well, let me get some coaching help on this. And it was so, so, so beneficial. Many times afterward, they'll say, if that had happened to me before, I would have eaten my way through that entire experience.

And I'm so proud to say that is not what I did because I had coaching in my life. I think when it's like I don't have the capacity for thought work right now, I would just kind of look at it like, well, but what do you even think that looks like? What do you think the thought work requires of you? Like if you say you don't have capacity for it, but then what is it that you don't have capacity for? Right. It's I kind of look at it like, but if you have capacity for like pain and suffering and struggle and anger and resentment and like all the different emotions that that people go through day to day, it's like you probably do have some capacity to explore some of that, and to look at it and figure out if there's a better way that doesn't feel so difficult for you. So again, I'm not over here trying to convince people to do this work.

[00:18:55] If they don't want to do it, cool, then don't do it like I understand. But if it's something you want to do that you feel attracted to, that you feel some sort of pull toward that you believe would help you, then I would look at it like, well, I'm going to use coaching to help me figure out how to create the capacity to do the thought work. That's how I'd suggest looking at it, instead of just telling yourself what you can't do or what you don't have, telling yourself, I'm going to go find a solution so I can do it. That's, I think, the best way to look at it.

Okay, so I think the last one, the last myth that I'm busting in this three part series is I want to get pregnant in the near future, and so I can't join the program. And so I touched on that briefly before about the eating. But I think that honestly, well, I've worked with many women who have been in a similar position trying to conceive while they've been in the program with us, and it's honestly been super beneficial for so many of them. There can be a lot of stress around trying to conceive, and sometimes it doesn't happen like super instantly. And having coaching support during that can be super helpful. Definitely you can still work on losing weight while you're trying to conceive.

[00:20:08] As soon as you find out you're pregnant, you should stop trying to lose weight. But depending on your body and your doctor's recommendations, I mean, there definitely are some people who are recommended to not gain any weight or to gain very little weight while they're pregnant and being in a program can be very beneficial to that. So you don't end up gaining much more than what's recommended. And it's I always think of it as like, what's cool is if you're pregnant, then you're not sitting there trying to lose all this weight.

You can focus on the mindset stuff even more, and I think it really helps pregnant women. That can be a difficult time for a variety of reasons physically, emotionally, things like that. It's a big transition in life and having coaching support during that and learning how to manage your mind and learning how to not use food to help you through that, which is what so many pregnant women do, is an incredible, incredible gift. And then the other cool thing is that then you have the baby, and so many people are like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? And how am I going to get the weight off? And what am I all that? And instead you're like, cool, I know what I'm doing. Like, you've got it right. Like it's totally a healthy way to support yourself. Support, baby. It's like helpful with breast milk production and all of that.

[00:21:16] And it's just not a reason at all not to get this help right away, right when it's available and could really help you. All right, friend? Well thank you, I've. That was a lot of myths that I busted over the last three weeks. There's a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun, actually, for me to be able to talk about all these things and just kind of lay it out there, like, here it all is. This is the deal. And hopefully clarify some things for you. And of course, if you have any other additional questions about joining us in my program, you can always reach out to us and ask those questions.

But otherwise I'm still I'm a huge, huge believer in coaching as a solution for struggling with food and overeating and the weight gain that often comes with that and to support you as you're losing weight. I, I can't imagine how people would do it without that. And honestly, if you think about it, the majority of people who lose weight don't keep it off. So it's probably because it's missing this level of support. So weight loss coaching is amazing and I encourage you to explore it. All right.

Thank you so much for your attention. Have a wonderful rest of your week. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #398: Part 3 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you always wondered whether weight-loss coaching might work for you?

In this three-part series on the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast, I’m busting myths surrounding weight-loss coaching so that you can separate fact from fiction and find out whether coaching might be a good fit for you.

This is Part 2, where we’re busting myths surrounding who weight-loss coaching is and isn’t for. We’re covering age, diet restrictions, therapy, and more.

If you’re telling yourself, “I can’t do it, this won’t work for me,” then listen up because this episode is for you.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why I’ll never tell you what you have to eat * A medically sound approach to changing your diet * The truth about what age you need to be to join weight-loss coaching * The relationship between coaching and therapy * Reasons to try weight-loss coaching even if you don’t want to lose weight * What I’ve learned about trauma amongst medical professionals * How to know if weight-loss coaching is for you

In this myth-busting series, I’m bringing you all the answers you need to understand what weight-loss coaching is really like and whether or not it could work for you. I’m all about helping you become the expert of your body so that you can make informed choices and do what works best for you.

If you haven’t heard, the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program is going out with a bang with one last round in October 2024. To get in on the action before it’s too late, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #396: Part 1 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series

Ep #395: Weight Loss Success Story – Jenevieve Hughes, MD, FACS, CPE

Ep #394: Empty Nesting and Other Big, Positive Life Changes

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there friend. Welcome back to the podcast. So today is part two of our Weight loss Coaching Myth Buster series. So glad that you're here.

We're gonna bust some more myths. I have to tell you something really quick, though, because the fact that this delights me so much is kind of amusing to me, but I just have to share it with someone. So I'm going to tell you. So I haven't talked much about my dog in a long, long time, but, you know, long time listeners may know that I have a West Highland Terrier. His name is Auggie. He's laying next to me sleeping because he barks so often. It's like clockwork. I usually will record an episode in the afternoon, and then he's barking at the mailman who's delivering the mail. And then I think you can sometimes hear that on the podcast. So today I made him come up with me, come upstairs to my office so that he could take a nap and be quiet. But anyway, so West Highland White Terrier, that's the official name of the breed.

And so where are the West Highlands? Well, they're in Scotland. And so my oldest son, I've mentioned this just a little bit, but he graduated high school, he applied to college, got in and deferred to take a gap year. And so he's traveling by himself around a lot of the world over this coming year. So he already left. He left a couple weeks after graduation. So he's been gone now I believe. Yeah, tomorrow will be a month. So he's as I record this. So he's been gone now for quite some time. So it's really fun. If you don't know the Marco Polo app, it's basically kind of like a walkie talkie app, but with video.

And so we set up everybody in the family including my younger kids and my mom on a family WhatsApp, so that he can talk to us and show us things and share with us where he is. And we also bought a huge map of Europe that will cover everywhere he goes, but a huge map of Europe, because that's mainly where he's going to be and put that up in the dining room wall and got like teeny tiny little stickers. And then every day, if he's gone somewhere new, we put a sticker on the map and it's already starting to fill up a little bit, which is really fun to see.

I think it'll be a really awesome gift for him at the end of the trip. To be able to have this map with all the little dots of all the places you went. Anyway, I digress. So he is in Scotland right now as I record this. And so he was at, I think it was called Stirling Castle today, which looked super beautiful and really interesting. And he said, “Tomorrow I'm going to go on a bus tour out to the West Highlands.” And I was like, “You are? You're gonna go to Aggie's ancestral grounds! You're going to see maybe some cousins many times removed.”

I'm like a crazy person. Yes, right. Obviously he's looking at me. He can hear it in my voice. Anyway, I was like, “Maybe you'll see some Westies there. Maybe you'll see a place where they breed Westies.” I'm like, really? I'm a little unhinged over here about the fact that he's going to be in that area of the world. He has actually seen some Westies, but more so in England. I think he said he saw one in Scotland. Anyway, I've become that person. I'm not a cat lady. I'm a dog lady. Anyway, maybe this will put a little smile on your face. Maybe not. Maybe you're not a dog person. If you are, maybe you'll understand my delight. Okay, let's do some work here.

When it comes to busting some myths about weight loss coaching and my program. Weight loss for doctors only, but weight loss coaching in general as well. And today's part I want to talk about is kind of more of the like, this won't work for me. I can't do it kind of section or segment, so to speak. I can't get what I need. This won't work for me type of a thing. And I think it it all makes sense. These are all great questions or all things to to really consider and think about. Of course, want to be an informed consumer and an informed buyer when you're signing up for anything. So it totally makes sense. It's it's great.

And if you miss the first episode, you will want to check that one out too. That's kind of more about the nuts and bolts and like, what is weight loss coaching even really about? And a lot of things that people have misunderstood or misconstrued or just general myths about my program in particular, but also about weight loss coaching over the years. So you'll want to check that one out as well. So let's hop right into these myths. So the first one I'll give you one kind of version of it. But there are many other kind of versions of this. And that's I'm diabetic or have an underlying illness that prevents me from following a structured eating plan.

And it could be diabetic. It could be autoimmune stuff. We've seen it with all kinds of other. This question has come up with people with all kinds of different kinds of medical problems or other issues. And so this kind of ties a little bit back to what we were talking about in part one of the series. But if you think you can't have success in the program because you can't follow a structured eating plan, or the types of things that we recommend are not the right thing for you, that's totally and completely fine if you already have someone giving you dietary recommendations.

If you already work with maybe a dietitian or a nutritionist through your doctor that you work with, or they've recommended somebody, or there's just best practices for whatever you're dealing with, that there's a better way to eat, then you absolutely should just eat that way. And again, because the way that we encourage eating or whatever, those are just guidelines that are sort of a broad recommendation for a lot of people, but it's not going to be the right thing for everybody. And if it's not the right thing for you, then don't do it for sure. Don't do it right. A big part of my program, in particular, is helping you to understand that you need to become the expert in your body and your life. Okay, so when we go to other people and like going to the whatever person online who's like, yep, okay, eat this way and this is your macro count and blah, blah, blah, all those things like that, like they become the expert.

They know what you should do in order to get results. And what I want you to know is that when you've done the work to really connect to your body, to really understand your body's signals to you, and also understanding like how does food feel in my body? What is the result of me eating these things when not eating these things, sometimes the messages are all there. We just often are not tuned in to them. We're not paying attention to them. We're just living outside of our bodies and looking outward instead of looking inward and going, wait, what if I actually already know? What if I have?

Actually, I already know that when I eat gluten, I don't feel great. I just kind of was in denial or never really put two and two together. So if there's a better way, you absolutely do that because the vast majority of our program, the real gold, the gem in our program is the mindset work, which has nothing to do with you following any kind of structured eating plan. And I would also say that sometimes the idea that a certain way of eating won't work for you, and not even saying what I just very generally recommend, won't work for you.

I have actually seen a lot of people who kind of have the belief that nothing will work for them. It's like because I have this illness, I can't follow this eating plan. Like then I don't have to do this, and then I don't actually have to do the hard work of trying to lose this weight. This is usually a subconscious kind of theme that's going for them that they don't know about, that they don't really realize. They think it's really true that they can't follow that eating plan.

But I have had people with this kind of concern come in and find out actually what I recommend is really amazingly healthy for them. And actually something that is works great with what it is that they're trying to do and the type of diet that they want to follow. So sometimes we even have to look at that mindset that we have that like this won't work. Instead of just going like, well, let me figure out what works for me, and maybe there's some overlap. Maybe there's a lot of overlap. And I've seen that with people who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant or things like that going like, is this going to be okay for me? And what I love is that over the years I've had literally dozens and dozens and dozens. And I mean, I think actually hundreds at this point.

I just have never actually done the math to confirm that specifically. But I've worked with many OB GYNs and maternal fetal medicine specialists who all have said that the way that I recommend for people to eat is actually super great for baby and mom. It's like if you're trying to conceive, if you are pregnant, and then also after you have the baby, it's great for supporting your body if you're nursing or just through the recovery. And it's not that deep. It's like it's a good, solid, healthy way of eating that's medically sound.

So if there is some other underlying thing, we usually just say like, yeah, talk to your doctor, talk to the other, support people who know more about your illness or whatever is that you're dealing with. And let's figure out what's the right thing for you, because I will bet you, and this is not an accusation, but just an example, that they're not. They're going to be like, oh, take a break from eating sugar. That's the worst thing you could do. They're like, yeah, it sounds like a solid thing to try. Like they're not going to be mad about that. And again, it doesn't mean you have to eat super low carb, right. If you're diabetic. Just going back to what I was saying last time, which is like this is not a low carb program, which is actually one of the other additional myths here.

I'm not allowed to eat carbs in the program. Not true, not true, not true. If you're diabetic, you have to eat carbs. I love carbs, carbs are amazing. You absolutely can eat carbs. You can eat whatever works best for your body when people keep interpreting it as it has to be low carb. And that's not the right thing for their body. They think, I can't get what I need out of this program, and that is so far from the truth, so far from the truth.

Okay, the next one. I'm too old or I'm too young, so I'm going to be just too old. A lot of people think that there's just some limit. And you know, what I really think about this is I really think it's kind of like the societal misogyny that exists that makes women think this about themselves. Because, sure, I think men sometimes think this way, but this is much more often, I think, a women dominant kind of way of thinking that like my best years have passed or I'm too old or I'm menopausal, so it's not going to work or I'm perimenopausal or whatever it is, like somehow blaming ourselves, blaming our age like we can't have what we want because of something that we have no control over. It's a pretty crummy place to live to think that that's the truth for you.

And I just know that's not true. Now, a couple episodes ago, I had on Lindsay Thomas, who's an amazing woman who is definitely toward the end of her career and has had amazing success. Like, it's absolutely not like the thing that is most important is do you want to make a change? I think that for some people, as they get older, they don't actually want to make a change. And if you just believe that you're too old to do it, then you don't have to. That's kind of an excuse. Then you don't have to do it because you're just too old. And that's fine if that's the life that you want to have.

But if you really want to make a change, you absolutely can do it. You just have to change the way you think and not think that way anymore. Every time you tell yourself you're too old, like, what result do you get from that? It's typically not going to be something that moves you forward in a positive manner. So it makes sense to evaluate that and go like, yeah, so what? Maybe I'm whatever age or whatever stage in my life that doesn't mean I can't learn anything, doesn't mean I can't do something different, doesn't mean I can't solve this problem that I've been dealing with for however many decades. Sometimes I think of it as like, well, would I want to go to the grave with this issue, or would I like to work through it? I mean, I think I might like to work through it, but also I'm someone who goes head first into these types of things because I just know how much coaching can help and how much improvement it can create in someone's life.

So you're never too old. You absolutely can do it. All right, how about this? If I'm in therapy, I wouldn't really benefit from coaching. And what I would say with that is I think in some cases that might be true for some people. They're really like doing some deep therapy work where it probably makes sense to focus on that for the time being. I think also, if there is somebody who's in therapy and really struggling more actively with a mental health issue, mental health diagnosis, maybe. Or maybe not. Would coaching be warranted or beneficial? But I will tell you that for the majority of the people that I work with who are not in a place like that, they actually do so well doing both. I've had both in my life for I think this might be my fifth year. Yeah, because they're different, but they build on each other in such a positive way. And what I find is therapy is helpful with some things, and coaching is helpful with others. And it's not like one is better than the other or more important than the other.

They're just different. And I get a lot out of both. And I know a lot of people who do the same. So therapy in my opinion, is a lot more about healing things, going back through stuff in the past and kind of digging through some of those older or repressed kinds of things. Whereas coaching is much more forward thinking. I find it to be much more helpful, like in the moment, actively. Like I have this thing coming up and here's how I feel about it. And I'm not feeling great, or I need some help with x, Y, and z thing. That is very helpful. So I always think of it as therapy is kind of looking more into the past. This is how I think about it.

Coaching is really helpful moving forward into the future. So they're different. But I will tell you that I've had people come in to work with me in coaching who are ready to move forward, but it's like they're dragging a ten ton weight behind them, and that weight is the past trauma from the past and things like that. And so it's like, well, we can move you forward, but it's going to be a lot slower and a lot harder than if we get rid of that weight. And so and this is like not body weight. This is not not a metaphor, but just like what they need to do is do some healing also from the past.

And so then they're doing therapy at the same time as coaching. And I think it's amazing. I will also tell you that over the years, the more I do this, the more I realize that I think the vast majority of doctors would benefit from working with a trauma therapist. There's, I think, very little chance that most doctors got through their training without some sort of traumatic experience. And if it's not any issue for you, then that might be fine. But I have been shocked and doing my own work at how sometimes some very vivid memory of a very stressful time during residency or med school, like, has just popped up and is still very much alive in my mind and in my body, and being able to work through that and release that has been very helpful and just very healing.

So I think you're both amazing. And so like I said, we have one more round of our program. So if that's something that you always kind of wanted to do and check out, then you'd want to explore that with us or maybe with somebody else. But I think it doesn't need to be one or the other or either or. Okay, I have food chatter, but I don't need to lose weight, so thinking like that, it wouldn't be the right thing.

The myth is it wouldn't be the right thing if I don't need to lose weight. And that's actually not the case. And there are definitely people who have a lot of food chatter, a lot of intrusive thoughts about eating and food, and what they find is that when they maybe it doesn't affect them weight wise until they get older. And so then they come and work with me when they're in their mid 40s or later when it is finally kind of catching up with them. So you could wait and do it then, but also why not just take care of it earlier when you know there's no weight issue and then hopefully you won't have or create a weight issue in the future.

So that again, since the mind work, the thought work is what's so so so important. It doesn't really matter if you're trying to lose weight or not. And there also are people who don't really need to lose weight, but know that the way that they're eating is not really the most positive or supportive. And so it can be helpful to them just to from a general good health kind of place, focus on some things. All right. And then the final question is, you know, I can't get one on one coaching. I need one on one coaching to be able to have success. And what I will tell you is that's just a complete myth.

Just not true. Not true at all. I worked with so many people before I offered one on one coaching and they had great results. So one on one coaching is you know what? Most people talk about that as meaning it's like just the coach and the client, the program member or whatever talking. There's nobody else around. What I always say is, like, you do get one on one coaching in a program like in our program with written coaching, you totally get one on one coaching. When you're coached on a group call, it's only you being coached. It's not like other people are talking to, like it's just you getting that time.

But the benefit is that other people are learning from your experience and you learn from others as well. And so it's like kind of everyone takes their turn and everyone learns from one another. And that makes such an amazing, beautiful, rich group experience. And so I think the myth is that you need one on one coaching in order to be successful, and it's just not true. And even in our program offering written coaching, I mean, that is anonymous. So if you are like, well, I don't feel comfortable sharing around other people, that's completely anonymous and even our group coaching is can be anonymous. I mean, we would hear your voice, but we wouldn't hear your name or your face. So it's completely fine to do that.

And I mean, here's the thing. You get to do what you want. If you want one on one coaching, there are one on one coaches out there, and you can totally benefit from that. But I will tell you that there's a reason I stopped offering it. And it's because in a lot of cases, it was really holding people back from getting the movement forward that they were wanting. So I think the invitation is to question what we believe is just like hard facts. True.

Like, is it really? Do I really have to have that? Why do I think I need that? Like, what if that just were not true? What am I withholding from myself because I believe that? What am I not allowing into my life because of that belief? Something to consider, right? So okay, that's part two. That is part two of Weight Loss Coaching Mythbuster edition. That's part two. All right. And then our final part three next week we're going to talk more about like actually digging in and doing it. You know what I mean. Those we're going to talk about. So can't wait to have you come join me then. All right. I'll see you then. Have a great week. Take care. Bye.

The post Ep #397: Part 2 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you worried that a weight-loss coach is going to tell you how to eat, when to eat, and what exercises you have to do, just like every other diet program out there?

The same misconceptions come up again and again, so it’s time to set the record straight. Whether you’re thinking of working with me or someone else, these are things everyone should know before going into weight-loss coaching. In Part 1, we’re kicking things off with what I call the “nuts and bolts” of joining a weight-loss coaching program: the basic facts that you need to know to get started.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How weight-loss coaching is different from dieting * A way of eating that works for you * The most important skill you’ll gain in weight-loss coaching * Tools to help you get to the root of your relationship with food and exercise * The key to getting permanent results * 7 myths about weight-loss coaching * How to lose weight while still eating the foods you love * How diet mentality is sabotaging your weight-loss goals * Why exercise isn’t helping you as much as you think it is

With all the misconceptions out there, weight-loss coaching might be nothing like you expect! My goal with this series is to bring your expectations closer to reality so that you have better chances of finding a program that works for you. If you’re looking for a permanent solution to your turbulent relationship with food, coaching is the way to go.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #395: Weight Loss Success Story – Jenevieve Hughes, MD, FACS, CPE

Ep #394: Empty Nesting and Other Big, Positive Life Changes

Ep #393: Overcoming the Fear of Food Spoilage

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I am really excited to do a little three part series for you here. What we're going to be talking about today and over the subsequent next two episodes is a little something I'm calling MythBusters.

Maybe you're familiar with the show MythBusters. I did not spell it similarly, because I certainly don't want any trademark infringements or anything like that. I didn't spell it as one word as they do, but we're going to be busting some myths today and over the next couple of weeks about some things that a lot of people seem to think about weight loss coaching somewhat, particularly as it pertains to working with me and my program, but also just broadly and more generally as well. And I'm excited to do this because, as you may know, I'm going to be hosting or holding one more round of my weight loss for Doctors Only coaching program. We're going to kind of go out with a bang and do one last group in October. And so I wanted to take this opportunity to bust these myths and to just clear the air, make sure that it's super, super clear for everybody and what I offer and set the record straight, so to speak.

But also, if you end up listening to this after that program has passed and you're thinking, hey, I want to work with a weight loss coach, or even now if you don't qualify for my program and you'd like to work with a weight loss coach, I think it's really important that you understand these concepts. So I believe that this is the case. And can be the case. What everything we're going to talk about for anybody that you work with, of course you'd have to talk to them specifically about it.

But I think it's really important for people to understand. I think people, even though I've been doing this for years and I sometimes feel like I'm like, how do I sometimes, to be honest, feel like I'm beating my head against the wall? I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel like I've said this so many times, but the same misconceptions pop up again and again and again. And so I just want to take again this opportunity to really set the record straight and make sure that you totally understand and make sure it's really clear what this is all about. So let's start off today. Today we're going to talk in this part about what I consider to be sort of the nuts and bolts of being in a weight loss coaching program.

And we'll kind of use mine as an example. But this could apply, as I said, to other programs as well. So the thing that I notice a lot of is people being really focused on the details of what is sort of recommended or specific guidelines as it pertains to how to lose weight. Now, of course, this makes sense because if you're joining a weight loss coaching program, you're probably doing it because you want to lose some weight, right? Like obviously like that would be clear. But I think the thing that people really get confused about is in thinking that is even really that important. I know why people get confused.

I know why folks are thinking that's the most important thing to focus on, and it's because food and exercise and all of that stuff has been all we've really known. When it comes to weight loss, it's It's an old pattern. It's a habitual way of thinking. It's something that we're familiar with changing, particularly when it comes to wanting to change our weight or relationship with food. And so it's the familiar. So of course, our brains go to that. So I'm going to talk about some of these myths specifically. But I want to just tell you big picture. Please hear me. That is such a non-important part of doing this.

I mean, do you need to choose something? Some way of eating? Probably. I mean, if you're eating in a way that's creating weight gain, like that's probably not working for you, and probably we need to find something else. So yes. Does it make some sense to spend a little bit of time on that? Of course. But it is by far two things. Not really what weight loss coaching is about, but also not where weight loss coaching really shines. The thing that weight loss coaching is really, really, really good at is helping you with all the reasons why you want that food in the first place.

Focusing on your thoughts and your emotions. And that is something that many folks really tend to gloss over or sort of forget about or think is just this, like cute little thing on the side if you happen to get extra time or something. And I want to just be really, really, really clear with you here that joining a weight loss coaching program and focusing mostly on the food and the exercise and not doing the actual coaching work. Not really doing the mindset work, the thinking and feeling work. What you will get is maybe some weight loss, but you won't maintain it. It will be no different than any other diet. And I know that there have been people who've come into my program and approached in a similar way, and they've gained the way back, and this is not like an accusation.

I'm not blaming anybody, but that's how that works. Basically, I just want to like, share that information with you so that you know that the people who go through my program and who have the best results across the board consistently program after program, year after year of doing this, are the people who dig into the mindset component and the thinking and feeling work. So I just want to start off with that, that if you're really looking for someone to, like, help you fine tune the specifics of your eating, give you like an exercise routine or things like that, you probably shouldn't sign up for weight loss coaching. You probably should go find like a trainer or a dietician or nutritionist or like somebody like that.

Those people really are the experts in that. And I'm not saying that they don't play a role in this. For some people, maybe they do, but for people who've maybe tried that and it still hasn't worked, or it's not something that they want to continue, or they just know that's not the right thing for them. Weight loss coaching is what helps you to get to the root of why there's all these issues with food in the first place, right? Like it's not so much that you need to be told how to exercise, right? If you're not exercising, it's more, why aren't you? What's your relationship with your body? With exercise? What has it been like for you to exercise in the past? Is there a different way for you to to think about exercise, to change that relationship with exercise? So that actually becomes something that you want to do that you enjoy doing.

That is a positive contribution to your self and your life. That's what weight loss coaching can help you with, right? Because you can work with a trainer. But then like say that you stop working with the trainer for whatever reason, you stop exercising. It's like we're right back where we started. So the in my opinion, the whole point of participating in weight loss coaching is to actually change the way you think, to change essentially a bit of who you are, so you can become somebody who consistently interacts with food and your body and exercise and all of that in a way that not only helps you to get to where you want to be weight wise and everything, but helps you to maintain it, because you have to change that part in order for you to maintain those results.

So what I would say is weight loss coaching is really a great option for people who want to pursue creating a permanent solution. I think that's probably like the what do they call the TLDR too long didn't read. I think that's the main point. But anyway, how many do I have here? I think about seven different myths that I want to discuss.

So we're just going to touch on each of these, and you're going to see some things that are kind of similar and some that are a little bit different. So the first one is I can never eat flour and sugar ever again. And I always find it so interesting. I totally understand like just understanding the brain. I'm human too. Like sometimes we read something or hear something or expose to something that kind of essentially sort of triggers our thinking. It's like before we've even really read it, we've already been activated and we kind of decide. We think we know what the thing means. So I have never, ever, in all these years, ever said that you can't eat flour and sugar ever again. I just sometimes like, where does this come from?

I don't understand. So to be clear, you don't have to do anything you want to eat flour and sugar. You're welcome to do that. But my recommendation or my guidance for people who have never tried taking a break from it, is to take advantage of seeing how different you feel taking a break. That means not permanently. That means take a break from eating it. Let your body reset itself physiologically so you can learn to reconnect with your actual hunger and satiety cues that exist within you. So you don't need to be measuring, weighing food, putting food in boxes, like doing any of that kind of stuff when you know what your body is asking for.

When you're eating flour and sugar regularly, it is much, much harder to do that. So not saying impossible, just a lot harder. And why not do it the easy way is what I have to say about that. I also know from working with people for years and years that everybody is like, oh, I don't know about that. And within a week or two, if they do it consistently, they're like, okay, I didn't love that, but that was not that bad. It was not as bad as I expected, including me. I didn't want to do it either. This is the worst the first time I did it. Now it really doesn't matter to me. Either way is fine.

But what I love about that is that it just goes to show how much work I've done on my thinking and my over desire to get my desire in check. It doesn't matter to me if I eat it or not, because it has an appropriate amount of importance in my life, and that comes from doing the thought work part that didn't come from it didn't just magically happen by not eating that food for a while. Okay, so I never tell anybody what they can and can't eat. You're an adult. You get to do whatever you want. But if you want to try something different than what you've tried before, it might be something to just take a break from it and then practice reincorporating it into your life in a way that is, you know, controllable and doesn't seem to like take over and drive you to overeat a whole bunch.

And how to do that is a significant portion of my program. Right. So a big part of my program is teaching you how to reincorporate it. So it just really doesn't make any sense to think that you can't eat flour and sugar ever again. But in case you were wondering, you absolutely can if you want to. Are there some people who decide, you know what, my life's better without it? Few. Not many, but some. And that's also your prerogative. But you absolutely can eat foreign sugar if you want to.

Okay, I can't join the program, or I can't participate in weight loss coaching. If I'm on weight loss medications. And I can see a lot of that is a newer thing and I can see how people are thinking, well, I just need to focus on like on one thing at a time. And I mean, I think there's a million ways to do everything and have success. So you could definitely just like, focus on getting the weight off with medication and then work on your thoughts. I personally think that is a longer and harder road than taking advantage of the benefits that you get from the medications, helping you to lose weight, and then you are transitioning right into a long term maintenance phase where you have already been working on your mind.

It seems to me that it would be harder to make that transition from one thing to the next. I guess if you're planning on staying on the medications for the rest of your life, then maybe you don't need to do the thought work. But I think a lot of people are kind of not thinking that they probably want to take it forever. And so if you're thinking, oh, eventually, someday I might want to come off of this, wouldn't it make sense to have done a lot of other work so that you could create a relationship with food and eating, and all of that helps you to maintain those results?

So I think some people think they can't participate in weight loss coaching if they're on the medications, because I'll just tell you what people have said. People are going to think I'm cheating. People are thinking, I'm going to think I'm taking the easy way out. The thoughts along those lines. Now, what I have to say to that is people aren't thinking that that's what you're thinking. And so if anything, we think that other people are thinking about us is actually what we think about us. And so coaching can be really helpful for you to figure out why you think that getting medication help is cheating for taking the easy way out.

Do you on some level believe that? Why? And does thinking that way actually serve you and benefit you? Maybe it doesn't, but it's worthwhile looking into which is one of the great things that we do in coaching is finding out what we think and believe, and then deciding if we want to continue thinking that way. Right? We find out what it is and also what the result is of us thinking that way, or believing that, and then deciding if we want to keep that or if we want to change it. But as far as my program is concerned, you absolutely can be on medications while you're in the program for sure.

I can't speak for any other weight loss coaching programs, but we can coexist. We can. It's a Venn diagram, right? You can definitely have that overlap and I would recommend it. I really would recommend it for sure. Okay. The next myth I need to stop or start exercising to be successful with the program. So a lot of people get confused about the exercise thing too. And that's actually another one is like Katrina recommends not exercising. I'm an exerciser, so I can't join the program, and that's absolutely not what I recommend. And I'm really, again, just not sure why this is constantly misconstrued. So I'm going to just completely clarify it for you here. This is what I say about exercise.

And this has not changed. This is the same as it always has been. In case you're wondering, if you exercise currently and you do it for any reason other than trying to lose weight, you do it because you love it, because it's fun. Because it's how you hang out with your friends, because it helps you to relieve stress. It helps you to sleep better. All the amazing things that exercise does for you. If you do it for those reasons and you like it and you want to continue. God bless. Absolutely.

Please continue exercising if you are doing it for the purpose of losing weight, then I ask you to stop doing that because all of the research shows that exercise does not help you to lose weight. It helps you to maintain weight loss. So it is something that we incorporate for sure later. But if you are doing it for weight loss, it doesn't work for that. And a lot of us really struggle when we're in that kind of weight loss exercise mindset. If we struggle with the old way of thinking, which was that you can essentially out exercise your eating habits so you overate, I'll just exercise more or I'll exercise more now so I can overeat later. And that is diet mentality. And that's not the kind of relationship with food and exercise in our bodies that I recommend or try to help people to cultivate.

So if you can transition, if you've been doing that and you can transition to something else that you don't do for exercise, that's fine. But a lot of people are doing it just kind of like suffering through just trying to get the weight off. I asked them to stop doing that because that exercise can make them hungrier. They may be changing how they're eating. They're working on their thoughts. It's a lot of things. It's too many things at once. And you can look at all the habit. Literature changing too many things at once. The likelihood of you being able to continue is low. It's much better to add one thing, maybe to then build on it. So of course we bring exercise in.

Now, somebody who hasn't been exercising, I tell them, hey, don't even start right now. First, when we're starting, you don't need to because I know in a couple of months I'm going to be talking to them about getting started with it. But often there's a lot of other work that we need to do mindset wise, before we're even in a position where exercise is going to be something that is a positive contribution to them in their lives or anything that they can sustain or enjoy or anything like that. And so we wait until it's the right time to introduce it. And finally, I will tell you that on occasion I have worked with some people who are doing really very intense exercising.

So this often looks like intense endurance exercise. So this would be like running marathons, training for marathons or really long triathlons, ultra marathons, things like that, or doing a lot of really intense heavy weight lifting, like powerlifting competitions, like things like that. And so in those cases, what I recommend is that those folks take a break from the competition part. So I'm not saying you can't run anymore. You can't work out. I would just say not like the training that's required to run a marathon or more you'd like still be maintaining your muscle mass and everything, but not actively working to build and add more muscle.

And the reason for that is because both of those things really strain your body, that endurance exercise. I mean, you can talk to tons of people. I know so many people I've talked to over the years who are like, I trained for a marathon, didn't lose a pound like your body when it's strained like that, often will not release extra weight. So if you're training and exercising like that and trying to lose weight, often people don't have great success. So I want people to have success. So I usually recommend, hey, just take a break from those races for a few months, get to where you want to be, and then you can totally do it again. And same for the heavy weight lifting. And this is I think I just talked about this on a recent episode.

It doesn't work very well when you're trying to anabolic Lee like put on more muscle on your body while catabolic trying to lose fat. It doesn't work very well. And even the professional bodybuilders and all the people who compete in that, they don't do it that way either. And it's because it doesn't work well. They put on muscle, and during that time they add fat because they're eating a lot, because they you need food to be able to put that muscle on. And then they go through what they call cutting period where they lean out, and that's when they're losing that fat.

And during that time they're maintaining their muscle mass, but they are not trying to add a ton more. So that's it. On exercising I love exercising. I just exercised before this. Exercising is amazing, but it would make sense that if we do exercise that we do it in a way that serves us and a lot of people don't. And if they're not doing it in a way that serves them, then we need to take a break from that until we can create a way that does serve them. All right. I have to do intermittent fasting, another meth thinking. You have to do intermittent fasting. You absolutely don't. And I'm actually super clear that you don't because it's not the right thing for some people.

They're definitely people where it's not the right thing. Now, can it be something really nice for doctors? Absolutely. For the people who it is the right thing for. One of the reasons why it can be so nice is because a doctor's lifestyle. I mean, it's so nice to be able to just have a super crazy busy day and be able to just work completely through lunch and have it be no big deal. And then you eat a great dinner and plenty of food and you feel good, and it's no big deal if you don't feel good while you're trying to do intermittent fasting, then maybe it's not for you.

Or maybe we have to try doing it in a different way or easing your body into it. But it's not like the goal is you have to do a lot of intermittent fasting. I actually did a podcast episode many years ago about doing excessive fasting, and that's what I really saw from a lot of people, was like, they were like, well, if I eat a little bit less, like, what if I just eat a lot less all the time? And I've seen that's kind of out of the scope of this, this episode, but I've seen that not work for people, especially when it comes to a long term solution. So I think it is really nice to have your body be in a position where if you need to fast or decide you want to fast, your body will happily do it.

You feel amazing and that's awesome. Do you have to do it? Absolutely not. And like I said, for a lot of people, it's not the right thing. You're going to ask any of the people who work with me, particularly in the last couple of years, if somebody comes to me and says that they're doing fasting and they're not losing weight. When the first things I talk to them about is actually eating more often. So you know what I mean? It's like it's not always going to be the end all, be all thing, and just specifically not for each individual person.

And that's kind of one of my problems with a lot of the recommendations that are out there where it's just like, oh my gosh, my friend read this book about intermittent fasting for women. It's amazing. It's working so well, but when I do it, I'm not getting those results. Well, maybe because that's a great fit for her and her body and her life and everything, and it's not great for you. So we just got to figure out what works for you, that's all. And that's what I've always been working toward, which is creating an individualized program for each person. What is going to work for you if it doesn't work for you, you're not going to be able to maintain it, and then you're not going to maintain your results.

So for some people, fasting is the best thing ever. For other people, it's contraindicated or it is not a good idea or their body just doesn't like it. Cool. Figure it out another way. There's so many other ways. Okay, so that leads me into the next one, which is the program recommends eating keto. And this has been from the beginning. People are confused about thinking that this program is low carb or keto or anything like that, particularly going back to the taking a break from flour and sugar thing. And that's not the case at all. Now, there are some people who feel better eating low carb, and if that is the case, they are more than welcome to do that.

That's fine for them, but that's definitely not something that I like, encourage or even recommend or anything like that. What a lot of people get confused about is in thinking that flour and sugar is the main way that you get carbohydrates in your diet, and it it doesn't have to be. I mean, it might be for specific individuals, but it doesn't have to be. You can not be eating flour and sugar and still be eating starchy vegetables, whole grains, fruit. There's naturally occurring sugar in a lot of food. What we're not eating is added sugar. That's what we're taking a break from refined sugar. So I don't actually recommend keto mostly because the vast majority of people who use keto can't maintain it long term.

There are people who can maintain a just more of like a low carb lifestyle, not so low carb that it ends up being keto. But for some people they really do feel so much better. And just like life is so much better when they're low carb, I happen to not be one of those people, so it's not for me, but for some people it is. And if you know that about yourself, you absolutely can do that. But absolutely. I mean, you can eat tons and tons of carbs. Absolutely you can. All right. And then the final question is a little bit different because it's not specifically about the the food stuff and exercise, but another one that a lot of people get confused about is thinking that they can't join my weight loss for doctors only program if they're retired, and that's not true at all.

We take all women physicians we actually have several retired people who are working with us right now, or people who are kind of right on the cusp there. And actually, they often do super well in the program because they have a little bit more bandwidth and space in their lives to be able to participate and participate fully. Right. Really take advantage of the resources that are made available to them. So if you're retired, you absolutely can be and you can be retired at any stage of life, right? So if you are someone who has gotten an MD degree or a DO degree or an international equivalent of that, and you're a woman, you are welcome to come into the program and get that help. Okay. Well, this ends part one of weight loss coaching myth busting. That was fun. I love being able to just share this with you. Something that I've learned from doing my own work over all these years is that one thing that is hard for me is when I misunderstood, when I feel like I'm misunderstood, and these are things that I feel really misunderstood about. Sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, how many times do I have to say this? And yet I'm still misunderstood? So if some of that frustration was coming through, please forgive me.

My apologies. I want to just try to make it as clear as possible. And like I said, if this is something that you're coming across at some time in the future, just know, like what you're looking for. Like the real gold in weight loss coaching has nothing to do with any of the stuff that I just talked about. Okay. The real gold is in the mindset work and learning how to process your feelings for real. Okay. All right. I'll be in the back next week with part two. We're busting these myths. Can't wait to see you then.

The post Ep #396: Part 1 – Weight Loss Coaching Myth Busters Series appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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If you’ve been on the fence about whether Weight Loss for Doctors Only is for you and you wish you could have a peek behind the scenes, I have a treat for you!

In this episode, you get to hear Jenevieve Hughes’ weight loss success story and the highlights of what she gained from the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program. Spoiler alert: she gets into a lot more than just weight loss.

Tune in to be a fly on the wall for this conversation about the strategic byproducts of working on weight loss and creating peace and freedom around food through a mindset-based approach. Learn how many things can improve in your life beyond your relationship with food and your body when you simply change the way you think.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why you need to get back in tune with your internal hunger cues * How mindless eating is sabotaging your relationship with food * The surprising ways you’re using food to cope with stress * Everything you can gain from hearing other people’s stories * Why traditional weight loss programs don’t work long-term * The secret ingredient in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program * What weight-loss approaches did and didn’t work for Jenevieve * How mindset work has helped Jenevieve in other areas of her life * One thing that makes weight loss easy

The beautiful thing about hearing people’s stories is that you start to see yourself in others. You may feel alone right now, but you’re not. I hope you find comfort, support, and encouragement in Jeneveive’s story as well as the inspiration to take the next step for yourself. You have the power to make a change and I’m here for you!

To learn more about the program that helped Jenevieve and over 1700 other women physicians, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #394: Empty Nesting and Other Big, Positive Life Changes

Ep #393: Overcoming the Fear of Food Spoilage

Ep #392: Dealing with Unpredictable or Erratic Schedules While Losing Weight

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

I have a really, really fun interview again today. I have another weight loss success story with Doctor Jenevieve Hughes. She's incredible. She's so great. I think you're gonna love this interview, this conversation so much. It's like you get to be a little bit of a fly on the wall listening to us chat about things. What I love particularly about this episode, is how much depth we went into on what you might call the strategic byproducts that come from working on weight loss and creating peace and freedom around food through a mindset approach like I offer in weight loss for doctors only. It's not just about weight loss, it really isn't.

You do lose weight and you do figure all of that out. You, you know, create a different relationship with food and all of that, and that's incredible. And on top of it, so much else improves in your life. And so we spent quite a bit of time chatting about what all those things can be, or at least many of them It's certainly not comprehensive or all inclusive and what we talk about. And so I'm just really excited for you to learn more about that, for you to think about how you might have a similar experience if you were to give this a try.

And, you know, I feel like sometimes I was I was telling Jenevieve before we started recording, I was like, sometimes I feel like people get tired of hearing me talk about it. So I think it's nice to have other people come in and share their experiences as well. So I'm really excited to share Jenevieve's story with you. She's just an incredible, incredible doctor and helps so many women. She's a breast surgeon and we need good people like her in medicine, so I'm so glad that she is able to support people who are doing such great work. Is truly just such a thrill for me. And it helps just recognize the value that is being created every day in the Weight Loss for doctors Only program. So I'd love for you to give this a listen and let it inspire you. I think when we hear about other people's stories, we really can start seeing ourselves in others. It's a great conversation. I can't wait for you to listen so I will stop talking then. So please enjoy this interview with Jenevieve Hughes.

Hi Jenevieve, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Jenevieve: Hi, Katrina. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Katrina: These are just great opportunities. I love to just talk to people about their stories and you know, how they've gotten to where they are now. So it's going to be super fun. Let's start off with you just letting the listeners know a little bit about you. What would you like to share just about you?

Jenevieve: I am 48 years old. I live in Texas. I have a husband and two teenagers, a 15 year old and a 13 year old. And then I have a doodle on a dog. So that is our family. I work as a breast surgeon.

Katrina: Okay, cool. Yeah. You've got that, like, very classic little family, right? Including the dog. Gotta include the dog. Okay, so at what point in your life let's like, take it back to the beginning. At what point do you feel like you started maybe having an issue with food or weight? You know, I think like for me, I think I had a food issue long before I had a weight issue. Like, where did it all start for you?

Jenevieve: I can definitely look back to college, to undergrad and see that that was a time where the typical freshman 15, you know, I definitely remember having that happen and feeling like there was a little bit of food scarcity, like, well, I have to make sure I get to the, you know, campus dining hall, you know, at these hours or, you know, starting to want to take extra food back with me or, you know, just kind of trying to make sure I knew where the next meal was going to come from.

Katrina: Like, just in case you get hungry later. Yeah. Yes. They used to get mad at us. If we take, like, an apple out of the dining hall, we'd have to, like, hide it because they get mad. Oh, that's funny.

Jenevieve: I don't remember that at all. I think I felt free to do that, but, you know, that kind of went on through college and then into medical school. I think I was in kind of a stable phase at that point. But then once I hit surgery residency, the idea of like, where's the next meal? When's it going to happen? Food restriction and scarcity really came into play. And I definitely remember, you know, any chance you got you ate whatever was available, which usually was, you know, peanut butter and crackers in the resident, you know, the call room area, you know, whatever foods that the nursing station was available and especially going into, like long surgeries. And, you know, I remember feeling like I don't know what I'm going to get to eat. And so I need to eat now. And there was no attention to any sort of hunger, you know, it was just eat while you have the chance. And the reality is, there was never a time that I did get to eventually eat. You know I got to eat eventually, but not knowing and just not really having the skills or even the thought to try to plan, you know, or bring food or something like that. It was always felt just kind of like, you know, I didn't know where that next meal was often going to come from, and not because I was didn't have the ability to get a meal, but just more the schedule and the crazy hours and work hours and that sort of thing. So I think that's when it really built for me was in residency.

Katrina: And I feel like, I mean, I think for everybody in med school, we learn from the residents and then we perpetuated in residency, but particularly in surgery. You know, it's that idea, like when I really think back to when it was really ingrained in me, like, you need to eat when you have a chance. It was on my surgery rotation, you know, for three months it was surgeons. It's like, oh, this is how we do this. You know, we got to really pile on, like have this huge breakfast because we could go all day. It is really part of that mindset. And I and I think actually for some people, particularly the men, they do lose weight. You know, they're like having a hard time keeping weight on. And so they really do probably need to follow that kind of a mindset. But I think for others of us, right, we start getting into this idea that even if food is plentiful, the way we're thinking about it is as though it's not.

So then we are always in that state of like relative deprivation. You know, we feel like if we're not deprived now, we're going to be deprived in the future. So pack on as much as you can, which is actually, you know, humans evolved to do that as a survival skill. You know, I mean, if for the vast majority of human existence, starvation was the main cause of death, I mean, it would make sense that when there's food available that you should eat it, you know, but then we just recognize, like, wait, hold on. If I just, like, back up and look really right, like, we're not going to die, we're not going to fall over, there's going to be a meal. Like, maybe I have to go a couple hours longer than typical or what I'm used to, or what I would prefer, but I'm going to be okay. Yeah.

Jenevieve: I mean, for me, it really became mindless eating. Like I said, there were no hunger cues being paid attention to. You know, it was just when you can. And it became very mindless. And I considered myself, at least at that point in my life and for years after to be a foodie. And, you know, we definitely would plan and celebrate with food and plan special events. And that was a big part of my husband and my early relationship, you know, was around food and special restaurants and, you know, everything revolved around food. But it became mindless in terms of not paying attention to my own body.

Katrina: Yeah. Okay. So that all makes sense. Oh, I have a question. In college, were you already pre-med? Did you already know you wanted to be a doctor?

Jenevieve: Fairly early on? Yes I did, within the first year I was pre-med. Yes.

Katrina: Pre-med. Okay. So you already were kind of like on that track because I. And I just bring that up just because I think there is like an additional layer of stress when you know that, you know that that's what the goal is and you know you're building toward that. So like, every grade is so important and you know, all the basics. I remember the basic sciences GPA. Oh yes, I know they don’t do that anymore. But I don't remember who I was talking to recently about that. I'm like, well, it's a little interesting if like, that's cool, because if your basic sciences GPA isn't good enough, they won't even look at you.

Jenevieve: Doesn't matter what the rest of the grades were. Yes, I was pre-med, you know, pretty much all four years. And it is. I mean, it's interesting to look back because I think food for me was not the answer. Definitely a big answer and a big way that I coped with that stress. And I didn't understand that that's what I was doing. I definitely was doing it, looking back on it. But I didn't understand that younger me just didn't recognize that that's what I was using to cope.

Katrina: And when you think about it like getting into, you know, the being a foodie, it's like, you know what? You have time to be even when you're surgery resident is like someone who enjoys a meal, you know, if you are going to eat anyway, you know when you're off. Like maybe you could go to a like a place where the food's particularly good. You know, it's like it seems like a hobby that is very doable, right? Like you don't need a lot of energy, you know, you don't have to get sweaty, like you don't have to, you know, do like, you know, have all this extra time.

You can do it when you're tired, you know? And so it does start to sound like something that is like a thing that you just have for yourself is like you do work and then you get to look forward to, you know, where you're going to go on the weekend. And that helps you get through the week and things like that. It's like you can see how it makes sense. It's like a logical thing and honestly, there's nothing wrong with it unless another problem ensues comes up.

Jenevieve: Yes, it's socially acceptable. It's like you said. I mean, there's it's so easy to lean on food.

Katrina: Okay, so that was residency. And then at what point were you going, hmm, maybe something needs to happen here.

Jenevieve: So after residency, I did fellowship. And then at the very end of fellowship, I had my first child. And then very quickly after about 15 months later, I had my second. And then after he was born is when I really started to focusing on trying to lose weight. Really. Before then, I was never in any program before then. I don't remember, you know, really making much of an effort to change my body at all. And then after my son was born, I joined Weight Watchers, and that became the start of on and off of Weight Watchers for a long time.

Katrina: Mhm. Familiar story. Yes.

Jenevieve: But I mean I think, you know, when I first started listening to your podcast, that was one of the things that resonated with me is, oh wow, I'm not the only one. Obviously there are many people out there now I know, but I mean, here's somebody else who had a very similar story. And ultimately, in the long run, this did not work.

Katrina: Yeah, right. Well, it's like what when I sometimes people like, why beat up on Weight Watchers? I'm like, I'm really actually not beating up on Weight Watchers. Weight watchers, to me represents any number of different types of programs and ways of trying to lose weight that, you know, kind of have. I mean, yes, you can personalize it somewhat, but basically like this is what you have to do. There's limits, there's counting of some sort. There's always been some sort of counting involved in Weight Watchers, even as they've adjusted things over the years, and then very much like means to an end behavior, like from the majority of people, you're willing to do this to get the weight off and then what?

And that's the part that has really been missing. Not that they don't talk about maintenance. It's just I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. Then what am I doing? I'm gaining it back because I don't know anything else to do. So I think it's more that it kind of gets us into this idea too, of getting very used to feeling pretty bad, some range of bad, some range of stressed or restricted or extra hungry around the idea of losing weight, you know, suffering through to get to where we want to be. And then, you know, having it for a hot second before we lose it again. And then we start thinking that that is weight loss.

Jenevieve: Yeah. I mean, I think that's where I fizzled out with these different diet programs was two things. One was the counting. Like there would just come a point where I could count no more points counting whatever, and we can talk about what I do now, you know, in terms of kind of tracking, but it's so different than what, you know, required. And I am definitely a bit of a perfectionist, something I'm working. I'm, I'm a recovering perfectionist. That person that certainly like, if I'm going to be on this planet or whatever, I'm going to be all in. So then when it came to that point that I felt like, well, I am so sick of doing this, then it was like, well, throw everything out.

I can't do any of it. And like you said, I was never in a program with the intention of thinking, I can do this forever. This is me forever. I'm happy with this. That was never even on my radar. There was always going to be an end. And that's what I think is so different. Me now versus then is, you know, and why those programs didn't work for me is there was always going to be an end, and I was never going to count forever. I was never going to eat that way forever.

Katrina: And I think for some people too, right. It's like, I'm not I'm never going to take these medications forever. I'm, you know, whatever it is, anything that we're doing as that kind of means to an end behavior isn't necessarily bad. It is another way, like, you can use Weight Watchers, lose a bunch of weight or any other way and lose a bunch of weight. But then still, what lays ahead of us is the invitation, then, is to figure out a way to maintain that, that we like, that we are, you know, not just like begrudgingly willing to do, but more than happy to do that feels normal and fine and easy and, you know, not that big of a deal. Like that's going to be something that we're more likely to continue on forever.

Jenevieve: And the idea that that was available to me, that there could be a way that I could lose weight and maintain it and like it, you know, I've been reflecting back and I'm in a year, two years ago, if you had told me that, I would've laughed at you, you know, and if you told me that, I could change my thoughts and that would help me to achieve my goals in terms of my health and my body and weight, I would have thought, that's crazy. You know, my thoughts aren't going to fix that. And it turns out I was wrong. I was I was uninformed, uninformed.

Katrina: Right. You just didn't know what you didn't know. Okay, so you did Weight Watchers several times, maybe more than several times.

Jenevieve: I mean, I really one I had one major, um, the first time I did Weight Watchers, I had good success. And and when I got past that weight more recently, again, I it was interesting because I felt that kind of old familiar like fear of like, oh my gosh, I'm now at that point again, can I go below that? Can I keep going past it? Am I going to give up like I did before? You know. And that was really interesting to work through. Some of those thoughts and feelings that I had.

Katrina: We definitely will have memories, you know, like at this weight it means this. And this is where I was at in my life when I weighed that amount. Yeah, there can be a lot to go through, more than you'd think.

Jenevieve: And I'm now at a point that I am less than I was 26 years ago. I mean, really, when I basically the year after college, I don't really have a lot of recordings of what I was before then, you know, in terms of, of weight. But it's crazy to think about that. And I can't ever I don't remember in my adulthood weighing what I weigh now then. And that was an interesting kind of line to cross when I got the low where I had ever gotten with any diet plan.

Katrina: It's like an important marker on the road, right? It's kind of like, oh, this is what this means. So at what point did you start thinking maybe Weight Watchers is not it for me?

Jenevieve: I lost a lot of weight with Weight Watchers. I gained all of it back. And then I tried Weight Watchers again multiple times, but it would be for much shorter spurts than I did initially, and it would always come down to that. Like, I'm so sick of, you know, counting points. I'm so sick of tracking. I don't want to do this forever. And then I would go on and again off again. And so there kind of came a point there where I thought, well, this is just I'm just this is my destiny to be in a body that doesn't feel great for me and this is it. And I was starting to learn more about, you know, my own self-image and that I wanted to improve, that I wanted to give myself more love. And so I thought, well, you know, I need to start by just being where I'm at. But I just kept having this kind of lingering sense of like, I don't feel good. You know? I don't feel good in my body. I don't feel like I can move as easily as I want to. I, you know, have some GI issues and heartburn and stuff like that that I, you know, did not want to live with forever.

But I didn't know if that could ever be something that would go away. And then actually, it really was the fall of 2022 that on Facebook somewhere through physician moms group PMG, which I very loosely follow. I'm so sometimes you know something that I am in PMG and sometimes something will catch my eye. And I think people were talking someone there was a post about weight loss and someone mentioned your name and podcast and I thought, you know, it just caught my attention. And so I went to the podcast and I think, you know, started with a few episodes and really thought, you know, this is different, this is unique. This is not something I've ever heard anyone really saying before. You know, this this idea that my thoughts have power, you know, the thinking cycle and not something I had ever been taught before. And so it really was maybe a month or two went by, listened to podcast episodes. And then there was the offer for the next Waldorf group to join. And I thought, well, you know what? I have to lose.

Katrina: And WLDO was Weight Loss for Doctors Only. That's our nickname for it, for anybody who like what.

Jenevieve: And I really had no idea what I was getting into.

Katrina: And the best way, don't you think? I didn't really know either. I was like, I don't know what this is, but I guess I'm just going to do it and see what happens.

Jenevieve: Before the winter holidays. And I talked to my husband and I was like, what do you think? You know, are you okay if I spend this money? And he's been so supportive the whole process. But, you know, he was like, sure, you know, whatever you think, I trust you. If you think this is, you know something, you want to give it a try. And he knows me well enough to know that, you know, when I say I'm going to do something or at least attempt something, I'm all in, at least for certain period of time. He was very supportive and I thought, well, you know, like I said, what do I have to lose? I don't know what I'm getting into. This seems weird because there's not really like a set program.

Katrina: It's what we're used to. We're like, so what are the rules going to be? Because I want to know all the.

Jenevieve: Rules, and then I will follow all the rules as long as I possibly can, until I beat myself up when I don't.

Katrina: Exactly, exactly. Yes.

Jenevieve: So I kept thinking, well, the rules are going to come later. They must come later. There must be rules. And little did I know, I'd heard of coaching, but I had not ever used it myself. I had no experience with that at all.

Katrina: Well, what I hear from a lot of our members is you have to let people know how much additional help you get in this program outside of just the weight loss. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I kind of I tried to, but also I think some people are like, yeah, forget all that. I just help me lose weight like when they're first coming in. So I get that. But I do think that, you know, when you're thinking about whether this type of thing is the right thing for you, like as an individual, I think it can be helpful to recognize it's not like, okay, this is work that's going to help me in just one area of my life. Like I'm going to build skills and develop tools for myself to use that actually, then really nicely extrapolate over into other areas of my life.

Or sometimes we actually end up doing it the other way around. For instance, like say, someone you know more acutely has an issue with work and we coach a lot on work. What they learn from doing all of that, they start going, oh, wait a minute. Look, I can actually apply that over here. And that helps me with food and weight and all that stuff as well. So I'm just curious to know from your experience outside of the food and weight stuff, which is great and amazing, and exactly what we want is like to be relieved of the stress and the obsession about that and everything. What else have you found helpful? Like how else has this helped you in your life?

Jenevieve: Yes, I could probably talk for a long time. It turns out that our minds and our bodies are so closely linked, right? And that seems so basic. Like as physicians, we should all know this, but I think we're also we also are somewhat trained to be disconnected. And we're certainly in our training, you know, taught ways of disconnecting ourselves and our feelings and our thoughts and our, you know, from our, our body. I mean, that's kind of the definition of residency in some ways, right? Is you just keep going no matter what, and you ignore what's really in there.

And, you know, for me, I definitely have learned how closely these things are linked. And that's been the key. You know, I feel like sometimes people ask me, well, what's your secret? And there's no secret. It's just eye and mind opening to find out that, you know, again, changing my thoughts would lead to changing my feelings and my actions and my results. And wow, I can actually get the results that I wanted. So, you know, and a high level I would say that is my secret. That's my the magic there. But you're absolutely right. It has affected so many things. I really do love the concept of The Onion, and I heard one of the coaches say the other day, you know, there's no center to that onion.

Katrina: Meaning just the layers, like you get through one layer and then you've had a lot of improvement and you realize at some point like, oh, look, there's another layer, there's more I can do, there's more I can improve.

Jenevieve: Yeah, you go deeper and you keep going deeper. And it's kind of amazing to think about like that is life, right? And we can spend our lives if we want to, continuing to peel the onion and we learn about ourselves, we learn about others in the world around us that way. And so that's been, in a weird way, fun. Sometimes I think about this journey that I've been on is is kind of the easiest hard thing I've ever done. I love the concept that we can make things easy. We can choose for things to be easy for sure. I never viewed weight loss that way and a lot of other things in my life I never viewed wow, I can approach this as being easy. How can I make this easy?

And now I feel like I asked myself that fairly often. You know, I've got a challenge I'm facing. What can I do to make this easy? What thoughts do I need to lead to feelings that lead to my actions and results that will make this easy? So some of the skills that I feel like I have learned and the tools that I've gotten for weight loss have completely spilled over into other areas of my life. Another one that I love is winning and learning. There's no losing, and that when I'm not winning, if I feel like I'm not winning, I'm learning something. And that has been a really, really useful gap versus gain mentality is another one. I think we set goals and including with weight loss, you know, I want to lose X number of pounds. And if we don't get there, you know we tend to focus on the gap. Well I was 5 pounds short or whatever it was exactly.

Katrina: Or it took me too long or whatever. There's always some way of seeing what the, you know, glass half empty. Yes. For sure.

Jenevieve: Um, and so that has definitely those concepts have been huge. I mean, I think I mentioned earlier that I'm kind of a recovering perfectionist, and I've really delved into kind of looking at my self-talk and tendencies there to feel like I have to do everything perfectly and be perfect in other areas of my life. You know, definitely not perfect in the weight loss journey and definitely not perfect anywhere else that I would be. I would have used to beat myself up about that. And that's something that I've looked at. Done work on relationships and boundaries and rule books that I have for people, and that's been really meaningful.

I think the other thing that's been huge is learning, number one, that I have emotions, which again, seems so basic, but I was a complete stuffer, like I was so out of touch with my emotions that unless I was literally bawling out loud, you know, like I never thought to stop and consider what I'm feeling like. I never thought to name it. So I literally, in my journal carry around a feelings wheel. And I still use that, you know, learning to, number one, identify my emotion. And then number two, learning to process them. I didn't even know that was possible. You know, I didn't even know I needed that. And now, I mean, I'm still learning. And it will be a lifelong process, you know, of learning and using that skill.

But if there's any one thing in this journey over the last year and a half that I feel like is going to be something that is for life, a gem, it's that it's learning how to identify and process my emotions and not stuff them down and not eat because of them or whatever other, you know, vice because of them. And for me, I think a lot of my over desire and my overeating was tied to these uncomfortable emotions that I didn't know, I didn't even know how to name, much less know what to do with. And so food was the answer.

Katrina: Yeah. And when we're looking at it from a more superficial standpoint, we're like, why am I evening? I don't even know. I don't even know why I'm eating. It's like, right, if you're not in touch with that, you wouldn't know. You would.

Jenevieve: Not know.

Katrina: So this is something that can be learned. You know what I always think about it too is I'm like, you know, like, look at you. It's like you learn to become a surgeon. You can obviously learn things. You're an intelligent person who can learn, like, why would we think we can't learn some of these other, you know, soft skills types of things? The reason we don't know them is because no one taught us, like, we would have been great students at it if we'd learned it at some other point in our lives. But we didn't. So the opportunity is now and then we can see how it changes things, and I can just imagine how much it's, you know, just changed, like touched every area of your life, you know, and hopefully it's also improved, like the fulfillment that you get at work.

Like, you know, it doesn't mean that when things are weird at work, you're not annoyed by it or, you know, like you get to have all the all the feeling about things, but moving past it faster. I think that it's huge at preventing burnout when you know how to process through what's actually going on for you. And I think you can move through those uncomfortable feelings faster to also get to a place where you can maybe advocate from a more, you know, emotionally grounded place instead of from a reactive place or, you know, request what you need and want or you know what I mean, like all the negotiate better and all those things from creating a relative level of comfort and familiarity with those emotions rather than just like, oh, that's an unacceptable part of me that needs to be shut away, never to be seen. And then, oh, I have no idea why I'm drinking three glasses of wine and eating all the chips every night. Yeah.

Jenevieve: I mean, I think work is another, like you said, it's another area where it's just kind of spilled over. And I, I feel like I have experienced some levels of maybe more mild levels of burnout, you know, more recently in my career. And you're absolutely right. And this has been it's just been life changing to rethink about the issues and challenges that come up with work from a different perspective. And I absolutely love that. The idea that no one gets to make me feel anything that I choose my, you know, it's my thoughts that lead to my feelings and that ultimately I'm in control of that. And even if I'm in a situation that feels kind of helpless and, you know, I've done quite a bit of work on burnout and this idea that, you know, oh, we're just victims and we can't control the bigger issues of healthcare and all the world around us and the situation around us.

I think to remind ourselves that we do have the power to guide our own thoughts and feelings, and that nobody else gets to make us feel anything is huge, and it brings the power back to us individually. And that's been hugely rewarding for me. And I approach my job differently, and I had a month or two earlier on in the program where I, I really just focused on everyday, like getting up and saying, I'm going to choose to want to go to work today. And it's amazing how even just that thought, like, I'm not sure I believed it every day, or especially at the beginning, but then it just started to kind of work its way in, and there was this trickle down effect of, you know, okay, that led to feelings of, you know, fulfillment and confidence that then I could just keep building on.

Katrina: Yes, exactly. And that yeah. It's like you get that that snowball rolling. Right. And then it's easier to keep it rolling when you already have some of that momentum. I really think that's so huge. I'm seeing, you know, more and more people, different organizations anticipating that there's going to, you know, this physician shortage, like people are retiring too quickly and all this stuff. And these are serious things that need to be addressed. And so I very much look at it like, okay, so what can we do to help support the people who are already trained and experienced and, you know, know what they're doing to try to make this a career that people want to stay in. That's part of the value that I get out of helping. Right, is recognizing like, yes, I mean, you know, we need people like you helping all the women in the world who need breast surgery, you know?

Jenevieve: So and I think, you know, for other physicians, I mean, if you're struggling out there, think about coaching. You know, again, this was not an option that I really knew was available to me. But what do you need? To lose weight or not is irrelevant, you know? But think about coaching. Having somebody who can help reflect back to you what your thoughts are, help you identify those thoughts, and then how they fit into a thinking cycles, how they, you know, lead to to the the result you have. And, you know, I think that's just it's so valuable, um, so valuable.

Katrina: Yeah. I mean, just the awareness that comes from that and then recognizing, like, you don't have to change anything, but if you want a different result, like there's three things you can change. Your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. I mean, they all interplay so right. Like that's what you can do. And again like going back to what you were saying earlier, the agency that you have like recognizing, oh wait, I actually have a lot more control over this in the, you know, there's research that shows like as health care has become big hospital systems and, you know, like there's just so few like small independently run practices anymore. That's been a big contributor to physician dissatisfaction and burnout and things like that.

And if you think about like, running your own practice isn't that easy either, but you get to at least make your own decisions. And I think a lot of people feel like, you know, things are just happening to me. I'm told these things and a lot of ways that is true, but no one can tell you how to think. No one can tell you how to feel. No one can tell you what actions to take. Like that really is ours alone to own. And that's very powerful. That's a way to take some of that power back, to be able to function within the current system the way things are at a higher level and be more satisfied with it doesn't mean that things don't need to change. There's other things that could be beneficial. But in the meantime, if this is what we're working within for now, then what can we do about it? And there is something we can do about it, which a lot of people don't realize.

Jenevieve: I totally agree with that. And that's key. There is something we can do even if it starts with changing our own, you know, thoughts and feelings. But you know, I think there's a lot of sense of helplessness around and that, you know, leads to inaction in a lot of ways. And people kind of discount their, their power to be able to make even small changes in the world around them and in their work and in their situations. And reality is, most of us are not stuck completely in our current situation. We sometimes feel that way, but I think we have to be honest with ourselves in terms of like, if we really wanted to get out, most of us could.

Katrina: Yeah, and not even get out of of medicine, but get out of this particular employment situation or like whatever the situation is, where you're where you're working.

Jenevieve: I love your idea that there's infinite possibilities and infinite answers and infinite solutions, and all you have to do is just find the next one.

Katrina: Find the next one. Exactly, exactly. And just to be clear, you know, it's like when we're working on our thoughts in an environment like this, it's not like a Pollyanna. Like there's no problems here. Like working here is great. That's not what we're talking about. Like, if you don't believe that to be true. Now, we have had some people, some program members who are like, actually, after did all this work, I looked around, I was like, I think we've actually got it pretty good. And that's okay to believe.

Actually, I don't think there's much of a problem here that's also amazing. But I think some people have resistance when they're like, no, this is literally a dumpster fire. And I'm supposed to change my thoughts about it and it's like, well, you know, we can hold two things at once. You know, we can have thoughts about like, the way this is set up is definitely less than ideal. You know, whatever the complaints are, you know, the people running it are mismanaging it, whatever it is. Well, at the same time, recognize like while that is happening, I still get to decide who I am and what my experience is. Within this you are allowed to enjoy yourself from time to time. You know, like have a good workday. Even when all of that is happening.

You don't have to be miserable all day, every day in response to that, because the only person who experiences that misery is you. Like, there are some organizations who have been really trying to work on reducing the amount of work hours for doctors and like giving extra time, and has not actually improved physicians job satisfaction at all. They're not happier. They're not less burned out, like, you know, like they've gotten the things that they've wanted. And it hasn't helped, which is really interesting. Yes. Very interesting to note, right. Because there's another component that the job can't do for you. And that's the management of your mind. Like as we say, it's not your job's job to make you happy. It's your job to work on that yourself, if you so choose to do that. Yes.

Jenevieve: And I think a lot of us don't really realize we can do that or that we should do that, you know?

Katrina: Yeah. Or that's even available. Like you said, we just never were taught any of this.

Jenevieve: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I have to remind myself that, Bill, you know, when I'm having a bad week or a rough day, I mean, we do, you know, you have to kind of go, wait a minute, okay? You know, I get to have some power and control here. It's what I'm thinking that is producing these feelings.

Katrina: And if I don't like it, like, what am I doing to help that? Now, if I'm waiting for someone to come in? These are things I tell myself. If I'm waiting for someone to come and rescue me, I'm probably going to be waiting a while, you know? So those are like those hard truths that were like, ah, I don't want it to be that way. It's like, welcome to being an adult in this world. But there's, you know, it's great to be in a position where there actually are options and ways to make things better. So thank you for sharing all of that. I think that is that is so great.

Jenevieve: You had just asked about, you know, kind of other things. And I think one of the things that has been pretty pervasive for me in this experience has been learning about my own self-image and learning how to, you know, part of identifying feelings, also learning to listen to my own self-talk. And I did not really know how negative it was. You know, I probably knew that I was more of a glass half empty sort of person, but I just didn't understand that.

That's another thing that I kind of have control over, and I did not know how much I would kind of beat myself up about all minor things, that I was definitely my own worst critic, you know? And then, I mean, these are layers of that, you know, never ending onion that I will continue to peel back and peel back and peel back. You know, I think awareness is key, like starting with that. I mean, for so many things, just the awareness that, you know, what you're saying to yourself and awareness of, you know, learning where that's coming from, why that's there, or how that's affecting me has been huge.

Katrina: Right? I wonder, I think sometimes some people think like, if I spend all this time just thinking about myself, then I would never have time to actually get anything else done or like then everyone just gets soft or whatever. But I think it's actually the opposite. Like, you're so much more productive when you're not being weighed down by all this negative self-talk or like having the negative thoughts about yourself slow you down. You know in everything that you do, particularly in work, you know, it's like we'll slow you down and just in your efficiency and, you know, lack of confidence is never going to help anybody to do better. And so it's actually the opposite of what you think. Like it's not like you're just like, well, I'm just not going to go to work today because blah blah blah.

You know, it's like, no, that's actually not what it is. Instead, what it is is maybe you're not feeling great or whatever's going on, and you actually offer yourself some compassion and some empathy, and you're supportive of yourself in recognizing this is a hard thing you're going to do, and you're going to be okay, and you're going to get through this day, and it's going to be okay. Like, what's the first step? Let's take the first step like that. Thinking can shift and can make doing those hard things, those uncomfortable things, the things we don't want to do, you know, at least a little bit better, maybe a lot better, which helps us to get through our lives with, you know, a more relative level of comfort.

Jenevieve: Yeah. And I asked myself that question all the time, like, how can I give myself more grace? Where can I give myself more grace? And where.

Katrina: Especially for a perfectionist.

Jenevieve: Yes. I mean, I've gone so far as to, like, beat myself up for taking all this time for me over the last year and a half. And I'm like, that's insane. Like, you know, why is my inner critic giving me these messages? You know?

Katrina: But I think we have to also like, you know, have compassion for ourselves and recognizing all the messaging that we've gotten in our whole lives about, like, being productive or, you know, you know, even just saying, like, you know, no sense crying over spilled milk or, you know, like, what's crying going to do to help? Like actually crying is super healing and really helps a lot. Get those emotions out. Have your moment and then you can move on instead of stuffing it down and trying to avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. Like it actually makes life a lot better.

Jenevieve: Yes, if only I had known this years ago.

Katrina: But that we we come into it thinking like we don't we don't, you know, like holding ourselves to the super impossibly high standard is the way and thinking like it's too scary or vulnerable to try a different way, you know, and that that's often what we're doing too, is building up that idea of like, okay, look what you can accomplish the other way where you're actually supportive and nice to yourself and showing yourself, oh, you can accomplish a lot regardless of what you're thinking. So if that's the case and either way is going to work, do you want to do the way where you are super mean to yourself and feel terrible about yourself, and you want to escape being in your own head all the time, or the other way where you actually feel encouraged and supported and like you can do it so good. Oh my gosh. Okay, well, and we know that you lost weight because you told us so. We're we're not even focusing that.

Jenevieve: I gained so much more though. That's the thing.

Katrina: So much more.

Jenevieve: I lost, you know, physically. But I gained so much more and I feel fantastic. I had no idea I could feel so good in my body. And, um, that's been, you know, it's almost secondary to everything else that I learned, right?

Katrina: Right. So good. All right, well, let's wrap things up. If there's somebody who's listening, who's like, huh? That's interesting. You know, maybe this is something I want to try, you know, particularly the Weight Loss for Doctors Only Program. What would you tell somebody? Maybe she's on the fence. She's just not sure. You know, say she came up to you and said, hey, what do you think? What would you say?

Jenevieve: I would say, first of all, it's not too good to be true. It is possible for me. It's possible for you. And we get out of things as much as we put into them. There's some truth to that. But in this program, you're really more doing the work in your mind that I think is a key component. And like you said, it's kind of what's missing from a lot of other programs, a lot of other diet plans and things like that, and uncovering the reasons behind why we gain weight, why we have over desire for food or drink or whatever. You know, that is a key component.

Katrina: Yeah. Absolutely amazing. Well, Jenevieve, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts and your story with us. I've really enjoyed it and I know so many people will as well.

Jenevieve: You are welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

The post Ep #395: Weight Loss Success Story – Jenevieve Hughes, MD, FACS, CPE appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you have a child leaving home in the next few months or another big life change on the horizon?

Are you wondering how you’re going to get through it emotionally?

In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, I’m sharing my own experience of sending my first child off to college and how I learned to process my emotions in a healthy, judgment-free way.

This episode is for you if you want to learn how to handle your emotions without relying on food. You can use the tips in the episode through any emotional life event, so whether you have a child leaving home or something completely different going on, there’s advice in here for you.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How to get through emotional life changes without relying on food * Things you can do to prepare for an emotional time * Tips for letting your emotions out at appropriate times * The emotional benefits of a good support system * How to allow yourself to feel your emotions (without projecting them onto your child) * What happens when you stop judging yourself for how you feel

If you have a child leaving the nest in the next couple of months, I see you. Whatever you’re feeling is completely okay—let yourself feel your feelings without self-judgment! Everyone processes big life changes differently, so your experience won’t look exactly like mine or anyone else’s, but we can still use the same strategies to process our emotions in a personal way. This episode will help you do that.

To learn more about processing emotions without food in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #393: Overcoming the Fear of Food Spoilage

Ep #392: Dealing with Unpredictable or Erratic Schedules While Losing Weight

Ep #391: Weight Loss Success Story – Lindsey C. Thomas, MD

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. So I want to talk to you today a little bit about something that I personally have been going through in my life.

I feel like I'm not super far ahead of somebody who's about to go through this, but I do feel like I'm maybe like one step ahead of maybe some other people. And what I'm talking about is kind of sending that first child away. Maybe it's off to college, maybe it's to some other stage in their life. But that kind of shift in life, like big, positive life changes that still can feel like a lot. So I think I always think of empty nesting as when literally all your children are gone. And of course, it's still going to be several years before I'm in that position, but I still wanted to take the opportunity to talk about this because it's a topic I haven't ever addressed on this podcast, and I think it's a big one that a lot of women can end up eating through.

So it's something that, you know, there's there's resources on the internet for this. And a lot of people have different thoughts and experiences to share. So there are resources out there. But I still feel like I want to talk about it through the lens of the work that I do and a little bit with my own personal experience. So my oldest child graduated from high school a few months ago and is already gone. So I would say that probably for a lot of people or majority of people these days, that child graduates and then they still have the summer before they transition into their next educational endeavor, if that's what it is, which it is for a lot of people, maybe they've moved away, starting a job, maybe it's military service, different things like that.

So I know that some people are in a similar position to me where the child is already gone, but I wanted to record this episode and have it go live now, because for a lot of people within the next month or so, they're going to have kids leaving. And it's interesting talking to people. Some people say like the first one leaving is the hardest one. Some people say the last one leaving is the hardest one. Some people, they have just one kid. And so it's it's all wrapped up into one, right? It's the first one and the last one. It's the only one that's leaving.

And all the feelings that go along with that. And so I wanted to share with you a little bit more about my experience and what I've learned – and also just from a coach's perspective, what I can recommend so that this is an experience that you get through is kind of smoothly as possible. And what I mean when I say smoothly, I want to put that in quotes, little air quotes that you get through it in the best way that you can, and maybe not with an additional 15 pounds, because that would be nice, right? If we don't end up having to rely on food. So just to give you a little bit more of my personal experience.

My oldest son graduated from high school, like I said, in the spring, and I could tell probably through the whole last year of him being in school, last year of high school, that senior year that I was going to have some feelings about this. What I have realized is that I'm someone who really, really, really does enjoy my kids getting older and them growing up in the sense that I really enjoy adolescence and I know I'm not I'm not always joined by other people. A lot of people have other thoughts about adolescence, I think on reflection, it was a lot harder for me to be a parent to toddlers. That was a lot harder, like young school age kids, than it is to have kids who you can have really cool, interesting conversations with and just include them in things that you enjoy.

We started watching The Sopranos together with our son and just like doing really fun things together, just kind of transitioning a little bit into more of that parent/adult-child relationship rather than like, this is someone that we have to actively be parenting all the time. And so a lot of that was really fun. But there already was a bit of a countdown for me in my mind, which was the timeline of like, this is the last of this and the last of that and the last time we'll do this. So like last trips, last spring break, last Christmas, like this.

My son is actually really close with his siblings too. And so part of me was even starting to think like, okay, how am I going to help to manage this transition for them as well? What can I do to help facilitate that? Because they're quite a bit younger than he is. And you go away even for a few months, and they're in a stage of life where they're going to be changing a lot, and it would just be a bummer to me if they didn't maintain at least some level of closeness and all that. So this has been something that's been on my mind for a while, and I think even the summer before, I guess the summer between junior year and senior year, I had a moment in coaching when I was working with my own coach, where I just burst into tears and I was like, okay, this is a bigger deal for me than I think I had realized.

So I already knew it was kind of coming. And I think I mentioned my son applied to college and he is all accepted and everything, but he deferred for a year and he's traveling for a year solo by himself. And so I think with the college applications, I think we were kind of distracted by that. And then him getting ready for his trip, those kind of exciting and some distractions and some of the end of the year things with school and sports and other activities and things. So.

So there was definitely a lot of like just feeling really proud of him, really excited for him knowing that really good things are on the horizon. But I kind of knew, like, there's probably going to be some feelings moving forward. And how that showed up was something that made me just be really, really, really happy and proud of myself for all the work that I've done. On being able to process my emotions and being able to be with whatever is true for me. And so what I decided was that however, I was feeling, whatever I was feeling that I was going to decide that was normal, that I wasn't going to judge myself for feeling however I was feeling.

I was like, Maybe I'll be totally elated. Maybe I'll be super happy that he's leaving. I didn't think I would, but I was like, it's a possibility if that's how we feel. If that's genuinely how I feel, then that's okay. So I decided to just not judge myself and be open, and I want to encourage you to do the same. So what I found was that there were some things that were coming up, some kind of end-of-the-year things, some wrapping up of things that I kind of anticipated Thinking like this is going to be pretty emotional for me.

One thing in particular was his last voice recital, which I think it was like his seventh or eighth voice recital with the same teacher, and just thinking about all the times that he had gone up in the same location and performed. And then, of course, for his senior solo that he chose, he chose this song. That is extremely sad. Like when he told me it was that song, I was like, oh, that's a sad one – but it has a lot of meaning to him and so that's why he chose it. But anyway, then at one point we were sitting at dinner and my other son was like, oh, what's which song is that again? So I played it on my phone and I was looking at the lyrics while I was playing it, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so sad.

This is the saddest, saddest, saddest song. I was like, tearing up, just even thinking about that and listening to that song, and I thought, oh man, I think I'm gonna cry big time when he is singing this, just because it's such a sad song, and then just recognizing that there were emotions just kind of at the surface, there is a Taylor Swift song that is escaping me, the name of it right now, which maybe it'll come to me, but it's on her Speak Now album. Oh, it's called Never Grow Up and I remember playing that within that his senior year and totally getting a lump in my throat.

And I actually leaned on that song quite a bit to help me to bring up the emotions when it was an appropriate time to do that, to help, to get them out of me. I'm not someone who can always just, like, cry at the drop of a hat or do that kind of thing. So I would play the song when I was alone and could boohoo to just get those emotions up. I mean, even just thinking about that song makes me a little choked up. It's just so, so, so touching. And for whatever reason, that song really hit me in the in that spot. So I had that experience. Graduation was okay. That was okay. That was more exciting.

I was kind of like on the lookout for was graduation going to be hard? But then it was really just a couple of weeks and he left. And so he actually took the ocean liner over to Europe, and he decided he wanted to take the train from where we live in Wisconsin to New York City, where he got the ocean liner. So we actually said goodbye to him in the train station, and I had been feeling some emotions leading up to it. But then the day of, he was feeling like a little, you know, having some little nerves.

And so I was kind of doing the total mom like, it's going to be fine, you're gonna be great. You just, you know, like totally talking him through it, kind of stuffing my own emotions to be strong for him. But we got into that train station and it was like I could not even help myself. Uh, just talking about it, um, chokes me up. I mean, I just started sobbing. I just couldn't even control myself. I just, I oh, man, just talking about it. It was very emotional. I don't know what else to say except that I just was like, I'm just going to have to be with this. I'm going to have to be with what is really true for me right now. And he got on that train, and I just was in a whole group of people just crying.

And the same thing happened during his voice recital. I realized I didn't finish that story. I think there were like 30 kids who sang, and he was like the 28th or something. So all these amazing, amazing kids are up there singing their hearts out. It's just so emotional in general. And then he gets up and sings this super sad song, and I held it together until the end. And then I was literally just like boohooing. The lady behind me tried to talk to me. I couldn't even speak. You're gonna have to talk to my husband. I mean, I couldn't even get up out of the pew. It was in a church for a while, but what was really cool was how nobody was looking at me like, who's this crazy weirdo? Like, everybody was patient.

My family was patient. No one was embarrassed of me. It was just like, yeah, I'm feeling some feelings and that's normal. And that can be okay. So I just want to speak to a lot of the anxiety and fear and feeling terrified and everything that you can feel when you're sending your kids off, or just with other big, positive life changes. I mean, I was very nervous. I knew that him traveling was the right thing to do. I keep telling myself it's going to be so much easier just to send him to college, because after this whole year, if he can get through this, which so far he is getting through it, but then he's going to be fine.

I also did some things that helped to make me feel a little bit better. Think thoughts that helped to allay my fear and anxiety. So one thing I was concerned about was his personal safety. And what if he found himself in some place that isn't a good place and there are some nefarious people around doing whatever? And what if he gets attacked? And so actually flew out to Las Vegas with him several months ago for the weekend, and we did this personal safety self-defense kind of a class. And after that I was like, well, that was good for me too, because now I feel like I know what to do so much more.

But it was really good for him as well, Like, now, I don't have to be as afraid of what if that happens? Because I know he knows exactly what to do and how to protect himself and just exactly what to do. So. So sometimes there are things like that you can do. It doesn't have to all be just changing our thinking, right and processing our feelings. Sometimes there are some actions to take that make it a lot easier. So what I want to share just anytime you are going through one of these big positive life changes is again, like I said, whatever you're feeling is normal.

And I also want to encourage you to be open to the reality of what you're feeling. A lot of us have this idea of how we should be feeling, or someone we know they felt this way, or just whatever idea we have of what the experience will be like. And then when we think it's going to be one way, but it's really a different way, then we start wondering what's wrong with us and what could even be that you're thinking you're going to be sobbing all day long and you're not. And you're like, oh my gosh, am I like a horrible, unfeeling, uncaring parent? Like, no, it doesn't mean that at all. It just means that whatever you're feeling today, whatever the reality is of that, is normal and is okay. So whether it's anxiety, if you're feeling terrified, if you're worried, if you're feeling sadness or grief, you're feeling excitement.

You could be feeling pride. I mean, I am so excited for college because there's so many cool things he's going to get to take advantage of. Like, it's okay to have all those emotions and to be kind of holding all of them simultaneously, or many of them simultaneously, where you have a lot of positive emotions and some maybe more negative emotions at the same time, it's It's all normal. And so the next thing is to practice riding those waves of feelings. So if you're not going through something like this right now, all the emotional processing that I talk about, what I teach my clients and all of that work is all about learning how to be with the emotional truth that you're experiencing, which means that when emotions well up, when there's a wave of emotion, being willing to be with it and letting it be there and letting it flow through you.

So not using food or alcohol to stuff it down to avoid it, to try to maintain some sort of facade for others. My younger kids saw me totally boohooing about this kid leaving. I don't think that's a bad thing. And if anything, maybe they can see like yeah, I really love my kids a lot, so practice writing riding those waves of feelings before you find yourself in a position like this. And if you are now just finding yourself in a position like this, just practice it. When the waves come, just think about it like you're like a cork in the water, in the ocean. You're just floating on the top. Just let it come, let it come. I also want to really encourage you to get support where you can speak honestly, and then process what's really true for you. I'm telling you, having coaching in my life has been so, so helpful, so important, and I always know I have that time where I really can get help letting those emotions flow through me, processing it, talking it all out.

Nobody's going to be trying to talk me out of how I'm feeling or give me advice. It's just a time where I get to just be with the truth of what's going on. So get support. It could be a friend that you can talk to. One of my very dearest friends who is always kind of she's kind of like, you know, the big sister to me in terms of like, her kids are a bit older. I was asking her, like, what do I do? She's giving me such great advice in the past, and she's like, her kids stayed at home or really pretty close to home or first three all did. And then it wasn't until her last one left that she went further away and she was just yeah, they stayed there.

So I didn't really go through that. And I was like, no, you're the one who's supposed to have all the good ideas and all the good advice. And so she still could be supportive of me, but I could see what I was doing there, which was like, tell me what to do, how to think. So I don't feel this so much. And she, of course, was just like, you just have to feel it. Whatever you're feeling, it's normal and it really is. Oh man. I did not realize how much talking about this would bring these emotions back up for me. Okay, next. Don't believe anyone who's going to tell you about how you're going to feel.

And this is about, again, like sending kids off or any other big positive life change. A lot of people are like, okay, this is how it's going to go. But particularly when it comes to sending a child off, like your relationship with that child is unique and how you experience that separation is unique. For me, it very much felt like a loss, but I recognized like there are some people who are probably like, oh my gosh, finally, this has been so hard. These last several years have been so difficult. And finally we get a break and it's like all good all around. And that's amazing. If you feel relief like, that's totally fine, that's totally great. Whatever you're feeling is normal.

Again, because your relationship is unique. So don't judge yourself for how you're feeling and be open to you being wrong about how you thought you were going to feel. It may just really be totally different than what you expected. A big thing that I had to work through was my thought it'll never be the same again. Like it's never going to be this way ever again. And that is true. That thought brought a lot of sadness for me. Even just saying it out loud brings up a lot of sadness for me. And so I just needed to process that because it's really true, right? It won't ever be the same again.

It's not going to be the way it was when he lived here all the time. And so that would come up and I would just like release those emotions and process through all of that. And then I just want to give you an example of what happens when you take time to do that. What happened over the course of time was I all of a sudden, then I processed some of that, and then I had this sort of like glimmer of hope. I had a another thought was like, well, yeah, it's true. It's never going to be the same again. But what's to come?

Could be good to like, who's to say that the new relationship isn't also good, right? In my mind it was like it'll never be the same again, equals it will be bad. Or it could also be that it's different, but it's also awesome because I allowed myself to process that and be with the emotions and ride those waves. I was able to come to that place. And so I think it's too early to say I haven't seen him since he's left. We stay in touch and everything and thank goodness for the Find My app, because I can look every day and see where he's at, see what's going on. Except like yesterday when it was like four hours ago, he was here. I'm like, why is it not updating? What could this mean? And I'm like, okay, calm down, it's fine.

It's all okay. But you know, that's something that you might be able to get to as well as, like what's to come could be good too. And then finally my last little bit of advice is that remember that time helps. And over time you will integrate this change into your life like even big positive life changes. We think they're going to be so great. Why do we feel a lot of negative emotions? Because it's changed, right? Because there's something different. And over time, particularly if you're willing to process and ride those waves of feelings, you will start to feel like it's the new normal. It'll just start to feel like the next stage. And you may still have feelings of loss and grief, maybe for the rest of your life that things have adjusted to where they are.

But I also kind of looked at it like, yeah, I can be sad that is over, but also recognize that this is actually exactly how I want it to go for him. And it doesn't have to be so all or nothing. We can have some gray areas where it's like, it's so good and I'm so happy. And I'm also devastated and grief stricken at the same time. You know, I think they call that, you know, having a bittersweet experience. And I think that is definitely what's happening here. So if you are going through a big positive life change, if you are sending a child off, maybe the first child, last child, only child, hopefully these words have been helpful to you.

All I can really say is just be willing to feel it's good practice. If it's something that is a skill you could develop, then I want to encourage you to do that because it's only going to help you. And of course then you won't be coming across to that child as needy or weird, or totally pestering them or showing up in a way that you'd really rather not. All right, I'm going to leave it there. There's a special place in my heart for all of us going through this, and those who've done it before us, they've gotten through it.

And so we know that we can as well. And for all those who are in the throes, little kids, all that stuff, it's like, I totally feel for you as well, because when you're in that stage, it feels like the day will never come. And then all of a sudden the day is here and it's like, how did that even happen? Literally, how did that even happen? So okay, well, I'm going to leave it here. Have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you next time. Take care. Bye bye.

The post Ep #394: Empty Nesting and Other Big, Positive Life Changes appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Does food spoilage ever interfere with your food plan?

Unfortunately, food spoilage is a normal part of life. We all have to deal with it sometimes and throw away food that we didn’t get around to eating. However, if food spoilage is harming your relationship with food, there are things you can do to mitigate and reduce it.

Maybe you find that you’re overeating because you fear throwing away food, or maybe you keep eating off-plan because you fear eating spoiled food and throw it away prematurely. Whatever struggle you’re facing, I want to teach you how to overcome a food scarcity mindset, figure out your comfort level with food spoilage, and create a plan that will work for you and your consumption habits.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How to meal prep in a more flexible way * What does and doesn’t work for you when it comes to meal prep * How to make meals that will last seven days * Backup plan ideas for when your meal prep doesn’t work out * A truth about food spoilage that you have to accept * How much food spoilage is normal * Your own comfort levels with food spoilage * How to live and eat in alignment with your values

If you struggle with your thoughts and feelings about food spoilage, I hope this episode helps. I know that this will look different for everyone, so I want you to take the information from this episode and use it however it works for you! I can’t promise that you’ll never worry about food spoilage again, but I can give you the tools you need to make it easier to deal with.

To learn more about how coaching and the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you overcome your fear of food spoilage, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #391: Weight Loss Success Story – Lindsey C. Thomas, MD

Ep #390: Enjoy Summer Holidays Without Overeating

Ep #389: Does Weight Loss Equal Skinny Fat? Let’s Talk Body Composition

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there friend. Welcome to today's call. So glad you're here. I decided to dig into my question and answer list that I have for podcast topics.

So as people have written in emailed over the years with questions, sometimes they say, hey, I'd love it if you do a podcast on this topic or that topic, or some question that I have something like that and we always file those away. And as I was thinking about what to talk about this week, I thought, I have not looked at that list in a long time. Let me go in there and see what's in there, see if there's something that can inspire me. And sure enough, it did not disappoint.

You all did not disappoint. And there was one that jumped out at me as like, yeah, we should talk about this. We should definitely talk about this. So this was requested by a lovely woman named Jess. And here is what she said. She said one of your previous podcasts made me realize that part of why I overeat is fear of food spoiling.

I grew up pretty poor, and it was something my parents always expressed worry over. Currently I am food secure and I meal prep on weekends. I realized that I either one over eat before the prepped food goes bad or two. As I get to the last few planned meals, I worry that they've spoiled and I throw them out and then get something off plan. I'd love to hear a podcast about this if you have some advice specific to food spoilage.

Meal planning for whole week has helped me financially and time management wise. I hate to give it up. So I thought immediately I was like, oh, this is so, so good. Can't wait to talk about this. So that's what we're gonna talk about. They're gonna talk about the fear of food spoilage and how to overcome that kind of combo combined with some scarcity around food. But I think that this is something that is really great to address. So I do want to say, just like right off the bat, the once a week meal prepping has not been something that has really worked for me. And honestly, probably partly because of this issue. I remember years ago trying this and I think I did it. I actually, I remember exactly like I got the inspiration from someone back in the days when I was on Facebook, someone that I kind of knew peripherally locally.

I think she was like involved in one of the multi-level marketing things. So she was doing a lot of posting about her life and different things, and she always talked about how she meal prepped and it seemed like it worked great for them and for their family, very busy family. And I was like, okay, like that's something that maybe I should do. I can figure out how to do this. And so I did it on a couple of Sundays. I remember trying to make all this stuff. I remember my husband was not super in love with the idea of it, because then there were so many dishes to do, and it was just like many hours of work on that weekend day. And he didn't love that.

But that was okay. I mean, I was willing to push through if it worked, but really what happened was I had one call weekend then, and I wasn't able to do it because I was busy, and then the whole thing kind of fell apart. It was kind of my limited experience with meal prepping in that way, but I know that it can be super helpful for tons of people. And I also think what I want to like express here is that there are so many different ways you can do this, and the important thing is that you find a way to do this that works for you as an individual, right? So it could be that prepping all the food on one day for the whole week ahead and having it sit in the refrigerator the whole week isn't the way.

Maybe there are some other ways that you can plan where you can maybe do some of it, or some of the meals for the week are handled in this way, and there's other options for the rest. So with food spoilage, there's a lot of overlap with food waste. Like just kind of the idea of I paid for it, it was here and it didn't get eaten, but it's not the exact same thing as food waste. So with food spoilage, I mean, the food isn't good anymore. Then you can't eat it. You shouldn't eat it. I think some people have more of a comfort level with some form of food spoilage than others.

Like a little kind of weird. Like we can scrape that part off and still just eat it. And other people are like, absolutely not. I'm not gonna take a chance. That's fine too. I think, you know, it's important for you to to recognize where you are on that spectrum so that you can plan accordingly. So I think a fundamental kind of like truth here, though, is that if you make a week's worth of food on one day, so probably a weekend day, let's just say if you make a week's worth of food, I mean, at least some of the time By the time five, six, seven days have rolled around, some things are going to have spoiled.

And I think the thing that I would anticipate I would guess would happen is that sometimes you make something and it's fine, and it totally lasts till the end of the week, and other times you make the exact same thing and it doesn't. And it could be because there's fresh produce involved. And as we know, right. Sometimes you buy like blueberries and they stay really good for many days, and sometimes you buy them and within two days they're already starting to get moldy. And so that can be the case with vegetables and other things as well. Just different freshness levels.

What season it is. There's so many factors that play into that. So there is ultimately going to be a little bit of an element of unpredictability in terms of that. I also think that it's important to recognize, like, how much does having fresh food in your life really matter to you? I think that if you're okay cooking everything and having cooked things waiting for you, it's probably more likely to last. Even better would be if you could make them, let them cool, and then put them in the freezer and then thaw them to eat. That's probably going to be the least likely to spoil, but some of us don't want to eat all cooked food like that.

And so I'm just going to speak for myself. I think we can all get used to anything, but I do know that I'm someone who does enjoy having something fresh. It doesn't have to be every single day, but I do like having some fresh things, like meeting fresh produce. And so that's just like a priority. It's something that I enjoy. I like that it tastes good to me. And so I would have to factor something like that in. So again, important to just look at what is important to you.

What do you enjoy eating. Because again, right, the whole point of this is to make it so it's easy to follow your plan. It's not easy to follow your plan when you make a bunch of things that you don't want to eat when it comes time to eat them, remember my whole thing, which is like, don't eat anything that doesn't taste good to you. So just keep that in mind, right? Okay. So when you're figuring this out, I think it's important to look at two separate things. So there's going to be thoughts and beliefs and then the ensuing feelings that come from that about food spoiling about how you approach it. If food has spoiled. And then, like the scarcity and the food waste that may come from that. And then just your actions, right. Sometimes there are some action things that you can do.

So let's start with the actions. Because I think that's kind of where we tend to lean toward first. And then we'll talk about the thoughts and feelings. So I think in this kind of scenario, right where this where Jess says realize like, hey, I end up noticing that like, the food's starting to be a little bit off. So rather than letting it totally spoil and throwing it out, I should just eat it. And then overeating, right? Eating now for hunger you might have later, which just doesn't work. But in our minds, right. We're like, well, this food is edible right now. Soon it won't be. So I should eat it while it's edible, right?

So there's that element. And then there's also the evidence that she has, which is at times things do spoil. And then that was the plan to eat that. But it's not good anymore. And so now I got to figure something out. So I think that again, like just zooming out and starting to brainstorm is the best thing to do. So you like being able to prep food on the weekends. It sounds like it's something you want to be able to continue doing. It's helped you from time management standpoint, financially, all that stuff. It's like something you want to do. But is there a way that you could do it in a different way, slightly different. That would minimize the amount of food that goes bad, that you've prepped and makes it easier for you to have something that does work for you so that you're not finding yourself kind of last minute scrambling.

But then I also want to say that if you do have to find yourself last minute scrambling, because that's real life and sometimes that happens. You can also have a plan for that last minute and I'm scrambling. Then what do I eat. Right. And so this is really where your freezer is going to be like a very good partner for you. I would say potentially some things in your pantry as well, like making sure you sort of have like some backup food always available.

And of course things that are canned or like dried grains or things like that or things that keep really well. So that can be a little bit easier and there's less chance of that spoilage. So what I would say is if the prep food, if you kind of are like, okay, pretty much like for 3 or 4 days, the food that I made on the weekend is fine and that works great. It's like days five, six and seven that it starts getting a little wonky. Then what I would suggest is you make the things that you know are going to last, or that you like making. That's easy for you. And lasts those three, four days or whatever it is.

And then you come up for the remaining days. You come up with some plans of things that you can put into the freezer. So like you make a thing and then you freeze it, and then all you have to remember to do is maybe 1 or 2 days before you're going to eat it, pull it out of the freezer, put it in the fridge to thaw, and then you're just heating it right back up again. So that could be built into your meal planning. Because when you're meal prepping on the weekends, by default you are doing all your meal planning. So that can just factor right in. And it could be that at first you're like, oh, I don't know. None of these would really last that well. Or like they wouldn't freeze that well. That's okay.

There's so many resources on food that does freeze super well. Thaws really well reheats really well. Or maybe it just could even be like the way that you are freezing. It could be changed so that it lasts a little bit better. There's tons and tons of resources out there on Google that can help you with that for sure. So that would be like an action that could make it so that it's kind of solves for some of these things. And then also, like I said, brainstorming those other options. So if it's spoiled or you forgot to take it out of the freezer or whatever, like what are the options? Like how long does it take to actually thaw it? Is it something that you can thaw in the microwave? And yeah, it delays dinner a little bit, but it's not really that big of a deal.

Or it could be that you have some backup plans, like places where you can get takeout. You know that you can like order on DoorDash or like however you order Uber Eats or however you order food in. There's something that you can pick up on the way home from work. And, you know, it's something that like, tastes good to you and is on plan and it works well for you.

I'll give you an example of something that I do or some a food that like my whole family, we all enjoy it and it is often our kind of go to in a scenario like this. And that's going to our local poke Bowl place. It's like a whole bunch of vegetables. I usually get the cauliflower rice because I actually like that. My family usually gets regular rice, and it's just like a super tasty meal that fills us up, gives us a lot of good nutrients, and we feel good after we eat it. It just like works for us. We don't really get tired of it. So it's like, that's one of those backup things that I always have, right? Rather than being like, oh, the food spoiled.

I can't eat whatever I planned, I throw it out, I get something off plan. It's like, oh, I have all these things that I do love to eat that are on plan. Cool. Like getting a burrito bowl or like there's so many different things you can get or plan for, whether you're picking it up yourself, getting something that usually your grocery store has pre-prepared or something, you also can have some other kind of backup food in your freezer that is pretty easy to thaw or easy to prepare straight from the freezer and then like, okay, that's okay. Like if this happens, then I can always have this thing and I just make sure I keep the stuff on hand.

So, so a little creativity goes a long way when it comes to this kind of thing. And I think that alone will actually solve for a lot of this. But I do want to talk about the thoughts and the beliefs. And then, of course, the way that we feel. And I want to address this, particularly because of what Jess expressed with what her growing up experience was like, and she said that her parents expressed worry over food spoiling and things like that. We just can't help but pick up on that. We're kind of like sponges when we're growing up, and we're going to we are going to pick up the thoughts and beliefs and the concern, the feelings of the people around us, of the adults around us. So it's like if food spoiling was an issue for your parents, We're not even judging whether that was rightfully or wrongfully so.

It's just like it just was. Then it would make sense that at least a part of you, even maybe even subconsciously, maybe not even always consciously, but part of you subconsciously is like, oh, this is something that we need to be concerned about. And so then it is factoring into how you're interacting with this food. So I want to kind of point something out. And I think that this is kind of the truth. My belief is that when you are a human being, like some food that you get is going to spoil. Like, I don't think that there's a lot of people out there who are eating like fresh things.

Obviously everything is pantry safe. Like it probably won't spoil, although it can still can go bad. I think that's going to be like some food. Spoiling is just a natural, normal part of life. Sometimes you get the package of whatever and when you open it up you're like, oh, I don't know. I don't know why lettuce is coming to mind, but like it looked like it was fine. But when you get it open, you're like, oh, this is actually this isn't that great? I'm going to end up having to get rid of some of this stuff. Like, that's just kind of a natural, normal part of being a human. Now, are there certain things that spoil faster or more readily or whatever? Yes, absolutely. Like I've noticed, like raspberries are very sensitive that way.

Like if we get raspberries, like they need to be eaten within like 2 to 3 days probably max, or they're really just not that good if you can't eat them within that time, like maybe you shouldn't get them or don't get that many, or however you end up using them. Maybe like frozen raspberries work just fine in that case. And then there's less of that food splitting. So I definitely think this is not like me saying like, let's just be wasteful and let's just not even care and let's just buy a bunch of food and have it spoil in the fridge.

That's not at all what I'm saying, but we can think about it and plan accordingly and get food that some things need to be eaten kind of right away, and some things can last longer and plan accordingly. And even with our best attempts, sometimes food's just going to spoil because that's just life. And can that just be normal? And so I would just suggest for anybody who struggles with this to kind of sit with that question and like how much food spoilage is, okay, I think we all can agree, like there's no way you're going to be like 100% perfect with your food and anticipating how much to buy and the checking out the quality of it.

I've noticed if I order groceries, it's more likely to spoil because I think I'm a pickier selector of produce than whoever the shoppers are, so that's something to factor in too. I mean, I typically would prefer to just shop myself.

I actually don't mind grocery shopping. I know a lot of people don't like it doesn't bother me, but, you know, regardless. Right. Like you just you have to kind of keep that in mind. So if some is inevitable and we can be okay with some food spoiling, just knowing that's a natural part of living human life, then we can decide for ourselves how much is normal because there's no food spoilage police. Right. That draws that line for us. So at what point do you start to get uncomfortable with the amount of food spoiling? I think, is my question. Like, I feel pretty good.

I was thinking about the food that we eat and I mean, I really in general, I think we do a really good job of eating what we buy and kind of keeping tabs on things and making sure it gets used up and doing our very best. But sometimes. Right, like I was just thinking the other day, open up a package of peppers and like, couldn't see it because it was kind of covered up like, oh, this one's like all super moldy. Bummer. You know, like that one went bad. So, like, that doesn't make me feel away a certain way. But when I think about lots of things spoiling in my fridge, like, I don't like that, that doesn't feel great to me. Like, it feels like I can do better. Like my thought is like I'm not being a very good steward of this food or even of my finances.

Like I just paid for a bunch of things that are just rotting. That doesn't make sense. And that's not the kind of consumer that I want to be. So it's figuring out what your values are like, what are your priorities and what are your values. And it could be that it comes from a very clean and positive space. You want to try to minimize food spoilage, and it could be that you're coming from like, I'm a bad person. This is wrong. Like like a really kind of punitive or beating yourself up kind of a place to also avoid food spoilage.

So that's where those thoughts and beliefs and then the feelings are going to help us to understand, like we can be doing the same thing, trying to do our best to avoid food spoilage and recognizing that some things will just spoil because that is life and we can be doing it driven from thoughts and feelings that we like and want to experience, and thoughts or thoughts and feelings that don't feel great at all and make us really feel crummy if we're not doing it in a heavily emphasize in quotes, perfectly right, whatever perfectly is in our minds. So I think for anybody who has this coming up for them, it's worthwhile spending some time exploring this, figuring out like, okay, so this was my experience when I heard my parents speaking about food and food spoiling and expressing worry over that. Like, what did they say? What did I make that mean? What part of that do I still agree with? And what comes of that belief? Meaning the thinking cycle?

So when I believe that, how do I feel then what actions do I take and what is the result for me? And so anything that gives you a result that you're not happy with, like in this case for Jess, like she's overeating the prep food before it goes bad, or she's throwing out spoiled food and then getting something off plan like those are worth looking at and thinking like, okay, well, what actions do I want to be taking? And then moving up the ladder, going, like, how do I need to feel to do that? And what thoughts and beliefs still feel true and believable to me and make me feel that way so I can take those actions and get that different result.

Okay, so that's how I would suggest approaching this. I think it's something that when we hold ourselves to a really high standard, which over the years I've noticed so many women physicians do, we just we often have very little room for any grace or compassion with ourselves at like an emergency comes up or whatever happens. Had we known, we would have done something differently, but we didn't know, and then we beat ourselves up, or we kind of Monday morning quarterback ourselves, right? Like, well, now that I know all this information, I was so stupid that I did this and this and this. Yeah, but you didn't know that information, so how would you have known to make that decision.

Right. So any of that that might be coming up, I just encourage you to explore that and work on letting that go, releasing that, recognizing that whether food spoils in your house or not, this is not a referendum on are you a good person or not? Like, are you doing wrong or bad things or not? It's just it's a fact of life. And to a certain extent, it's a choice that you make. You know, how much food do you bring in? What types of foods do you bring in, and then what do you do with them to try to minimize that spoilage?

It really can be something that is still a value, something you still want to try to take action to avoid happening like that. Food spoils, but it doesn't have to be something that is a judgment on you or anyone else for that matter. All right, well, Jess, I hope that this was helpful for you and for anybody else who struggles with food spoilage and thoughts and concerns about that. Hopefully this is helpful for you. And I just want to thank Jess for sending in this question, because this was a fun one to discuss with you. I really appreciate it.

All right, friends, well, I hope you have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you next time. Thanks. Take care. Bye bye.

The post Ep #393: Overcoming the Fear of Food Spoilage appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you deal with a lot of unpredictability in your work schedule as a doctor? Do you find that interferes with your eating habits and weight-loss goals?

You’re not alone. Many doctors have to navigate being on call, working rotating shifts, or not knowing when they’re going to get off work in the evening, to name just a few scheduling challenges. It’s not surprising that makes it difficult to maintain consistent and healthy eating habits. Like many others before you, you end up skipping meals and eating the Doritos that your coworker brought in.

This episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians will teach you how to deal with erratic or unpredictable work schedules when you’re trying to lose weight. Learn how to make the unpredictable predictable so you have a plan in place for every scenario.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The things you’re blaming work for without thinking about it * Why more things are within your control than you realize * Some of the causes of erratic work schedules * How your erratic work schedule is harming your relationship with food * Why you need to change how you think about finding solutions * An easy way to reframe your thoughts about your unpredictable work schedule * How to find predictability within unpredictability * Why you need to turn your rhetorical questions into solutions-focused questions

Hope is not lost! There are things you can do to navigate erratic schedules and still lose weight without quitting your job – you just have to find what works for you! Listen to this episode and then start making a plan for yourself to follow the next time you’re on call or working a night shift. You will make your weight-loss journey so much easier.

To get help with your own unpredictable or erratic work schedule, check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program at katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #391: Weight Loss Success Story – Lindsey C. Thomas, MD

Ep #390: Enjoy Summer Holidays Without Overeating

Ep #389: Does Weight Loss Equal Skinny Fat? Let’s Talk Body Composition

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. Today I'm excited to talk to you about something that I actually coach on and my team. We coach on this a lot in the weight loss for doctors only coaching program, and it's not something that I've talked too much about here on the podcast, so I wanted to spend a little time on it to just help those of you out there who are struggling with this and to help you see how coaching can really help when you deal with this.

So this is an issue that a lot of doctors struggle with. Not every doctor though. Not every doctor, but a lot do. So what I'm talking about is when you have erratic work schedules or unpredictable work schedules, and how to deal with that while you're trying to lose weight, or even if you're not trying to lose weight, just trying to maintain your weight, maybe you've lost weight and want to maintain that. Or maybe you're just in a stage where you're just like, I just want to get through this and not gain a bunch of weight.

Because these types of situations with unpredictable and erratic work schedules, they often are dealt with by us with snacking and food and some extras here or there, and that can result in that weight gain, particularly as we get older. So how do you deal with this? What I hear from a lot of people when they struggle with this is that they just are kind of blaming work, because my work is like this. That means that I struggle in these ways and very often the primary solution that is present for folks who deal with this in their minds is to find a different job.

And I'm not negating that because sometimes it isn't the right fit for you anymore, or something has changed for you and something different is going to be better. And that may be the case. So I don't want to take that away. But I do want to say that there is a lot that you can take control of that a lot of people do not recognize is within their realm of control. So I want to talk about that today because it's worthwhile to practice these things. If you're in a work environment where things are like this or predictable or erratic. And honestly, even this applies also to home life too. Like when I'm thinking about for like unpredictable or erratic schedules is like sports. You know, if you have kids, sometimes you're like, I thought we were just doing this one thing.

And then you find out there's two more games that you have to do, or just the game runs way over, or, you know, there can be a lot of unpredictability in that as well. But on this episode, I'm going to be focusing mostly just on those work schedules. If this is something that you're dealing with, that there's really a lot that can be done from a mindset approach and from just like a planning and problem solving approach can make a big difference. And if you apply that to your current situation, you can see like you could get to a place where it actually does work for you and it's fine.

And you don't need to switch jobs, you don't need to find something else, and that can be nice as well. The best solution isn't always going and trying to find a different position. So what I'm talking about when I talk about unpredictable or erratic work schedules, I just want to be clear on kind of what I'm thinking of when I talk about this. So I'm talking about times when maybe, you know, you're going to be working, but you don't really know in what capacity or what that's going to look like. So the first thing that comes to mind, of course, is taking call. And some people are like, well, when I'm on call, I'm in house and I know I'm going to be up all night working.

And that's not really unpredictable or erratic. It may not be something I love, but I know what I'm going to be doing. But other people are taking in house call, and a lot of the time there's not much going on and they have time to rest. They are pretty much fine, except for the times when they're up all night or they have had really interrupted or broken up sleep having to go deal with this and that. And that can be unpredictable, right? In the sense of am I going to be able to sleep tonight while I'm in the hospital? Or will I not be like, what is the day going to be like?

What is the evening going to be like? I have no idea. So sometimes it's that sometimes it's taking call from home, but knowing that you might be woken up a bunch of times or that you might have to actually go in. So again, very unpredictable. You have no idea what you're going to be dealing with. You just never know, right? So even if it's home call, you just don't know what's going to be happening. You don't know what is the night going to be like. So that I can predict what my day tomorrow will be like. If I have a super busy day tomorrow, it may not be great if I'm up the whole night before, just things like that.

This is something that comes up all the time in coaching. Rotating shifts is another big aspect of this. So this can be when sometimes you work day shifts, sometimes you work evening shifts, sometimes you work overnights. And the different ways that those get assigned to you essentially. So you will know your schedule, obviously, but you'll know when you need to report. But it may be erratic. It may not be the most conducive to circadian rhythms. You might have to switch with people or cover for people or things like that, and that can end up being more erratic than you would prefer.

And then another thing with shift work is it's easy for people to think like, okay, well, like when your shift's over, you're done. Well, often that's not the case, right? Often, technically, your shift is over and the new shift of people have arrived, but you're still maybe spending even hours wrapping up some things before you leave and not really knowing when you're going to be able to go. It's not like time clicks over and you're walking out the door necessarily, although sometimes it may mean that. Right? So again, it's just unpredictable. You might be able to leave, you might not and you just don't know. And then another aspect of this I'm thinking about is not having really like a hard end to your day. This is how this presented for me when I was in practice as a pediatrician.

I have no idea how the practice runs things currently, but back in my day, we basically just kept seeing sick kids until everyone who had called had been seen for the day. So basically, once the final patient who'd called was in the building, we would switch over to the answering service. And so we would be working thinking, okay, it's not so bad.

And then there would be this huge rush of phone calls, and all of a sudden we were working another hour or hour and a half or longer because all these people were needing to come in so very unpredictable of when I was going to be able to leave, what was going to be happening for what I could do for my family and things like that. That was very challenging. And then finally, I was thinking about people who will do weeks on service or some sort of chunk of time on service. And so when you're on service as well, it's not like you don't know, okay, this is a service week coming up for me. It's going to look like me needing to take care of the hospital patients and things like that. Like you do know that. And you probably know about when you like to start, but you may not know when you're going to be done for the day. And if you're doing a whole week at a time and you don't know if you're going to be able to leave at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m. or 11:30 p.m. and then get up,

Quick turnaround and start again, maybe at 637, 738 in the morning the next day, and then doing this day after day. That can be very difficult too. Definitely unpredictable. You never really know what you're going to be dealing with and things like that. So all of that unpredictability can really, really be difficult for us. Just baseline a lot of us, just like having some structure to our days. We like knowing what to expect and often that's just not available to us when we're working as doctors.

So just in general, the opportunity to work on creating some comfort within the discomfort, creating some stability for ourselves within the instability, that's something that we can definitely work on, but particularly when it comes to losing weight and food, What we end up often focusing on or end up using to help ourselves get through these difficult times is food. Partly because when things are erratic and unpredictable, we may have thought we would have time to go run to the cafeteria or order food in or whatever, like get out early enough to run to the grocery store. So we have food for the next day, and all of that may not happen. And then when we aren't able to get the food necessarily that would be most supportive to us, then we're just like eating whatever's around. There's a shared bag of Doritos.

We're like, let's do it. You know, like, screw it all, forget it all. It's time to just eat whatever we want, whenever we want. And so that can be difficult when you have other goals in mind for yourself, right. So as far as solutions go here and how to deal with this, in my mind, I broke it up into two separate pieces. There's kind of two chunks of work that I want to invite you to consider, and both of them are really important. The second one is the one that we maybe are most used to doing, whereas the first one is arguably more important. So the first one is managing your mind. I'll talk more about this, but really working on your thinking and your feelings around this. This is the one that a lot of us I just want to skip over.

We don't think it's as important as it is. It's super, super important. The second part is getting solutions focused and creative. So I'm going to talk about both of those a little bit separately. Give you some true actionable ideas. But also I want you to really be thinking about your thinking. Don't skip over that part. That's the part that we often don't want to spend time on. So, okay, the way that you think that creates your feelings, that's your emotions and your emotional life. How you feel creates your entire experience of your life. So if you are not feeling great about your erratic or unpredictable schedule, and you know what it looks like to live a life like that, we often want to look at the facts, right? We don't want to look at what is actually creating our experience, which is the way we feel.

And what creates our feelings is the way that we think. So what I want to propose to you here is that your experience of the current schedule, your current life, could become much, much better. Your experience could improve dramatically by looking at the way that you think and the feelings that creates. Very often we are not aware that the way we're thinking is really thinking like we think that it's truth facts. It's um. Here's an example. It's hard to work a schedule like this. I mean, that could be true. That could be your current experience of it.

If you believe that it's hard to work that kind of a schedule, you will either consciously or subconsciously create an experience where it is hard because we know that the way we think always shows up in our results. So if we want to have a less hard experience, it might be beneficial to us to consider not thinking about it in that way anymore. So we're not saying this is easy, I don't care. We're not gaslighting ourselves, but we're no longer entertaining that thought of. It's hard or it's impossible. It's when I hear a lot, it's impossible for me to take care of myself working this kind of a schedule.

Well, if that is what you're thinking, what are the chances that you're going to come up with a way of doing like, other possibilities, like very low because you've just convinced yourself that it's not possible. So this is the thing about it. Like when we're willing to kind of humble ourselves enough to go, okay, yeah, there are challenges to this kind of a life. And some of those challenges are self-created with the way that I think if we can humble ourselves enough to admit that, then we can start looking for those thoughts and understand those feelings that we don't love, that don't make us feel great and start to work on whether there's a different way of thinking that still feels true and believable, but gives us a different result, gives us a different feeling that drives a different action, that creates a different result.

Okay, you might be like, okay, I don't know, like, I mean, I hear what you're saying, but how do I do that? I mean, that's what we do in coaching, in weight loss for doctors only, like, this is what we're doing, in case you're wondering, like we're actually working on this because I can't tell you, like, oh, this is the thought. This is the magic thought for you. I can give suggestions, but even still, you have to try it on.

You have to see what really works and resonates for you. So really understanding on a deep level how your thoughts are creating your experience, how your feelings are changeable. By thinking differently is the most important thing to do when it comes to this. So this comes just your general experience of these work experiences, but also what it's like to lose weight or work on your eating while you are doing this right. If you have a thought like it's too much to do both, then you won't be able to create success in creating solutions in that environment. It's just how that works. You know what I mean? So if you want something different, you have to decide to think about it differently. So that leads me to the next step, because another part of managing your mind that would really, really benefit you is to increase your belief that solutions not only exist, but that they are available to you for who you are currently like.

You don't have to change. You don't have to be different. The rest of your life doesn't have to be different. And not only does one solution exist, but tons of solutions exist. I like to think that there's hundreds, maybe even infinite numbers of solutions, and I only have to find one that works. There's so many. They're everywhere. So many solutions. I just have to find one. It's very different than, well, finding a solutions like a needle in a haystack.

Very different. So when you work on that belief, like, I can feel good, I can have the results that I want. I can make changes to myself in my life and still work my work schedule as it currently stands, like you work on that belief that will get you very, very far. It will be very energizing. A lot of people will say to me, oh, I just lose all motivation. It's just so hard to get going. Well, sometimes we forget how depleting the way that we think can really be, and we don't like how we're feeling. But remember what creates our feelings the way we think about it. So practicing belief, the solutions exist and they're all available.

There's so many they're available to you right now is a really, really great first or second step to get you moving in a direction where you can deal with this positively. Next, I want to encourage you to shift your mindset in whatever way you need to so that you are open to iterating to find solutions. So many of us are like, okay, fine, I believe a solution exists. I'm going to try this solution, this one that I've come up with. And basically it better work. You know, like we're like, yeah, I'm not interested in finding any other solutions. I found this one and I would like it to work the first time. That is not always the case. Sometimes we think one thing is going to be great, and then we try it out and we realize, nope, that was cute.

But no, like, good try. Didn't work this time. It might be a massive failure. It might be that parts of it worked and parts of it didn't. It could be that, wow, you're like really on the right track and it just needs some editing, you know, some some iteration, some nuances need to change. But otherwise you're in a good place, right? We have to be open mentally to the idea that we're going to have to continue to come up with solutions. So we're not thinking like, okay, I found the solution and this better work for the rest of my career, right? Lots of things can change. Our bodies can change, our demands on our lives. Otherwise can change.

So many things change our health. We have to be open to iterating. We have to be open to essentially failing, trying something, having it not work, and coming up with more ideas. The thing that's so great about you is that you have a really smart brain, and you really know how to problem solve already, so it's a mindset issue. That's the block. It's not your ability to find solutions, right? It's whether you allow yourself to utilize that strength that you have or not okay. So so changing your mindset so that you're open to inner iterating. And then finally for this managing your mind piece, I want to talk about recognizing the predictability that exists within the unpredictability, because it's easy for us to tell ourselves a story about how awful it is, or how unpredictable or erratic it is.

But when you really, really zoom out, you start to see no, but even within that, there is some predictability. So let's just say we're talking about being on service. I mean, you could do this in a data driven way, or you could just kind of go based on like what your memory serves, but you really can think about it like, okay, so typically on a regular workday when I'm not on service, I'm able to, you know, leave by 536. And that's pretty consistent. I'm making this up, but let's just say right. So but on on service, I mean pretty much I'm usually leaving between 7 and 830.

That's pretty typical right? So that's already pretty predictable. Like you're probably going to be leaving between 7 and 830. And you could be like, yeah, every now and then something weird happens and I got to stay past nine. But really, for the most part, that's just that's very few and far between. So yeah, there is some unpredictability about when you're going to be done. But for the most part, within that unpredictability exists, the predictability that you're probably going to be leaving between 7 and 830 for the most part, and then you can plan accordingly around that. Okay. So same thing with working shift work.

Maybe you work in an urgent care or emergency department or something like that. Could be like every now and then I leave, like basically right after shift change. But most of the time, not most of the time, I end up having about 45 minutes to an hour of, you know, work to do to just tidy things up, finish notes, do whatever. So pretty much an hour after I'm usually leaving. Or if there's like a trauma that came in, it might be up to three hours. But even that, even if things are really, really pretty crazy going on in there, I mean, it's very unusual for me to have to stay longer than three hours after.

So there's some predictability within that. Like pretty much within 1 to 3 hours after your shift, you're going to be done. So you can plan on that. You obviously have no idea if a trauma is going to roll in or not or what's going to be happening, but for the most part, with few exceptions, it's going to be in that range. That's also really good to know. So that predictability that exists within the unpredictability can give you some of that structure and stability that you really crave and want. So part two is getting solutions focused and creative. And what I mean by this is often we're just like, ah, I mean, what can even somebody do a lot of rhetorical questions I mean, what are you even how are you supposed to even figure this out? How are you supposed to lose weight when this is your life? And like, your brain's like.

Yeah, how? I don't know, they're not really asking it very good questions. You're not saying. I know there are so many solutions. What could some of them be? It's not a brainstorming kind of activity. It's a I mean, honestly kind of a self-pity. Poor me. Kind of a exercise. Right. So what you want to do is pay attention to where you struggle and then create specific plans around that. And this is something that I think a lot of people don't recognize can be a great solution. It's something we talk about in our program all the time and we help people with individually.

Sometimes you're going to need to have some, like maybe your regular plan and then some extra backup plans or adjunct plans, some additional things that help you during these times when things are more erratic or unpredictable. So similarly to what I was talking about earlier with understanding, okay, I typically am going to be getting home between this time and this time, or leaving between that time and that time. You can make a plan for how you approach that. You can make a plan for how you set yourself up for success leading into that. So that's leading into a week of being on service. Like probably maybe make sure that your house is stocked with food.

I mean, or have groceries delivered and is someone there to receive them middle of the week or something like that? Like plan ahead for that. If you're on call, plan on how you can support yourself. I remember so many times I'd end up staying up late thinking, well, I don't want to go to sleep because someone might call and then I'll be woken up again. And then no one called and I should have just gone to sleep like there was not great prefrontal cortex driven. Thinking always around that. And it would have I would have benefited from that. So you want a plan for how to support yourself leading up to it, but also afterward? Because that's a time when a lot of people struggle with overeating.

You can imagine you're going to feel super, super tired, probably physically and probably emotionally too. Mentally very tired. Are you going to be doing your best thinking and planning and decision making at that time, particularly when it comes to food? I mean, maybe not, probably not. So it could be that the best thing to do is to make sure you've got everything that you need already in the house, and this is your plan. You want to come home, you're going to eat these things, and you're going to be laying down by whatever time or like you're planning. You already know, like if I'm going to be probably tired from being on call all night, then I have a full day of work and then a meeting after, and I know that I'm going to be picking up this food that's on plan and works for me, and I always enjoy eating on my way home from work.

So it's not like, oh, maybe I should go here or there, or where should I get food from? It's like, it's already done. It's already planned. It's just all you have to do is follow it. That's sometimes the biggest gift that you can give yourself. It's like you already just decided it all and you just have to do what you decided. Another element to this is having some backup plans for your backup plans, because you could have it as you have this secondary plan, and then that's not going to be so great. So it sounds like, oh my gosh, it's all this planning.

But it doesn't have to be so difficult, particularly when you end up doing these things again and again, like if you have weeks on service periodically, right, or you're working overnights periodically, there's ways to think about this. So it could be you can again get creative and the release solutions focused. So one of the times that I really kind of struggle, even if I have a plan, is when this happens. And so if that happens then I'll approach it this way. Like we can't obviously think of every single scenario that could ever come up for ourselves, but we really can set ourselves up for some significant success by just thinking about like, well, what are all the issues? What are the things that have happened before that I had a hard time with, and then making adjustments accordingly? And then finally, I just want to encourage you to advocate for solutions, you know, ask for what would help you.

This could be in your personal life. Like, it's okay to ask the people who love you, who are in your life to help you when you're going through these times. Often they want to help and they don't even know how, and so there might be certain things that you can do. They can help, maybe hold you accountable, or maybe they can help provide some of the things that would help you a lot, that you won't have time or energy to do, like some food prep, or getting food from places, or even just companionship. Someone to talk to about something like whatever it may be. But it also could be advocating big picture for some solutions in terms of what it looks like to work these types of schedules. So, for instance, say that you are finding that when you have weeks on service, things have gotten so busy that you are regularly staying past 11 and then you're back at it again at seven. And it's just this is untenable. This is not something you can do long term.

It might be time to talk to your department about having some sort of backup system, or somebody to help out during the day to relieve some of the pressure on getting things done. Could be that it might be time to start looking at your efficiency. And maybe other people are not having such struggles even when it's super busy. It might be time to start looking at like, well, why is it taking you longer? And what efficiencies can we build in? Maybe there's some mindset things. Maybe you're taking longer than is probably necessary to be researching everything on every patient, whatever it may be. Right? There might be some room for movement there.

Another thing, though, I think that can be very helpful, particularly for people who work shift work and it is erratic and all over the place is to advocate again with the department of whoever's making these decisions. There is research on ways to have people go through the process of doing shift work, where it is not as taxing on bodies, on minds, on things like that, like working with the circadian rhythm a little bit better could be that there's just some shifts. You could propose some ideas, especially if there are research backed people would be probably more interested in that and advocating for things that are going to work for you and where everyone will win. The patients get taken care of, and everyone's experience of working in this way improves.

So as much as it's like, yes, we can do a lot of work to make our experience of these types of schedules better. There's nothing to say that you can't or shouldn't ask for ways to change the actual system as well, to make it even easier and even better. Okay, that's what I have for you today. I have worked with so many people over the years who have unpredictable and erratic schedules. I always just, I always look at it. I'm like, okay, cool. We just got to find the way that's going to work for you. So let's get to work. Let's just do it. And I think that mindset has really always served me well in my life and served others as well.

And I want to encourage you to adopt that as well. Like, all right. So this is what we've got. So how can we make this work? How can everybody be winning, including me, and opening your mind up to those solutions so you can really figure it out? Because I know that there's not just one solution. There are dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions, infinite number of possibilities. And you just got to find one that works today. All right, my friend, thanks so much for your attention. Thanks for being here. And take care. Have a great week.

The post Ep #392: Dealing with Unpredictable or Erratic Schedules While Losing Weight appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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It’s been a while since our last client success story episode; I figured it was about time you heard from someone besides me! Allow me to introduce you to Lindsey C. Thomas, MD.

In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, Lindsey is sharing her weight loss success story, complete with all her secrets to living a happy and fulfilling life, at peace with your body. In fact, she’s sharing how she came to the realization that she didn’t need to lose weight at all after years of constant yo-yo dieting.

There’s so much value in learning from people in different stages of life than you, so I hope you enjoy hearing Lindsey’s perspective from the tail end of her career and everything she’s learned about self-love, weight loss, and living the dream.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The shockingly young age at which kids start worrying about their weight * What you never knew about the early days of the Weight Watchers program * The harmful cycle Lindsey found herself in for years of her life * What you need to know about fad diets * The benefits of the science-based approach of Weight Loss for Doctors Only * The damaging eating habits that doctors force on themselves * How it feels to live life with total self-acceptance * What makes Weight Loss for Doctors Only different from any other weight-loss program * The secret to living life on your terms * How to know if weight-loss coaching is for you

There’s so much to relate to in Lindsey’s story. So many of us have struggled with body image issues since childhood, tried every fad diet to come and go, spent years losing and gaining weight, and never truly found peace with our bodies. All of that changed for Lindsey when she found Weight Loss for Doctors Only, and this is her story.

To learn more about the coaching program that helped Lindsey so much, check out Weight Loss for Doctors Only at katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #389: Does Weight Loss Equal Skinny Fat? Let’s Talk Body Composition

Ep #388: Preventing Future Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 3

Ep #387: Moving Forward After Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 2

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Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm really glad to have you here with me today. Today is another great, great episode and another really fun weight loss success story.

So today I brought on Lindsey Thomas, who is really, I mean, an incredible, incredible doctor. She has really, really accomplished in her career. We didn't even touch on that that much in this episode because we were kind of talking about other things. It was probably outside the scope of what we talked about. But she's really incredible, really accomplished, and has mentored so many people and is just, you know, a joy and just someone who we've had in the program for a little while now and she's just so lovely.

One thing that I just have appreciated so much from her is that even though she's more on the tail end of her career, she has really just come in and been so open to all the things that we do in weight loss for doctors only, and she's just gone in head first and applied everything and has the results to show for it, which is so, so cool.

Another thing that's so great about Lindsey is she is somebody who maybe didn't really lose a ton of weight, but that's because she really didn't actually need to. We'll talk more about that in the episode. You're going to hear more about that. But really, it's interesting to think about the idea that, you know, we constantly think we need to be losing more weight or, you know, we could be a little bit thinner. And that day never comes where we feel like we are, you know, thin enough and can maintain it. And it feels peaceful and easy. It just can be this treadmill to nowhere trying to continue to lose weight.

And so that was something that Lindsey had experienced. And so through coaching, she was able to really kind of rightsize what her focus is. I get to a place where she's focusing on the things she wants to focus on creating the experience of her life within her body that she wants to have and doesn't need to focus so much anymore on, you know, the weight and trying to lose and doing all sorts of maybe less supportive things, as she had done over the years and as so many of us have also done over the years.

So Lindsey is a really, really inspiring person. I just love coaching her and love talking with her because she's just yeah, just, you know, kind of like hashtag goals. She's just a really great person to have in our program. And you know, we have so many other women who are so similar to her in the sense that they're at the maybe more of the tail end of their careers or even possibly retired and still have so much to contribute, are able to give mentorship to some of our program members who are more mid-career or earlier in their careers.

It really just creates a rich environment. I think so many of us know a lot of people who are about the same age as us, and I think it's so, so beneficial for us to get to know people who are in all different stages of life, and there's so much that we can all learn from each other and contribute to each other. It's just incredible. Anyway, I'm going to stop gushing about Lindsey, but I could keep going so great. I know you're going to really enjoy this episode, so please enjoy my conversation with Lindsey Thomas.

Katrain: Lindsey, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so glad to have you here. Well thank you.

Lindsey: This is fun.

Katrina: I want to start off with just asking you if you could just introduce yourself a little bit, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself, whatever you feel comfortable sharing. So I'm.

Lindsey: Lindsey Thomas. My career was and still is to some extent as a forensic pathologist, which if anyone listening is the least bit interested, it's the best job in the world. Go for it. It's the best kind of doctor. I fell into it by accident, but it turned out I have loved it and continue to love it. I am married to my high school sweetheart. We're going on 45 years this year and we have three children, all of whom are married. Our two daughters have our grandsons, and our son and his wife are expecting our first granddaughter this summer.

So we will have four grandchildren. And I spend a lot of my time taking care of myself. Now I'm in this marvelous phase of life. I'll be 70 this summer. It's kind of magic. I listen to people who are in the thick of child rearing and full time careers, and I look at my oldest daughter, especially, who has two children, and I'm so empathetic because I remember those years of just, okay, we have the track meet in Elk Rapids, and then we have the choir concert at the high school, and then we have. So we're going to grab a meal somewhere and just trying to fit it all. And so, ah, I'm at this wonderful place. So that's me. Yeah.

Katrina: This is so great. And I am very excited to talk to you, because I think that people in your demographic in your age group are often not heard from, you know, particularly women and a lot of women in particular when it comes to, you know, wellness goals, weight, eating, things like that, start thinking like, what's the point? Why even work on this anymore? You know, it just like I've, you know, I've been struggling for so long or, you know, just lots of real kind of, you know, not super helpful thoughts. So I'm just very excited to have this conversation and, and discuss things further. So could we go back to whenever in your life you first identified that you had an issue with food or weight? Whether you know now you think you did, it might be debatable, but when did that first become an issue for you?

Lindsey: Honestly, Katrina, I don't remember a time in my life when I didn't think I had an issue with my weight. I remember in elementary school thinking I was fat for sure by middle school, and by then I had started sort of playing around with dieting, and I remember wearing a really tight belt under my dress so that I wouldn't be hungry, just the kind of crazy stuff that people do when they don't have any information about what else to do. But I would say my whole life I felt like I was overweight.

Katrina: Was that coming from like your actual family unit? Was it the outside? You know, just society already was shifting in that direction. Where is that coming from?

Lindsey: Well, certainly I saw my mother struggle with her weight. My grandmothers were both a little on the heavy side, but in retrospect they were really probably very healthy people. It's just now thinking about it. At the time I thought, oh, they're kind of fat. And my mom for sure was always worried about gaining weight. And she was pregnant, oh, I don't know, 6 or 7 times in a ten year period. And so certainly had gained weight. But again, in retrospect, she wasn't overweight until much later in life. And even then she wasn't that overweight. But I think that was very much the message. And then, of course, as I became a teenager, it was the era of Twiggy, all that external messaging about you have to be willow thin, and I have size 11ft. I'm never going to be willow thin.

Katrina: Well, you know, what I was thinking about was just the different generations and the messaging. And, you know, it's been a long time, even before you were a young girl that, you know, there was messaging around body size and all of that. That's that's been going on a long time. But I'm like, in Gen X, I'm a young Gen Xer. I just I'm like at the tail end of Gen X. And a lot of the Gen Xers talk about how it's like, you know, we really got the brunt of the low fat, you know, dieting stuff and everything. And I think for sure that is a huge part of it. But I was thinking, though, that like the generation before us, like we were kids when we were going through all of that, or like seeing our parents and our mothers and, you know, the women in our lives struggling through that. But your generation was actually living the whole thing, like you were there for the whole shebang, basically.

Lindsey: You know, that's so interesting about the low fat. When we moved out of our house in Minneapolis, I went through all of my kids stuff and I found some nutrition booklets that they had worked on at school. And the pyramid of here are fats at the top. You don't want any of those. Fats are bad here. The bottom grain cereal, bread, pasta I mean just it's like, could we please flip that or.

Katrina: Just have a little more balance all around? Yeah, there's a place for all of it. And I could just.

Lindsey: See it was kind of new at that time, as you say. And oh, this is really going to make the difference. Yeah, it sure made the difference.

Katrina: It definitely made a difference. That's for sure. That's for sure. That's for sure. Let's just go over all of those I mean you know, so you said right. You're 69 now about to be 70. That's like a lot of decades of dealing with all this stuff. Can you give a little bit of a, you know, overview on different things that you try different things that you did?

Lindsey: Sure. The first really serious effort was when I was in med school. And my I think it was my second year of med school, I joined Weight Watchers and lost. I mean, I it's so ironic now because I went in at a perfectly fine weight. I had just stayed at that weight my entire life. I would have been fine. It's maybe 10 pounds more than I would like to be. 15 maybe, but if I'd stayed there, I would have been fine. So again, in retrospect, it was a horrible thing I did.

So I joined Weight Watchers and I lost 20 pounds and got really thin. But of course it was totally non-sustainable. I mean, Weight Watchers back in those days it was pre points. You got two servings of carbs a day, you got zero fat. Basically you got two pieces of fruit, three servings of I mean it was really not sustainable, very restrictive. So that really started me on the whole kind of on off good bad binge fast, that whole kind of cycle that for the next, oh, 30 years, I sort of went up and down and up and down. And I joined Weight Watchers multiple times, and I think I did Jenny Craig once.

Lindsey: And so I had all the things and kept over time as I was working full time, raising kids did not have a lot of time to care for myself. My weight kept creeping up and up and up and the year that I was going to turn 60. So exactly ten years ago, I just thought, okay, I do not want to keep gaining 5 pounds a year for the rest of my life. And our oldest daughter asked if I wanted to go on a canoe trip with her for my birthday, and I thought, I don't want to sort of waddle into that canoe, I just, I need to do something.

So at that point, I joined Jenny Craig and it was very successful in terms of weight loss, and I did that for a number of years. But again, at that time you got your packaged food. So it was great. My husband would make his dinner, I would make my dinner. At some point I realized, okay, this isn't sustainable. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life carrying around these little packages. And and again, there was sort of the free food and that you can go.

Katrina: Overeat when you want to emotionally eat.

Lindsey: Exactly. And none of those programs ever deal with why or any of the underlying stuff. Then from there, a friend told me about ketogenic way of eating, and ketogenic girl was the person I followed, and I had great success with that. And actually I've eaten low carb now for almost seven years, I think. And one of the criticisms, of course, of keto is, well, it's not. People can't stay on it. They miss the real food too much. And I kind of feel like I'm so lucky to be at this stage when the food industry is starting to catch up, because there are so many great substitutes. Riced cauliflower. I mean, I think I've read that no vegetables had the glow up that cauliflower has had.

Katrina: You know what's funny about cauliflower? Is. I don't even like cauliflower. I really I mean, it's just really not my thing. Like too many years of growing up, being forced to eat it, I just don't really care for it. Can I make myself eat it? Yes, but I just don't care for it that much. But in rice format, you cannot taste it like it doesn't taste like cauliflower. It's amazing. I just had it the other day and I don't eat it really at home too much. But I've had it out and it's great. Yeah.

Lindsey: It's my go to. I mean, even my husband, who does not like cauliflower particularly, is perfectly happy with that.

Katrina: So the low carb has felt good for you because it's not like for me, low carb is not the right thing for me, but it is the right thing for you. Which is so good to figure out. It is.

Lindsey: And I don't do it 100%. I'm not, you know, perfect. But I've really come over time to realize I can have exception eats once in a while, and that's certainly something I'm continuing to work on in this program with you, because as we've talked, international travel is kind of my downfall. But anyway, after starting ketogenic, then I found another coaching group, online coaching. And that's where I was first introduced to the idea of coaching. But then a friend of mine, a forensic pathologist, said, I'm doing Katrina Ubell and it's coaching just for doctors.

And honestly, that was such a little light bulb click of. First of all, I love how science based it is, which makes sense that it appeals to doctors because it's science based. The second thing that's been so great is as a doctor, I think I felt so much guilt about being overweight. Like, I'm smart. Look at all these things I was able to do. I got into college, I got into med school, I got into residency, I finished all that. Why can't I get a handle on and learning from you that actually, we were trained during college, during med school, during residency, during our jobs, honestly, to ignore our bodies.

Lindsey: And it doesn't matter if you're tired, you keep going. It doesn't matter if you're hungry. You just keep going. And then when you do have a chance to eat, you better eat all you can because you don't know when you'll eat again. And I don't care if you're full. Keep going because it may have to last. You and I sort of joke with myself that I have a separate bladder that I use during autopsies, because. Your auxiliary bladder. My auxiliary bladder.

When I'm doing autopsies, I'll go in the room and get all gowned up. Well, I don't want to have to un, you know, clean to. So I'll just go and go and go. And then the instant I'm done, I leave. I'm taking everything off and running, running to the bathroom. And my profession is much more flexible than surgeons or I mean, if you're in a labor and delivery, you don't have the option of saying, oh, just say I'm a little peckish, I need something to eat. So it made so much sense and really helped take away the guilt and shame about why am I this way, why can't I? I feel like that's something that's been really, really valuable.

Katrina: And so one thing that we've talked about is that idea of it kind of never being good enough with your body, you know, like where there's always another 5 or 10 pounds that you feel like you could lose. And it's like, yeah, you probably could if you wanted to become like, emaciated and then progressively more emaciated, you know, but how that is driven from that old programing, this idea like that, our, you know, us against our bodies, our bodies not being good enough. Like going way back to comparing yourself to Twiggy even. Right. Like, are you twiggy thin? If not, then like, you know it's not right. And how that has been a lot of the work that we've done together in our program is kind of just getting to peace with what you have, and then what you kind of have realized is like, you don't really need to lose weight after all these years.

Lindsey: I know it. So I I've gotten to this ridiculously low weight probably three times in the last maybe five years or something, and I stayed there for about a day until I eat anything else. And then I go back up and I felt like I was constantly struggling still, and I thought, okay, this isn't peace and freedom. Yeah, I'm at this great weight, so-called. But it's just it's not sustainable. So then and this is what I'm still really working on, is okay if I eat the. Where I want to eat, which is low carb, which is really paying attention to the hunger scale, which is I still plan every meal at least a day, and sometimes for the whole week.

I am very conscientious about not eating bread, and when I say if I eat the way I want to eat, it's not, oh, I eat all the things I ever crave. It's like I eat what I consider to be a healthy way of eating. It turns out that my body prefers to be about 12 pounds more than what in my head I think the skinny me should weigh, but even when I got to that low weight, I still was feeling like, you know, three more pounds would really do it. And at some point with, you know, coaching with your group, I realized, you know what? It's not really the number. It's really how I feel about my body. So that's what I'm really working on now is stop obsessing about how I look and really focus on can I do the things I want to do? Can I lift my grandson and stand up? Can I chase after them and play Big Bad Wolf and have I? Can I jog as far as I want to go? And yes, is the answer to all of that, right.

Katrina: So it's like kind of recognizing there's actually not a problem here. Like the only problem is the one that I create in my thinking about it.

Lindsey: The first time I coach said, what if there's nothing wrong with you? And I just felt like saying, okay, well, clearly you don't understand this ongoing thought of what if there's nothing wrong? I can wake up in the morning and honestly, truly, 100% believe, yeah, my body is fine the way it is. And if at some point I decide something else, I can do something else. But really, my work right now is accepting where I am.

Katrina: Which way do you think about it? When you have so much practice rejecting your body right and thinking it needs to be different, like it would make sense that it might take some diligence to to shift that, you know, to have the this new way become the normal. Like the way that you approach your body and yourself.

Lindsey: I mean, for how many years? The first thing I've done when I've woken up in the morning is pat my belly and say, ooh. And for the last couple of weeks, I've really made an effort of I get up, I don't touch my belly, my belly is fine. Whatever my belly is doing is fine.

Katrina: What I am hearing and what I just, you know, think is really great is like, well, one of the things that I love about our program is that it's not like everybody's eating low carb or everybody's eating more carbs, or everybody's eating paleo or whatever it is, you know, like like that, you know, your body feels great on that. And so you make that work, you know, and that's a priority for you. And then like the way that you plan your food is amazing. And other people are like, I can actually achieve the results I want and I don't have to plan so much. Amazing.

You know, like like we get to just do what works for us as individuals instead of it just being this, like, you know, predetermined plan that everybody needs to follow no matter what. Like that's how we get ourselves in trouble, like that's Jenny Craig or, you know, any of those other things like, this is just the way you have to do it. And instead it's going like, no, how can I work with myself and my life doing the things that actually help me as an individual and then do those in a way that works like, right, like some people eat low carb and they feel terrible. I try to be for zero energy. I feel horrible. So it's like, that doesn't work for my body. Isn't it so great that there are different options for different people? And then you get to find like the things that taste great to you, so it works out for you.

And then and then what I love is then you go international traveling, because that's the stage of life you're in where you're doing more of that. And then, you know, I know you're still working on it, but finding that balance where it's like, yeah, you get to have, you know, whatever you want. However you figure out you want to do that. And then when you get back home again, you're not like, oh my gosh, I need to go on a diet. You know, like all the drama, it's like, just go back to doing what you know, works that you like and it sorts itself out.

You're back to where you want to be and that that's normal. I think, you know, can you go on vacation and not gain weight? Absolutely. Can you go on vacation and lose weight? Absolutely. But also at a certain point, particularly when you're maintaining, you know, you're maybe not so focused on that. So you gain two, 3 pounds. Okay. So what. Because, you know, as soon as you get home, like you said, within a week or two it's off again because you know how to work with yourself. And you know, what are the. Actual things that really move the needle for you as an individual, which then frees you up to think about other things you're not so focused on, on, you know, the weight and all that.

Katrina: I think, honestly, I think it's always a great time to really focus on how we feel. I think we often like what I'm realizing in my late 40s now is how all of a sudden it feels like very much about health. You know, like I had to get a cardiac scan and I was like, wait, what? Before it was all about about, like, being thin, you know what I mean? Like being a good weight. Like, that's what it felt like, at least for me, in my own mind and my experience. And now all of a sudden, it's like health related stuff, like we can, you know, incorporate all this. We don't have to get to a certain age to start doing anything. We can start being satisfied with where we are right now or, you know, like going, hey, what are the things I want to do? How do I want to feel to your point and work on creating all of that and see where our bodies kind of rest at instead of being so focused on the number, you know, and it's like a good day or a bad day based on where I stand compared to that number or things like that.

Lindsey: Totally. And also within the last ten years, what I've really focused on is exercise. And I started jogging ten years ago because our daughters said, mom, let's run a marathon. I was like, uh, none of us run. They're like, yeah, but we could do it. So this was Christmas one year, so the three of us went out and we jogged for about a minute. Then we walked for about five minutes, and then we jogged for about a minute. And we're like, okay, well, that's a start. Well, six months later I ran a marathon.

Katrina: Incredible.

Lindsey: My t shirt said, my daughter's talked me into this. On the back. It said, where are they now? They all their lives interfered, but oh, they.

Katrina: Didn't even end up running it.

Lindsey: No they didn't. Our oldest ran the last four miles with me, which was really nice. Yeah. If you ever do a marathon, the last four miles are.

Katrina: Having someone run you in is really nice.

Lindsey: So I started with jogging. But then the older I get, the more I realize it's about upper body. Because especially as women, I thought, I don't want to be one of those people that gets on an airplane and then looks around for some man to put my case up. Now. True, lots of times people look at me and say, here, honey, let me help you. But you know, I could do it.

Katrina: You want to be capable.

Lindsey: I want to be capable. I want to be able to lift my own things. Right. So that's what I've really been focusing on. And then a few years ago, I came to your in person in Milwaukee. And one of the things you had us write about was, what's something you would like to add or do? And I put yoga and then, well, what's holding you back all the time? I don't want to have to go anywhere. I don't want to. It was still during Covid, blah, blah. And then the next question was, okay, why is that BS or something? Why is that excuse really not? And I thought, okay, that's the lamest excuse. First of all, there's YouTube. There's so much yoga.

Second of all, I can find ten minutes a day. Yeah. Just that's so for the last, however many years ago that was three years. I've done ten minutes of yoga every single day. And it's like my balance is better, my flexibility is better. And so then I've now within the last oh, 4 or 5 months, I decided, okay, I can add ten minutes of, you know, this other thing. And a few years ago I decided, okay, I can add 20 to 25 minutes of this high interval intensity or high intensity interval training thing. So now I do all those things and it's just I have the time because initially when I started jogging it was for weight loss.

Katrina: Right. And that's what I was going to say. It's like people think if I could just be a marathon runner, then I wouldn't struggle with my weight. There are tons of people who are very physically active, marathon runners and otherwise, who very much struggle with overeating and body issues and all kinds of stuff. Totally.

Lindsey: I don't think I lost a pound training for a marathon, and now that isn't even like a factor. In fact, one of the apps that I do is all about weight loss, and I just sort of filter that out because that's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this for lower and upper body strength.

Katrina: And I think that when we can shift away from that weight loss mindset, or at least having it be like the primary thing, it just opens up this whole other world of other accomplishments and ways to enjoy just being in the world and and what our bodies can do. And it's just brings more positivity to us and arguably more health. Right? I mean, we know when people's balance is better and we can prevent falls and all that stuff. It's a great things, you know, to be concentrating on. That's actually I had read an article in. A paper a couple of years ago about balance. And I was like, huh, I don't do anything about that. And I thought, you know what?

When I'm brushing my teeth, I have like the Sonicare toothbrush. So it goes for two minutes. And I thought, you know, what I'll do is, you know, beeps like to have me move around the four quadrants of my mouth. And I'm like, when I brush my teeth, I'm just going to stand on one foot. I don't know how I got this idea, but I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this, you know? And then I realized how much better my balance was on one foot than the other. And like over the course of time, I have like really gotten so much better at that. And then I make it harder on myself and I'll, like, close my eyes a little bit. I'll do all these different things and, and I only do it at night. I don't even do it in the morning when I brush my teeth.

Lindsey: Well, that's the thing. And when I feel physically more energetic, then I'm more likely to say, yeah, let's walk instead of drive. Or we just got back from a bike trip, I don't bike, I mean, I can bike, but I didn't even do any bike prep because I knew my cardiovascular is fine, my legs are strong, I'll keep up. And it's just so fun to feel at this age. And I keep trying to think about when my mom, for example, was 70. Did she? I mean, maybe she walked downtown once in a while, which is a quarter mile. But certainly she did not believe in exercise. She thought it was a waste of time. If you want to exercise, you mop the floor. If you want to exercise, you rake the leaves. It's been kind of amazing to get that voice out of my head and replace it with the this is so good for me voice.

Katrina: Yeah, exactly. And you get to enjoy the benefits of that. I love that if it's okay, I wanted to just talk a little bit about how you were kind of contemplating whether you wanted to fully retire, like completely stop working because that's, you know, that is a big a big decision maker. You know, I think a lot of people start, you know, really when when's the right time and when should I go. And and as we know, there are a lot of, you know, things to be frustrated about, lots of things to manage your mind around and being a practicing physician these days and, you know, but then there's a lot of great things that can come from it, too.

And, and you had this idea that, like, you should retire. And then we had a nice conversation. No, you actually can live the life you want to live and do the parts of your job that you love and still contribute in the ways that you want to keep your brain active and, you know, just staying an active participant for longer. And also, it would have been fine if you decided you wanted to stop working. But it was it was a big kind of area for you to work through.

Lindsey: It has been so interesting because I retired from, uh, my regular practice ten years ago, but I've had this very active consulting practice, and I was doing locums for a while, and that really fell off during Covid. Then I did a little after Covid, but I haven't done any locums for, gosh, almost three years now. Maybe. Uh, but I still have this consulting practice, and I made the mistake of agreeing to work for a couple of entities that were really a pain to work with the military and the federal government, to be exact. The people were great. The processes were ludicrous. Yeah. In terms of trying to get reimbursed for my time and just all the paperwork. And so that's when I was talking with you was when I had recently had a few of those and I was just like, I just want to be done with this.

I don't want to have to deal with. But then I realized, you know, actually, there are some attorneys that I work with that I really like. And I know it won't be a hassle getting paid. Mhm. And it's such interesting work. I mean that's the thing. So what I, the decision I've made now is if it's a new attorney that's asking me, I'll say no. And here are, you know, six people I can refer you to. But if it's someone that I have enjoyed working with in the past and it wasn't a hassle, I've said, well, yeah, let's talk about this. So I have a couple of new cases and mostly I'm cutting back and finishing up cases. But yeah, that was such a helpful conversation to sort of realize, you know, actually there are things I really like.

Katrina: Yeah. And you don't have to stop and you certainly don't have to stop because of a certain birth date or milestone birthday or any kind of predetermined, like, who am I to be practicing at XYZ age? Like, what difference does it make? If you like it and it works with your lifestyle well?

Lindsey: And what I realized was I was being very influenced by our oldest daughter. We live in Madison where she lives, and we moved here to be closer to her and our grandsons, and she's at the hard, hard place in her life where she's working. Her husband's working, they have a four year old and a one year old. And, you know, somebody's always coming home from daycare with a fever. And then there's I mean, you know, we've all been through that of not what's your day like?

Katrina: It wasn't that long ago.

Lindsey: What's your day like tomorrow. Can you stay? You know, just all of that. Do we have to go to the E.R. or is it. I mean, her life is so challenging. Yeah. And she looks at me and how much we travel. Yeah, and she just thinks your life looks exhausting me. And so the other day, I was over there and we were gardening, and I said, you know, I know it must look to you like, this is a crazy life that I have because we travel. We got here three four times a year. We travel all over the US. I mean, I love to travel so. And it's why you work, right? So you can do what you love. And I said, but it doesn't feel stressful to me.

I remember when I was at your stage in life, the thought of loading up the kids and going anywhere. It just makes me want to lie down. Yeah, it's not like that. Now I can spend a whole day packing myself and walk back and forth and back and forth in the condo to my bedroom and my closet and, you know, yeah, it's fun. I like thinking about, am I going to need my hot pot on this trip? Silly stuff, you know? And she was like, oh, well, I can see that. So I realized I was being influenced by her kind of criticizing my still working because from her perspective, it felt like I should be relaxing more. Right?

Katrina: And I can see that especially when you're so exhausted, it's like, you know, you kind of think like, that's when I'll be able to rest. But, uh, I think, you know, we we even discussed this a little bit is like, you know, the more you can use your brain in a way that you like to like, that is good for you, like, that helps you with your health, with your vitality, with, you know, your, um, you know, ability to stay like an active participant in the world. It's something to really consider. So it's like when you have something that you love to do and you can do it in a way that works for you. Why would we stop doing this? And whenever that time comes, you know, I think it can be helpful to just know that you will know, it will become clear to you. It will become obvious. Now's the time. And so if that's not happening yet, then you don't have to keep thinking. Is it now? Is it now? Is it now?

Lindsey: And likewise with travel, a lot of people look at us and say, I can't believe how much you travel. Isn't it exhausting? And what I keep saying is, we won't do this forever, right? We're at this really kind of magic window in our lives when we have the time, the energy, the money, the a freedom, the lack of responsibility. But, you know, if my 95 year old dad got a lot worse, we would maybe need to spend more time with him. Or if something happens to one of the grandkids or the then. So at any point our priorities could shift. Or in ten years we just may feel like, you know what? Doing that overseas flight is just too hard.

Katrina: That's what I've decided. I'm like, we need to go to the far places now, and then we'll travel around the country when we're older.

Lindsey: Yes, exactly. I know my husband and I were debating between a trip to South Africa and a trip to Germany, uh, for next year, and he was looking at the flight times, and it's like a 16 hour flight to South Africa. Wow. So we were like, okay, we better do that next year. Yeah, right. And then.

Katrina: Do that one in.

Lindsey: Germany later, because we can always do the eight hours, you know. That's right. Right, right, right.

Katrina: So so great. And it's so great to not then be stressed about how much weight am I going to gain on that trip? And then what am I going to do to get it off and all of that. So. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Lindsey: And every trip has gotten just a little better. I've learned, okay, this technique didn't work. Okay. That technique didn't work. Okay. It's okay if I eat this, but I still need to be really careful about when I drink. And, you know.

Katrina: So just like learning and I mean, that's one of the benefits is you have you get to do a lot of practice with these kinds of things, you know, like for that's why, you know, what our home life is. We practice every day. So then we get better at it a lot faster. But when you're going, you know, farther away and different kinds of foods and all kinds of different, you know, uh, just kind of, you know, tricky things to figure out. You're working it out, which just makes it that much easier. And yeah, I would just argue that, you know, that whatever happens, even if nothing you plan for worked, you'll come home and like, it's not going to be a big deal.

Lindsey: I know it. It's miraculous to get on the scale when I get back. And I used to be, whenever someone would say, hey, how was the trip to Paris? I would say that was great. The food was amazing. I gained 10 pounds in a week. It was like that was always part of my summary of the trip was how much weight did I gain in what time frame? And this time, the latest time I came back. How was the trip? It was great. The food was great. Yeah. And I know in my head, yeah, I temporarily gained some weight, but it's that real and I know what to do about it. And it was so fun experiencing everything. Yeah, I love it. By the way, the Greek salads really. I know you said your kids don't like feta or something. They don't.

Katrina: Like feta. I want to go to Greece with them, but I want to wait till they like feta cheese because, I mean, come on, both.

Lindsey: Lunch and dinner virtually every day. We had the world's best Greek salad. Can't wait.

Katrina: Someday I'm going to have that. Maybe I'll have to go without them, but. I don't know. My kids like a lot of things that are very grown up foods that I took me years into adulthood to like. So you never know, they they might turn it around here.

Lindsey: Well, and butter and grease might, might do it for them. The octopus was the best I've ever had in my life. Wow. And again, like octopus, huh? It can be good. And not just rubbery.

Katrina: Oh, right. Exactly. It's so good. So as we wrap things up, though, I would love for you to just share what your thoughts are for a fellow woman physician who's thinking like, is it worth it to come and do a coaching program? Should I do weight loss for doctors only, like especially for women who are, you know, maybe not in their 30s anymore or not even in their 40s anymore, and starting to think like, is this even worth it? Like, why should I even do this? What are your thoughts?

Lindsey: So yes, this is totally worth it. The coaching is what really makes the difference. And the previous program I did had this enormous group coaching, which was interesting. And you, as you've always said, you do learn from listening to other people, but it's so helpful when it's just doctors and when it's a smaller group, because for someone like me, it's really easy in a big group to just think, oh, other people need the coaching more than me. I'm okay and and not raise my hand.

Katrina: Other people have real problems.

Lindsey: Exactly like my husband isn't cheating on me. My kids aren't doing drugs. You know, whatever the really serious life issues are. Yeah, but in a small group, it's sort of like, okay, Lindsey, what did you bring today? And then obviously I want things to work. And you know, I can always bring something, but it really, really helps to have that focused group with other physicians who really understand in a way that it sounds elitist, but I don't mean it to be elitist. It's just it honestly is true that the training we've had to become who we are is unique. It's really different. And. So I think it really helps to be in that kind of a focus. And as I mentioned earlier, the science that you bring to it, I found those first, like the first six months when you have all those videos and it's like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting.

And I kind of knew bits and pieces about being fat adapted and, you know, intervals of when you eat and insulin and, but the way you put it all together, I thought I really should listen to that, like every year or so because it's so helpful. And as I mentioned, it just takes away so much of the guilt and shame.

Katrina: Yeah, like there's nothing wrong with you. It's like when we just learn how our bodies work and work with it. It's like, do you need to be ashamed about what your CBC showed this morning? Like, no, like, it's like we don't have to. Exactly. And then we can work on our brains and reprograming all of those thoughts that we have. And you know what? We make it all mean and all of that.

Lindsey: And one of the things I've loved is moving from white knuckling through, okay, I feel an urge. I just have to to learning other ways of, oh, yeah, last night I really wanted some chocolate after dinner, but I was full. Yeah, there's that urge, huh? Of course, my brain is telling me that our youngest daughter was here with her son visiting recently, and we were talking about sugar addiction because she and I have both really had issues with that. And she said that her pediatrician said, yeah, brains love sugar.

Katrina: And they sure do.

Lindsey: It's like kids prefer fruit over vegetables. It's plain flour, sugar. And again, I think the more I can. Not make it be that it's I'm doing something wrong and make it more. Yeah. This is just how bodies are. This is how my body is. And I can continue to be mad about it and struggle. And it's so unfair and and I think years thinking, oh, it's so unfair. My husband can do eat whatever, drink whatever, and he doesn't get. But then it's like it's not a matter of fair, unfair. It just is. Yeah.

Katrina: And that comparison isn't helpful when we just feel sorry for ourselves and then we don't, you know, like, why are we making ourselves feel worse? And when when we're emotional eaters and we use food to make ourselves feel better, like we're actually making it harder and the urge is stronger by even thinking about it like that.

Lindsey: Right. So. And now I just laugh. It's like, yep, some people eat that and don't gain weight, and I do. So there you go. That's how it is.

Katrina: Well, Lindsey, thank you so much for sharing. I really, really appreciate you coming and taking the time to share your personal experience. And I think, you know, you're very inspiring to me. And I think a lot of women feel like they are just kind of finding their way, you know, kind of like blindfold, like, you know, just reaching out in the dark, trying to figure it out. And I know that it makes a big difference for women like you and other women that we have who are later in their careers, you know, in our program. It really creates such a rich experience. And I think, you know, everybody is looking for what everybody else is offering, and it just makes for such a great experience. So thanks for trusting me. And thanks for, you know, taking a chance on yourself that you even come into the program. I think it's amazing.

Lindsey: Can I just put in one more plug for your program? Of course, one of the things that I've gotten is on your podcasts. I've learned about breathwork, I learned about tapping. I mean, I already was doing meditation, but you've had people on meditation, you have all these people, and now that's incorporated as part of my daily routine. I start every day with breathwork and meditation and tapping. And it's it's like everything helps.

Katrina: It all adds up. That's the thing. It's like, I think sometimes we're like, but I then I meditate and I don't know if it made a difference. Well, maybe it's not going to be one thing that changes everything for you, but, you know, several little things, like you said, like little ten minutes of yoga and a little bit of this and a little bit of that makes a difference. It's cumulative, and it ends up creating really the well-being that we've been searching. We thought if we were thin, we would feel that way. And now we realize actually, you know, yeah, it's nice if you can move the way you want to and you feel good in your body and all that, but ultimately you want to feel well, you want to feel like you can participate in your life in the ways that you want to. And those all contribute.

Lindsey: Well. Thank you.

Katrina: Thanks for coming on today.

The post Ep #391: Weight Loss Success Story – Lindsey C. Thomas, MD appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you find that the summer holidays affect your relationship with food?

There are a lot of traditions centered around food in the summertime. July 4th cookouts, ice cream in the evenings, cocktails and snacks on the porch. The list goes on. There’s even an evolutionary explanation for overeating in the summer which we’ll get into in this episode.

I’m here to talk about how to enjoy your summer holidays without overeating. I’m going to show you how you can enjoy food, enjoy the summer, and still keep up with your weight loss or maintenance goals. It is possible to have both! Tune in to learn how.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The evolutionary reason for overeating in the summertime * The secret to avoiding overeating without feeling like you’re missing out * Why you are putting contradictory pressures on yourself in the summer * Fun ways to replace sugary or alcoholic drinks * An effective way to get more enjoyment out of your treats * One thing that is pushing you to overeat (and how to overcome it) * How to reevaluate your food-related summer traditions

I hope you have an amazing summer filled with special moments and good food. I am not here to tell you you can’t have any of your favorite summer foods. In fact, it’s the opposite! I’m going to help you understand your thoughts and feelings about food at this time of year so that you can be free to enjoy your favorite foods without feeling the need to overeat.

To learn more about how the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you at this time of year, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info! We’d love to have you!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #388: Preventing Future Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 3

Ep #387: Moving Forward After Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 2

Ep #386: So You’ve Gained Weight Back… – Weight Regain Series Part 1

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. Happy summer. I think we can officially say it's summer here. For those of you on the other side of the world, happy winter! I hope you enjoy it. But. But over here, for most of my listeners, it is summertime, and I thought that this would be a good episode to do on the week where we are about to experience 4th of July.

So in the US, July 4th is our Independence Day, and it is kind of a quintessential summer holiday where there's usually a lot of excess and a lot of enjoyment. And I thought it would be a great time to talk about how to enjoy summer holidays and just the summer in general without overeating, without overdoing it, maybe drinking too much, things like that and still enjoy ourselves, right? We don't have to be suffering or missing out or feeling like we're deprived. I think what happens a lot of times in the summer is there's a lot of traditional things, a lot of things that are maybe nostalgic for us.

I know for us, our I think I've talked about this on here before, but we have a parade that goes down the street literally a half a block from my house, and my kids have been going their entire lives, and it's a really fun community event, and we look forward to it every year. It's like, it's a really good time. It's just tradition. It's tradition to do that. And while we have traditions throughout the whole year, I think that the summer is a time where we do a lot of that.

A lot of people go to a summer place that they've gone to maybe every summer since they were even a child, potentially. Could be that you always take a family trip, maybe to different places, but you go together as a family or with groups of friends, just things that are kind of outside that typical in that norm. And so talking about the summer and overeating in the summer is, I think, something that is worth looking at.

I was thinking about this a little bit more, and I was realizing that overeating in the summertime, like essentially stuffing yourself, is basically a super time honored tradition. And what I mean by that is when you think back a very long time ago. So humans, as we currently exist, have been around for about 200,000 years. So, I mean, even just 50,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, obviously there's I don't even think there's any real record of so much of what we were doing or things like that.

But I think the experts in those fields recognize that when there were harvests and even before there was any harvesting, when we were just hunting and gathering, when things were fruiting, when fruits were ready to be eaten, when roots were ready to be eaten, when there were maybe more animals around and present to hunt. It was in the summertime. Things were warmer, and so it made sense for humans in order to survive the winter and in order to not starve. It made sense that in the summertime that you would eat as much as you could, and that probably meant putting some fat stores on, because, again, you were probably going to be living off of those throughout the winter.

So when you came across some berry bush, some wild berry bush, you made sure to eat as many as you possibly could, even if you were full. Even if you didn't want more, you probably ate more. I think this is an important thing for us to recognize, because I don't know. I mean, I'm just hypothesizing here, this is not based on any fact, but I just have to kind of guess and wonder that there is some element of this that is in us genetically that we're just driven to do that.

I think some of it is that a lot of the really palatable foods are what's available in the winter. Right? So we evolved to think that those foods taste good when we eat them. But the thing that we didn't have back in those days, just to point out, was a bunch of sugary stuff. We didn't have a bunch of processed stuff. Nothing was super concentrated. We didn't have really refined foods and products and things like that. And we do now, of course. So which is really, really different. And of course, our brains have not had a chance to adapt to that or evolve to figure out how to not overindulge so much in that.

So that's where this topic comes in, where it's time to kind of discuss it. We can understand. Oh, right. It totally makes sense that there are times when I want to overindulge at this time of year, and I can understand why that is and why that tendency exists. And then I also understand that there's ways to work through it, so I can still enjoy myself and still have a good time and have it be a great summer. And I don't need to not reach my goals. Whether your goals are maintaining weight loss or maybe you want to lose weight, but you just are, what I'm going to work on is maintaining for now, or you have lost weight and want to maintain.

I think some people also look at the summer as like, okay, this is my chance to really get the weight off. I'm, you know, it's better whether I'm able to get outside. More able to be more active. The food is fresher, easier to eat, fresh stuff and days are longer and all that kind of stuff. But we can end up just putting a lot of pressure on ourselves during the summertime. And so I was thinking about that some more too, and I was realizing, I think the pressures that we put on ourselves in the summer are kind of opposing, like for a lot of people, it's two opposing forces.

So one force is we've got a couple of months. We got to maximize it. We got to maximize the fun. We got to have the best time. We need to take vacations or travel. We maybe need to host some events or parties or attend some of them. We need to enjoy all the foods that are around. It's just like, make the most of it. This is our chance to do that before it gets cold again. For those of us who have children, it's, you know, kids are off. So it's like this is often the time when we're going and doing different things and our schedules are different, and we want to have fun with them and do fun things and have different experiences. There's often a lot less structure or the structure that we do have is all over the place.

That's what I'm dealing with right now. I have all kinds of different things on my calendar that I'm juggling, and in addition to my own stuff, this is my oldest is off now. He's gone traveling the world. So another episode on that. I'm too emotionally tender to discuss it now, but there's still lots to do. So that's the one opposing force where it's like the one pressure is have fun, have the best time, take advantage, make the best of it. Right. All of that okay. When it is presented to you, take advantage. Then the other pressure is you should be thin.

You should look good in your clothes. You should feel good in whether it's a swimsuit or just less clothing, because it's warmer. If you want to be losing weight, like you should be getting a lot of weight off because this is the best time to do it. So this is your chance. Like make sure you maximize it and get that weight off. You know, by the time it starts getting cold, like you're in a different place and same, even if you're just trying to not gain weight, if you're having the best time and eating all the foods and taking advantage of all the food and drink opportunities, you know, it can be hard then to not gain weight.

So you can see how those two things are opposing. Reminds me of a lot of the advertisements that we see, which either explicitly or implicitly state that we should be able to eat all the things like all of the food, drink all the things, and we should also be skinny and fit and have a flat stomach and things like that, right? Just like, wait, how is that supposed to work? So just understanding that I think is really helpful to go like, oh, no wonder this can sometimes feel really difficult. Or I end the summer feeling really disappointed. I have these expectations for myself to have fun, want to participate in that, whatever that looks like.

Even if it's just like enjoying a drink on your back porch, you know, having snacks like kind of a cocktail hour type of thing, and then still having dinner, all those things. And then it's like, oh, I ended up not actually achieving my goals. Like, we can end the summer not feeling great about things. So another element to talk about with summer is with scarcity. And, you know, it is it's limited, particularly where I live. I mean, I know in warmer weather climates, sometimes the summer is more like how we look at winter, where it's just like so oppressively hot people can't even really get outside that much. They're basically in water or in air conditioning all the time. And so maybe they aren't experiencing it similarly.

But still, this is like their chance to do all the things that we don't get a chance to do the rest of the year. And that can be, again with the ways that we interact, like just being outside more, more travel, more special events. This is my chance. So I better take advantage of it. And that comes with food and drinks too. It's like, well, this is my chance. How often do we get to sit outside and have a fire and roast marshmallows? Okay, well then I probably should have a marshmallow because this is my chance. Not even factoring in at all. Like, do you even want that? Do you even like toasted marshmallows? Like, maybe you do. Maybe they're not really that big a deal to you. Maybe one a year is enough and you don't need to be having it every weekend with the kids, you know, like things like that, right?

Like, it's just that scarcity of, like, this is my chance. I better have it. I'm not going to have this experience again sometime soon, so I'll deal with the consequences later. Let me just take advantage now. And then. Another element I kind of alluded to it a little bit, but it's just the schedule being off, having maybe visitors coming to see you, maybe your kids are all over the place, different activities, just the things that maybe typically work for you or that routine is thrown off.

I mean, I know right now I've got two kids downstairs. I don't know what they're doing. We've got some plans a little bit later, but for now I'm like, I don't know what's happening. It definitely throws my brain for a loop. I'm like, wait, what's going on? What are we doing? Are you guys doing the things you're supposed to be doing? So that's what we got going on for the summer. So the good news is, is there's totally ways. To get through all these summer holidays and just the summer days in particular, without overeating. I think the biggest thing to recognize is that in the summertime and at the summer holidays and other days as well, there are so many things to enjoy in the summer that are not food or alcohol.

Okay, yes. Does a cold beverage taste good on a hot day? Absolutely it does. But it does not have to be alcoholic, and it doesn't have to be super sugary, and it doesn't have to be quote unquote special, you know, in the sense that it's like, oh, we put together this whatever thing that we don't usually drink. I mean, there are also plenty of other beverages that are also refreshing, also taste good. The specialness of it comes from the way you think about it, not because there's something so inherently special about it. And similarly, like you think about ice cream as summer food.

I mean, lots of people like ice cream all year round. But, you know, just when it's hot ice cream is nice. But then recognizing like, yeah, but you know what? Also so is watermelon, right. There's like a really good summer peach. Like there's lots of things that you can still enjoy that even are kind of more uniquely summery foods that are arguably probably a little bit more supportive for your body. Again, not to say you can't ever eat ice cream, but do we need to be having ice cream like three four nights a week? Maybe not. It's something to think about.

I don't think I've mentioned it on here. Maybe I did, I can't remember, but last summer we had this really cute ice cream shop open up. Let me think. It's three blocks away from my house. Like not even long blocks. It's the three short blocks away from my house. Really adorable. Owned by a family from the area. And it's just like such a great community gathering place. We can walk there, people walk there, walk their dogs there, and one of the weather's nice. You just stand outside and go up to the window and get your ice cream. They make the cones fresh and all the stuff really nice. Premium ice cream and it would be easy to just make going to get an ice cream be just part of the regular routine.

And what I know from my experiences in my life is that, like, it doesn't take long before it's like, okay, now it's time to go get ice cream. Yeah. And your brain's like, oh, I like this habit. Let's keep it up. Let's keep doing this some more. This is awesome. So we need to put a little thought into it. So one of the things I think that is a very simple it sounds very, very obvious thing to do, but a lot of us don't think of it is to just recognize like, you know what? I can have that because I'm an adult and I can eat whatever I want. It's not a crime to eat ice cream, but how often do I really want to be eating it? Meaning my prefrontal cortex that can see the future?

Who understands the consequences of my behavior? Not your primitive brain. That's like. Well, when's it not a good time for ice cream? I always want ice cream right now. So when you think about it, you might go, you know what? Twice a month is probably good. And that's pretty nice. And that's something that I can look forward to, right. Because so much of the enjoyment that we get out of these quote unquote special things or things that we don't have that often is the specialness of them. When we have things a lot regularly, they cease to be as exciting.

They cease to be as special. So one option can just be like, hey, you know what? There's certain times and I plan for it, then I'm also not going to have it. If I'm full, I'm going to have it when I'm actually interested in eating this. I have room in my belly. I'm going to stop when it stops tasting delicious. To me, that doesn't mean you have to wait till it tastes bad because it probably won't taste bad, but when it stops tasting delicious, you can stop. Think about that when you eat a piece of cake, like one of those huge slabs that they give you, or like Cheesecake Factory size slice.

It's like, buy that last bite. It does not taste as good as the first bite did. I'm not saying tastes bad, but it doesn't taste as good. Can you practice maybe stopping when the really heightened pleasure from it is no longer there, and you can save it for later? Ice cream is a little harder to save, but maybe instead of getting like the double scoop cone, you get like the kid size cup because then you can really enjoy it and there's not as much that's wasted. It's easier maybe to stop. Like there's definitely solutions. And I think that's one of the biggest things I want to impress upon you is you can have both. You can have tons of fun, you can enjoy all of it, and you can lose weight if that's your goal.

You can maintain weight loss. If that is your goal. You don't have to choose one or the other, or feel yourself like dragged from one extreme to the other. Or it's like, Now I'm enjoying everything, and now I'm living this austere lifestyle and I'm not letting myself have anything. And then, oh, and I'm going to have it all again. Like, you don't have to whiplash yourself back and forth in that way. A big part of this comes down to over desire, which comes very much from the way that we think about these foods. So when we have thoughts that these foods are so special, they're so good. Oh, I love that. That's my favorite flavor. It's so delicious.

It's not something I get to have. Very often we create more desire for those foods. And so say you always go, you know, around here this is not a tradition that we have, but there's an area of Wisconsin further north along Lake Michigan that a lot of people really love to go to. And many people have gone every summer, like, their whole lives. It's just like a tradition for people who are originally from here. And there are like, oh, we always went to this ice cream shop and we always went and had fish fry here. Or like whatever the different things are that people have and it's like you can have those things and also recognize, you know what, there's good ice cream everywhere.

There's seriously really good ice cream everywhere. So maybe you just realize, you know what? There's one flavor and I really like it there. And when we're there for a week, I have it once, maybe twice, and that's it. I don't need to have it every day. Right. And I don't need to have a ton, you know what I'm saying? The same thing. You're traveling, it's hot. Maybe you're in Europe or something and you see the gelato. You can enjoy yourself. Of course. Do you have to have it like twice a day?

Do you need to have the huge cup? Maybe not. Those are the things that we can start to practice, right? Also, recognizing that there are really few summer foods, what we think of as summer foods that you can't eat at other times of the year. I mean, certainly some things are fresher, but usually those things are not the things that we're having issues with, right? It's not typically the fruit that we're overeating in such excess that's causing a ton of weight gain, right. So enjoy what's fresh. But we don't have to overeat and we don't have to look at all the, like special desserts that you can make with all those peaches. Like we can just enjoy a fresh peach because it tastes good.

And if you don't like peaches, whatever your version of that is, there's ways to approach that through a mind management lens so that you enjoy yourself, you have fun, you do the things you want to do, and you don't end up overdoing it. So for 4th of July, since that is coming up and for the majority of my audience is going to be in the US, it's something to really consider. What does the fourth look like for you? What are the traditions? What are the things you're expecting to do? A lot of people around here at least will, like, go off and spend time on a boat, or go to someone's home on a lake and have a party there, or things like that.

Like if you are bringing food along to contribute, make sure there's some stuff there that really works for you that you're happy to eat and is delicious and you enjoy and like, that's your side dish. You know, there's some of those side dishes that can really be a meal if they need to be. Like, there's ways to take care of yourself. Like maybe most of the drinks are alcoholic and you're like, yeah, I'll have one drink. But there's other things that I can bring to I'll maybe bring some sparkling water, or my latest thing that I have been having from time to time is nonalcoholic beer, which I don't know. I'm like late to the train there.

I'm not actually a big beer person at all, but every now and then it tastes really good and it's like not that big of a deal to have that. And then I'm not decreasing my inhibitions. I'm not having the counter effects of alcohol. I'm at an age now where when I drink alcohol, I mean, unless it's like basically before noon, my sleep is wrecked because of it. It's like, oh, this is a nice way for me to feel like I'm participating. And it's also doesn't have a bunch of alcohol in it. Like there's just always solutions. So when you're thinking from that clear non-dramatic kind of a place not feeling sorry for yourself, not, oh, why do I have to struggle with this?

I wish this wasn't an issue for me. If you just go like, okay, I get to win all around here. I get to win by having a really fun time. I get to win by participating in all the things that I want to participate in, and I get to win by doing it in a way that serves me and my body. So how can I figure that out? What are the options? Because what I find is when I coach folks that have some concern about this, usually the solutions are right under the surface. I mean, as soon as we go, like, oh wait, did you know that you can actually have a great time and have your needs met, like physically and have it all work out and lose weight if that's what you want to do and not gain, if that's what you want to do.

And you're like, oh my gosh. Okay, so now we're in a solutions focused mindset. It's like it's already happened. I've already had that success. So how did I do it? Backtracking up. What are some options. It's like boom there it is. There's the solution. I just have to go and do. That tends to be so much easier. And then just recognize that you're going to try some stuff, and maybe you won't hit the nail exactly right on the head. And maybe some things will work and some things won't. And that is a normal part of the process.

Nothing's going wrong if you go, you know, I did great until they paraded out this thing and then okay. Yep. Then I had a hard time. Okay, good to know. So for next time, let's learn something from it. Let's allow that experience to advance us and move us forward so we can figure out what the next steps are for us. Okay, I can't wait. I hope you have a really, really, really good 4th of July. If you celebrate. If you don't, I hope you're just having the best summer. No pressure to have the best summer, but I hope you're really enjoying it.

It feels very special to us here when the weather's really nice. I was out walking my dog this morning and I was like, oh man, what a gorgeous day. So beautiful. So take advantage of those types of things when you can. But you know, I don't have to be eating or drinking anything to enjoy how beautiful it is. And neither do you. See, if some of these things resonate, try to maybe take one little thing that I talked about and apply it to yourself and see what happens. I'd love to just do it from an experimentation standpoint, I don't know. I mean, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Let's see.

Let's just see before we decide. And I think what I've seen in my life so many times are things that I really was very doubtful would work, end up being amazing, and work super well. So maybe you're not as doubtful as me, or have that cynical mindset that pops up from time to time, but let's give it a try. The worst thing that happens is you figure out something that really works well for you. All right, well, please enjoy your summer and whatever way that looks for you, and I will talk to you next week. All right? Take care. Bye bye.

The post Ep #390: Enjoy Summer Holidays Without Overeating appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Does weight loss make you skinny fat?

It’s a common experience to reach your goal weight only to be bombarded with messages and feelings about even more things that are supposedly wrong with your body. One of those things is the possibility of being skinny fat.

What is skinny fat? What causes it? How can you avoid it? These are all questions I’m striving to answer in this episode, but first and foremost, I want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with your body. Here on the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast we’re all about learning to love and make peace with ourselves exactly as we are, and this episode is no exception.

Leave the self-judgment at the door, but come to this episode with an open mind to learn the truth about what skinny fat really is and why we experience it.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How to find out your fat-to-muscle ratio * What your genetics predetermine about your fat levels * Why rapid weight loss isn’t always the best * The type of exercise you need to do stay healthy as you age * Common misconceptions about body composition * The problem with trying to lose weight and gain muscle at the same time

We’re not scared of taboos around here, right? I hope that by talking about concepts like skinny fat, we can take some of the fear and judgment away from them and instead learn to love our bodies however they look. Love your body when it’s skinny fat and love it when it’s not! Love your body when it’s muscular and love it when it’s not! Your body is worthy of love all the time.

To learn more about how a mindset-based approach to weight loss can help you achieve your goals, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info!

If you’ve read my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, it would mean the world to me if you would leave me a review letting other readers know what you thought! Click here to leave a review on Amazon.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Reach the Source Article About the Concept of Skinny Fat

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #388: Preventing Future Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 3

Ep #387: Moving Forward After Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 2

Ep #386: So You’ve Gained Weight Back… – Weight Regain Series Part 1

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. Thanks for joining me. I am super glad you're here with me.

I hope your summer is going well so far. That is if you live in the northern hemisphere. Most of my audience is in the northern hemisphere, but if you're not, then I guess you're heading into winter and I hope that that's going okay. But overall, this is the time of year when it's just so nice to live in Wisconsin. So we just wring every moment out that we can try to really enjoy every stretch of it.

So this actually leads me a little bit to today's topic, because when it's nice out and the weather is warmer, you know, we often change what we're wearing and sometimes some body image and body composition issues and concerns start to surface. And so today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about body composition – and not so much about how to change your body composition a ton. But kind of the question of, does weight loss end up making you skinny fat, or is there a way to lose weight so that you don't end up having a body composition that you're not happy with? And I think it's a good question.

I think, though, that it's also an issue that a lot of people are a little bit fearmongering out there. I think not everybody by any stretch, but there definitely are people out there who are like, well, I lost weight. And then I found out I was skinny fat. Oh my God, the horror. And then like, and now I had to do something different or whatever. And so I think there are people then who are like, well, if I lose weight, then I'm just going to be skinny fat and then I'm going to have to do all this other stuff. And it's, you know, like the drama, the mind drama that goes along with that. So I just wanted to dedicate an episode to talk about that. Like, does weight loss equal skinny fat? Let's talk about it. Let's even talk about what skinny fat means. You know, I think the answer is yes and no, because everybody's on a different journey and has different kinds of assignments, so to speak. You know, it's like if we're all working on getting a degree in permanent weight loss and peace and freedom around food, it might be that the curriculum for each of us is not the same, even though we end up with the same degree at the end.

And so let me first explain what it even means to be skinny fat. Maybe you're familiar with that term. Maybe you're not. But skinny fat basically means that you have a BMI that's probably in the acceptable range, or maybe even below it. So you might be actually considered underweight. And of course, right. We know that BMI is not perfect by any stretch. So just recognizing that here. But it's the best of what we got for the moment. So you've got a normal or possibly even low BMI, but you have a higher body fat percentage and a lower muscle percentage than would be recommended. So you look thin, you know, like your clothing could be small. People might even be saying to you like, oh my gosh, you're tiny. Or you know, all the things that people feel entitled to say about your body to you. You know, you're so small and things like that, but you still may have more fat than muscle, like your overall muscle mass might be relatively low. And so that means that what's filling up the rest of you is fat. And that fat for a lot of people tends to end up being more visceral fat. It also can be under the skin, under the surface. It can be a combination. But for a lot of people, it ends up being more visceral, fat.

And we know that that is obviously not great from a health perspective long term. So you might be wondering, well, how do you figure out if you are skinny fat? There's different measuring things that have, you know, certain degrees of error involved in them, but getting a Dexa scan is probably the best way to be able to find that out. Now, I want to caution you before you're like, okay, sign me up, let me do a Dexa scan. Like you just have to kind of decide, depending on where you are in your journey, whether that is even helpful or not, because I can see for some people, when they find out this information, when they're in the middle of things, it can kind of spiral them. And why do that to ourselves if it's not necessary? Right.

So let's talk about the causes of skinny fat. Like what makes you skinny fat. Well, genetic predisposition is a big part of this. So just putting that out there, you know, like for some people it's just kind of like, you know, they just are lower muscle volume people just in general. Not that they can't change that, but just naturally that's just how their bodies are. So it could just be genetic predisposition. But outside of that, there are some other factors that can be contributors to being skinny fat. And so one interestingly, is excessive cardio. And you know, when you hear so many people who are like, especially I feel like a little bit less now because we know, you know, that the data shows so clearly that exercising for weight loss doesn't work.

But, you know, back in the days when it was like all about cardio, doing so much cardio and people would do all that cardio and often wouldn't actually notice a lot of results on their bodies. So interesting right? Excessive cardio can cause it crash. Dieting can cause it. Sudden weight loss, right? So we can lose weight quickly and not be actually trying to crash diet. But in any case, losing weight quickly can contribute to this. A nice little plug for why rapid weight loss is not always the best, you know. So I'm kind of like speaking to all of you out there who are in a rush to get to your goal weight talking to you. Uh, this is something we talk about in my program a lot, where it's like, people just want to get that weight off as quickly as possible. They just want to get to that goal. So sometimes, you know, our clever brains will start doing some things that are maybe a little bit more diet mentality in order to get the weight off quickly. But, you know, if you recognize that that might increase the risk of you being skinny, fat and still having to do some body well, you don't have to do.

But deciding that you might want to do some body composition work at maintenance, like maybe we could slow down. Maybe we don't need to rush so much other causes of skinny, fat, chronically poor eating habits specifically like very high carb and refined sugar type of diet can contribute to that type two diabetes, particularly the insulin resistance that's involved in that. And hypothyroidism can cause it as well. Some things that I read, some medications can sometimes cause it as well or contribute to it. And then I didn't want to put this down as a cause, but it definitely can contribute and is something that is important to recognize because it's not mentioned. We talked about excessive cardio, but little to no strength training definitely can contribute to this as well.

So going back to, you know, not that long ago and the decades prior to that, where it was, particularly for women, all about cardio, you don't want to lift weights because you're going to get bulky, you know, don't lift anything over 3 pounds or whatever. I think that's what Tracy Anderson used to tell me back in the day. Um, you know, you don't want to bulk up all those things, like being so scared of having muscles. That really has changed. I think for a lot of people over the last maybe five, ten, 15 years, something like that, that's still kind of maintained. It's like we want to be fit, but we want to be super tiny at the same time.

So a lot of women still are not doing that much strength training. But even outside of body composition, it's really important to recognize that muscle mass is really, really important for women, particularly as we age. It's so important for our bones for preventing falls, um, preventing osteoporosis. It is linked with longevity and health in longevity and things like that. So it's definitely something that I have been focusing more on because I want to be strong and I want to feel good and I want my bones to be healthy. So I've been working on it more. But just mentioning that, you know, for so many of us, it was like all cardio, all the time, very little strength training. And it's what we're used to, you know, it feels familiar.

And for some of us, it can be hard for us to shake those old fears that we have that, you know, we're going to get too big. And that's not a feminine look or whatever the old stories were that we had. What it comes down to with skinny fat is and these body composition types of things is that we have to like, zoom out and look at the big picture, and we have to recognize that there might be different stages for us in the process. So here's what I'm talking about. You could start working on losing weight and absolutely work on preserving the muscle mass that you have.

You could even start adding on more strength training and really working on adding muscle. I'm not saying that. I'm suggesting that you go and do bodybuilding or bikini competition type of stuff or anything like that, but if you look at those people, there are some lessons that can be learned. So what the people who engage in that have figured out are really effective ways to increase their muscle mass and to become more lean right, to get fat off. And what they will all tell you is that when you are building muscle, you need to eat. That's not the time to be trying to lean out.

So their terminology is like you're either in a bulking phase or you're in a cutting phase. And when you're in a bulking phase, you're eating more and you are lifting a lot of heavy weights. And that will contribute to growing your muscles, but it will also contribute to some fat gain as well. And then they go through these cycles. I mean, listen, I am no expert in this, but I do have a little bit of working knowledge – I don't take people through. This is not my area of expertise at all, but I still think there's some good things for us to learn here. So they go through a phase where they build muscle and they gain some weight intentionally, and then they go through a cutting phase where they're maintaining the muscle that they have built and they are restricting in order to get that fat off.

Now that cutting phase. Well, first of all, if you talk to anybody who's gone through it, you're going to know. And if you do any reading about it, the way that they do that is through calorie restriction. And a lot of people talk about how it's really not fun and they really feel very uncomfortable, which is one of the main reasons why I don't take my clients through that, because many of us, that's just not the experience we want to have. But they go through that, then they lean out and then maybe they go through more cycles of this, or they're leaning out for competition. And then like after the day after the competition, they're like eating again and they gain. Some of that way back again, I will tell you that eating disorders and disordered eating are rampant in that community. So just letting you know that. But here's the thing that I think is important to recognize is they have periods of time where they're working on building muscle, and then they have periods of time where they're working on leaning out. They're not trying to do the two at the same time. And I think that's important. The way I've always kind of thought about it is when you are building muscle, you're in an anabolic state.

When you are leaning out, like when you're trying to get fat off your body, you're in a catabolic state. And those two things are like, if we're asking for our bodies to be doing both of those things at the same time. It just can be more difficult. Now what I'll tell you that I've seen over the years is that when people are trying to lose weight, they often want to see some result on the scale, and people will sometimes really have a hard time mindset wise if they're not seeing that.

So sometimes doing a lot of heavy weight lifting while trying to lose weight, like maybe you are changing your body composition, but if you're not checking that really frequently and keeping close tabs on that, it can be something that can be mentally kind of more disappointing for people because they start making it mean that like nothing's happening, that what they're doing isn't helping when we actually don't even necessarily know that that body composition, like everything that I've kind of researched, shows that like changing that body composition is not something that's usually super quick meaning like adding more muscle and leaning out. It's not like, oh, eight weeks and you're going to have dropped 6% body fat or something like that. For most people, it's going to be something that's going to be a much slower process, which means that you probably won't see those results that much, or it'll take a while before you see them on your body or in the way your clothes fit.

And then the scale might not move at all because you've replaced some of that fat with muscle. So if you want to do that, you just have to really work on your mindset to be okay with that. I don't think it's a bad thing. I've just seen a lot of people really struggle with that and not like that's what's going on. And we don't have to be like all or nothing about everything. It can be like, well, maybe I'm not doing super high intensity weight lifting, but I am toning muscle. I am putting some strength training into what I'm doing, trying to maintain the muscle mass that I have while I work on losing weight, and then knowing that I can always build up more later. I think that what also is not addressed in this at all is the whole mindset approach.

If you need to go through the process of essentially losing weight, then end up wanting to change up your body composition a little bit for whatever reason, whatever you want to do and that is the result. Or because you have needed to work on your mind a lot, like you needed to focus on mindset and really working through all the things that I teach in my program, Weight Loss for Doctors Only. Like if you need to work through all that first and that's where your focus needs to be, which I would argue for so many people, that is the case.

Like there's always time to lift weights later, like we can always do that later. But if we do that all first and we still have this very difficult relationship with food and we still feel a bunch of over desire and we're still hungry all the time and emotionally eating like, what have we accomplished? You know what I mean? Like I said, like a lot of people like, will do those competitions and do that training and are having trouble with binging and things like that. I've known people who struggled with that.

Actually every single person that I know who's ever done that has ended up with disordered eating and binging. I'm just thinking now I'm like, yeah, I can't think of one woman I know who did it, who didn't have that experience. So not to say that doesn't happen. I'm not saying 100% of people do that, just nobody that I've ever met. So we can take the bits and pieces that help us and factor them into what we're doing. So the cool thing about my program with weight loss doctors only, like already baked into the program, we work on increasing your insulin sensitivity, which helps. I recommend that you don't participate in excessive exercise of any kind, but particularly excessive cardio. I've seen this time and time again when people want to try to do my program and train for marathons at the same time, and they don't get results.

It's like the body is hanging on to that fat because the excessive cardio is very strenuous. And when I say excessive, it sounds like it's judgmental. I think there's totally a role for those types of races and all of that. I usually just suggest how you just take a break from that level of training. It's like it doesn't mean you can't train, but just that level of training. Let's dial it back a bit, get the weight off and then you can go back to doing it again. And of course we work on improving eating habits big time.

One of the biggest things that we do is take a break from those refined sugars and really just take those out so that the body can function better. And if it's something that you are interested in working on, there are foods that you can prioritize which like already things that we know healthy fats, getting enough protein in complex carbohydrates, eating your vegetables like getting fiber in like this is all stuff we already know. It's like sometimes we're just like, oh my gosh, what's the trick? And it's like, there's no trick. It's like what we already know. And so my spin on it is like, yeah, of those foods, find the ones that you really like, find ways of preparing it that are simple and easy for you.

And you like eating them and it tastes good to you and do those things. Right. So recognizing though, that like some of us, because we might have a genetic predisposition toward being skinny fat, it might be that kind of we just aren't that muscular of a person. Like there just might not be that much muscle mass. And so we always were kind of low on muscle mass. But once we lose weight and find out we're still low on muscle mass, we're like, oh my gosh, I'm skinny fat. It's because I lost weight and the weight loss made me lose my muscle mass, whatever. And maybe it did contribute like you probably will lose some. Some ass with some dedicated weight loss efforts.

And there are things that we can do to try to prevent that or minimize it. And also like you get the weight off and then you can absolutely add more strength training in to build that muscle back again. So this is something that I think is important for us to recognize, particularly as we age. Sometimes people tell me, well, in my mid 50s, I did a weight loss program, lost a bunch of weight, and it was great. And then I tried that same one again ten, 15 years later and it didn't work. Like, what's the difference? And one thing that I wonder is how active the person is. Could be that your muscle mass and your level of activity the first time was different than what it is later, particularly as we get older, we tend to be more sedentary and it's something that we have to decide to not do.

We have to actively work against it. It's like different when you have little kids and you're running around like you don't have a choice, you have to be active. But when the different stages of life, we don't necessarily have those demands. And so it's easy to just kind of fall into more sedentary kind of a lifestyle without even planning on it. Like we didn't even try to or mean to. It just kind of happened. So we have to be thinking about it consciously so that it doesn't happen. Right? We have to actively work on that. So I just want to say that I think that there is nothing wrong with deciding to approach weight loss with a mindset approach, particularly if you haven't been exercising. I don't find it to be particularly helpful for a lot of people to start doing significant exercise right in the beginning. You can definitely move. I mean, I think it's great to get outside, go for a walk, do some yoga. Like I have no problem with that whatsoever. But to be working on your mind, probably changing up how you're eating and start adding exercise in. I just don't find it really to be sustainable for people and I'm all about it being sustainable.

So if you haven't been exercising like you can know, like, yeah, okay, I'm going to get this weight off, I'm going to work on my mind. I'm going to change my whole relationship with my body and with food and my emotions, and figure out how to support myself emotionally. That doesn't require me to eat or drink. And then I'm going to kind of do the next phase, which might be more physical activity, building up our muscle mass and things like that.

So when people are like, oh my gosh, I lost this weight and then I had to gain muscle, I'm like, right, that's probably pretty normal. Like, you know, like it's just part of the journey. It's not necessarily something that's so bad. And, you know, over the years I've had plenty of program members that I've worked with and even just with myself where it's like, yeah, we kind of realize, okay, I worked through all that and that's amazing. And so my next goals for myself are these things. And it could be changing body composition. It could be that we realize, okay, yeah. You know what? Now I am a little skinny fat. That's good to know. And now I'm going to start taking action to address that and build up that strength. And of course if you have hypothyroidism, of course you want to get your thyroid under control. Right? There's other things that are at play that are not just about exercise and how we eat and stuff like that, but you just want to put another plug in.

That slow and steady weight loss can be really beneficial. Like if we don't do like excessive fasting or different kinds of things that really make us drop weight quickly, we might be more likely to keep our muscles. And that is kind of a nice thing. It's hard work building muscle back up. We know this because we have to lift heavy weights and that's hard work. So if you're somebody who struggles with the rush, with struggles with wanting to have that off right away, struggles with having patience with the process, maybe this could be something that would help you to be able to slow down. Just going like, you know what? Like faster is not always better. It could be trading one thing for the next. Do I want to do that? Maybe I could just take my time and keep working on this consistently, knowing that I'm going to get there in the end. It's like the same work regardless, you know what I mean? So that's what I want to say. I'm not over here going like, you should just be skinny fat. It's not a problem. I mean, yeah, people have identified that there are some health risks to it, but it doesn't mean that it's the end point for you and that you did something wrong.

That's really my main point. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong. Like, yep, this is how this goes. Definitely for some people, not necessarily with everybody, but definitely for some people. And then once we know what we know, we can make adjustments and make changes and do what we need to do. I want to say one more thing, which is that I have found that when a lot of people like, look, I'm not saying you should just like be satisfied if you're skinny fat, but when people are like want different body composition, like, of course I'm not judging that everybody can do whatever they want.

But I do think that sometimes it's like we get the weight off and then we're just continually dissatisfied. Well, now I still don't like my body. Okay, maybe I need to totally change my body composition and like, go to CrossFit or do whatever, you know, and totally lean down so I can finally like my body. And I want to let you know that there is an invitation in there to learn to like your body at whatever way it looks. You know what I mean? Like that. You don't have to keep changing it. So that you can feel that your body is acceptable. That is also a mindset piece to work on too, which is loving and appreciating and accepting your body no matter what state it is in. We don't want it to be that you have to get to this place where you're like, super lean and super fit for you to look acceptable because people who have that mindset, even if they can create that for themselves, eventually something ends up happening.

Whether it's age or an illness or an injury or something happens and it can really send people to a dark place, because so much of their acceptance of themselves and their body comes from what it looks like and what it can do, and that can be really difficult later. So the invitation is to work through that, accept it exactly as it is at any time. Big, small, more muscle, less muscle, more fat, less fat, and then deciding to change things just because you want to, right?

Like doing it because you think it's fun or it feels good, or you have less aches and pains when you're stronger or you want to prevent osteoporosis or things like that. Right. I really would strongly recommend that. So it doesn't just keep turning into this race to try to change things so you can think different thoughts about yourself. You can actually think different thoughts about yourself now, today. Okay, okay. That's my final thought. I'll leave you with that. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for your attention and I hope you have a great rest of your week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.

The post Ep #389: Does Weight Loss Equal Skinny Fat? Let’s Talk Body Composition appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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What can I do now to prevent weight regain in the future?

First of all, congratulations! If you’re asking yourself about prevention, it shows how much you care about your future self and long-term results. It’s hard to get to this point in a world that is so focused on instant gratification and short-term gain.

Over the last two episodes of the podcast, we’ve talked about what to do when you regain weight and how to move forward. Now we’re moving on to prevention.

I’m teaching you the thought and behavior patterns you can rely on to maintain a healthy and sustainable relationship with food and stop weight regain before it begins. The cycle doesn’t have to continue, but only you have the power to break it.

If you’re wondering if this ever gets easier, tune in and I’ll tell you what I think.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Ways you’re subconsciously setting yourself up for weight regain * What you need to change to end the weight regain cycle * The part of your body that you’re under-utilizing in your weight loss process * How to avoid common causes of weight regain * Lies you’re telling yourself about reaching your goals * Unexpected reasons you might have to change the way you eat * What to do when you first start to notice weight regain * Life support for everyday

I hope this three-part series provides you with the comfort and confidence you need to handle weight regain. You are not alone and there is nothing wrong with you – I know you have what it takes to move forward and get back to where you want to be.

To learn more about how the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you prevent weight regain, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #387: Moving Forward After Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 2

Ep #386: So You’ve Gained Weight Back… – Weight Regain Series Part 1

Ep #385: Overfunctioning and How to Stop

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. So glad you're here.

It's part three of the Weight Regain series. Today we're going to be talking about preventing future weight regain. So as a little recap, two episodes ago we talked about gaining the weight back. When you've gone through the process of losing weight, only to gain it back. What to do when you find yourself in that position. How to get yourself to a place where you are learning what you need to learn so you can start moving forward. Then last week's episode was about the actual moving forward process. So what do we do when it's time to start losing weight again? Or at least stopping, gaining, doing something, making some sort of adjustment? And then today we're going to be talking about preventing that future weight regain. So let's just say now you've lost that weight again. So what are you going to do now? So we don't repeat that cycle of losing weight, only to regain it again, because that is really what we would like to have happen.

When I talk about permanent weight loss, that's what I'm talking about. Like you lose it and it stays lost. It stays gone. So how can we prevent that future weight regain? That's what we're going to talk about today. I think that a lot of people get tripped up when it comes to weight loss, even though logically I think they understand this. It's like there's a subconscious component that also needs to hear me. And that is the part that thinks that once you get to that goal weight, that you've somehow arrived, like you get the gold star and it's life's going to be so much smoother and better, and it's all going to be easier from here.

And I'm open to it being that way for you. But I'm telling you from experience personally and from coaching, you know, I think we're at over 1700 women physicians I've coached now. I mean, that's not how it goes. And so when we tell ourselves it's going to be like that, and when we approach the maintenance phase from that kind of a place, we really set ourselves up to gain that way back again. So if the previous patterns are that we work hard, we lose that weight – maybe we enjoy that weight loss for a while, or maybe not very long, or maybe it's longer, but for a bit of time. And then the weight comes back again. Whether it's just like a gradual creep or something happens and you go back to overeating to cope with that.

However it happens, if that is the pattern, then we have to change how we're approaching things, because the current way that we've approached maintenance hasn't worked right. So it's not about good or bad. It's just it's not effective. Like something was missing that would help you to maintain that weight loss. So we have to figure out what that is that's missing. We have to figure out how to fill in the cracks, so to speak, bolster that support. That's what I want to talk to you about today, because I just think that it's something that's really overlooked.

It's what a lot of people don't talk about. In general, people are so much more focused on the weight loss component and kind of like, yeah, I'll figure out the maintenance later. Or there's like this little part of us that it's like, again, we know it's not logical, but that we just kind of hope that we're going to lose the weight and then we're going to be cured of the obsession. We're going to be cured from liking food as much as we do. We're going to be cured from not wanting to feel our feelings and wanting to eat them instead. And experience just shows. That's not at all what happens. So can we set ourselves up for success while we're losing weight? Can we make the maintenance process easier by doing work while we're losing weight? Absolutely we can.

And that's a huge thing that we do in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program. But I do have plenty of people who lose weight on their own or lose weight in other ways. And they come into my program having lost all the weight or the majority of the weight, and they're like, okay, here we are, like, it's time to do this. It's time to actually start working on my mind so that I can maintain these results that I've created. Right? Because there's lots and lots of ways to get the weight off.

But maintenance, there's options there, my friend, I hate to tell you, it's kind of like there are things that work, and those are pretty much the things that work. I mean, this database of people who've lost weight and kept it off for a long time. And there are a lot of things in common with those people and what they do and how they approach this. And we're going to be talking about some of that today. The very first thing that I want to impress upon you to consider and to really like, buy into when it comes to preventing future weight regain, is that it's very important that you keep doing the things that got you to where you are with the weight loss. Now, that's not 100% across the board, always going to have to be the case.

But I mean, more specifically when it comes to the emotional support. The planning, the whatever you do that helps you to get that weight off, it's going to help you to maintain it. If you're really good at checking in with your body and assessing where you are in the hunger scale, and that helps you to not overeat, you would be well advised to continue doing that. That would be really helpful. Now, some people find that there's ways of eating or things that they do that help them to lose weight, and then they want to change that later. And that's totally possible.

We totally can do that. And of course, for people who are using medication, they may be using medication to get the weight off and then plan to wean themselves off the medication. So it's not like you necessarily have to stay on that medication forever. In fact, a lot of people really hope that they don't have to stay on medication forever. But either way, right? Like even so, I have personally witnessed people who are on the medications who are still overeating. Like it's still possible, right? It still is possible. So you want to keep doing what got you to where you are. So this is important because these things start to feel very normal to us, particularly for the people that I work with. We just really incorporate these principles and these activities and these support systems into our lives.

Like integrating it is a huge part of our proven process so that it just feels normal. It's just how you live life. It doesn't feel like this extra thing that you have to do. It's just normal to you. It's just life, right? It's just what you do. And as normal as it feels, that's great. But it also can be a little bit like a double. What is it, a double edged sword? I don't even know. You know what I'm trying to say? It's great that it feels so natural and normal, but sometimes we end up unintentionally kind of taking it for granted. We start to tell ourselves, hey, you know what?

This actually maybe isn't as important as they think it is. I'm doing so well. I probably don't need all of this. What it reminds me of is like when I would take care of kids who are on prescription acne treatment, and then they'd come in, they're like, my acne is so bad again. After it being really good for a while, I'm like, okay, are you using the medication? No. I stopped taking it because my skin cleared up and it's like, no, you have to keep taking it. That's why your skin cleared up. Let's keep using it so that we can maintain that good clear skin. So it's a similar kind of idea if you are doing certain things that are helpful in terms of stress relief, if you're doing certain things that help you with processing your emotions, you would be well advised to continue doing those things right.

And maybe it doesn't have to be like every single day or everything's going to fall apart. Like, we don't have to hold it with such a tight grip, but we do need to really buy into the idea that these things really are non-negotiables. These are things that are important. What my hope is, is that if you end up missing doing some of those things, you have to stop because of whatever that after maybe a couple of days, you already start feeling like life isn't as good. I can tell I'm off. Something's off. Something's off kilter. I need to get back on track because I feel better.

Life is better. Being me in my life is better when I'm doing these things regularly. So to even notice that requires a certain level of awareness, right? Paying attention. How am I feeling in my life? What's going on for me right now, and where this often comes up is a big stressor will come up in our lives, particularly if it's needing to care for someone else or someone else in our lives is having a crisis of some sort or something like that. Some big things happening we often like. The first thing that we cut is often our self-care. That's the first thing that becomes negotiable.

That's the first thing that we kind of go, oh, you know what? I can hit pause on that. I'll pick that right back up again. You know, we have the best of intentions. We really don't think it'll be a big deal. But again, experience shows, history shows. It often does end up being a big deal. So, you know, we need to figure out how to continue doing those things so that they are not optional. They are things that we make sure we do. We really prioritize them because, you know, what we do is the things that are important to us. So they need to have a high standing of importance to us in our mind. They can't be at the bottom of the priority list because that's the first thing that gets the ax. So keep doing what got you to where you are.

Does it mean you always have to do every single thing? No. It could be that over the course of time you can kind of take away this and see what happens. It's like if you have a bunch of scaffolding up, you could take down one piece and see, you know, let me see how life is, how are things doing it in an intentional and calculated, informed kind of way where you can pay attention like you're doing it like an experiment. Now I got busy, so that's the first thing I stopped doing.

You know? I mean, like, that's gonna tend to be much more of a difficult thing. The next step is to be open to continued learning from mistakes. So again, the arrival fallacy. We think we're going to get there. We're going to have it all figured out, and we won't have new concerns or new pressures on us, or new challenges when it comes to food and weight. We think we've figured it out. And that, I find, is not a very productive way of thinking about things. Because then the minute that we do have a mistake or the minute something isn't the way we expected or we have to make adjustments, it's very easy to just throw our hands up and like, why is it like this?

It wasn't supposed to be like this and I must be doing something wrong. You know, the whole doom spiral of like, it's all going to fall apart now and oh my gosh, I knew I couldn't do this. All the emotions that go into that. So when we can expect, when we just know, hey, part of the process of maintaining is learning. Continuing to learn, continuing to grow, continuing to figure out new scenarios that are challenging for us. Not looking at it like, well, I have every answer now, so I should never struggle ever again. It's just not realistic. That's just not how it is. So we want to really be aware of that idea that we have it all figured out.

It's great when we're in a good place, we're coasting along, but we can still offer ourselves a little grace if we make a mistake, but then also make sure that we learn from it. So important that we learn and make adjustments, right? Again, we don't have to hold it with such a tight grip, but when we have a super relaxed grip, everything just falls through our fingers. We don't want that to happen.

Recognize that you are probably going to need to change how you eat at some point. This is another thing we often think like, okay, I figured out my way of eating. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I mean, that could happen, maybe, but probably not. Like, probably. I mean, it's just like if we are just being realistic, like, probably at some point in our lives, we're going to have to make some sort of adjustment. It might be because of a medical need. It might be because of a health need. Maybe your doctor or a dietitian or somebody recommends you change the way that you eat. Maybe you need to make some adjustments based on different intolerances that maybe you develop. Who knows? There's all kinds of reasons. Maybe just the way you're eating right now stops working for you in the sense that it's difficult to follow. It just doesn't work with your life anymore.

There's all kinds of reasons why we might need to change. And so again, when we can expect that, when we know that's going to happen, then when it does happen, we're not freaking out. Oh my gosh, why is this happening? We're like, yeah, I knew a time would come when I'd probably have to make an adjustment. And look, it's here, right? So we don't panic or start thinking something's going wrong. So this is actually a huge thing that we help you with in weight loss for doctors only. We actually have a supplemental resource that's all about changing the way you eat that you have lifetime access to, so that if at any point you're like, oh, I need to change, what do I do?

You just come back into the program, access that module, and we walk you straight through exactly how to do it. So just letting you know that is available there. But ultimately what you want to do is you want to maintain a solutions focused mindset, and you want to build on what you already know works for you. If you already have a plan that you know works, then we don't have to throw everything out, right? We just have to get creative. And we have to recognize that there's not just like one solution. There's so many solutions, so many ways for this to work.

And we just have to figure out one or a couple, you know, if we need to be flexible and we just have to be open to experimenting and seeing what happens, but that we can absolutely figure it out as soon as we start telling ourselves, like, I don't know if I can do this, I don't know if this is going to work.

If I have to follow this way of eating, I'm definitely going to gain a bunch of weight back. I mean, we know how powerful our thoughts are. We know our thoughts always end up in our results. So thinking that is much more likely to create the result of weight regain, which we don't want. So just recognize that you're probably gonna have to make some adjustments. And if and when you do, it's going to be okay. You figured it out the first time. You absolutely can make some tweaks and adjustments and figure out something else for you for this next time. I guess another reason you might want to change is maybe your goals have changed. Maybe you need to adjust, you know, different levels of macronutrients you're eating. Not that we count those in my world, but you know, you just want to have a little more of this, a little less of that or whatever. And you have to make some adjustments. You absolutely can figure that out. Next, get help. When you notice a small amount of weight regain, don't wait until it's all back.

And this is something that I really want to speak to, because what I have noticed is that we will have people who will gain a little weight back, and then they'll start beating themselves up about it, and then they'll feel ashamed that they've done that, and they kind of want to just deny that it's even happening. Our brains are so powerful, right? Denial. So powerful, it's like, ah, it's not really that big of a deal, you know? It's just 10 pounds. Like, I can get that off. I can do it myself. Maybe a couple tries getting it off without success and then the weight just starts really creeping on, and then that shame spiral just worsens.

Feeling worse, feeling guilty. I invested all this. I did all this work and here I am gaining it back and just adding more pain to the pain that already exists. Like just adding insult to injury. I just find that when people notice, hey, you know what? Like all the things that I usually do, that gets me back on track with my eating because it may not even be a weight thing. It could also be just relationship with food. Like there's so much food chatter back. I'm really struggling. The sooner you start getting help again, the easier it is to fix it, or at least to understand what the problem is, and maybe at least halt the weight regain while we work on that problem, while we work through whatever that issue is.

And then we know how to lose weight. So we just get that weight off again. Like, that's not really that big of a deal, but it's like when there's some reason why we were overeating again. And if we don't get help on that, or if we aren't able to work through it ourselves, we should really get the help that we need, because otherwise it will just continue to result in weight regain. Find the people who come back who've gained it all or more. They just tend to be in a worse headspace, you know? Not that they can't work it out, not that we can't help them with coaching.

And of course we work with them and we can help them get to where they want to be. It's just not something they're very happy about and it just feels harder. So it's like, do yourself a favor. If things start feeling like, oh, things are a little wacky, like start getting help right away, just do yourself that favor and really preserve the work and the results that you've created for yourself. If you feel like the help that is available to you is something that you'd feel judged by that person or that group or whatever, like that's not the right thing for you. Then what I've always said about my program is like, we always want you back.

Like we are never making anything you do with food or weight mean anything negative about you. We're not frustrated with you. We're not tired of discussing the same things over and over again. We want you back because all it means is that there's a little bit more work to do. There's some things that we didn't touch on the first go around, whatever, whenever the last time we worked together. And so it's okay if there's more work that we have to do. That doesn't mean anything negative about you. In fact, it means really a positive thing when you recognize, hey, you know what? This isn't going according to what I would like.

I'm going to take steps to get this sorted. Okay? So just don't wait. And then keep getting life support. Because life is why you gained the weight back in the first place, or even gained weight in the first place. And what I mean by life support is like coaching or therapy or, you know, a very supportive friend group, just those support systems in your life. We know that eating, overeating, gaining weight is not just because you like food. You know what I mean? It's not because you're a foodie. It's not that there's other things at play there. There's things that happen in your life. There's experiences that you're having. There's emotions that you're having that you'd rather not experience in their current form. And food changes that for you.

It makes it more tolerable. So if we aren't supporting ourselves with those things that happen in life, right, like things happen in life that stress us again or that make things more challenging, if we don't have that support, we're so much more likely to go back to asking food to change that experience for us again. So again, thinking about it as an insurance policy to maintain your results, it makes sense to, at least on some level, have some support in your life. Now I'll just as an example, I have clients who have been in and out of my programs for five plus years, and what they'll do is they'll just periodically come back to another six months, you know, we have a continuation program come back and they know, like maybe they have a little something going on with their weight.

Or maybe they're like, I'm close to probably starting to gain, or I'm more tempted by food because this is going on or just like, this is a stress in my life and I want to work through it, and I don't want it to become a problem with my food or weight. And so we spent six months, we like, do kind of like a tune up. We clear things up and they're like, okay, I'm good to go now for a while. We won't see them again for six months, 12 months, 18 months, couple years, sometimes many years.

But they know they can always come back to the mothership. We're always here for them. So it's like they know, hey, if I need help, I can come back to that program. But in the meantime, they have other life support. They listen to this podcast, right? They hear me talk about these things. Sometimes they're listening to old episodes because that's helpful to them. Sometimes they're taking part in parts of our program that they maintain, like coaching calls or reading written coaching responses or things like that that help them to stay on track and of course, other ways of supporting themselves as well.

So you want to make sure again, that you continue investing in that. It's often a lack of investment in that life support that got us in the predicament we were in anyway, which was either gaining weight in the first place or regaining it after weight loss. So that's really what it comes down. It sounds to me I'm like, it's kind of boring. I'm like, yeah, keep doing the things that work. It's like, duh, you know? But it sounds so obvious. But there's more to it than that.

You know? It really requires us to at least have some certain amount of paying attention. And so I want to finish this up with a question that you may be asking that people have definitely asked me that I even remember asking, and that is, does this get easier? Like, really for real? Does this get easier? And I can tell you, after being in a position where I've lost weight for a long time, yes, it really does get easier, but it's a gradual thing.

And I think we want it to be easier within like a month or two of reaching goal weight. And for a lot of us, it is not that way. Not that it's hard still, but it takes time for these things to really, truly settle in. There were some things, like sometimes foods around different holidays that, even for the first couple of years of maintenance, were definitely more of a challenge for me. And now it's just not that big of a deal anymore. It just really isn't a thing. And it's not that I've done so much extra work on it. It's just like continuing to do the regular stuff to maintain doing all the support work.

Just doing the things that help me to feel good in my life, mentally and physically. It's just not. Yeah, it's just not as big of a deal anymore. It really does get easier. And I feel like the mental drama definitely continues to reduce. But I will also say that I think it's been 8 or 9 years since I lost weight, and during that time I've still continued working. I've worked with various different coaches and done some trauma therapy and some different things, and I think continuing to work on myself, on the challenges in my life have really helped to preserve that weight loss, because for.

Well, first of all, as new things came up and new stressors, it of course has helped to support me. So I didn't need to turn to food. But besides that, I've been able to grow and develop as a human being so that I am more resilient and I'm more capable of living all the ups and downs of life without the need for food. So my answer is like, does it get easier? Absolutely. And I think that if you are able to do the work it takes to maintain it, that's how it gets easier. Like if you lose the weight and then six months or a year later you start gaining it back again, then you gain it back, then you got to lose weight again, like you're interrupting the practice that you have at maintaining.

So the way it gets easier is by practicing, right? So you do it again and again and month over month and year over year. And that's how it becomes easier. I think it's a slower path to it being easy when there are the ups and downs in between of gaining and losing and gaining and losing. So I just want to offer you that hope, right. I think a lot of people really are just like, there's just no way of keeping it off. It's just not true.

And I know even some people are thinking with the medications, like, you know, maybe what they'll do is like, get off of it for a while, and then maybe they're going to need a tune up with medication, take medication for another month or two or something, get a couple pounds off even that, if that's what people start to recommend. Like, I don't actually have a problem with that whatsoever, but wouldn't it be cool to maybe be able to stretch out the periods of time in between needing the medication? Wouldn't it be cool to maybe eventually get to a place where you don't need that?

Like it's still everything that I just talked about? It all remains. It's all the exact same thing regardless. All right, friend, that's what I've got for you. That is the end of our Weight Regain series, part three preventing future weight regain. Um, this is when you can come back again and again. Of course, I didn't tell you at the beginning, but, you know, if you haven't listened to the first and second parts, you're going to want to take a listen to those as well. All right. Well, I am hoping that you have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you next time. All right? Take care. Bye.

The post Ep #388: Preventing Future Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 3 appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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You’ve regained weight, you’ve processed your emotions, and now it’s time to do something about it. What’s next?

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how to manage your thoughts and feelings about weight regain. In this episode, we’re focusing on how to move forward after weight regain. I’m sharing practical and actionable steps that you can personalize to your journey to create a plan and get back on track.

There’s no shame in weight regain, and I hope that this can be a totally shame-free and guilt-free space for you to show up in. I truly believe that releasing shame will reduce your stress levels and make it instantly easier for you to get back to working on your goals.

You’re not alone! Myself and the rest of the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians community are here for you. Let’s do this together!

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How to identify what helped you lose weight in the past * Healthy habits to reintegrate into your routine to start feeling better * How to lose weight again without reinventing the wheel * The importance of identifying what didn’t work * One game-changing way to make the weight-loss process easier and faster * Signs that the process is working before you start losing weight * A simple way to choose one thing to work on * The type of goal to set if you want to experience more success * Unique ways to celebrate yourself (and how they will help you lose weight)

Between this episode and Part 1, you’re now armed with the tools you need to work through the emotions of weight regain, develop healthy coping skills, and create a plan to move forward. I strongly encourage you to work through the exercises in this episode with pen and paper so that you can get your ideas out of your head and see your plan solidify in front of you. Trust me, it helps!

Go to katrinaubellmd.com/info to learn how the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you move forward after weight regain!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #386: So You’ve Gained Weight Back… – Weight Regain Series Part 1

Ep #385: Overfunctioning and How to Stop

Ep #384: Try Just One More Time

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hey there, friend! Welcome to today's episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians. I'm really glad you're here. I have part two of the Weight Regain series for you. Last week, I gave you part one, where we talked about how you may have gained weight back, or maybe you lost weight and kept it off briefly and then regained it.

Maybe you lost weight and kept it off. Maybe for a long time, maybe for many months or even many years. And then the weight was regained. And so we talked last time a lot about what we make it mean about what we need to do to prepare ourselves mentally to deal with this weight regain and and move ourselves forward. You know, figuring out what our thoughts and feelings are about the whole situation and, you know, building some awareness of what happened. How did we even get here so that we can learn from it. So I want to encourage you, if you did not listen to that episode, you might want to start there. And actually, I would strongly encourage you to start there.

Maybe put pause this one on pause and go over, listen to that one first, and then come to this one. This one is part two of the Weight Regain series. Today we're talking more about moving forward after that weight regain. So last time we talked about okay so it's happened. You've regained it. And now we're going to talk a little bit more about actions, about what to do when you're ready to move forward. Now another reason why I'm going to tell you I don't want you to skip the last episode, that part one, because often we're like, you know, how you go into a book and you're like – for example, I can think of is the sleep training books.

I don't know what the more recent ones are like. I haven't read them in a while. But back when my children were younger and when I was practicing as a pediatrician, I'd, you know, get a book on sleep training or something, and they wouldn't get into the actual details of how to sleep train your child to like chapter 5 or 6 or something. You're like, I don't care. Just tell me how to get this kid to sleep, you know, and I can imagine there were people who are like, I don't care about the thoughts and feelings. Just tell me what to do to get the the weight of regained off. And while I am sympathetic to that, and I do understand that place, I want to let you know that if you don't want to have this experience again where you gain the weight again, if you really want to lose it one last final time, you can't skip that part.

It's really, really important that you work on the mindset, the thoughts and feelings part, and even just understanding. There's a lot of gold to mine essentially in understanding what brought you here. So we want to make sure we don't leave that gold in the ground. You know what I'm saying? Okay. So you're ready. You're like, okay, I've kind of wrung out all the learning I could from that. There's still a little bit more, though, to figure out, but we're going to get down to like the real action, like the stuff I'm doing, types of things. So here's what I want to suggest that you do. I want you to take a moment or, you know, I mean, a few moments probably, and write down what actually worked when you were losing weight in the past.

And if you were maintaining it, you know, what was working during the maintenance phase. So just bring yourself back to that and identify what the things that you were doing that really worked and worked can mean several different things. Part of working is that it gives you the results that you want, right? So the weight either came off or it stayed off. So that's one way to define it working. Another way to define it working is that it felt really comfortable for you, or it felt really easy, or it was something that was just, you know, so integrated, so on autopilot for you that you just were able to do it.

It's just how you lived your life, at least in that period of time, you know, things that just made it seem like, “Hey, this is really great.” Now I will say that depending on how you lost weight in the past, you might not have a lot of things that really feel like they worked from a simplicity or ease standpoint, or not having to think about it that much standpoint. Maybe they were things that did create results on the scale, but weren't very easy for you to follow ongoing. And that's also really important information, because if you know, those things worked from a scale standpoint, but it's not something that you can continue ongoing, then it's just not going to work.

You know, that's the overall big picture. It's not working. And then that's not going to be something we want to try again. But often there are some things and you know, we can think about a big picture or really big things. But I want to encourage you to really think about some of those small things, the little details as well, things that maybe don't even seem like they made that much of a difference at the time. But, you know, maybe they did. It could be that you were really, really good about getting some water in, and you really made sure you drank more water than maybe other beverages, and you wonder if that maybe helped.

You know, that your hydration status was really good. Like, that's one example of just kind of a small thing. Or it could be that you were just a little bit more organized with your sleep schedule so you could get up a little bit earlier so you had a little more. More time in the morning to do whatever it is you like to do. Go outside for a walk, spend a little time privately journaling or reading a good book, or just a little time to yourself meditating, whatever it is you like to do. Maybe that little extra ten minutes has fallen by the wayside.

All those little things. Just thinking back to what was life like when things were going well, and make sure you jot those things down. We always think we're going to remember them. I found that we tend to not remember them. It's usually not how that goes. So write that all down because ultimately we do not need to reinvent the wheel. And of course, we never want to reinvent the wheel if we don't have to. I find that, you know, what we tend to do is kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater in the sense that, you know, we're kind of like, well, I gained that weight, so everything I did there is garbage.

I'm going to just throw it all out and not do any of that. And that's a missed opportunity. And there are so many good things in there that probably if you just did those things again, which you already know how to do and in the past felt good and easy, I mean, amazing, like, let's do those again. We don't have to find something totally new. And I think when we think we need to find something totally new that slows us down, everything feels harder. Things that are just more like, oh yeah, I kind of had forgotten how much I liked XYZ, right? This is always easier, always better.

Okay, next you're going to write about what didn't work. And I know we did touch on that a little bit. Like what got you to where you are right now. In the last episode we talked about that, you know, really just understanding like what happened, what did I stop doing was something happened in my life. And then I just kind of got out of the habit or what exactly happened. But I do want to spend a little more time on that. Again, in terms of the actual actions, you know, what were the things that always felt kind of hard or you never really loved? You know, maybe it's like you had decided that you need to eat more cruciferous vegetables, and you were forcing yourself to eat a bunch of, like, broccoli, cauliflower, or something.

I'm just totally making this up. And you don't even really like those vegetables that much, and so you're just not that excited about doing that again. I would put that on this part of the list. You know, it doesn't mean you maybe never eat it, but maybe it's, you know, we find some different ways of preparing it that tastes better to you. Or maybe we just, you know, like let go of that goal of eating it, you know, four times a week. And maybe instead we just do it once or twice or something like that because it's something that we can sustain. Right?

This is what's so important is that this is doable. What we're doing, what didn't work, can also have to do with our expectations of ourselves. It could be that you had in mind, like, okay, I need to be doing this long list of 13 different things every day, and if I do all of those things to support myself, then I am able to lose weight or maintain it. And it's not that something is necessarily bad with that long list. It could just be that your current life doesn't mesh with that. You know, maybe at a certain point in your life you were able to do that. Maybe when you were doing that, you were single and you had a lot of time. And now maybe you have children or a baby or, you know, other responsibilities. Maybe you have a different job that requires so much more of you.

Maybe you have other personal responsibilities. Maybe you're taking care of aging parents that kind of time, that investment to get all of those things done. It's just not available to you now. So we want to make sure we write that all down, not because we need to throw the whole list out, but because we might need to make some tweaks. Maybe we go, hey, you know what? What were the top three things that moved the needle the most, that were most important to me, or really, really made the most difference and really, really helped?

Maybe I can find time for those things. And the other ten, you know, are kind of nice to haves when little extra time does, you know, open up. So understanding what didn't work, but not from a place of and these things are all horrible and we need to get rid of all of them. But instead coming from a place of there's definitely some gold in here. I just need to kind of like filter it out from the Fool's Gold. No, just like, you know, I just need to, like, pick and choose and find the things that were good. And then I might want to consider continuing on, but not necessarily like all of it, you know, or maybe none of it. I mean, it could be two that you're like, yeah, I was totally super miserable. I was feeling tons of urges.

I felt like I was using so much willpower. The whole thing felt so hard. When I think about any time I had to drink, like any kind of shake of any kind, that's how I feel. I know some people like shakes. I've not ever met a shake I like. It's just not for me. I've tried many of them. It's certainly not a long-term solution for me by any stretch. Right? So it's like not like, oh, I just maybe need to find a different shake that I actually like. I could just go, hey, you know what? I'm going to figure out a way to do this where I don't drink shakes. And that's exactly what I did. So now we're going to move on to taking action like to true taking action time.

And I want to pause here for a moment to really strongly suggest that when you're in this phase when you're ready to do this, you get some coaching support here, and I want to tell you, why, can’t you do it yourself? Yeah, I think anything's possible. But I will tell you, it is so much easier and better when you do it with coaching. And what you find in coaching is that this is not like your friend who is, you know, giving you their opinions about things. What you're getting is a very unbiased person who is helping you to achieve what you want to achieve, and is able to see things in the way that you're thinking, and in the way that you're approaching the whole process, that it can be easy for us to miss ourselves.

You know, like we can think that we've got our thinking all straightened out, and then a coach is like, yeah, so you just said this, so explain to me how that works and how that makes sense. And you're like, oh my goodness gracious. I did not even see that. And this is true even for coaches, right? All of us. Like we're so inside. You know, some people say it's hard to read the label on the bottle when you're inside it. You know what I mean? It's like kind of the same thing. And so the other thing that's so helpful with coaching is that it is solutions-focused.

And so we don't spend so much time talking about the problem or more deeply understanding the problem. We do want to build awareness around that. So we've previously talked about it, but we're all about taking action and moving forward and staying focused on the future so we can create what we want. And I think what can slow us down, particularly when we're doing it ourselves or not getting the help that we need, is that we end up kind of backsliding or thinking about the past more than is helpful. That's one thing I really love about my program weight loss for busy physicians. Our permanent weight loss proven process. I mean, it just literally takes you through the steps, like all you have to do is follow the steps and then you'll get to where you're going.

It's sometimes it's so nice. It's like, I don't need to sit here and keep thinking, what should I do next? And is this enough? And should I do something else? It's like, just follow this proven process and you'll get to where you're going. You know what I mean? It's so good. It just takes you there. So that coaching help really, really helps you to make sure that you're making this time, the last time to actually figure it out from not only just like the day-to-day actions of what to do, but also the mindset approach. So that's my plug for coaching. Just because I know it works, it does.

Okay, so when it's time to take action, here's something that I find a lot of people do that really can make it hard for them. And I see a lot of people tripping up on this. What often happens is we've identified what worked. We know all these things were helpful in the past, and then we're like, well, I want results as soon as possible. So I'm going to just start doing all those things again like I used to be able to do them all, and it felt easy and was comfortable and it was no big deal. And then they start doing that, and then they're kind of surprised that it doesn't feel great and that it's hard and that, wow, that's a lot of things.

And how do I fit that all into my life? And it's not uncommon for folks to really start feeling like they're doing great for a little bit and then not doing. And then why does this feel so hard? And I must be doing something wrong. It's like a lot of fits and spurts, you know like you're doing it, you're not doing it, you're doing it, you're not doing it. Or maybe you do it for like a week and you're hoping that like 17 pounds falls off. You know, not really, but ideally. Right. We're like, I just want to, you know, have like a significant sign that this is working.

Like, I want to see it on the scale or, or feel it in my body and the way my clothes fit and often right. It takes a little longer than that. And that can be something that we don't love, like we just are in a rush to get back to where we were before with, you know, before we regain that weight. And so I want to suggest, well, first of all, that you're not thinking about going back anywhere. You know, we often tend to romanticize the past, and we want to try to avoid that. Instead, we want to think about the future. We want to move into the future, to the new version of us who has created, you know, some ironclad protection around us so we don't regain the weight if we want to go back to where we were before, then we're going to be setting ourselves up to just regain the weight again, because who we were back then regained the weight back.

So there needs to be some evolution, some growth, and that occurs when we're moving forward and not trying to go back. So what I suggest is that you think about all the things that worked and all those things you've learned, and you go a step at a time and you really meet yourself where you're at, like, don't try to do everything all at once. It really tends to not work well, I mean, we know this from our own experience, but there's research that backs it up as well.

My suggestion is the following. Look at your list of things that worked, and I want you to pick either the easiest thing that worked that really is not going to take much from you, that you're like, yeah, that's not a big deal. I can definitely do that and do that consistently, like pick that or pick the thing on the list that if you did it, you think it would make the biggest impact. Okay, so you're like this, if I do this, I know it really moves the needle. And I want to point out that this may not actually be food related, this thing that might have the biggest impact. You know, some people find that if they start doing some of their stress reduction strategies, oh, look at that.

They just aren't overeating as much. Right? Or they start doing some of the journaling that they know really helped them before. And oh, look at that. Not so much food chatter in their brain. Interesting, right? So what's really cool to realize about this is, you know, we think we need to focus on the food. Well, I mean, maybe, but also maybe going back to those other supportive things and getting those established will just make the food part even easier. They'll be even less work that you have to do because you're supporting yourself in those other ways. So how to know if you should pick the most impactful thing or the easiest thing I think is really up to you.

I think if you're feeling pretty energized, if you're feeling pretty motivated, you're like, okay, let's go. Like, I'm ready to do this, then I think the one that'll make the most impact, you know, it sounds like there's energy behind that and that could be really good. I think if you're not feeling so energetic about it, if you're still working through some of the feelings that you have, that you're where you are, if you're feeling really pressed for time, like you want to take action, but life is feeling particularly busy right now, your hours are more accounted for than they maybe were in the past. I think the easiest thing can be really nice because it just gives you some good wins where you just start feeling like, you know, I didn't even have to make that many changes and it's already starting to work and that can feel really reassuring.

It can help you to recognize, like, this does not have to be so hard. I don't need to have total life upheaval in order for me to shed some excess body fat and have a better relationship with food, right? It doesn't have to be so, so challenging and so difficult. So, so depending on where you're at, I think, you know, just trust yourself to know which one of these is going to be the best for you. Okay. So you're doing that thing and I'll just speak to this again consciously, like on purpose, build awareness around any thoughts that come up about how things were in the past.

Okay. Like it's very easy for us to go well, but you know, I'm just using that as like my point of reference. And you know, back then I did this and back then that was so great. Like I said, we put on rose colored glasses. I've seen this so many times. Like, well, back then it just felt so easy sometimes. I've coached these people in the past and I'm like, yeah, but I remember coaching you when you were totally complaining about that thing and they're like, oh my gosh, you're totally right. I completely had forgotten about that. Fascinating, right? So fascinating. So we really want to focus on the future.

So you notice your brain going back to the past, thinking about the past, lamenting about the past, glorifying the past. Like redirect time to redirect. Let's think about the future. What am I going to do today? What can I do today that can help support me on creating the future that I want? Okay, so that takes some conscious awareness, some conscious effort in the sense of paying attention to what you're thinking, what you're saying to people, the story you tell yourself and others. Next, I really want to encourage you to celebrate your wins.

When we have regained weight, sometimes we think that as we're losing, we don't deserve to celebrate that because we should have never been in this position in the first place. This is that kind of mean, judgmental part of us, that voice in our head. Sometimes that comes out, and I really want to discourage you from thinking about it this way. It is ineffective, just blanketly ineffective to try to shame ourselves into permanent weight loss. It will not work. Okay, so let's just not do that. But I want to encourage you to also when it comes to wins, not just celebrate the results wins. Like, oh, these pants used to be really tight and now they finally feel comfortable or I reach this certain number on the scale. Those are, of course, things that you can celebrate, particularly if those things are part of your goals or things that are important to you.

But I want to encourage you to celebrate process wins as well, and maybe even more so. And what I mean by that is setting process goals for yourself. These are things that you absolutely have control over, right? You don't necessarily have control. Like is the scale going to move X many pounds this week or something? I mean, you absolutely can set goals on that and take actions that you hope will create that. But. You can't ultimately 100% create that every time, right? It doesn't. This is just not how it works. So with process goals, you do have control and with process goals.

What that means then is you are committing to doing parts of the process and then you're celebrating when you did those things. So for instance, that could be at least one meal a day, really checking in with yourself to figure out where you are on the hunger scale before you start eating. Which you know, I have more information about the hunger scale in this podcast and in my book called How to Lose Weight for the Last Time, if that's a new concept to you. And so you could say, yeah, you know what, once a day, a minimum once a day, I'm going to be checking in on the hunger scale around a meal. So I'm going to recognize where I am on the hunger scale when I start to eat. And I'm gonna let it guide me to know when to stop eating.

Right. So that could be one thing that you're deciding to do at least once a day. And then when you've done that for maybe even just three days in a row, you can celebrate that. If it's something that's really tough for you to remember or maybe a week, you know, seven days in a row, like we can celebrate that and celebration sometimes, you know, I think we get a little like, well, how do I celebrate it? I mean, it literally can just be like sitting there for a moment and going, go me like feeling, you know, some pride in yourself, feeling the joy of accomplishing something, just being like, this is awesome. Look at me.

I did it for seven days. I wonder if I could do it for seven more. Or maybe I could do it just three more and see what happens. And at ten days. Oh my gosh, look, I did it for ten days straight and you start to build that up. You build the excitement, the momentum. You build evidence for yourself that you really can do this, that this is working. This also helps you to keep a more positive mindset and helps to keep you thinking about the future and moving forward. So make sure you let yourself celebrate those wins. Don't punish yourself. And then finally, I want to encourage you to just add new things on gradually. You know, like we talked about finding the one thing on the list, like when you're ready for a second thing, maybe choose the second easiest thing, or the thing you think will make the second biggest impact and choose that to add on, right? Just one thing at a time.

Like, let's just work with ourselves. There's no need to be in a rush if this is going to be the last time. In fact, it's so much more likely to be the last time if we don't rush. You know, some of us get confused. We think if we're not rushing, then we're doing nothing. It's a very all-or-nothing way of thinking. We need to, you know, all the invitation is to increase, you know, that capacity to be in that middle space where we are taking action. But we're not, you know, coming from like a frenetic or frantic energy. And then as new obstacles show up because they will find solutions. Recognize. I always like to tell my clients, I don't even think there's just one solution out there.

I think there's hundreds of solutions, probably infinite numbers of solutions to this obstacle that you have. And all we have to do is find one that works. So do you think we can find one out of infinite? I think probably we can. Let's try to do that. So something new comes up. There's a little trip up. We don't make that mean. It's the beginning of the end. No. Instead what we do is we really just focus on learning from what happened similarly to what we did earlier.

Talked about that in the first podcast and learning what we need to learn so we can take strides moving forward and continue building up the toolkit and the skills that we need to be able to live our lives while having peace and freedom around food and maintaining the weight that we want to maintain. That's how we do this. So that's how I suggest you move forward after weight regain. I don't want to come down too heavy handed, but I'm telling you, coaching is so instrumental in helping to get this going. If you have been trying to do this on your own and it's not working, I want you to really strongly look into whether it's my weight loss or doctor's only coaching program or coaching with somebody else.

You really need to be getting that help if you want to be moving forward, okay? I mean, like I said, I think you can do it yourself, but I think it's so much more likely to be permanent. I know that when you're getting this specific type of help.

All right. That is part two of the Weight Regain series. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a great rest of your day and your week, and I'll talk to you next time. Thank you. Bye.

The post Ep #387: Moving Forward After Weight Regain – Weight Regain Series Part 2 appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you ever felt like you’re on the rollercoaster of weight loss and weight gain?

When you lose weight and then regain it, it can be really disheartening. You’re not alone. In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, I’m going to help you through it. I want us to dig into the emotions that come up when you gain weight back and how to handle and process those emotions in a healthy way.

Weight regain is too big a topic for just one episode so this is part one of a multi-part episode. Once we’ve addressed the emotions and mindset, then in the next episode we’ll talk about how to move forward after weight regain, and I’ll be here to offer you support at whatever level you need.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Common emotions that come up when weight is regained * Causes of weight regain you might not have considered * Things that cause your eating habits to feel out of your control * How to support yourself emotionally through disruptive life events * The big problem with trying lose-weight-quick schemes after weight regain * A healthy way to process and move on from your weight regain * How you can leverage the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and actions * Lies you’re telling yourself about your worth

If you’re coming to terms with weight regain, I see you. There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re not broken, and it is possible for you to lose weight again if you want to. I know that you’ve faced setbacks and challenges in your life before and overcome them, so I know that you can overcome this too. Never stop cheering for yourself!

To find out how the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you with weight regain, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there my friend. Welcome back to Weight Loss for Busy Physicians. So glad you're here. Thanks for joining me today. I have a two-parter for you. We're going to do part one this week. And then next week we'll follow it up with part two.

We're going to be talking about weight regain. And this is something that is bigger than just one episode. So I wanted to give it its full due and do it as a two-parter. So today we're going to talk about what you do kind of when you're currently in a position where you realize you've gained weight back and all the emotions and thoughts that come with that, and then next week we're going to talk more about moving forward after weight regain. So there's kind of like two sections to this. And so I want you to make sure that you come back next week as well so that you get kind of the full picture. So you know, not everybody has struggled with their weight up and down, up and down, up and down right.

Like I did losing and gaining and losing and gaining so many times. Maybe you've had that experience to where you've, you know, been on the diet roller coaster a bunch, but not everybody has. You know, there are people who kind of, you know, at some point. Right? It's just and that might be you or you're realizing, yeah, okay. This is kind of crept up. It's become an issue. And so you might not actually have the experience of having lost weight and then regaining it back again. I still think you're going to get a lot out of this regardless if that's been your experience.

But I'm more speaking now to people who have done a lot of work. And so I'm not talking so much about like, “Yeah, I did this crash diet type of thing,” or you know, did something like kind of, you know, “extreme” whatever you consider extreme to lose a lot of weight for some sort of event. And then I gained it back. I mean, that's kind of like to be expected. Everyone kind of knows that's going to happen. Instead, I'm more talking about like, no, you really gave it a solid try. Like you actually were working it, doing the work, maybe even doing some of the mental emotional work as well. Maybe you were, you know, doing a coaching program or even in my coaching program and got a lot out of it, and things were great and things were cooking along there for a while.

And then you find yourself gaining that weight back. And I'm also not talking so much today here of, you know, I gained back 5 pounds. I gained back 10 pounds, although that can have a strong impact on people for sure. Absolutely. I want to focus more on the close to or the full weight regain. So say you lost 50 pounds and you've regained 50, or maybe you've regained 55 or 60. You know, maybe it's even more. And what comes along with that?

This is something that was actually inspired by a friend of mine who had some really good success. It's been a few years. It was kind of pre-COVID when she did this and really was doing the work, like really, really, really doing. Not just changing her eating work, but doing the mental emotional mindset work. And over the course of time has gained it back and we’re, you know, very close in discussing the struggles of all that. And, you know, I'm not her coach, I'm her friend. And so we talk about these things in a little bit of a different way. But she even suggested saying, you know, you should really do a podcast episode on this because there's a lot to dig through.

There's a lot to work out when it comes to the regain. And, you know, we might think on surface level, “Oh, well, you know, you just get back on track again,” and, you know, you just get started and do what you were doing before. And that should be enough. What I hear, though, from people who are experiencing something like this is that that feels really, really hard to do. Or it can be kind of like in fits and spurts. It's like, oh my gosh, I have to get this back off. I have to get back to where I was as soon as possible. And then they kind of go pedal to the metal, trying to do everything as fast as they can and as intensely as they can, and then they burn rubber and, you know, and they don't get traction.

So then that even feels worse. And it's easy for things to start feeling like it's just not possible to get back there. You lost the special sauce, the secret formula, whatever was so good you can't get it back again, and you can just start to feel heavier and heavier and harder and harder. So for some reasons why people in recent years have gained weight back is, of course, stress with Covid, that was a huge thing, particularly for doctors, just kind of eating their way through the stress of being a provider during those more intense Covid years.

Also, there were people who were just super anxious and were eating to manage those emotions as well. Another big part that I don't hear a lot of people talking about, though, is kind of like that post-Covid freedom. You know, it's like, oh, we're back. We are traveling, we are going on vacation, we are doing things. And it's kind of, you know, it seems like every summer it seems like it's ramping up more and more. I was talking to someone recently. We were recognizing how, like pretty much every musician out there is touring this summer, like everybody is out there taking advantage of the opportunity to, you know, play to a crowd. And, you know, in general the public is like here for it.

Everybody's like, yes, let's go out, let's do things, let's make up for that lost time. And sometimes that sort of whiplash, so to speak, from, like being home, not really being able to do much, which for a lot of people is actually great for their eating because there just was a lot of predictability, you know, not not a lot of ups and downs, not a lot of, you know, events where they couldn't control what they were going to eat and things like that, and then they get out and all those things are there. And life is back to regular life.

And they maybe either forgot some of the tools that can help them with that, or never really fully developed those tools and skills. And sometimes we just think like we just deserve it. We want to have fun and food is a part of that. Maybe alcohol is a part of that. So those can be some reasons for gaining that weight back. But then outside of that, which is, you know, of course, very circumstantial and not something hopefully that we're going to be dealing with again anytime soon. Sometimes there's like what I'm calling like a big thing. We'll put that in quotes. The big thing, like a big thing happened and you had to go through that, some sort of life event that was maybe stressful. It might not even have been bad.

It could have been good, but it could have been, you know, also, good things come with stress. It could have been stressful in that way, or it could have been also something that was not what you were hoping for, something that was more difficult or very hard, and that maybe you ate your way through that. And then that created some weight gain, like food was your support during that. And that can make a lot of sense, because often when, you know, we're living our lives, we're not going through a quote unquote big thing. And even when we're doing like the work that I offer to, you know, my clients and weight loss for doctors, only when something big happens, I kind of am secretly glad because then they're going to learn how to do this work and how to support themselves emotionally when there is a big thing in their lives.

So if we think like, oh well, I'm going to wait till things are all settled and then I'm going to learn this. Well, then we haven't actually developed the resilience or the grit, so to speak, to get through the big thing without going back and relying on food. So not like we're hoping for a big thing to happen, but it's definitely not a bad thing. And it would make sense that if when you were losing weight, things were pretty subtle. There wasn't a lot of up and down in your life.

Then when there are more ups and downs, it would be harder, right? You might go back to those old habits. You might start relying on food again. That would make a lot of sense. Another reason people gain weight back is kind of like general life dissatisfaction. You know, kind of like the blahs. You just have the blahs, you're just feeling blah about everything, you know? And maybe that's a little bit of depression. Maybe it's truly a mental health thing, or maybe it's not. It's just like, I'm just not loving certain parts of my life right now. And I think sometimes those things can actually be a really good indication.

It's not like we want to always avoid that. Like if you're feeling the blues about something, say your work. That can be a really good opportunity for you to hone in on. What is the problem there? Do I need to try something different, shift my role, move to a different place? You know, practice in a different way. You know, who knows something different and same way. Personally, sometimes when we are noticing we're feeling that way, it's a good indication that it's time to do some reevaluation, find some different things to spend time on in our lives than the way that we're currently doing it, and that can be very helpful.

But when we're going through it, it often doesn't feel great. And again, when it's just kind of like that feeling of the grind every day is just not that great. Sometimes we start relying on food again, and what I think happens for a lot of people is they think, well, just this time I'll make an exception and, you know, I'll whatever overeat or eat things that I wouldn't typically eat, but then it doesn't take long. And then all of a sudden you kind of like, open your eyes and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm doing this every day now. Or like a lot of the times of the day, you know, a lot, a lot of days of the week or things like that.

And, and I think that's normal for to have a bit of a creep where all of a sudden you like, didn't think it was making a difference. And then all of a sudden it has made a difference. And that can be disheartening, too, for a lot of people. So, you know, when you have the the blahs, you're just like not feeling great. You know, maybe you don't have a lot of motivation. Maybe, you know, the things to do that would help you, but you just aren't feeling motivated to do them, just not feeling it, you know?

And another reason can be having some sort of medical issue, needing to have surgery, something that's really kind of like a physical upheaval as well. So like there's sort of those emotional mental upheavals and then more physical kind of upheavals as well. And there are so many other reasons this could be happening. And so, you know, for sure, my list was not exhaustive of all the reasons why people gain weight back, but I did want to just kind of speak to those things, because often when we're going through this, we tell ourselves the story that we're the only ones who are struggling in this way, or other people have it figured out or, you know, somehow other people are not struggling as badly as we are. Somehow we miss the memo.

There's something wrong with us, which is why we can't get over it or get through it faster, or why we let it get so bad, you know, like things like that.

And so it's just important to recognize, like, yeah, these are all normal things. And it doesn't mean just because this happened and you gained weight back that you're hopeless or it's never going to work or you can't figure it out, or that you were stupid to think that you actually had created permanent weight loss. Like there's all kinds of, you know, judgment and things like that we can put on ourselves when these things have happened. So there comes a point where we recognize, like, okay, this has gotten out of hand in the sense of like gained all this weight back or whatever has happened.

And we sort of recognize that what I really want to encourage you to do is to, well, I'm going to discourage you. I'm going to discourage you from being reactive. I want you to not be reactive. What I mean by reactive is to recognize what has happened, and then kind of panic and start doing lose weight quick schemes, doing things to try to get the weight off as quickly as possible, just trying to run away from the discomfort, physical and mental emotional that you feel. Try to get it off really fast to get away from it. Because if you do that, it's actually, well, first of all, often not sustainable the next time either.

But also, it's a true missed opportunity on figuring out what happened that created this. Again, any time we have any kind of result, ones that we like, but also ones that we didn't want or don't like, there's something to be learned there so that we can prevent ourselves from repeating that. And when we get reactive and just like rush and try to get the weight off ASAP, we are missing that lesson. And then the lesson will present itself again, probably with the next time that we gain the weight back, right. So what I would suggest is that we learn the lesson when it's presented itself, so that we don't need to repeat it again.

That would be awfully nice, right? So we want to take a little bit of time to understand what got us here. And to understand what we currently think about this situation. So let's kind of break that up into two little chunks here. So the first is building awareness around what got you here. So you know, we can kind of take a moment to backtrack to whenever, you know, we were at a place where we were happy with our weight and with our eating. And look at the time between then and now and better understand what happened truly what happened, like being really honest with yourself and not that kind of like mean honest. Like I'm just keeping it real.

But really, what it was, is I turned into a lazy piece of crap. No, that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is truly separating ourselves, you know, getting more into that like watcher or observer mode, where we can more objectively look at it. Okay, here are the facts of what happened. I hit my goal weight on this day or whatever, you know, around this time or something. And then things were good and I was continuing to support myself for the next nine months. And then for this six months after that, I was doing pretty well, gained a few pounds back, but, you know, like wasn't quite doing quite as much as I had been doing prior to support myself.

And then the thing happened or whatever it was, you know, like some whatever and making this up, something happened. And then to get through that, I went back to relying on food. And then that's been about a year. And now here I am. It's like, okay, like there's no judgment, you know, this is good or bad. It's just these are the things that happened. You know, it's very helpful to build awareness on like, oh, look what happened there. When I did these things, I was able to maintain my weight loss. When I stopped doing those things regularly or at all, I went back to food and I gained weight back again. Super duper good to know.

Really, really, really good information. Like, we don't want to have to learn that lesson again and again. We want to instead go, oh, you know what? I didn't think it was such a big deal. You know, I didn't think it really mattered that much if I did this thing or that thing and the other, and it turns out it actually matters a whole lot. Super good to know. So in the future, if I try to tell myself that those things don't matter, I can remind myself that that actually isn't true, that they matter a lot. You know what I mean? Like honestly understanding ourselves and what helps us. I would say that another thing that probably happened during that time of weight regain was a change in the way that you think.

I mean, it had to have happened like the way you thought when you were losing weight or before, and when you were maintaining weight is different than the way you think when you are gaining weight back. And we know this because of the thinking cycle, which is from cognitive behavioral therapy. Doctor Aaron Beck, psychiatrist who's, you know, hopefully, you know, about cognitive behavioral therapy. At least recognize that it's, you know, a very well researched and accepted form of therapy. And while I'm not a therapist, we still can lean on this information to help us. So if we understand that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings drive our actions, and then our actions create our results, right? Like if our thoughts end up driving our actions through our feelings, if we were doing one set of actions that created weight loss or weight maintenance, and then we take a different set of actions that create weight gain, we absolutely have to be thinking differently.

It can be very, very helpful to take some time to understand how the thinking changed. How was I thinking when I was losing weight? How was I thinking when I was regaining it back? Like what shifted there? What changed? And I do want to say that I have had some people that I've worked with who recognized in doing this kind of reflection that the way they were thinking when they were losing weight wasn't actually maybe so great for them, in the sense that it wasn't super supportive for them. It may be created the result, but, you know, I mean, I'm talking about simple things like even telling themselves, you know what, I'm just going to do the food part.

I don't know that I need the mindset work, you know? So then they did all that stuff, didn't do the mindset work, and then shifted their thinking when arguably the mindset stuff would have been particularly helpful, right? When when life just continues going on. And so it's important to understand the thinking, which thoughts were really helpful? Which thoughts are you interested in thinking again? Which thoughts are really driving overeating and, you know, are you interested in maybe switching those to something else? So we want to build that awareness to understand that.

And then we want to spend some time understanding again what you currently think of this situation, because this is also a big barrier to getting, you know, quote unquote back on track again or losing that weight again is the barriers that we put. Up to success. And this is, of course, completely unintentional. But we put these barriers up to essentially kind of punish ourselves often, you know, and so what has happened is you've, you know, you've lost weight and then you've regained that weight again. And then you have a whole lot of thoughts about that.

You have thoughts about your current situation. You have thoughts about yourself as it pertains to this current situation. And often, you know, those thoughts create some feelings that are not great. You know, these are some real choice, um, thoughts that, uh, who you know, they can be rough and so common feelings that, you know, people have regained weight share with me are a lot of blame, right? They blame themselves. They blame maybe, you know, the situation of that in their life that they found themselves eating to get through. Just lots of blame. So number one, blame number two guilt. Right. They did something wrong that they made a mistake. They shouldn't have done what they did and then feeling really guilty about it.

And then the next one is shame, right? Which is something is wrong with me because I've gained this way back again. This feels terrible. This feels so terrible when we make gaining weight back mean that something is actually wrong with us, when that is just not the truth at all of what it means. But when we tell ourselves that, and we believe it to be true, we start thinking this is factual, and then that makes us feel terrible. And coming from a place of shame, to try to lose weight is hard. Right. If we want to lose weight again, let's get ourselves mentally into a place where we can actually have success and work through this so we don't repeat it again.

So blame, guilt, shame, judgment. Oh man, I know there's some mean, mean thoughts that a lot of folks have in their minds when they've gained weight back again. You know, a lot of judgmental, mean, mean thoughts as though thinking about it that way or having that kind of self-talk is going to motivate you to to make a change. Unlikely, doubtful that that's going to happen. A lot of frustration, you know, and I think it's it's honest frustration just like, oh my gosh, I'm here again. You know, like just so frustrated that like here we go again kind of a thing. So frustration is really, really common.

And as well as hopelessness and despair just kind of really feeling like oh my gosh. Like I have hit rock bottom here. Like this is super, super hard. Um, you know, I'm feeling really terrible about myself. I just am not in a good place, you know. And when that is the case, this is the time to get help. You know, I think sometimes we think, oh, I need to have sorted this all out before I, you know, get coaching or, you know, work with someone to lose weight.

And I want to let you know that no, when you're in this stage where you've got these really intense negative emotions is the time to get help. Okay, because we want to work through these feelings, process them, but also understand the thoughts that we have that create them. So that we can, you know, move through this, understand that, and then work to find some compassion for ourselves, some understanding, maybe some tenderness in the struggle. Like, this is a struggle. Yeah. This happened. Not our favorite. I'm not saying that you have to get to a place where you're like, well, it's no big deal. That's not what I'm saying. But we don't need to make it mean more than it is. Really. All it is is you ate more food than your body needed for fuel, and so it stored that in the form of fat on your body for another day.

That's really all that happened. I mean, you know, that's the facts. It's really, really not as intense as our brains like to make it mean for us. And, you know, of course, there's so many reasons why we do. And I don't want to minimize that, you know, in terms of societal pressures and messaging and all of that, of course. But those are still thoughts like the facts are more food was consumed than the body needs. And here we are. Right? So if we can find some compassion, find some understanding, you know, find some tenderness, and we can start moving toward creating some belief in yourself. And from that place, that is an excellent place to start losing weight from. Right.

Do you have to be in that place to start losing weight? You do not, but it sure feels a whole lot better when you've moved away from those negative emotions that are holding you back and instead going, you know what? Yeah, that happened, I understand it now. I've learned the lessons that are to be learned, and now I'm going to move forward. I'm going to create something else. So so good okay. So I'm going to end this part here. This is some great work to do. If you've gained some weight back. I want to really encourage you to work through this to start understanding these things better. Just because you gained weight back does not mean that you can't.

Figure it out. And in fact, if you find that you've tried to lose weight again a few times and maybe some false starts and things that just didn't really work out, it could be that getting some coaching help is absolutely what you need before you can really be successful, or follow through on another round of trying to lose weight, something that's very much overlooked. But, you know, we often think like, oh, I'll do the mindset work later. Like, let me just get the weight off. I really want to really, really want to impress upon you how important it is often to do the mindset work first so that we can have success with the weight loss so that it is a more comfortable experience and more likely to be a long term result that we are able to maintain.

So I want to encourage you to think about this more. And if you're like, whoa, this is a lot, I need some help. Guess what? Help is available to you. So our weight loss reduction is only coaching program is an amazing, amazing place to work through those kinds of things. And, you know, it's really going to be something that you're going to want to look into so that you can figure this out. And I didn't really mention it. But also, you know, people who are using medications and stuff, like there's a whole element of that, too, people feeling like they're cheating, they're getting away with something and a lot of drama around.

How am I going to maintain this weight loss if I don't want to take the medications forever? These are all things that coaching can help with because that's all brain based. It's all mindset based, and that's what we work on, right? Medication isn't shifting the way that you think okay. Yep. We're gonna wrap it here. This is enough for today. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope this is giving you some good things to think about. And, you know, if you are not on the path of regaining, if you are maintaining currently working on losing, maybe for the first time, you can still learn so much from this, so much from this. It would be really nice if, you know, you didn't have to go through this whole experience.

You know what I mean that I'm talking about here, so we can learn from the experiences of others to try to prevent ourselves from having to go through it as well. Thank you so much. Part two. Next week we're going to talk about moving forward, what to do when you're like, okay, let's do this. Now it's time. Let's actually lose some weight. I hope you'll join me then. And thanks again for your attention. Thanks for being here. All right. Take care. Bye bye.

The post Ep #386: So You’ve Gained Weight Back… – Weight Regain Series Part 1 appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you the one who is always in control of your family members’ calendars? Do you often try to make other people feel comfortable at your own expense? Do you take on other people’s tasks because you know you can do it faster?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, you might be an overfunctioner.

So what is overfunctioning, why do you do it, and how do you stop? In this episode, I’m taking you through each of these questions and more to help you better understand your own behavior patterns and how they could be harming your health, relationships, and mental well-being. There’s also a much more exhaustive list of examples in the episode that you can use to assess your level of overfunctioning.

If you want to learn what the optimal level of functioning looks like and how to obtain it, don’t miss this episode.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How overfunctioning is going undetected in your life * Signs of an overfunctioner * Ways you might be projecting your anxieties or insecurities onto other people * Common problems caused by overfunctioning * Helpful tips for establishing sustainable, healthy, and appropriate behaviors * Relatable examples of overfunctioning that might surprise you * How to achieve an optimal level of functioning in your day-to-day life

This episode ends with some reflective questions that you can ask yourself about over and underfunctioning and where you fall on the spectrum. This exercise is not about judging yourself or being right or wrong, it’s simply a way to increase your self-awareness and invite more healthy behaviors into your life. Come to this episode with an open mind to discover something new about yourself!

If you think you might be overfunctioning and you want help figuring out your next steps, check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching group at katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Psychology Today Article

Will Meek PhD Article

MyWellbeing Article

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #384: Try Just One More Time

Ep #383: How to Stop Speed Eating

Ep #382: Overcoming Weaponized Independence

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm so glad you're here with me. Thanks for joining me. I want to talk to you about a concept today that I actually have known about for years and years, but just on a really very surface level, kind of a thing. And it's not something that I hear a lot of people talking about. There's kind of like little areas where people talk about it more, but in general, I don't hear it as a concept that's discussed that much. And for whatever reason, it was brought back up to my awareness recently. And I thought, you know what? First of all, I should learn more about this. And secondly, I should do a podcast episode on this. And as I learned more, I realized, oh, I absolutely have to do a podcast episode about this. I think this is something that is at play for a lot of people who listen to this. So this might be you.

It probably is you to a certain extent, uh, maybe more for some people than for others. But I think, as you'll see, this is a thing that kind of is at play for a lot of people. And I think it's it's a good thing for us to all think about. And what I'm talking about is overfunctioning. So that term I was always kind of a little confused by it. I'm like, what do you mean, you're overfunctioning? But I learned more about it. And as I have researched this episode, I have really opened my eyes to even areas where I am overfunctioning. So, I will get to this later.

There is a concept of under-functioning as well. I don't think that the majority are even. Probably a small subset of people who are listening to this episode are in the under functioning category. But just to let you know, there are some of both. And sometimes we’re overfunctioning in one area of our lives and under-functioning in another. So it's not like an all-or-nothing kind of a thing. Where you're either 100% overfunctioning in every area of your life, or you're optimally functioning or you're under-functioning. Okay, so there's some nuance here. And again, this is not like diagnosing anybody with anything. But I think it can be pretty eye-opening, particularly for people who are overeaters.

And you're going to see why here. So this concept of overfunctioning, I'm going to put a couple of articles that I referenced heavily for this podcast episode, and I'm going to put the links to them on the show notes page. So if you want to learn more, you can look there. Or you can of course do your own internet search. There's lots of great stuff out there. So overfunctioning, what does it even mean? So what it means is being overly responsible for other people. Okay, so I did an episode a while back on being, you know, super conscientious as a kid. It can be, you know, similar to that, right? Overly responsible for other people. And that includes family, friends, colleagues.

I mean, it literally can even be strangers, you know, like there's times where we just start taking over. I can think of I don't know that I do that so much, but I can think of specifically one person that I know who absolutely does that for sure. So what this means, right? It sounds like, oh, you're responsible. You know, it sounds good. What it means is that you're essentially controlling others, and that controlling of others becomes your automatic way of calming yourself down or managing your anxiety. So overfunctioning is often related to anxiety management or managing of insecurities and things.

We'll talk about that a little bit more. So what we also do to manage our anxiety often to calm ourselves down is what? We use food, right? So either we're eating food that, you know, maybe is heavily palatable or very sweet or refined or whatever, and that helps us. Or it's overeating of food, just of all types. And so for those of us who don't have a lot of tools and skills to help ourselves when we're feeling anxious or stressed, you know, we might be overfunctioning.

We might also be using food to help or maybe doing other things as well. And so I think that for people who are overeaters, it's something to consider for sure. Now, I think many years ago, before I became a coach and was a coach myself, I would have been like, I'm not anxious, what are you talking about? But what I have learned is that everybody experiences anxiety, whether it's something that's a true diagnosable thing or you identify that actively in yourself or not. Of course, everybody gets nervous or worried or anxious. It's a normal emotion. And often when we're, you know, using food to make ourselves feel better, we just don't even realize what we're doing. We just, you know, go back to the good old standard of I just like food, you know, kind of a thing.

So just, you know, my suggestion is just to have a bit of an open mind as you listen to this today and see if anything resonates. You know, it's like. I'm not saying you have this as an issue or not, but it might actually resonate a little bit. And so yeah, we'll see. We'll see what you think. So over functionaries, people who overfunction, there are often people who really like have it together, you know, like they're super detail-oriented or they're really organized. They're really, really competent. They tend to be really reliable as workers, as partners, as parents. They're often really good leaders, really good problem solvers, and high achievers.

Does that sound like you? I'm betting it does at least part of what I said. Okay, so just follow me along here. So people who are overfunctioning are going to take on the responsibilities, the emotions, the needs and even the well-being of the people who are around them, like all the people in their lives, whether those people want us to do that or not. And it's done as a way, like I said, to manage our own anxiety or our own insecurities. This is what's so interesting, right? It's like whether they want us to do it or not, we're doing it. So one of the articles I read, the author said when I first saw the word overfunctioning and read the description, I identified with it, but I initially brushed it off.

Someone has to get things done around here. And I thought, oh, that's so good, right? Because many of us are like, yeah, I probably am overfunctioning. And it's a good thing because otherwise, everything would fall apart, right? But then they go on to write, “But like dealing with high functioning anxiety, people pleasing or perfectionism, which are three things that over functioners might also identify with. Overfunctioning is not sustainable or fair to those around us, even though it might seem like it is to us.” Okay. So I find that we're doing that overfunctioning. And then when it doesn't become sustainable anymore for lots of different reasons, we're often turning to food. The result of overfunctioning is these are things that we are often coaching on.

In the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program that I run, you know, this is like as I learn more about this, I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, this is another angle to help us to understand why we struggle in the way that we do, and to give us some framework to help us to move out of that or, you know, retreat. We want to be optimally functioning, not overfunctioning.

So here's the thing, you know, doing all the things right – it's something that is glorified. We're praised for it. Modern society loves this. It's like, yep, you do it all. What is becoming more and more clear is that there are definite negative impacts to overfunctioning. And those include burnout, stress, more anxiety, sleep problems, physical health issues in other things as well. So a lot of the things that doctors are really struggling with these days can be the result of overfunctioning. So when you're overfunctioning, you're really just doing more than is sustainable, more than is healthy, and more than is appropriate for you as an individual. Like, we can't just say this much is overfunctioning and this much isn't. It's much more about what is sustainable, healthy, and appropriate.

So classic characteristics of overfunctioning include being really overly focused on another person's problems or life situation. You see this a lot where it's just like, you know, somebody is just thinking a lot about a relative, a family member, someone at work, right? So that can be a classic characteristic, also offering frequent advice or help to other people, which is usually unsolicited. Right. People don't like that. They don't really actually doing things that are part of another person's life responsibilities. And then telling ourselves, if I don't do it, then it won't happen.

That's so it's so good. And like it kind of hurts at the same time, right? Feeling anger when help is not appreciated, or if the person who's under-functioning. Because if we have an overfunctioner, we need an under-functioner, or if the under-functioner doesn't change or even doesn't want to change, that can be pretty brutal, right? Feeling really angry about that, right? It's like I'm doing all this for you. And I think about it as almost like the classic trope of a woman who, you know, works and maybe has a family of like, “I do everything around here and nobody appreciates it,” you know, like right thinking everyone needs to be different.

So also, if the person overfunctioning believes that they know a better way for other people to be living. I mean, we talk about this a lot. Like, I mean, if people just live their lives the way I think they should, it would be great, but they don't. When we tell ourselves that we know how to live other people's lives better than they do. It creates a lot of emotional strife for us and often for them too.

And so also classic characteristics include frequently feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and neglecting self-care. And this is so important because what we talk so much about in my program, to be able to, you know, not rely on food so much, it involves actually having to take care of yourself, needing to have a bit of an inner life, being able to spend time with yourself, meet your own needs, take care of yourself. You know, not only just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. And so those are the first things that get thrown away often when we're overfunctioning.

So overfunctioning can be seen as kind of like a type of enabling. But really the intent of it is the opposite. Like when we're over functioning, we're like, no, I'm helping this person. I'm like actually getting them to do better. That's what we think is happening. You might be like, oh, is this like co-dependence? And what I saw online is that the true classic definition of co-dependence usually is going to involve the other person having some sort of form of addiction. I don't think it always has to, but it often does. I think the codependency term has sometimes been used a little bit more broadly in recent years. So, you know, if that's a term that you really resonate with and it makes a lot of sense to you, then that might also be part of it.

But in this for what we're doing today, we're not going to talk about that so much. So why do we even do this? Why do we overfunction? So sometimes we're placed into that overfunctioning role. As a young person. You know, we have to assume this role of being super responsible or overly functioning within the family system. So that can be because the parent or the adults in charge, like they're either not there, maybe they have an illness, they're just not able, for whatever reason, to take on that role. I know that there are plenty of people who can identify with that. You know, they just kind of had to take over for any number of reasons. So if that's you, I think that's important to recognize.

You know, this was something that was required of you when you were a child if you resonate with us. And so it would make sense, particularly as you're developing as a child, that you would continue that same behavior into adulthood. Some other causes are having a lot of anxiety when you're watching someone else make mistakes or do things that seem unwise, you know? Like you're like watching the train crash and you're just like, oh my gosh, so, so, so anxious about it. I mean, I don't know that any of us really enjoy that or don't feel anything about it, but it is something that we can work on for sure.

And I know that some people for sure have extreme anxiety or really intolerable feelings when something like that is happening. Other causes are feeling a sense of guilt or obligation to help someone. This often happens in a family type of dynamic where you know, whatever the background story is makes us feel like we've done something wrong. We need to make up for that or our beliefs about ourselves within the family unit require us, obligate us to help someone in a certain way.

Another cause is getting into a relationship with somebody when they're under-functioning wasn't really super noticeable to you. Maybe you didn't see it, maybe it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. And then before you know it, you're like in a relationship with somebody who's under-functioning and stepping up and over-functioning to compensate. Another cause is using another person's life and problems as a distraction from our own life and problems. Ooh.

You know where I talk about something similar to this is when I talk about weight loss drama, like food drama. Often I have found just because I've been doing this a long time and working with a lot of people over the years, a lot of doctors is that sometimes when we have a lot of ups and downs with the food and like, we're, you know, we create a plan and we're following it, then we're not, and then we can do it for a couple days and then we can't do it anymore. And it just creates a lot of mental drama, a lot of emotions, a lot of ups and downs, and things like that.

Sometimes there's like a subtext there that they're not even aware of, which is if I can just stay consumed with the ups and downs of trying to lose weight and not succeeding, then I don't have to actually address why I'm overeating in the first place. I, you know, I don't have to address the fact that I have a serious concern about my child or a serious concern about my marriage, or, you know, I'm miserable in my work or something like that. So important to see that here, too, this overfunctioning.

It was essentially using someone else's life and problems to distract you. Hmm. Okay, I'm going to give you a long list of examples of overfunctioning, and I want you to see what you think and we'll discuss at the end of it.

Okay. So here's some examples.

Making sure your partner wakes up and goes to bed at a certain time. Using phrases like no worries in emails to calm other people down. Having goals and aspirations for your partner or child that they don't have for themselves. Finishing people's sentences when they're anxious. Lecturing family members about how to eat healthier. Make better choices that they should date certain people, etc. Giving advice to someone who hasn't asked for any. Always picking the restaurant for your friend group. Lecturing a family member about how to cook dinner when they've volunteered. Reminding people they should hurry up and book travel. That one got me. I was like, oh my gosh. Doing something for your child that they can do so it will create less of a mess.

I mean. Yes. Doing something for someone that they can do because it will take less time. Oh my gosh. Yes. Taking on a task at work because teaching another staff member will be frustrating. Keeping a mental schedule for your partner because they often forget appointments. Being overly accommodating when people need to reschedule meetings – I think a lot of people resonate with that. Not sharing important beliefs to prevent making others anxious. Telling people on the internet what they should think and how they should act. Hopefully, you're not someone who's doing that, but we all know those people exist. Reminding someone to take their medicine.

Telling someone what to order. Researching information for someone who can look it up. Creating a secret alternative plan when you know someone will mess up. When I read that, I'm totally serious. I literally laughed out loud. I was like, oh man, this person knows us. Creating the secret alternative plan. Reminding your spouse or partner to call their family. Taking over a family tradition because you think you can do it better. Giving your adult parent dating advice. Explaining someone else's thinking in a work meeting when they're present. Updating your friends and family about people they could contact themselves. Putting more food on someone's plate when they haven't requested it.

Oh, I know we're often on the receiving end of that. Hiding alcohol or food from someone so they won't overindulge. Taking over for a colleague when they won't do a task the same way you will. Giving someone directions when they are capable of finding their way. Buying someone a self-help book you've recommended. People don't like that too much. Doing something for someone after they've communicated they're capable. Reminding an employee about an upcoming due date they already know about. Talking to a doctor on behalf of someone who is capable of communicating. Making decisions for an adult parent that they can make themselves. Mind reading the wishes of a family member without asking them. Telling a driver when to stop, speed up or turn. Constantly checking in with someone who's agreed to take on a project.

Doing a task for someone when you know the task is going to frustrate them. Leaving instructions for a job that a person could easily figure out themselves. Furiously completing tasks for others when you feel bored, anxious, or distressed. Planning out a day for someone who you know will complain about being bored. Talking a lot to fill in the gaps and awkward pauses in conversations. Hectoring people to follow your previous unsolicited advice. Trying to convince someone that your thinking is right. Automatically paying for something to calm someone down. Taking over a group project that is coming together slowly. Steering your child away from experiences that may result in failure. Worrying about other people's responsibilities. And finally, always volunteering for the most challenging piece of a project.

Now I feel like I can hear you and you're like, look, I mean, come on, some of these things like you have to do, they're not that bad, right? It seems like a lot of them, they're relatively harmless. I think a lot of them are also a bit of a spectrum. Right? A little bit of that is probably fine. A lot of that is probably too much, right? So really what it comes down to is this it's not that we sometimes do these little things, but it's more that when acting these ways becomes the automatic way that we manage our stress, right? We end up preventing others from becoming more capable like we're taking it on.

It's interesting. It's like we want our partners. This is a thing that comes up a lot in coaching. We want our partners to help more, maybe even take on responsibilities entirely on their own. But then we want to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks and they don't forget stuff. So then we overfunction to clean up behind them, instead of letting them make mistakes and learning from them and actually becoming autonomous in their own way. Right? So you might be like, yeah, but I have totally people in my life who love when I do this. This isn't a problem at all. So when you have people in your life who are happy to let you take over so that everyone is calm and things run more smoothly then they are under-functioning, and this doesn't even necessarily mean that that's a bad thing, it's just a thing to notice.

So an example of this might be say that you are really, really good at putting together travel plans, you know, putting together a vacation or a trip or something like that, and you really like it and it's fun for you, and you kind of know what everyone's needs are. And so you're able to choose things that are going to work for everybody. And your partner hates doing that and isn't good at it. You know, when they're in charge, it just never seems to go well. Like, are they under-functioning in that? I mean, we could say yes, maybe, but there's if there's no negative consequence to it, then I don't think it's a problem.

It's not like, okay, you're doing this for everybody all the time to your own detriment, you know, or you're so frustrated because everyone expects it and no one appreciates it. And you know, it's starting to create problems now. It is a problem. But if your partner needed to or wanted to learn how to do better with these things, you could train them, they could learn how to do that, and they could become more optimally functioning in that way. So I think that's a good distinction. Like it's not necessarily so bad. It's just are you overfunctioning in a whole bunch of areas of your life? Slash is the overfunctioning creating a problem for you?

Okay. So when you are overfunctioning in a relationship, just kind of by default the other person is under-functioning. So just kind of take that in. And like I said like really digging into under-functioning I think is outside of the scope of this episode. But you can learn more about that of course, by googling that. Okay. So what's an optimally functioning person like? What are we trying to do? So, you know, the functioning means like making decisions, managing yourself like your time, managing your emotions, your stress, all that stuff, being responsible for the things that you're, you know, taking part in, that you're involved in, that you're able to operate as an autonomous human being.

Okay. That's essentially what the functioning is. So when we're functioning optimally, we've got a good schedule. We're staying on top of things. We're meeting deadlines at work, at home. We're making decisions for ourselves. Even if we want to seek some advice, it's okay, but we're making decisions for ourselves. We're not taking on more than our share of responsibility, and we are successfully fulfilling the roles that we have in our lives. Right? Like parent, partner, you know, employee boss, you know, all those things. Okay? So like an optimally functioning person, think of them as having really just 100% responsibility for their life, okay?

Like they're just like take on that responsibility, understanding that they own that. So that's kind of like the that's where we're trying to get to. But here's what's really, really important. We want to be very clear that we're not getting all or nothing on this. Okay. So an optimally functioning person, it's an ideal, right. If you can achieve it, it's typically not going to be something that you can maintain for an ongoing period of time. This is important, right? We all know that when I read that I was like, yeah, that makes complete sense, where it's like, you know, you have those periods where you're like, I'm winning at life.

Like everything's trucking along. Things are going super great. You know, that's really, really awesome, great, amazing. But then we have to understand that there often are then some inconsistencies, right? Where we end up kind of flipping into overfunctioning or under-functioning in other areas. So for instance, it could be that a lot more work stuff shows up. And so then you are, you know, either overfunctioning maybe at work or maybe optimally functioning at work, but then under -functioning at home or with your own personal goals, maybe under-functioning in your relationships, some things like that. Right. So there can be some of those inconsistencies.

So this is something that we're aiming to try to get to. But we want to be careful about the arrival fallacy. You know like that. Just like I just know like when I get to optimally functioning, like life's gonna be great. Like I don't think that's a useful way of thinking about it. I think what we want to instead do is just try to identify better. Where are we overfunctioning? Where are we under-functioning, and then moving more towards that optimal ideal, taking steps towards that without the explicit intent of reaching it. You know what I mean? So for most of the people, I think, you know, in we're listening to this, you're going to recognize that, right? There's times when you're like doing a little more over here and a little less over here.

And, and it kind of works itself out. And if that's what's happening, amazing. Like, I think you're doing great, but where it really becomes a problem is when you're really drifting into high levels of overfunctioning based on what's happening in life or possibly very high levels of under-functioning or, you know, functioning at a very low level when the fluctuations become more extreme or more consistent is when we want to pay a little more attention. So, you know, everybody just again, just to normalize this, everybody struggles with making everything work, you know, in life. Right. And we need help from people who are in our lives who care about us.

Like a lot of the things I was saying, you might be like, oh my gosh, am I the under-functioning? Or like, it's okay for us to help one another, right? It's just when it's become if it's like, you know, you are helping with someone's calendar when they are capable of handling their own calendar, it's a good idea to ask yourself, why are you doing that? So another thing, if they cannot, if they are not capable of managing their calendar, then yeah, of course, you know, like you get some help, like it's totally fine. Okay. So hopefully that distinction is clear here. So when there are problems is when we are, you know, need our ears to, to perk up.

So when there are larger problems in our lives, in our relationships that are emerging, when the issues that that this results in become more fixed patterns is when we need to spend some more time on this. So then what do you do? How do you interrupt this. And so I think it's a good idea to understand like what is kind of required. Like what do you have to do to interrupt that overfunctioning. And the first thing as always is building awareness. So understanding observing more like watching and noticing. How do you behave, how do you think when you're overfunctioning and then how do others respond to your overfunctioning. Right. You're just watching.

You're not asking yourself to change anything. You're just noticing, you know, when those around you truly don't want or appreciate your help. And that can be a clear sign that you're overfunctioning. Right. So just like opening your eyes up to how is this received? How do I feel when I do this? What are my thoughts about this very important place to start? Okay. And then from there you can start to identify, oh, this is an area where I'm overfunctioning. Then you need to think about like what do you actually want to do that? What do you want to be thinking? How do you want to be feeling and how do you want to act instead? You know, this is that thinking cycle again.

So because we know that we can choose how we think, we can work on that. Like you have current thoughts, if you're overfunctioning in an area, you have current thoughts that create an emotion and then you take action on that. If you want to take different actions, have different results, you need to be thinking and feeling differently, right? So you can spend some time thinking about that, thinking about how you want to think. Right? Another big part of this is being willing to sit with the discomfort of letting other people be responsible for themselves.

When we're really expert over functions, it will be. Very uncomfortable for us. All right, at least some level of uncomfortable for us to just let people fly and see what happens. And so, you know, often we talk about this, it's like, yes, you have control over the way that you think. But also having uncomfortable emotions or negative emotions is a normal part of being a human. And we don't want to tell ourselves that we can just outthink that all the time. So it's like, yes, when we can change our thoughts and that's effective, amazing. And when we are feeling what we're feeling, we need to increase our capacity to be with those feelings and also know how to process them, how to move them through us so that we are hopefully in a position where we're more open to thinking differently.

So once you understand how to sit with that, or you've built up some of those skills of being with that discomfort, you also want to look for opportunities to actually go into this discomfort. Right. Because the most comfortable thing for you, even though it creates problems, is going to be to overfunction. So you have to kind of be like, ooh, okay. This is a place where I would typically go and do it and that would make me feel better, but instead I'm going to not do it. And on purpose, I'm not going to feel as good because of the big picture. It's very similar to overeating.

Like, I can eat this cookie now. It will make me feel good for five minutes, but then it creates problems for me ongoing, right? Long term. Or I can be with the desire to eat a cookie and allow myself to want it and not have it in exchange for the long-term results that I want. See, this parallels totally right there. So you're going to look for those opportunities, and then you're just going to practice and reinforce those new thoughts and actions. And what I would say too is if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm doing this in so many areas of my life, I want to caution you to start trying to make changes and become aware everywhere you can kind of crash and burn. It just becomes too much.

So my suggestion is that you identify a certain area or relationship and just focus on that first because once you start learning how to do it and you are receding into optimal functioning in that area, it will just start to ooze into the other areas as well. It'll become much easier to do that. So another author of an article that I'll link for you wrote about putting this kind of thing into practice, and I think she said on a great day, I can sit on my hands as my daughter makes a mess while eating a peach. So that's on a great day. Or when a group of humans bumbles their way through a task I could do on my own on a good day. So that was a great day.

On a good day, I'm halfway through a sentence when I realize that I'm trying to calm everyone else down instead of myself, but most days, my autopilot thwarts any opportunity for me to be my best self. The most I can do is keep paying attention, remind myself of who I want to be, and try again. And I thought that was just so real. You know, like this whole idea of like being optimally functioning, whatever. It's like, yeah, like we're going to have days where we're like, I'm winning life right now, like amazing. And you're also going to have a lot of days where you're like, wow, just wow.

You know, like, okay, at least I'm aware of what's happening. I'm going to keep working on this, you know, trying again. Okay. So it really can be hard for people who over function to give just 100% and nothing more, like think how often it's like we give 110%, 150%, 200%, like no, just 100%, nothing more. Just what you're responsible for and nothing more. So finally, I want to wrap it up with some questions to ask yourself to. I think these would be great things to journal on, to just kind of contemplate and think to yourself. So number one is when does my sensitivity to others' anxiety make me overly helpful?

You know, I did an episode a while back on sensitivity, and I think a lot of us who are more sensitive like we can really read the room, we can pick up on the fact, like that person is like in a bad way, or is stressed out, really anxious, and we're like, oh, let me make a beeline to that person and just tell them what I'm going to do to make them feel better, you know, like so, so, you know, notice, are you doing that anywhere? When does that happen? Um, number two, how would I like to be less responsible for others and more responsible for myself? And this is such a good question, because in our efforts to be more responsible for others then is reasonable, right? When we're overfunctioning for others, something has to give, and it is quite often the majority of the time it is the care that we need and deserve from ourselves, right? We drop our responsibilities for ourselves so that we can take on others responsibilities.

And the invitation here is to figure out how to be appropriately responsible in interactions with others, and work on optimal functioning and responsibility for ourselves. And then finally, what are upcoming opportunities for me to turn off that autopilot that way that we just are normally functioning without thinking about it and let other people manage themselves? I think a really good thing for you to question for yourself if you have children, particularly if they're not really itty bitty, tiny is to really question your thoughts about what they can do and what they can manage for themselves.

I am going to tell you something that I want to be clear. I am not by any stretch telling you that I haven't figured out or I did it perfectly or anything like that. That's not what I'm saying here. But when my oldest son, who's just graduating from high school in literally a week from tomorrow. When did I start doing this? Well, for sure, when he went to high school. But even like in seventh and eighth grade, I mean, basically sixth grade kind of too. I basically said, look, I believe in you and your ability to keep track of your assignments, keep track of what your responsibilities are, and create systems for yourself so things don't drop, you know, so nothing falls through the cracks.

I know you can do this. And also if you need help, I'm here and in my mind took what I think is a pretty hands-off approach. I think once he got into ninth grade, I always did it on my Google calendar. Everybody has their own color-coded calendar like every one of my family is assigned a color. And then that way when I put like say, if I have to put an appointment on for one of my kids, I put it on on their calendar so it shows up in their color. And then by the color, we know who it's for. And so that's just how I've always run everything. So once he got a little older, I just shared his calendar with him so he knew what I had on the calendar for him. And I was just like, yeah, there's your calendar.

Once we started going back to school with COVID-19, his school actually did a thing where they went every other day in person and on the off days they were virtual. And literally every other day. And I just straight up told him I was like, so here's the deal. If you don't have that on your calendar correctly, I cannot guarantee you that I'm going to be able to get you to school like it's got to be on the calendar and it's got to be on there correctly, and it's your responsibility to do that.

And he did it, you know. Now again, if he couldn't do it I would work on teaching him how to do it. I would really help him to do that. But I kind of looked at it like, I'm going to just believe in him, that he can do it. I'm going to let him know that I believe in him, that he can do it right. I'm offering him thoughts that he can think about himself, that instill confidence in him, help him to think positively about himself. I can do this. And then I just let him try. Now it turns out that really, for the most part, he was able to do it, which was awesome for me.

But I was always, always very willing to get involved if I had to. So he knew I would help. I was there if he needed help, but I was only going to get involved if he needed help. I want to be clear this isn't going to be right for every kid you know. There's kids with learning differences and all kinds of things going on, and this may not be the right thing for every kid. So I just want to be super clear about that. But it's just an example of. Letting him manage himself because he needs to learn this.

You know, I was like no one when I went to college was like looking over my shoulder. Actually, even when I was in high school, no one was looking over my shoulder. I knew what I needed to do, and I just handled it. And so I realized, like, if I do that for him, he will actually not develop that skill and I am not going to be doing that for him later in his life. So he better learn it now when the stakes are lower. Right. So. Did that require me to sit with some discomfort? Yeah. Like sometimes. I mean, I'd go to a parent teacher conference. They're like, well, as I'm sure you've seen, these are his grades. I'm like, no, I never look at anything.

And they were like, some of them teachers were like, oh, some of them are like, God bless you. Literally. One of them said, God bless you. He's been a teacher over 40 years. He was like, oh, that's so good. Keep doing what you're doing. Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there as an example. It does require me to have that discomfort of not knowing for sure that it'll all get done. I don't really know when his tests are. I don't know when papers are due, but he does, and I know that he can handle that. And if he doesn't, there's natural consequences. And. That is generally motivating for a lot of people.

You know what I mean?

So it's just an example, I think, where we can think about that. Like another example I gave, uh, you know, recently when I was talking about delegating things was when I basically let my husband take over swimming for my two kids, my two younger kids, and I know nothing about any of it. And I was willing to let him bump his head. I was willing for the kids to be disappointed because they didn't get signed up for something. To not have to think about it and just to know that it's someone else's responsibility. So those are some examples of where we can move into whatever optimal functioning looks like for us. Right.

But I do just want to say that sometimes I truly think that the best gift you can give somebody that you know you love or care about is truly to take a step back and let them actually function for themselves, like let them learn how to do it. If they don't, if they already know how. Like, right. Just like let them live their lives. If they don't know how yet, like step back and let them learn. It can require some some discomfort. All right. This ended up way longer than I expected. And so maybe this took you a couple a couple car lessons or something to get through. But I thought this was really, really good stuff. Gave me a lot of food for thought, as I hope it will for you as well, and just recognize that a lot of this is very closely tied to overeating and food.

So when you're working on the emotional part of losing weight, keeping it off, creating peace and freedom around food, which I always talk about, this is an important aspect of that. All right, my friend, thank you so much for joining me. Sticking it out to the end. It's good stuff and I'll talk to you next week. Take care.

The post Ep #385: Overfunctioning and How to Stop appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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What could happen if you were willing to try just one more time?

A great man once said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Do you know who it was? You’ll have to tune into this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians to find out. I’m sharing nine inspirational quotes to encourage you to keep going and to try just one more time.

This episode is about perseverance, strength, and determination, but most importantly, it’s about discovering your belief in yourself. I believe in you with my whole heart! Do you?

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Nine inspirational quotes for your weight loss journey * Why I think someone who lived 100 years ago can help you right now * The only way to find out what truly works for you * What happens when you stop living by the rules * One mindset shift that makes weight loss easier * How to set a goal and stick to it * An insider’s trick to finding the solution to your problems

I hope this episode can give you the boost that you need right now. You have the answers inside you, and if you keep going, you will figure out how to reach your goal. I’m here to cheer for you every step of the way.

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #383: How to Stop Speed Eating

Ep #382: Overcoming Weaponized Independence

Ep #381: How to Stop Eating at Night

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Read the Transcript Below:Well, hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm really, really glad that you joined me today. I have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole and I am going to invite you to come with me.

That's what we're doing today. Very excited to share this. So I had originally intended to allow a single quote to inspire this episode. And the topic that we're going to talk about today, and as I did, a little bit more research into it. I realized there are more quotes that I need to add. So this quote is actually by Thomas Edison, good old Thomas Edison. He was obviously super influential in a lot of ways in our lives. I think, you know, like so many people from those good old days or those old days, we kind of look back and go, oh, this person really didn't, you know, do things the way we would now maybe didn't really allow the spotlight to shine on the people who supported him and helped him, and creating all the amazing inventions that were created in his lab and stuff like that.

But regardless, I think there's still a lot we can learn. And he's got really some amazing quotes that are really just a peek into what his mindset was. You know, 100, I guess about, yeah, about a hundred years ago. Because, you know, I'm not going to give you a history lesson on Thomas Edison on this podcast. I think that's outside the scope of what we're doing here. But what he was really known for was just continuing to persevere and keep trying until he figured something out, you know, or him and his team, the support staff to he just didn't take no for an answer. He just didn't give up. And I think that is so important when it comes to losing weight permanently and creating peace and freedom around food. What I hear from so many people is the idea that because it hasn't work before, it's just not going to work in the future. It's just not possible.

There's feeling, um, dejected and just deflated and like, it's never going to happen. Now, I do want to say it's of course normal to have those emotions from time to time. All emotions are normal, completely, completely normal and okay. But when they're the main emotion, when they're the emotion that's essentially driving the boat, now we start to have some problems because those emotions end up holding us back instead of driving us or pushing us forward to create what it is that we really want.

So the initial quote that I came across just kind of like randomly was, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” I've not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. And I think that so many people have this experience. I was recently in conversation with a person who's considering coming into the Weight Loss for Doctor's Only program. And you know, what I commended her on was, you know, she told me all these different things that she had tried that hadn't worked. And I was like, that's so great. You're an action taker. Look at that. Like you're actually doing things to try to solve this problem.

You have learned so much by doing that. That's incredible. Right? That's not a failure. That doesn't mean it's never going to work. It just means all those things, at least standing alone are not the thing. So good to know. Because also, when you haven't tried a lot of things, it can be really overwhelming. How do you even know where to start, right? How do you even know where to start? So that's the first one, because I just thought I was so inspired by that. I was like, that's right, just have to keep on going. You just have to persevere. So then I went to corroborate that this was actually quoted, you know, attributed to Thomas Edison. And I found a whole bunch more.

I actually found eight more quotes. I was like, I can't leave these out. They're so good. And they all kind of move toward the same direction. So I think that they're all helpful here. So the first is, “I've not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Do you have 10,000 ways that won't work? I bet you if you got to work saying, I even want to find 100 ways that don't work, you would find out a lot. You'd probably find the solution. Or maybe you try ten things. I'm going to find ten things that don't work. I'm going to go and try stuff so that I can learn and take what works, and leave the rest and move forward until I create the solution.

For me, I think where a lot of people get stuck is in thinking that there is some sort of like secret out there that like someone has it that like, this is the thing that works for everybody and that just is not the case. What you are invited to do is to figure out the thing that works for you, like how does it work for you? And maybe it's not just one thing, it's probably a little bit of a bunch of different things that come together to create a bespoke solution for you as an individual, and that's why it's an actual, sustainable, long term, maintainable solution, because it is actually created specifically for you and all the ways that you struggle and all the ways that you need things modified.

It just works perfectly for you. But that doesn't exist outside of you that is created by you. Of course you can get assistance and guidance. That's what we do in Weight Loss for Doctors Only and the coaching program. But you create that personalized program for yourself. That's why it works. That's why it's maintainable. Okay. Are you ready? The next one. “There are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something.” That's so good. “There are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something.”

Think about that, right? Usually we think we need to know what the rules are so we can go and accomplish something. What he's saying here is rules are not welcome, because the rules limit our ability to think and innovate and come up with new solutions so that we can accomplish something. So when we come to weight loss with all these rules, all these ideas of ways, it has to be, I've learned the longer I do this, the more I realize there are really no rules. Like, you really, really, really get to make it work for you however you want to do it. You know, there are some guidelines that kind of might be advisable for good number of people, but really there's no hard and fast. This is the way it has to be done.

And I think that the invitation with this quote, “There are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something,” is if you want to accomplish this, if you want to lose weight, keep it off, have the experience around food and body and weight that you want to have. You have to throw those rules out and you have to build from scratch what's going to individually work for you. I think a great way to do this is just to question everything that you think is scripture like this is the way it is. Everybody agrees to lose weight, xyz thing has to be done.

No, it does not. Like, why do we think it has to be that way? What if that just wasn't even true, particularly for rules that you don't want to follow? If there are rules you don't want to follow, guess what? We're throwing those right out. Because any time we have that idea that we have to do things that we don't want to do, we will not do it long term. We have to figure out a way to come up with something that works for us, that we do want to do. Maybe that's the secret. I said there's no secret. Maybe that's the secret. All right. You have to figure out a way to make it really work for you. Okay, the next one, “There's a better way to do it. Find it.”

Isn't it so good? “There's a better way to do it. Find it.” I love that. What that is is an expression of the belief that there is always a solution out there, and all you have to do is go find it. I've told my clients this so many times they're like, yep, yep, yep. We know we hear it all the time. I believe that there's an infinite number of solutions out there, and all we have to do is find one. There are so many solutions. There's so many ways to do it, and all we have to do is find one. That's it. Right? It's a complete mindset shift that opens up so much possibility, opens your brain up to problem solving, to brainstorming, to innovation, coming up with something new, something you've maybe never even thought of to try.

This is what is so incredible when we realize, hey, you know what? I have to figure this out in a way that works for me. Rather than going, who's the person out there who has the answer for me? Right, instead going, hey, you know what? There's no answer outside of me. I can accept help and guidance and direction, but ultimately I have to try stuff so I can figure out that better way so I can find it. Love it. Okay, “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

I see this a lot. I don't personally love referring to people as failures anyway, some people being right on the cusp of really having a breakthrough and being like, you know what, I don't know, I think I'm just too busy. You know, it's like, who isn't too busy? Everybody is busy. We still just have to figure it out, right? I wouldn't really personally use this language to call people, you know, who gave up a failure. But I do think that it's an important thing for us to recognize, right? When we're just like, I can't, I'm a failure of this. I can't figure it out.

You know, it could be that you just have no idea how close you are because you cannot see. It could be that there's like a thick fog that has rolled in and you just can't see it. But if you just keep taking that next step that you can see, it leads you where it is you're trying to get to, and you just keep going. And I will say, this can be hard, right? When you have setback after setback after setback, mistake after mistake after mistake, failure after failure after failure. Right? It can start to get a little weary. You know, we can start going, okay, I don't even know what am I even doing here.

But I just think that giving up on yourself. I don't know how it often ends up creating a good result for us. It's something that we end up, you know, like sticks with us, especially those of us who are doctors, right? We like to accomplish things. We like to be successful. That's just facts. So let's just go out there and be successful. If you've had a big trip up that can look like, you know, totally veering off into left field, you know, eating all the things, maybe you had really slowed down your drinking. Now you're drinking more again, like, whatever it is, it doesn't mean that you failed and you just it's over and you can't do it.

You could be so close to figuring it out. You just have to keep going. Which leads us into the next one, “We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.” I just think I read that and I was like, oh my gosh, that is my coaching program. Sometimes people are just like, oh, I don't know. I bet that does work for people, but I don't know if I want to actually get in there and do it. And here's the thing. There is some work involved, like you do have to put some effort in.

I always say, like me, my team, we are here. We are like showing up for you. We are ready to go. We are prepared, but we cannot do it for you. So you gotta meet us halfway. And that does look like some perseverance, some work, some effort. It does look like that. And the rewards being offered for that investment of work are lifetime incredible, right? We often miss opportunity. This is the opportunity. It just is not, you know, the easy button. And can that be okay.

We just have to like actually buckle down. The thing is, this was what I've always said about the people that I work with, which is women physicians, is like, you cannot tell me that you cannot do hard things. You cannot tell me that you cannot persevere. I mean, like, that's just no, like I don't believe you because look what you've accomplished in your life. So if you can do that, you can absolutely do this. If you can work that hard, you can absolutely do this. I think part of it is that sometimes we have it in our heads that this shouldn't be so hard. We shouldn't have to work so hard to solve this food and weight issue. And to that I go like, who says literally says who? Right?

I mean, I guess all the get thin quick schemes, that's what they say. But we know those don't work.

So you know – overalls are cute. You know how to work. We can do this. Don't miss this opportunity. Okay. The next one. “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are first hard work. Second, sticktoitiveness. Third, common sense.” I wonder if he coined that word sticktoitiveness, because that's like a long time ago that he was saying that word. All right. It just boils down to everything.

Hard work. You know how to do that. You know how to dedicate yourself to something and solve problems. You can do that. Second, sticktoitiveness. That's perseverance, right? Keep on going. You keep tripping and stumbling and falling and scraping your knees. It's okay. Pick yourself back up. Dust yourself off. Let's keep going. You can do it. I see it all the time in my program members who've, you know, worked with us for a while, like the incredible results that they just continue to keep making because they keep sticking to it. They have a vision for what they want for themselves in their lives, and then they just go to work and create it, and we're just there helping them along the way. It's incredible. And third is common sense.

I think common sense is so important because we can get so tied up in all kinds of, you know, things that just don't even, you know, they just don't make sense, like different ideas. And you have to do this thing.

I'll tell you, one of the things that was like a common sense thing for me is like, you know, so you're telling me that I have to eat every couple of hours as a grown woman? Or I'm going to struggle with my weight. This is what a nutritionist told me back in the day. Like that literally doesn't make any sense. Like our bodies were literally designed and have evolved to be able to go many hours without eating. Like, it's just it doesn't make sense. It's just not common sense. So when we hear stuff like that, like you have to eat every two hours, every three hours, like you are not an infant. I mean, unless you have something specific going on that's, you know, okay. Right?

I'm not giving you medical advice here, but for the majority of us, it just doesn't make sense. Right? Common sense would say that we should be able to get the results that we want and still be able to make one meal for our whole family, you know, maybe with a few modifications. Right? That's common sense. Okay. Let's just go and figure that out. Instead of going, well, I have to make different things for the kids and then something else for my partner. And then I get to work making something for me. What? How are you going to do that? Long term doesn't make sense. Okay. Next one. Three more to go. “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

I love that he is using the actual literally meaning literally, not figuratively. If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. So what I hear so often is a lack of confidence, a lack of belief in our own capabilities. I don't know if I can do it. I'm not sure I can really accomplish something like that. From the outside. I'm like, are you literally saying that to me? Look at what you've accomplished in your life. Look what you've so far been capable of doing. Look at the capabilities you've been able to develop for yourself. I mean, you're a doctor for the love. Like, can you learn how to do this, too?

Absolutely. There's so much that you are capable of doing or that you can become capable of doing. If you did all those things, you would literally astound yourself. You really would. You would look around and be like, what is this life I'm living? This is incredible. Really, truly. It's a good little wake up call. There's so much more that you can be doing, and not because you're not doing enough, but because you are an incredibly capable human being. So good. Okay. When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this you haven't.

They're so good when you have exhausted all possibilities. Remember this you haven't. So if you think you've tried everything, guess what? You haven't. That's good news, right? So good. If there is something that you want, you can just keep going until you create the solution, right? You create new possibilities. You find new and different things. You invent something new that does work. Right. That is how you find the solution. So when you start telling yourself, I've exhausted all possibilities, remember this.

You haven't. I hear so often. I've tried everything. Okay. Have you tried life coaching? Have you tried working on your brain? No. Okay, well, I guess not all the possibilities then. Not everything then. Okay. Finally, these all go together, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.“ Okay, that's what my message for you. Try just one more time. I'll say it again. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

So I want to invite you to try just one more time. You really can do this. Let's do it one more time. We can do it. You can do it. All right. You can create permanent weight loss and peace and freedom around food. Doesn't matter what you're bringing from your past.

We can move forward, we can find that solution.

All right, well, if you're interested in finding out more about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, which I think you should be, if you've listen to this podcast, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info.

You can tell you everything about what we have going on, what's coming up next, and more about what we're offering in the program. Because you really can do this. It's time to try just one more time.

All right, friend, thank you so much for joining me. Have a great rest of your week. Take care. Bye bye.

The post Ep #384: Try Just One More Time appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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I am a recovered speed eater… and you can be too!

Do you eat most of your meals as quickly as possible in between seeing patients, rushing around after your kids, and trying to get everything done? Do you eat so fast that you often end up uncomfortably full a few minutes after you finish eating? If that sounds like you, listen up.

In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, I’m revealing the hidden causes behind your speed eating and how it could be harming your health. I’m sharing things like how to know if you’re a speed eater, how long it should take you to eat a meal, and tips to slow down your eating so you can improve your relationship with food.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How you could be self-sabotaging without realizing it * The unexpected benefits of eating slowly * Why it’s important to get pleasure out of your food * The surprising truth about multitasking * How to make more time for your meals so you don’t have to rush them * What happens when you try to numb your feelings with food * The hidden damage that dieting may have caused you and how to fix it * Alarming medical issues associated with speed eating * Tips for slower eating habits

To be clear, I am absolutely not here to punish you for speed eating. We’ve all done it! There’s no shame in it, and it might not even be something you want or need to change about yourself, but if it is, this episode can help. I want you to enjoy your food, feel more satisfied by food, and get the absolute most out of your meals so that you don’t feel the need to overeat. If you want that too, tune in.

To learn more about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program and how it can help you lose weight permanently while also experiencing peace and freedom around food, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #382: Overcoming Weaponized Independence

Ep #381: How to Stop Eating at Night

Ep #380: Update: Weight Loss Medications and Coaching

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there, my friend. How are you today? Welcome to today's episode. I'm so glad you're here with me today. I can't believe it. 383 episodes. And this is a topic I have not discussed on here before. I was kind of like, oh my gosh, I don't think I've ever talked about this.

This is a subject that came up recently on one of our coaching calls in the weight loss for doctors only coaching group. One of my very lovely members brought this topic to coaching, and we talked about it, and I have been thinking about it ever since. So thank you for the inspiration. This person knows who she is and I thought, you know what, I think this is something that would be good to bring to the podcast because I think everybody could benefit from this. And so what I want to talk about is eating more slowly, like how to stop speed eating. It's an issue that a lot of people struggle with, for sure, and it's one of those things.

[00:01:33] I actually talked about this pretty recently on one of my weekly emails. If you're not on my email list, you want to make sure you get on there soon. But also in one of the episodes, just talking about these rules, these kind of like fake rules around losing weight, keeping it off, you know, what you have to be doing. I think one of the things I brought up earlier was that you should sit down when you're eating, that you shouldn't eat when you stand. And I think all these rules come from a place of good heartedness, you know, good intentions. But ultimately it's like. You know, I eat standing up and it's fine. Like not every meal by any stretch.

But often I am eating my breakfast while I'm standing up. That's just how I do it, you know? And it's fine. It's not a problem for me. But, you know, the point is well taken. Yeah. If you're standing up and eating all the time, do you feel like you actually had the actual meal where you focused on the food? So you know what I'm saying? It's like we can take things too far, the pendulum can swing too far, and we want to be careful about that. I want to say the same goes for speed dating. You know, we're like, oh, the reason I just can't lose weight is because I just eat too fast.

[00:02:49] And if I could just figure out how to eat slower then it, you know, I'd be able to get, you know, the results I want. I disagree with that, I really do. I think that if you eat really fast then yeah, it's something that you have to take into consideration. When I talk about the hunger scale and stopping eating when you're at a plus four on that scale, if you eat really fast, if your food is down the hatch within 3 to 5 minutes, no plus four, you cannot be a plus four when you stop eating, it's going to be way too much, so you have to experiment with that. Maybe a plus two is right for you because 30 minutes later, an hour later, you actually are at a plus four.

You know, maybe it's even a plus one. Maybe you have to actually stop eating when you still feel hungry because you know it's going to take time for your stomach and your brain to catch up. These are things that you can figure out for yourself, and they become like little tools, little skills that you can leverage. Because guess what? Especially when you're a doctor, sometimes you have to eat a meal fast. It's just like how it is. This comes down to like one of the main reasons why I decided to leave medicine and actually do this work, and particularly serve doctors, because so much of that conventional wisdom and what people talk about and the people who are helping others to lose weight, they give you these rules.

[00:04:04] And I was just sitting there going, yeah, but like sometimes when you're a doctor, you can't do that. So then what was so frustrating to me and so I still maintain do not use those rules against yourself. If you are a fast eater, don't make that mean anything more than it means, which is that you eat food pretty quickly. Now, is it something that you can work on? Is it something that you can adjust? Absolutely. If you want to, if it serves you, if it works with your lifestyle.

And I want to say that I know that for sure, because I am a recovered speed eater, I really, really, truly can say that for many, many, many years I have eaten, you know, at a reasonable speed. I will say I'm not a slow eater, but I definitely don't tear through food the way I did for the majority of many decades of my life. So I know that you can change this. I know the benefits that come from when you change it, but I also want to just start off by saying, you know what, there are times where you just need to check the box, get the food down and move on, and that's okay too. You can still totally have success, still get the results you want when that is the case.

[00:05:19] Okay, but what we could maybe work on is maybe not having that always be the case, or most of the time being the case, right? So I wanted to tell you that one of the biggest reasons to slow down in your eating is because when you eat fast, it actually massively reduces your enjoyment of the food, which is really interesting for people who tell themselves they really love food. Like if we like food so much, why are we wolfing it down? Like someone's about to take it away from us, right? Like you actually cannot register the sensations that make eating enjoyable.

Like you're not really tasting it. You're not really getting like the textures, it's not registering with you. And so you have less enjoyment of the food. This often then ends up leading to overeating, because we didn't get the enjoyment out of the food that we wanted to. So then we go and we eat more. I remember so many times I would be, you know, trying to eat my food fast at dinner, helping my kids with different things, and then I'm making lunch and eating practically another, like half meal in lunch bits, like, you know, a few things for them, a few things for me. And then I'd sit down and totally eat more snacks and sweets and whatever. You know, it's way too much food for me.

[00:06:38] But I was still just looking for that pleasure, so it makes sense. We want to get pleasure out of our food. It is a normal way that humans get natural pleasure, and so it can really benefit us to allow ourselves to experience that pleasure. But so I want to dial back and go back to the program member that I was working with who brought this to a coaching call. And what she was saying was that she really had gotten to the point where she felt like she was being super inefficient and wasting time if she wasn't eating quickly, and if she also was not doing something else at the same time, like charting or feeding her baby or, you know, any of the other things, like, I mean, and I get this.

There are times where I'm literally like taking a bite of my breakfast and like, getting undressed to get in the shower, you know, like kind of doing things at the same time. This is why I'm saying sometimes we have to do that. That's just how that goes. But when it's something that you're often doing and then you're noticing that you're overeating because of it, then it's of course, something that we maybe want to address and spend a little bit more time on. So for anybody who really resonates with what she had said, which is, you know, if I'm eating, it's a waste of time if I'm not also charting or, you know, going through the mail or whatever it may be, doing something else.

[00:07:57] I want to just remind you. And if I probably I think most people know this, but if you don't just let you know that there is a ton of research in the psychological literature that shows that multitasking is really just not a thing. So when we tell ourselves, like, well, I'm eating and I'm getting this done, I'm getting it all done and it's going faster. Generally, that's not actually true because we're going from one task to the next task and back and forth, and that actually ends up slowing us down. Now you might say, well, but no, like I took that time and I got, you know, 3 or 4 charts done while I was eating, but it probably still took way longer.

There's more chances for mistakes, for overlooking things. The quality of your work tends to go down if you're also trying to do other things at the same time. So we have to be careful about the stories we tell ourselves like that essentially bolster the thing that we don't want to be doing that, you know, it's like our argument for the thing that we actually want to stop doing. It's really unlikely that it's true that you're so much more efficient by doing that. And I think by being open to shifting that belief and changing the way you think about it, you can find other ways where you can be more efficient, where you really are actually just focusing on getting the charts done, and you get them done so much more quickly because all of your attention is there and you know, your accuracy goes up, your chances of, you know, having it done in a way that is an appropriate level of quality definitely is better.

[00:09:28] Okay. So that is definitely one reason that we overeat or and why we eat fast. Not really overeating, but eating fast. Eating fast often leads to overeating, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we're overeating. So I wanted to touch on several other reasons why we eat fast. And I think it's important that we understand this because some of these things may resonate with you and some of them may not.

And when you understand some of the reasons behind why you eat quickly, you can work to address those things. Rather than just telling yourself you need to slow down, you know, whatever it's like, right? If that was so simple, we would just do that. But often it requires more than that. So for a lot of people, eating quickly is habit because of many, many years of doing it. It's just like how we eat now. It's not something that we are making ourselves do, it's just when we eat.

[00:10:21] This is how we eat. So why that is can be multifactorial. Some of the reasons why can be just family culture. This was the reason for me. I mean, my parents have often talked about how they just eat so quickly, which actually might even stem from the next thing that I'm going to bring up. But, you know, it's just like when everybody in your family eats quickly, then it's just becomes normal to eat at that pace, to keep up with everyone else. And if that's just what your family of origin was like, then that's just how you eat.

You may not even remember any time of eating more slowly, or it could be that you ate more slowly, and then you were constantly prodded to eat faster. It was taking too long. You were the last one at the table, and it's like you got to eat faster. You got to eat faster. Another reason is if you experience some food scarcity as a child, and this can come from truly there was not food there at times, like you had to miss meals because no food was available. Or sometimes it can be, you know, if there's a limited amount of food that's available and everyone's sharing it, then you better eat fast, or everyone else is going to eat all the food and you won't get enough. That definitely has been something for people for a long, long time.

[00:11:35] So then you learn to eat faster so that you can make sure that you get your needs met. So it's important to look at things like this with some compassion and some empathy for yourself, right? Like the reason you do anything, like you have good reasons for doing it, you know, and if you had some food scarcity or you went without meals. When you were younger, you know, you experienced childhood hunger, childhood poverty that resulted in hunger. It would make sense that you have a strong desire to make sure you get your needs met. And when food is available, you want to get it down the hatch quickly before something happens.

And maybe it's taken away. Of course, logically, you would understand that that's not going to happen, but inside you, that more primitive part of your brain doesn't really know that it hasn't really gotten the message. And that could be something to work on, right? To help that part of your brain understand? Actually. We're good. I've got us. I will take care of me. I will always make sure that I'm properly nourished. Okay, so that's something to really work on. Not get mad at yourself about or get frustrated about. Okay? Another reason why we eat fast is we're busy. I mean, we just straight up are right. We got a lot to do and we're going from here to there. I mean, often I'm just gonna totally admit it.

[00:12:53] When I'm eating breakfast and I'm walking around and I'm standing and I'm eating whatever, I'm like, putting away the clean dishes from last night. I'm emptying the dishwasher. I'm putting the breakfast dishes in, you know, like doing this, doing that. Sometimes that's just what we've got. I got a certain amount of time to get it done and off I go. I'm doing it. So sometimes we're just busy. I think that we have to be careful about telling ourselves, well, I just live such a busy life, like I have to eat fast.

But just recognizing that we have a lot of things, we're trying to get them all done in a certain amount of time. And also if I decided, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. Eating while I'm standing and emptying the dishwasher isn't good for me. Then I can empty the dishwasher another time, or I can get up a little earlier and I can do it like it's not that big of a deal if it's creating a problem. I don't believe for me that that is creating a problem, which is why I just don't think it's a big deal. Okay, the next reason we eat fast is emotions, right? We feel stress. We are feeling anxiety. We're feeling pressure. You know, all the reasons, all those emotional reasons that we eat. We're like trying to change our emotional state.

[00:13:55] We've got some sort of emotion we don't like feeling, and we're trying to numb it out. We're trying to distract ourselves from it. We're trying to feel differently. And food can help with that, right? So it changes what we feel like inside. And so if we get it down faster, then maybe we can change that emotional state faster. So just mentioning that right emotional stuff, another reason why it's so important to learn how to process your emotions, how to support yourself emotionally so you can truly separate your emotions and caring for them from eating, nourishing your body and occasional pleasure like extra pleasure. Right?

You should get pleasure out of your food because your food should taste good. Okay, another reason why we eat fast. Many of us who have been on restrictive eating plans in the past. I mean, I know I have been on many in my life, right? When you've dieted a lot. It's very common that when it comes time to eating like you've been extremely hungry, you've felt deprived, you felt like you aren't getting your needs met. So you need to just get that food down fast. This also happens if you do too much fasting. Sometimes you know people are hanging on through their fasting window and then when it becomes the eating window, then it's just like, oh my gosh, get the food in as fast as possible because suddenly, you know, you're permitted to eat.

[00:15:14] These are problems that can come from that diet mentality, from too much fasting. I've talked about that in the past on this podcast. Won't belabor it here. But you know, we can understand that if we've gone on restrictive diets in the past that may have really contributed to why we eat quickly. And then finally just being aware of your body's signals, what I call the hunger scale, or really just understanding your hunger and satiety cues. Your body comes preprogramed with that information to let you know when you need food and when you've had enough. And you know, if we just are unaware of that, completely disconnected from it.

We don't know if we're hungry or we're just eating mindlessly. It's just like putting it in our bodies, you know, we can end up eating really quickly because of that as well. So I wanted to just talk very briefly about some medical issues that can be associated with fast eating. I thought this was actually pretty interesting. This is all per the Cleveland Clinic. You know, a lot of it makes sense, but some of it was kind of interesting. So poor digestion, just like not chewing enough, you know, you can get poor nutrient absorption. You really just are kind of like gobbling it down. It's not really great for our bodies. So that can lead to indigestion and heartburn leading to gas, bloating, abdominal pain, things like that.

[00:16:28] I'm kind of like IBS type symptoms. Interestingly, some studies have shown that eating quickly can be associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome. Very, very interesting. And then I think this is not totally surprising, but there are studies that show that fast eating is related with unwanted weight gain. And, you know, there's just several different ones and, you know, talking to different people that show that. So it's kind of not surprising, right? When you eat really fast, you can end up eating too much. That would result when it's, you know, more food than your body needs, than your body will save it in the form of fat.

For, you know, another day. And that's how that weight gain happens. But, um, the interesting to just see like actual data showing like, oh yeah, it is actually associated with that. So when we are thinking about how we end up, sometimes some of us have like that weight creep that just sort of creeps on, you know, a few pounds here, a few pounds there. And like every year we're a little bit heavier. Definitely. This can be something that's associated with that. So then what are you supposed to do? Because a lot of people do ask me, like, how long should a meal take? And I think that's that's kind of a tricky question in this, because like I said, it's like I don't want it to be like, oh, but if I didn't take that long, then I'm doing it wrong and I can't have the results that I want because that's just not true.

[00:17:42] But I do think that it can be helpful to know, like, what am I kind of aiming for? So, you know, I mean, what I found from a lot of different experts online is people are saying aiming for about 20 to 30 minutes for a meal. I personally think that that's like a pretty slowly paced meal, I think. I think it's a great goal. I think for some people it's going to be easier to accomplish than others. I'm just even thinking about like the end of the day meal, the more dinner type meal. I mean, just looking at my own personal situation with a lot going on with different kids and different activities, you know, we don't always very often have that much time.

But, you know, we can aim for it and we can just slow down and, you know, maybe we can get it into ten minutes or 15, which is definitely better than 3 to 5. So but just giving you that idea, like having it take a little bit longer, you want to chew more thoroughly. You know, you really shouldn't have like big chunks of food going down your throat. If you've been eating quickly for a long time, then you might really be just super used to that and feel like it's just really common.

[00:18:50] I think where this really can come into play is during our medical training where, you know, we're just like, there's an emergency and this going on and that going on, okay, I have to eat something like, let me just get it down as fast as I can or like, it's almost like we're in like a speed eating competition or something like, let me just get it down like in two bites or something, and it's just way too much. So so that's something that we have to build awareness around. And that's really ultimately what it comes down to.

For all of this, with slowing down or eating is having to build awareness around eating, meaning you have to consciously pay attention when you're eating so that you are doing less of the behaviors and activities that you don't want to be doing and practicing doing the things you do want to be doing. Okay, I could see from a time standpoint, you might want to set like a little bit of a timer, just like practice. Like, what would it be like to eat a meal that slowly, like just to get a sense of it, you know, just experimenting with it and seeing like, okay, what is this actually like? You might be like, oh my gosh, 20 minutes was amazing. I actually loved that.

[00:19:51] And that wasn't really that difficult. You know, if you're eating a meal with someone else, it's a really nice opportunity to connect with other people, have some conversations, take a break from the eating to talk and share and things like that. Okay? The next thing is drink some water while eating. You know, I'm a big water drinker, just in general. I always have been my whole entire life. So of course I'm like, right, doesn't everyone do that? But no, in fact they don't. And so if you're someone who doesn't drink a lot while eating, you definitely would want to work on getting some of that water in.

That also slows you down and also helps to just kind of hydrate your food and, and fill your belly up a little bit more and then practicing what people call mindful eating. I'll tell you, I don't love that term mindful eating. Like I hear that and it sounds like really not very fun to me. And I've always felt that way. I'm not sure what my problem is with that term. If you love it, amazing. Go. You like, keep at it. But if you're like me and you're like, oh, mindful eating, oh my gosh, what's that? All it really means is just like, pay attention to what you're actually doing. Like be here now. Be present with what you're doing. Think about it. Like if you're doing a procedure, are you also like thinking about 25 different other things in your mind, like hopefully not.

[00:21:05] Hopefully you're focused on, you know, the case that you're doing or the procedure that you're doing so that you are actually doing it correctly. Kind of similar idea here. Okay. So you're not like also watching like TikTok videos while you're operating. Hopefully not. Right. You know, so like let's put the phone away, turn the TV off. Let's not have screens. I think having a little music in the background is totally fine if you don't want to sit in silence, but sometimes it can actually be helpful for some people to just that is your moment of like quiet and stillness. And you could just be there with the food and yourself and enjoy it.

And I've talked again, I have so many times about like, you really need to eat food that tastes good to you, so if it tastes good to you, it should be an enjoyable experience, right? You want to engage with the food. That means taste it. Notice what it feels like in your mouth. What are the textures? Is it crunchy? Is it creamy like? Is it smooth? Is it rough like what are you actually tasting? And allow those sensations to be registered by your brain? Okay, that's really what it means. And then like I said, having a conversation I think is really helpful too, because if we're going to multitask anything, I think our brains really are actually wired to eat in community or with other people.

[00:22:24] And of course, it's, you know, if you do. Have other people that you live with. It's a great way to connect with them, you know, especially when people have busy lives and are coming and going and stuff. It's a great a great family tradition. There's I mean, pediatrician me is of course, going to tell you that there's lots of research on how family meal is actually a really, really positive thing for children. So I know it's challenging to do that at times, but it's still something good to think about.

Okay, now I'm going to do the part that you're not going to find in other places, which is so what are you going to do when you actually have to eat fast? Right. Everyone's like, just don't do it. And I'm like, yeah, but sometimes you actually have to. So the first thing though is you have to question this idea that you do have to eat fast, right? So when you're like, okay, I got I got to get something down really quick. I want you to question, do I really have to eat fast? Do I though do I really have to eat fast? Or is this just a story I'm telling myself? Is this just a habit that I tell myself like, oh, I need a hurry and I need to get that done? Like, can whoever's waiting on you not wait, just like even a couple more minutes so that you can chew your food? I think they probably can.

[00:23:35] It's kind of like telling yourself, like, well, I don't have time to take a bathroom break during the day. I mean, really though, really though, like, I get it. I totally get it. There are times you're like, I don't want to keep people waiting any longer than they have to, but to meet your own physical needs, you do have time for that. People can wait for that, for you to take care of your body so that you're feeling well and, you know, have proper digestion and you're feeling good in your body and you're eating the right amount of food, like, yeah, you probably do have time.

Okay. So that's the first thing. So maybe, you know, maybe a good chunk less of the times when you think you need to eat fast. Do you actually need to eat fast. So that's good right? Like paring it down even more. But then there are times, right? There's just times. And that's how it is. So here are my suggestions if you can plan for it. You know when you can like do so. Meaning if you can look ahead, you know it's going to be this way or you know, it's not uncommon for you to have a day where it just ends up being like, you just have a couple minutes, just plan for it.

[00:24:42] What I mean by that is don't bring a salad. That's going to take you 20 minutes to chew up for your meal. And also like, even if you're like gobbling down nuts or something, like huge chunks of nuts are not going to really get broken down very well in your stomach. So you might want to think about like, what are some foods that still help me to accomplish my goals? But. Are easier and faster to eat. One thing can be yogurt pretty fast, like you can eat a banana faster than you can eat an orange that you need to peel and the whole thing. Or like a big crunchy apple or something like that.

Maybe, you know, you can bring foods that are like a little bit smoother or more pureed, like like a pureed soup or something. It's still like it should hopefully taste good to you. It has nutrients in it, but you can basically get it down pretty fast, especially if you don't heat it up overly hot. You know, sometimes there's things like that where we can just be like, okay, like that was my meal. Like I got it down, I got something in me, I got it in pretty fast. It's still on plan, right? Because the problem is that a lot of processed food is easy and fast to eat, like a piece of banana bread or pumpkin bread or like something like that, like is pretty fast to get down.

[00:26:01] A lot of those things that are more processed, you can eat them quickly. So we want to make sure that we have things that are a better choice for us available on hand, and they are quick to eat as well. That's you know, I think the main thing, the other thing is when you are like, this is something that I talk about with with the members of my Weight Loss for doctors only program. We really work on whether being able to intermittently fast from time to time is something that can be very helpful.

It definitely can be something that can be really great for doctors who have certain types of, you know, schedules or days like it can be just really nice if you can fast, like through lunch, no problem. Like maybe you ate, you know, breakfast and then you're just like, okay, I'm going to intentionally probably just not eat lunch because I know I'm going to be too busy. And then you plan for a dinner that is a bit more satisfying, you know, nutrient dense and maybe more food than you typically eat. I think in some cases it can be better to eat to a little bit slower meals than three, where you're just like trying to stuff that food down you as fast as you can and then you end up like overeating or whatever it is.

[00:27:16] So intermittent fasting is not for everybody, but it definitely can be nice for doctors if you know something that they're interested in. So that's something that you can learn more about as well. Or in our program. I talk a lot about that. Well, I don't talk a lot about it, but I can help you to do it. I used to talk more about it, but I've really found that for a lot of people who struggle with emotional eating, too much, fasting can really turn into more dietary types of stuff. And it really tends to, for a lot of people, not really end up being something that's sustainable. And there's just other ways that you can accomplish your goals, you know?

And then when you do have time, more time to eat, take it. You know, like I said, eating good food is a huge natural pleasure. Like, let yourself enjoy it. Let your mind rest on it. Let yourself be there with what's happening in your mouth. So sometimes we end up eating quickly because, you know, we kind of want to rush through the diet food that doesn't taste that good or like the quote unquote healthy things that we never really like that much anyway, so we can rush through and then get to dessert. I know I did that for a long time, and that even touches on something else that I work with all my clients on, which is reducing over desire.

[00:28:25] Right? If you don't even really want the main food, but then you're like making yourself eat it so that you can, quote unquote, deserve to eat dessert, you know, or you're allowed to eat it or whatever, but then you're still overeating that it's too much food. You're wanting that food more than is appropriate, and it just ends up creating problems with overeating, eating fast and things like that. I will tell you what I think was something that was very helpful for me, which of course not everybody has control over. But that was something.

I mean, for years and years I worked on this because I think I just kind of didn't fully understand how much it would help me to eat slower. But I married a person who's a slower eater, and then my first child was an incredibly slow eater. Like very, very, very, very, very slow. And so what I found was it wasn't very fun for me to gobble my food up and then sit there and wait for them forever. You know, I'd get up, I'd start cleaning up like they're still eating, you know? So so that kind of forced me to really think about, like, do I want to try to slow down? But I'll tell you too, that I definitely had I had some other digestion issues for many years, like decades.

[00:29:38] I've talked about that previously on this podcast as well, that eating, uh, the right amount of food and not overeating and not eating so fast, I mean, off medication, really, for the vast majority of the time, problem solved. Like almost never, ever have problems with what I was dealing with. And it really, I wish I had known how much my habits were contributing to the GI distress that I experienced on a really relatively common basis.

So just pointing that out there, if that's something that you want to work on yourself as well. All right. Can you stop speed eating? You can. But listen only if you want to. For real, I mean it, you don't have to do anything. You can still eat fast. It just probably won't be as pleasant of an experience. And that's okay. But if you want a more pleasant experience of eating, you really want to enjoy that food. You want it to feel easier to not overeat, then slowing down is very helpful and this can help. All right, my friend. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you next time.

Thanks for joining me. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #383: How to Stop Speed Eating appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you weaponizing your independence?

In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, we’re exploring what weaponized independence is, how it prevents you from getting the help you need, and how to break the cycle that it traps you in.

If you have a hard time asking for help when you need it, there’s a good chance that you do in fact weaponize your independence. This episode will help you shift the way you think about getting help so that you can be open to receiving the help you need from people who are willing to give it to you.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* What help resistance is * When independence hurts you * How to overcome weaponized independence * Why it’s not sustainable to exist without help * Things you might tell yourself about why you don’t deserve help * How accepting help will improve your life

After listening to this episode, think about where in your life you accept help, where you’re resistant to help, and where you’re weaponizing your independence. I hope this exercise will encourage you to change the way you think about accepting help so that you can get the help you deserve.

To learn more about getting help in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info now!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #381: How to Stop Eating at Night

Ep #380: Update: Weight Loss Medications and Coaching

Ep #379: Creating a Smoother Re-Entry After Vacation

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

As we get going, did you listen to the episode that I published a few weeks ago about litigation with Doctor Gita Pensa? If you have not, I want to just really recommend that you listen to it. I have gotten some feedback from some people that they're like, oh yeah, I didn't listen to that one because I'm not actually being sued right now. And so I don't really need it. Or the kind of magical thinking like, oh, I don't want to listen to it because I don't want to tempt fate. I don't want to bring on some lawsuit. I don't want something bad to happen. Of course, we know that's not actually how that works, but our brains like to think that it is. And what I want to make sure that you understand is that episode is, of course, for people who are working through litigation right now, but it's even more so for people who aren't.

[00:01:30] So please, please, please, please, if you are a physician, please listen to that episode. It's really, really important that you do, even when you're not actively undergoing the litigation process. You'll see why when you listen to it. And I promise you, that's not a thing, that you listen to a podcast about being sued, and then all of a sudden you're going to be sued. Okay. If that were to happen, it was already in the works way before you ever heard of this podcast episode. Okay, that's not really how that works, but I really wanted to bring it to your attention because it is something that is so important.

I was very excited to have Doctor Pensa on as a guest, and also because this episode was inspired by something she said in that episode. So she mentioned when she was talking about her experience of going through the litigation process, that for a long time she was something that she called help resistant. I hadn't really heard that term so much before, and I know it really resonated with a lot of the physicians that I work with in weight loss for doctors only. And so I've been thinking about that term more, and I decided instead of titling this podcast episode with Overcoming Help Resistance, I decided that's not actually truly what I want to talk to you about today. What I want to talk to you about today is actually weaponized independence, because help resistance is one thing.

[00:02:57] But what I actually see with a lot of people, with a lot of doctors is weaponized independence. So let me explain a little bit more about what I mean by that. First, let me tell you about help resistance. Some people call it resistance to assistance. Some people call it resistance to receiving. But really what it comes down to is you could probably use some help and you're resistant to accepting it. Right? You don't really want anybody to help you. There could be a lot of reasons for that. But when I really thought about what this was all about, particularly when it comes to solving an overeating problem and emotional eating problem, losing weight, keeping it off forever, and creating the relationship that you want to have with food and weight.

Often we cling to this level of independence in a way where we actually do weaponize it, and not typically so much against other people, but we weaponize it against ourselves. Our independence, our fierce clinging to independence, becomes a weapon that we then turn on ourselves. And what I mean by that is there are a lot of people who could really benefit from some assistance, from some help, whether it's from me in weight loss for doctors only or from somebody else. And they are so attached to their independence that they don't actually let themselves get the help that they need, and therefore it's effectively harming them, at least in some ways, at least in holding them back from having the results or the resolution of symptoms, or just the success that they want to have.

[00:04:38] And it becomes this cycle where there's a belief that you have to be so independent that there's no way of doing it, like you can't get help from anybody else, and then that hurts you, makes it even harder to get the help that you need, or to even make any progress on your own. And then when you're not making any progress on your own, then you make that mean negative things about yourself. And then that cycle just is, becomes like a vicious cycle that you can't get out of the kind of idiom that came to mind as I was preparing for this, that I feel like kind of describes best.

What we're talking about here is the idea of cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're so attached and have such a tight grip on that independence, despite it hurting you and honestly, possibly even hurting other people. And I want to be careful in declaring that. But I do think that if you. Particularly if you have children at home or anybody that you have influence over. I think the best example that we can set for others, particularly young people, is what it's like to have a normal, healthy adult relationship with food and with our bodies. And as we know, young people, they pay so much more attention to what we do than what we say.

[00:06:01] And so they do pick up on those things. So when you won't allow yourself to get the help that you need because you're weaponising your independence against yourself, and you continue to struggle and continue to struggle and continue to struggle even when really good help is available for you. Some people may pick up on that, so that may not be the case for everybody. And I certainly would never say that anybody is at fault. For where this often comes up is when a young person develops a eating disorder. People will ask me, has the mother did I create that? Did I cause that because I've struggled so much?

I just I don't know that anybody will ever know. I think it's very multifactorial, and I don't think it's actually productive or helpful to blame ourselves for that, or even to take ownership for that, because there are so many things at play there. But like I said, I think the best thing that we can do is help ourselves to be an example to them of how they can also get help themselves and improve their relationship with food and their bodies and weight as well. That's a little bit of an aside. So I have some different things that I'd like you to think about. If the concept of help, resistance, or weaponized independence resonates with you at all.
Now, I don't think everybody struggles with this by any stretch. There are a lot of people who they know like, hey, if I don't know how to do that and I know someone else does, boom, I am all over it.

[00:07:33] Happy to pay people to help me to get the results that I want. So there are plenty of people who are not struggling with this. But I do think that amongst people in healthcare, in the medical profession, particularly as doctors, there's definitely maybe more so people who are resistant to that. There's this way of thinking or this culture amongst at least some people that can end up preventing them from accepting that help and driving them toward that weaponized independence. So if you find yourself to be resistant to help, if you just find yourself going like I know it's available to me, you know that you can avail yourself of this help, but you are not.

I really want to encourage you to look into why that is. And when I say look into why that is, this is something that you can definitely do on your own. Good thing because your help resistant, sorry life coach joke, but you also could get some help. It's something you could talk out with a friend, with a family member that you trust. You could even talk it out with a coach, right? Or a therapist, of course. But it's ultimately, and I hope that you can understand this on a cognitive level, that it really is not an indulgence to get help from other people who have solutions to the problem that you're struggling with.

[00:08:59] This is actually how society works. It's part of our social experience as humans that if you think about just the exchange of money, even in our economy, some people have needs and some people have solutions and we make that connection. There's an exchange of money, and then everybody theoretically gets what they need. It's obviously a very simplistic way of looking at it or thinking about it, but you catch what I'm trying to say, right? It's this idea that you could also be resistant to any help from the supermarket. You know, you could be like, no, I'm going to grow everything myself.

And you know what? I will just generate all my electricity myself and I will do everything myself. So there are a lot of things that we don't insist on doing ourselves. There are so many things that we are very happy to have others help us with, but we just think about it differently and that is why it feels different. Okay, so in our minds, it makes complete sense to allow farmers to grow our food for us, and then we give the grocery store our money so that we can have that food. Right. It makes complete sense that we're not going to try to create our own gasoline or electricity, like we're going to let the experts in that do that for us, so that we have the energy that we need to be able to live our lives. Right.

[00:10:17] There's lots of things that we recognize, like if you're building a new house, like you're probably most people at least are not going to be building it themselves. And we don't feel bad about that. We're not like, oh, I should be able to build a house myself, right? We're like, no, I'm going to find someone awesome who's totally an expert at doing that. And I will very happily pay them money to do a great job. So somehow when it comes to food and weight and creating peace and freedom around food, we can think about it in a different way that often doesn't really help us. What's interesting to me is I was thinking about how as doctors, sometimes there are patients that we see who are resistant to help, right?

They don't go to the doctor, they don't follow up, they don't take our advice. And I've seen many, many doctors over the years get pretty frustrated with people like that. Like if you would just do what I told you to do, if you would just come in like, why did you wait until it was this bad or until you were eight months pregnant to come see a doctor or like whatever it may be, thinking like, yeah, why wouldn't you just come in? Well, some of us over here are like, why wouldn't you just get help from a coach to lose weight and keep it off? Like, you know, it's a real similar thing. So I just want to give you that framework because you might have had those thoughts about patients before, and now you kind of understand where I may be coming from in talking to you about this.

[00:11:38] So I want to dig in a little bit more about the emotions beyond this. Right. Because anytime we're doing or not doing anything, it's because of how we feel. And maybe we want to change that feeling. But whatever it is, that feeling drives us to take actions or to take inaction. Because what I also find is when a lot of people say, like they're going to do it themselves, they have that weaponized independence. It's not like they're actually taking a lot of meaningful action on their own.

Or maybe they do, but just sort of in fits. It's in spurts, but never anything that is particularly meaningful or sustainable or long lasting, and that only makes them feel worse about it. So some people follow me on this because this is a little bit more of a, I guess, a little bit more advanced of a subject or a concept. If you're if this is your first episode you're listening to, you might be like, what? What is she talking about? But some of us, maybe not cognitively, maybe also like you, consciously have these thoughts, but maybe more subconsciously, we want to hurt ourselves. We actually don't think that we deserve to have help, right? Like sometimes we believe, well, other people can have help, but I can't.

[00:13:01] Or I could have help, but only if I weren't. So whatever disparaging thing, right? If only I weren't so lazy. If only I weren't so undisciplined. If only I weren't so out of control or gluttonous, if I only I weren't so undeserving of help or whatever it is. That can be a way that a lack of self-esteem, a lack of a positive relationship with ourselves, a lack of a positive self-description. Ends up holding us back, right? We're kind of like, well, I'm just going to confirm that this thing that I believe about myself is true.

By denying myself the help that people who are quote unquote, deserving, right? This is a mental construct. I'm denying myself that help to prove that I really am as bad as I believe I am. Okay, so that's pretty deep, right? Sometimes it's like I'm broken on a deep, foundational, fundamental level. If that's a belief that you have, then it would be in direct conflict with that belief to actually go out, get help and solve the problem. So this is some pretty deep stuff. This might be something that you are like, oh yeah, that sounds about right. Or it might be something that you have some resistance to, or it might be something that you need to noodle on a little bit and just kind of have that marinate in your brain. And I'm not saying this is the case for everybody, but it is for some people.

[00:14:33] Now, some people, when there's the idea of help, like the concept of maybe we'll just use my program as an example, coming into weight loss for doctors only some people go into a bit of like a defensive or a protective mode, right? Some people even get kind of like angry or frustrated or really just very resistant. And what that can be about is being really reluctant to share what's really true for them, because it's just too vulnerable. Right? Like if I go get help, then I'm going to have to actually look at what the problem is, and that feels too risky. It feels too vulnerable.

For some people, accepting help can feel on some level like a failure on their part. Right? It's like if you need help solving your overeating problem, your emotional eating problem, creating a different relationship with food or with weight, if you need that help, then that must mean that I'm not good enough, that you're not good enough so you resist that help and insist on doing it on your own, when of course, it doesn't have to mean that at all. And what I always find interesting is that for the vast majority of people, they would never make that interpretation about somebody else going and getting help. Right? Like their friend signs up for weight loss for doctors only. They're like brilliant. That's so smart. Go you. I love that for you. It's so good. But then when they think about doing it for themselves, they're like, absolutely not.

[00:15:55] I'm not deserving of that or it'll make me feel like a failure. I should be able to do this on my own. Some people feel that they need to prove themselves or prove their worth, and that's why they have to do it themselves. Like if they go and actually get help, then that somehow means that they're worthless. Some people, and I would say there's a decent number of doctors in this category. Some believe that they're above needing help. It's kind of like this, and I mean this in the most loving way. It's a kind of grandiosity that some doctors really struggle with. It's like if you're above needing the help of others, it can make you feel actually really powerful.

So you're not feeling great about yourself, maybe because of your eating or your weight or whatever. It's like being you around food, but if you can tap into that feeling of grandiosity, then you get to feel powerful and you kind of get to feel better than other people. And that is kind of like a drug for some people. And that can be another reason why some people really resist getting help. And finally, I think that there are a lot of people who, at least on some level, right, like maybe subconsciously they believe that if they ask for help that they might find out that there really is no hope, that they really can't do it, and then they'll feel even worse.

[00:17:25] Right? Then they'll feel totally helpless. They'll feel absolutely like there's no hope at all, and it's going to feel so bad. So if I just don't even try, then I won't find out that I can't do it. I think that will resonate with at least somebody who's listening to this today. Maybe not you or maybe you, right? So partly I wanted to bring this up because I think it's an interesting thing for us to think about. This is certainly not me coming at you going like so you just need to turn it around and just accept help. I mean, of course I do think that accepting help is a smart thing to do. I think it actually makes a lot of sense. But what I found, what I think I know to be true, is that when people are resistant, when you try to yank them in a different direction, it's typically ineffective.
It's like we have to be ready to be open minded to something else. My hope with bringing this to your attention is for you to think about where you do accept help in your life, where you're resistant to accepting help, and where in some cases, you're so attached to your independence that it may even turn into a weapon at times, particularly or especially against your own self. What I find interesting is a lot of people say, like, I've had such great results with your podcast. It's helped me so much.

[00:18:48] And I'm always like, yeah, and that is just like literally the appetizer, like weight loss for doctors only is really where you get the real help that actually starts moving the needle for you in a long term fashion. But, you know, if you are so attached to your independence and doing it yourself, you wouldn't give yourself the opportunity to be coached and to be helped and to come join that program to actually get that assistance that's going to truly solve the problem. So that's partly why I wanted to bring this to your attention. But I know that for other people, they realize, oh my gosh, like, there's other areas where I'm doing this as well.

So I just want to have you think about this, think about how this may be presenting in your life. And I want you to also think about whether it could be possible that accepting help has nothing actually to do with your value as a person. It's not something that you have to deserve. You don't have to be at a certain point in your life, a certain place with your knowledge. You literally can just do the smart and most efficient thing and just get help. Just be open to it being faster and better and easier than it would be on your own.

There are patients who are like, well, I could read a lot of medical textbooks and I could figure out how to get the medications that I need from offshore pharmacies, and I could do a lot of it myself, like, why would you do that when you have a very well trained and experienced physician available to you, like, who can absolutely help you? Like not only they have more experience and knowledge than they know how to advise you, but they also can make it go so much smoother and faster and better.

[00:20:34] It's a similar thing like, why would you not want to get help working on utilizing coaching tools to help you with your relationship with food and weight? But of course, also all those tools end up helping you in other areas of your life. I think that's what a lot of people overlook is like the work that we do doesn't just fix the food issue. It's like the food issue is the symptom. And what we do is we get to the underlying source, and that source is often all the other things that are you're still struggling with.

So even if you're having success with medications right now or things like that, you might want to really think about coaching as a bit of an insurance policy, like, okay, so you get those results, how are you going to maintain them? Like, it would be really nice to ensure that you can maintain them. And you can do that by focusing on your mindset. That way, when and if you ever need to stop for any reason, you have so many other tools at your disposal, you're not like, oh shoot, panicking, what am I going to do? The way it's all going to come back? Right? And I'm like, back to square one.

[00:21:39] What do I figure out to do next? So I just want to have you really think about that. Weaponized independence. I think all of us have done it at times to our own detriment. I can think of times where I have to, and I think I tend to be pretty open minded to getting help. So I think all of us can probably identify with this, at least on some level. And I think that there are even sometimes some of us, like we're even theoretically getting help and then were resistant to that help. Right? I know that sometimes there are people that I'm working with in my program who are just very resistant to doing what's recommended, and not to say that everyone has to do everything, or that's not normal, to have doubts and want clarification and want to really think through what makes the most sense for each person as an individual.

That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is knowing this would be helpful, or at least having a hunch that it would be, and still resisting just not being able to do it. And I don't think that it's as simple as just like, oh, I'm just help resistant. There's more to it behind that, right? Like if you can stay independent, that somehow protects you emotionally.

[00:22:44] And that's really what we've been talking about today here. So when we can shift the way we think about getting help, that shifts our emotions, it shifts our feelings. So we aren't feeling right, like a failure, like we're not good enough, right? Like we're undeserving. Instead, we shift the way we think about it to something that helps us to feel good about getting help, if maybe even better than good. Delighted. So excited. Guess what? I don't have to figure it all out anymore. Someone else who already did figure it out can help me. Brilliant. So so smart.
All right, my friend. Well, I am excited to have you think about weaponized independence and some help resistance. And like I said, if you do not listen to the litigation episode a few episodes ago, please go and listen to it. I promise you it is worth your time, even if it never helps you. There's a lot in there about supporting other physicians who are going through litigation. It's very important that all of us together shift the culture around this, and you are also an important part of that. So please make sure you listen to it if you haven't already. All right. Thank you so much for your attention. Thanks for joining me. I hope you have a great week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #382: Overcoming Weaponized Independence appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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If you had told me 10 years ago that it was possible for me to stop eating at night, I would’ve called BS.

It was a habit that I didn’t think I could ever shake, but guess what? I was wrong! In this episode, I’m sharing the tips and tricks I used to break the habit of eating at night when I wasn’t really hungry.

Before we dive in, I want to be clear that there’s nothing inherently wrong with eating at night, but if it’s causing issues for you in your relationship with food and your body, it’s okay to want to make a change. This is a shame-free space wherever you’re at!

As you learn how to stop eating at night, you’ll also learn more about your emotions, your unconscious habits, and what’s causing you to eat when you’re not hungry. If that sounds like a path you want to go down, tune in!

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* + - Harnessing the power of patterns and habits - Why you eat at night - How to create new habits - The value of having regular meals - Better understanding yourself and your emotions - How to break unhelpful patterns - Other ways to get pleasure out of your evening

If you feel like you’ll never be able to stop eating at night, let me reassure you that it is possible. First of all, I want you to stop beating yourself up about it, and we’ll take it from there. I hope the strategies in this episode help you get the results you're looking for as you continue on your journey to peace and freedom around food.

Check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program for more help ending nighttime and emotional eating! Go to katrinaubellmd.com/info.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #380: Update: Weight Loss Medications and Coaching

Ep #379: Creating a Smoother Re-Entry After Vacation

Ep #378: When Match Day Doesn’t Go Your Way

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm so glad you're joining me today. I really love talking about stopping eating at night, because if you would have told me ten years ago that I could stop doing it, I would have called BS on that. I would have just been like, I would love to, but don't know that it's possible because I had been eating at night or in the evening or before bed literally my entire life, and it was a habit that I just did not think that I could ever stop doing.

I know that this is something that so many people struggle with. You might too, and if you do struggle with it, it can feel really, really hard to stop. I know this because I have been coaching, um, many women physicians for many years, and it's not a problem for everybody, but it is a problem for a lot of people. And when you're one of those people, it can feel uniquely difficult. I remember when I was back in practice, there was a woman who worked in our back office doing some billing, and I remember talking to her one night about weight loss or eating or I don't know what we were talking about.

[00:01:45] And she shared, she's like, oh, you eat at night? She said, no, we make dinner and clean up the kitchen and then that's it. And I remember just kind of being like, what? I just couldn't even imagine doing that, like that. Just wow. And that definitely was not the environment that I grew up in. So in our house, we didn't have dessert with dinner, we ate dinner. And then a few hours later we had our dessert, which typically was more in the evening time or kind of a little bit before bed.

And that, like I said, for as long as I can remember, since the time where I didn't eat dinner and go straight to bed, I had been doing that. So it was really something that I had to work to overcome. And having done it for a very long time and guided so many people through it, I feel very confident that I can help you to stop eating at night. This is definitely something that you can learn how to do. Now I want to say there is nothing inherently wrong with eating at night. Number one thing we have to talk about is there's no shame in eating at night.

[00:02:44] Sometimes I get the sense that people feel like it's somehow like morally wrong or something is wrong with you. If you eat at night and you have a hard time stopping. And I want to be really clear, this is just a habit. It oftentimes stems from something that makes so much sense. It could be a level of comfort that you're seeking at night, especially if you are really busy during the day. Maybe you often are actually underfed, and rather than eating more like nutritious food in the evening, you end up eating more snacks and whatever. The same thing that I'm going to talk about here goes for drinking alcohol as well.

That's your version of eating at night, your version of a snack. So number one, we just have to lay the groundwork here that there's no shame in this. If this is what you do, there's nothing to be ashamed of. There's nothing to be embarrassed of. There's no reason to think. You can't stop doing this. You absolutely can stop. You are not broken. Okay, so this is truly a habit on actually a couple of levels. And like any habit that you want to break, it takes some effort, it takes some awareness, but it's totally something that you can do. Next, let's talk about some patterns. And this is a big part of the habit. Very often there are certain times of our lives, like periods of our day, that are very repetitive.

[00:04:10] A lot of people end up eating if they eat breakfast. They eat kind of the same stuff, at least most of the time for breakfast. Like their breakfasts are not that varied. It could be your morning routine, so to speak. And I'm not even saying like, oh, you get up and go for a jog and then you meditate and then you journal. Like, I'm not saying that kind of morning routine. I'm saying like, you get up and get ready for work or get the kids out the door and then go to work or whatever it is. That tends to be pretty similar for a lot of people.

Now, of course, people who work shift work, it might be a little bit different, but I would even venture to guess that when you're working a day, shift your day at least parts of it look pretty similar. If you're working a PM shift day looks pretty similar. If you're working an overnight, right, there's certain parts that look pretty similar. So a lot of that is habit. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense for our brains to do that. Because when we can just repeat things, then our brain does not have to be on like full blown critical thinking level. It can kind of downregulate some of that stuff so you don't have to think in the morning so much.

[00:05:14] Okay, what do I do next? Oh, it's take a shower okay. So what do I need to be able to take a shower? Well, I need my towel. I need to hang my towel up by the shower. Okay. What else do I need? Oh, right. I have to take my clothes off. Okay. Next. What what what's next? Oh, I got to turn the water on. Right. You see what I'm saying? You just take a shower. You're not thinking so hard about it. Or, like, why do so many great ideas come to us in the shower?

Well, we are still showering. It's because we don't have to think so hard about every single step. And what's the next thing that I should be doing? So a lot of the time it's just an energy conservation kind of a situation. It makes a lot of sense that if we do the same thing the majority of the days, that we would be able to do it without having to think too much. It's kind of mindless. It's just like what we do. And so I want to offer to you that eating at night for a lot of people is similar to that. It's kind of the same thing where if the majority of the time, like if you are home and nothing big has happened or whatever, like something major, then what you will be doing is roughly the same.

[00:06:15] There will be some sort of evening meal that you'll consume most of the time, and then there will be some sort of tidying up or cleaning up or sort of finishing up for the evening, and then there will be some sort of relaxing time to come that can look like lots of different things, and it may not even be that relaxing. I mean, it could be you're working on your charts, but you're doing it with a glass of wine by your side, or you are tidying up the house a little bit, or you're getting through emails or going through the mail or whatever.
Some of those things are folding laundry, whatever that may be. But for a lot of people, there is in that evening time, a chunk of time set aside to kind of wind down. That makes sense. Like, I remember working shifts in the emergency department, and there's no way that I could work an overnight in the E.R. and come home and go right to bed. Like it doesn't work like that. You know, you need a little wind down, period. At least I did. I wasn't that tired. I mean, resident level tired. Yes. Then you can just sleep anywhere. But a lot of the time you're tired, but you still need time to transition your brain from that high intensity work environment to a period of time where it can actually relax and go to sleep.

[00:07:20] So oftentimes during that wind down period is when we eat. And so that could be your reading a book and you're having a snack, you are watching a show and you're eating something. You are on your phone, you're shopping for stuff, mindlessly scrolling whatever. Like any of that could be things that you do and maybe other things too, like maybe there's some sort of hobby. I know some people like doing a hobby in the evening, because it often keeps your hands busy, and then there's less opportunity to be able to eat. But I would love for you to just not eat regardless of what you're doing.

Not needing a hobby in your hands so that you don't eat, you know what I'm saying? So if you think about it though, like if that's the typical routine, let's just say for an hour or so, or maybe longer, maybe a little less before you go to bed, there is this wind down period, and you probably do similar things. You probably sit in a similar place, you probably do similar things. And if one of those things that you do on a regular basis is to eat something, then again, it's just kind of a down regulated thing. It's like your brain's oh, right, I know what comes next. The next thing that we do is we grab a snack. The next thing we do is we go rummage around the pantry and find something sweet to eat, or find something crunchy to eat.

[00:08:30] Or we go in the freezer and get some ice cream or whatever it is. So like often people will say, well, I don't even feel like I'm thinking about it. Like all of a sudden I'm just eating well, right? Because it's not something you have to think about so hard because it's a habit. It's something that you do most of the time. So this is where building awareness, actually being present, keeping your brain 100% fully online during that time can help you to recognize, oh, right. So I'm going to want to eat now because that's typically what I do. I'm working to stop doing that.
Therefore I need to be awake and present and here with myself so that I don't just all of a sudden kind of go offline. And before I know it, I'm eating a snack because that's what I typically do, right. So that's why it makes sense that it can be hard. Like you have to actually pay attention similarly to if you are a nail biter or you chew on your cuticles or something like before we know it, people will say, all my nails were gone. What you have to do to stop doing that is you have to be aware of you putting your hands in your mouth. That's one of the first things, right? I mean, very, very helpful.

[00:09:33] So breaking those patterns is very helpful. Like your brain expects to eat when you usually eat. So it will create urges. It will just make it very effortless for you to float into the kitchen and find something to eat. This is something I'm going to give you some thought mindset things, but I'm going to give you some really like effective, hands on actionable. You can do this kind of a thing to help with this too, because often it's actually just the first couple of weeks that are the hardest with this. And when you get over that hump, it's actually really not that difficult anymore, which is really cool.

So if your brain is like, hey, guess what? Here's an urge to go eat, because this is what we typically do in this kind of environment. Then it makes sense that changing the environment, breaking the pattern of that environment would be an effective strategy to be able to kind of throw a wrench in things in terms of your brain switch it up so that you don't feel such a need or desire to do that, that can look like, well, if I usually sit in my living room on the couch and I watch shows and I have a snack, maybe instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to get ready for bed early, and I'm going to go sit up in my room and read or watch a show on my iPad, you know, or on the laptop or on the TV in my room or whatever it may be.

[00:10:51] If you have a TV and just switch up where you are so it can look like lots of different things, different room typically will help different environment. Like maybe you get ready for bed early or change into your pajamas or something like that's different. You're just kind of changing the whole scenario. Some people say like, well, brush your teeth and then you won't eat. Well, I don't know that that's always effective for everybody, but if one of the things that you find is that you're like eating and then you're like dragging it out because you still have to get ready for bed and you don't have the energy to do that.
Yeah. If you know you're not going to eat anymore because you're working on stopping eating at night, yeah, you can brush your teeth and then that's done and that's cool. And that's one less barrier to you getting to bed. So same thing if you have a routine where you take your makeup off or do anything to your face or moisturize or like any of that stuff, it can be helpful to do that first and then have a wind down period closer to where you are going to be sleeping, or at least just in a different place.

[00:11:48] So it doesn't mean that you won't get any ideas about eating. You won't miss any of that stuff, but it does change it. It makes it harder. It helps you to be more aware. It helps to prevent you from slipping into that fog where you just do what you always do. The next thing that I want to really make sure that I emphasize is that when you're stopping eating at night, it's important that you make sure you had a solid, satisfying evening meal. So some people will find that they just kind of snack this and that, ate some things off the kids plate, had a little of this and a little of that. Maybe. What, you weren't really that hungry for dinner. And then 9:00, 10:00 rolls around and you're rummaging for a snack because you are legitimately, physically hungry.

Same thing can happen for people who end up skipping meals and not really being prepared to skip them. And what I mean by that is not making sure that then the meals that they eat afterward are properly satisfying. So something that can happen is say you eat three meals a day and you had breakfast, but then you would plan to eat lunch. But for whatever reason you got busy, you couldn't eat. Then you eat regular dinner. Well, you might be hungry again 3 or 4 hours later, depending on how late you stay up and how early you eat dinner, because your body's like, where's our third meal? Right? So we want to make sure that we're doing our best to have some regular meals, particularly during this time when we're trying to stop eating at night and make sure that you have that solid evening meal.

[00:13:17] What I mean by that is not overeating, but what I mean by that is that you eat a proper meal that actually has some fiber in it, like some vegetables, ideally some good healthy fat that's very satiating and keeps you feeling full so that you know that you have had enough food. I've talked about the hunger scale before, and maybe it's something to review on here. Again, the hunger scale. You're using the scale to help you to know when you've had enough food. And so honing that in and going, okay, yeah, I didn't overeat, but I have had enough.
I feel a nice content, positive feeling of heaviness in my stomach. This is good. I've had my proper nutrition for the night. Then, you know, like anything that comes up for me later this evening is really probably not going to be physical hunger. If it feels like hunger, it might be emotional hunger. Maybe that would be an opportunity to help identify the difference between the two and process that emotional hunger. But then you just know there's no part of you that's going, yeah, but did I eat enough today? Like, you know, you ate enough.

[00:14:16] You're fine. Like, you know, you're gonna be okay. It's like when my dog has put himself to sleep upstairs in our bedroom, and then he comes down for some reason, then all of a sudden is acting like he wants to go out. I'm like, you were just in bed 30 minutes ago. I think you're okay. You don't really need that. So I will say that if you are someone who is eating a dessert on a regular basis, a lot of the people that I work with, especially for a period of time, while we're really working on understanding our body's signals, we take a break from eating flour and sugar.

But if you are not doing that for any number of reasons, and you are having some sugar in your life, and often that sugar is in the evening time, I would suggest that you eat it with your dinner. So rather than like okay, rather than four hours after dinner having my snack, I'll have it two hours later. What I would instead suggest, like say you like to eat chocolate or whatever. Like that you have your chocolate actually with your dinner. So if there's going to be any sweets involved or anything that you kind of deem as dessert, have it with the meal. Now that's also something that I work with my clients on.

[00:15:20] Sometimes we have to kind of like undo that kind of dessert mentality. But we're not talking about that today, because today what we're just working on is stopping eating at night. So if you're going to have something typically or you want that little whatever, have it with your dinner, okay. So that way you have gotten what you need and you know, everything that your body needs has been done. I mean, honestly, just as a side note, this is something you can do even when you're not trying to lose weight.

Or you could be like, you know what? Like I'm not actively really working to lose weight right now. I'd like to in the future or whatever, but I can still work on stopping eating at night, right? So it's like often the all or nothing thinking that we have makes us think that, like, if I'm going to stop eating at night, then I need to be actively trying to lose weight. You really don't. This is something you can do even if you're eating all the things. In fact, it would be interesting to try it, right? Maybe you're like, yeah, I'm kind of in precontemplation I'm not really ready to lose weight yet, but yeah, I could maybe try this and see if I can just stop eating at night. It would be interesting to see what would happen with your weight. You might even lose weight. I bet a lot of people would.

[00:16:21] Okay, so make sure you have that. So then next some people ask me about what you can have in the evening time. Then like some people really like having some hot herbal tea, some decaf coffee, like some things like that. Absolutely. You can have those things for sure. Now having 3 or 4 cups of decaf with heavy cream and like, you know, thinking that's fasting. No. And that's not what we do. That's too much. But if you just like having something. Warm. I live in a typically cold climate, so I really do enjoy a mug of peppermint tea at night. It's something that for years and years I've really enjoyed having, and there's no downside to it.

So there's literally no reason why you can't have that. So it's not like you stop eating at night and all you can have is water after that. If you want something else that, like I was saying, like decaf coffee, hot tea, things like that, you absolutely can still do that. I like to think of it as, does it cause a problem for you? Like me, having a mug of peppermint tea at night does not cause any problems for me. The only main issue would be like if I drink too much of it right before I go to bed, I might have to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, which isn't ideal, and I don't love that.

[00:17:32] But you know, that's the only real downside of having it. So just think about that. If you're like, well, every time I have decaf coffee, it just makes me want to have more. Yeah, then that's maybe not so great. Maybe we don't want to do that. We want to choose something that isn't going to create more problems on the other side. Okay, so you're in a different place. You have your mug of tea, you've gotten in your jammies. You're like changing your routine. Whatever it is that you've decided and you still want to go eat, congratulations. You are normal. That is okay. Totally normal.

But this is where the mindset part comes in, okay? Because you've done all of these things for yourself and that's amazing and great. And the opportunity here now is to figure out what it is that is the problem that you want food to solve for you. Okay. So you want to eat something to change your state, to change how you feel in your body. So what is that feeling and what is creating it? For some people they're surprised, just like restlessness. They just feel restless and they just feel like they just just want to eat something. Okay, cool. Really good to know that's what it is. For some people, it's a boredom. For some people, it's dread. It's like those Sunday scaries which you can have any night of the week.

[00:18:48] It can be any number of things. Right. What's really important is for us to spend some time understanding what it is that we're trying to fix with food, so that we can do something about that. Right? Let's just say we'll go with the restlessness thing. That's definitely something that came up for me. And still from time to time, I feel that at night. And so okay, so this is restlessness and I understand what that feels like in my body. And then I can figure out what I want to do about it, if anything. Right.

I can just let it be there. Sometimes it's kind of like a I need to move around kind of energy. And honestly, even depending on how long you've been doing this and how difficult it is for you to stop, you might even want to distract yourself for a little bit, but not with six hours of shows. And now you're up till 3 a.m., right? You would want to distract yourself with one chapter in a good book, or watching like one 30 minute show or one one hour show, and then knowing it's done and then just moving on from there, you know what I'm saying? Like, we don't want to create other problems, but sometimes it's just like, yeah, like not feeling great, really want to eat. And so I'm gonna distract myself for a little bit because I'm not quite time to go to sleep.

[00:19:53] And then I'm gonna go to sleep and just move through this. And so particularly in those first few days, the first week, the first two weeks, it can be a little challenging. And that's okay because you can do that. Like you can do challenging. It's okay. But we need to know what if the reason you want to eat at night is because you have intense dread, you really don't want to go to bed because then tomorrow will come and you're going to have to go to work. And there's all these things about work you don't like that's important. We need to know about that, if that's what's going on.

That explains so much why you want to eat that night and then why when you ask yourself to stop eating at night, why it's so hard. So what? Stopping eating at night will do for you is help you to understand yourself better and help you to understand where there are some areas to work on. And of course, coaching is magnificent at helping you to work through those things to figure out what your next steps are, whether it's staying there and working on your thoughts about it and processing your emotions, whether it's finding something different, whatever it is, once you identify that coaching can be incredible. Now, of course, if you can't or don't want to have coaching in your life something you could bring to a therapist, it'd be something you could journal on yourself.

[00:21:06] Just trying to understand that some more. Okay, so when those urges come, don't think of them as so annoying and trying to resist them and just push them away. There's a lot of really good, intelligent information in there and you want to tap into that. Find out what it's all about, understand yourself better. That's the opportunity right there. This is so, so, so important. And I will say that if you're kind of in your old spot on the couch with a TV on, you're gonna have a harder time understanding this stuff.

So I think changing the location, breaking those patterns really helps to figure this out some more, too. Okay. And then finally, as we wrap this up, I do just want to say that sometimes it's just hard and you don't like it and you're just in a mood and. It's not there. And why can't you just eat? And if that's the case, I want to suggest that you just go to sleep. Just go to sleep early. Just go lay down. Put yourself out of your misery and just go to sleep. Because honestly, you probably need the sleep. I mean, who are we kidding? You probably need it. And getting a good night of sleep is only going to make the next day better.

[00:22:12] And when you are less exhausted, it is a lot easier to not emotionally eat. So you're just setting yourself up for success for the next day. So sometimes you're just like, I've tried all the things. This is hard. I don't even know, you know, made sense when Katrina talked about it, and now I'm doing it. It feels hard. Just go to sleep then, okay? Make sure you got a good comfy setup. I haven't talked about it too much on here, particularly recently, but if you are too hot at night, you might want to check out the eight sleep. The number eight sleep. That's my favorite thing in my life.

Before that was my chilly pad, chilly cube, whatever it was called. And then I upgraded a little bit ago to the eight sleep and super loved that as well. Really amazing. Particularly for women of a certain age who have some temperature regulation issues at night like myself. But even if not, like there's lots of people who love this stuff and just make your bed like a really comfy, welcoming, enjoyable place for you to be so you can work on getting to sleep okay. And some people like taking magnesium at night to help them, whatever those things may be. But you know, the more you break those habits, the easier it's going to get. It's going to feel more normal to not eat. And what will happen is those neural connections that connected evening time.

[00:23:28] And it's time for winding down, and you're sitting on the couch in this particular spot. It's time to eat. Like it'll start to break those connections. So it's not like you can't ever go and watch a show in that place again before bed. But for the time being, we want to break those patterns and shift it and change it, mix it up a little bit so that the brain is not sure what to expect next. But if you like, go to that different place and you start snacking their brains like, oh cool, we snack in two places. So we want to try to try to keep it clean in that sense, like without that association. So I want to encourage you to really try this.

If you struggle with eating at night, this is something you absolutely can stop doing and it can not feel like a hardship. You know, it's like, well, sure, I can not eat at night and then I'll be miserable and I'll hate every minute of it. I would say I understand that line of thinking, but at the same time it's kind of like, well, if that's the main way to get pleasure out of my life or my evening, maybe it's time to think about, like, other ways to get pleasure out of my evening. There could be other ways that ultimately end up feeling very satisfying as well, and are not causing weight gain.

[00:24:33] Right. And results that we don't like. All right, friend, listen, you can stop eating at night. I want you to really work on doing this because it's a possibility. And when you can do it, this is a little bit like the snowball that starts the avalanche, like when you're like, oh my God, look at me. I'm not eating at night. And it builds your confidence. Like, what else can I shift with my eating? There is more that can come from this and I'm going to do that. It can be a big motivator and and really help get you moving.

And I'd ask that you would share this episode with somebody who could benefit from it. I know sometimes sharing weight loss stuff can feel a little like you just want to be tactful and not insult people or hurt their feelings, but you probably know somebody who's shared that they struggle with eating at night too, and they would definitely appreciate getting some help. So go ahead and share that, if you wouldn't mind, please. All right.
Thank you so much. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for your attention. And I hope you have a really good rest of your week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #381: How to Stop Eating at Night appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Weight loss medications have been taking the media by storm; let’s talk about it!

I have a little more experience and insight into weight loss medications since the last time we talked about them on the podcast, so I think it’s about time for an update.

In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, we’re breaking down the stigma around taking or not taking weight loss medications, what to do if you can’t take weight loss medications even though you want to, and alternative ways to get the same results as weight loss medications.

Whether you’re on medication right now, have been in the past, or never have been and never will be, this episode has something for you.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Quieting the brain chatter around food * Alternatives available to you if you can’t take weight loss medication * Fighting shame and taboos around weight loss medication * Skills and tools that can support or replace weight loss medication * The positive side effects of coaching * How coaching and weight loss medication can benefit from each other

Whatever your relationship is with weight loss medication, I want you to know that it’s not the only tool available to you. I believe that the more options we have available to us, the better, which is why I’m putting this episode out. If you’re wondering what your options are, you’re in the right place.

For more information about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #379: Creating a Smoother Re-Entry After Vacation

Ep #378: When Match Day Doesn’t Go Your Way

Ep #377: Making it Through Litigation in One Piece with Dr. Gita Pensa

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

My high school senior son has narrowed things down for college to his final top two choices, and so we're going to be heading out on a road trip to visit these two schools out on the East coast. And, uh, normally I'm not someone who super loves a road trip. Not really my idea of fun, but when we looked at flights and stuff because we have to go to two major cities, it was just like not going to work. Because of course the two visitation days overlap, right? So there are about four hours apart from one another. So we thought, okay, well, let's just drive all the way out there in one day. Then we'll spend the morning and lunchtime with one school, then drive up the afternoon to the other school for what they have in the evening. And then that school has some things in the morning the next day as well.

[00:01:39] And then we're haul ourselves all the way back here again. So anyway, that's what I've got going on in my life. Anyone who's ever had a kid, you know, finishing up high school, making these decisions, or if you're in the mix with it right now too, it's a lot. And yeah, just new. I'm guessing that by the time my third child's going through this, it will feel a little bit more just kind of like, yep, this is what we do, this is how we roll. But the first time you're doing things with parenting, right, it's like, wow, just, um, a big deal. And I don't know that I've actually really mentioned this here so much, but my son is planning on taking a gap year.

So this is he's deciding where he's going to go, but he's still going to defer and take a gap year. And he's going to be traveling in Europe by himself for a year. So in about two months, he's going to be leaving and he's gonna be gone. So yeah, it's a lot. Um, I'm using my coaching tools on my own mother heart and just being open to all the emotions that come. I'm so grateful for coaching and everything that I've learned. You know, all the tools that I teach, I apply to myself, and I'm so grateful for them because, wow, it's a lot to go through.

[00:02:52] It's a lot of emotions and it's a huge, huge transition. At least it will be for us in our life. So that's what I've got going on over here. But that doesn't mean I'm any less committed to helping you achieve your goals with permanent weight loss and peace and freedom around food. So I want to talk to you today a little bit more about the weight loss medications that a lot of people are using, that maybe even you're using. It could be that you're using them right now. I have not actually spoken about them on the podcast since January of 2023. So that was like episode 312. This is 380. So it's been a while. It's been over a year.

And, you know, things have changed a little bit since that time. And I've had more experience with clients in my program, members of my program using the medications. And I just have a little bit more insight, some more updates for you and some more thoughts about the work that I do and using those weight loss medications. And yeah, just have some perspectives for you that I think might be helpful, particularly if you are taking the medications or have taken them in the past. Maybe you didn't tolerate them, maybe they didn't work for you, maybe you're thinking about it, but not sure. Maybe they're something you're interested in, but for whatever reason, they're just not the right thing for you right now.

[00:04:15] So I just have some perspectives on that, just some things that I wanted to let you know about in terms of what I'm seeing, what I'm noticing, and how I think it can be helpful for you to see how the two things can play together for people that that's the right thing for. And also, if the medications are not the right thing for you to not despair. That is something that I want to stress as well. We'll talk about that as well, because it can really be really painful for some people who have to stop the medications, even if they were getting good weight loss results.

So let's start with you tried the medications, one of them or a couple of them or whatever. And either it didn't work, meaning your body just did not lose weight because I've definitely had people I've worked with who've had that result or you couldn't tolerate it for some reason. And so I have also been in communication with people who've tried it, who just had to stop because the side effects were just absolutely not something that they could go on doing. But now they feel even worse because whatever weight they lost, for those who did lose it, the majority of the time, they've gained it back already, which is, you know, pretty disappointing for them. That's what they've shared with me, that they feel disappointed to the point where where some people have even told me that.

[00:05:35] They liked how quiet their brain was in terms of food chatter, so much that they kind of almost want to consider going back on the medication to have that experience, even though the side effects were like, really, really bad. Which just is so interesting because all it really shows is how desperately we want to be freed of the obsession with food, with the constant brain chatter around food. And what I also find is because right now, you know, Oprah is out there talking a ton about these medications and the media has picked up on it.

And it's actually I think they're a little slow to the party, to be honest. It's been a big thing for a while now. You know, really everybody talking about it more and more and more for those people where it didn't work or they couldn't tolerate it. I'm noticing a lot of people just feeling even worse about themselves, like feeling even more broken when everybody in the media and all these people around you are like, look at me, and I'm feeling so great, and I've lost all this weight. And you're like, well, good for you. But I can't have that. Like I've just noticed a lot more shame, a lot more really feeling like I'm broken. My person, you know, each each person individually is kind of looking at it like, oh my gosh, like, I wish I could have that, but I can't.

[00:06:52] And so they're feeling even worse about themselves or feeling even more like, you know what? This is just I'm just destined to struggle with this or I feel so horrible about it. Some people then are overeating because they feel that way. And that, of course, is contributing to the weight gain and just being in a really, really rough place about it. One of the things that I wanted to point out, that I think a lot of people really don't understand, is that taking these medications is not the only way to quiet the brain chatter in your brain about food.

So this is something that so many of us want, right? We just want the urges to go away. We want it to quiet down. We just want food to have an appropriate amount of importance in our lives. Right. Do you need to eat to survive? Yes, but you need to think about it constantly. No. Do you need to have your brain, you know, totally like, you should eat this. You should go get that, you know, like just kind of consuming your thoughts about food. Absolutely not. And I think so many people think when they hear like, oh my gosh, I started taking the medications and the brain chatter around food was just gone. They think that that's the only way for the brain chatter to be gone. And so what I want to make sure is clear to you here is that for eight years, I've been helping women physicians to quiet the brain chatter that they have around food.

[00:08:12] Like, sure, the medications might be a great way to accomplish that, but it's not the only way. And so I just want to point that out, right. Like that there are other ways to achieve and accomplish a lot of the positive experiences that people who have found the weight loss through medications to have, like that's not the only way to do it. So I just want to point that out to provide some hope, because it really I talked to some people who are like really at rock bottom, like worse than they've ever been after taking these medications, which imagine when, you know, everybody is like, it's a miracle. And you're like, it's not for me.

A lot of people have been feeling super, super bad about that. And so I just want to say you're seen, you're noticed, you're understood, and don't despair. Like there are other ways to get the results that you're wanting. I mean, when you think about it, right, like these medications, like you end up eating a lot less food. And people find that to be really pretty simple because their GI tract is just like, absolutely not. Like, do not eat more food. But some people find they're like, yeah, but eating is a natural pleasure. And I do want to actually enjoy the food that I eat.

[00:09:25] So like, is there a way for me to be able to enjoy my food, have like a reasonable amount and not have it be like, oh my gosh, I'm basically stuffed all the time, even though I'm barely eating anything. Like, is there a way to work that out? Like, yes, we work on creating that all the time. I've mentioned it before, but I'll talk about it again. You know, we have study data that shows that our program is almost as effective as Semaglutide with some lifestyle changes.

We're meaning, you know, moving your body and changing the way you eat, which I don't know how you could not change the way you eat when you're on those medications. Like you just can't overeat anymore, right? For most people, for a lot of people. So I just want to point out that it's really easy to think like, oh my gosh, these drugs are a miracle and that it's the only miracle. There are other ways of doing it. And I know this to be be the case, because I've seen it happen with literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women physicians who are members in my program. Okay. So now let's talk about when the medications are just contraindicated for you or they're just not the right fit for you. You know, some people are like, you know, I'm curious, but I don't know. It just doesn't sit right with me.

[00:10:38] I just kind of have a gut feeling I maybe shouldn't do it. It's just I'm, you know, I'm not sure what the long term consequences are, and so I don't feel comfortable doing it. Like, whatever it may be, you know, having those reservations about it, it's also easy then to think. Pretty much if I can't use the medications or if I decide not to, then I guess I'm just stuck. I guess I'm just going to be over here slogging away in diet mentality, suffering. It's gonna be awful, you know, or thoughts like that. And I want to just reassure you that, like I said, like our program is also like very close is effective. And and it's just like another way, a different way for you to get those results.

So cool thing too is that whereas with the medications, you know, it's really looking like you have to continue using them ongoing long terme with the work that we do, you wouldn't need that. Or you know, some people have actually kind of been like, well, maybe what I'll do is like for people where it has worked out for them, they get off the medication, I'm managing my mind, I'm doing all the stuff that I can do. And then if they find, like they're still kind of struggling or their weight creeps back up again, like maybe they'll take the medication for a little bit of time to bring it back down again.

[00:11:53] You know, like, I don't know, I think it's it's interesting. It's kind of the Wild West right now. I don't know, like what how people are gonna approach it. But, you know, theoretically it could be something. So that actually brings me to the next thing. Okay. Let me move on to the next thing. So if the medications are going super great for you and you might even be planning to use them long terme, you might be like, I'm fine, I love this. This is great. I'm just going to take these forever. You know, what's interesting is like, but what if you have to stop for some reason?

Like what if some side effect crops up, or you have some other issue that comes up or some other thing that happens and you know, what's really recommended is you stop taking that medication. Wouldn't it be great to be totally set up with other skills to help support? The results that you have gotten, because I could imagine that if you've been on it for a while, I don't want this to come across as where it can be sometimes. I don't know if it's quite the way that I want to say it. I don't I don't mean it in any judgmental way, but it can be kind of a crutch, right? You're leaning on it. You're relying on it to manage, you know, your hunger levels and you know, the brain chatter and urges and things like that.

[00:13:02] So if you have to stop taking the medication at some point in the future, and you don't have any other way to create that kind of a experience for yourself, where the chatter is low and where you feel like it's, you know, very easy for you to eat the right amount of food for your body. It can be, first of all, scary. It can be very difficult. Some people report the weight coming back on really pretty quickly. Some people report the hunger coming back, like with a vengeance. Wouldn't it be really, really nice to have all these skills developed for yourself and, you know, probably in use in some ways as well, so that whether you're on the medication or you're not on the medication, you know, you're going to be okay.

You know, like you don't have to have anxiety around, like, well, what if I can't find it? Or what if suddenly I can't afford it? Or what if whatever, suddenly, you know, my employer stops covering it? Or what if something else develops and, you know, I can't take it anymore? What am I going to do? Well, you already if you've already been participating in coaching, it's not like a new skill that you have to learn. It's something that you've already been leveraging. It's another support system, another tent pole, so to speak, to keep that tent upright. So I think that that I'm not the only one thinking about this.

[00:14:15] There are this has been in the papers and stuff, how there are lots of employers now who've been finding that so many of their employees have been taking advantage of these medications, that the cost has really become prohibitive for them. I read something that there's, you know, some companies that are finding they're spending way more on weight loss medications than they are even on cancer treatment or any of those types of things, and they're just not set up to be able to support that. And so some people are just having to stop, you know, some employers are just stopping covering it, at least in the US.

But another thing that's happening is some employers are saying, okay, well, you can be on it for a certain period of time or you can be on it as long as you are also participating in some sort of lifestyle well-being type of support training, which is basically exactly what weight loss for doctors only is. You know, it's like they're basically saying like, yeah, don't think you're going to be using this stuff forever. We're not going to pay for it forever. You have to be learning other tools, other skills to be able to support yourself and doing that at the same time. And I'm like, yes, I agree, because that's what we offer and I know how much it is really helping people and, you know, helps anybody who struggles with weight.

[00:15:32] So I just want to be clear, you know, some people are like whispering like, oh, and, you know, and I also on Manjaro and I'm like, you can say it out loud like it's okay. Like nobody's judging you. Just because an escalator exists doesn't mean it's better. You're like a better person if you take the stairs. But, you know, sometimes the escalator is broken. And then what? It's nice if you can take the stairs. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's kind of the way to be able to look at it. So the final thing I want to point out is something that is really often super duper overlooked. And, you know, we talk about side effects of medications, but there's also some significant side effects, positive side effects of coaching that a lot of people really don't understand.

They're like, you know, if I were to come into your program, I get help with food and weight and all that stuff. Okay, fine. But the main side effects that medications do not offer even in the slightest are how coaching helps with other areas of your life, too, right? So being thin because of being on medication doesn't make you enjoy your work anymore. It doesn't make your work any more tolerable. It doesn't improve any of your relationships. But those are things that we're constantly working on in coaching because we typically are overeating because of those stressors.

[00:16:51] You know, the things that are difficult for you in your life, like if you're emotionally eating. How about we work on those other things? So it's, you know, partly it's learning how to process those emotions, but it's also working through those issues that you have and working to solve them and improve them and make them a better experience for you. Like none of that happens for you with medication. So if you take the medication, then you have to stop. It's like your life is exactly the same. Whereas with coaching, like there's no way your life could ever be the same. It has to be better. If you're participating in taking advantage of coaching and applying that to your life.

It's just there's no way that you can ever go back to like, the before times, so to speak. You're always going to know, hey, you know what? This is so much better. Life is so much better. And like, no one can take that away. You know? You don't have to be fearful. Like, what if I can't afford that anymore? Or you know what? If I can stop tolerating whatever it is, it's like, no, this is something that you invest in on the front end. And some people even decide to invest in it. On going for a while. I know I do. I've had various coaches in my life for eight years. It's one of the best investments I can make, but is by no means to the same level of investment as, you know, taking those medications, you know, ongoing.

[00:18:09] So I don't know, I don't want to get into like a tit for tat on on cost, but it is something to think about. Like with coaching, it potentially could really support you. You know, you could learn the skills you need to be able to continue on without needing to make immediate, continued investments. Like maybe you would want to from time to time or get a little tune up or whatever, but it's not the same thing as needing to be ongoing chronically on a medication. So I just wanted to point that out. Like I have got no beef with medications at all. I'm like, look like, you know, we live in an amazing time where lots of amazing things are available to us, but it's important that we kind of back up and really see the big picture.

And I think one area where sometimes we, particularly as doctors can struggle is with some all or nothing thinking and thinking like, oh, am I going to do coaching or am I going to do medications as though they don't, you know, overlap or that they both couldn't benefit from one another? You know what I mean? And it's I think, really important. I think more and more people are going to see this moving forward that like, wow, okay.

[00:19:15] You know, it's really fun to be on these medications at first because it's always super fun to lose weight. You know, you feel great. It's awesome. You're like, I can absolutely do this forever. And then like, what happens in a year or two years or five years or now you're eating like weird shakes designed for people on these medications because you've lost so much muscle mass. Sometimes we need to start thinking about some other things, and it would be really, really awesome if you already had those mindset support systems in place to help you with whatever transitions might come in the future.

And if you're somebody where it just didn't work out for you, or it's just not the right thing for you, for whatever reason, I really again, I want to just say it again. There is so much hope. Like, don't give up hope. Please, please do not let this like spin you out into a spiral of frustration and despair and like, it's never going to happen. It's just going to be different. You know? It's just going to be different and other options and other solutions are available to you. I just want to really make sure to impress that on you. All right, my friend. Well, thank you so much for being here. I want to be clear, like people who are on these medications are contemplating them or trying to get off of them or whatever are absolutely welcome in my programs.

[00:20:26] I don't know where people thought that they weren't, maybe, but I don't think everybody thought that. But some people did. And yeah, I just wanted to clear that up. Absolutely. We are here to support you and to help you in whatever way we can. I can and my team can and whatever makes the most sense for you. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to encourage you to share this episode with somebody that you think it could help, whether that's personally or sharing it on social or wherever it makes sense. It would be great if you could pass it along to somebody else, kind of like, you know, you read that book that was so great, and you give it to your friend, maybe something along those lines.

All right, well, I hope you have a great rest of your day and rest of your week. I'm going to be in the car doing a lot of driving. Luckily, my son can drive so we can trade off. That's one thing I keep telling myself that's going to be a huge benefit. So all right, well, I have a great one. Thanks again for being here with me and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #380: Update: Weight Loss Medications and Coaching appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you ever felt more stressed after vacation than you did before?

This is a very common experience, but I’m going to give you some tips and tricks to combat it so that you can enjoy your next vacation in peace knowing that everything will be under control when you get home.

I have tips for both home and work life because I know that they can be equally stressful to come back to after time off (piles of laundry and stacks of paperwork – say no more). I also want to talk about how to get back into a normal routine with food so that you don’t feel like vacation has derailed your progress toward a healthy relationship with food and your body.

Let’s talk about how to create a smoother re-entry after vacation so that you can feel better after your break, not worse.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Managing your expectations for your vacation and your return to work * Giving yourself time to readjust when you get back home * Realistic ways to prepare for your return * How to get caught up on work * Taking time to create a prioritization system * How to stop living from vacation to vacation and start enjoying everyday life

We’re spending time talking about both thoughts and actions in this episode. Changing your mindset is one of the most important things you can do, but there are also actions you can take to set yourself up for success that I want to go through. It’s difficult to get back into your normal routine after vacation, but hopefully, this episode will help you.

To learn more about how the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you go to katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #377: Making it Through Litigation in One Piece with Dr. Gita Pensa

Ep #376: Overeating in Social Situations

Ep #375: Improve Your Well-Being Through Intentional Focus

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there my friend. Welcome to today's podcast. I swear I keep thinking, okay, now the rain has really died down. Now I can start recording and then it rains harder and louder. But this is actually kind of appropriate.

I really do need to record this episode for you today, like now, because I'm actually heading out on a family trip here soon, and we're talking about vacation today on this episode, so it kind of works out perfectly. It's like, well, I need to get it done. So I guess, you know, the dog's also been barking like crazy downstairs. We're gonna do what we can do. We're going to see what happens here. But yeah, I'd like to say that when it's raining because, as you know, I'm in the attic, right? So it's loud when it rains, but when it's raining, just think of this as like one of those, like, meditative rain shower types of audio. So, you know, it's like two for one. You get a podcast and you get to totally chill and relax, maybe at the same time.

[00:01:31] So I want to talk to you today about vacation, but more specifically, what it's like to come home from vacation because something that comes up a lot to ask for. The people I do work with when it comes to eating, because sometimes when we're, you know, we like vacation, we're even off of our people. We're eating this off of our usual, not even necessarily off plan, but the way that we approach it, the it will we are eating is the thing. And, you know, we often will us to think like then I'll get back around and just like transition right back into like my normal way of eating and my normal life. And then to go that way things start to feel harder.

So say if it was a week of vacation, then you come back and it takes you another week or maybe even longer to sort of get back into the swing of things guy that they were before, a little puffed. So people start to feel really stressed about back start thinking, oh my gosh, like, I've lost all this time. And you know, whatever's happened with weight and it starts to feel like a lot. On top of that, though, it's come up and again and again, even over the years as I've coached women physicians that it's, you know, pretty common for us to come back from vacation kind of feeling worse, you know, like, meaning we're more tired than when we left.

[00:02:49] We might feel more angry when we return, feel like we can feel whole, like you can feel more included and reenter. And it all just is still worse. And we can make you having these thoughts of of why do I ever even, you know, out on vacation in it known it would be this hard to just stayed home you lots of thoughts like that left for having those thoughts when you when I was in practice, when I would come back to my you were on paper charts come back adage just see the head your of the chart might be pretty on my desk what have me I that way for some reason you really I have things to thought and I thought it was a good one.

I thought, you know, I just want to get through these as quickly as possible so I can feel all caught up. And so I did this again and again over the years, where I would just stay late that first day that I came to work, that first evening into the night, I would just stay and I would just get all the phone calls done, and I would review everything, and I would just at least try to make like a very, very significant dent in that pile. And I remember one of my older partners who actually ended up retiring while I was working. I remember him just kind of looking at me once.

[00:03:56] He had a much different, um, kind of demeanor to mine. He was much more chill about everything. He was just like, I give myself at least a week to get through the day. And for me, at the time, I thought it was ridiculous and just completely unacceptable. That was my first thought about it, like I would not do that, but now with more experience and time and then like you might have actually kind of put something birth. And I wanted to test to ask about that many stories. And I'm sure you see two of their vacation and it just did that really, really tough.

And one thing in particular to remember was and going on a vacation trip, I only one kid at the time and paper was three, and we had put him into an old school thinking that would be, well, good, and if you complete disaster, it was just did not go for that's a story for another time and that's going to we also just doesn't didn't think that surge altitude might bother him. So you might not sleep. So it's my son did not barely sleep at all in a good sleeper. He did not sleep at all for a week. We were is so exhausted like, and won't really come back early so that I could go have to to a full week. Jake Paul at you get that call weeks ago he was literally the worst busiest call weekend I had in the ten and a half years that I practiced.

[00:05:19] That was something that was really, really something I like. Recommend that I want to talk to you today about some ways that you those thoughts could be contributing off difficult reentry for Cap, and how those can be shifted and changed to help. The reentry. And I want to just talk about some actions too. Like sometimes there's just some good things that we can do that can set us up for success. And I think it's it often ends up being kind of a combination of both. Right. We shift our thinking and then maybe we do a couple things that help us smooth that reentry and that transition. And then overall, it can be a better experience.

So. You know, I think one of the things that's difficult about vacation is what our expectations are of it, even going into it. So [00:06:08] if you have been struggling at work, if you haven't enjoyed being there, if it's been difficult for you, it's been a difficult experience and you're looking forward to vacation. You're thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to be so great, I'm gonna have a break. I'm going to feel so good. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to sleep. I'm gonna rest. I'm gonna whatever it is that you're doing. A lot of the time when we really are thinking about what that vacation is going to be, it's like no human being could experience a vacation like that. [00:06:35]

You know? Like the reality of vacation is that hopefully you have some good times and hopefully there's some fun. Hopefully there's some rest. Hopefully there's some relaxation. Or maybe it's like an, you know, an adventure trip or something and you go see cool stuff and you go see Beautiful Nature because you're hiking or whatever it may be. Hopefully you have some good positive experiences, but often it's not like the really super shiny, polished version that we had in our minds. [00:07:05]

So sometimes we come back and we're like, shoot, I thought I would feel better than I do just because I thought it would be more rejuvenating, more restorative. Sometimes I kind of laugh or joke. It's like I kind of thought I wouldn't be a human being anymore. You know what I mean by that is we kind of forget that I am still a human in this world. You know, there's still going to be ups and downs. Travel is still going to be tiring. There's still going to be, you know, challenges that come up and flights that are delayed. And, you know, there's still going to be those normal ups and downs of living life and sometimes arguably even more so, like when your luggage gets lost or delayed or, you know, just all the things that can come along with travel. So I think that recognizing that and that we need to not be excited for the trip, it's not that so much.

[00:07:58] It's more just recognizing this is going to be really cool. I'm going to really enjoy myself. I'm excited to see how it all plays out, and I know there's going to be ups and downs to that way. If it's not perfect, when it's not perfect, you're not feeling like you totally got sold a bill of goods. Like what? Oh my gosh, this was like, oh, you know, you know, you're like, yeah, this is how it goes. Some vacations are better than others. You know, like one year we took a another ski trip vacation. And my daughter, how old was she at the time? Maybe six. Something like that.

She got a stomach bug on the way there. Literally. We arrived and she was not feeling well. And then she was sick the entire week. And after the first night she gave it to me. So the two of us were sick in the condo the entire week. And that was our vacation. You know, it's like, that's how it happens sometimes. What can you do? So I do think that. Again, not dampening, not like looking at it like I don't want to get my hopes up. Nothing like that. But instead thinking about it like I'm excited for the cool things that are going to happen, and I'm gonna be here for the ups and downs of it all. If there's some downs, I'm going to know.

[00:09:14] Yeah, that's what happens sometimes. That's how it is. Then you have the trip or the vacation or the time off. And when you come back. Your thoughts have a big impact on your experience. So when we're feeling worse, you know, we step into work for the first time and then, you know, work is still work and you start feeling angrier. That's when we start, you know, having thoughts like that are not helpful. Let's just say so when you have thoughts where you're immediately annoyed, like, why is everybody still exactly the way that they were when I left?

Or why is this annoying thing still like this? Or maybe you asked some people to do something while you left, and then when you came back, it hadn't been done yet. Or, you know, things like that. Our thoughts can really, really add to that. Many of us, though also, Feodor, we want to come back from vacation. We want to just feel our load completely settled and back in our normal lives. And that's really where the root can fairly often start. Difficult. Like you come back, it's maybe have, you know, a week's worth, go a full family's worth of dirty laundry. If I maybe sand I would and like who knows what else different and to deal with that I mean you might have it's a messy house practice left just trying to get everything together with like, sewing, you know, might have.

[00:10:34] And nothing in your fridge, right. Like your pantry and file cabinets. Everything mining for me. Bear. You might also what you really need in that day and had this might have a thought. I just want things and I to be back to normal. You just want to feel settled again. And I think that it's true that we want that. But often thinking about that makes us feel worse, like we're not really open so much to the reentry period. We're not willing or so willing as we might be able to be to let the reentry period take a little while, like getting home and then turning everything around in two hours, going to bed, and then getting up the next morning as though everything were normal.

Like, that's probably particularly with certain types of lifestyles, like probably not going to be the reality. And then wanting things to be back to normal just makes us feel worse about the way things currently are. So, you know, you come back and you have an inbox just full of notes and charts and labs and images and so much stuff you have to do. Thinking it should be different than that is what makes it feel worse. It's basically resisting. The reality, but then also resisting what's true for you. You know, it's okay if you come back and you're like, yeah, this is a lot. It's pretty overwhelming. We're going to talk about maybe a way to work through that, to make it a little bit more bearable in just a couple minutes, but recognizing like this is difficult.

And yeah, this is what happens when you leave and you take a break, you come back, there's more to work through. There's no need to rush, and it doesn't mean I don't ever need to take time off or, you know, I shouldn't do that. When I resist what is true, when I resist the reality, it will make this experience feel worse. So it may already feel like a lot. And then when you resist it, you're making it feel that much worse. You're like adding to the discomfort, adding to the negative experience. And that's the part that's created by our thinking. Yes, there is the work to do.

Yes there is, you know, digging out. But then the way you think about it massively impacts what your experience is of that. Okay. So I'm not saying that you should not tell yourself the truth. You shouldn't just be like, oh my gosh, I love it when I have, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of things that I need to go through. But you can tell yourself, you know what? This feels like a lot feel a little overloaded right now. And that's a normal experience when you come back after having been gone for however long. And I'm gonna just figure out a way to work my way through it.

[00:13:19] I'm just going to chip away at it, and I'll get through it all. Like, that's a way that changing your thoughts helps you to know that you're going to be okay, you're going to get through it. And how do you know you're going to? Because you always do. I mean, my pile of charts always went away. Like eventually everything gets caught up again. So we don't have to add pain to the experience by resisting it. So, you know, I want things back to normal. I have to get things back to normal that can make you feel even more overloaded. You just got back from your vacation and now you have to like, scramble like crazy to get everybody unpacked and like all the things and get ready for work, I mean, right, that thought alone is exhausting.

If you did get some rest while you were gone, you probably have lost it with that thought. And another thought, you know, it shouldn't feel like this, right? It shouldn't be this bad. Well, but if it is, then it is, and that's what we've got. So how can we work through it and, you know, not add to the agony of it? One other thought that really creates a lot of pain is I just had a vacation, so I should feel great, or I should be feeling amazing and I'm not. I don't think that that is helpful. Like, we have this expectation that vacation is supposed to make us feel a certain way, and if it doesn't, then we did vacation wrong or something is wrong with us.

And that's really a painful way to think about it. Like we have to decide what is it that we want to get out of that vacation and then remind ourselves that we did get it. I've known people to have an amazing vacation. They come back within an hour, like, oh my God, why did I even go away? And well, they're not remembering that they just had this great experience and that yes, we're back to work. We have to reenter. Can be a little bit of shock to the system again. And that's okay. It can feel hard. It's normal for it to feel hard. So my suggestion is to give yourself one full week to reenter.

You know, it is a big transition coming back. You might have various factors that make it even harder. You might have jet lag. If you are dealing with jet lag. You've got to give yourself some grace in that vacations themselves can be pretty tiring depending on what you're doing. Depending on when your travel plans are, it can be very, very tiring. I found years ago that coming home a day early has really, really worked wonders. We didn't use to do that. We thought, oh, you know, let's try to maximize the vacation as much as we can. And what we find is, you know, you get home and then you have that next day.

[00:16:01] It's just a miracle to be able to get some more rest, unpack, get some laundry started, you know, get some basic groceries in the house, like, just sort of get yourself feeling a little stable before you reenter into the day to day life. That's not always possible. This trip that I'm about to take, we it didn't work out that way. We have to come home on Sunday and then Monday. Here we go. So we do the best we can and we can make adjustments when possible, but it's not always possible. Okay, so from the home front, it's easy to think like I'm gonna, you know, cook ahead and stock all these amazing meals in the freezer and all the da da da da.

I mean, if you can do that, amazing. Go you. But let's just be really realistic. And maybe what we can do is make a little short list for ourselves before we go. Or maybe even on our way out. Like if you have some travel time to be able to just write down what you're going to need and what you're going to need to do when you get back. So it doesn't feel so overwhelming and like you didn't expect it. So just simple things like you're going to need to get some groceries and maybe this is something you just order in, or maybe you just run out to the store quick and just, you know, pick up some basics.

[00:17:13] You might even want to throw together a list if you know what you need. Just just what those basics are. It's easy. When you already have the list, you just go and get it or order it. Getting some laundry going. That might be something that you need to do. You might need to go through the mail and packages. You might need to go through your email. Sometimes that's a bigger dig out, you know, going through all the different messages that have come through and figuring out what needs to be done with what. And, you know, as far as what you're going to eat.

Some people find it really helpful to have the first couple of meals, you know, maybe planned or maybe just kind of loosely, an idea. And what I mean by that is like, maybe you actually do have some meals in the freezer or some easy things in the freezer, and you could just know, like, okay, those first couple of nights we're going to have that. Or it could be like, this is a time when you order takeout from those places that you know are on plan that just, you know, simplify your life that much more. Some people have cleaning service come in while they're gone. I think that's amazing. If you can do that. I haven't really typically done that, but I think that can be fun to come home to like a spick and span house.

And sometimes people even, you know, have a friend or a family member or, you know, hire someone to pick up those groceries and have them in the house so that you have them right when you're getting home. I think those are amazing. If you have that as an opportunity, if you don't, it's also, you know, it's not required by any stretch, but it can just help you to feel like you have what you need and you're able to get off on the right foot, right? When it comes to home, another thing to do is to try to prioritize sleep that first week if at all possible, like just recognizing that there's just a lot going on, a lot of things that are outside of the typical, a lot of adjusting.

And often we don't sleep that great when we're traveling, you know, like, or we're just exhausted from the things that we were doing. So that can really help us to for already coming home down on sleep. And then we're, you know, like trying to do all the other things like get through all the charts and get through the laundry and getting the house back in order. Then we're exhausting ourselves even more. We feel even worse. So honestly, it's like letting the laundry sit for a while is better if it means that you can get caught up on sleep so that your overall general like mental perspective on life is more positive, it's going to make things a lot better.

[00:19:35] Okay, now let's talk about work. So you get back and there's things to do, right? You have a whole list. Now it can be helpful to create some sort of prioritization system. I mean back in my day I would sort of sort things from like who needs phone calls and who, you know, this, that and the other thing and kind of go through those charts like what are the things that need to be done? But even so, what are the things that really need your attention sooner rather than later? And what really doesn't need your attention urgently and making some divisions there? So when you're thinking about giving yourself the whole week to get yourself caught up. Or maybe even longer, depending.

I mean, I think longer than that. It just starts to feel like it's hanging over you. But, you know, depending on, you know, teach their own if that's what you need to do, you totally can do that. But one thing that I think can be really, really helpful is utilizing your support staff. So whether that is, you know, nursing staff or medical assistants or, you know, mid-level provider, you can still use them, utilize them, maybe even just your partners to help you as you are getting yourself caught up. So if there are some phone calls coming in and they were on a patient who the PA saw last week, like maybe you chat it out real quick with the PA and the PA calls them back, you know what I mean? Like you're using the nurses to help streamline things, to help manage expectations with patients who were waiting to hear back from you.

[00:21:04] Potentially. You know, it could be that the way you book your first couple of days back is maybe a little bit lighter to account for, you know, give you some extra time to dig through some things that might be a smart way to approach it. But creating prioritization system I think can be really helpful. Some people use like a red, yellow, green kind of a system, maybe divide it up like this is a Monday issue, a Tuesday issue, a Thursday issue. You know, this is something that really doesn't need to be dealt with urgently at all.

Okay, maybe that's a Friday issue. And then by the time we get to Friday, okay. And that's when we start digging into those things. There's a million other ways you can prioritize, but helping yourself to see you don't have to do everything all at once. Not letting the whole list just weigh on you is very helpful when it comes to your perspective and the way that you think. You can feel a lot more successful when you recognize. I know these are the things that need to get done today, and then you get those done and then you know you're done rather than thinking, oh my gosh, yeah, I did all those things, but look how much else I also still have to do.

[00:22:04] So let other people help you like they're there. Arguably to create an environment where everybody is supported. So let them help you, okay. And then really try not to come home going straight into call or straight into a week on service or things like that. Again, you know, depending if it's like, you know, some sort of family event or something, you might not have a choice and then you just have to really, really prep and and prepare, you know, think about how to support yourself. Because what we don't want happening is coming in without a plan, totally exhausted, you know, life feeling all in disarray. And then we feel terrible.

And then often we end up asking food to try to help us to feel better, which of course, it doesn't really. We only end up feeling worse. And it can really be a tough spiral to get out of. And so that's really what we want to avoid, right? We want to be able to take time off and go on trips and do things like that and enjoy ourselves. Yet we don't want it to feel like it totally derails us. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I went on vacation after doing Weight Watchers, and that was totally just the beginning of the weight coming back on again.

[00:23:14] It happens so many times. It was like, I mean, now I can look at it and go, that was pretty predictable at the time. I'm like, no, no, I won't do that. But I had no plan on how to make sure it didn't happen again. So shifting your beliefs about vacation and about how you approach reentry and what that looks like for you can really, really make a big, big difference. You know? Of course, like I said, I gave you some ideas of things you can do, but really ultimately where this starts in creating a smoother reentry after vacation is in how you think and what you believe.

And I really think that [00:23:51] if we're miserable in our day to day lives and we're just kind of living from vacation to vacation, that can be really, really tricky because we are just kind of settling for not feeling great, not enjoying ourselves day to day, when the day to day is really the majority of our experience of our lives. So if you find yourself just going like I am just so miserable here, then we need to start looking at what's going on there, right? We need to start looking at, okay, well, what needs to happen. So that day to day life can start feeling more pleasant, less something that you need to escape from with vacation and more of something that has its normal ups and downs. [00:24:31]

[00:24:31] [00:24:31]But still, generally speaking, is something that is enjoyable and something that you're pleased with and happy with. [00:24:38] So I'm leaving. Let's see in three days. And, uh, I have not packed. And I'm going to be just totally honest. I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed by it right now. We're taking a trip where we are going to be in kind of a variety of climates and altitudes and different, you know, attire needs. And it feels like a lot. I'm just I'm, I'm, I'm working through it. I think sometimes it's easy to think that, you know, a coach never experiences the same stressors as everyone else. And that is not true.

It's just like thinking like a doctor never gets sick or never struggles with their own health. But it's something that I'm working on as well. And it really inspired this episode. And these are all great things that I'll be looking to utilize as well. Like one thing, because we are coming back on a Sunday is the next day, has purposefully got some protected time in there to be able to kind of deal with whatever needs to be dealt with right when I get back. So these are things that can be modified to suit your life and can really make a big difference. Finally, the last thing I'm going to say is. When you recognize you're in the reentry period, you can stop expecting yourself to be living life like quote unquote normal.

[00:25:57] So in that first week, back when it feels off, when it feels weird, when it feels harder, when you feel more frazzled, you can remind yourself, hey, that's normal. Because this is the reentry period. I'm still in reentry. And that can help to normalize your experience. So you're not resisting it and not thinking that you're doing something wrong or something's wrong with you. It's just a normal part of the experience that we don't typically recognize. So then we think that everyone else has it figured out and doesn't have that experience.

And when we do that, we're doing something wrong. No, that's not how it is. Everyone has that adjustment period going back, and the more that we can talk about it and recognize it and do our best to support ourselves in it, the faster we feel like we move through it. And also time just passes and then everything settles down and we're back to normal again, you know, kind of despite ourselves. So the next time you take a vacation or you take time away, consider applying some of the things that we talked about today. I think it'll make a really big difference for you. I'm going to end it here.

Thank you so much for your attention being here with me today. Take care and I'll talk to you next time. Bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #379: Creating a Smoother Re-Entry After Vacation appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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So, Match Day didn’t go your way. What now?

In this episode, I’m sharing three Do’s and Don’ts to help you get through the grief of not getting the Match Day results you wanted.

You see all these joyful posts on social media of people opening their envelopes and being delighted with where they matched, but you don’t usually see the other side. It’s totally normal for this to leave you feeling alone and lost when you don’t have the happy video to share and you don’t know what to do.

If you didn’t match or you matched with a place low on your list, I’m here to validate and normalize how you’re feeling, help you process your emotions, and walk you through your possible next steps.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Processing the emotions that you might feel if you didn’t match * What options you have if you didn’t match * How to boost your self-esteem * The importance of talking things out * How to avoid relying on emotional eating * Learning how to feel your feelings * Tools for processing your emotions

I hope this episode will encourage you to practice believing in yourself. I’m not here to tell you to cheer up or not to let it bother you; of course it’s going to bother you, and that’s okay! But I also know that you’re going to be okay.

If you’re tuning in as someone whose Match Day is in the past, please share this episode with anyone who you know is struggling right now. I think it will mean a lot to them to know that someone is thinking of them and willing to talk about what they’re going through.

To learn more about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #377: Making it Through Litigation in One Piece with Dr. Gita Pensa

Ep #376: Overeating in Social Situations

Ep #375: Improve Your Well-Being Through Intentional Focus

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Today's episode is one that I kind of am actually surprised I never have talked about on here before, but as I'm recording this, it was just recently match day and my team, we are all aware of what's happening with the doctors, and everyone was talking about how joyful it is and how on social media you see all these super joyful shares of people opening their envelope and just being delighted with where they matched. And it immediately brought to mind that, yes, for a lot of people, that is their experience of match day. But what people typically are not seeing is the reactions of those were match day did not go their way. And what I mean by that is either they didn't match or they may be matched to a place that was way lower down on their list than they thought they would need to go to. Now, since this podcast is for doctors, I'm not going to take any time to explain what the match is or how it works.

[00:01:47] If you're not a doctor and you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe skip this one. But anybody who is listening to this who's a doctor is going to know exactly what I'm talking about. So I wanted to do an episode for the people who didn't have Match Day go exactly their way. And I have a personal experience that kind of fuels this even more. I mean, I think it's a good thing to talk about anyway, because people really don't talk about it very much. But regardless, that'll come here in just amoment. I'll tell you a little bit more about why it is so personal to me, but I really wanted this episode to be something that could be used for someone who just went through the match, and maybe it didn't go their way.

And so when this airs, it'll be a few weeks out and maybe the dust will have settled. Maybe it'll have scrambled into something. Maybe it'll figure out what your plans are for next year. But the emotions can still remain. And that's what I really want to talk about today. Like how you actually get through the pain of it, the hurt of it. But I also wanted this episode to be something that my longer term listeners or people who are maybe much further away from the match in their careers to be able to recommend this episode to anybody that they work with, any learners that they work with who might find themselves in this position, it could be that they've mentored you and recommended that you listen to this episode.

[00:03:11] If you're having this experience, maybe sometime in the future. I wanted it to be a reference episode that can be shared, because this is one of those things where it can feel extremely isolating and extremely lonely when you're going through it. And then finally, I wanted to record this episode because I think there are probably more people than we realize who didn't have a great match experience back in the day and maybe haven't fully processed it. It is an experience that can either ignite some imposter syndrome or some lack of confidence, or it might fuel any imposter syndrome or lack of self-confidence that already exists.

And I know because I have been coaching women physicians for many years, that those are issues that persist and they kind of smolder, you know, they really just can continue on years and years and years later, even when we're well past that, it really can be something that's still actually an active issue going on for us in our minds. So for all of those reasons, I decided, okay, yep, it's time to do match day episode. Let's do this because this is a thing that people go through, and it's important that we talk about it. Similarly to the episode I just did last week, which was about litigation.

[00:04:31] And when doctors are sued, it's a similar thing. We don't talk about it. It's a very, very hush hush. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, if this happens to you suddenly, it's like you're a leper. Everybody wants to get away from you, or they don't want to bereminded that this is a thing that could happen. Like I said, it can be a very, very difficult, challenging, painful experience to go through. So let me tell you why this is a personal experience. Not because I didn't match, I did actually match, and I did match to my top choice.

The reason for that was because I only put one choice. It's a bit of a dive bomb situation when I matched, but the story, it really starts with my husband, because he did not match the very first time that he applied. And this is something that I got his permission of course, to talk about. It was actually interesting with us talking about it. I said to him, you know, I totally understand if you don't want me to talk about this and share our story, his story, our story. But I will say that if I can share it, I think anybody who listens will be able to recognize that. It's not that I'm just teaching what I know. It's that I really, really, deeply know this on a personal level, and I think it'll be more impactful. And he agreed. And so he was like, yep, absolutely.

[00:05:47] You know, you can talk about it. And then it also gave us the opportunity to go back in time because this was many years ago now to kind of hash that out again, so to speak, kind of a trip down memory lane. Like, what was that like and how did that all go? And, you know, asking him how he felt and things like that. So I will try to keep this story as concise as I can. So my husband was a year ahead of me in medical school when we met. I was a second year med student. He was third year and because of the timeline of everything, we had to decide like really relatively quickly, whether we were going to factor each other into our ongoing plans.

Like, was this serious enough that we were going to try to work it out so we could be together in residency or not? And so we came to the conclusion that, yes, we did think we wanted to do that. And so it would make sense that he would match somewhere. And then I would do my very best to try to match their the next year. That was basically the plan. And back in those days, ear, nose and throat, which is kind of doctor he is was part of the early match that has since changed. I know there are some fields that still some specialties that still are in the early match, but just kind of follow me on this, because back in those days, it was probably the early match.

[00:07:02] I was doing pediatrics, you know, which is regular match, but we weren'teven in the same year. And really, he had been an excellent student all the way through. He I don't even want to really say like coasted through his schooling, but it wasn't like particularly taxing. Let's just say I mean, I worked a lot harder than him. Let's just say that and know him in college. But I know what I did and it was it was much more challenging. So not that because he took the easy way out by any stretch. It's just that school was something that came relatively easily to him.

He had gotten great, like full ride merit scholarship to college, special scholarship. He got like, you know, it was like really amazing full ride scholarship that he got. He got into a great med school, had multiple options there, never had any concerns about not getting into med school, had really been one of the top students in his class. And things had been going really, really well for him. As you may know, you don't stand in front of your peers with an envelope that's empty or an envelope that says you didn't match. You find out a little bit in advance, I think, like the day or two before that you didn't match. And I cannot even begin to express to you how much of a shock it was to him, to me, to all of us who knew him.

[00:08:26] I mean, it was just so out of left field. You know, it's one thing if you're like, you know what? This is a really competitive, you know, field and specialty. And I'm a decent student, but, you know, definitely not a shoo in like. Let me just try and see and then like, here's my backup plan. If it doesn't work, I'll go into the regular match in this other thing. That is one thing, right? When you're kind of like, you know what I mean? It's a reach, but why not try? This was not that at all with his advisors and everything, like nobody had ever had any concerns.

I mean, he knew that it was more competitive, but this was just not a thing that had ever been considered. So I cannot, you know, probably overemphasize how shocking it was that he didn't match. So I actually asked him what his feelings were, you know, like, let's just really dig in because, you know, this is feelings. What's all about. And back in those days, I wasn't connected to my feelings. We certainly didn't talk about it so much. So I made a list as we were talking. So this is what we came up with. He felt sad. He felt really shocked. The word he said really described. It was gutted, you know, just feeling like just completely dug out inside, just completely gutted.

[00:09:39] He felt like a disappointment to himself. He felt like a disappointment to his family. And that was really hard. You know, that was very emotional to feel like he'd let people down, let himself down, let his family down. He felt like his self-confidence, which previously had been pretty strong, was very much shaken, he said. It was kind of like it felt like, you know, what you thought was solid isn't solid. Like finding out this thing that you thought was a sure thing? Absolutely. Isn't that level of uncertainty.

You know, I think that that is something that we all got a taste of during the pandemic, right? We thought life was a certain way and suddenly life was very, very different. He felt angry, you know, kind of like, why didn't I get better advice? Like, how could this happen? Fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of it never working out. And he said he was fearful of what it meant for us, him and me and our relationship. Our kind of budding relationship. Said he really felt embarrassed, and I think that's something that a lot of people don't talk about. He really felt embarrassed. I mean, obviously people knew and he felt grief stricken because there really was a death, a death of the vision that he had had for what his life was going to look like, a death of what his plan was to get to where he wanted to be in his career.

[00:10:55] And it was just super, super, super tough time. I'll lightly mention and touch on the fact that it was hard for me too. I mean, I had a lot of the similar emotions, to be honest. And I remember I actually, a couple days later had to go see my own doctor for something. I don't even remember what it was, and she, I don't remember, but she somehow said like, you know, are you doing okay? I don't know, I must have I must have been exuding some sort of energy or something. And I was like, no. And I just started bawling. I was like, my first time I'd actually had any kind of emotional release.

I'd just been holding it together and oh my gosh, it was a really, really, really tough time. So what ended up happening was we got different advice and stuff and people said, well, why don't you just go into the regular match in general surgery? And like, he didn't really want to be a general surgeon. Like, no offense to any of the general surgeons great practice area. It's just not what he wanted to do. There were four positions left unfilled after this match that he could scramble for. He applied to all four of them. We know for sure he interviewed at one of them because I went with him. He thought that maybe he had gone to another one. I honestly, I don't really remember. I didn't go if he did, we couldn't really remember.

[00:12:15] It was a long time ago. The one place where we did go to together, we were kind of like, oh, even if you get it, like, I don't know that this is it, you know? And so but they didn't they didn't offer it to him. And so he really had to figure out what is he going to do. And I think, you know, the options besides scrambling are, you know, there's different things you can do. You can try to, you know, go get a master's degree. You can do research. You can maybe, you know, go travel and do some volunteer work or things like that.

So he decided to do a year of research, which kind of worked out perfectly for us because then we could be together. We actually got married the beginning of that year of research, and while I was finishing my fourth year, and then we could work on figuring out how we were going to try to do a couples match together. So he decided to do that to bolster his application with a year of research. It was a lab that was really highly regarded in ear, nose and throat and gave them an opportunity to work with some great people. So that's what he decided to do, how it all ended up working out. Just in case you're wondering, I mean, that next match was an extremely stressful period of time for us, as you might imagine.

[00:13:19] The reason why I did sort of that dive bomb is what we decided was that we would both apply, like as early as we could, and that even though I was regular match and he was early, I would interview early, like as early as I possibly could. And so we had a month where we were like, you know, never barely seeing each other. I think we had like we met at one time in Alabama. I think we both had an interview in Alabama on the same day, but otherwise we were jet setting all around the country, just blanketing it with applications, trying to go to as many places as we could.

And then what we did was we jointly decided on his rank list, because you could actually do the couples match with an early match and a regular match, but there had been a couple the year before him, I believe, like where he didn't match, where both of them had been really, really, really excellent students and one was early match, one was regular and going into, you know, pretty competitive fields and they did match. But it was like way lower than they had anticipated or anyone expected. So the advice we got was not to do it that way. So we created our joint rank list. Then he matched and then I only ranked that place. And you know, we told his chair, you know, hey, could you let them know, you know.

[00:14:39] And I was open when I was interviewing like, hey, we're a joint deal. So I'll let you know after he matches what's going on. So of course I immediately like expressed my interest and honestly it worked out great. It was our third choice. So that's not bad at all. That's in fact really, really awesome. So then he did his residency and he got to do exactly what he had wanted to do. He always wanted to work in private practice as a general ENT, and he's been doing that now for a lot of years, and he's been able to do exactly what he wanted to do, even though there was, I mean, calling it a, you know, an obstacle sometimes feels like it's like. Under emphasizing it.

I mean, it felt like running your car at 90 miles an hour into a brick wall. That level of obstacle. I mean, not to be dramatic, but seriously, it really felt so bad. So luckily for him, he came with already a pretty decent level of self-esteem and self-confidence and thoughts about himself, and that really buoyed him. We talked some more about different thoughts about himself and, you know, did he make this mean negative things about himself? And he said, it really didn't. But I know that there are so many people out there who already have a little bit more of that shaky self-confidence. And it's easy to make not matching or matching much lower on the list than you would hope for to make that mean that this is, you know, proof that you really aren't very good, that you really do suck, that you're wrong about yourself like you thought you were good, but you're not.

[00:16:13] And everyone else knows and you're just finding out or, you know, really some very, very painful thoughts that we can have about it. And I want to emphasize that these are actually their thoughts. They're not the truth. They are not facts. They are one way of thinking about it. It's important that we understand that, because the way that we think creates how we feel. And when we wonder, like, why do we feel so bad? It's because of how we think. Now, I'm definitely not suggesting that you just be like, okay, well then I just have to think that it's no big deal that I didn't match and then I won't feel so bad about it.

That's not how that works. That's not what I'm saying at all. But there's the pain of the facts that you didn't match, right? There's the feelings that you have, all the emotions that come with that. We don't need to add on to it by deciding to think certain ways about it that create more pain. Right? It's like if you're already injured, you don't need to think in ways that creates, you know, feelings that are like daggers. You know, you don't have to add insult to injury, basically.

[00:17:19] And so I have three don'ts and three do's for how to approach this kind of a situation. So you haven't matched or the match did not go the way that you had hoped. What to do. And I will say that, you know, even if it was five years ago, ten years ago, maybe longer than that for you, these still might be very, very useful things to address. Because like I said, I think there's a lot of people who've shoved this down and wanted to pretend like it never happened. Right? Don't want anyone to know. So don't make this mean something that it doesn't mean right. Don't start telling yourself stories. It's really, really easy to decide to think about something right?

Like they didn't accept me. And that means this either about them or about me. And before we know it, we believe it like it's the truth. When all along it was a story that we just made up. This is how human brains work. There's nothing wrong with you if you're doing this. This is normal. But since we know it happens and we know it's normal, we can become more aware of the fact that it could happen. We have to be really very careful to not tell ourselves that we know why we weren't accepted, unless they have specifically told us why, which they probably did not like. Well, it's because this person didn't like me and this one interview went badly. Well, I mean, it could be that you could have done a better job interviewing, you know, like, that definitely could be the case.

[00:18:53] But, you know, you don't know. You really just don't know. And it's actually less uncomfortable to sit with the uncertainty than to tell yourself, like, to spin tales, like very scary fairy tales like mean, you know, the evil characters, like the, you know, conjuring up these villains, whether you're the villain or they're the villain, and then believing that that's true and that's how it happened. It's really something we want to be careful of. And, you know, speaking on my husband's case, like he had the grades, he had the test scores, like everything was great. And so it was kind of like, well, maybe he could do better with his interviews.

Like some thoughts that he settled on were, you know, I just didn't show them how good I am. I just didn't convince them. And I need to do a better job of doing that rather than like, I'm not good or, you know, no one's going to accept me. Or they saw the truth of who I am. Who was I kidding that I could, like, dilute them into thinking that I can actually do this? None of that kind of stuff just going like, oh, you know what? I didn't communicate well enough to them. What I'm capable of, what I can do, why they should take me. And so that allowed him to have the energy and the fortitude and just the patience with himself to practice interviewing.

[00:20:05] He did go and then do several practice interviews with many of the ENT attendings where we were in school, where he was doing research to really practice and to make it smoother and make it better. And I think that really did a lot in helping him to match the second time. Okay. So the first don't is don't make this mean something. It doesn't mean the second don't is don't avoid talking about it. Don't bottle this all up. Don't kind of be like, okay, this is the thing that will never be spoken of again. I don't want anyone to ever know.

Not saying that you need to be like leading with this and telling, you know, shouting it from the rooftops necessarily. But, you know, when we really stuff it down and we don't want anyone to know, all that does is it fuels shame. Shame comes from thinking that something is wrong with us, right? Something's wrong with me because I didn't match. And when we don't talk about it, when we don't share it and only fuels that and you might think like, oh, well, you know, what's the big deal? I deserve to feel ashamed for it. Or, I don't know, something that I don't agree with, some sort of, you know, thought like that. But the problem is, is that shame starts putting its fingers in other areas of your life.

[00:21:17] Like, you start feeling ashamed about other things, and soon you're feeling shame in a lot of areas of your life. And what shame likes to do is hide. And it likes to stay in the dark. So the more that you can share about it, the more you can talk about it. That alone starts to help to relieve the shame. I mean, even just recognizing, like you're

not the only one that this has happened to like it doesn't mean something's wrong with you. It's just an obstacle, you know, like, if you really just look at the facts of it, it's like people made some choices of, you know, who they wanted to work with, and your name was not high enough on that list.

It doesn't mean anything negative about you, right? Remember, you just didn't show them. You just didn't convince them. You didn't convey that well enough. That's all that happened. It doesn't mean something is wrong with you. So we're not going to make it mean something doesn't mean. And we're not going to avoid talking about it. We're not going to bottle it all up, shove it down, and, you know, act like it doesn't affect us or it never happened. And then the third don't is a bit of a cautionary tale. This is not the time to start relying on eating, on food, on alcohol, on social media, on basically anything to numb you out, to help you get through this time.

[00:22:32] You know, I think that there are some people that it could be that emotional eating actually starts happening, like they start actually developing emotional eating patterns because of something like this happening and not knowing how else to support themselves and not having anybody to talk to about it, not having any other outlet to deal with this. So how about I just try to make myself feel better and not myself out with food or with alcohol with, you know, other substances? It could be any number of things, right? That's what we want to be really careful of.

Now, I'm not saying that a distraction or a break from what you're feeling isn't warranted. You don't have to be feeling horrible all of the time. In fact, I think it's actually really nice if you can, you know, get lost in a novel or, you know, you just start watching a movie and you, you know, just don't think about it for a little while. Like, I think that's amazing. There's very little or minimal long term negative consequences of doing those things. Whereas overeating over drinking and getting sucked into looking on social media at everybody else's, you know, their highlight reel, like if you're feeling awful inside and then you're watching all these people and their amazing posts about like, how happy they are that they match to this place, in that place. I mean, that's no, that's not going to be useful or helpful to you at all.

[00:23:47] Right, okay. So that's we're not going to do. And what do we do then? Here's what I want to encourage you to do. This is a great opportunity for you to feel your feelings and to learn how to do that. If you don't know how, if you're kind of like, I don't even know, like I might be over run with them, I want to let you know that that's really typically not how that works for something like this. Although if you are concerned about that, there are support people in the world who can help, who can be there with you, people like a therapist, you know, coaches things like that. It's a really important that you let these feelings out. Again.

You don't want to bottle them up. You don't want to stuff them down. You don't want to try to pretend that they don't exist, you know, by eating or things like that. So here are some examples of ways that you can process your emotions. And this is by no means comprehensive or covering every single way, but these are easily accessible to most people, and they can be really effective. And you might want to try all of them. So the first one is writing often just writing and writing.

What is the truth like not trying to like, sugarcoat it and telling everybody that you're fine when you know inside you're not even sure you will be fine. But like lying about it, you know, essentially, and saying that like, whatever is true, putting it down on paper, not because you necessarily want to go back and, you know, review it and, you know, spend a lot of time with it, but more just as an outpouring, just a catharsis, just an emptying of what's inside your mind.

[00:25:13] Okay. Another one is talking. Like finding that person you can talk to is really, really important. I will say that one thing my husband said is like, he still went to the match day ceremony to support his friends and stuff, and I said, how did you feel doing that? And he's like, awful. It was horrible, you know? So it's like everyone knew that he didn't get up there and open the letter, you know which guess what that means. You didn't match. Like everybody knows, you're seeing all your friends being so excited and not an accusation or nothing against them.

But like, they didn't know what to say, so they didn't say anything. You know, he was feeling super horrible and alone, you know, but still like, carrying on and being there for his friends. And like doing all that stuff, right? Having someone that you can actually talk to about, all of that is so important. And this could be a good friend. This could be a family member. This could be like a set, a coach or a therapist. This could be a trusted advisor or a mentor, but somebody that you can just be honest about what's going on with you with.

[00:26:20] One thing that can be difficult is when you have people who really, really love you and want what's best for you, and then something like this happens. They're in pain too, you know? So, for instance, say like your parents are a sibling, you know, they're hurting too, and they want you to feel better. And so sometimes it can be hard for them to support you because they're dealing with their own stuff, even though it's your thing and it feels worse, arguably for you, they're still going through it too, and it can make it hard for them to be the kind of listener or support system that you're really needing or wanting.

Also, maybe not, but I just want to put that out there. That is what can be so great about a coach or a therapist is they're neutral. You know, they're totally on your side. They're there to listen, and then you're not going to have to be like taking care of them because they're getting so upset knowing that you're having a hard time or feeling bad. You know, they're not saying they're like trying to cheer you up. Instead, they're trying to help you to process what's happening. Okay, so writing, talking, screaming, I mean it in the car, in a pillow, in the forest. By yourself like that can be very helpful. Just getting that emotion, that energy out of you using your voice can be very helpful.

[00:27:32] Similarly, using your eyeballs crying. If it can come, let it out. Like just let yourself cry. Let yourself sob. Don't tell yourself it's silly. Don't tell yourself it makes no difference. Why am I crying? That is just energy coming out of your eyeballs. Let it come. Let the waves come and don't fight it. Don't resist it. Don't try to stop. Just go to a private place where you can be by yourself and just let the waves come. Just know you are letting all those emotions out of you by allowing that. If you have a hard time crying, sometimes it can be helpful to listen to like some sad songs. Or if there are certain parts of movies that you know are very emotional and kind of really trigger you to be able to cry, you can watch that sometimes that can help kind of

get it flowing. And then exercise is another one too. You know, some people really find that feelings like anger and fear and things like that, that exercise can really help to move some of that out as well. So just knowing that moving your body can really help. I mean, that can be a great thing to do. You know, getting out in nature, getting out in fresh air can be really, really good. Okay. So do feel your feelings. Let them out. Don't be afraid of them. They are natural and normal. And the path to really incorporating this into your life so it doesn't feel so sensitive and tender and difficult, is to move those emotions through.

[00:28:57] Okay. The second do I actually kind of talked about but a little bit different. So find supportive people that you can talk to and that you can get advice from. And so what I mean by that is obviously the people I just talked about earlier, but also, you know, just in terms of advice, like my husband realized, you know what, hey, I'm gonna talk to, you know, the guy who was advising me before, but I'm also going to maybe spread out the net, cast the net a little wider, talk to maybe some other people, get some advice from them, talk things out with them.

You know, just recognizing there are people who want to help you and taking advantage of them, like finding out what those opportunities are to get some support. You know, some people who are going to genuinely try to help you to figure out what the next best steps are for you, what you should try to do. And then finally do practice believing in yourself. The thing about this is that this issue may come up from time to time, like it still may resurface. You may think, well, I just need to move past it and just move on and it'll go away. I mean, maybe it might and it also might come up again and again. And so this is such a great opportunity for you to really boil it down to what do you believe is true about you, whether you succeed or whether you fail? What is true about you recognizing if you know that you bring value, and that you would be great in this field, and you have the passion for it and the desire to be there.

[00:30:27] You know, like you have to believe in you. You have to know, like, I can do this. I am competent and it's really just my job to show them that. But if you come in going, I don't know if I am. It's a lot harder to convince other people next time, right? We really don't want this to just completely destroy your identity of yourself, your self-confidence, never to rebound. Of course it takes a hit.

Of course you know you're feeling bad for a while, but what do you know is true? Like, one thing that I always can come back to is like, I know I'm a hard worker. I know I'm a smart person and I can learn things. You know? I know that I can persevere, like there are things like that right? Where we just can know, like, no, I know this about myself. I know that I will keep going until I figure out what the the right thing is. You know, for me, like, those are important things to recognize and then to remind yourself of. Here's another little coaching tool that I think can be very, very helpful when a situation like this happens.

[00:31:28] So what I want you to think about is 20 years from now. So say you're listening to this and you have just recently not matched. But even if it's been a while, you know, previously, so 20 years in the future and you are working as a kind of doctor, you want to work as in the ways that you want to be working, and you're feeling really fulfilled in doing that. And you have other things in your life, relationships that you want, like just thinking 20 years ahead. Like, what does that life look like? Like, what is it that you want? Now imagine that you have all that.

Okay, so that has all happened. That is all happened 20 years from now. If that is the case, then how do you look at what has just happened to you? Is it a complete, you know, insurmountable obstacle? Or is it just a temporary one that. Yeah, you have to figure it out. It's not how you thought it was going to go. But you're going to find a solution and you're going to move past it to go create that life. I found that this tool can be very helpful because what we think is, you know, where our minds go is like, everything's going to fall apart. I'm never gonna, you know, be able to do what I want to do. Like, everything's going to be horrible.

[00:32:52] I'm gonna, you know, whatever all the negative things and really extremely rarely is that how it works out. You know, my husband's scenario is a great example of that. He's like, I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do. It really was like a very minor blip now in his life. So thinking about it in that way, you can recognize, you know what? This feels super bad right now. We're not minimizing how you feel right now, you know? Yes, it feels super awful and.

You're going to work through this. If you do those dos right, you find those supportive people, you find some good advice. You work on processing these feelings. You find people you can talk to about what's true for you, and you really work on believing in yourself. You're going to get to where you want to go. I mean, it's inevitable. It really, really is. So this isn't to, like, cheer you up or try to be like, okay, so now you need to just be thinking positively about it or like, don't let this bother you. It's going to bother you. Of course it's bothering you, right? Of course it is. But you can also recognize. You know what? This is a temporary thing. It's a temporary setback. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to keep going and I'm going to I'm going to just keep going until I figure it out. I'm going to. It's similar actually to permanent weight loss, to be quite honest with you.

[00:34:13] Going to just keep going until I figure this out. I'm going to figure out what's the best thing for me. I'm going to keep going. And I don't have to make this mean negative things about me that aren't true. Okay, so the do's are feel your feelings, find the supportive people, and practice believing in yourself. I want to end with letting you know. Another thing that my husband mentioned on his own, which I thought was really impactful, especially for anybody who's listening to this and maybe I should have led with this earlier, but hopefully there are people in other places in their lives still listening to this.

You know, my husband said that nobody really encouraged him or like told him to keep going. Not that they didn't think he should keep going, but nobody said that. None of his friends said, hey man, that is so weird. You need to apply again. Like, or you need to try again or something weird happened because that's not right. Like nobody really expressed that to him. No one said you should keep going. None of the advisors, nobody said like, yeah, you know what? Don't let this stop you. And I don't know why they didn't do that. I think in our culture, I think in our greater culture, but within the culture of medicine, that often is something that we just don't do. Instead, we just kind of avoid talking about it if at all possible.

[00:35:30] It's like, might as well be saying it's like, it's almost like people feel like it's contagious. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, you've got like some bad energy around you. And I don't want any of that to rub off on me. So I'm just gonna kind of avoid. And we know that people are very uncomfortable in kind of, you know, scenarios like this and they don't want to talk about it. And what I want to do is encourage you to talk to anybody that you know, that this has happened to, to encourage them, to help them to know what their strengths are, to tell them what you know to be true about them.

You know, like it is really kind of like oxygen for them. And so my husband was saying that he really had to tell himself that he really had to tell himself, like, no, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to do this, I can do this, you know? And that really came from himself, from within. And so last week, again, we also talked about sharing positive feedback with our colleagues. And this is another example of that of just being willing not to lie, not to say things that aren't true, but to let them know that they have a lot to offer that, you know, even if it maybe isn't in that field. Whatever they do, the people that they take care of are going to be lucky to have them like things like that really, really go a long way.

[00:36:52] And I think probably for people who've had this experience, they're more likely to do it. But for those of us who didn't have the experience, even more important for us to understand, like it is awkward, it does feel weird and do it anyway. Please. It really, really makes a difference. And when we're talking about improving the culture of medicine, making this a more enjoyable environment to work in for everybody, it's these little things really do make a difference. Okay, I'm going to leave it there. My final message. If you hear nothing else, please know that if the match doesn't go your way, you're going to be okay.

You're going to be better than okay. It may be hard to see that right now, but you really are going to be okay. This is a painful, hard, hard time and you're going to totally get through it and you're going to still have a great life. So do not, please make this mean anything negative about you or what's possible for you. You're still going to be an amazing doctor who's going to help so many people, and that is the truth.

Thank you so much for your attention today. Please share this. Share this now. Share this in the future with anybody who you believe could benefit from it. Take care. Have a great week. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #378: When Match Day Doesn’t Go Your Way appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Litigation is a taboo subject in the medical field, but what if we could change that?

A lot of doctors live in fear of one day being sued but not a lot of us talk about it. By bringing it up on the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast, I hope that we can open up the discussion and make it less of a scary subject.

Dr. Gita Pensa is joining us to discuss how we can support doctors (including ourselves) through litigation so they make it out in one piece rather than broken apart by trauma. She’s sharing why things have to change and how that change starts with us.

Whether you or someone you know is going through a malpractice case or you want to be better prepared to support doctors in your community, this is an important episode for everyone to hear.

Gita Pensa, M.D., FAAEM, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brown University and is widely recognized as one of the nation's leading experts on malpractice litigation stress and physician litigation support. Her open-access podcast curriculum, “Doctors and Litigation: The L Word” is an introduction to the practical and psychological preparation necessary for malpractice litigation defendants, and is now used as a teaching tool in medicine, law, and the malpractice insurance industry. She works as a consultant to medical malpractice insurance companies and defense attorneys and is also a well-being and performance coach for defendants in litigation.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* What to do if you’re named in a malpractice case * The importance of seeking and accepting help * Who to talk to about what you’re going through * Accepting that you will make mistakes * How to help yourself and other doctors feel less isolated * Overcoming fear of litigation * The power of being reminded of your value

My hope is that this episode will expand the conversation around litigation in medicine so that doctors can be more educated and less afraid of what might happen if they are ever named in a case. We can only support each other if we’re willing to talk about it. Will you join us?

If you’re interested in Dr. Pensa’s work and you want to learn more, go to doctorsandlitigation.com and leap-coaching.com.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #376: Overeating in Social Situations

Ep #375: Improve Your Well-Being Through Intentional Focus

Ep #374: Lose Weight Without Wielding Portion Control

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Read the Transcript Below:[00:00:08] Katrina : Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified Life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm absolutely thrilled to have a guest for you today. I did not know Doctor Gita Pensa until pretty recently when one of my clients introduced her work to me. It was not long after I took a look before I realized, absolutely, I needed to get her to come on this podcast to talk to you. As you know, we talk about all things related to weight loss and eating and emotional eating and overeating all of those things. So you might wonder, why do I do episodes like this? And what I want you to know is that this is, first of all, lots of people overeat because of this issue. But think about it like I have this platform, and if I can use it to share information that doctors can benefit from, then I want to definitely take advantage of that. And today is one of those days. So Doctor Gita Pensa is an emergency medicine physician, and because of her own experience with going through malpractice litigation, and she will tell you on the episode how this all came to be, but she decided to start putting together some resources to help physicians who are undergoing litigation of all different kinds. So basically being named in a malpractice suit.

[00:02:04] Katrina : And this podcast is so good. It's called Doctors and Litigation: The L Word. It is incredible. It's so good. I right away asked my husband to listen to it too. And I was like, we have to talk about this. This is so good. He loved it as well. And I really want to strongly encourage you to listen all the way through its 13 episodes, whether this is something that is actively an issue in your life or you know, somebody who's going through litigation, or even if not, it's really, really good to educate yourself early on from the beginning. And her approach very much aligns with the work that we do here and that I teach and talk about on this podcast. So she now speaks and coaches and talks to groups just extensively. She teaches on this topic of malpractice litigation, stress syndrome, and just educating people on the process and how to help doctors through this. She's talked to residency programs, professional society conferences, CME companies, peer support groups, defense attorneys, malpractice insurers. She's really developed a name for herself in this space as a support for doctors who are defending themselves or being named in a in a lawsuit. And I just love that she came to this by filling a gap that she had noticed when she was going through the experience herself, so we kind of connected on that fact. After we stopped recording the episode of kind of like we both were like, hey, how is there nobody helping doctors with this? I need help for myself, and it's not available. So, okay, fine, I'll be the one who goes first and puts it out there. And that's really what she's done.

[00:03:52] Katrina : I understand that it's like excessive how much I'm gushing over this podcast, but it is that good for real. It is really, really that good. And I really want to encourage you to listen to it, to share it. If you have any kind of, you know, social media, you might want to post it for other people to find, other doctors to find. And my understanding is that even other people in health care, other defendants may be, you know, psychologists or nurses and other support staff have found it really, really helpful as well. It's such a great mix of really educating you, but then helping you to understand what resources are available, helping you to be supported emotionally. It's really just I can't say enough good things. So I wanted to invite Doctor Pensa on to talk about her experience, and there's no way that we could cover all the great things that are taught in this podcast on this episode, but we did touch on a lot of the main points, so I hope that you can get something out of this episode. And maybe after you listen to that, head on over to Doctors and Litigation: The L Word, you know, literally medical schools, residency programs are using it as like a mandatory learning. It's a course assignment in a health care leadership graduate courses. It's like the real deal. And I really want to make sure you know about it. So please enjoy my conversation with Doctor Gita Pensa and then check out Doctors and Litigation: The L Word. Gita, welcome to the podcast. I'm so, so, so excited to have you here with me today.

[00:05:21] Gita: I am the one who is excited. I'm very excited to be here and to talk to you and to your many, many listeners.

[00:05:27] Katrina : Yes, thank you so much. So I first heard about your podcast from a client actually. So it was actually, I don't know, maybe 4 or 6 weeks ago we had an in-person live event, and on one of the breaks, one of my clients came up to me. She will know who she is. I'm not going to out her by name, but she will know who she is. And she said that I should listen to your podcast. That had really, really helped her. And she's a client who's, you know, I've worked with on and off for many years now. And she was just like, it's really, really great. And I was like, oh yeah, that does sound really interesting. I hadn't heard anything specific to doctors for this kind of work. And I was like, yeah, tell me the name, thinking I'm never going to remember this. And she's like, it's called Doctors and Litigation: The L Word. And I'm like, oh, the L word. So anyway, I started listening right away and immediately I was like, oh, she is right. This is really, really, really good. And I have to share this message for real. So I reached out to you. I think I'd only listened to a couple of episodes and I was like, I don't care what she says in the rest of them. Like, definitely I want her to come on. So the first thing I wanted to say is everybody needs to listen all the way through Doctors and Litigation: The L Word can they find it anywhere podcasts are?

[00:06:41] Gita: Yes, they if you just Google Doctors and Litigation, if you just Google the L word, you're going to find something else. So there's like this I think it's an old Showtime show or something like that. But so it's Doctors and Litigation: The L Word. And then you'll find it okay.

[00:06:57] Katrina : Totally free. Available to anybody.

[00:06:59] Gita: Available to anybody.

[00:07:00] Katrina : Okay. Yes.

[00:07:01] Gita: There's only 13 episodes.

[00:07:03] Katrina : It's only 13 episodes. Exactly. You can totally get through it. So what I would love to start off with is just let us know kind of a little bit of your backstory, what prompted you to even create a podcast to help doctors who are going through litigation?

[00:07:16] Gita: Well, if you do listen to the podcast, you'll hear it come out over time. But the short answer to that is that I myself was a defendant in a very, very long malpractice case. I was about five years out of residency when I was named in 2006. Well, I saw the patient in 2006. I was named soon after in 2007, and then it lasted 12 years. And so I was the sole defendant in a malpractice case with the initial demand was $28 million. And I was a completely helpless. I had no idea who to call, what to do. I felt like my whole world was caving in. When I got notice. I had had these thoughts about myself, this identity as a very good doctor. And all of a sudden I felt that whole thing crumbling. No one had told me anything about what to do. Once, you know, the finger was pointed at you like there was literally no instruction. And the implication seemed to be that, you know, if you're a good doctor, you wouldn't need to know. So, like, that's why we don't teach you. It began this descent into just a really, really terrible place where I lived for quite a few years. I went on trial in 2011. The wheels turned very, very slowly. And I'm from Rhode Island, and it was just very, very slow process.

[00:08:35] Gita: And as I approached trial, I was just so anxious and depressed. And of course, this was seeping out into all the parts of my life, my family, my work. Everything was suffering, but I was still showing up and doing my thing. And I went on trial and then I was still miserable. I did win, didn't matter. I went back to work miserable. And it wasn't until 2015 when I found out, like I found out soon after the trial, that they were going to appeal it. And then in 2015, my verdicts got overturned and I found out I had to go to trial. And I wound up just falling into just this really, really terrible. I mean, I thought I was bad off before, but this was really, really rock bottom. And I had to make a decision about, you know, I had really terrible thoughts. Am I going to let this thing just eat me alive now, which, you know, in some ways felt like it might be easier or I can't be like this, what am I going to do? And that actually started off this journey. It sounds like such a hokey word to use, but it really was, um, learning one about how to accept help too, about how to help myself, and three, learning about the law and how it is that one shows up as a good defendant.

[00:09:48] Gita: And I went through a series of career changes, and one of them involved me learning how to do things like blogging and podcasting. I joined an academic faculty and I became I was the educational technology social media person. That was like, what they are, what they said, oh, we need this person. I don't know anything, but I learned a lot. And then before I went on trial a second time, I started thinking like, you know, like I've learned a lot. I've made peace with going to trial. I know what I'm doing, but I think. There's something I could do with this, and I want to start laying the groundwork. And that project is eventually what became this podcast. I just wanted to make the thing that I wished I'd had when I started, and I really felt like I had something valuable to say. And I also felt like people needed to know, like just the practicalities of what it really means to be involved in litigation. And a lot of our anxiety is just because there's this dearth of knowledge and it's anticipatory anxiety. So long answer to your question. But that's the background.

[00:10:50] Katrina : Yeah. Well, one thing I thought was so interesting, you said on the podcast, I think when you saw the patient, you were pregnant with one of your children, and by the time it was all done, that child was 12, I think, or like 12 years old in middle school. I mean, just think about that, right? Like you're pregnant and that child is in middle school. That's a long time. Yeah. To be dealing with this.

[00:11:12] Gita: It was really like this sort of dysfunctional family member really just had a hold over everything in my life for, you know, the better part of a decade. And meanwhile, my kids were growing up, and, I mean, I was there, I was functioning, you know, not well, but I was just, you know, I wasn't really present or enjoying my life a lot in those days. And I think I was just kind of doing whatever I needed to do to keep people alive in my household. But I was I don't think anyone would have thought of me as a happy person. You know, I think we especially, you know, women physicians, we show up, we do the work, we do the work at home. We take care of the kids, we go to work, we show up and we do that. And we have a lot of resilience and grit and determination, and it's pretty amazing how long you can do something, being unhappy with just those things alone.

[00:12:02] Katrina : And I was saying it's more than even just unhappy, right. Like really in some sometimes being in a bad way.

[00:12:08] Gita: Oh, very bad, very, very bad. Yeah. I was help resistant at the time, as I think a number of physicians are probably not the group of people who are listening to this podcast.

[00:12:20] Katrina : I was thinking about it because I was like, you know, I never was so resistant. Even back way back when Oprah was on, you know, she'd be talking about stuff. I'd be like, yeah, totally, like totally into it. But when you were talking on the podcast about being so resistant to self-help and, you know, not really judgmental of other people needed that or help them, but like, judgmental of the idea that you might benefit from it. Like you don't need that kind of stuff. I think that attitude is actually really, really common, particularly amongst doctors. So I was like, no, you're the perfect person to address this. I love what you said. It was like, I think there was like a book on your nightstand. It was like something like when good doctors get sued or something like that, and you were just like, you know, kept looking at the title and you're like, hmm, like, I don't want to read you, you know? And then you said you broke the self-help seal. And I thought, oh my gosh, that's so good. And then you're like, wait a minute. And I think that has probably happened for some people who are listening to this, I.

[00:13:12] Gita: Would imagine that to be the case. And honestly, now there's no zealot like a convert, right? So right now that I like I, I'm here, I believe I, you know, now I can't get enough of it. But I really was this person that I was helped. And there you know, I talk a lot about the origins of this, of both the help resistance in the physician, but also like of litigation stress in general. And there are so many reasons why we might be help resistant. You know, the psychology of physicians is complex, but also we're discouraged from getting help, like if when we're talking about this being like a really serious mental health challenge for people, the system actively discourages us from talking about it or from seeking help or, you know, you're worried if I go to therapy, is that discoverable? There are a lot of things that are keeping the physician from being able to pursue the help, and they themselves often have this feeling of, if I need that, then I'm weak because I don't see anybody else that has to do that. And so there must be something wrong with me. And then there are also fighting against I've listened to your podcast, and so there was the one on self-compassion and you mentioned terminal uniqueness. And so physicians have this feeling too, of like, we're bred to feel somewhat exceptional in terms of our thinking and that we shouldn't need these things and that these sort of pedestrian techniques that might help other people, like, they can't help me. A lot of things keep us from getting the help we need, and from helping ourselves to adjust our mindset about the whole process. Yeah.

[00:14:43] Katrina : One thing I thought that was interesting is I don't know if you mentioned, but you are emergency medicine and it sounds like, you know, within that practice field, being sued is, you know, maybe more likely than in other specialties. All the experts you had on were kind of like, yeah, of course you're going to get sued, especially when you're emergency, you're going to get sued. And so I do find it so interesting how, you know, maybe you have like 1 or 2 lectures on risk management. The idea is like it's like the it's so when you really think about it makes no sense. It's like. This message of like, you know, if you operate enough, you're going to be sued. Or like, you know, you see enough patients, like you're going to be sued, but then also don't be sued because only bad doctors get sued.

[00:15:26] Gita: That's the messaging. And we never really stopped to think about how strange that is. And we're not taught to deal with it in any way. But it is, you know, it's a cultural thing in medicine that it's a it's a taboo topic to talk about. And it's sort of like maybe divorce was Once upon a time or cancer once upon a time. And so you never had this ability to see someone work through the process. And so a lot of times when I work with people, I use the construct of, of grief not only like, oh, there's, you know, the stages of grief. And you'll feel that when you go through litigation, when, I mean, is that. Grief is something that we all understand because if you haven't experienced it personally, you have seen it modeled. Right? So, you know, at some point this thing is coming for you one way or another. If you enter into any sort of human relationship or even a relationship with a pet or whatever, like it's coming, you live long enough, it's going to happen. And you know that when it happens, it will feel terrible. But you also have seen that people, they live through it. They find their way somehow. And there are people who are swallowed whole by it. But then there are other people who manage to come out on the other side as, you know, different. But but okay, better, wiser. You know, sometimes they're happy on the other side of that. And you've seen that happen. You've seen it in books and movies and all this stuff. You don't see that. You don't see that in medicine. You never watched an attending get sued. No one talked about it, although.

[00:16:51] Katrina : They for sure.

[00:16:52] Gita: Were. Of course they were. Of course they were. And it's funny, like I make this comment all the time, like, oh, I didn't, I didn't know anyone. And one of my attendings from like way back in the day got in touch with me and was like, I feel like I should tell you because it's okay now. I'm okay now, but thank you. Yeah. So it's a disservice that we do to each other and to our learners that we don't address it head on.

[00:17:15] Katrina : I think one thing that I felt like you did such a great job on in this podcast, I mean, it's like multifactorial, actually, lots of ways that I think this podcast is so good, but it's kind of like a curriculum. It's like Legal System 101 very clearly laying out like, exactly what's going to happen all the way through, at least to a certain extent, with generalizations, of course, but like really laying it out, explaining things. But then, I mean, you continued to just hammer home, like your response is normal. You are normal. If you're struggling, you are normal. Like really trying to help people to see like this is hard. And the reason it feels hard is because it's hard and it's okay if you feel that way. And then also encouraging people to talk about it. I couldn't believe it when somebody I don't remember if it was you or one of your guests was saying that they knew people who didn't tell their spouse or partner that they were even, you know, named in a lawsuit till the day they were going to go testify or the day that the case started in court, you know, or just never, like, completely kept it from them, like, never told anybody. And, you know, we can't judge how people cope with things, but we could just assume that holding that all inside can have some detrimental effects, particularly to the majority of people. So I found it very interesting because, yeah, I never had just like in my practice, no one just sat around and talked about that. It was like, if you had been sued, I think it's kind of like a scarlet letter, right? It's just like, oh my gosh, you know, it's almost like we don't want to talk about it because I don't want that to like, rub off on me or like somehow it's like contagious or something.

[00:18:56] Gita: Yeah. It's the scarlet letter L.

[00:18:58] Katrina : Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Like it's just this idea of like, oh, like other that person because that's happened to them. And then you find out that, you know, there are so many people who are named in suits who did a very, very, very good job. And they're still named in suits. And also, some people make mistakes even when they're very, very, very good doctors and they get named.

[00:19:22] Gita: And we don't know how to deal with any of those things. We don't know how to deal with any of those things. And so there's always going to be a strong emotion, whether or not you feel like you are responsible for what happened or not. And there are themes that come up over and over and over again. But we do a very poor job in medicine of actually preparing the physician for adverse events, for certainly for litigation, and for the inevitable mistake, like if you are working in medicine every single day. You will be right a lot of the time, and you won't be wrong sometimes. And it's a given. It's a given. You know there is an art to it and art is not precise. And so you are going to miss some things and you can process that intellectually. You know, most of us are like, oh yeah, I'm going to make a mistake, except that we're kind of taught. In a different way by culture that we really ought not to.

[00:20:14] Katrina : Well, and it's that exceptionalism that you spoke of earlier, but if you're really exceptional, then you won't be one of the ones who makes the mistake.

[00:20:21] Gita: Exactly. But when the exceptional doctor doesn't say we don't talk about it and they're meant, you know, obviously complex reasons why we don't do that also. But this is something that I think is influenceable just in the way we see cultural changes and how, you know, how shameful is it to talk about divorce, how shameful is to have cancer, like those are cultural shifts that are made by people being open and honest and a little vulnerable to start with, and then just totally okay with it. And you hear people be okay with it. That's what has to start to happen in medicine around this. Mhm.

[00:20:56] Katrina : I was thinking more about how somewhere in the podcast you or some one of your guests was saying about how like even if you know somebody who's being sued, most people don't tend to like bring it up and check in and hey, how are you doing with it? And I was thinking more about that, and I was thinking about how it has some parallels, in fact, to grief, where people will say, well, I didn't want to bring up your loss because I didn't want to make you feel bad, or I didn't want to make you remember that they died as though they had forgotten that this important person to them had died. And you had to remind them, it's like they didn't forget that they're being sued, you know, like they know.

[00:21:34] Gita: Yeah, exactly. They know. And it is hard because, you know, sometimes the physician has heard this admonition not to talk about it and take it very seriously. And they're worried about like, well, what if somebody asked me about it, which is sort of an unnecessary panic? But that's what a lot of people feel. And, you know, we tend to isolate ourselves and other people, as you said, isolate us. And the isolation is, as we know, is a real driver of suicide. I mean, we finally have evidence that civil legal problems are a contributor to the problem of physician suicide before no one asked the question. So you didn't have the answer. But we kind of knew because people left notes or while they were really struggling with this lawsuit, then they took their life. But we knew it, but we didn't have proof. Now, finally, someone did the study. And yes, it is a known contributor. And what we also know about risk for suicide is that isolation, trauma, despair. Sometimes substance use is and maybe we'll talk about this later in terms of what people do in terms of coping and buffering and avoidance of these really difficult emotions. But it's a terrible recipe. It is a recipe for disaster. And the isolation is a really key part of this because especially, you know, I've had, you know, I've talked to spouses of physicians who've taken their lives or, and other family members. What starts to happen in the minds of many of these physicians is this belief. It becomes a belief that they are a bad doctor, and everybody else also thinks so. Mhm. And so when you start to incorporate that into your identity and you are being shunned, it feels like by other people, other peers, it just perpetuates that notion.

[00:23:16] Gita: It takes people down a really dark path. One thing that I do recommend, because people that then they always have this question of like, well, what do you say? Like, how do I address that person? Like, like, hey, I hear you're getting sued. Like, that doesn't go over great, right? What I ask people to do, because so much of the distress comes from this feeling of other people thinking we're a bad doctors, like we begin to feel ourselves, that we are bad doctors, and also my peers, my respected colleagues going to perceive me as a bad doctor. What's going to happen to my reputation? All of that. And I remember I felt those feelings very, very deeply. And, um, just the act of reminding somebody that they're a good doctor is amazing. Like, just if you're like, if you if you were an ER doc, but just saying to someone actually, you know, like, I'm really glad you're here. I heard you might be going through something. All I want you to know is that I think you're a great doctor. I really like working with you. I'm happy when you're on. The staff really loves you. You know, I would trust you with my family. I've taught residents how to say that to attendings if they know, like they heard something, just. Hey, guess what? I think you're a great teacher. And thank you for today, because I really learned a lot. And I think you're a really special doctor. Like, you're a good role model to me. I'm, like, welling up over here.

[00:24:31] Katrina : I'm like, that's so touching the whole thing.

[00:24:32] Gita: I found the.

[00:24:33] Katrina : Whole thing to be quite emotional, which is fascinating because I'm not practicing medicine anymore. Yet I was completely there, completely there. And the whole experience like, quite. And I hope that doesn't scare anybody off. But like, it really is important that we learn how to have these conversations, be able to share that.

[00:24:53] Gita: And I think what's emotional about it is that even if you're not practicing medicine, you still have the heart of a doctor. You still understand the meaning and just, you know, it is this sorority or this, you know, we speak that language. We all have it running through our veins. And you know what it means to have that integrity questioned and to start to question it yourself. Because we do have this awesome responsibility for other people's lives, which we take very, very seriously. And we're really just human beings trying to do good on the earth with limited resources and limited time. But but with a pretty sharp skill set and a desire to do good things. And so I welcome the emotion. I want people to bring the emotion into it because, you know, that's, you know, as you and I both know, big.

[00:25:36] Katrina : Problem locking that down.

[00:25:38] Gita: Yep.

[00:25:39] Katrina : The only reason I'm able to have this emotional response is because of all the work that I've done on myself to allow it. I mean, that would have been completely locked down in the past. So I did actually want to go to that next. What you mentioned a little bit ago, it's called malpractice litigation stress syndrome. Yeah.

[00:25:53] Gita: I mean, litigation stress on one end. And then this malpractice stress syndrome, which is when it starts to get really, really ugly, you know, really significant physical symptoms, depression, anxiety symptoms, substance use and abuse, relationship harm, suicidality. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:11] Katrina : Okay. One thing that I found helpful about that is, again, with the isolation and the terminal uniqueness and us all thinking that we're the only one who's had it this bad or experiences it this way. When something has been named, you feel like that's always helpful. It's like, oh, if there's actually a name for it, that means that I'm not the only one, right?

[00:26:31] Gita: I had no idea that there was a time for it. I didn't I had no explanation in my own vocabulary and my own head for what I was suffering from. I just knew I was suffering, and I judged myself for the suffering because I was like, what the hell is wrong with you? Why can't you get your act together? Like, why can't you handle this? Get over it. Couldn't do it.

[00:26:50] Katrina : So the episode where you talked about relationships, it was another really good one. As one might assume, if you have strong relationships in your life, those can be very supportive for you and going through this process, but not always. And also, if there's already a little bit of a rocky relationship, it could be that this is continuing or starting the unraveling of that. And so it can have other like basically the effects of this case. It's like little like finger like projections all into all the different areas of your life. And then, you know, just looking for ways to not feel like we mentioned. And so of course, I help people who are using food to not feel and sometimes alcohol. And so I immediately picked up on that. I'm like, right. You know, I've over the years I worked with clients who are like, you know, I'm being sued. I know I can't really talk about it, but I still need some help. And so, you know, being able to coach them without knowing the details of anything, but still coaching them to help them to not use food to process what they're feeling and to be able to get through it. But of course, not with the understanding or background that you have. I mean, it's obviously like a huge expertise that you have. Okay. So I want to transition here to the fear of being sued because I've. Touched on this a lot too. So there's one thing to actually be named and to go through the process, but I notice a lot. Of doctors kind of being. I mean, I don't think it's exaggerating to say consumed with the fear of a potential lawsuit. Not like, oh, this thing happened and I'm afraid I'm going to be named, but just like a broader, you know, like I'm a surgeon or I do whatever, and I'm just afraid I'm going to make a mistake. I'm so concerned that something I'm going to do is going to be wrong, and then I'm going to enter into this whole legal experience. So I would love to know what you think about that. Like the anticipatory fear and anxiety.

[00:28:46] Gita: It's very common any time I speak about this. People will always come up to me afterwards and say, you know, I spoke to a group of Ob-gyns recently and, you know, someone came up to me and said my plan was to practice until I got sued, and then I would quit. Like, that's my plan. That's how I'm going to deal with this. That is surprisingly common. And I know people who are, you know, paralyzed just by indecision because they're worried about all the ramifications of any decision that they make, even before they've ever had to go through this process. There are so many reasons for this, but I think the chief one is that we've been trained to be afraid of it. But it is like the boogeyman. You don't have any practical experience with it, you don't have any knowledge about it. So it's very easy to catastrophize around it because there is no knowledge to come back and say, you know, here's a more realistic view of what this is. And, you know, there are some skills that you can learn and you can show up and defend yourself. And again, you know, maybe, maybe it is like grief. So you know about grief, but it doesn't prevent you from entering into a relationship. I mean, for most of us, we accept that risk because we want the relationship. We want the relationship. We want the love. We want that fulfillment that comes with it, even though we know.

[00:29:59] Katrina : Yeah, it's like getting a puppy. I feel like that is like the most upfront, right? You're like, I love this animal so much. And I also understand that in ten, 15 years this is going to end.

[00:30:09] Gita: Yeah, exactly. We still do it. I, my dearest dog, died a year and a half ago and I thought I would never be able to get off the floor. It was just supreme. Terrible grief. And now I have a ten month old puppy. I said at the time, I will never do this again. I will never do this again. I will never, never, never, never do this again. And I now I have a puppy and I get it. And we can't stop ourselves. But it's because we have this understanding of like, yes, it will be difficult, but somehow it will be okay. At least there's that feeling of somehow it will be okay, but so I can do the thing that I love, right? We don't have that. There's no anchor feeling of like, yeah, that's a normal human thing. It's a normal doctor thing. It is part of my career. It is a normal occupational, you know, inevitability of what it is that I'm doing here. This is what I signed up for. When I signed up to be a doctor. I signed up for this. Maybe I didn't know it, but I signed up for this. And if you sign up for it, like, you know, it would be better if we had an understanding of this being just a really difficult human experience that we're going to have to go through, but understanding that in some ways we can arm ourselves, we can equip ourselves, we can do the things that we need to do so that it becomes more of a challenge than something that we have to just to live in fear of.

[00:31:31] Gita: So, you know, I always try to help people come at it from this lens. You know, fear is often a driver of decision making, but it's not a great one. It's really not. And so people who like they choose their specialty based on like, the least likely, you know, in a lot of ways this thing is like death in the marketplace. You asked before about like which specialties are like the ones to get sued. And if you know that story about death of the marketplace, like the thing's going to find you, like whatever it is that you go, it is likely to find you. And so when people are in a specialty in which they feel like I wasn't supposed to get sued, and they do, sometimes it's even worse. Yeah, it's.

[00:32:06] Katrina : Like a false reassurance. Um, you know, like they were sold a bill of goods, kind of. Right. Like, if I do this, then the exchange is that I won't be sued. And now I got sued anyway.

[00:32:16] Gita: Right. And that's what we train people to think, because that's how we teach risk management. That's how we like. Even the phrase risk management annoys me because you can't manage risk a lot of the times, right? I mean, it makes it sound like this is all on you and it's not. Mhm. But I mean the reality of the situation is like this is going to happen. Know that when you sign up, don't just live in fear but learn about it, learn about how you're going to show up. Listen to other people when they talk about it openly. Understand that you are going to have to go through some things, and you're going to incorporate those things into who you are as a human being, and you can come out better on the other side. It is something that's going to happen in your relationship. You probably don't spend every day decision making from a place of fear about losing that person. I mean, sometimes that might actually alter your behavior, like pay attention because someday this person won't be here. Like that's a nice reframe sometimes. Mhm. But you don't live in that place of fear every single day because it keeps you from enjoying the relationship. Mhm. And so if we want to enjoy the practice of medicine, which we ought to, because we worked really hard to get there, yeah, it doesn't feel good to be operating from a place of fear all the time. Um, I.

[00:33:25] Katrina : Think sometimes, and this is like subconscious. And this is not like a conscious, logical decision. But I think sometimes it's kind of like some people I think, are afraid to give up that fear and anxiety with the kind of the idea that, like, if I'm afraid and anxious enough, then I won't make a mistake, like then I won't suddenly be caught off guard and make a mistake, you know? And that's something to unpack and work through. But yes.

[00:33:46] Gita: We all have magical thinking around this. We really do. It just, you know, if I, you know, just like, oh, if I imagine all the terrible things that could happen to my children or whatever, like they won't happen, it's some weird insurance policy. And yeah, that doesn't work either, you know? So, like, none of those things work. Yeah.

[00:34:02] Katrina : I felt like your podcast was very grounding, though. Like that grounding force. I think, like you said, like educating yourself. Like I could imagine a lot of people thinking like, well, why don't I just wait until, you know, maybe I'm served or there's actually been something that's happened in adverse Outcome to learn. And really, you should learn now you really, really, really should educate yourself.

[00:34:23] Gita: You should learn now. Because honestly, again, being in that fear and panic mindset is a terrible way to it's not a good place to learn from. It's just it's not like if you go in ahead of time having this, you're going to still need to learn, like when you enter into it, because it is this, you know, it's this foreign land that you're going to have to learn a little bit more about the language, but you can go in much more prepared and having a much more clear eyed version of what this really means. I'm not saying there isn't risk like there is risk. We have to make peace with that risk to function. And we also have to sort of, you know, realize the risk, like really be able to understand what the true risks are. And they're often not as bad as you think they are. Do these crazy judgments happen? And yes, they're horrible for all people involved when they do happen. But you hear about them more because they're the outliers. Like this is bread and butter. Like for people in medicine, they just you just don't know that it is it's happening every day, and much of it is much less cataclysmic than what our brain tells us is going to be. And so bringing some of that just basic knowledge and understanding of like, yes, it's likely to happen. Here's how your insurance policy works. It's why it works this way. It's really important, I think, for us to you need some perspective to be able to get a hold on that fear. And you don't get that perspective without actually like getting some knowledge.

[00:35:46] Katrina : Yeah, I love that. That's so good. Okay. So you basically had to go through the same trial twice. It's not the same thing. Right? It was like a but like the same issue like again. And I have to say I found it extremely inspirational how you learn to become a better defendant, how to really show up for yourself on the stand in the courtroom. I actually I've pulled up next to me because this also I was like, oh my gosh, like on your website, there's a little sticky note and I'm assuming this is from your daughter Mira. Is this your daughter? Yes. It says mom. Third days the charm. Good luck with testifying. Show them who's boss. Love, Mira. And I was just like, oh my gosh. This shows how it impacts everybody. It impacts your whole life. Everyone in your family. Anyway, I loved when you had the lawyer who originally worked with you to become a better defendant. I just loved how vulnerable and open you both were about, really how terrible you were at first.

[00:36:46] Gita: And he has since become a friend. But the two of us, man, it was so funny in the beginning because he was fresh out of law school and they gave this guy this job to be my handler, because this was the high value case and I was a mess. And they were like, but this is all defensible. And I'm like, mhm. Like your job is to make this go away people. And that's one of the things you learn is like if you come into this process expecting fairness, you're going to be really disappointed. I was so resistant to learning what this man had to offer. My joke that it was like, you know, this whole My Fair Lady thing where I just had to be transformed into this defendant who could, like, stand up and give some testimony. And it was an upward slog for that guy. But I think particularly having him back and talk about how I was I mean, this is not a word of a lie. That attorney is very the seasoned attorney was like, this is one of the worst defendants we've ever had, man. Your job now is to make her better. I was so glad that.

[00:37:40] Katrina : You included that, though. It was so good to hear that, because it's easy to think like, look how well-spoken she is. Of course she got off, you know, and then you're like, I was really, really one of the worst. It was very inspiring.

[00:37:50] Gita: I was really one of the worst. I was just so terribly emotionally reactive because I didn't have any context. I didn't have any perspective I had I thought this was supposed to be fair. I thought all I had to do was explain to everybody like what happened? And then somehow, magically, they would be like, oh, okay, right. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. Like, here you go. And it does not. Work like this when I teach and when I give talks about this, like one of the things that we have to drill home is that this is a totally different. It's like, you know, doctors show up. We've been playing tennis our whole lives, and then we're dropped in this other game and we've got a racket, but they're playing football and we're like, what is happening? And why can't I use this racket? Like the tools that we have, our mental tools, our thought tools, our constructs, all of it. We don't understand why it doesn't apply. And we get very, very angry and upset because nobody seems to be following our rules. What our rules are, what our thoughts are about how this thing should work is not lining up with reality. One of the things I'm sure you talk about in coaching is like arguing with reality, right? You argue with reality, you're going to lose.

[00:39:03] Katrina : Yeah.

[00:39:03] Gita: If you can't wrap your mind around that and just learn a little bit about this other country that you're visiting and its rules and customs and how you're supposed to engage and you know how to play football. It will not feel good, it will never feel good, and it's never going to feel great. But the real difference between me in trial A and trial B was that in between I got myself an education. I got myself an education about how to think about this and practically how to show up. And I made this joke once to a colleague and I was like, I'm a really good defendant. And he laughed and he said, well, that's a club nobody wants to be in. And I said, you know, I actually disagree. Why would you not want to be a good defendant? I think we should all be good defendants. Why is that a skill set that you would just not want to have? If it's going to happen to you, why would you not? Yeah. And I think it's a good thing to be a good defendant.

[00:40:00] Katrina : I also loved how with the second trial, you invited your residents to watch you on the stand with the idea that, like, they're probably not going to have an opportunity to see someone else do it until it's their turn.

[00:40:13] Gita: And I'm not going to say that was easy for me. I was really that takes a lot of.

[00:40:17] Katrina : Confidence on your part.

[00:40:18] Gita: I really had this feeling of like, it's kind of like, you know, inviting someone to, you know, come see you speak or some watch a talk. Like when I was like, I know how to do this. Like, sure, things might not go my way, but I really felt that I had this opportunity to teach them something, and it was motivating for me. But I crafted that email and I like ran it by the program director. And I was like, I think, like you tell me if you think this is a bad idea. And she was like, no, I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea if you're in, you know, they're in. And the residents who now, not all of them came. There are a couple who I would say, hey, hey, are you going to be there? And they were like, oh, I can't think about it. And one of them, I asked him afterwards, I was like, you said you were coming. You didn't come. What happened? And he was like, oh, Doctor Pensa, I just couldn't I just didn't think I could handle watching you go through that. Wow. And I was like, I need you to be able to do it yourself, right?

[00:41:15] Katrina : Also, it makes you wonder, like, what was he anticipating? Like a few good men.

[00:41:19] Gita: All of the residents who came were just like, that was such an education. We had no idea what it was going to be like. None whatsoever. And and they got to talk with the insurance company representative, the claims guy who was there, like they had no idea the relationship between like, claims and the attorney and like, who runs what show and who pays what check. And they had no idea. So they had this like total education over the span of a couple. And a couple of them came on other days thereafter. Just once they felt a little more comfortable showing up. They did come. And I had, you know, at the second trial I've been really honest about, like, this is happening in my life. I talk in the podcast about this ballroom dance competition where I was very like, you know, everybody come watch because I'm doing this for a reason, which was really, honestly was instrumental in getting people to write some big checks. It was great. But like, for my cause, you know, for my charity, cause like, I, you know, going through something hard, right? Right, right. But, you know, they came to trial too, and they did the thing where they reminded me in the breaks in between, like they would hear what the terrible. Because you got to get ready. They're going to say terrible things about you. Yeah. And afterwards they'd be like, man, you know, none of that's true, right? Right. Like right.

[00:42:29] Katrina : Like reminding you you're an amazing, valuable, treasured human being.

[00:42:34] Gita: Yeah, exactly. And it was priceless. It was absolutely priceless. And they took care of me. It was a very different experience the second time through for a lot of reasons. And one of them was that I let people in, um, I let them take care of me.

[00:42:47] Katrina : So now let's talk about life after litigation, because it's very easy to think, like, okay, this, you know, you sided with the defense again like you got off again like amazing like celebration. Let's move on. It's all rainbows and daisies and it often really isn't. Even when you're exonerated, even if it's subtle. You know, I think we have this idea that it should be a certain way when it's all said and done, and we should just, like, go back to some whatever normal or like somehow be a certain way. And that's really often not the experience for a lot of people.

[00:43:20] Gita: No. I think what we're not accounting for there is that the event itself is traumatic for a lot of people, especially if they come in without an understanding of what it is like. It is trauma. Physicians often push back against that word, and I say to them, anything that is making your colleagues kill themselves might be traumatic. And it is. It is. I think that we ignore that at our own expense. And so typically when like even when the traumatic event is like resolved in some way, you don't just get to drop it and like go skipping off into the sunset like there is some work to be done, there is processing to be done. There is incorporation into who you are as a human being moving forward. All of that's very important and we tend to ignore it. We tend to be like, okay, time to go back to work. But there are these feelings about like, what if this happens again and are all of my patients out to sue me? And man, I hate this job. What's all I want to do is get out and you lose sight of the meaning.

[00:44:13] Gita: You lose the joy. There's a lot of disillusionment that happens afterwards. And that, again, is if we go into it expecting that we should feel a certain way, like, oh, I should be fine now. And certainly, yes. Does it feel better to win than to lose? It does. But I work with people who do both. Who who have done both. I've certainly, you know, had to support people who have lost a trial. And it doesn't happen as often, but it does happen. And if you're going to trial it's because your care was defensible. Mhm. Like true malpractice is usually settled. If you're going to trial it's because they believe in you. So it's really hard to lose in that circumstance. But either way reentry is difficult. And if you don't expect it to be difficult and it is uh, then there's a disconnect and you start judging yourself about like, well, why is this so hard? Like, why can't I just get back on the horse? What is wrong with me?

[00:45:02] Katrina : And probably even more so if you know someone who is going through the experience and, you know, settled or, you know, somehow, uh, results in, in their favor or regardless, I guess, really. Right. Don't expect them to be back to some sort of normal like that's maybe, you know, another time or maybe even more importantly, a time to be reaching out and connecting, checking in with them 1,000%.

[00:45:26] Gita: I had a very my chairman at the time because it was from the community hospital. We had this tiny it was like this tiny little Democratic group, and we were all really very much kind of like family. And that my chair at the time was very, very insightful. And we had had someone else on our team who had lost at trial not long before I went to trial. And he learned a lot. We all did, trying to support that physician. And so when it was my turn, he said to me, because I said, like he would come to trial sometimes. And I was like, dude, I'm not coming back. Like, I don't know what to tell you. And he was like, I know you feel like that. Can you just first you're going to take a week off, you need time, so you're going to take some time off, and then I'm just asking you to give me two weeks and. Can you see what you can do? And this is after my first trial. But I think just that if you're in a position where you provide support to other people or your leadership or anything like that, I think just acknowledging that this is something that it does need a little bit of a delicate touch, like, don't just throw people back to the wolves and expect them to be performant. Like, understand that this is a difficult transition for people. And again, coming back to grief, if someone loses a spouse, you don't expect them to be right. Like immediately. Mhm. It's going to take some time and we welcome you back when you're ready. This obviously people don't understand that this can have this degree. It does in some people's minds. They will tell you that it feels as bad as when their partner died. It feels as bad as when they got divorced. And sometimes they'll say it's worse. Because it's this, this part of their identity that's being so, so threatened to be crushed. You know, give them grace, like give yourself grace. And and we should give them grace. It's really hard.

[00:47:12] Katrina : You know, I really hope that people listening will listen to the whole series. But I also really hope that by listening to it, that it can spur some conversation in whatever kind of communities doctors are in, like creating a little like podcast listening club, like, let's listen to an episode and then talk about it like, do what you're encouraging people to do, which is to actually educate themselves and then talk about it more. You know, I was thinking like, you could even do that, like within a certain department or a specific practice. Like everybody can learn how they can support one another with the idea that probably at least one of you is going to be going through this at some point in the future. And wouldn't that be so great to be able to rely on that foundation when that happened, to be able to, you know, be supported?

[00:48:00] Gita: I love that.

[00:48:02] Katrina : What I love also, though, is you provide a lot of resources for people to learn more. You're certainly not like this is like the end all, be all, all you need resource here is a really great introduction. More than an introduction, really, but it's a really great place to start. And you suggest several books and some other resources there. But I also just wanted to wrap up with letting people know that you do offer coaching services. Now to physician defendants who are going through this. I'd love for you to just share a little bit more about what those services are. I know you also speak and things like that and then how people can find you.

[00:48:40] Gita: Yeah. So you can find me at my website is doctorsandlitigation.com. I do one on one and group sued, talking more about self-coaching strategies and things like that, and so that I don't know how the website, maybe by the time this airs, I will that you will be able to find at leap-coaching.com.

[00:49:34] Katrina : Okay. Amazing, amazing. I have one final little like detail, but if you are currently you're named in a case and say that happened to me and I wanted to work with you, could my malpractice attorney hire you so that it would be covered in the legal fees and there wouldn't be an out of pocket expense for me? Is that typically how people do it?

[00:49:58] Gita: That's my ideal scenario, and I do both. And so three different ways. I work with some insurance companies and I take referrals from them. They will often refer like when a claim is initiated and they're like, man, we met with this doctor and I think it's they're going to have a really hard time. Like they will refer them. That's one way or attorneys. I know a number of attorneys and people do ask their attorney, like the organization that pays the bills is the insurance company, by the way. So it all kind of goes back to the insurance company. But that is a really great way to do it because then it is protected. I do, I believe, a very good job of when I'm working with clients to avoid talking about the details of the case, because I really don't need to know them. I mean, all you really need to do is to say, you know what's in the complaint, which is this is a pediatric case. And the baby had anoxic brain injury. Like, what else do you have to say? Like there's really not a lot you know what the emotions are involved in that. And so we do a really good job of just sort of steering clear. When I work with the attorneys, often the attorney will fill me in on like, here's what you need to know about this case. And then honestly, the client and I don't have to talk a lot about it, but I get their I get their perspective. And I do some witness preparation work for like getting people ready for trial, getting people ready for deposition. I do that through insurance companies. Yeah.

[00:51:07] Katrina : That's so cool. I just think what you're doing is amazing to tell you. So I'm listening to this to your podcast. I immediately tell my husband, who's a doctor, I'm like, you need to start listening to this, and I want you to finish it before I interview her so we can talk about it first. It took me a while till the end to really figure it out. I'm like, I don't know who is doing her production, but it is so well done. I'm like, and she doesn't credit anybody. Like, she doesn't say thank you to anybody. Like even if someone in her family was helping her, like, what if she has a communications degree? I mean, she sounds she's on NPR or something and the music is so good. I'm like, could not get over just, you know, having a podcast myself. And then at the end you're like, yeah. And I do it all myself. And I'm like, oh my gosh, she's a genius.

[00:51:45] Gita: It was, well, that's why there are only 13 episodes in five years. But it did. It started off as like this sort of passion project. I'd like learn how to edit. And I was really fun and the creative and it was like just this. Freedom Flex, and also something that I thought was going to do some good. It really, truly has been a passion project for me, and it's led to just these things that I couldn't possibly have imagined for my career. And I'm making choices now about like, okay, like I'm still practicing. It's interesting. I'm just I'm moving from emergency medicine. I'm doing a little more urgent care. And it's the litigation didn't drive me out of emergency medicine. Menopause did. But then like, my inability to sleep, um, and so like, yeah. So I'm trying. I'm at a really interesting crossroads right now. But this work, to me is just so just truly like, it's important to me. It's important to me. I feel it very deeply. And I'm really thrilled with the way that the podcast came out in terms more of just that. I've, you know, I hear from people that it helps them. And as someone who is still, you know, you're always recovering from that traumatic event and looking for the meaning in it. And to find that meaning for me is such a gift. So invitations like this just make me so happy and thank you so much.

[00:52:57] Katrina : Yeah, well, thank you for agreeing to come on and talk about it. That commitment and passion that you have absolutely comes through. Like that's not something that people can feign very well. You know, you can feel it and hear it as the listener of the passion you feel. And I'm just so glad that you decided to move forward on this because it is really, really, really filling a gap that I mean, as you know, was really needed. So thank you. On behalf of all the doctors, everyone listening, thank you for doing it and everybody listening. Go check out Doctors and Litigation: The L Word. You need to start listening to it right away. It's so good. Gita, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:53:36] Gita: Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:53:41] Katrina : Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #377: Making it Through Litigation in One Piece with Dr. Gita Pensa appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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How can you stop overeating in social situations?

If it sounds impossible to you, listen up. There are all kinds of reasons that you might overeat in social situations and I know we can’t cover all of them in one podcast episode, but I’m going to cover the basics and give you some tools to get started so that you can address your thoughts and beliefs about social eating and make some positive changes.

This episode will walk you through some different scenarios and how to handle them and leave you with three questions to ask yourself about your relationship with social eating.

If you want to stop overeating in social situations, tune in.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Different scenarios where you might eat socially * Addressing your thoughts about social eating * Why it’s okay not to eat if you don’t want to * How to take the pressure off of social eating * Letting go of things you can’t control * Creating a plan for your future self in social situations * How to stop using food to manage your emotions in social situations * Enjoying food without overeating

Whatever your feelings are towards food in social situations, don’t feel bad about them! If you want to change them so that you can have more peace and freedom, I can help you with that, but you have nothing to feel bad about. I hope this episode reassures you and brings you closer to the results you’re looking for!

To learn more about how the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program can help you stop overeating in social situations, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #375: Improve Your Well-Being Through Intentional Focus

Ep #374: Lose Weight Without Wielding Portion Control

Ep #373: Prioritizing How You Feel Vs. How You Look

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

This is the day after daylight savings has shifted in the US. Whew! Man, I even tried this past weekend. I tried something to to try to mitigate the effects of this spring forward. I don't think it really worked at all. Just in case you were wondering, I tried going to bed earlier, tried to adjust everything. Took me half an hour to fall asleep last night. I yeah, I'm feeling it this morning. Feeling it this morning. And that's okay. Because guess what? We make it through every year. My whole life, every spring we've done this, we figured it out. Those of us who struggle with it, what is it? Maybe one week and then we're okay. And I have to say, today is a beautiful sunny day. I'm literally wearing like a spring dress, kind of a spring summer dress. It's a real treat to be able to, you know, really feel like it's spring so early in the year where I live up in the cold in the north.

[00:01:41] So there are some good things that are happening here. So today I'm going to talk to you about social situations and eating. And as I prepared this, this was something that someone requested, I realized this is a pretty involved subject. I think I knew that, but I was thinking like, how can I sum it up? I do think I have something for you here where I've I've summed it up to a certain extent at least, given you several questions, like three questions to think about. I think this is a good entry point into thinking about social eating and how to get a hold on that, and how to stop overeating in social situations.

But there are so many different potential factors or situations that could be at play. And I realized, you know, in weight loss for Doctors only my coaching program, we deal with these on individual case by case basis. Some of you really struggle with, you might really want to consider getting some coaching to figure out the real route for you in these specific situations, because also, it could be that, you know, you eat socially in lots of different scenarios, but the reasons why and the way to approach it are each different. So not to overcomplicate things, because I don't like to think about it like, oh my gosh, you have you know, here's your list of 152 things you have to work on yourself so you can stop overeating.

[00:02:56] I don't like to think about it that way. In general. It's kind of a few bigger picture kind of issues, but it could be that you're overeating in one situation because you feel bad about yourself comparing yourself to these other people. Then in another social situation, you could feel like super awkward or socially anxious or something like that. And that's a totally different situation. And those are all things to work through. And the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program, we have a whole supplemental resource about events and travel.

So I was like, yeah, how did I think I was going to sum this up on one short podcast? But I'm going to give you a good start today. Some things to think about, and hopefully this will help you move forward. Like help you, you know, start tackling it, at least for those first couple of steps. I think sometimes with these kinds of situations, with social issues, we just kind of feel like we don't know where to start. We feel like it just happens to us and we feel bad about it afterward. And so I think having some good steps to start with will be really helpful for you today. So I really want to focus on true social eating really when we're with people.

[00:04:01] So I'm not going to be talking about like later in the day after the office party when there's still like food laying around and you're going in there and eating stuff by yourself, like, that's what I'm talking about. That's not a judgment or an accusation. You know me. I'm the first to admit I've done all of those things. Or like after a party when everyone's left and now you're eating everything. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when the people are around the actual social part of it. You're around other people and you find yourself eating.

So that's what I really want to focus on today. And so I started first by thinking about like, well, what are all the scenarios where we're eating socially and there are so many in a work setting, it really can depend, you know, there's so many different factors in every office and every work environment is different, but sometimes it's something to do with the actual people you work with. So it could be like an office potluck or like someone's birthday party. I know some offices they'll do just like every month. They'll do, you know, an event party type of thing to celebrate all the birthdays that were that month. If there's enough people in the office, sometimes different people will bring in lunch or food or, you know, sometimes they would take a whole Starbucks order for everybody.

[00:05:12] Sometimes, you know, it would be like the local radiology group and they're sending in treats or things like that. So whether it's a pharmaceutical rep or another kind of rep or the office manager from some other physician who wants us to refer to them or something like that, there were lots of opportunities where food was brought in and were expected to eat socially. So in my experience at the culture at my office was if someone went through the trouble to bring the food, then as the doctor, you were kind of expected to go in and at least, you know, sort of show your face and spend a little time with that person.

I have to say, you know, like years out, I felt less and less obligated to do that. I think now with maturity and coaching and understanding my thoughts and all those things, I mean, that definitely was something that it was a story that I told myself that I believed, and I think it was probably a bit of an expectation, but so what? You never have to go and talk to anybody or eat anything that you don't want to or isn't a good fit for you. So just recognizing you really can just not be available. That's okay too, for some of those things, but for some things you really want to be able to be there or, you know, maybe you don't want to do it, but it is the right thing to do.

[00:06:24] So that's a little bit different. And then for home life or personal things, you know, all the birthdays, the anniversaries, things with family, things with friends, it can be a lot. And even if it's not a lot, it could be that just like pops up from time to time. And those are things that you struggle with. They could just be the regular, you know, going out to eat or ordering in the way you get together with people that you like to spend time with is centered around food, potentially. I mean, it can be watching sports, it can be you name it, you can eventize anything, right? And it can be hosting parties as well. So maybe you like to host.

Maybe that's just something that you enjoy. Maybe, you know, by the time you have different graduation parties or this thing to celebrate and that thing to celebrate, you're finding yourself hosting things, you know, the end of the kids sporting season, and you're inviting everybody over to have a party at your house. You know, those things can start to feel like, wow, we do this pretty frequently. So what it comes down to with social eating is what our thoughts are about it and what we believe to be true. So I mean, beliefs are thoughts. They're just thoughts that we think are true. It's kind of like a spectrum is the way I think about it.

[00:07:38] Like a thought. We're usually like, oh, that's one way to think about it. Here's another way to think about it. Sometimes we're less committed to those thoughts, whereas with a belief it's what we think is true, it's a thought that we're very committed to. So I made a little brainstorm of some thoughts that I think can be beliefs for a lot of people, and they can be ones that we think are true, and they're also ones that tend to lead us into overeating. So, right, like there's all these people will talk about all these different. Ideas and hacks and whatever tips and stuff for what to do at a social, you know, gathering.

I remember in Weight Watchers they would talk about like eating before you go, make sure you're not hungry. Like all those things are a good idea. Like, I'm not gonna poo poo any of those if they're super helpful for you. Amazing. You've probably heard them before, and I concur. Like showing up, starving, you know, feeling extremely hungry. And, you know, there's a whole spread like that might be harder. But, you know, when you've gone through this work, like even that, like, none of that should really end up being a problem if you're at a place where you have peace and freedom around food, it shouldn't really be a problem. None of this stuff should really be a problem.

[00:08:53] So I want to just let you know that you can get to a place where you're not like having to micromanage all your eating like, oh shoot, I didn't have a chance to eat. Like, what am I gonna do now? I'm gonna totally overeat this party. To me, that's not peace and freedom around food. We want to get to a point in our lives and our relationship with food. And, you know, our bodies and our body signals and meeting our own needs that, you know, we can eat at the party. We can not eat at the party. It doesn't really matter.

Like if we ate before the party, we're not hungry. Cool. If we totally didn't get a chance to eat cool, it's just not a problem, right? That's where we want to get to. That's where I wanted to get to. I feel like I've gotten to that place. I'd love to help you get there, too. I just think that some of those other skills and tips and things I was talking about, those can be very helpful on the path to getting to where you want to be. I don't see them really as like a permanent solution, because it just ends up still feeling like a white knuckling, like a, like a need to control when that feels like it's tiring and requiring a lot of energy that doesn't feel peaceful or free to me.

[00:09:58] You know what I'm saying? That's the difference there. So let's talk about these thoughts that we often either really just think are true. Or you may find like I don't actually think that like consciously, but yes, that is going on for me, at least on a subconscious level. Right. Because there's the things that we're thinking. We're just like, oh, look, there's my friend Susie over there. I'm going to go say hi to her. Right. Like that's maybe what you're consciously what you're aware of what you're thinking. But these thoughts may be going on more on a subconscious level.

And so our opportunity here is to bring them from that subconscious level to a conscious level, so we can become more aware of them and understand how they create problems for us, and then recognize that we have the option to think differently if we want to, to create a different result. So the number one thing that I think really just doesn't even matter what the situation is, but the number one thought or belief is, I have to eat this or I have to eat here. You know, this idea that like, I'm expected to eat. And so therefore I must and I will. And you might be like, no, but there are these expectations. And like, people look at me weird and then they say all these things. And if I don't write like all those things, and I totally get all of that, but you never have to eat anything, ever.

[00:11:16] Like if you were just recovering from the stomach flu, you would probably think differently about it, and everyone else there would too, if you told them that, right? Like if you totally had an upset stomach, if you were not feeling well in some other way, you'd probably have a different thought about it. And so sure, there's that different situation, but really ultimately it's the same thing. It's like if your body doesn't feel well now, let's not put a bunch of food in it. But if you put a bunch of food in it and you don't feel well later, that's somehow okay. That doesn't actually track. It doesn't really make sense. So it's like, I have to eat this or I have to eat here. These are also combined with thoughts like, it would be weird not to eat.

You know, people are going to say something, look at me. Weird. It's going to be a strange situation. It can also be something like, I'll just eat to avoid the attention I would get if I didn't eat. So some of us love attention, not me. Some of us really don't want everyone's attention on us. That's me. But I know that there are both groups of people listening to this. So whichever one you fall into, if you're like me and you really don't want the attention, you know, just recognizing that we're eating to try to control other people, like, that's interesting.

[00:12:36] Is that how we want to approach this? And if you do want attention, you're probably not looking for that attention through what you're eating. Although it could be that you like the praise that you get if you eat. So this could be in specific family types of situations. You know, maybe it's your grandmother who totally gives you a hard time if you're not eating enough or like, you know, some cultures it's like you could be stuffed if you don't eat more, it's considered disrespectful or the family member is upset or whatever. It could just be like, this is just means to an end.

Like, I better just eat this because it's like the easiest path and in the moment it might be the easiest path. But in the long tum, it's definitely not the easiest path. When you are struggling with overeating, struggling with weight, struggling with feeling like food controls you not feeling good in your body. Right? So I like to just back it all up and zoom out and realize you just never have to do anything. Like if you want to stay out of jail, you need to pay your taxes. What else do you need to do? Very little you really don't need to do. I mean, you could just not pay taxes and go live in jail. Like you really don't have to do anything.

[00:13:46] So anytime we're telling ourselves we have to do it, or like if I just eat, then it somehow makes the situation better. I mean, you know, maybe we have evidence for that, but still, you don't have to eat like you're not responsible for other people's thoughts and emotions. As much as we like to believe that we can control them and manipulate them with what we do and say, we can influence them, but we can't make people think or feel anything, right? So we think, well, I'll just eat so I don't get the attention that I would get if I didn't eat.

Also, it could just work through that attention issue. We could work through the person who's giving us that attention we don't want. We could work through how to respond to that, how to maybe set a boundary with that person. There are other options, is what I'm trying to say here right? Deciding like what is weird? What is not weird to eat or not eat completely. A thought you might be like, you know, I go to the office potluck and then if I don't eat, then everyone's like, oh, are you on a diet? What are you doing? Like, are you eating this or are you eating that? What are you you know, like all this attention on that. What I've learned is, like, you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about.

[00:14:50] If you don't want to talk about what you're eating, you just change the subject and you ask that person something about them. You can be like, oh yeah, I'm just not that hungry right now. I've talked before on this podcast about ways of shifting the attention and, you know, just kind of being evasive so you don't have to get into every detail of what you're doing, because often it's just really none of somebody's business who's asking you about it. But you can totally just be like, oh, so tell me about your next vacation you have coming up, or tell me about the vacation you just had, or. Oh, I meant to tell you about this thing about that, you know, patient we have in common or something.

Just completely change the subject. It's really works very, very well. You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. Okay? So let's shift it a little. Now, sometimes we're like, oh, but this is my chance to have these foods, you know, like in a social situation. Like I normally don't eat this stuff, but this is my chance, you know, like sheet cake from the grocery store, you know, that people get for birthday cakes and stuff. People are like, oh, girl. So it was just sheet cake. I'm like, I love sheet cake. Gosh, I'm trying to think, when was the last time I had sheet cake? I can't remember, I've not had it in a long time, but I'm always like, I like a sheet cake.

[00:15:53] It's good. Right? So normally I wouldn't ever go buy myself a sheet cake, but then, oh, there's a party and there's. Cake. Oh, this is my chance to have these. Like, normally I wouldn't eat that. Oh, but this is my chance to have this. Which is kind of funny because I could go to the grocery store literally any day of the week and buy a cake if I wanted it and plan for it, but we don't do that right, because it's not that good. That's the funny part, right? It's not so good that I'd go spend, you know, $10 on it, but if it's there, then I have these thoughts like, this is my chance to eat it.

I think a kind of a corollary to this that we know logically doesn't actually make sense, but subconsciously we have these sets, like a little bit of magical thinking, like it doesn't count if I eat in a situation like this. Like normally I'm, you know, I'm not eating sheet cake. We're just going to pick on sheet cake. Now, normally I wouldn't eat that, but oh, but now I'm at this event so I'm going to have some because it doesn't really count when I'm here, even though we know it does count. But we're kind of like, yeah, but if I think it doesn't count, maybe it doesn't, you know, like, I'll just try to forget that it ever even happened like, or to erase it from my consciousness and then it doesn't count anymore.

[00:17:00] So that's interesting. If we figure out that we that we think about it that way. Okay. Now let's shift gears again. Okay. I feel awkward or anxious in these social situations. So then when I eat, I'm doing something. I'm keeping myself busy. Could be that like then I don't have to talk. Like I don't have to find someone to talk to. Because if I'm standing there eating, that's an appropriate, acceptable thing to do rather than just standing there alone. And this is something that I've personally experienced myself as well. And so this is more of that social awkwardness, social anxiety, feeling like you don't know what to say, feeling really uncomfortable.

And so going and getting food and eating it and drinks can be a big part of this too, gives you something to do. So again, there can be baby steps here, right? Like there's ways that we can try to work through. Like, you know, bringing a friend or bringing a partner with or, you know, there's things that we can do to try to make it better. Um, but also what we can do is work through that feeling of awkwardness and anxiety and also come up with some good life skills, some good tools.

[00:18:09] You know, a little while ago, I was asking one of my clients who is, I wouldn't say has like the most out there personality, let's just say super lovely person, but a little bit more on the reserve side. And she was like, yeah, I totally love talking to new people. Like it's not a big deal at all. And I was like, so tell us everything. Like, tell us how you think about it. I want to know how you think about it. And she just at a conference doesn't know anybody like completely. Just goes up to people, starts talking to them, doesn't feel like she's stuck talking to them.

Knows how to let them, you know, kind of transition away, talk to the next person. These are skills that you can learn. You can really learn how to interact with other people in a social manner, in a way that's more comfortable for you. So you aren't relying on food so much. But I think it's kind of a combination like, can you learn how to do things so that it doesn't feel so bad? Yes. Also, can you learn to be with the uncomfortable emotions and not need them to go away? Yes, you can do both. And I think both of those are really things that can be very helpful to work through. How about this? I feel bad about myself. So here's comparison, right? Like feeling whoever you're with or whatever is just somehow your thoughts about their life versus your life or what they have versus what you have, it makes you feel bad about yourself.

[00:19:25] So you're feeling bad about yourself and there's lots of food available. So let's use it to distract to get that dopamine hit to feel better. Those are other reasons. Another set of reasons why we'll sometimes eat in those social settings. So if this is like a friend kind of a situation and you're like, you know, whenever I get together with this group of people, I feel bad about myself. I mean, it's an opportunity to really consider, first of all, do I want to stay friends with these people? Not like it's necessarily their fault that you have thoughts about them.

Sometimes we just realize, you know what? I don't think that this is something that's actually positively contributing to, you know, my life right now. So maybe I need a break, but also not necessarily right. Like we have to be responsible for the thoughts that we have about comparing ourselves to others and then how we feel bad about it. That's not their fault. It's again, it's situational and, you know, case by case basis, but recognizing, oh, I'm eating because I feel bad about myself when I'm with these people. That's something to really become aware of, can really help you when you notice yourself overeating in these social situations.

[00:20:29] And then the final thought belief that I came up with has to do with when you're hosting. And that thought is, I want everyone to have a good time. And it sounds so good, doesn't it? You know, sounds like, what's my goal for this? I want everyone to have a good time. I don't think it's there's nothing inherently wrong with that thought or that belief, but if it makes you feel stressed, if it makes you feel pressured, if it, you know, makes your experience of it something where you need to eat. Or find yourself over eating, then maybe it's not a great one.

You know, maybe you're like, well, I'm having such a good time with everybody and everyone's eating and I want to take part in that too. But we have to understand that it's not the actual chewing of the food and swallowing that makes us have a good time. It's the interacting with people, right? It's the way we think that makes us feel good. It's not what our taste buds are sensing. Really, really important to understand that. So could you envision a scenario where everyone's having, you know, let's just say everyone's having a good time and you let go of the grip that you have on how good of a time they're having. I mean, whether they have fun or a good time or not has a lot. I mean, it really, you're just setting up the situation for them.

[00:21:43] But there are so many other factors in their life that can determine whether they're having fun or not. It's really not your responsibility. I think a better way of thinking about it is, is this the way that I want to show up as a host? Have I created an environment that I feel proud of? If you have, that's your whole responsibility and then what everyone else does with it, that's on them ultimately. Right. So just recognizing that that, you know, sometimes the pressure and the stress that we put on ourselves when we host can make us feel pretty depleted or sometimes, you know, feel like I should be having more fun. Look at everyone having fun. Why am I not having more fun? I should probably eat too. So interesting, right? Interesting.

So I want to make a note. I haven't even talked about alcohol, but alcohol just increases the intensity of all of this and can make it harder for you to be properly managing your mind. Just some more alcohol that you have, so just keeping that in mind as well. So I have three questions for you to ask yourself as you're approaching a social situation where you either anticipate that it's going to be challenging or, you know, from, you know, past experience, it probably is going to be challenging. Or if you're just like, you know, I sometimes the magical thinking, seriously, I've had experiences where I'm just like, yeah, I'm just not going to do what I normally do with that thing.

[00:23:00] And that's the amount of thought that I've put into it. And then I get there. And of course, I do exactly what I always do, because that's not really enough of a plan. You have to actually put together a real solid plan to make sure you're not doing it. So the first question you can just anticipate, especially if you've never been to the thing before, you might not really know what to expect. Or maybe you've done it a bunch of times and you have a good idea of what to expect. But regardless whether you know well or not, ask yourself what is food or alcohol going to do for me in this social situation?

And, you know, it's somewhat a rhetorical question, but also not it's a question where you have to really think if this is a dinner, like what a food is doing for me is it's, you know, meeting my body's need for fuel could be part of it, right? Or it could be like, it's entertainment. It's a part of the entertainment of the party. I get to choose what parts of the entertainment I take part in. You know, I always think is interesting, like particularly when it comes to alcohol, is for people who struggle more with that.

[00:24:01] It's like the idea of not having alcohol is so foreign to them or be so challenging. But we see this time and again, particularly with women who become pregnant, that they have no problem giving it up. You know, it's like, so okay, so you can have fun without it or say your designated driver or something. You're like, yeah, no, I totally can have fun without it. But if you don't have that reason to not have it, then your belief is I need to have it. It's just good to question all of it. And just to notice, like the inconsistencies in your thinking, to notice when what you're thinking ultimately doesn't really make sense. It's kind of like poking holes in it, which is of course, what we do with coaching is just to go like, wait, so how does that make sense?

Like, you know, not in a judgmental way, but in a truly like, really understanding, oh, the way I think about this is the problem. And if I want a solution, I need to change the way I think. That's the permanent solution here. Okay. So number one question what is food or alcohol doing for me in this social situation. Might find out. You know what it's distracting me from? You know, the stress that I feel from the pressure that I feel some people find I feel my belief is like if I'm going out to eat, it needs to be extra special.

[00:25:11] If I'm going to spend the money, it needs to feel really, really, really amazing. So more food, more alcohol. It's kind of like, hey, if it hasn't been amazing enough yet, if I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth, I better have more to try to get to where, you know, this, like, really just made up level of pleasure like that bar has been reached. Or at least I've gotten close to it. Now, the problem that we often find is we don't actually reach that bar, or we bypass the bar, you know, and now it's actually getting worse. We're feeling worse because we overeat or we over drink. Okay. Number two question what kind of relationship do I want to have with food?

What I mean about that is, you know, I often talk about like we really want is that, you know, food is nourishment for our body, for ourselves, gives us energy, meets our body's physical needs with some occasional pleasure. But most people are going to want to have some food that arguably is not particularly nourishing from time to time, because that's just one of the pleasures of life. Now, do we need to have it all the time? Do we need to have it in excessive amounts? You know, that's what we get to decide. Maybe we don't, but so if that is something that you're aiming for, then you can understand the difference between occasional pleasure, you know, occasional joy in my life from this food and using food to try to manage my emotions, because that's the part that we really want to try to separate out from.

[00:26:34] And I think it's where a lot of people end up finding themselves kind of sucked in. In those social situations. It can be challenging, particularly in the beginning, to really be able to stay connected and enjoy the heck out of the food that you're eating, so that it truly is occasional pleasure. When there's all this stuff going on or you're talking to other people, there's, you know, all this activity, a lot of distractions away from that connection that you have with your body. Now, can you learn? So this becomes so automatic that it isn't something you have to focus on so much. Absolutely. I feel quite confident if I went to your, you know, say you're hosting a party, I went to your party, I really wouldn't be worried about it. It would be totally fine for me.

But I've also been doing this for many, many, many years, so it's something you absolutely can learn. But at first it's like, you know, you need to let yourself have some training wheels and so you can maybe understand for yourself, like, okay, you know what? When I'm doing the occasional pleasure type of thing for food, I probably not going to do it in a social situation for a while, because I'm still working to develop that connection that I have with my body, to be able to really have that pleasure and enjoy it, but also to know when I've had enough, when the pleasure has peaked and it's on the downward trend.

[00:27:52] Because we want to stop right after it's peaked, you know, right at that point of the peak. And that's a skill that we have to learn. We have to practice. So it can just be helpful to understand, like, I want to eat here as this because I'm trying to manage my emotions. Is this because I'm feeling anxious? I'm feeling awkward. I'm feeling avoidant, like I don't want to have a difficult conversation with someone or I know someone's going to, you know, make a comment if I don't eat.

And just really understanding more like, what is the food doing for you? Is it because you're physically hungry? If not, let's try to figure out. What you're asking it to do for you. So at least you just understand that from that place, you can start to figure out what you want to do with, you know, next steps. And then the final question is, how can I stay connected to my body while I'm eating? And that's what I was just talking about. Like, how can I practice doing that so that I can be in a social situation and still be connected to my body, myself, and know that I am not going to overeat? And I've said this before, I'll say it again.

[00:28:51] I mean, you could have let's just, you know, say like total junk all around and you haven't eaten, I don't know, in two days. You're so hungry. Totally. Okay. But you don't have to overeat that stuff. I remember back in the pandemic, people were like, what if there's only Doritos in the grocery store? Like, cool. Then you're eating Doritos, but you don't have to overeat Doritos. Right. So it's like you can have whatever the treats are that they have of the party, but you don't need to overeat them if they have a whole big spread and lots of different things.

You don't need to taste every single one if there's so much more food. Always where that came from, like there's always more delicious things to eat. Why does it matter so much to eat this thing right now? What is it about this thing? Is it that actually it's this thing that I really need to eat? Or is it. I really am just trying to feel better. I'm trying to change my emotional state by eating something. That's what we want to start figuring out. And so I feel like it's when you're actively trying to lose weight, you're like, no, but tell me exactly how to stop doing this. Well, I mean, you can white knuckle it and just decide you're not going to have anything.

[00:29:53] I mean, I've done that many times way back, you know, in my more dieting days, like lots of people do, that that's one thing you can do. But if you're thinking big picture and actually solving the problem, we need to understand more about why we do what we do so that we can effectively choose something else that satisfies that same need. And solves that problem for us. So that is the thing that can feel slower, but it's permanent. And what I found is, you know, the white knuckling stuff, it's just tends to not be permanent for most people. All right. Well, I'm going to wrap this up now. Like I suspected, it's getting longer and I could say a whole lot more.

But like I said, if this is something you'd like to work on, we help our clients in weight loss for doctors only all the time on these things. And we talk about each person's specific situation and scenario, which is so helpful for everybody else learning from those things as well. So rather than me, just kind of like sort of speaking in generalities, we can actually dig in with you. So that might be something that you want to consider in the future, getting some of that help from weight loss for doctors only. All right, my friend. Well, thank you for joining me.

[00:31:02] I hope this gives you at least something to think about when it comes to those social situations and times when you're expected to eat socially. And I want to just let you know that you can work through this. Like this really is something that you can solve for. This can get better. If it's something that you've struggled with a long time, it can start to feel like it's hopeless or like, well, it doesn't, you know, matter so much if those social events are rough, because the rest of the time you're doing pretty good, you know? I mean, that's, you know, I it's one way of thinking about it, but I, I like to think about it. Just big picture.

Wouldn't it be great if just no matter where you were or what was going on, you knew you had your back, you knew you'd stay connected to your body and you just didn't feel like it was like such a thing in terms of, you know, eating, not eating, how much you eat and all of that. And that's what I'm working on helping you to create.
All right. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much again for being here and talk to you next time. Take care. Bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.Overeating in social situations

The post Ep #376: Overeating in Social Situations appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, we’re talking all about ways to improve your well-being. I’m specifically referencing Shira Gill's list of 12 things within your control to focus on to improve your well-being.

If, like me, you find yourself getting overwhelmed by the news and at times feeling hopeless about the state of the world, this episode will help you shift your focus onto things within your control so that you can take action to improve your life and the lives of those around you.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Ways to take care of yourself * Focusing on things within your control * The importance of mindset * Making choices in alignment with your priorities * Why it’s so important to care for yourself * Taking ownership of how you feel

Your well-being is so important and is deserving of your time and attention. When you put yourself first, you have more capacity to also give time and attention to other people and passions in your life. Use the list in this episode as a starting point to think about how you can improve your well-being.

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #374: Lose Weight Without Wielding Portion Control

Ep #373: Prioritizing How You Feel Vs. How You Look

Ep #372: Leveraging Simplicity to Create Weight Loss Results

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Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Joining me today. Today is a day where I feel like we should just, like, cozy up, get a cup of coffee, cup of tea, cuppa, whatever you like to drink, and let's just sit down and have a little chat about some things.

I really was feeling very called to do an episode that hits you in the feels a little like seeing you for what you're needing right now. You know, maybe you're listening to this much past when I first published it, but also it might be exactly what you're needing at this moment. In fact, it probably is. And I'm really excited to have this information for you. Before we get started, though, I want to do something that I have literally never done before. So many episodes of this podcast have never done it before, but I decided that it's something that might really help you. And so I wanted to share it with you. So a company reached out to me and asked if they could sponsor my podcast, like do an ad or, you know, do a financial sponsorship in exchange for me promoting it.

[00:01:41] And I don't do that. That's not a thing I've ever done in this podcast. I don't do ads, I don't have sponsorships. I don't do that at all. But I was curious about the company. And, you know, I got a lot of solicitations and basically almost never am I interested in what's being sent to me. But this one piqued my interest. And so I went over and clicked over and had a look at what they offer. And I was like, this actually sounds really, really good. And I still don't do sponsorships. So I'm I'm not going to take any of their money, but I wanted to reach out to them and say, well, hey, I'd be happy to just pass on the information to my listeners.

And then I was like, thinking about y'all and thinking like, maybe I can get something good for them. And I was like, what if I just, you know, talk about it? Like, would they have some sort of special code or something that I could offer the listeners just to help you out? Again, I get zero from this. I don't want anything from this. This is just a genuine idea. Share. I hesitate to even say recommendation as such because I haven't used it myself. But as I was considering doing this, I actually coached one of my clients and she mentioned using a service like this.

[00:02:44] It was a different one and I thought, no, this is really a thing. People are using it, doctors are using it, and it's really helping those who are using it. So I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention, or at least everyone listening here, in case maybe you haven't heard about it or you have and you just have never really, like taken the leap. Like maybe this will be the thing that'll get you going. So what I want to talk about is using a virtual like an AI scribe. So recently I did a podcast where I was talking about different ways to support yourself more, to get more help. And one of the things I talked about was hiring a scribe.

Well, when I was talking about that, I was thinking about like an actual physical human. But there are many, many companies out there who now are offering, like an AI virtual scribe that then, you know, listens to your whole interaction with the patient and then writes your note for you. And so I thought, well, how good can that be? You know, I'm like a natural skeptic, but I went through this website and looked at everything and looked at their reviews and I was like, no, this is really good for people like the people who take just a little bit of time to get it set up and to to train it, you know, it keeps learning and then it gets better and better at writing the notes exactly how you want them.

[00:03:54] So the company is called freed. Freed. Their website is Get Freed II. So get freed. I like I said, there's many other companies out there. It could be that maybe there's a certain one that the institution that you work for maybe is rolling out, and you can use it with your EMR. Maybe it's something like that or maybe not. Maybe you don't know anybody who's using this and you're like, what is this?

I want to check it out. So I'm not saying that freed is like the only one that's good by any stretch. They're just the ones that reached out to me. And like I said, I checked out their stuff and it seemed like people are super loving it. So what I got for you is a discount code because like I said, I was like, well, if I'm going to talk about it, I want to like help you out. And so this is for a free month of unlimited uses of freed. So I think if you used it for a month, you know, unlimited uses, you could really get a good sense of, is this something that actually helps you or not? And, you know, I don't think I need to say this, but I will anyway. You know, getting charting done is a huge challenge for a lot of doctors.

[00:05:00] Not every doctor. There are plenty of people who have it figured out for themselves, and it's going really well without this service. But if you're someone who struggles, if you're someone who's looking for some solutions, clearly what would really help are some systemic changes and solutions, of course. But while we're waiting for those, maybe we can find some things that you can use today, like right now to help you. So like I said, you know, why not try it? The code is wait 99. They have wait written in all caps. I'm. Not actually sure if the all caps matters or not, but why don't you just type it in in all caps just to be sure. So it's WEIGHT99 and that gets you a free month of unlimited uses at get freedom.i. Just check it out. Why not? Like, what do you have to lose?

Or maybe just look at it and see if it's something you might want to consider. But it seems to me like if you were going to be reading things out loud, saying things out loud to an in-person scribe, this would not really be different, right? You might have to explain it to the patient because it could be a little like, why am I saying some of these things out loud? But I think they would really love being able to see you looking at their face and making eye contact while your phone or whatever is listening. To be able to write that note so that you're not having to face the computer and type it all the time, you know what I mean? Or wait and type it later well into the night because you're behind.

[00:06:30] That's what I have for you on that. I wanted to share that with you because I think it's pretty cool. What I want to talk to you about today. Like I said, I really wanted to connect with you a little bit like heart to heart. Hopefully. You know what I mean by that. I get this sense that there are people out there that need that connection, and it could be you, right? Like holding it together, you know, marching forward, but need a little moment to have just like a little heart softness there.

And I was trying to figure out what exactly that was. And then a friend of mine who's actually been on this podcast twice. I'll tell you more about that in just a second. I'm on her email list because her work is amazing, and she sent out an email that literally came out today, I believe, and I was reading it and I was like, oh, dang, that's so good. And that's what I'm going to talk about today, and I'm just going to credit her for it. I'm not even pretend like I came up with this myself because I did not. It's so good. It's so good though. So Shira Gill, she has been on this podcast twice.

[00:07:29] I wrote it down. She was on episode 82 and episode 251. And definitely those are good episodes. She's a great person to interview, great person to chat with, so definitely recommend you check those out. 82 and 251 so Shira is an organizing expert, but the way that we met was actually through the coaching industry because she is also a trained life coach as well. So she doesn't really focus on coaching clients so much, but she understands how brains work because of coaching to help people, to be able to declutter, organize, you know, have the right amount of things for them. She's also the best selling author of two books.

The first one is called minimalist. A second one is called Organized Living, so you're going to definitely want to check those out. Her website is Shira Gill g I l l.com. So you definitely want to check out her work you can get on her email list. I highly recommend it. I find it to be very helpful. And also I just love Shira. She's my friend and I've actually worked with her. I actually this was pre-COVID. I had her come out and help me with my home and she's incredible. So all the credit to Shira here, but she was talking about different ways to take care of yourself. But there's one part in here that really resonated, and it was talking about things that you can control. For me, when I was really thinking about like, what is this actually talking about? It's really more about what I titled this, which is improving your well-being through intentional focus.

[00:08:52] And I think maybe I'm feeling like you need what I need right now, which is that connection to more like of reality. What I mean by that is with what's going on in the world, partly political, but also partly just other world events. It can be a bit overwhelming, it can be a lot and it can be easy to start. Feeling sucked in by those topics, sucked in by the problems and what I've noticed myself at times, just a little bit. Because I try to really do my best to keep this under control, but starting to sometimes wonder, like, are there really solutions out there?

Like, what is this really going to mean for my children? And like, you know, I'm I'm just to be totally honest, I've had thoughts of like, people who are well into the end of their life and like when people pass away, I've literally had like fleeting thoughts of like, well, lucky for them, they don't have to stick around to see what happens, you know, or like things like that, like, wow, that's interesting. That's interesting that I'm having thoughts like that. Okay, okay. And so what I have been doing before I even read this email from Shira, was trying to curate that a bit more. So I'm not at a point where I want to go completely no contact with news.

[00:10:07] I'm not at a point where I want to just completely like delete the two apps that I, you know, or like cancel my subscriptions. There's two papers that I subscribe to. I don't want to do that, but I also want to be on there less. So figuring that out has been helpful. Like, for instance, there were even some podcasts I'd been, you know, dedicated listener to and decided to take a break from those, decided to listen to a few more audiobooks, you know, just decided to maybe expose myself to some things that were a bit more fun and we could maybe argue even like a little bit like frivolous, like, you know, I've gotten kind of into knitting lately and like looking at beautiful yarn online, you know, it just feels like it's actually really a nice thing to do for myself.

So when Shira was talking about that, one way to take care of yourself is to really focus those things that you do have control over. And she has a list of 12 things I was like, yes, this puts into words what I think I've been trying to do for myself. It was so helpful for me to read it, and I wanted to share it with you as well, because I think it will be helpful for you. And I think it's a great list to maybe write down, print out whatever your version is so that you can remind yourself, like, am I doing things that are on this list? If not, you know, do I want to maybe drop what I'm doing and focus on that? So these are things that you can control for sure.

[00:11:33] But I think when you intentionally focus on them, it really does improve your well-being. Right? Like, yes, there are the things that are happening in the world. And, you know, we can spend as much time as we want to or we feel as valuable on them and thinking about them, talking about them, things like that. But then. Actually making a concerted effort to shift away and focus on these things that bring value to us and help us to feel well so that we can contribute positively to the world, like within our sphere of influence. I think it's really, really meaningful.

I think it's really, really meaningful. And before I get into the list, I wanted to just briefly mention that episode 356 of this podcast is titled Peace and Freedom Around Politics, which, if you're having some trouble with political stuff currently, right as this is published or even just sometime in the future, that's a good episode to revisit as well. Or maybe listen to for the first time, but this is really something that you can use really, any time you're feeling like maybe just like pulled in different directions. You know, for me, sometimes I'm kind of like I start to feel like there's a little pessimistic thread in my thinking, like a through line, like, I don't like that.

[00:12:46] Why is that like that? I don't I don't want to live my life like that. I really want to be thinking and feeling more optimistically. And I think focusing on these things really helps. So I'm going to read them all to you. And then I have one extra, and I'll put in my own little thoughts and tidbits as, as I go through them again with those ideas. So just so that you get the list first. So this is Shearer's list, she says. These are the things you can control, right? What you can intentionally focus on my attitude, mindset and actions. Number two, my work ethic.

Number three, how I spend my time. Number four, how I care for my home. Number five what foods I consume. Number six who I choose to spend time with. Number seven what I read, watch and listen to. Number eight who I choose to give my attention to. Number nine. How I spend, donate or invest my money. Number ten. Who I vote for. Number 11. How I treat myself and number 12 how I treat others. Oh so good. And I'm going to put a little lucky number 13 in here. I really thought long and hard, like, what do I have to add to this? And everything that I came up with was actually it could be tied into something that was already there, except for number 13 that I did want to point out.

And it makes sense that Shearer didn't have it on here, but it makes sense for me to offer it to you because you are actually coming here for, you know, some help with your mindset and for coaching tools. And so lucky number 13, I said, was how I utilize the coaching tools I know or that are available to me. Right. Very often we learn a lot of these tools and then we're not actually putting them into action. We're not utilizing them, applying them to ourselves to help us.

So that could be processing your emotions, looking at your thoughts, evaluating them, you know, things like that, like all those things that I teach you, right. Like actually using those things and, you know, putting some intentional focus on that can make a huge, huge difference as well. Okay. So let's just go through each one of those line by line. So the first my attitude mindset and actions I mean this is like really honestly I'm so glad she led with this one because it's kind of like a mic drop moment, right? It's like when we're not happy, it's like, okay, well, if I fix my attitude, if I fix my thinking, my mindset, if I'm making sure that my actions are in line with my values, my priorities, who I want to be in this world, how I want to show up in this world, things start to feel a lot better, just like immediately.

[00:15:24] Like if that was the only thing she wrote, I'd be like, yeah, pretty much right there. So I think that's a really good check when we're like, why is everything the way it is? Why does it have to be that way and wish everyone was different? Maybe what we really wish was that we were different and not like in the bigger picture sense, but in like our attitude in the way that we're thinking, in the actions that we're taking in our overall mindset, the way we're approaching things, particularly with work, it can be a huge part of it.

So this is, again, not anything to be like judging yourself on beating yourself up about, but it's a little bit of that like, aha, come to Jesus kind of a thing. Like where it's just kind of like, oh, okay. Right. Yeah. I do have control over that, don't I? Interesting. Yeah. When my mindset is controlled, so to speak. Right? Is how I want it to be. My perception of everything and everyone around me improves immediately. Right. Our well-being improves immediately. Okay. Number two, my work ethic and I don't think that there's really many people here who have a concern about work ethic. You know, knowing Shearer like it's it's there's not even a lazy cell in that woman's body. Like it's not that at all, but focusing on what you can do right.

[00:16:36] When you're kind of feeling like you're spinning and you're all over the place, it's like, wait, I know how to contribute value to this world. So I'm gonna get to work focusing on getting that done and doing it in an efficient manner. I think that can be really centering as well. Like. I really have something of value to offer here, and I'm just going to get to work and do it instead of, you know, spinning around with all the distractions. Okay. The next one, how I spend my time. This is so good. You know what I noticed a little bit was like, sometimes because, you know, I don't do social media, right?

So sometimes those news apps can scratch that itch, give that little dopamine hit of like, oh, like, I wonder what happened now. Or, you know, I've already read the paper in the morning and then at night, like, I'm kind of thinking to myself, well, I wonder what happened today. Going in there and looking at things, is that how much time I want to spend on the paper? I mean, I think we could argue like no one would criticize me for that. But when I look at. How I want to be spending my time. It's not that much, you know, whatever happened during the day will probably be there tomorrow morning, too, you know, if it's important enough. You know, sometimes I get a little bit of scarcity, like sometimes there's some articles that I find really, really interesting that aren't necessarily like news as such.

[00:17:43] And by tomorrow they won't be there anymore. So I get a little bit of a FOMO kind of thing. Well, let me just see. And was there another article? And, you know, sometimes it's not so easy to find something that you saw before. I just decided, like, I none of that's actually that important, right? How do I want to spend my time? Do I want to be spending it on things that maybe don't always make me feel so great? Well, maybe. But maybe just a small portion of that and spend more of my time doing other things, like finishing the shawl that I'm working on. I've been hooked. Any of the fiber arts people I think may know a couple years ago, I never in a million years would have thought this would be me, but it is me.

It's something I'm really enjoying. Okay, how I care for my home. You know, our surroundings are important. I don't think that we need to make this, like, a pressure kind of a thing of like, well, you can't feel like you're in control or have this feeling of well-being until you've completely straightened your whole house up. It doesn't mean that at all. But again, understanding what your priorities are, what your values are, and putting some of your time and effort into creating a home environment that is in alignment with that, I think is really, really important and something that does help us to feel better when we're just in our homes.

[00:19:02] When you look around and it's not calming or esthetically pleasing or it's just difficult for you in whatever way, it might be time to make a little shift in that. And, you know, even if it's just some small things. They're not always that hard. Like we don't have an attached garage and so we have to go outside to get to all our recycling bins and garbage and all that stuff. And sometimes it's cold and I've got some recycling, you know, piling up cardboard laying around and, you know, it just it's like so like just go outside in the cold for 20s and put it out there so that it's gone. Like, this is what I'm telling myself.

And then it looks so much tidier and it just, you know, it feels better to be in my home. Okay. What foods I consume. I don't want to spend too much time on that. We talk about that a lot on this podcast, but it is important to remember that, you know, like it's easy for us to tell ourselves we don't have time or, well, I had to eat whatever was around. Not really true. You actually have a lot. You have full control over what you put in your mouth. I mean, unless somebody's force feeding you, which I don't hope is not happening for you, right? So what foods are you consuming, being thoughtful about that, having some focused intention on that, particularly then choosing foods that make you feel good in your body, that help you to create the results that you want.

[00:20:17] Okay, next, who I choose to spend time with. I think this is really huge because often what we find ourselves doing when there's not intention on this is we spend time with a bunch of people that maybe we don't want to be spending so much time with them, and then we're not making sure that we spend time with people we do want to spend time with. We're kind of mixed up on what our priorities are, or we're making choices that are out of alignment with those. And so getting clear on that again, like, who is it that I want to be spending time with and then making sure that I'm doing that or making some moves to do that?

Okay. What I read, watch and listen to, I mean, enough said. So huge, right? Like I'm, I'm definitely not ready for like no news at all, but really, really dialing it back a lot. And I am open to just canceling the subscriptions if I need to, I might. I'm just, you know, always on the table as an option. Don't think I'm quite there yet. I also have to say, like for me, I don't currently right now have a lot of time to watch very much.

[00:21:17] But you know, I decided to I've never been someone who was really like someone who rewatched shows, but what I found recently is that I found it really, really nice to rewatch some things that I know I enjoyed rather than trying something new. It's stressing me out, even if I really enjoy it, but it's like a stressful thing sometimes. That's nice too, you know? I remember the show from like the 90s called Northern Exposure, and I remember enjoying it back in the day and I found it. It's actually on Amazon Prime Video. I think you have a Prime subscription. It should be free. I know I'm not paying for it. It does have a couple ads, but it's not too bad.

And I was like a little bit of it has not has not aged well. But overall the concept is is the premise is still something that is entertaining. And it was, you know, it's just like it feels like wholesome and it makes me feel good when I watch it. So making sure that what you're doing is helping to facilitate that. What you're reading, watching and listening to. Okay, who I choose to give my attention to again, like if you are upset by something that's happening in the world and not actually taking action in the moment to help in any way, do you need to continue to give it your attention right now? Not to say that it doesn't have to be all or nothing, like you're giving it all your attention or you're giving it no attention.

[00:22:42] But does it need to have as much attention if it's not feeling like it's contributing to your well-being or your ability to feel good in your life? So same for that. Same for actual people who are in your life. Your attention is really, really valuable. It's really, really important. And I think it's something that is underrated and under talked about. So definitely something to think about. Then how I spend, donate or invest my money. This is a really good one to think about as well.

This is something again, I feel like I don't hear people speak of too much, but especially if we sometimes use spending as a way to not feel our feelings. Something really to think of. Does this really help me to feel well in my life? Something that might be good to intentionally focus on? Okay, next, who I vote for. I think this speaks for itself. You have control over that. That is to say that you have and it can be a good idea to exercise that, right. Okay. How I treat myself so good, right? Not only in actions, but also in how you think, what your self-talk is, you know, do you shove and stuff your emotions down, or do you find a way to process them so you can let them move through you in a way so you can really feel better, like you can stay afloat.

[00:24:02] Like you're not dipping down, feeling horrible underwater, bobbing back, you know, getting shot back up again for a little while, then getting pulled under with the undertow of emotions. Are you taking care of yourself well? Are you treating yourself well? This is so, so, so important. And then the final one was how I treat others. And I think that's really important too. You know, we think about the golden rule like we treat others the way we want to be treated.

It's a good way to live life. It's something to strive for. None of us is perfect. We're not always going to do it right, but it's really something that we can focus on when we treat others well. I think we also feel better about ourselves, you know, it's just more enjoyable being us in our lives. And then finally, my extra one, how I utilize the coaching tools I know and that are available to me, you know, and this is like no judgment whatsoever because all of us have done it. But sometimes, you know, we're kind of in a consumption mode or we're hearing things and learning things and yeah, that's so good. And like, oh my gosh, I totally should do that. And then we're not actually utilizing those tools. We're not actually putting them into action. And like everyone has done this I've totally done this as well. So this is just like a friendly nudge to actually try it out, to actually do it, let it work on you in your life, in your mind.

[00:25:19] Allow that time that you've invested into learning these tools. Pay off by applying them in your own life, and hopefully integrating them so that it just becomes the way that you approach things moving forward. So those are the things that you can control. Those are the things that if you intentionally focus on them, it really will improve your well-being. And these are things that we can do. Like if we're not careful, I think we can start to feel a bit overwhelmed by it. But I would just suggest like just pick one thing. Maybe focus on that. Maybe that's the thing for today.

Maybe you have some extra energy, you know, one evening or on a day off or a weekend day and you're like, you know what? I am gonna declutter and I'm gonna take those donations out and I'm gonna I'm gonna just do some general, you know, reshifting of things in the house so that it feels how I want it. So it's kind of reset back to the way I want it. Those are great, great things that you can do. And there's absolutely nothing that is indulgent about doing that. There's no reason not to. You feeling good in your life and feeling well does not detract from other people. It does not make people who are suffering feel worse.

[00:26:31] But it certainly doesn't help anybody. When now more people are suffering when more people are feeling unwell. So that's why really, the call to action for each one of us is to take ownership of our own wellbeing and do what we need to do to get ourselves to that functional place and hopefully even ideally, even better than functional. So what am I going to do? You know, as I was listing this all out, I'm like, what's my next thing? And I was thinking, you know, I have a decent car drive this weekend, I'm going to reach out to one of my friends and see if she's going to be available to maybe have a chat on the phone so we can catch up during that time, because it's important who I choose to spend my time with, right?

And who I choose to give my attention to. And she's someone that I would love to get my attention to. So all of us, we can use this as a filter, right? We can all use this going like, okay, what thing can I focus on? What's going to be something that's going to improve my well-being? You know, again, course and medicine. There's a need for some systemic shifts and changes of course. Absolutely. But in the meantime what are we doing? We can't just be suffering along and blaming it on others entirely. We have to take ownership for our part, the part we're responsible for.

[00:27:42] And these are all things we're responsible for. All right. Well, thanks, Shira. Thanks for putting out this amazing, amazing email that could inspire me. And, you know, I always love sharing Sherry's work because it's super good. She's also on Instagram. Her stuff's gorgeous. Don't let it make you feel bad though. Your house doesn't have to look like hers. It's just all like very serene. Anyway, check her out sher-gil dot com. You can get on her email list for free.

You can also check out her books, Minimalist and Organized Living. And if you're interested in trying out a virtual AI scribe, check out Get Free AI the code one more time is weight 99 white. In Caps 99, you get a free month of unlimited use. Give it a try. I mean, imagine if it changed your life. If it made charting so much easier, it would be so worth it. And if it's not for you, then cool. It's not for you. But at least you know, right?

Well, thanks for your attention. I just want you to know I haven't told you in a while. You're doing a really good job. You're here, you're listening. You're doing the best you can. I totally get it. And I appreciate you. And I'm sending you tons of love. Have a great rest of your week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #375: Improve Your Well-Being Through Intentional Focus appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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What if I told you you could ditch the concept of portion control, never think about it again, and still lose weight?

I’m here to challenge some widely held beliefs about portion control because, to be honest, I don’t like it and I don’t think it’s helpful. Many of us feel like we have to use portion control to lose weight even though we don’t enjoy it and it doesn’t feel good. I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I want to live my life.

Tune into this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians to hear more about why I’m choosing to reject portion control and what alternatives I’d suggest.

Gone are the days of using food and portion control as weapons against ourselves! You deserve more and I’m here to help you find it.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why portion control is not the only way to stop overeating * How portion control causes you to eat more * The restrictive and limiting nature of portion control * Why I think the concept of portion control is often unhelpful * Approaching yourself with more compassion * How to lose weight without portion control * The importance of remembering that you know your body best * Meeting your body’s needs in a way that feels good

Could portion control be a thing of the past for you? I want you to know that you have options! You don’t have to suffer through weight loss methods that don’t feel good to you and your body. If you’ve ever thought “There must be a better way than this” you’re right, there is, and I hope I can prove it to you in this episode.

To get personalized help losing weight without wielding portion control, check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program at katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Ep #372: Leveraging Simplicity to Create Weight Loss Results

Ep #371: Improving Medical Marriages with Coach Sara Payne

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. Really glad that you're joining me today. I am jazzed to talk to you today about something. It's a little bit anti what most people say and think, and I can't wait to tell you about it.

So I titled this episode Lose Weight without wielding Portion control. And I want to tell you a little bit about how and why I use the word wield. So first I was going to say leverage. So lose weight without leveraging portion control. And then I was looking at the list of episode titles. And I think two episodes ago I used the word leverage and I was like, oh, I can't use that. I got to find something else. So I googled synonyms for leverage, and none of them were right at all. And then I thought, okay, let me google synonyms for using, because using just seemed boring to me.

And there popped up wield. And I thought, hmm, is that a little dramatic? I kind of want to use it, I don't know. So I then I looked up like, what is the exact definition of wield? Because you know how sometimes you think you know what a word means, like you're pretty confident and in fact, you're quite confident, but there's that little part of you that's like, maybe that is not actually what it means.

[00:01:49] So now let me just look it up. And what came up online was to hold and use like a weapon or tool. And the word weapon stood out for me and I was like, oh yeah, I'm using the word wielding because I believe that many of us have and continue to use the concept of portion control as a weapon against ourselves. So let me explain. Portion control, just the word itself is something that is actually like distasteful.

It doesn't sit well with me. Is there one person in the world I want to know who's, like, excited when they hear portion control? Like, is there a world where somebody is like, oh yes, portion control. I mean that jokingly, but I also mean it sincerely. Nobody really wants to do that. But we've been led to believe that that phrase, that tourm portion control is really what's needed, and that if we don't have it, we cannot lose weight and we can't keep weight off. Now, you might be like Katrina, I'm confused. You over here are talking about how overeating is a problem, and now you're saying we don't control our portions like what is happening right now.

[00:03:04] And I get that. And what I want to say is that portion control is not the only way to stop overeating. When I think of portion control, like if someone said, listen, you know what we're going to do? We're going to do some portion control. Like, I am not exaggerating because I've been thinking about this a little bit. I immediately feel some emotional hunger, like I'm not physically hungry, but I feel a sensation in my body that is reminiscent of hunger, that is emotionally based. And if I didn't know better, I would at least consider going to eat something. So isn't that interesting?

This concept, this tool, this tourm, this thing that's supposed to help us to do better and help us to create a result that we want, actually, at least drives me, and I don't think I'm alone to do the exact thing I'm trying to stop doing or not do. It makes sense, though, why we think about portion control. I started Weight Watchers, gosh, close to 25 years ago, I think was probably the first time I went. And their whole concept of counting points and everything, you know, that has shifted over the years. But the general principle is the same, which is assigning some sort of value to the food and then keeping the amount you eat within that, that like the designated a value that you get to have based on various characteristics about yourself and. So by definition it is a limit.

[00:04:33] It's a boundary. You can eat this much and you can't have more. At least that's the way I interpreted it. Now, I do recognize that there are people who eat more points on Weight Watchers than is allotted to them, but I, I mean, I just didn't do that. If I ever had an experience like, say, I ate out or something and, you know, it was very, very hard to determine a point count. I would just not document anything. I'd rather just not document anything than admit that I had gone over the allotment. It's like the wanting to win the game, or wanting to get the gold star or the A plus like I did it.

I totally followed it accordingly. And the problem with that was that when I did follow it to a T like that, I did really lose weight and like at a nice clip. And so that was enough of a positive reinforcement to me that it's like, oh, like when you control your portions, when you put this, control this like governor essentially on how much you eat, you get this weight loss result that you want. The part that I never connected to that, though, was that having that limit was unsustainable. I was physically and mentally unhappy. I did not feel great in my body, did not feel super great in my mind. I mean, I did like the weight loss part, but there was no part of me that wanted to continue doing that forever because it had, you know, enough discomfort to it that there was no way that I would be considering doing that ongoing.

[00:06:10] And that's just one example, because so many weight loss programs talk about portion control. And that's just built in to the like, the lingo, so to speak. We just automatically assume that what we need is portion control. And this actually came up because someone had reached out to me and had said, like, I'd love some help with portion control. And so I started thinking about that firm because I do not use that firm at all, at all, at all. It's nowhere in my program or anything. And I thought, interesting that this person believes that they need this and they want help with creating it, yet it actually isn't necessary.

So I started thinking more about portion control, and then I started getting a little fired up, a little fire in my belly like portion control. What the heck? We don't need portion control. And so we end up using the concept of portion control, essentially like that weapon. Remember when I talked about wielding portion control? It's like we're using it against ourselves. We're saying, hey, you're too much. You're a glutton. You consume more than your share. And you need to have less. And when you have less, you will feel bad, like your needs are not being met. It will not be a pleasant experience. And then you should do that forever.

[00:07:34] We're not going to do it. When I think about portion control, like I said, I immediately start to feel some emotional hunger. I. There's not one cell in my body that's excited about doing that. Not one cell in my body. Who's interested in doing that long terme. If anything, it just makes me get into a diet mentality kind of mindset. I start thinking, okay, well, I can suffer through this for however long until there's whatever the quote unquote cheat day or I finally gotten to my goal weight and I can let myself have more at that point or whatever. It's very much means to an end behavior. It automatically feels like I'm not getting enough, like my needs will not be met.

And when we believe that our needs won't be met, they are not met. We try to meet them. And often the way our body does that is by creating urges, by creating that emotional hunger like go and get some food, maybe even physical hunger, because it might just really not be enough food for you, because that's a whole other issue. Sometimes this portion control kind of stuff is like, yeah, you need to eat more food than that. Like, that's just not enough. Now, I do want to pause for a moment and say that if a portion control type of situation is working well for somebody, absolutely. God bless. Like there is no part of me that's saying you should stop doing that.

[00:08:57] I'm not like morally against portion control. I'm not saying it doesn't work for anybody. I think there are people who have found that, you know, weighing and measuring their food every day. It feels like a sustainable, doable thing for them. I don't know that they really would say that they experienced peace and freedom around food, but, you know, it could be. Everybody's got their own back story. And for some people, I think sometimes just having that level of strictness around what they eat is supportive to them, at least in some ways. Like they may believe that if they don't have those limits and they don't have those numbers and figures and amounts all dialed in, then it's just a free for all.

And they can't do the free for all. So there have to be limits. I am aware of some of the food addiction programs for people who identify as being food addicts. Like, you know, you can't abstain from all food, but you can abstain from some foods. And part of the treatment in some of the 12 step programs for that involves weighing and measuring your food and having limits around that. So I do believe and recognize that it can be very helpful and arguably even life saving for some people. But I think that that's an overall small subset of people. I think the vast majority of us who don't identify as food addicts, who have, let's just say, a relationship with food that could be improved upon.

I just don't know that the concept of portion control is particularly helpful. And so what I hope to accomplish with this episode is pushing back on that widely held belief. What if you don't need portion control at all? You could forget that tirm and never think about it ever again. In terms of your eating, I think that thinking about portion control, it can feel judgmental. Like, oh, I got to control my portions is basically like judging us. Like, yeah, you eat too much, it's too much. It's like it doesn't feel like it's a compassionate way to approach ourselves. Now, of course. Can we change the way we think about anything? Of course we can. Can we decide?

No portion control is going to become my most favorite time in the world? Sure, we can do that if we want to, but I also know that I lost my weight. I've maintained it and so many like literally hundreds and hundreds, you know, well over 1700 physicians that we worked with. Now we don't talk about that and they have success. So knowing that with that said. We can consider the idea that we can still get the results that we want without thinking about it through the lens of portion control, and it might be more effective, more comfortable, and more sustainable than we could ever imagine. Like, if that were the case, we could probably just so dramatic. The visual I had through the tourm portion control in the garbage, that's what just came, popped into my mind.

[00:12:03] We can just get rid of it. We can just say goodbye to that tourm and never think about it again. So maybe you're like, okay, that's cool, I'm behind that. But then what do I do instead? Like, if I'm not controlling my portions, I'm usually overeating. So what am I supposed to do instead? And to that I say that you don't need to control portions or measure anything if you pay attention to your body's signals. And as a side caveat, if your body signals are relatively trustable and what I mean by that, when people are eating a decent amount of foods that can kind of mess up your hormones, such as flour, sugar based products, it can make it so that it is harder for you to actually be able to identify and understand, like interpret your body's signals.

So sometimes we take a break from those foods for a period of time for a variety of reasons. But one of the main amazing benefits that can come from it is the clarity in the messaging of those signs. Like it becomes much clearer are you actually physically hungry or not? And your satiety signals become much clearer and more interpretable as well when you're doing that. So it doesn't mean that you have to never eat those foods ever again. What it means is that you can take a break. It's kind of like tuning in, like on a radio, you know, like you can kind of hear the message, you can kind of hear the signal, but there's a lot of static.

[00:13:37] Think about the old cars from like 1970s and earlier where you had the dial and the car radio. You know, you would just shift that dial just a little bit and then the signal would come in. Clearly that's what we're trying to do. So the idea that something else or somebody else outside of you knows how much food you should be eating and you don't. I just don't agree with that. I just really, really don't. When I hear of people doing that to get a certain result, there's often some sort of long terme downside to that.

For instance, many people who do fitness competitions, they're counting everything and totally looking at everything and have, you know, very, very dialed in way of eating that helps them to achieve the physique goals that they're creating for themselves or they're, you know, trying to create. And it works. I mean, they get those results. But what I also know is that disordered eating and actual eating disorders are rampant in that community, particularly among women, but men as well. And so it's kind of like you end up paying that price at some point. Are there people who love counting macros and it's just their favorite thing, and they want to do it forever more? I think there are there are people who really have found that it's very helpful and very easy for them, but there's nothing I want to do less.

[00:15:06] So I'm speaking with the people who agree or who also have that experience that they don't want to be needing to use a calculator and weighing and measuring to make sure it's the proper amount of grams to be able to have that. Like, that's just not the kind of relationship that I want to have with food. When I talk about peace and freedom around food, it is not like weighing this and measuring that. And you know, the one time that I did try doing that, I the quality of what I was eating because I was trying, it was like from a convenience standpoint, like trying to make it so that it would fit better. It was just not a good experience at all.

So for those of us who are like, hey, can I just like, live a normal life and enjoy food like the right amount and not too much and just not think about it excessively and enjoy it when I enjoy it and when I'm not having it, I'm not thinking about it like that's what I'm helping people to create. So like, could you get leaner if you followed, like the fitness competition stuff or like followed macros and whatever to get a certain physique? Yeah, you probably could, but is that even really your goal? You know, for some people it is.

[00:16:16] But for the majority of people it is not. So if it's not, could we just ditch the whole idea of portion control, ditch the whole idea that we need to somehow put these limits on ourselves, and instead practice trusting and believing that what we already have issued to us at birth in our bodies, is enough to let us know when to eat, how much to eat, when to stop. When that is the case, then you get to actually meet your body's needs. Some days you may be hungrier and you know that might be because your body actually needs more food that day.

And when you really understand the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger, you don't have to worry that you're eating too much food if it is actual true physical hunger. And then there are other days where maybe the amount that you're supposed to be able to eat, maybe you would have actually stopped eating a little earlier because for whatever reason, your body doesn't need as much that day. But when you're in portion control, well, you better eat now because it's your chance and this is all you get. You're not going to get to eat again until the next time.

Like these limits immediately put our primitive brain into like, fear that we're not going to be okay. And for many of us, we've had these experiences where truly our needs were not met. I mean, I was thinking the other day how many times, especially early days when I did Weight Watchers, how much diet soda I would drink, just trying to fill my stomach up, like with the carbonation.

[00:17:49] This was kind of before all the fancy bubbly waters existed, you know? And like all they had was like club soda. You gross. Who was going to drink that? So of course now I'd be like, mm back then. No way. So like all these diet sodas, just trying to get myself through the day, trying to distract myself from the true physical hunger. Like gnawing, stomach growling feeling that I was having, you know, so. So, yeah, like, if I was willing to suffer in that way, I did have this consistent weight loss, but there's no way I was going to continue on eating that way forever.

That just did not feel like the kind of life that I wanted to live. So if you are intrigued or interested in creating a life where you experience peace and freedom around food, and then your body ends up at an appropriate weight for you and you're able to maintain that long terme without a lot of effort, without having to control your portions, without having to measure things. I just want you to know there is something available to you, like when we talk about like, oh, I just need portion control. I need help with portion control or really saying, like, I need help making this not feel so bad. If we're using it like a weapon, we're basically saying, I need help to stop using this weapon against myself.

[00:19:05] And that's what I'm hoping to offer to you today. You can put that down. You don't need that. You don't need it to get the results that you want. And if you don't have a super positive and loving relationship with the concept, the terme, the whole idea of portion control, you don't have to use it. It really I was just about to say it's optional and it's not optional. I mean, optional means it's like, yeah, I take it or not. Like either way is fine. I think for a lot of us it's not fine. It doesn't help us. It actually creates more of the yo yos. The weight up and down creates more drama with food.

It actually detracts from what it is that we're trying to create with peace and freedom around food, so you can get all the results you want without portion control. Completely unnecessary to ever use that terme ever again. Just want to invite you to consider that that you just really, really don't need it. And if you're interested, at some point I'm figuring out how to do it in another way. You can always check out more. You can check out my book, which is called How to Lose Weight for the Last time Brain Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss. And you know, there's other great, amazing resources for free on this podcast as well.

[00:20:22] And of course, you can come work with us in the Weight Loss for doctors Only program too, if you'd like some personalized help on that. So can we just maybe stop with portion control? I don't want to talk about it. Not because I'm not willing to talk about it, but just because, like, no, we don't want that. It's not helpful. Let's just drop it and we'll think about food in a different way. What I really want to focus on is not how I can limit my food, and instead I want to figure out how I can meet my body's needs in a way that feels good and nourishes it in an appropriate manner.

Let me figure out what that is, because guess what? That's something that you can do ongoing. You can do that the whole rest of your life. And you don't need any special calculators or anything like that. You don't need your phone, you don't need an app. You literally just need to be present in your body. Which guess what? You can't go anywhere without it anyway. So there we go. Nail in the coffin on portion control. I think that's what we've accomplished with this episode. I hope you have a great rest of your week. Take care and I'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #374: Lose Weight Without Wielding Portion Control appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you spend more time thinking about how you feel or how you look?

Like so many of us, you’ve probably been conditioned to put more importance on how you look. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but if it’s at the cost of how you feel, it might be time for something to change.

In this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, we’re exploring the difference between how you feel and how you look and how to shift your priorities from one to the other.

I’m here to help you create the relationship with food and your body that you want. Not the relationship you think you should want, but the one you really, truly want. Taking care of your body and listening to how you feel is a big part of that. Let’s get started.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why we often prioritize how we look over how we feel * Potential downsides to focusing primarily on how you look * How to improve how you feel in your body * Ways to shift your focus to how to feel * The value of gentle accountability * What happens when you prioritize how you feel

Maybe focusing on how you feel could be what changes everything for you. What if this one mindset shift could open up the path to peace and freedom around food and the relationship with your body that you’ve always wished for? I know it’s been transformative for me, and I hope it will be for you too.

To learn more about a simple way to lose weight permanently, check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program at katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #372: Leveraging Simplicity to Create Weight Loss Results

Ep #371: Improving Medical Marriages with Coach Sara Payne

Ep #370: On Being Sensitive

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there friend. Welcome to today's episode. I'm really glad you're here with me today. I want to talk to you about something that's been on my mind a little bit lately. And that's a difference between how you feel and how you look and the priorities of that.

I kind of wonder if my thinking about this is partly just a part of life, like a part of maturity. I'm in my later 40s now, and I just kind of wonder if this is something that maybe a lot of people think about. I don't know, maybe you let me know if this is something that's been on your mind as well, or if it has been in the past. If you're older than I am, if you're younger, you might be like, wait, what? Because I have a feeling that even ten years ago I would have maybe had some resistance to this. But anyway, regardless, wanted to just bring it to you as something to consider. Because for many years now, I've worked with people who struggle with eating food, weight, and of course, I have my own history of struggling with those things as well.

[00:01:37] And so it's something I think about a lot. Of course, I want to, you know, always do whatever I can to help any person, really, but particularly the women physicians that I help, I'm always interested in helping to make this process easier, simpler, more enjoyable, and to try to help each person I work with to create whatever kind of relationship with food in their body that they really want, not the one that they think that they should want, or the one that they have always thought that they should want, but the one that they actually do want, so that when they get there they're like, yes, this is it.

I have it now, and I want to maintain this because this is really, really good. So I was thinking about using the metric of how one looks to guide us or lead us when it comes to weight loss. And of course, you know, altering how we eat to do that. I think a lot of that messaging or kind of just the idea, it's almost like a habit to think about it that way. Like I want to look a certain way. I want to lose weight so that I can look a certain way, so that any specific part of my body will look different. I think part of how you look is also the size clothing that you are wearing.

[00:02:56] Sometimes people are using clothing size as their measurement, maybe even just the number on the scale. And look, I want to be clear here, I'm not saying that these are bad ways to measure it. It's just something to think about. I just something I'm thinking about and I want to encourage you to, you know, just think about it as well to figure out what really is going to work for you as an individual. So when we use even the scale, then, you know, at a certain number on the scale to determine how we should stop losing weight or you know what those numbers mean? It's a direct correlation to how we look. Right.

We're kind of like, well, why do I know that I want to lose 40 pounds? Well, maybe it's related to some other metrics that, you know, are maybe arguably considered a quote unquote healthier weight for us or something like that. But ultimately, we also are like envisioning how we're going to look, and we're going to feel proud of how we look. And, you know, maybe you're going to feel just more confident or feel sexier or just feel more comfortable wearing certain types of clothing that you like to wear. A lot of it still comes down to looks. So thinking more about where this all comes from and I think, you know, mainstream media, advertising, society, patriarchy, you know, all those things I think have a lot to do with it.

[00:04:15] But I'll just speak for myself. And recognizing that that prioritization of looks really goes back to me being a young teenager, the messaging was thinner, is better really. You know, it was okay to be thin at all costs, right? So to prioritize how we look, I think really just stems from old messaging, old priorities. And it's just a habitual way of thinking. It's just habit thinking. When we think about weight loss, we think about how we look as the goal. The problem with this, right? Because is it even a problem? Like who cares? So you want to look a certain way? Does that have to be a problem?

I don't think it has to be a problem, but I do think that it often ends up leading us into what I call means to an end behavior, which is typically what also would be called diet mentality behavior, which is doing things that you have no intention of doing long terme in your life in order to try to look a certain way or, you know, get to that certain weight. It could be something that you maybe even do for a long time, but you kind of have to suffer through it. You kind of have to endure. It's not something that's very comfortable for you. It's maybe fear based. You know, you're afraid that if you don't control things in a certain way, then you're going to gain weight and then what's going to happen and you're going to look a certain way, and that's going to be terrible.

[00:05:41] So often when we prioritize the look, it has that effect on us when it comes to us figuring out what changes we want to make or arguably should even make. Now, I will say that focusing on how you look, which also comes down to sizes and scales and stuff like that, it is easier to measure. Like if you're like, I want to be a size four, you're going to know when you fit in a size four. You know, if you want to weigh whatever 150 pounds on the scale, you're going to know when you weigh 150 pounds on the scale. So to a certain extent it is easier to measure. And so in some cases, I think it can make sense in that way.

And like I said, I'm not saying you shouldn't be using this. I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever look at the scale or ever have a goal for yourself for a clothing size. But I do really think that there are some significant downsides to using this, particularly as we get older. So what I have seen a lot of times is that we do finally get to the clothing size. We do get to the number on the scale, but we're still kind of dissatisfied. Right? We're still not fully happy with how we look. And this can be as we age. But there are plenty of people who are in their 20s and 30s who have this exact same experience, you know? So we finally get to that sort of like coveted size or that coveted number on the scale, and then we're like, oh, like, I really thought it would be better than this.

[00:07:06] I thought I would look better than this. So, you know, any number of concerns that people have, right? Skin issues, sagging, wrinkles, cellulite, you name it, whatever the things are that we don't like, we really hope I'm going to put this effort in. I'm going to get this weight off, I'm going to make these changes, and then I'm going to feel really good in my body.

And a lot of people still don't because they're focused on how they look. You know, not to say that you can't go and maybe make some surgical changes or like things like that, but like, you cannot stop the aging clock. Like there's no way to just like, freeze your skin and your body in a certain age or in a certain decade of life or anything like that. Right? So it really can be a letdown for people. A lot of hard work to get there and not really being all that happy with the result at the end because of the prioritization of how we look. And I wonder if that's maybe part of why it's often unsustainable for people to keep the weight off. You know, they just never were really even that pleased with what they saw when they got there.

[00:08:15] So let's talk about focusing more on how you feel versus how you look. Now, I do not want to suggest that just because you weigh a certain amount that you necessarily feel bad, because I don't think that that's the case. I think there are plenty of people who are, whatever we could characterize them as overweight or obese who actually feel quite good. So I don't want to equate size with how you feel in your body. But I do think that for enough people, even if they relatively feel good in their body, there's still some limitations that they find for themselves.

And things that I'm talking about is like, say you decide to go for a hike, I don't know, you can go by yourself or just with other people that you enjoy doing those types of things with. And, you know, you climb to the top of a hill and maybe you're like really sucking wind there at the end. You know, it's rough. Like you're really needing to take more time than a lot of other people to catch your breath. And you're like, you know, what would be really awesome is to feel like I could recover more quickly when I do something more strenuous or taxing. Right. That might be something that you notice. You're like, you know what? Like, I'm not like feeling bad, but there are some things that might, you know, really be nice to do.

[00:09:38] So I think that at least factoring in how we want to feel. Into our goals with food and weight. I think it's a good opportunity. It is harder to measure, but you get to enjoy how you feel on going every single day. So. Where this has been coming up for me recently is with strength training, and I am not going to assume that you've listened to all 372 episodes of this podcast before this one.

Maybe you've recalled me saying at some point in the past something about this, but if not, I'll just kind of give you the executive summary. So I grew up at a time where being rail thin was desirable. Kate Moss waif look, heroin chic. Really just being as thin and kind of twiggy as possible was what was desirable. And so that was what was imprinted on my young mind as like, this is the ideal and this is what you should be trying to create. And I mean, even as a teenager, I mean, basically my whole entire life I have been a more muscular person. And as we know, muscles like take up space. They just do. And I really hated that about my body. I hated that idea that I just couldn't create that, like small lean frame because my body just wouldn't do it. And so without getting into every detail, it would take way too long to talk about it.

[00:11:14] Over the years trying different ways to lose weight. There were times when I wasn't exercising as much or at all for a lengthy period of time, and so my muscles then did shrink, because that's what happens, right? When you don't use it, you lose it. And that's what happened. And so I have actually had some periods of time in my life where I was closer to that ideal. I mean, never even remotely close to as thin as those models, but but definitely like that smaller size. And I enjoyed that look. I really did, but it still was never really what I had hoped it to be. And now, in hindsight, I can really see a lot of downsides to it as well.

Like for my body to be that deconditioned to have that small of muscles, like there was a cost to that, there was a price that I paid, and a lot of it pertained to chronic pain, just not really being able to use my body in ways that I wanted to. And I don't even think that I fully had awareness around that. I think this was a lot of like, you know, hindsight is 2020 kind of a thing, but where this has finally switched for me, I'm almost 48 years old. So maybe for those of you younger than me, maybe, maybe you can consider this a little bit a little bit earlier and maybe make some changes in the way that you think if you want to.

[00:12:39] So what happened was in the last year, I read a book by a doctor, I think her name is Jen Gunter. She wrote a book called The Menopause Manifesto. As I was starting, you know, going into perimenopause, I realized, like, I don't know enough about this and I need to be educated. I actually heard her speak at the Canadian Women in Medicine conference a couple years ago. She was talking about the subject about menopause and talked about her book, and I thought, oh, you know, I should get that book, got the book.

And as we often do, let it sit around. I was like, not excited to read the book for a while. But then last summer, I finally was like, that's it, I'm digging in. I need to educate myself. Like, we educate girls so much about menarche. We really do not educate women well enough at all. I don't believe on what to expect with perimenopause and menopause. So anyway, that was actually a very interesting book and I learned a lot. And in that book, she really talked a lot about strength in terms of lots of different ways that it helps women as they age, particularly with osteoporosis, which is in my family. And I really just started thinking like, you know what? Like I need to do this for my health. I think that there's this such a long period of time for so many of us where, you know, eating and food is all about how we look, you know, what we weigh.

[00:13:56] And then does that look good? Is that acceptable? And then there comes this point where you start realizing, like, who cares how I look like, am I healthy? Do I feel good, am I well? And I think that was kind of like a shift for me. Oh, like, what difference does it make what I look if I'm not well, if my body is not healthy, if I don't feel good in it. Right. So I started working on some strength training. Knowing myself in my body, I knew I needed to kind of start small, work my way up.

And in case you're interested, I do a lot on the peloton app just because that is convenient for me. I've done other things that I've loved as well, but for me and the stage of life I'm in right now, that's what's working best for me. And I just started with their arms and light weights, you know, kind of things. I was like holding 1 or 2 pound weights and did those for a long time. And that was hard. And, you know, that's something that I focused on. And and then doing, you know, some of the cardio would build some strength and things like that. And then I started doing some of the barre classes, which is like a kind of modified ballet type of thing.

[00:14:59] And that's actually really good too, with strength. And so I was like gradually building it up. And then at the start of this year. Ish run. Then I decided, okay, for realsies. Now I'm going to do, like, real, real strength stuff. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna bite the bullet. And I know that I'm gonna put a ton of muscle on. It's going to change the way my body looks. I'm going to be bigger. My clothes will not fit the same way. And I have just decided that I don't care. I have decided because this is a decision. Like, what do we decide to think about something?

The meaning that we want to assign to it? I have just decided that the way my legs look is irrelevant, and really, nobody cares except me. And even if they do care, I mean, you know, if you're looking for the weight coach who's, you know, rail thin, I'm not your girl. I don't know what to tell you, you know? So I just decided, like, I'm gonna do this because it's important for my health and well-being to build muscle. Also, knowing that, you know, while I still have estrogen on board, this is the best time to get as much muscle on my body as I possibly can, because it will only get harder after I'm into menopause. And so I started doing like some real strength training stuff. I have a couple of friends. I'll actually just share this with you just in case it's something that is motivating or helpful for you.

[00:16:22] A little while ago, these two friends, they'd actually. I'm friends with both of them. They had been doing it on their own and then they invited me in to it. We have a little WhatsApp channel with the three of us, and the whole point of it all we do is we just post what we've done for our exercise on there, and there's no writing back. We don't have to like, make any excuses or, you know, spend a lot of time like all we do is place an emoji on what the other person did.

And so it's just more of like very light accountability in the sense of like, here's what I did. But then it also can be very motivating. So there's definitely been times where I'm like, I just am not feeling it today, don't want to do it. And then I see my friends have done some things and I'm like, you know what? I could do that too. I could go do ten minutes. Okay, fine, I will go to quit, you know. So it has been very motivating, but not in a like an aggressive accountability kind of format. So anyway, one of those friends does some strength stuff and I asked her if she wanted. She actually actually told me if I ever wanted to do that strength program, that she would join me.

[00:17:21] So I said, hey, I'm going to start it if you want to do it. Yes. Okay. So that was a month long and we did that together. And that just ended a couple weeks ago. The reason I'm telling you all this is because last week I went on vacation with my younger two kids and my husband to go on a ski trip. And most years we try to go out west for a week of skiing, if at all possible. And so this year my senior in high school had to stay back. He didn't have off that week, but my younger two kids had off for school and so we headed out to Utah. Shout out to Utah! I love to ski out there.

Went out to Park City and decided to ski. Now my background is skiing. I've skied since I was three years old, so it's a long time thing for me. But as an adult I have often really struggled with it where I just like am super uncomfortable, did not feel like I could really do it for very long. So for a long time I just kind of had this rule of like, whenever my body feels like it's done, I'm done. And I stand by that. I mean, that was by far for sure the right thing to do. What I've learned is once you're tired and then you keep pushing yourself like that's when you're going to fall and hurt yourself.

[00:18:21] So don't even do that. So I would usually ski for like maybe three hours or so, and then I would just leave early. I would just be done early and my husband would be out skiing with everybody else. And that was just how we did things. So with this trip, I was kind of open to seeing like, well, let's just see how I feel. And, you know, let's see how things go. And I was so pleasantly surprised with how I felt like I could not believe by building the strength that I can fully see on my body. Like it's like, yes, things are definitely bigger for having done this strength work. I had so much more of an enjoyable time skiing.

I was able to deal with the altitude much better. Which nice thing about Utah is the altitude is not that bad. So that was really good. But regardless that was great. I was able to ski 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. I mean, like, who am I? Like what? And then not even being super sore the next day, or really sore that much at all. That was the most shocking part of the whole thing, because usually I would just be so, so, so achy. It was just so difficult and really that strength training right there. And I thought, you know, because I prioritized that I get to feel really good and like, who cares what size my snow pants are, you know what I mean? Who cares what I weigh on the scale? Like I got to be outside in nature with my family.

[00:19:48] This was the first time we had no kids in ski school, so we all ski together the whole time. It was so fun. We had beautiful bluebird sky days. We had a day of amazing powder 15in on the mountain. It was incredible and usually a day like that would just my legs would be shot and I ski the whole day and it was really, really, really nice. My point is, when we focus on how we feel doing the things that help us to feel good, right? Like I had the cardiovascular fitness and the strength to be able to do this thing that is important to me, that I want to be able to do for many, many, many more years to come.

I have to be willing to sacrifice this how I look priority. There's just no two ways about it. I can come up with, like, if I want to be strong, there will be size that goes along with it. And that's just how it is, right? When we are focused on how we feel and we prioritize that, that is like a present front and center experience for us every single day. Like, I think the novelty of wearing a size like ten years of wearing whatever size, like it's just normal. It's you don't even think about it anymore, right? Like it just kind of fades out over time.

[00:21:05] Same with the scale number. But being able to do stuff you love never gets old. So what I've noticed from focusing more on how I feel is I have much less pain. I have a lot more fun because just doing things that are strenuous is more fun and easier. I was shocked a couple years ago I went to see a pelvic floor physical therapist, shocked to find out that a lot of those issues are related to weakness. So stronger. I am in my hips and my glutes and all that better pelvic floor function, which is awesome.

It's more energy sleeping better. I mean, I've known for years that movement, even when I really don't want to do it afterward, it is great for my mental health. It's just better being me in this world when I've exercised. It's just how it is, right? So if I don't exercise, I can have the at least as close as I can get to the quote unquote desirable look. But there's a big price to pay and that's how I feel. Right. So I just want to offer to you, like, what if the goal is to feel good? What if maybe part of the goal should be to feel good? Maybe you do have a size or a scale number in mind, but you're also like, yeah, and I want to get there and then I'm going to see how I feel.

[00:22:27] Then I'm going to see how I feel, and maybe I'll add on 10 pounds of muscle after that, because I want to feel a certain way. Right. It really requires us to decide what's important to us, to decide what our priorities are, and to decide to stop thinking that how we look is bad. Right? Like how I feel is important. Therefore how I look is less important. If that's the case, then I need to stop thinking about how I look so much and even bigger picture extrapolating that if you want to feel good and that's a priority, then you eat food that nourishes your body.

So your body feels good, your digestion feels good, right? You can maybe do things to work to improve your sleep so that you feel even better. Because when we're rested, we just feel better. Life is better. People get proportionally dumber the more tired I am right so, so more rested you are. Maybe the smarter people become, I don't know, right? But you're able to, you know, you move in ways that feel good. You create a body that feels good to live in that doesn't get old. The importance of that doesn't wear off. It doesn't fade away. And it becomes something that you. See as president in your mind day in and day out. And therefore I think it is easier and more important to preserve that because it's front of mind so much. And by preserving it, I mean maintaining what you have.

[00:24:00] You know, when I really don't want to get up and exercise. Yeah, but I want to keep the muscles that I have and I want to keep getting stronger. So I will go and do this also knowing that when it's over, I'll be really glad that I did. And I will feel happier because that's just how it works. So with that, I'll wrap this up. I want you to really think about that. What if you prioritized how you feel? What if you used how you feel as the temperature dial, so to speak, as you're going through the process of losing weight, changing your relationship with food? So many people tell me when they're eating is on track, how good they feel.

And then they're like, Now I'm back to eating whatever. And we know all of that, right? Because we have to learn how to process our emotions and feel them in other ways, and not use food to try to make them go away. But you know, when you're continually delighted with how good it feels to be you and your body in this world, it's easier to prioritize that and to continue making decisions that help you to retain that which is the permanence of your results. So something for you to consider. It was fun for me to think about. Honestly, I've just decided I'm like, you know what? You know? You know how, like, people as they age, like, they just care less and less about what other people think.

[00:25:19] They'll just like, say, whatever comes to mind. And they just don't even care if it's offensive or whatever. Just Ernest and I kind of think to myself, I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna stop deciding that my body is offensive to this world, to the eyeballs of other people. Like, cause, you know, that sounds extreme. But honestly, when we're like, I need to look this certain way. Like, why? Particularly when that's against the way our body naturally looks.

There are people whose bodies naturally will look that way. Well, good for them. But for those of us where it doesn't, we can just decide. It's not important. Something else is important. And what that is, is the thing that I'm going to be working toward creating and then maintaining for myself. So give it some thought, see what you think. And, uh, maybe focusing more on how you feel is going to be the ticket. It's going to be the thing that really shifts things and makes this struggle start to shift for you.

All right. With that, I'm going to say goodbye. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your week. Thanks for your attention for being here. And I'll talk to you next time. Take care. Bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #373: Prioritizing How You Feel Vs. How You Look appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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When was the last time you thought about simplifying your life?

One of the biggest problems that people run into when they’re trying to lose weight or improve their relationship with food is finding time. It can feel impossible to fit one more thing into your already busy schedule. If that’s true for you, I want to help you figure out how to simplify your schedule to create the results you want.

If you don’t have time for the things that are most important to you, then your life has probably gotten a little overcomplicated, and it’s time for some simplification. The simpler, the better, right? In this episode, I’m helping you leverage simplicity to create weight loss results.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why things become more complex over time * The value of simplifying your life * Adapting to a world that is always becoming more complex * Identifying your priorities * How delegation can help you simplify * Focusing on things you can control * How to figure out what works best for you * Tuning out the extra noise

I want you to hear me when I say: don’t overcomplicate the simplification process! You might laugh but I mean it – you don’t have to simplify every area of your life at once. Pick one thing to work on and go from there. I can’t wait to hear how you choose to simplify your life!

To learn more about a simple way to lose weight permanently, check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program at katrinaubellmd.com/info!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #370: On Being Sensitive

Ep #369: Using Delegation to Improve Your Life

Ep #368: Getting Started With Self-Compassion

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I am really glad you're here with me today. This is a fun episode today on simplicity. I'm really, really excited about this. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I think it's something that a lot of us are really wanting in our lives.

Feel like it's it's kind of just sort of maybe a collective trend toward this. Maybe you've been feeling it too. Maybe not. But it's something that I wanted to address. So I want to talk to you about leveraging simplicity to create more weight loss results. And I mean, I feel like this is one of those things, like every time I even sometimes I say it, I'm like, well, as you know, doctors are burned out. It's like everyone's like, I know, we know. I feel like it's similar when when I'm like, well, the world is becoming a more complex place. Yeah, we're all aware. We all know. But I do think it's an important thing for us to kind of not just complain about or resist or wish it were different.

[00:01:40] Like, there's ways to work with what is true and what is real and still have the experience that we want to have. And that's really what I want to talk about today. I think a big barrier for a lot of people with food and weight issues and trying to create permanent weight loss and peace and freedom around food is just trying to fit it in. Right. Like, when do you do this? When your life is already pretty packed from eyes open to eyes closed? How are you supposed to figure out a way to do that? And how are you supposed to continue doing it right? Sometimes we can carve out the time for a period of time.

We prioritize it for a while, and then it just falls by the wayside again. And then there we are again, regaining the weight, repeating the same stuff and same results that we've created in the past that we don't like. So how do we move past that? And so I was doing some research on complexity and just trying to learn more about it. And wow, that was a rabbit hole. I don't know that I super suggest it. It was interesting. The word entropy was brought up. I don't know if that's exactly the way I want to put this. So I really just have one reference quote really that I want to read to you here in just a moment, but that I think helps to describe what I'm talking about.

[00:02:55] It's like the concept of complexity is pretty complex online. Oh imagine that. So I put in I don't know exactly what my search question was, but I basically found an article from 1993, Scientific American, that was a deep dive. And the title of this article is Why do things become more Complex? Think about that. Like there are a lot of things that have gotten easier in our lives. And. Hand in hand. With that ease has come complexity. So this is their answer. This is a whole article, but they're just like the one sentence that answers the question says complexity tends to increase as functions and modifications are added to a system to break through limitations, handle exceptional circumstances, or adapt to a world itself more complex.

So basically what it's saying is like everything will just naturally, over time, become more complex. And so periodically we are invited to deconstruct it. And rebuild it in a simpler way. The prime example I thought to myself was decluttering your home. There is no world where you can live. You know, for 30 years in a home and not have to go through and do some decluttering and some elimination of things. You don't need anymore space for new things that you do need. Like that's just kind of a natural part of living.

[00:04:35] So you might have a closet that you had all nice and orderly and neat. And then over the course of time, you know, the empty spaces on the shelves have gotten filled up with this, that and the other thing, and maybe some things that you thought you were going to use or you used to use are still sitting there, but you haven't really realized, oh, I don't use that anymore. If you've maybe you've forgotten what it even is, maybe some things have worn out and you haven't removed them yet.
Maybe things are kind of out of style, or you're just not really wearing that kind of stuff anymore. Like over the course of time, there has to be a culling, you know, you have to go through and declutter. And so similar, I think, to cleaning a home. You know, I talked about that on a couple episodes ago. It's like house just is gonna get dirty. There's just nothing you can do about it. It just will. You can be the tidiest and cleanest person, and it still is going to require that one thing. I was thinking of a system and a process that have become more complex over time is listening to music. And this is exactly what I was talking about, is like, as we get new great things in our lives, the complexity often really gets a lot more difficult.

[00:05:47] So when I was born, we had a record player, you know, good old vinyl, and it was so easy to learn how to play a record that I was a young, young child and knew how to play a record. I think I even had like a Fisher-Price toy record player that had little plastic records that you put on, and it would somehow play something. And so that was really pretty simple, right? Pretty simple. You put the needle on and it plays the music. Everything was hardwired in and it was something that would work. And then, you know, gradually we got cassette tapes and then CDs and then it was a little more like, okay, I gotta like find where I have all those stored, and then I gotta load them into the CD player and then make sure that it's flat so it's not skipping.

But you know, the music is a little bit better and, you know, easier to bring with and things like that play in the car. So that was better. So a little bit more complex but also a better result for us. So now I don't know how you listen to your music, but I listen on Spotify for the most part, and I have access to more music than I could ever even dream of listening to so much music. It's incredible. I mean, it's amazing. Think how much time we used to spend going to record stores and buying, you know, looking at everything.

[00:06:59] And should I spend my money on this one or that one? And it was like a whole thing right now it's just all that music is available at my fingertips. Anything I want to play, it's just boom, there it is. Amazing, right? Incredible and sadly pretty complex. Sometimes it's not that easy. You can't find the stuff that you want. Sometimes just getting the proper speaker to connect through Bluetooth is just not working, or your earbuds won't connect. Or as is the case in my home and I still have not figured this out.
Even though we have a family plan, somebody plays something in the home while I'm out listening to something else on my own Spotify account, and they, like, hijack my account and I can't listen to what I want to listen to anymore. Right? There's just innate complexity to it in some ways amazing, in some ways more complex. Another way that I see this is in car vehicle interfaces. You know, it was just like there used to be some buttons and like you had your radio stations dialed in and maybe you had a couple CDs in the car on your visor, you know, that you would put in and you'd listen to those again and again, and it wasn't that hard to adjust the temperature or anything like that. And of recent years, I found interacting with the car and I've driven several different cars so unnecessarily complex.

[00:08:21] My family's, if they're listening, they're like, oh my God, this again? Really this again. It's one of my latest things. I just, I keep joking, I'm like, I'm gonna get a car from the 1990s, and then I'm gonna find one that I super love, and then I'm gonna find 2 or 3 more identical to it and put them in storage, and then I'm just going to drive those cars until I die, and that's just going to be it. It's so funny. It's something that of course, I'm trying to adapt to, but it's actually a legitimate problem where the car manufacturers now realize that they've taken it too far, where it's so complex now, it's actually dangerous to people like you're spending so much time trying to touch the screens and figure out how to get to the things so that you can just, like, turn the temperature down a little bit.

Meanwhile, you know, you're not looking at the road. And so that's the same thing. It's like they try to make it like really awesome and give you so many options and try to make it really, really good for you. And in the process make it extra complex. So. My understanding is that a lot of the manufacturers are working on actually reducing that and simplifying it and making it easier because the customers are like, what is happening? That's been my my experience, what is happening.

[00:09:34] So we just have to understand that life naturally becomes complex. And so that's not something to resist. It's something to recognize. And then to also, you know, accept that you have to periodically work to do complexify it right. You have to work to simplify it. You have to take yourself through a bit of a process so that life feels simpler. And I think that the majority of people really, really relish a simpler life. Like a lot of people really feel like, oh my gosh, like I kind of, you know, wish for a time when there wasn't so many inputs and so many things to keep up with and the pace of life and things like that.

But the good news is that there's a lot that you can do about this, and it doesn't mean that you're living this austere life or, you know, you can't ever be on social media or like any of that kind of stuff, but it does require you to be a little bit more thoughtful. Where I see this coming up, though, is that, again, that complexity creep just keeps always lurking in the background. There's always going to be that creep and not like a person creep, but like the creeping, the verb creep.

There's going to be that creep that takes over. And what I find is that as life gradually, sometimes even kind of like imperceptibly becomes more complex, our efforts at either losing weight or eating in a way that supports us or maintaining our weight loss permanently, those get kind of shoved out, they get crowded out, and then we're left with the complexities of life, not the results that we want.

[00:11:08] So I have a few questions for you to consider, particularly if you're in a place right now where you're like, yeah, okay, I think that's me. I think it's time. Like, I'd like to just think about it like you build things up, just like it said in that quote, right? Like you set up some sort of system and it seems great, but then you have to modify it and you have to make it maybe better talked about in that quote about increasing the functions and modifications.

So as you do that, you need to do that to break through limitations. Right? Maybe there's something that your original system couldn't do. And so you needed to be able to, you know, have it, you know, something else be available to you. So you had to add something on or to handle exceptional circumstances. I mean, life is nothing but exceptional circumstances, right? There's never like ones like, I'm going to wait to lose weight until things just really calm down and, you know, time and space opens up. What who's life is like that help you to understand who has a life where that is their experience.

[00:12:05] That's just not even a thing, right? That's just not how that works. There's always going to be exceptional circumstances that come up. And so we have to learn how to still create the results that we want and maintain them despite the exceptional circumstances, even when the exceptional circumstances are happening. And then finally, as we adapt to a world that is itself more complex, like that's just happening, and so we respond to it and therefore life becomes more complex.

So I think a great place to start is by asking yourself what your priorities are. And I have to tell you, this is sometimes something when in case you're feeling the same way, sometimes people will ask that like, oh, you have to figure out what your priorities are. And you're like, oh, you know, priorities. But truly, like what is important to you? I think that's sometimes a way to think about it. Like, what do you want to be spending your time doing? It's a really good question to ask yourself, because if your priorities, you know, say your top 3 or 5 priorities are things that you're not spending a lot of time doing, or and it doesn't even necessarily have to be time, but like dedicated effort, energy and focus. Then you're kind of living out of alignment, right? You're putting more energy, effort and focus and probably time on things that are less important to you.

[00:13:22] And that's kind of a recipe for not being very satisfied with how your life is going right. You're doing a lot of things that are lower priority, and not as many things that are higher in priority and more important to you. Over time, that starts to grate on you. That doesn't feel so good. So just even getting back to like, yeah, what is actually important to me in my life, like, what do I want for myself in my life that doesn't have to take you hours to contemplate it, but think about that and maybe jot a few things down, like what is actually important to me.

Then the next question is what in your life feels too complex? And another way of asking it is like what feels excessively complicated right now? Or maybe even just involved, you know, something that used to be pretty simple and now it's like turned into a thing. So what could that be? What in your life just feels like it's a bit too much right now, and you appreciated it for a little bit more simplified. Sometimes what we find is we just need a new kind of like system or process, a new way of doing it. You know, maybe the old way worked for a while and it just doesn't work anymore. And we need to take it all down and start from scratch.

[00:14:30] If we're going to rebuild this process, how would we do it? One way that I kind of think about it is like, how can you make the process a little bit more linear? Like, what's the straightest line between where you are right now and where you want to go? And so I'm kind of speaking in these generalizations, but I even mean like something that seems very minor, but really is a thing which is just dealing with the mail and packages that come to your home. You do have a process, even if you feel like you don't. You have a system, but the system might be that you leave stuff on your porch for a while, or pile it up inside by the front door.

You know, maybe the mail piles up for a while, or you leave it in the mail slot or the the mailbox for a while, and then when you get it, there's just tons and tons of stuff. Then it lays there in a pile until you feel like, oh my gosh, it's a lot like, I probably should go through this stuff. Then you kind of go through it, but there's still another pile of things that you still need to, you know, ask someone about or research or file or do something with. Meanwhile, you know, the stuff is just laying around your house adding up. Maybe things are getting lost despite just like the clutter of it, you know, just having to see that.

[00:15:37] So that is a system. Maybe you don't love the result of the system, but it is a system. So sometimes we just have to go, oh, you know what? I keep bringing it over here when I bring it in. That's not actually the best place because then I forget about it and I don't look at it. Or when I do see it, I'm not in a position to actually go through it and open it. Maybe instead I need to bring it from the front door closer into the house. Maybe I need to put it in the kitchen, right on the counter, and then I can go through it more when I'm waiting for my coffee to brew or, I don't know, I'm just making this up, but you know what I mean?

Like, sometimes we just need to simplify how we're approaching it, and then it's just that much easier to get the result we want, which is to have gone through all the stuff, know what we need to take action on recycling the rest or delegating it to somebody else. So sometimes that idea of just re-envisioning it from start to finish is the simplest thing to do. It's kind of like sometimes with a home, like an old home, you just have to tear it down and start over again. Like there's only so much that you can really do to adjust it before it's time to just start from scratch again.

[00:16:40] And that can be actually invigorating. You know, that can be kind of an exciting thing to, you know, be energized by the simplicity that you just created. And other questions to ask yourself are things like, you know, what can I say no to in my life? Right? Like so we just identified what feels too complex, too complicated, too involved. So what can you say no to? What can you delegate elsewhere or what can you just not do anymore? You know, there are things you could just stop doing them.

You know, you really could. I give you permission. And, you know, I just did an episode not long ago. I think it was episode 369 on using delegation to Improve Your Life. So if you're interested in learning more about that, I definitely recommend that episode. And I'll say that delegation can simplify things, but sometimes, depending on what it is, it can actually add complexity. I talked about this a little bit on that episode, but if you hire a bunch of people to help you, those people do have to be managed. So they are helping you in doing, you know, arguably taking a lot of things off your plate. But then if you're having to spend now a lot of time managing them. What's the net? How much has it really saved you? If you really find the right people who are super capable and are doing an amazing job and really don't need very much management at all, it totally could be worth it.

[00:17:58] But if you're finding just kind of swapped one time suck for another, we address that again. We think about other solutions to figure that out. Okay, so besides that, I think it can be really helpful to also finally ask yourself what can you reduce or minimize? What can you be doing just less of? Like how do you make something better by removing by subtraction. And this is something that we typically we don't think in this way very often. Like the way we think about things is like we need to add to it. It's addition that creates better things.

But very, very often what makes it better is the removal of things. So I want you to consider thinking about it that way. You know, and I'm talking about like your life as a whole, but even with your work as well. And I do recognize, right, sometimes there's some complexity baked in that you don't have control over. You know, I was just coaching one of my clients recently, and she was talking about how, you know, to be able to refer a patient who needed some follow up used to just be like an easy click, you know, or a quick signature.

[00:19:05] And now it's like all that, plus signing this form and grabbing that form and the other thing, and it's just become innately more complex. So sometimes you have some authority over that and sometimes you really don't. And so the things that we don't have authority over, and that's when we work on acceptance and just trying to be efficient and things like that. But it would be interesting to open your mind to like, where are there some, you know, inefficiencies here, some, some complexity built in to my day where I do have control.

This is like a very kind of small example, but just to give you an example. So at my old practice when I worked as a pediatrician, when I first started, there was one nurse's station and, I don't know, I think nine rooms, eight rooms, something like that that we all shared. And over time there was an addition put on and a small kind of like a mini nurse's station was added on this interior room as well. And we started to realize, like, it just does not make sense for doctors to be running all over the office, you know, trying to find your nurse over there, and then you're walking from here and walk into there. Over time, it really adds up. It's a lot of time looking for people, you know, it's a lot of time looking for stuff like what we need to do is set it up so that little mini nurse's station services, these three rooms on this one side and the larger nurse's station services all of the other rooms because they're much closer.

[00:20:29] And it just makes more sense. Right. So it's sometimes it's little things like that. And, uh, you know, for a variety of reasons, I think, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I also talked about being sensitive. This is, I think, before I even knew that I was this is something I did that really helped me with kind of overstimulation was I, you know, I was like, hey, when I'm working, I want to be. We called it The Dark Side, which was like the small nurse's station and those three rooms, like it really was just better for me to just not be around everybody else's energy, to just be able to, like, put my head down and do my thing and have, you know, my medical assistant or my nurse who was working with me and just get things done.

That proved to be much more efficient and mentally so much better for me. You know, just in terms of the level of exhaustion and things like that. And then finally I want to talk about weight loss, the whole weight loss process itself, and the complexity that can be built in there. One thing that I notice is, you know, we'll we'll figure out some things that work for us, and particularly those of us who really like learning, you know, like which I think is probably all of us, but some of us just, you know, we really like learning things and trying new things and stuff.

[00:21:35] And when we've been doing something for a while, we're looking for a little novelty, something to spice things up a little bit. And so I'll notice people suddenly, you know, oh, I read this book about this kind of thing with health or weight loss or longevity or whatever.

And now I'm going to try that thing too, and then I'm adding this thing on. And then so and so says you should be exercising in this way. So I'm adding that on too. And it all comes from a good place. And it's all in an effort to create good results. But it ultimately ends up becoming too complex for many people. And then we kind of stop doing all the things right, or we stop focusing on really making sure that the things that really move the needle and really make a difference are non-negotiable.

So I want to offer to you with that as well, thinking about in terms of food and weight and weight loss or maintenance, wherever you're at, where is there some unnecessary complexity that has crept into that? How can you continue to simplify this? How can you make this even easier? One thing that came to mind was, you know, when I was first losing weight, I've, you know, talked before about how I had a whole thing with peanut butter for a while there, and I found, like my favorite peanut butter.

[00:22:43] And it was at Whole Foods. And I don't typically shop at Whole Foods. And it's not really the Whole Foods isn't really like on the way to anything for me. So like, you know, I'll go there occasionally to get whatever, but it's not really like where I'm shopping all the time. But then I was like, but I have to have that peanut butter. Like, that's the peanut butter, which this is kind of an aside. I definitely had some over desire on the peanut butter and had to work on that, which I was able to work through.

And it still, I maintain, I think the best tasting peanut butter out there are one of the best tasting ones, but it added additional complexity because this became something that was an important part of what I was eating on a regular basis. Yet I wasn't shopping there very often, so then I had to find the time to get there, to get that, you know, when are we going? And then, oh my gosh, they're out of it. Shoot, what am I going to do? To me, it was starting to feel like being controlled by food again, which is exactly what I don't want.

[00:23:32] And I think you're the same, right? We just want to be able to just like, flow with it a little bit more like, okay. Yeah. If I happen to be around Whole Foods, sure. I'll pick up some of that peanut butter because I like it. And if I'm not, it doesn't matter because I'll eat these other things. Like there's so many things available to me, it's just not really that important overall. So sometimes it can just be like that. You know, sometimes maybe the plan that you've created for yourself or the plan that you're following, it just has some unnecessary complexity.

Some things that you think have to be done a certain way or it just won't work anymore. I would question that. Is that even true? Because I bet you it's probably not. So this is actually really, really good news. You know, our our willingness to simplify and to do it with, you know, some regularity only makes life easier and better for us. And there's nobody who just has the simple life, you know, unless you're living alone off the grid, you know, in a cottage, I don't know where. Northern Canada, I don't know. And there's probably complexity there as well. You know, I'm sure there is with like getting access to certain materials and goods and services and things. So my point is, if it feels too complex, you're normal.

[00:24:48] That's life. That's what happens. And you have the invitation to create more simplicity any time you want to. It is available to you and it will help you to get the results you want more. What you'll focus on are the things that really make a difference, that actually create the results you want. Whether we're talking about weight loss or other results that you want in your life. Like that's what we want to be focusing on, and it helps us to feel more in charge of our lives. Like we have agency, like we get to choose. Life isn't just happening at us or to us. So it really is a positive thing.

Now before you get yourself overwhelmed, oh my gosh, I need to simplify everything. What's the easiest thing? What's the first thing that really doesn't need that much to it? That's going to make a big difference. Maybe do that thing first, or what's a really, really big goal that you have that you're maybe not making progress on. Maybe that's the first thing to work on finding some simplicity in. All right. Can't wait to hear how you simplify. Things are so good. I love simplicity. It makes me so happy. All right, I hope you have a great rest of your day and your week.
Thank you for joining me and I will talk to you next time. Take care. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #372: Leveraging Simplicity to Create Weight Loss Results appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you ever feel like no one really understands what it’s like to be in a medical marriage? Whether you’re a doctor or you’re married to one, a lot of the challenges you face are unique to your situation.

Sara Payne is a Master-Certified Relationships Coach who specializes in helping women create rock-solid relationships with the most important people in their lives. I invited her to join us on the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast to talk about this because if anyone gets it, she does.

As the wife to a doctor as well as a coach for doctor’s partners, she’s bringing both her personal and professional experience to the table. She knows what it’s like, and she also knows that there’s a better way.

She’s here to help you understand what your non-medical partner might be thinking, feeling, and experiencing in your relationship as well as how to ask for what you need, get on the same team, and stop playing the blame game.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The unique challenges that come from being in a relationship with a doctor * What it’s like to be married to someone in the medical field * Navigating feelings of guilt and shame in a marriage * Common issues that arise in medical marriages * Approaching problems as a team * How to stop placing blame in your relationship * Why it can be hard (but necessary) to give up control * Getting curious about your feelings

Are you tired of keeping score and feeling like your marriage is a battle? Take a breath; you’ve finally found a community of people who know what it’s like. I’m so excited for you to hear Sara’s advice and learn some new approaches to help improve your medical marriage.

If you want to continue to connect with like-minded medical professionals and get more support on your weight-loss journey, check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program at katrinaubellmd.com/info!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Listen to Rock Solid Relationships with Coach Sara Payne

Visit Sara’s Website

Connect with Sara on Instagram

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #370: On Being Sensitive

Ep #369: Using Delegation to Improve Your Life

Ep #368: Getting Started With Self-Compassion

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well. Hello there, my friend. Welcome to today's podcast. Thanks for joining me. I'm really glad that you're here today. I have a guest today that I have been wanting to have on this podcast for a long, long time and I'm excited that we finally made it happen.

So I've known Sara Payne, who is a life coach for many, many years now. In fact, I believe we didn't even talk about this, but I believe I was an instructor when she first became a coach. So it was like many, many years ago. And so even back then, she was talking about who she wanted to help and she continues to do it. It was so fun to catch up with her. So she is the spouse of a doctor, and she helps people who are married to doctors with their marriage and their relationship. And I think that it's so good that there are people out there who are doing this work because, you know, you can work with anybody who helps with marriages or relationships, and that can be super, super helpful.

[00:01:36] But sometimes people don't really understand some of the nuances that come with being in a relationship with a doctor. And a lot of people don't really have sympathy. We talk about that a little bit in the episode, like people when you're like, oh, it's just so hard being married to a doctor. People are not like, oh, I feel for you. I feel so bad for you. But it really is true. It can be very, very challenging. So I wanted to invite her on because of course, there are many dual physician couples in this world and in one of those relationships myself, but also because I wanted those of you who are listening, who are in relationship in a partnership with somebody who is not a doctor, to maybe understand a little bit more about what your partner might be thinking or what they might be going through. Because I feel like, well, I know that from the other side of the relationship, there can be a lot of challenges as well. And I just really like the way that Sara approaches this type of thing.

[00:02:40] I think that it is something that, you know, one teaches us this stuff. It's just like, you know, you don't have to take a class to be a parent. You know, like, like you can just have the baby and now you're a parent. Like, you can just get into a relationship or marry somebody. There's a lot that can be learned, and it can be better. If you're not really feeling super satisfied with how things are, it really can get better. And we talk about that a little bit too. Like at first we wanted to just be maybe a little better or a little easier and then could we be open to it even being really incredible and really amazing.

So I invited Sara to come on to talk about some of the things that people who are in medical marriages in particular, struggle with, and she has some really cool ideas that you can start implementing right away to start kind of making it a little bit of a easier or smoother interaction with your partner. So please enjoy this conversation with Sara Payne and I'll talk to you next week. Sara, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast.

[00:03:45] Oh my goodness. I'm so happy to be here.

[00:03:47] So why don't we start off with you just giving everybody a little bit of information about your background, how you came to coaching and who you help now.

[00:03:57] Yeah, so I came to coaching five years ago. I was listening to a podcast of a fellow coach, and she was explaining my problems like, better than I could. And I just thought, I have to work with this woman. And once I did, pretty shortly after that, I thought if I could help women the way that she's helped me, that would be like the dream of a lifetime. And so I did. And I'm married to a podiatrist, surgical podiatrist. And so we've been kind of lived all over the country in pursuit of his career and schooling. And so it was kind of a natural thing for me to want to help medical families.
And so that's mostly what I do. I also help, you know, anybody who can relate to that kind of lifestyle as far as like the career being like the center oftentimes of the life. And I love it. I love I think that medical families in particular, you just have to develop a certain kind of grit to get through that time and all of that training, and then they just have a lot of influence. And so it's thrilling for me to help them with their marriages in particular. And as you know, with weight loss, when you help someone lose weight, you don't just help them lose weight, you help them like it expands to like every area of your life. And it's the same with marriage. When you help them with their marriage, then it helps them with their other relationships and their relationship with themself and all of that. And so that's pretty exciting.

[00:05:35] Well, what I love about what you do is that it's obviously super helpful for somebody who is married to a doctor, you know, if that person is not a doctor, does not have a background in that, you know, I think the, you know, coming into that world and maybe trying to understand it, of course, that's super helpful. But there's many of us, including me, who are in, you know, a dual physician relationship marriage, and that can present its own challenges as well. And as I told you, I really want many of the people who are listening to this are partnered up with somebody who is not a doctor, like it's, I think, very helpful for them to hear what it's like to be with someone who's a doctor. Right? Like that's you, right? That could be right.

[00:06:20] Exactly. I mean, some of the challenges are pretty unique, right? Because there are few careers where, like, someone's life is literally on the line if the partner isn't doing what they do. And so I think there can often be this resentment, like your job always comes first, and then also this guilt and even feeling like, how dare I think that when, like, these people might not live, or at least their health would be in jeopardy, like if my partner didn't do what they do?

I know I especially in the past, I've felt that way so many times. Like, really, you're not going to come to the game that our kids have that you promised you would be at because somebody had an emergency and the or and then you feel so bad like that. You know, my husband does a lot of amputations with diabetes and stuff like that. So like this patient's losing their foot and I'm mad that my husband's not going to be there to like, watch my son score in a basketball game. There's this push pull like blame game basically. Right?

[00:07:20] I mean, I have an example that I immediately think of when you describe that, because even though, you know, I worked as a doctor, it's still like the same thing my husband's ear, nose and throat people often will be like, oh, that's great. There's no emergencies in that. And I'm like, no, it's not true. There's actually plenty of emergencies that can come up. And they don't. Thankfully, they don't seem to come up, you know, super often where it's like really, really bad. But this was many years ago when my younger two kids were really little, like my daughter. My youngest was for sure like a baby in arms, really.

You know, it was not easy to, like, get a meal made. You know, she that's that hour right where they're like, you know, cranky and want to be held and all that stuff. And it was a weekend and Matt was on call, you know, sometimes, like, it's pretty quiet when he's on call and then it's easy to sort of forget that, you know, at any time he could have to go in. So we were making dinner. I decided to make a dinner that did require more work because he would be home. He'd be able to help with the kids, with the baby in particular. And so in the middle, literally in the middle of me doing that, he gets a call. And it's not just a call. It is one of the calls where he's on the phone, talking and racing around, putting his shoes on, grabbing his keys and like, waving as he's still on the phone, going into the car like it's like, no, this is an emergency right now.

[00:08:41] I'm racing to the hospital kind of a thing, and I was so annoyed. It's like, are you kidding me? I mean, that's that is a very nice representation of what I was thinking. I was that's the PG version. The PG version. I was so irritated, like, can I just make a meal? You know, like, I just I'm feeling so angry and sorry for myself. Honestly, I think I had so much self-pity that like, this is my life and this is what I have to go through, and other people don't have to deal with this and all these things.

So we get through it all. Everyone survives. He comes home a few hours later, and he tells me that it was like an elderly man who was having a severe nosebleed, and so he went and helped him and got it all stopped and everything. And then this man tells him, please tell your wife. I said, I'm sorry, because this happened in the middle of the dinner hour. And I then felt so much shame. I felt so bad. You know, here's this little man, you know. Yeah. Who really needed his help. And he saved this guy's life. Matt saved his life. And then he even had the wherewithal to think, to apologize to me, to thank me like I had a choice. But regardless, you know. Yeah. And so I think that's such a representation of what you're talking about, where it's just like, no, I'm proud of him, that he could go and help this person. And this is this is a great thing. And also, I don't like that it happened to me, you know. Right, right.

[00:10:19] So interesting that we often go to shame, right? Like instead of being like, I'm actually awesome. Like this, we are helping society as a whole by the sacrifices that we're making at dinnertime. It's like, let me just feel bad that we felt bad.

[00:10:34] Or we're upset. Exactly. Yeah. There's like something wrong with me. I'm a bad person. I should just let him leave in the middle of everything, you know, like, obviously I should ask my permission. Should be thrilled that he's running out. Go save lives. Yes, exactly. Exactly, exactly. So what are some of the common issues that you see come up from time to time? And I do want to say, I mean, it seems to me like this would be I mean, it really could apply to anybody who has a partner or spouse who's got a really demanding job or things like that. But in the, you know, specifically more for people who are married to doctors or partnered up with doctors, what are the common things that seem to come up again and again?

[00:11:13] Yeah, I think like division of labor in the home is a big thing and there's a lot of their job is preventing me from X, y, z, whether like whatever, you know, goal or dream that they have. So there's some resentment there. It seems so insignificant. But I think it's a big deal when they are with people who aren't in medicine. They hear a lot like, oh, must be nice to be married to a doctor. And that can just like it's just like twisting the.

[00:11:43] Right, having them in the back and twisting it. You know, a.

[00:11:46] Lot of people don't understand what that actually entails and the work that went into it and the money that is like, you know, heavy the student loans and things like that. And then just the actually, there are a lot of things that aren't very nice at all, and there's not a line out the door like people wanting to hear about how hard it is.

[00:12:08] You're married, right?

[00:12:10] Because there are some things actually, right that are really, really nice. Like, I don't take my kids to the doctor very often because my husband can look at them and be like, they're actually fine and other things. But there are some challenges that most people just don't want to hear about.

[00:12:25] Exactly, exactly. So when people come to you with these things, like with the division of labor and stuff, you know, I think right now it's like a lot of people are really looking for equity. You know, it doesn't have to be equal necessarily, but equity. How do you approach that with them? I mean, I'll tell you what I find is that a lot of people just haven't even had the conversation with their partner about it. So, yeah. Tell me how you approach it.

[00:12:49] Well, first off, I think it's important like to look at the problem as like it's us against the problem versus me against him or, you know, the partner.

[00:13:00] Yeah.

[00:13:00] And it's so easy to just be like, if they would only fill in the blank, then this wouldn't exist versus like, okay, like, let's take, you know, an example of a child getting sick. Right. And and so okay, we have a problem. The school called and the child needs to come home early because they're sick. So now we just need to figure out, you know, who's going to go get the child and then who's going to take care of the child if they're younger, when we both have to work, and then your brain can go to work solving for that versus like, I'm so sick of being the one who always has to drop everything so that they can do their job.

And when you approach it, like I call it, us against the problem, then you're on the same team, and then it doesn't mean you agree on the solution, it doesn't mean there isn't tension. But then you can go to work solving the problem versus who's to blame here.

[00:13:53] Yeah, I would imagine that really helps with even initiating the conversation too. Right. Like if I go to my husband, I'm like, look, when you do all this stuff, when you're so busy and you can't this and that, it's, you know, it feels very directed at the right. It's easy to to get your hackles up and start feeling defensive and conversation maybe isn't so fluid, but when it's like, hey, I'd love to discuss with you how we can figure out a better way that works for both of us. When the kids get sick, then it's a little more like, oh yeah, I'll have a discussion about that. Like, let's talk about it. Yes, let's I.

[00:14:29] Love that you brought that up because it's something so tactical. Right. And it's.

[00:14:32] Usually.

[00:14:33] Not the best time. Like right in the moment. It's like a lot of other types of conversations, right? That you just say, hey, I'd love to have a discussion about this. Is now a good. Time or later. So you give them some options, right? And then I love that you brought up defensiveness too, because when we come with our armor up, it's so easy for them to put theirs up. Right. But when we come like open and wanting to solve the problem, then even if they put their armor up like we can stay grounded, that is a skill that I think I would love to give every marriage because one person stays open. You can have an effective conversation.

[00:15:12] And and because humans are often mirror each other, if one person is listening and is kind of keeping the temperature down, let's just say right, like it can help to, you know, make it more productive for sure. For sure. Now, one thing that I hear a lot of in the work that I do, and also outside of it, is like the ownership of actual important things to the family, so to speak. So people will sometimes say, I just wish my partner helped more. You know, if you objectively look at it like the partner does, maybe carpool kids or take kids around and do all these different things, yet the initial person doesn't really feel better and still doesn't feel like they're actually getting the help that they want. They're asking for help.

They are getting like assistance, but they still don't feel better. That could be just like habitual lines of thinking, you know, always kind of like the filter through which you see that what the person does is like never enough. Like you've decided that they don't do enough. So therefore they could never do enough for it to be enough. But I also think that there's something to be said for recognizing that there are different parts to accomplishing something. You know, getting the kids to swim practice is important, but who is signing them up? Who is looking at the emails to figure out where things are, who's signing them up for the meets, and making sure that makes sense with all the other family activities, who's making sure that they have the proper swimsuits and that when their goggles break, they have, you know, a middle pair, all the other kind of higher level things that go into making it possible for the kids to be driven to swim practice.

[00:16:56] And I think that it's important for us to even just recognize that, because when we're asking for help, I think we need to know what are we asking for? It's like, who actually owns this? And they're mine needs to be on it and thinking about it. So that's something that even my own husband and I just in the last couple of years, finally felt like we made some progress on where I was just like, I want to know nothing about this activity except what you need me to do to help. So it was like flipping the whole script, and now I'm the one who comes and just assists.

And it's really fascinating. The kids come to me, where's swim practice tonight? I'm like, I have no idea. Like what's on the calendar? I don't know what to tell you. I don't get the emails, I don't know anything about it. And to a certain extent, it's been really, really good for us to, you know, I think he gets a better sense of like what it's really like to own one of these activities and be in charge of all of it. And it does then feel more equitable to me where it's like, like, just tell me what to do. Well, I can't tell you to go into my email and pull this off and like, you know, so.

[00:18:02] I have a question for you about that, because I find with a lot of my clients that giving up that control is very challenging for them. So like they don't want the responsibility but they don't actually want. Their partner to have a responsibility, because then their partner might do it wrong differently than they do it. So there's like, has there been any of that or have you seen that with your clients?

[00:18:24] Well, I just decided that there's a learning curve to everything, and I was willing to let him bump his head a little bit. Everybody write that down. All right. Because I really, really, really, really needed to not be in charge of that. The way this happened was kind of I didn't go into it like, like totally planning to do this. It kind of happened. Sort of. Thanks, universe. It's one of those things where they couldn't get my email address to work. Makes no sense, because my oldest son used to be on this team and I used to all get all the emails, but for whatever reason, like we tried a million things, we could not get it so that I was getting any of the emails and then I was having to, like, text this other mom and find out all these things, and it just wasn't working.

Finally they said, you know, do you have another email we can try? And I was like, well, I'm not giving them my work email because no, like separation of church and state. Like there's no way it's totally up in there. So I was like, Matt, can I have them use your email? And he's like, yeah, okay. Because he knew, like, we need to be getting the information about this team. And then I was like, so how about since you're getting everything and I can't I literally cannot get it. How about you take over?

[00:19:34] That's so good, I love it.

[00:19:36] So that's how that happened. So. But I will say, you know, just as a pediatrician, this is after, you know, ten years of observation of different couples, particularly male, female. So like more of a, you know, hetero couple, very, very, very common for the mom to be very controlling of, particularly when they're babies and really little of like how every you know, exactly how the diapers should go on and exactly everything about the child and then the father trying to help. And constantly being told that he was doing it wrong. And so when you are constantly getting feedback that you're not doing it right, I mean, this is just human behavior, conditioned response. You stop trying. Right.

Because if you can't ever do anything right, why would you keep trying? And then the moms are complaining that they're not doing anything. I would see that. And I think something in me just knew even from early on, like, I can't do this all by myself. I'm unwilling to change every diaper. I don't care that much that the diapers one in the way that I like to do it. You know, actually, what I found is that he was better at some things than me. Like I taught him how to swaddle a baby and he could swaddle a baby better than me. And I was like, are you kidding me right now?

So I think I was just like, I can't do this where I feel like I have to do everything and have a career and all that. It's just not going to work. So I think this is somewhat an extension of that. But also I was like, yeah, like we'll probably miss some things and probably I mean, even still sometimes the kids, it's, you know, we get the schedule a month at a time and sometimes we're into the early month and I don't know where things are. And I give swimming zero brain space.

[00:21:14] Oh, that's so good. Like that's so good.

[00:21:17] And they're like, oh, it's always on Tuesdays. It's whatever school I'm like, I can't remember that because I have decided not to remember it.

[00:21:23] You brought up a couple of things. I think that it's important to ask ourselves those questions like that you saw through your patients, right? Am I thinking that I have to be the one to do these? Or where am I trying to control the situation? Right? Like with so much love for yourself, might need to let go of some of that. I can't have all the control and all of the hell. And then second that you brought up earlier was like, how did I get myself here into this?

Like you talked about how you and your husband did that with, like, not just thinking about who's going to take the kids, but like, what else is going to be impacted. Like, do we want to add this thing into our family like, that can like, help you prevent a lot of the problems that might come? Right? And if you're already in the thick of it, that's fine. You can still ask yourself, how did I get here? How did we get here? And then you're solving the problem. Instead of blaming the person or yourself.

[00:22:17] Or like, you know, the partner is the one who wanted to get this kid into hockey, but then is never there to help with any of this stuff or whatever. Well, but if it's really true that you, as a, as the parents decided we will do hockey, I mean, you could have said no, because you're never going to be able to help with any a better do any of it.

[00:22:33] Or you don't want to or you don't want to. Not wanting to is is reason enough as well as reason enough.

[00:22:39] Yeah, exactly. And so it seems to me like a lot of the resentment comes from not using your voice and not actually speaking about what's true for you. And just like going along with things, going along with what is either truly expected or what you assume to be expected of you, and then feeling like you have no choice in the matter. But using your words right? Having conversations, having discussions about things is the only way to work through that. I feel like.

[00:23:10] Totally. And I think for a long time, as I would coach on resentment, I'd be like, it's this emotion that we it's totally unnecessary. Let's just like, work through it. And I think as I've like coached more and more, I think resentment and this will hopefully be helpful to all your listeners. Resentment could just be a window into what you want that you're not getting. And so because resentment is kind of I think for a lot of people, one of those emotions like jealousy, like, I don't want to admit I'm feeling that like I, you know, but if you can just get curious about it, okay, what am I wanting that I'm not getting, wanting or needing?

And then you can work from there and solving the problem instead of either blaming your partner that they are creating this for you or blaming yourself like, well, I've got myself into this situation, I should just be happy about it, right? You can kind of ask yourself, figure out what it is that you want, and then you can approach your partner from there. I really would like this. How can we get this together?

[00:24:08] Mhm. I think that's where coaching can be so helpful. Right. Because sometimes we're like I'm not sure I feel resentment but I don't even really know what I want yet. Okay. So then coaching can help you get really clear on that so that you come to the conversation as clear as you can be for yourself, you know, prepared for that conversation, able to like, support yourself. I don't I don't even want to say like stand up for yourself because that feels like adversarial. It's more just like being confident in what you're bringing to the conversation so that you can advocate for yourself.

[00:24:39] Yes. And then be open to hearing your partner's side, too. Right. When you're confident you're not on guard as much, you're like, okay, I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to actually be wrong about this or to hear your side. But yeah, it's the whole having the armor up that just usually, in my experience, doesn't end well. And the connected conversation or even just a conversation that solves the problem.

[00:25:03] So this is super good. Okay. I want to talk about one more thing I want. Talk about keeping score, because that is something that a lot of us, you know, I coach a lot of people on like fairness, you know what I mean? Like what's fair and what's unfair and what, you know, what people believe is right and wrong. And there are definitely people who are kind of like keeping the tally, you know? Well, I did it this many times and they have only done it once or like things like that. How do you work people through that?

[00:25:33] Oh, that's such a good question. It's so it's a natural thing to do, right, to keep score. And so I think the first place to start is that I start with my clients is like, okay, let's let's just get curious about why you're on the OP. Because if we're keeping score, then we're not on the same team as our husband, right. Or our partner. And so that's actually good.

[00:25:51] If you just think of sports, right, a score is only needed if there's two teams.

[00:25:55] Exactly. You're only keeping it if one is winning and one is losing. That old adage like, would you rather be right? Or would you rather be connected right? And sometimes I just want to be right, even admitting.

[00:26:10] That to myself.

[00:26:11] Right. Like it's like, okay. Yes. Okay. Now. Once you recognize that you're keeping score means that you're not on the same team, then you can like ask yourself, why am I putting myself on the opposite team as this person that I've like, decided to dedicate my life to, like living together for, you know, my my lifelong partner. And then it's easier, I think, from there to be like, okay, let me just look at this more objectively and getting really micro, right? Like, okay, this is what we're dealing with right now, this one situation, and I can make it really big and say, this is every time I'm sure that you talk to your clients about this.

Like whenever our brain uses words like always, never, every time, it's like a notification for my brain to be like, I'm probably not telling myself the truth. And then from there, you can. I think it's easier when you decide that you want to be on the same team, to be able to see the other person's perspective. And I think a lot of people hear that and they're like, he doesn't see mine, she doesn't see mine. But like, what if you could? It doesn't mean you have to give up your perspective at all, but you're just willing to go first in, like seeing what it might be like for them.

[00:27:26] It's like an act of generosity. I feel like to just try to put yourself in their shoes. Of what? That's all like, you know what I mean? Like, I think sometimes too, it's like maybe during training, like with residency and stuff or fellowship, if the couple is together, then it's like, well, they were so busy, like every waking hour that really everything else did fall to the other partner. And then that has just become like the way that like by default, you know, like the way that everything was kind of split up and how you function. And then it never really has been like reevaluated or it never is really matured as the relationship has matured.

And so now you might have that partner who is taking lots of time to go golfing for many hours, you know, and like, you know, all these other maybe social types of things or, and then the other partner is like, how is that happening? And I'm still over here doing all of these other things. It can be easy. It's like, well, he went golfing three times this month and I haven't seen my friends in three months, you know, or something like that. Like that. Keeping score. I think you're. Yeah. Everything you said is a window into conversation.

[00:28:33] And it requires the partner to change up the dance steps. Right. Which is awkward and uncomfortable.

[00:28:39] And basically saying, hey, you're going to have to do less of what you want to do potentially. Right?

[00:28:43] And allowing your partner to not necessarily love that is, I think sometimes we choose the saying silently resentful over like the discomfort that we might feel by what we are thinking about, what their opinion of what we're asking.

[00:29:00] At what point. I'm curious, do you suggest bringing in I my understanding is you don't work with couples. Is that correct?

[00:29:07] No, not no, not usually if I do it like separately.

[00:29:10] Okay. At what point? Because I do feel like sometimes it really benefits couples to have really like a facilitator essentially to help everybody to feel heard and understood, making sure that, you know, it's clear what everyone is saying. And often it's going to be a therapist who would be really skilled at being able to do that. What's the line for you when you start going? You know, it might be something for you to think about to like bring in a couples therapists to help facilitate the movement forward on this.

[00:29:40] That's such a good question. I wish I had like a straightforward, oh, this is the line, you know, but I think for the most part, it's when they've been working with me for some times and it just feels like they're spinning their wheels, like they're bumping up against the same problems over and over this or the same emotions in all these different areas that that can be like, okay, maybe we need someone, like you said, an extra person.

[00:30:04] I think also some people it's just like avoidance is real, right? You just like really don't want to have the conversation or you try to initiate it and it just like is never a good time or like it feels like you want to have had the conversation, but the actual doing of it, like, you know, really just don't want to do or I have found like sometimes it's like the same fight again and again, like the conversation is trying to be had, but then it just keeps spiraling out. They're fighting. No one's getting anywhere, no progress is made. It's like, that's what I think. Like probably a therapist would have been able to keep the temperature lower. And yeah, exactly.

Like help them each to see each other in a better way if they're open to doing that. So I think sometimes obviously to go to couples therapy, you need both parties willing to go. And I think some people can be really reluctant to do that, but I've really seen it be very beneficial for some people because it's also like learning the skill of how to have those conversations with one another. And you could be married, you know, 35, 40 years and still not have that skill if you've never worked through it. So I don't think it's ever too late to build that in, improve the strength of that marriage and the ability. To have those conversations so that everybody is getting what they need out of the relationship.

[00:31:20] Definitely. And I think one thing to to pay attention to is like, are you already deciding in your head that your partner is not gonna be willing to do something like that? I see that a lot. Like, well, but have you asked them, you know, like we often make all these assumptions, myself included, about what my how my partner is going to react to something. And so like, well, that's not even worth bringing up. Like, actually they might surprise you. And even if they don't, your relationship is worth bringing up.

[00:31:51] Mm, I love that. Okay. So if anybody listening wants to find out more, you have a great podcast. What is the title of it? It's rock.

[00:31:59] Solid relationships.

[00:32:01] Sara Payne.

[00:32:01] Payne e e a n e. Yeah.

[00:32:04] Is there an H. There's no H on the Sara right. No h no h. Okay.

[00:32:08] If you type in rock solid relationships, it.

[00:32:10] You're gonna find it. Okay. And then what's your website.

[00:32:13] My website is Sarapayne.com. So okay perfect okay.

[00:32:17] No h. And by the you know I think there's going to be people listening who are going to be like you know I think I'm good. But my friend is really struggling. And to just know that the work that you do is out there so that people can, through word of mouth, just share that there are actually people out there who are not only just helping with marriages, but particularly with medical marriages, which it's just a little bit of a different ball of wax than your typical.

[00:32:44] Totally. And I think relationships are the most important part of our lives, right? Until. So sometimes it's really easy to be like, well, he would never change. He would never change. Like, it's not worth it, but like, it's just worth questioning. Like, what if it weren't as hard as living like I'm currently living?

[00:33:01] Mhm. Right. If it could be easier would I be interested in that.

[00:33:04] Yes. And then from there like what if it could be actually like amazing. Not just like.

[00:33:10] Right.

[00:33:10] Like that's a.

[00:33:11] Stretch.

[00:33:13] We could do little stuff like if it couldn't be easier.

[00:33:16] Right, right, right. Yeah. Let's just start with that. All right. Sara, thank you so much for joining me. This is really, really great. And I love the work that you're doing.

[00:33:23] Oh thank you. It's been so fun.

[00:33:29] Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #371: Improving Medical Marriages with Coach Sara Payne appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Just because you’re capable of doing something, doesn’t mean you have the capacity to do it. So why do we feel like we have to say yes to things even when we know we’re at max capacity? As women in the healthcare industry (or really any industry) we tend to fear being perceived as incapable. […]

The post Ep #348: Capability vs. Capacity appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you guilty of outrage addiction?

Recognizing it in others is one thing, but acknowledging it within ourselves is a whole new challenge. There is so much information out there on this topic, but in this episode of Weight Loss for Busy Physicians, I want to talk about it in your life.

There are so many people talking about the problems with outrage addiction but no one talking about the solutions. That’s why in this episode, we're not just pointing out the problem – we're exploring the remedies and strategies to break free from this mind-consuming cycle.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The reason we engage in outrage * The sense of connection we feel when we share outrage with others * The deeper emotions that outrage conceals * The costs of outrage in your life * How outrage can quickly turn to contempt * Steps to take if you are in the grips of outrage addiction

I hope this episode helped you gain some perspective into how outrage addiction could be impacting your life so that you can take the necessary steps to shift your mindset.

Start by thinking about the type of energy you’re putting out into the world. Is it what you want? If not, follow the steps in this episode to break free. We all want a better world for our children and grandchildren, but that starts with us.

To learn which episode to listen to next, check out the free Podcast Roadmap at katrinaubellmd.com/start

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #346: The Shame of Gaining Weight Back

Ep #345: You Are Allowed to Lose Weight

Ep #344: Proof Our Process Works with Mia Woodward, MD & Elisa Boden, MD

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well, hello, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. Thank you for joining me today. I have a really good episode for you. I am excited to share this information.

It's something that's been cooking for me for many, many, many months now, and I think I finally just kind of gathered enough tidbits of information here and there to actually be able to offer you something that I think is going to be really useful for you. It's not going to be something that you're going to be unfamiliar with, meaning it is something you're going to be like, Oh yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about, but it's something that I think a lot of people really don't know what to do with. And I think a lot of people also think that they don't struggle with it as much as other people do when think that's not actually the case. So I want to, as we start, invite you to set an intention for yourself on how you're going to receive this information that I'm going to share.

And what I mean by that is this is a topic that a lot of us it's very easy for us to go, Oh, you know what, my brother, my cousin, my best friend, my father, my mother in law, whoever, someone in our lives that we know, we're like, Oh my gosh, this is the perfect episode for them. They need this so much like we can see the problem in other people so much more easily than we see it in ourselves. And it's right away we're like, Yes, yes, yes. Thinking that we don't engage in this behavior and that others do. So others need this help, but we don't really need this help.

And what I want to offer to you today or invite you to do is to just open your mind while you're listening to the idea that it's probably pretty much guaranteed that you participate in this behavior, at least in some way, maybe way more than you even realize. Or maybe you do realize it and you want some help in reducing it. And what I'm talking about is outrage addiction. And I was looking at different terms for this because I was kind of like, is addiction the best word to describe this? Is that what I should really use? It's interesting online did a quick Internet search. There's a lot of information out there about outrage addiction. Some people call it mad addiction, like being addicted to being mad. Some people are calling it righteous indignation.
Other people call it indignant self-righteousness. There's all kinds of different ways to approach this. But I think outrage addiction actually makes the most sense to call it this. There's even books written on this subject. There are literally people working the 12 steps that a lot of people use to heal themselves from addiction and are working those 12 steps to get themselves to stop engaging in outrage in that. There are some articles I found online titled Your Addiction to Outrage is Ruining Your Life. And I think we can all see that playing out somewhere in the world. But what I'm really interested today in talking to you about is you and how this might actually be impacting you in your life.
And we'll talk at the end about some strategies about what to do about it, because what I do notice is a lot of the things that are written about it are very problem focused, like educating us on the issue, which is great and important information, not so much on what to do about it, how to get out of it. And this is something that, like I said, we often think we don't contribute to this, but most of the time we do. And I am not immune. I mean, I totally, in the past for sure have contributed to this. Like I could give many, many, many examples that I won't bore you with, but also just even in the last several years, I've been working actively to try to disengage with because this is a brain hijacking kind of a thing, right? It's not like we look at people who are addicted to crystal meth or heroin or fentanyl or things like that and say like that they're emotionally weak or something.
Right? There's a reason like these drugs are literally designed to hijack our brains and make us more focused on that and in some cases even solely focused on that. And outrage is actually not that different, kind of shockingly not that different. So please don't immediately think of the person in your life who you think needs to listen to this. Okay? Let that person in your life be you for today. Okay. So let's just talk about outrage a little bit. Anything that we take part in, there's a reason why we do it. There's an upside. There's something that we get from it.
Very often when I'm coaching clients, they'll be like, Oh, I just cannot stop overeating. And I'm like, okay, so there is some benefit to you to keep overeating. Let's try to figure out what it is. And sometimes they're kind of surprised. They're like, What do you mean there's no benefit? I'm like, No, if there was no benefit, you would not do it. So let's figure out what the benefits are and then we know what we're working with and we know what we can work through and process and decide how we want to think and things like that.
So it's really important to understand that there's a lot of perceived benefits from engaging in outrage. And I guess I didn't give you some examples. I mean, I feel like it's self-explanatory, but all you have to do is just look around and people are very insulated, very siloed, very. Thinking that everyone should think the way that they do and believe the things that they do and very vehemently oppose somebody who pushes back on that or disagrees. Not to the point of thinking like, well, we just disagree, but really being outraged, thinking sometimes even hateful things about people or institutions or, you know, situations really, really pushing back and being super outraged to the point where social media is just full of this.
You know, the news media, the general news cycle is often really full of this because it hooks our brains. It gets us to look. And we'll talk a little bit more about what it actually does in our brains. So there are people out there who are leveraging the way our brains respond to this, to get our attention, to get us more outraged, to make us more divided for whatever gain that may be. And I think it can be as simple as, you know, people who are just Internet trolls who just like getting a rise out of people and just like seeing people get upset all the way up to maybe bigger or, you know, possibly even more nefarious intentions behind doing that.
So I think the best thing that we can do is develop a lot of self awareness around this and really just understand what we are engaging in, at least maybe to a small extent, maybe for some people, to a large extent. And even if you can honestly say, you know, I'm not engaging in that at all, just understanding the constant beckoning by the people who are doing this to engage us in it, right? So we can be aware and try to avoid that. So there's several things we get from outrage. Outrage really becomes for many of us, it's become a source of connection.
And, you know, I'm largely thinking about this in terms of being a doctor and working maybe in some sort of organized administrative kind of setting. But this really applies to any area of your life. There's nothing like a common complaint to pull people together. You know, And in this day and age where a lot of people feel very lonely, they have lost a lot of their social connections, joining with other people who are outraged about the same things as you are can really make us feel. Mike were part of the group. You know, like that gives us a kind of itches or scratches that itch that we have for wanting to feel connected to others. When we are outraged, we can feel like we're part of the group, you know, like we belong, like we're part of the good guys.
We're part of the people who've got this figured out or who are on the right, you know, and and I don't mean politically on the right. I mean like in the right, I guess, is what I mean. And I think sometimes this even shows up in a more subtle context. And we'll call that the Snark recently coached a client of mine who was talking about how she was like super duper into the snark. And that was a big way that she and her work friends all really interacted. They're all still interacting that same way. They're still thinking that same way. And she's decided she doesn't want to think that way anymore and really has, you know, just changed her perspective. And it has actually made it harder for her to connect with those people.
So it's kind of interesting, right? It's like we want to be a part of that group, but the only way we can be part of that group is if we are thinking the same way. So we have to be outraged about the same stuff. It's like, you know, we have to be bought into the group. Think this is the way the group thinks. So therefore we must too. When we are outraged, we get to feel some feelings. We like to feel okay. We get to feel right.
I mean, it feels real good for us to feel right for some of us more than others. You know, I've coached literally 16 over 1600 women physicians over the last many years, and I've coached on this a lot. You know what's right, what's wrong? It's like, do you want a relationship or do you want to be right? You know, like that's it's a hard thing for a lot of people to give up. Some people really get more out of feeling right than others. But we do all like feeling right. We get to feel smart. We get to feel kind of like moral or pure, you know, like we are really on the good side.
We're on the right side of history, things like that. We get to feel more self esteem. Like ultimately you get to just feel better about yourself. When you are participating in this outrage, at least initially, you get a dopamine hit. It really does make you feel better, especially in the moment. In some ways, it's actually a more intense version of gossip. Gossip is another thing, right? We're talking about people or about situations that are not really our business to be discussing, are probably not in a supportive or positive way, but they do make us feel better about ourselves. At least I'm not like them. Right. And the other thing that is happening that I don't think as many people really recognize is that when you are in a place of outrage or even just in anger, particularly a lot as uncomfortable as that feels, it actually is often much more comfortable and at least more familiar than what are the emotions that are deeper down.
So I kind of call emotions like anger and rage. They're often like a cover emotion, meaning that they're covering up other emotions that we don't want to deal with. So those emotions can be fear. They can be guilt, they can be shame, They can be despair. You know, we don't want to sit there and feel afraid. So we'll just get angry. We'll just lash out. And often that was the behavior that was modeled to us when we were growing up. Not for everybody, but for a lot of people. So we're much more comfortable with anger than we are with recognizing that we feel scared or we feel afraid, or we feel like we might have done something wrong. Right.
Feeling guilt, feeling something's wrong with us, with shame or despair. It's never going to get better, You know, Whatever it is, is horrible. And we're going to be stuck here. So recognizing that, like, sometimes we're like, why don't I want to give this up? Well, because then we might have to actually look at some of these other emotions which you can learn how to process those. You can learn how to expand your capacity to feel them so that you don't need to push back on them or avoid them so much.
Okay. So now let's talk about the costs of outrage, because there's a price we pay, right? We get something from it and that comes at a price. So remember, I mentioned that outrage is a source of connection, but overall, it ends up actually making you feel disconnected. Okay. So when you are in this group where everyone's thinking the same way and you feel a connection to that, you are actually much less connected to the scores of people who are also all around you, right? Rather than feeling more connection all around, you actually only feel connection to the small group of people and you feel disconnected from others.
It can leave you feeling even more alone and it'll make you often feel like you don't want to leave that group because this is a place where you've found that sense of belonging like you're part of the group. But if you decide you want to think differently, then you will be all alone because you're disconnected from everyone else and you're not able to connect with those same people because you have to be thinking that same way. So some people will say they feel like they can't really be themselves, you know, particularly as we just grow and change as we mature and grow up as humans. Right. It's kind of like if you're not participating in that groupthink, then you will be or fear you'll be rejected, right? So that's not actually true connection.
So we get that kind of almost like artificial sense of connection because we're part of that group. But it's actually not true connection. It's not true acceptance of who we are as people. It's I will accept you as long as like with the, the conditions being that you must think the same way I do, that we must believe the same things. It's like the stipulation behind that connection. So therefore if we are not, you know, exactly in lock step. Now we're losing that group and we feel more disconnected. So that's often, you know, really not a great thing. It makes us want to hang on to these connections, to these groups where we may not even feel like we belong anymore, where we may not even feel like it's actually helping us or supportive.
But we're too afraid of having nothing, so we'd rather stick with that. There is ultimately a cost to feeling superior. When you are outraged. You do feel better in the short term, but overall you don't feel good, right? Because you are outraged. So it doesn't feel good to be angry all the time, even though it's made you feel a little better in the short term.
So then we will often resort to other compensatory behaviors to try to soothe and comfort ourselves. So this is, I mean, classic eating, right? If you find yourself, you know, you're just so furious all day long and then you come home and you're like, why am I eating this in front of the TV? Why am I having another glass of wine? Because you still ultimately are trying to feel better.
Living in a state of outrage does not feel good in the long term. And there's a cost to those repeated dopamine hits every time we are outraged. You know, this is actually very similar to what we traditionally think of as substances that or, you
know, activities, behaviors that people become addicted to when you are getting these dopamine hits frequently, that righteousness, that self righteousness, that indignation, you feel like you're so much smarter and more superior and all this stuff, you get that dopamine hit. But over the course of time your brain will actually downregulate the number of dopamine receptors that it has.

So you will not feel as good with each of those outrage experiences over the course of time. And what you'll find is just like we end up eating more and more sugar or drinking more and more alcohol, or shopping more and more, or spending more and more time on social media. You spend more and more time being outraged, taking in information that creates outrage like you're chasing that high again. You're trying to get yourself to feel really good. To what end? Right? Like, ultimately, it has such a cost. And when you are using outrage as a cover emotion, the cost is that you're stuffing down those deeper emotions, which only makes them fester.
It's not like if you stuff down the fear and instead sit with outrage like you're not still afraid. You know, outrage can just be energy directed outward, where the fear is more that energy inward. What if I'm not okay? What if I'm not safe? And that still is there. The outrage is just a distraction away from that. So really, ultimately, the cost of outrage is your overall experience of your life. The overall experience of your life can start to feel pretty sucky when you are in outrage all the time, your well being suffers.
And when that happens, you start having thoughts of, you know, escaping or running away or, you know, that can look like you're wanting to move to a different area of the country or to a different country, like thinking that grass is greener somewhere else, like they don't have problems there. Sometimes we look at like we're just trying to escape our work environment. I'm going to leave medicine or I'm going to find a different job. It's going to be better over there. Then I won't have to feel the way I feel. I won't have to be so outraged all the time, not recognizing that we are totally playing a huge part in creating that outrage and that our brains follow us. You know, there's always something to be outraged about, if that's what you ask your brain to show you.
And so when you start noticing that, like, I can't take it here any longer, that's how you start knowing those dopamine hits, right? They're not so available anymore. It's getting bad, right? Outrage is exhausting over time. It is very depleting and it's very divisive. And it's also really easy for this to bleed out into other areas of our lives. Like if you are spending most of your day at work in outrage, you know, and you're just so upset and frustrated and pushing back on everything, then when you get home or you're, you know, with the people that you love, like how is that bleeding into your other relationships? Because it's probably not just a complete break and you're totally switching gears when you're home.
This can definitely harm the most important relationships in your life when you're spending a lot of time there. You know, there are a lot of people who struggle with outrage addiction, where it maybe started in their place of employment, and now they're outraged at their partner or they're outraged at, you know, their children, they're outraged at their siblings, at their parents. Like it's just everything is pushing back resistance, resistance, resistance. And here's the thing that is really, really interesting. So outrage turns into contempt. So let's just talk about what contempt is. The Oxford Dictionary defines contempt as the feeling that a person. Or a thing is beneath consideration. Worthless or deserving scorn.
Contempt is the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless or deserving scorn. Mean all you have to do is look on the internet. I've received this too. I mean, people have scorned me. Like, doesn't matter. It does not matter what you say. What was behind anything. People love to be in contempt. The definition of it in Wikipedia thought this was really good too. Wikipedia says contempt is an attitude toward individuals, social groups and eventually ideologies that evokes a sense of superiority and the right to judge amid feelings of disgust and anger. This set of emotions generally produces maladaptive behavior. Okay, this is what we're dealing with every time it's a group pile on on the internet.
This is what we are participating in. Okay. There is a therapist. His name is Terrence Riel, and he's got some really, really good work out there. He talks about contempt in a way that I had never heard before. It actually was like when I read this, I was like, Oh my gosh, he is so, so right. What he says is that contempt is the emotion that drives both shame and grandiosity. And when we are in outrage, we are often coming from a grandiose place. And many of us will be like, Oh, no, no, I would never be like that. Just pause and consider where that grandiosity might show up. So what he says is that the psychological energy of shame and grandiosity are the same, that they are the same feeling, but just going in opposite directions.
So contempt outward is grandiosity. And that can look like thinking or saying that guy is such an idiot. Contempt inward is shame thinking things like, I'm such an idiot. I mean, so good. So, so good. So just think of that every time you're around someone who is coming with, you know, that grandiosity. Right? Coming with that contempt. They also have that same contempt for themselves. And we all do this as well. I mean, I'm just as guilty as the next person. The more that we can identify how we do this. I mean, this is literally relationship saving in all of our relationships throughout our entire lives.
So he says that contempt is emotional violence either toward others or toward yourself. And it does feel violent. You know, a lot of people haven't been the recipient of this kind of stuff online, but I have. It feels violent, right? It is a mob attack. And I'm not saying this because, like, you should feel sorry for me. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about here at all. Like I can handle myself and I do. But what I'm talking about is, you know, when you get a negative review online or, you know, you post something and someone disagrees, or maybe you're just hiding because you're so afraid that the mob attack is going to come at you.
This is what the majority of people are participating in right now. And what I have seen and what I believe is true is that when we live in outrage, when we spend a lot of time in outrage, then contempt just comes along for the ride. And this is kind of outside the scope of this episode. But if you've ever heard of the Gottman Institute and the Gottman are these two amazing psychologists who have done tons and tons and tons like literally decades and decades and decades worth of research on married couples and contempt for one another is one of the like. The minute they see contempt or notice contempt amongst a couple, they're able to predict with kind of shocking accuracy whether the marriage will make it or not.
And usually with contempt, once there's contempt, the marriage has some real, real problems and probably will dissolve. And that's just what they found from research. You know, it's not an opinion. And so we can, you know, extrapolate that to understand that when we feel contempt in any relationship, that is a relationship killer. You know, we want to feel connected to people. I mean, arguably the purpose of life is to feel that connection with other humans. And when we are participating in contempt and our outrage addicted, we have less and less and less of that. Which explains why we are so miserable, burned out and just want to opt out of everything.
Right? Okay, so what are we going to do about it? I don't want to just sit here and talk about it and explain it and not give you anything to think about, to work on like any kind of approach to start working on this. So I've got some steps here for you. Number one, recognize that this is a problem and that you participate in it. Okay. Like I said before, if any of us thinks that we don't engage in this, like there's no side of the street where you're not doing this, at least in some way, shape or form. Okay, So recognize it's a problem and how you participate in it. That doesn't mean you beat yourself up. That doesn't mean you turn that contempt toward yourself. Okay?
You're just creating awareness. How do you participate in it? Allow yourself to be surprised or to have your eyes opened to what's been happening without your realization. Number two, understand what outrage is robbing you of. Okay, There is a real cost to spending time in outrage. It is your well being and it is the life that you want to live, that you are trading. If you want to be outraged, if you want to live your life, then you're trading away your well-being and the life that you hope to have for yourself. So just understand that I'm not even going to tell you you have to change it, but just recognize what that trade off is.
And are you okay with that? Okay. Number three, name it. So notice when others engage in it and when you do also engage in it or want to if you feel the urge to do it doesn't mean you like are like, oh, you're in contempt over there, you're in outrage addiction. Okay. That's not what I mean by name. It what I mean by name, it is to yourself in your mind going, Oh, that's the outrage. There it is right there. I can hear the contempt. I can feel it. That is it right there. Just start to notice it. Let your brain see it so you can see where others are doing it.
And often when we see others doing it, then we go, Oh, wait, I actually do that too. And this is how that's why group coaching is so powerful, right? Sometimes so much easier to see in other people first. Okay, next. Number four, learn about other sides and don't make up stories about other sides. And just believe them to be true. Like actually educate yourself. This is something that most people don't do, right? People I'll just speak for in the United States. Like people decide that whatever side they're on, that the other side hates America. You know, like comes up with like all of these stories about what they think is true about. Those people without actually educating themselves and really learning.
There is a quote that I found that says, if you're furious, you can't be curious. Okay. If you're furious, you can't be curious. So find the gray zones. You know, in the episode I did a couple of weeks ago on administration and how to deal with that. That's something I talk to you about. Just learn more. Don't just assume that you know what you're talking about because you probably actually don't.
Learn more, ask questions, find out more, and don't assume that, you know, because one time one person said one thing that it's always that way. And this is directed at everybody, including me. We all can get better at doing this. If you're furious, you can't be curious. Okay. Number five, actively work to stop feeling that contempt inward and
outward. Right. If you also show your self contempt, which so many, so many people do, particularly women who struggle with food and weight, it would make sense that we at times are like, don't want to feel the contempt toward me.

I'm going to direct it outward to others. So actively work on changing that. And how do you do that with your thinking? Because the way you think your thoughts create your emotions. Contempt is an emotion. It is a feeling and it's created by the way that you think. So if you can understand, oh, when I think this way it makes me feel contempt. Then you have the opportunity to change the way you think, to shift it into something else that doesn't make you feel contempt.
Now, let me just say, I'm not asking you to switch it a total 180 degrees and be like, These people are incredible and I totally agree with them. That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is just let's inch ourselves away from the contempt and the outrage. Let's realize these are humans who want a good life, too. We're all on the same team. You know, we all want to feel like we're winning and everyone that we love is winning. And so we have so much more. I mean, everyone says we have so much more in common than we have differences, and that is true. But just really, really recognizing that seeing the humanity in others, recognizing the contempt and the outrage in yourself and working to shift away from that.
You do that, by the way that you think coaching can be super, super effective and helpful for you in that. And then finally, take action within the sphere of your influence. So it's very easy for us. Many of us do this and I am monitoring myself on this all the time, really feeling a lot of outrage on things that we do not have control over or, you know, feeling outraged and contempt because we think others are more at fault with something than we are. So like climate change is an example for myself, just like a personal example, you know, feeling like, well, what can I do over here? There's nothing that I can even do that's going to make any difference.
Like they it's all their fault and they have to shift it all. But what can I do? Instead of disempowering myself and telling myself about all the things I can't do and how it's other people's problem and they're the ones that fault the the kind of, you know, proverbial they. I'm not even 100% sure who they are. Right. Unnamed folks in positions of power. Right. Like, what can you do? What do you have influence over and get to work taking action there. That's actually in the 12 steps.
Acts of service is a big part of that. And this, I think, kind of, you know, encompasses that. What are the things that you can do? There is certainly something you can contribute with your time, with your energy, with your money. There's things that you can do and do those things instead of just sitting in outrage and contempt for others. What can you do? Create something positive. Put that energy back in the world in a positive way. When we are spending a lot of time in outrage, we are contributing, adding more to the world of what we don't want. So if you want something different, it starts with each one of us individually. If I want a different experience in my life, that's on me.
And same goes for you. Okay. And I will tell you, I just want to leave you with this. In medicine, everybody's talking about how, you know, just people's attitudes and everyone's so burned out and doctors are really struggling and suffering and. Absolutely. And you know what? This is each of our individual responsibilities to figure out how to make it work for ourselves with the current situation. You know, if we're waiting for other people to come and change our thoughts by, you know, adjusting the facts around us so it's easier for us to think more positive thoughts.
You see what I'm saying? We're waiting for administration to change something or whatever laws to change, insurance companies to change, whatever that is. So it's easier for us to think positive thoughts so we can feel better. But if you're going to be waiting friend, you're going to be waiting for a long time. And that's one way of doing it. If you want to do that and be miserable for a long time, you can. But I promise you, because I've seen it in my own clients where they're like, You know what? Everyone's complaining about this thing and that thing. And I actually don't think it's that bad. I actually think that our patient load is pretty fair. I actually think that our compensation is is right where it should be. But they're scared to even say that because of the mob attack, the outrage that they may perceive.
So you may be like, well, then I'll be the only one thinking this way. Probably not. There's others, too, who are looking for permission to not be outraged by everything, you know, and even regardless. Right. You can find connection outside of medicine. There's lots of ways to find, you know, people to be connected to. And there are people who aren't wanting to, you know, vilify everybody and are in a different place in terms of what they can offer. Those people are available and you can find them. They can become your new source of connection to actually support you.
They're not going to sit there and just, you know, bring things up again and again and again and complain about things again and again and again and not let things go. Like how does that help anybody? It doesn't help the person who's doing it and it doesn't help the people who are around it and listening. So this is all of our work, me included. This is all of our work and want to really encourage you to take this seriously. I really encourage you to take this seriously. Just think about how you interact. If you're on social media, you interact in any Facebook groups or things like that. How do you interact? What is the energy you are putting out into the world? Okay, Just really, really think about that and think about what the benefits are to you and what the costs are.
And are you okay with that equation? Because this is really our responsibility. We all want a better world for our children and our grandchildren. Guess what? It starts with us. So let's get to work. Let's do this thing. Okay? We're going to drop it. We're going to stop being outraged by everything. Being offended is a choice, okay? It is a choice. And with that, I'm going to let you go. I hope you have a great rest of your week, hopefully much calmer and without very much outrage. But it's a process, right? It's a process. And don't want to make it sound like you're just flip a switch and it'll be gone. Particularly if you've been doing this a lot. It's going to take some work and the benefits are great, are huge.
And if you struggle with food in your weight, trust me, when you no longer feel so angry and so outraged and so filled with contempt all the time, it will be easier to not eat excess food. Okay. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your time. As much as I told you not to think about other people, if you know somebody who you think could benefit from this episode, feel free to share it. All right. Take care, friends. Have a great one. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

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In this episode, I’m introducing you to one of my Weight Loss for Doctors Only clients, Kendra Sweet, MD, MS. She has an incredible story and I think you’ll see a lot of yourself in her.

She’s here to share her weight loss story and the added benefits that it has had on her health, work, and personal life. She’s done so much work on her relationship with food, her emotions, her relationships, and more in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program. I can’t wait for you to hear all about it.

If you could use a little inspiration or you just want to hear about the program from someone who’s actually done it, this is for you.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Childhood experiences with weight and body image * How learning to manage your mind, body, and emotions can affect other areas of your life * The kind of guidance you get in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program * Meeting your needs with more than just food * Learning to maintain a weight rather than staying in the cycle of gaining and losing * Realigning your identity with who you want to be * Why weight-loss coaching helps you with more than just weight loss * How to learn more about yourself and your values

I’m so grateful to Kendra for coming on the podcast and sharing her story. I hope you can relate to her and take some inspiration from her experience. Wherever you’re at, it’s not too late to make a change. You can have the life you’ve always wanted.

Ready to learn more about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program and finally have peace and freedom around food? Find all the information you need at katrinaubellmd.com/info.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:[00:00:00] Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here today. I have a really fun episode for you. I want to introduce you to one of my weight loss for doctors only clients. Her name is Kendra Sweet. She is a physician in Florida and she is someone who has just really incredible story and is also just a really normal person. I think that when we are doing this work, it's really easy for us to think that we can only have success if we hire a personal chef or we hire a personal trainer, or we have someone who runs our whole life for us. I

know I used to have those thoughts like, sure, I could do all of that if that's all I had to focus on. There's no possible way that I can do it when I have all these other obligations in my life between family and my job and everything else. And Kendra is such a great example of the fact that that's completely untrue, just totally a lie that we tell [00:01:00] ourselves and believe. And then we allow that to keep us from creating what we really want.

[00:01:05] And so she is here to discuss not only her incredible weight loss story, but also the kind of side benefits that have happened for her physically and even in terms of her work and her personal life. And really just everything has changed for the better for her in doing this work and really working on her eating and, you know, just her emotions and relationships and all that work that we do in weight loss for doctors only.

So I can't wait to share my interview with her. She's a great person that I know you're really going to enjoy listening to and hearing her story. So please enjoy my conversation with Kendra Sweet. Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach Katrina, MD. And this is the podcast where busy [00:02:00] doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Kendra, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

[00:02:23] Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

[00:02:26] I am really, really excited to talk to you today because you have a super, super great story. So interesting. We're going to get to some of the, I think, more interesting things a little bit later. But let's just first start off by talking a little bit about like at what point in your life you first started struggling kind of with like food, eating weight? When did that all start for you?

[00:02:46] Honestly, I was overweight as a child, not obese, not significantly overweight, but always bigger than. Probably your average child. And I remember [00:03:00] probably the first time I tried to lose weight was when I was in sixth grade doing some kind of fad diet with some of my friends, which of course worked for a week and then gained it right back. Ever since elementary school, I remember being heavier than I should have been, and it's continued since then. I've always been very active. I was a swimmer all through high school and half of college and has been a triathlete, and I've done a lot of hiking, but weight has remained a challenge regardless.

[00:03:29] Okay, cool. So it's like, you know, you kind of kept it under control to a certain extent with the exercise. Did you find that at a certain point that wasn't working anymore?

[00:03:38] When I got pregnant with my first child, I gained a tremendous amount of weight. I also had torn my meniscus right at the same time that I got pregnant. So my exercise decreased significantly at the same time that I was gaining a lot of weight with pregnancy. And then it took a long time to get weight off from that pregnancy and then got pregnant [00:04:00] again a few years later and gained a bunch of weight back then. So it's always been this kind of up and down cycle throughout. I mean, really my entire adult life. I do remember back in my early 20s there was one period of time where I felt, I guess, confident about my weight for maybe a couple of months and then just gained everything right back again.

[00:04:20] Did you try like a lot of different diet plans and stuff over the years or where were you at with that?

[00:04:26] Mostly Weight Watchers, You know, as you've said many times, it works when you do it. If you stick to it, it works, but it gets boring after a while. It's hard to to incorporate that into your day to day life if you're trying to do anything outside of the norm, the norm, being preparing all of your food at home and and bringing it to work. And so it makes going to restaurants tougher and going to someone else's house harder and any kind of event. So eventually I just kind of. Stop doing it. And I'm not someone who enjoys cooking. So there was a period of time kind [00:05:00] of funny, and this was not forced, but a period of time where my was doing Weight Watchers with me and we had a deal because she wanted to cook healthy meals, but she wanted some motivation to do it. So I would buy all the food and then she would cook for both of us and just bring a bunch of food at the beginning of the week. That is.

[00:05:17] Brilliant.

[00:05:18] But then she moved away and it all fell apart. And all because I wasn't going to cook anymore. Right. So I just stopped doing Weight Watchers.

[00:05:28] Right, right, right. So when you did you first start listening to this podcast? I'm assuming you did because most people do. Yeah.

[00:05:35] Okay.

[00:05:36] Where were you at when you first started listening to the podcast? Like, what was the impetus for you to start listening?

[00:05:41] So actually I had just started Weight Watchers again, and I had a friend of mine who came to visit who I'd seen a year prior, and at that time, well, when she came to visit, she lost about 65 pounds. And I asked her how she had lost all this weight. And [00:06:00] she mentioned your podcast. And ironically, she's not a physician. She's a teacher, actually. But she started telling me, you know, I just stopped eating sugar and flour and snacks. Well, that doesn't sound that bad.
I had always thought of myself as someone who had quite a sweet tooth, so that part sounded like it'd be the hardest part to give up. But she told me about your podcast and I started listening to it and I was like binge listening to it. Once I started listening and I was talking to her all the time about everything that I was learning and kind of shifted away from Weight Watchers and just shifted to no sugar and no snacks really, before I even gave up flour altogether just went away from sugar and snacks and really started to get in tune with, Am I actually hungry? No. Why am I trying to eat this? Or why am I wanting to eat and just starting to get in tune with reasons why I was actually eating, which most of the time we're not physical hunger.

[00:06:54] Mean like so many of us, right? Yes, totally. So then at what point were you thinking, okay, I think I want some additional help, like in the form of the weight loss for doctor's only program.

[00:07:04] I started to realize that there were a lot of reasons that I had been eating. There were a lot of reasons that I was eating when I wasn't hungry and that it was I could give up eating, but I was still kind of uncomfortable, just kind of not buffering with food or with sugar.

[00:07:22] I think that's the hardest thing, right? It's like not really that different than Weight Watchers anymore. You know, you're still, like, uncomfortable. You still don't feel good. You're still, you know, struggling.

[00:07:31] Exactly. Exactly. Like I could give it up, but I didn't I didn't know for sure. Could I continue this long term if I don't address kind of the underlying reasons that I'm doing this in the first place? So that was really when I when I looked up the program and looked up what Waldo has to offer, it just kind of spoke to me, to be honest with you. Like it just seemed to offer a lot of what I needed at that time. Had a lot of feelings of not being completely settled in my work life and [00:08:00] just wanted a little bit more understanding of what was going on in my mind, my own mind, and how that correlated with my eating habits and my weight. And so I thought if I could really dig a little deeper into all of that, it would really help me in my overall well-being, not just my weight, right?

[00:08:17] So let's just pause. We'll hit pause on the weight loss thing for here for a second. So how old are you when you first started having migraine headaches? Seven, seven years old. Okay. And so give us a quick progression of what that looked like as you started the program.

[00:08:33] Yeah, I mean, I thought back then and I probably am missing a lot of details from back then, but I think the initial thought was it was related to my jaw. And so I had braces in the second grade to try to do things with John. But the headaches were were kind of persistent and certainly not as bad as they were in adulthood, but definitely had headaches frequently in high school and in college and and then really probably in my early 20s is when I started getting them much, much, much more frequently. And so [00:09:00] averaging probably six days a week from my early 20s until, you know, last fall, which you know, was 44.

So for about 20 years, averaging about six things a week, getting a migraine headache. And then I started seeing a headache specialist, a neurologist who specializes in headaches two and a half years ago and was started on dairy medication to try to prevent them, which sort of worked. But the doses just kept getting increased and increased and increased and then was taking a trip down and was, you know, because there's a limit to how many triptans you can take in a month, you know, was told basically pick the days you want to have a headache and pick the days you don't and take the trip in on the days you don't want to have a headache.

[00:09:41] So that was kind of how I was functioning and taking Tylenol and ibuprofen a few times a day. And once I started on this program and, you know, made these changes to my diet and. Really think started better understanding the whole connection between my mind and my body and how to manage my [00:10:00] emotions. And all of this started coming together. My migraines started getting so much better. I mean, so much better. That's been the biggest change in my whole life. I still get them. I mean, I do still get them, but I went five months between refills of my triptan and that only has nine pills in the box. So I went from taking 13 in a month to nine over five months. My daily kind of preventive medication dose was cut in half. I get a headache maybe 1 to 2 days a week. Now that's usually manageable with Tylenol. And it's just been life changing. Absolutely. Life changing.

[00:10:36] Mean it's like an absolute miracle. And I just want to say what you've been able to accomplish, having so many migraine headaches. I mean, guess you get to a point where you're just like, this is just my life and you have a headaches way more often than you don't. But still, it's like just incredible. And then the fact like, I'm guessing you kind of were at a point where you're like, I guess this is just my life. It's probably just not ever going to get better. And then to be able to have this really unexpected side benefit [00:11:00] of doing this other work on yourself, I mean, it's just incredible.

[00:11:03] Yeah. Like you said, it just was kind of like, well, this is what it is like. Some people, I guess, just have headaches and I'm one of those people. And so you just either get on with it or you do nothing. So doing nothing is not really an option, so get on with it. But then it took me a little while to start to recognize like this thing is really consistently getting better. I guess. Maybe to me, well, maybe that's not totally true, but I guess it took me a while to realize what to attribute it to.

But the timing, when I realized when I had last refilled my triptan and then when I stopped needing it so frequently and it all started coming together. But this is fascinating. And then on Halloween last year, I did have some sugar and the next day had a horrible migraine, a horrible migraine. And I realized, wow, that is very likely the cause. And, you know, a couple times over [00:12:00] the holidays, when I did have sugar, the next day, I had terrible headaches. And so it's just if there's nothing else at this point that I really need to motivate me to stay away from it.

[00:12:10] And that's not even what, you know, I typically am like, you know, recommending or telling anybody to do. Usually it's more like, Hey, let's figure out a way where we can coexist with sugar, where if you want it to be a part of life, you can have it as part of your life in a more rational way where you feel in control and you're an example of someone who's like, No thanks, I'd rather not.

[00:12:29] Exactly. Which I never would have expected because I always identified as such a sweet tooth. And I mean, I would go as far as to say I mean, I was addicted to sugar right At the end of a busy clinic day, my nurse would go down to the gift shop in the hospital and just buy tons of crap, and we'd just sit there and just eat like chocolate covered pretzels and gummy lifesavers and just all this candy. It was so gross when I think about it. But we would do that all the time when [00:13:00] we'd have a stressful day in clinic. And now just the thought of that is just repulsive to me, which is great. But I mean, at the time that was like how we managed our stress.

[00:13:08] I was going to say, you didn't know any other way. That was the only way you knew to get through the day and you probably felt like you were doing something fun and nice for yourselves. And it was a way of kind of bonding with people getting that social connection. Yeah, it makes sense. But then when you realize you're like, maybe there's some other ways that I could accomplish the same thing without eating all of that stuff.

And that's really what we work on, right? Like, I think so many people think it's like, okay, here's your diet. Like, here's what you're going to eat and mean. Don't tell you what to eat at all. But like there's, you know, some guidance. It's mostly just helping you to figure out what's going to work best for you. But, you know, you get started on that and then we get into everything else like, so how do you get through, you know, a difficult clinic day and not just be like, well, in too bad, you just have to suffer and feel awful now because you don't get to have anything nice, you know?

[00:13:57] I mean, I think it's really recognizing or just being [00:14:00] more aware of, hey, what's making me feel uncomfortable, right? It's the things that would make me want to eat sugar, you know? What were those things? Is it a negative patient interaction? Is it that I, you know, personalize that too much and made that about me, when in reality it's not really about me? Or is it, you know, I'm an oncologist, So there's for better or for worse, a lot of end of life discussions. And is it that, you know, just had a, you know, an end of life discussion with a young patient that was emotionally challenging and that was hard to kind of come down from or whatever it may be.

But now it's kind of reevaluating and rethinking about those scenarios and say, you know, an end of life discussion, for example, I can kind of stop and recognize that, you know, this person was going to be in this scenario, whether I'm here or not, But my role for them is to make the. End of their life as good as it can possibly be. You know, to make them realize that they have done every single thing they can possibly do to [00:15:00] try to improve this situation. And this is where we are now. And now my role is to make them as comfortable as they can possibly be so they can die with dignity. And so rather than cheering like I have somehow failed them, I can choose to think about it. In a different way in that I have helped them as best as I can and I feel like I have been in in this place to try to make their lives better because their scenario wasn't going to change whether I was here or not.

[00:15:32] Right. Like your role kind of switches a little bit, right? You're like, I'm here to help them, you know, no matter what. And so, like, when we've exhausted all our options over here, then we transition to, okay, so now my role has shifted into helping them in the end of their life be as comfortable as possible.

[00:15:48] Exactly. But those sorts of thoughts are available to me rather than just feeling like I have nothing and I've failed them. Yeah. Which is, I think what leads to this kind of. Well, obviously sadness [00:16:00] and kind of need to act in ways that don't serve me, don't serve my body. But if I can think about things in a different way, in a more. And worth a positive way to think about something maybe more useful.

[00:16:14] I like to think of it as a more useful way, right? It doesn't have to be more positive, but it's more useful. It's like what came to me is like the image is like it can feel very empty, right? To feel like. Like you have nothing you can give anymore, you know, like you're just like, you know, or sometimes people even feel kind of numb, like they don't even know what to think. And so we just will eat because we're like, we want some sensory input or we want to fill up that emptiness. And but we don't have conscious awareness that that's what we're doing. We're like, I don't know, I just wanted gummy lifesavers or whatever you're saying.

[00:16:44] You know? Exactly. It's true. It is true. It's just filling a void. But rather than filling it with candy, you can just fill it with what I really think is the truth, which is that I have been in a place to provide [00:17:00] as much help and guidance as anyone can, and that makes me feel a lot better about the goal that I put in.

[00:17:09] Yeah, it's like you suffering more is definitely not going to help that patient in any way at all, you know what I mean? Or you kind of like, you know, punishing yourself to a certain extent, right? Or, you know, thinking negatively about yourself or there's nothing good comes from it. It really is the realization, I think. Right.

[00:17:25] Exactly. It just doesn't it doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help me with the patient either. And, you know, it just there's nothing good that comes from that.

[00:17:33] Well, and I think that that can really lead to a lot of burnout, too, you know, taking on all that responsibility. And then, you know, this is an art of medicine on purpose, right? Like, not everything works all the time. In fact, a lot of times it doesn't work. And you know, that resistance to that or thinking that, you know, somehow if you were just smarter or better, like you could, you know, save this person or whatever, like, I don't know why we think that way, but it's not helpful. It's certainly not helpful at all, no. [00:18:00] So would you be willing to share how much weight you've lost in our program?

[00:18:04] Well, that's 56 pounds.

[00:18:06] That is awesome. And that's your goal weight, right? You're at goal and you've been there for a little while now. Yes. Which is so fun. Congratulations for that. Gained and lost.

[00:18:14] 5 pounds here and there, which I think is Normal. Most people do not sit at the exact same weight like all day, every day. Right, Right, right. Yeah. So now you're working on maintaining, right? Like which is not something you ever did before. So how is that going?

[00:18:30] It's going really well. It's a learning process because I've never been in this place in my whole life where I've not wanted to lose weight. So I feel like I've always been in a cycle of either losing weight or gaining weight. So now I'm just at this place of wanting to keep my weight where it is and figuring out the best way to do that. So it's definitely a learning process I definitely have made. I don't even want to use the word mistakes because they're just I just am realizing, you know what? Just figuring.

[00:18:57] It out. Really? Yeah.

[00:18:59] Yeah. I [00:19:00] have noticed that if I do start snacking on something, my weight tends to go up and it also is usually snacking on something when I'm not hungry. And so I don't need to be doing that anyways and need to be addressing whatever it is that's making me snack on something. And so I think that just finding the right approach. I did cut out flour for a while when I was getting closer to my goal weight, and I think incorporating that back in is really, for me, the best way to to maintain my weight without adding back sugar or snacks, but just having a little bit of flour here and there to add in a little more variety and just kind of keep my weight at where I want it to be.

[00:19:41] Yeah, I think if you're able to eat a little bit of flour, then it makes it easier when you're like eating out or things like that, you know, like I'm not even much of a pasta person, but like every now and then, you know, it's just like, it's just nice. That's like, yeah, you know, sometimes I have this, you know what I mean? Like, not that big of a deal. Yeah. That's awesome. That's [00:20:00] so. So what happens in weight loss for doctors only, which I think a lot of people are surprised about, is we end up coaching on all kinds of other things. And just like you were talking about like, you know, talking about like, how do you deal with those clinic days?

And there's so much work that can be done there and it makes not eating all that stuff so much easier, right? I think a lot of times we're like, well, I'm going to be pulling that away from myself, like pulling away the candy at the end of the day and things like that. So I guess I just have to be miserable. Like, no, what we do is we actually stop, you know, make it so you just don't even need that or even desire it anymore, which makes it really easy to not have that. But we also often end up really delving into other things that are going on in various people's lives.

And I mean, honestly, like the whole gamut from A to Z and everything in between. And so I know you've been done well, you've done a lot of work and you've been coached a lot on your job and a potential opportunity to leave academic medicine, to go into a firm, a job where you could do more research like this, very related to the work that you've been doing for [00:21:00] many years, but then also like a family issue that was influencing that as well. I know this is an issue that just a lot of people are considering or thinking about. And so I'd love. For you to just share a little bit more whatever you feel comfortable sharing about that process?

[00:21:15] Absolutely. I think that this program, quite honestly, has been so impactful in helping me make this decision and feel good about the decision that I'm making. So I have been in my current job for ten years. I as you mentioned, I'm in an academic oncology and I treat leukemia. And I've been here at the same cancer center for ten years. And more recently I've just started, I'd say in the last few years, started to feel unsettled maybe, but really couldn't put my finger on what it is, because when I have talked to my department chair and asked for various things and he gives me what I ask for, I've gotten promotions to I'm [00:22:00] doing things that I love to do.

And so it's been hard for me to kind of drill down on what it is that makes me feel unsettled when if I just intellectually talk about what I'm doing, it's exactly what I want to be doing. But, you know, through some of the work in this program, I've really also spent a lot of time focusing on values, my own values, my core values, and really kind of makes me who I am and what kind of drives me to keep going. And so I think if I really drill down to like, what are my two primary core values, I would say family and personal well-being, which, you know, personal well-being could certainly be.

[00:22:39] That's a vague term potentially, but nevertheless, family is a big one. And then kind of touching on the family scenario, I have my husband and my two kids that live here in Florida with me and then my parents and my sister live in California and my sister has special needs. She has PKU that was not diagnosed at [00:23:00] birth and when diagnosed when she was two. And so she has cognitive deficits related to that being diagnosed late. And so my parents are very involved in her life and in kind of day to day, sort of the day to day stuff with with her.

And I have been more removed from that than I would like to be. And on some level, I have always known that I'm more removed than I want to be from what's going on in California with my parents and with my sister. But I don't know that I've ever really been able to articulate that. And just once I was able to really figure out kind of where my values lie, what's really important to me and family is really important to me and recognizing I want to be more present for my sister moving forward. I want to be more involved in her life in the years to come. I want to be more involved in my parents lives in the years to come.

[00:23:58] And I'm not moving to California. [00:24:00] They're not moving to Florida for a variety of reasons that we don't need to get into. But nevertheless, that's not happening. And so something else needs to change. If I wanted to really be in alignment with what I value and my current job for all that it has to offer doesn't offer the flexibility to be here and in California at the same time. And so ultimately, I just came to the realization that if I really want to live in alignment with my values, I need to find a different job that allows me to do that, that provides me the flexibility to be here and be there when I need to be there, when I want to be there so that I can be present for my family out there and my family here.

And that really matters to me. And so I found a job that is in the pharmaceutical industry, like you mentioned, doing clinical development, designing clinical trials, running clinical trials in my area of expertise, that is [00:25:00] a remote job so I can work from home companies based in California. I can kind of be where I need to be and still be working and provides me a degree of flexibility that I just don't have in my current job. And so after much coaching about it.

[00:25:16] I would call it careful consideration.

[00:25:19] Careful consideration.

[00:25:20] A rash decision by any stretch, you Know, not a rash decision by any stretch of the imagination. I finally came to the conclusion that that's what I wanted to do, and so I resigned about two months ago. I'm still in my my job at the cancer center. I'll be here for another two months. And then I'm starting my new job in July. I feel good about it. Overall mean?

[00:25:41] Well, it's it's very normal to have a lot of thoughts and feelings.

[00:25:46] Making A big decision like that that really changes. And it's a really it's a big life transition for you. And I just want to speak to, you know, something else that we talked a lot about, which was just the shift in identity, right? Like you thought you would be a certain kind of doctor doing [00:26:00] certain kinds of things and then realizing, you know, what's really better for me is doing something different, but that doesn't align with that identity. Or what you envision for yourself. So it's like realigning that, creating a new identity. It's an adjustment. It really is.

[00:26:16] That I think has been and I haven't even left yet, but that's probably been the biggest adjustment for me so far, is the fact that I really identify with being a doctor and with being an academic leukemia specialist. And I don't think I realized how much my identity is ingrained in this job until I decided to leave it. And all of a sudden, I'm recognizing that it's harder to walk away from than I thought it would be. Not just I mean, the people here are amazing and that's hard to walk away from, but really, because I'm kind of like, Well, who am I if I'm not this person? And so I have to kind of recreate that in my own mind and who I want to be. I remember asking you to like, Does this mean I'm a fake doctor now? Right, Right. [00:27:00]

[00:27:01] We're going to take away your degree.

[00:27:04] Right? But you're like, well, I don't know. I mean, the job you're taking now, a job for a doctor. I mean, and then not. Right. I come to terms with that Now. I know I'm not a fake doctor, but still kind of recreating that identity and feeling like, okay, now I get to really think about who is it that I want to be, who am I going to be, what are the reasons I'm doing this and how am I going to kind of re-identify myself? But that's been a big shift and that is not been nearly as simple as I just tried to make it sound right.

[00:27:34] But that's like one of those those side benefits, like, you know, you wouldn't have had all this coaching support and help in making that decision. And kind of like I mean, even now getting, you know, help with sort of like the aftermath, so to speak, of that decision. Had you not decided, hey, you know what, I think I want to get some coaching help on my food and eating and, you know, weight, right? Like, oh, my.

[00:27:52] Gosh, no, I would still be in my job just feeling very unsettled, trying to figure out why. Yeah, that's exactly [00:28:00] where I would be and probably would gain all the weight that I had potentially lost from Weight Watchers is exactly where I'd be because I've done all this before. Exactly that. I mean, the coaching support that I've gotten has really been it's been crucial. And, you know, when I signed up for Master's, I mean, I asked my husband if he was okay with it, but it was kind of like just asking but telling him.

[00:28:20] Like, I'm doing I'm doing this like.

[00:28:23] Right, I'm going to do this because I cannot leave my job and move into this whole new thing and not have this degree of support because I have to have this. I need it like it's been so valuable and I've coached on this so many times and every single time it comes up, I mean, I feel like a broken record, but I also learn something new and have something new to work on every single time. So realizing just there's still there's so much more there.

[00:28:48] When I just want to commend you because I think it's easy for people to shame themselves, like, Oh, I've already been coached on this, you know, several times. Like, I don't want to bother them, bring it up again. And you know, all of us as coaches, we're like, No, bring it [00:29:00] up. Like, you know, you're this is how you make progress. This is how you get to that place of decision, not by like shaming yourself into, you know, thinking that you shouldn't be getting the help that you really need. And I think that that's just really that was such a fun part of this process, right?

Like now you're you're maintaining your weight and you're learning how to do that. And that's like that's definitely going on kind of, you know, to the side. I don't think it's like the main, main focus anymore. And these other things get to get there kind of like the light of day, too, you know, the light shone upon them so that they can be worked out and you can kind of do them simultaneously, which is so fun and so great.

[00:29:37] It's really. Yeah, I can't think of actually, I can't think of the last time I coached on food or weight, which was the week that I reached my goal weight. And I asked a question about maintenance, and I don't think I've coached on it since then, and that was in January and now we're in May. I mean, yeah, like you said, it is. It's just kind of like a thing that's happening. And that's how we want.

[00:29:58] It to be, honestly, right? We want maintenance [00:30:00] to be something that's like, Oh yeah, every now and then think about that. But for the most part, I just this is how I do, you know, this is how I roll. Like this is just life and it's not so much focus on food and weight, which is really what we're all wanting. Whether we lose weight or not, we want to stop thinking about it, you know what I mean? We want to be free of that so that we can just be around it, have a, you know, healthy relationship with it, whatever that looks like for each one of us individually. And this is what that looks like, which is just so fun and so fewer headaches. Oh, my gosh.

[00:30:32] It's amazing. It's amazing. I now I'm like, I call myself a headache wimp, because when I do get a headache, I'm like, oh, gosh, I really just don't want to work with this headache right now. Like, how did I do this all the time before? Because it's like I've been exposed to the good life, right? Still 1 to 2 days a week. I'll do it, but so much better. I don't like it. Amazing.

[00:30:52] Right, right, right, right. Okay. So in closing here, as we wrap up, first of all, just thank you so much for sharing your story and, you know, all the [00:31:00] things that you shared, because I know it's going to be, you know, so helpful to so many people. But I wanted to just ask you one more question. So, you know, undoubtedly there's someone listening to this episode who's like, I wonder if I should Is weight loss for doctors right for me? Should I join them or not? I mean, there's good stuff on this podcast. Can I do it myself? I don't really know. And I would just love to know what you would tell that person.

[00:31:21] I would tell that person that anyone can can do it any mean. I've struggled with my weight for 45 years. I'm 45 years old, so I'm going to say 45 years. Well, 44, because I had struggled since I turned 45. And all of a sudden, you know, since finding this program, it's not a struggle anymore. And so anyone is capable of that that is available to anybody who wants it, which I think is absolutely incredible. And it's such a gift. So take advantage of that gift that been given. It's right there being handed to anyone who wants it.

So that's what I would say. And then [00:32:00] along with that is just the ability to learn so much more about yourself and what matters to you and how to manage kind of everything else that's going on in your world and how to make your whole life a little bit easier to to look at and just feel supported and feel cared about. And it's all right there ready for you. So I would recommend it to anybody personally just because of. The benefits I have experienced. I have recommended it to many people. I've got a couple friends that are in Waldo now that joined and and think again. They just they're experiencing significant benefits as well. And and I, I would love to think that everybody could feel as good as I feel.

[00:32:47] My gosh. So good. That is so great. Yeah. Because think that. Right. We we think like other people can do it but that we can't. And like you are a normal person with a real life and real challenges [00:33:00] and all the right. Like just it's like sometimes we're like if I had this perfect life and I wasn't actually human, then I could do it. No, like, you can do this while also actually being, you know, a regular person with a job and family and all the things.

[00:33:15] Yeah, absolutely. I'm just as regular as anyone else. The husband, who is great but also irritates me at times and kids who are awesome but also crazy and you know, they have schoolwork and activities and have a job that I'm here too many hours, you know, we've all got the same thing. We're all in the same boat, really, when all is said and done.

[00:33:36] And there's a way to make it work. Yeah. So good. Well, Kendra, listen, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and telling us all that. I appreciate you so much, so proud of what you've accomplished. It's just incredible. Always a pleasure to coach with you. So thank you so much.

[00:33:52] Thank you. Thank you for everything that you do for me and for everybody else. I'm just so grateful for you. So thank you and thank you for having me on. This is really [00:34:00] fun. I feel honored.

[00:34:01] Awesome. Thanks, Kendra. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #334: Weight Loss Success Story: Kendra Sweet, MD, MS appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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“Failure is the information you need to get where you’re going.” -Rick Rubin I heard this quote as I was listening to Rick Rubin’s audiobook and it got me thinking about how we approach our relationships with failure. This is something that comes up over and over again because we all tend to be pretty […]

The post Ep #333: Reframing Your Relationship With Failure appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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How much time do you spend out in nature?

When I started spending more time in nature, I noticed a huge improvement in how I felt and now it’s something that I prioritize all year round. For me, it usually looks like taking my dog for a walk around the neighborhood or at the park, but for you it might look like eating your lunch on the patio, spending time by the lake or the ocean, taking a quick walk on your lunch break, or something else entirely!

Sometimes, we fail to analyze our positive experiences to learn how to replicate them during tough times. Personally, spending time in nature is one such experience for me, and I believe it could be for you as well.

In this episode, I’m sharing the benefits of spending time in nature and some ideas to help get you outside – even if it’s tricky with your schedule.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Getting out into nature * How nature can reduce stress * Things I’ve done to prioritize getting my walks every day * The negative impacts of spending too much time inside * The benefits of spending more time in nature * How to find time to get outside * Ways to spend more time in nature without going for a walk * Being on the lookout for beauty when you’re outside

My challenge for you after listening to this episode (or maybe while you listen!) is to get outside. Even if you’re just standing at your back door and breathing some fresh air, find ways to get closer to nature. I’ve felt first-hand the difference it’s had on my physical and psychological well-being and I want you to feel it too.

Ready to learn more about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program? Find all the information you need at katrinaubellmd.com/info.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #331: Leveraging Your Future Self with Coach Laura Conley

Ep #330: Reproductive Shame & How to Overcome It

Ep #329: Downshifting to Increase Life Satisfaction with Natalie Bacon, JD, CFP, Certified Life Coach

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend, and welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to share with you some information today that I think is going to possibly make a big difference or it might be something that you're actually already doing and not being fully aware of how much it's actually helping you.

Sometimes it's hard to reverse engineer when things are good, right? When there's a problem. We're thinking about all the reasons we have that problem. When things are good and we're feeling good, sometimes we feel like it's just happened to us and we don't even know why or how. So when that happens, we don't know how to even recreate that for ourselves. So this is something I've been thinking about talking to you about for a little while now. And then I was coaching my clients in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program yesterday, and it actually came up and I thought, okay, that's it, it's time. That's often how these episodes come about it all the moons sort of align and it's time to talk about this.

[00:01:27] Here's what I've discovered. So about a year ago. It's been a year now that I've been doing this on a super regular basis, and that is getting out into nature. So about a year ago, this time of year in Wisconsin, it's finally getting warm. I know those of you who live in other areas are probably feeling sad for me. But for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, it's pretty much consistently, you know, nice to be outside at this point. Oh, when I do just want to say that right now up in my attic, I have the windows open because it's a beautiful day and I just wanted some fresh air. Normally, I would have closed those windows so that you didn't hear any nature sounds. And I thought, this is actually really appropriate that I have the windows open. So I left them open.

Whether you're able to hear any birds chirping or anything remains to be seen. We'll see. Or some wind chimes, but you'll see why why this is relevant. So what we had decided we had a playground in our backyard for, I think, over ten years, like a wooden rainbow swing set type of thing. And it was starting to rot and my kids were getting older and bigger and heavier and they would get on this thing and it was like like this is not safe anymore. Like, literally there were pieces of wood from sort of like a roof area that were just like falling down.

[00:02:42] We're like, this needs to go, This is not good. So like so many other people, when the pandemic hit, we spent a lot of time outside because there were so few other places that we could go. So we were spending a lot more time in our yard than we had before. Where I live, our yards are small. It's like a little postage stamp. That's how I like it. I love a beautiful yard, but I do not like putting the work into creating a beautiful yard. So I like to just have a small little area where it's easy to keep it up and keep it nice and neat and looking good. And so we had decided, you know what?

We want to be able to use more of our backyard. We don't need the space where this playset, the swing set was anymore because it needs to be taken down. So what should we do in that area? And we thought, you know, it would be fun is to put in an additional patio in that area. It's a little bit tucked in behind our garage. Our garage is in this area for the most part are detached. So it's kind of like back hidden back there a little bit for some more privacy. And we thought, you know what? We could put like a hot tub back there and get some comfy lounge furniture and it would be a little bit more protected from the sun.

[00:03:43] We could get some really good umbrellas and it would be just a really nice outdoor living area. So we went through the process of having that swing set taken down and then having a landscaping company, you know, come and install everything that we needed. And like so many other people who had the exact same idea, it kind of took forever, right? All the landscaping companies were so busy, so backed up. I think we had initially reached out to this company in 2021, in like February. I remember everything was still totally covered in snow and it wasn't able to really be installed until November. So we didn't really get a chance to fully enjoy it until last year. So once Spring hit a year ago, it was like, Oh my gosh, we've got it.

We ordered some patio furniture that was really nice and comfy and we got it all set up. So started spending more time outside, which was really, really nice. And at the same time I started wondering if maybe I should be a better pet parent. So I have a dog. He will be turning five in July. I can't even believe that. But he's a little Westie. His name is Auggie. If you know anything about Westies, they are Terriers, but they feel like they're slightly different than other terriers. They have a lot of personality. And by personality, that means that they're very cute. But also they can have an attitude.

[00:05:02] Obedience is not their strongest suit. They can be very barky. This is my second one. I haven't Mars, haven't been super barky, but they can get very, very barky and they can also just be kind of a little bit like pests, you know, like they just will bug you. Mine little Auggie. He will just come and like, step on your foot. He'll bump you with his nose and he just wants in and out. He just wants whatever he wants. And so I started to realize, you know what? I know this to be the truth, that I really should walk my dog regularly.

So I used to tell myself with our first dog who we got when we were interns. Crazy. I know, But we did that, you know, she was small and we could exhaust her in the house and we didn't actually have to walk her. And then she got diabetes when she was older and she had like a bundle branch block and like had exercise intolerance. And I think we did a decently good job of taking care of her, considering that we were residents for part of the time. And then we had, you know, small children for a lot of it. But, you know, I just kind of felt a little bit guilty like, you know, we probably could have worked a little harder. I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt that I was busy. I had a lot going on, babies and all that.

[00:06:10] But still, I was kind of like, well, you know, with Auggie, I might want to think about this a little bit differently. Oh, also, they are not great walkers because they have to stop and sniff everything, pee on everything. It's not like, Oh, let's go out and have, like, a pleasant walk. It's like, not really like that. So I really first started last year getting out into nature and walking him more when I discovered this area that's really pretty close to where we live, like maybe just a 3 or 4 minute drive away. That's like some county property that's pretty, you know, just kind of raw. It's like undeveloped.

And I would see people there when I was driving by walking their dogs off leash, and I was really nervous about walking my dog off leash because like I said, they're not obedient. So if I, you know, scream at him and tell him to come, I mean, maybe he'll come. It's a possibility. Probably not. Or at least not for a little while because they're also terrier. So if he's on the hunt for something, some little, you know, chipmunk or something, his brain gets like, hijacked and he just has to override that. But I did think I knew that it would be so fun for him to be able to run off leash every time I took him to a dog park. He loved it. But he would also just get so incredibly disgustingly filthy that it was like, you know, had to build that into it.

[00:07:21] It's like, okay, we go to the dog park and then I have to have time to give him a full bath, you know, the whole night. And they don't like getting wet either. So I thought, you know what? I want to try this area. I call it the field. I want to try taking him there and seeing if he'll behave himself. So I went with my husband, thought, you know, between the two of us, we could probably wrangle him pretty well if he was misbehaving. And so we started taking him there. One loop.

It's like also kind of hilly, which is nice because it's just pretty flat where I live in general, really just, you know, beautiful, like meadow kind of area. They, I think I don't know who somebody took on an initiative in the last maybe 5 or 10 years to plant a lot of just, you know, natural plants that grow wild in Wisconsin in this area. So it's just gotten really, really pretty. And the flowers, these perennials, just, you know, different ones bloom throughout the year. It's just really nice. So about a year ago, my husband and I are like, all right, let's go. We'll try it out and see how he does. It's one loops about almost a mile. And he just I mean, if there was ever just a way to assess sheer glee in an animal, that is what is the expression of this dog.

[00:08:32] He was so happy. I mean, like just so gleeful and joyful and just so, so, so, so happy. And so we would be able to still walk because we could take him off leash and he could stop and sniff, and then he would come and catch up with us. And he was able to run like top speed, which he usually isn't able to do so much. So he was loving this a ton, and I was really enjoying it too.

I was like getting out in fresh air, out in nature, just a different type of a walk than walking in the neighborhood. And we have sidewalks in my neighborhood, which is nice, but still it's just he would just have to stop and sniff everything all the time. It's like I always would say that taking him for a walk in the neighborhood is a compliment to even call it a walk as a compliment because it's a lot of standing around. So anyway, I started taking him there pretty much like in the evenings whenever the weather was nice, which was most of the time. So we'd finish up dinner or maybe a little bit before dinner, but more when the sun was starting to set a little bit and it wasn't quite as warm. I would take him out there and, you know, we'd do maybe 1 or 2 laps and then sometimes even three laps.

[00:09:35] And I noticed like, I mean, he would just be wiped. He was so tired, you know, he was just a very well behaved dog when he got that energy out, it was really good for him. So I started doing that more regularly and if I couldn't take him to the field, he was like starting to expect it. He wanted it. So I'd take him on some walks in the neighborhood, too. And so I was doing that every evening, and I started to just notice how it was such a nice end cap to my day. I would get outside, the sun would be setting. Sometimes there was a pretty sunset.

You know, people are kind of like winding down their days, but sometimes outside just kind of, you know, you know, right now I just feel like in the world, a lot of people just really keep to themselves. But it was a little bit more of an opportunity to say hello to different neighbors and stuff. Not even people I know or anything, but just, you know, saying hi. Things like that. And I started noticing all my time of standing around in the neighborhood of how beautiful some of the trees are and just looking at different parts of people's yards, like different plants that they had. Have planted in different flowers and how there's actually some different mosses and lichen on the trees and how it would be different if it had just been raining.

[00:10:43] And I just started to notice this like palpable stress reduction in myself when I was able to get outside, whether I went to the field or I just walked doggie in the neighborhood, it really helped me a lot. And so then gradually over the course of time, I started to take him for a quick walk in the neighborhood in the morning as well. If I had time and I did get up earlier to be able to do this, because I also had learned about how, you know, just our circadian rhythms and I've been trying to work on improving my sleep.

And one thing that can really help is getting light in your eyes first thing in the morning, especially when the sun is low on the horizon and then same at night. So if you're outside getting that low horizon light in your eyeballs, it helps your brain to know either it's time to get up, you know, wake up, let's get moving, or it's time to wind down. And, you know, sleep is going to be coming soon. And I was noticing that it really was helping me, really always struggled for a long, long time with consistent sleep. And this was really helping me to be tired appropriately and to just feel kind of ready for the day better. It was actually a noticeable for me. Like I go when I do this, it's not exercise. I wouldn't count it as exercise. I would count it as steps.

[00:11:56] We can call it steps, but it's not exercise, but just getting out there, getting that fresh air in the morning, you know, the world's just kind of waking up. It was just really, really, really nice. And again, like dogs are creatures of habit. And so I started getting really used to it to the point where if I didn't take him, he was not particularly pleased. And when I did take him, particularly in the morning, he was just kind of a happier guy during the day. You know, I work from home. He was less barky. He was just less kind of like annoying, to be quite honest. Like he would just kind of like chill out and take naps.

And he just seemed more content. And of course, I know it's better for him in terms of his physical health as well. And it's probably not bad for me, even if I'm not moving like in a traditional sense of a workout or anything like that. So I didn't really set out to set this as a habit or for this to be anything that I would do regularly. And to be honest with you, I really kind of thought, well, once winter hits, I mean, let's just see how is this going to go? Because like I said, I live in Wisconsin. Well, so now I'm coming off of walking my dog twice a day, consistently all throughout the winter. And that's how much it helps me.

[00:12:59] The only times I've really missed are if I have to get up really early to go to the airport or if there's like lightning. I mean, one time I literally looked at him and I said to him, I'm like, Listen, buddy, I'm not risking my life for you today. That's not going to be happening. I'm not getting struck by lightning so that you can get your walk. But I will look and see like, is there going to be a break in the weather? We should go then. And I invested in a good coat for him and we even had to get like these little kind of booties that sort of look like just like thick rubber balloons that we would put on his paws because it would be so cold sometimes that he couldn't even really walk.

He'd be like hobbling along, holding his paws up because it was, you know, uncomfortable for him. He doesn't really like having those put on at all or even taken off, but he loves a walk so much that he's willing to put up with it so that he can have a walk. I've had people say they're like, Oh my gosh, that's amazing. He keeps them on. I'm like, Well, he loves taking a walk and he knows there's no other way we're going out. So he's willing to tolerate it. So I made it through all of that. I got I think they're called yaktrax, like these things you can stretch over your boots or your shoes that give you more traction for when it's slippery.

[00:14:04] You know, I really went out there like I figured out how to bundle myself up and be really warm. And the other thing that really, really helped me in the mornings in particular was that he's so slow with sniffing is that I would take like my warm drink in my to go cup with me out so I'd be out there, you know, it just woke up. I'm tired. I don't want to be cold, but now I've got my nice warm drink with me. And so weather for you. That's tea or coffee or whatever it is you like to drink.

Like it is kind of nice to get out there and even do it now, even when the weather is warmer, it's just kind of like rather than, you know, sitting and reading the paper and drinking coffee, I'm like out kind of just taking a nice little stroll. So I've been noticing how this is really, really helped me a lot. And I think that connection to nature is really important. I've noticed that when I travel and I don't have it, I really miss it when I get home. I'm so grateful to have it back. And I've been thinking like, I think this needs to be something that we need to spend more time on. And like I said, I was just coaching a dear client who's been in my program for a while and she was just telling me how she's just in a funk.

[00:15:06] She's just for about a month, been having a hard time. And I understand because I've been through those times too. And I bet you have as well, right, where it's just like nothing's really different. It's just everything feels hard, you know what I mean? Like, everything at work seems harder. She was sharing some of the frustrations of what it's like to be a doctor in today's world. Patient expectations and just all the things and just being in that funk and things are not great and what to do about this. Because when you're first learning this work and you learn about the thinking cycle, it's easy to be like, Well, I just need to just change my thoughts, you know, and yes and no, right?

Like, yes, sometimes we can do that and sometimes it's just not really available to us. And what I mean by that is you try to come up with, you know, umpteen new thoughts and none of them feel true. None of them resonate. That's just not the thing that's going to change, you know, turn the tides or make things better. So I was talking to her about just thinking about what are some of those things that you can do that just make life a little bit better? And one of those things for me is being out in nature. And so there's actually data.

[00:16:15] I got a lot of information for this podcast from the American Psychological Association. I mean, this is like real stuff. This is not just like woo woo ooh nature. It's like, no, this is real stuff here. So, you know, the things that I think also contribute to us struggling is that we spend a lot of time inside. You know, we're looking at technology all throughout the day. And even when we're not at work, we're still looking at screens when we're home and or wherever else we go. You know, when we're inside, there's a lot of fluorescent light, especially if you're in a hospital setting or a clinic setting. It's just, you know, it's not that comfortable for us. And I think it's easy to just be like, oh, what's the big deal?

But over time, I think for many of us, it really can impact us negatively. The other thing is that, you know, when we're inside a lot, we're just breathing in this recycled air. And it, you know, might be purified, maybe not, but also particularly if you're well, even in a clinic setting, but particularly in a hospital setting, you know, there's other like chemical odors and like body fluid odors. And there's just things like that that we're breathing in all day. And, you know, for some of us then into the evening and into the night and it just can affect us. So really what's very clear and this is proven in research is that nature exposure really provides benefits for us both physically and psychologically in terms of our well-being.

[00:17:38] So I'm just going to list off here for you a short list of some benefits of being out in nature. Number one, improved attention. Number two, lower stress. Would you like to be less stressed? Lower stress. Number three, better mood. That sounds good. Number four, reduced risk. A psychiatric disorders. That's awesome. Number five, Increased empathy and cooperation. That's really, really helpful when you're dealing with the general public. Number six, Happiness. Increased happiness and subjective well-being. That sounds good. I'd like that. Number seven, positive social interactions. So an increase in positive social interactions and decrease in mental distress. I mean, okay, I think I'm getting sold here. Number eight, increased meaning and purpose in life.

I mean, what are the downsides of this? Well, let's actually speak to some of those downsides. Okay. So I do just want to note that not everybody has the luxury or privilege of living in a place where it's safe for them to be walking around outside necessarily. So that's something that we have to take into consideration. The other thing is, depending on your work schedule and the time of year, you might be only leaving work or outside of work when it's dark outside. So that's something to be dealt with. Now, what I worked on with the Darkness situation is and honestly even the safety situation, because sometimes it literally 4:30 p.m.

[00:19:02] in December, early January here, it's basically dark. It's so sad when that happens. It just wasn't possible for me to get out and walk in that time frame. So I went out and got some pepper spray and and, you know, taught myself how to use it, basically. So I feel comfortable with that. I don't feel the need to use that when I am walking during the day. But at night I take it with me. I also realized that my dog is very protective at night, like sometimes annoyingly so. But also I'm kind of like, Well, it's kind of good to know that he's got my back, because I do think that crimes of convenience tend to happen less when it's inconvenient. Like there is a dog that you're going to have to contest with.

So if there's a pet you can walk with, that can be helpful as well. But also, like if that's not possible, then taking advantage of when it is possible, right? So sometimes we just have to get really solutions focused, meaning maybe it's, you know, at your lunch break or in the middle of the day figuring out a way to do this, really taking advantage of days off or weekends. That can be another way that we that we can approach those kinds of things. But I also want to talk about some other ways to get nature that are not so much like getting outside and walking necessarily. I mean, I do think that even just sitting outside, I know for me, I cannot wait to be able to spend more time sitting outside.

[00:20:21] So you don't even have to be moving necessarily. If you have a balcony you can go to and you can sit out there if it's really, you know, loud or whatever, you can put on noise canceling headphones. Maybe if it's like, you know, a lot of street noise that bothers you or something like that, like just being outside, getting some air, it really can be very, very helpful. There's actually research that shows they actually did some studies where they asked people to just look out the window for 40s and it improved their experience.

So, you know, just looking at the window and enjoying any nature that you can see out there can be really helpful because it's easy for us, right, to be like, I can't do that. That's not going to work. Like, let's get solutions focused here. So even 40s, even just a minute can work. Even, you know, you have you're walking from one place to another rather than just being all up in your head and thinking about whatever. Can you look out the window? Can you just, you know, from the parking lot into the building, can you just look around? What is there to look at? Sometimes when we're in a city, right? Like urban nature counts, too. Maybe there is a dandelion growing in the cracks of the pavement and that dandelion is blooming.

[00:21:26] You know, just looking at that flower for a second, like just enjoying that. I know that there's this really, really big weed in a neighbor's yard. That is the kind that's really, really, really hard to dig up. It's like super flat. And I know this type of weed, like when you pull it, the root, the taproot will just break rather than pulling up. And and I was looking at it and I was like, oh, you know, like normally my initial response would be like, ooh, weed bad, right?

But I was like, Oh, it's kind of a kind of a neat shape. It's like kind of interesting and different. And then we had a little, a little sprinkle of snow one day and it was coated in just like a light dusting of snow. And I was like, Oh, that's actually really kind of pretty the way that looks. So we have to be on the lookout. We have to be looking for it. Right now, everything is leafing out here and, you know, there's spring flowers. Like I'm just every time I'm out there trying to have a look, notice things that are different, looking at the trees, looking how things are changing and just creating a connection to that.
So that's what's really important. It's, you know, the being out there is helpful, but also it's that sense of connection to nature or the overall natural world. I mean, it really contributes to happiness even if you're not physically immersed.

[00:22:39] So I know some people are super into being plant parents, you know, they love having plants in their home. That can be a great option as well if that's just a part of it. Figuring out like some people say, Oh well, but then I go out and it's like it's too hot and it's too this and it's too that. I want to just encourage you to. Think of solutions. What are options? Maybe a different time of day, maybe getting, you know, a good umbrella or a good shield or like I know years ago I took my son on a service trip to the Dominican Republic in July.

My goodness gracious. It was so hot, so humid. And I knew that I can be a pretty fragile flower in the heat like that. Like my body is, you know, just not designed or maybe adapted to being in such intense heat. And so I got essentially like a parasol. It was it's like a, an umbrella that on the outside of it, it has like a reflective, like metallic kind of coating or whatever. And you could still use it in the rain, but it also has some air flaps to it. And I would use that to create my own shade. And it made a huge difference. I don't know what I would have done without that thing. It helped me so much, just made it so that I could be outside where there was no other shade and create my own shade so I could be more comfortable and able to do what I was there to do.

[00:23:55] So all of this to say that I want to really encourage you to think about this. I want to encourage you to start thinking about how you can incorporate some nature into your life. I have also So here's this. I'm like, okay, so I walk my dog, I get outside and get nature. I'm having my warm drink in the morning, which is so nice. And then I've added a fourth benefit. So I'm getting all these things done at a time. I don't do this every single time or even every single day, but I found this app that I'm super loving called the Healthy Minds app. It's free.

If you like it, you can give a donation. And they it's a whole like meditation program, but they also do some teaching. And it's not just like meditation. It's also teaching you some other things that just research shows promotes well-being and good mental health and stuff. And it's all research backed and the meditations can be active meditations. So I will listen to one of the active meditations while I'm walking my dog because as long as you're doing something that's like pretty repetitive or doesn't require a ton of your attention, you can do these things. Because I'll just be honest with you, the stage of life I'm at right now, if I just ask myself to like sit down and do a meditation, first of all, I will never think of it.

[00:25:10] It just never occurs to me. And then day after day, I'm like, Oh, I never I still didn't do it. So that's just the stage of life. I've had different stages and seasons at other times where I could do it more, but right now that hasn't been happening for me and this is a way that I can get it in. And so much of what they're doing is, you know, awareness, awareness of your surroundings, awareness of what you're hearing, awareness of your breath like, things like that. And those are all things that I want to be more aware of when I'm outside anyway.

So it has been absolutely brilliant. There have been days where I come back from that walk and I'm like, I am winning at life. I feel great, got out in nature. I got some fresh air in my lungs. I've moved my body a little bit like, This is so great. I'm just so happy that I've come to this conclusion and really stuck with it so I can see those benefits. So, you know, sometimes we're like, you know, exercise isn't in the mix for me right now, or I just need a change of pace and I need to do some different things or I just don't know what to do to get myself out of this funk or just kind of this feeling of, you know, maybe pre burnout or some hopelessness or things like that.

[00:26:17] Like, I really want to encourage you to get out into nature. You can go to water, you can go to green spaces, try them out and see what works best for you. For me, right now, the green spaces are closer. I'm loving those. But there's also a river I can walk by if I want to and if I really want to go, I can go to Lake Michigan and it looks like the ocean because it's so big and I can get some blue space interaction as well. That's what they call that.

So. That's my challenge and encouragement for you this week. Go get outside, even if it's just, you know, you have a moment at work, Just go out the back door and just stand there for a minute, breathe some fresh air. Look at what there is to look at. Take it all in. Maybe listen to some birds chirping and just let nature do its work for us. We really don't have to do much except just get out there and be present with it. All right, friend. I hope this makes a big difference for you as it has for me.
And I wish you all the best this week, and I'll talk to you next time. Take care. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #332: Nature’s Remedy for When You’re in a Funk appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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If you could ask your future self one thing, what would it be?

Have you ever thought to ask her for help in times of need? What would she do?

In this episode, Laura Conley shares her experiences with body image, weight loss, and how her future self helped her lose weight for the last time.

If you’ve never heard the term “future self” before, or you’re not sure how to use it or what it has to do with weight loss, don’t worry. Laura explains it all in this episode.

Laura Conley is a Certified Life and Weight Loss Coach. Laura helps mamas who have been painfully struggling with diet drama to lose weight for the last time and free themselves from food forever. She is on a maniacal mission to do this so that her clients can pass down a beautiful legacy to their children around food and bodies, weigh what they want, and live the life they have always dreamed of without the weight in the way. She does this by coaching her clients on how to balance their hunger hormones, rewire their brains, handle emotions, and become their own bestie.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The cultural messaging that we receive about our bodies * Changing the way you speak to yourself * Learning how to listen to your body and give it what it needs * Why you should try thinking about your future self * How to set realistic expectations for yourself * Asking your future self for advice * The role of your future self in losing weight for the last time

I’m so excited to have Laura on the podcast to share her brain with all of us. I love her approach to life and weight loss and I’m grateful for the reminder to get in touch with my future self. I hope you enjoy this episode!

If you want to learn more about what Laura does, go to lauraconley.com or shoot her a message on Instagram to let her know what you thought of the episode!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Ep #328: Letting Go of What You Thought Was Real

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to today's episode. I have a really fun interview for you. I know that I love listening to people just have a conversation. Some of my favorite, favorite podcasts are ones where, you know, 2 or 3 people are just having conversation about various different things.

And today's podcast, I think, is a treat for you. So I invited Laura Connelly on. She is also a life and weight loss coach. She is the host of the Yummy Mummy podcast and she just does some amazing life and weight loss coaching, particularly for moms. And we just had the best conversation about all things relating to weight loss, but particularly future self work. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're definitely going to want to listen. If you do know what I'm talking about, it's going to be a good refresher and maybe some additional new information for you as well. We just had a lot of fun. She's just a real fun, fun person and we could have gone much longer. But I decided to reel us in just for the sake of brevity for you. But I hope you will enjoy this. I really think you will. And I will talk to you next week. Have a good one and please enjoy. Hey Laura, thank you so much for being on the podcast. So glad to have you here.

I'm so glad you're having me. This is so fun.

This is so fun, so great. So let's just start off with you kind of introducing yourself. What's your story? How did we get here today?

Of course. Okay, so my name is Laura Connelly and I'm a life and weight loss coach similar to Katrina, and I am the founder and CEO of the Yummy Mummy and the host of the Yummy Mummy podcast. And I was a coach. I've been a coach for like ten years or something crazy at this point, but didn't really get into the weight loss space until like 5 or 6 years ago. When the story goes, I had my baby, my first baby, who's now almost six, and I was like 6 or 8 weeks postpartum and I got out of the shower. I'm leaning over. I'm like butt naked, like toweling off. And I start hearing the very familiar talk track of me beating me up for the way that my body looked, which is, of course, just the conditioning that I got from our culture, unfortunately. So you had.

Already had a history of doing that before you even had babies?

Oh, yeah. Like I, I think it probably started when I was like 13, 14, 15 and became aware that it was important in our culture to look a certain way, or at least the culture that I grew up in. And it was no fault of my mom, actually, I think she was very much before her time in what she taught in our house. But I still got that cultural conditioning that if you look a certain way, that means you have a certain level of worth, which I'm not proud to admit. But I also don't really think it's my fault, nor any of our faults. Right.

And it's the truth. It was it was your experience, right? Like that's what happened.

Yeah, totally. So I think I started I mean, I'm 15, 14 years old, started to notice that it mattered. And that's when I started, like, heavily restricting. And I was able to, like, quote unquote, control it. I mean, but I mean, all enter all the disordered eating. I don't think it was a full eating disorder and my friends were all on board with it. If anything, I was like the most normal one. Normal? Yeah. Yeah. There was about 20 years of total yo yoing, so I was either starving myself and look the way that I wanted, but I couldn't hold on to it. So then I would throw in the towel and then eat all the things. But then I would feel like crap. I just wouldn't feel good in my body. So I'm leaning over toweling off my baby's like six weeks old at this point. This is my first baby. And I hear myself just berating myself like, Why can't I get it together? It's six weeks, which is so crazy at this point.
I'm like, It takes like, at least a year. Yeah. You know, it's just like this sort of disgust and disdain that I'm talking to myself and I sort of had of like, out of this body experience. And I was like, That's it. I was like, I was like, That is it. This is the last time I speak this way to myself. Because I knew in that moment that if that continued to be the way that I spoke to myself, that that would be the way that my daughter, only six weeks old at that point would talk to herself. And I knew that I could do the right things and say the right things. But she saw me watching myself in the mirror. She was still going to pick it up like those little kids are. So I don't even think it's our kids start acting the way that we act. I really think they think the way that we think.

Yeah, they pick up on the energy of it. So you know, that that look or just the way you kind of like pick at your shirt or, you know, just kind of like a. Putting something on and having like a, you know, totally.

So in that moment, it was sort of like, again, I feel like it was like the spiritual, like out-of-body moment. It was a decision that I was done with it and of course did my brain try to berate me again or beat me up again? Yes. But I felt like having that clear decision, that line in the sand made it easier for me to stop it when it did start. And am I perfect now as an example to my daughter? Like, no, but that's a whole nother podcast. But in that moment I was like, You know what? I'm not only going to stop talking to myself this way, I'm also going to solve this once and for all. I also am going to like your tagline, and you know, I say it all the time too. I'm going to lose weight for the last time and love my body because I think that there's this misinformation out there that it's one or the other.

I'm like, Why can't we have both? Why can't I weigh what I want to weigh and love my body? And by me weighing what I want to weigh and going down that path, that doesn't mean I don't love my body. In fact, that means I love my body because I'm actually listening to that inner voice, because I think so many times when I was just eating, quote unquote, whatever I wanted or whatever my lower brain wanted me to eat, that wasn't me loving myself. But I would lie to myself and tell myself, Oh, no, this is my intuition, this is what I need. And it really wasn't. And so I think that when we do have a deep desire to weigh what we want to weigh, honoring that desire and listening to that desire is an act of self love. So that was the beginning of my mission, to really love myself and to also weigh what I wanted to weigh.

So wait, can I just pause you for a second? So you were already coach, though, at this point.

Was already coach at this point.

So. Okay. And I just want to mention that because like you're like, I just noticed this thought that I had and I decided I was going to stop and I'm like, okay, but the average person is like, what? Or like, maybe they one day were like, I shouldn't be like that. And then like, the next day they forgot. So you already had several years of coaching, knowledge, experience, practice, helping people in other ways, and then you realized, Oh, weird, I'm totally doing this with my body. Okay, totally.

Well, I knew that this was my issue. Like for the whole 20 years that I was struggling, I knew it was my issue. But up until that point, I had sort of accepted defeat. I sort of had been like, This is just going to be my struggle. Like, there's actually no solve for it. And I know you talk about it and I talk about it, too, but I was introduced to Brooke Castillo in 2016, a year before I had my baby. And at that point I was pregnant. And I knew she had figured out the weight thing for herself. And I just was not interested because I was like pregnant. And I just wasn't. Wasn't on your radar. Yeah, wasn't on my radar. So part of me says, like, like I got lucky because the, the way that I cracked the code, the way that I lost weight for the last time was through her work, for sure.

She gets so much credit. It was also through. A lot of the mindfulness and yoga, which is in my background too, which is what I did full time for a long, long time. So it's kind of like I blended the two to create the solution for myself and then eventually my clients. But yeah, so that's a little bit of, of the story. I mean, I really can't believe that like this is possible. Like, I can't believe that we did this like and that all of our clients have done this. Like it still blows my mind because for so long I believed that there was not a solution to this and that it was I was just going to be yo yoing for the rest of my life. And you know what? It's not so bad, Laura. Like you have a pretty great life, right?

If this is the cross you need to bear. Yeah, exactly. It could be a lot worse, which is true. I mean, yes, it's true that it could be a lot worse. But it's also a lie to tell ourselves that we're just destined for it to be this way or there's no other way. It's just going to be this way. So just get over it and accept it. Like, I mean, that's one option, but it's not the only option and it's a legitimate option. Like it's okay if someone wants to pick that, but it's also not the truth to just tell ourselves like there's just no other option at all. You kind of sped ahead a little bit. So you had the baby, you had the moment in the bathroom, you're like, Yeah, okay, I'm not doing this anymore.

Talk a little bit more about like what that process was like, though, because like, when you have 20 years of thinking a certain way, maybe even more years and treating yourself a certain way and having a certain relationship with food and everything like that doesn't just like turn on a dime. So, you know, people love to hear people's stories, but particularly the parts where it was hard, you know, or where they stumbled or, you know, it didn't work. And then they had to figure something else out. So because I just can't believe that it would be that you're like, you know what? And then just like, did some things and then, boom, I'm cured. You know, we're like, What? No.

I'm so good at summarizing it now, like, so. Okay. So let me take myself back to those moments because I did decide in that moment, right, that I wasn't going to beat myself. And then I was I wanted to lose the baby weight anyways, right? But I also wanted to solve the the lifelong at that point struggle. So it went hand in hand. And I had always been of the school of thought of like, you need to punish yourself, you need to beat yourself up in order to lose weight. Like that was my motivation. Like, you're not good enough until you weigh this. And so it went hand in hand.

That was the moment. I don't know if it was exactly six weeks or eight weeks or whatever it was. I was like, okay, I'm actually ready to just start losing weight. And so, I mean, it went slower than my diet brain thought it should be. Like, of course I wanted to lose like 3 pounds a week, or at least at the beginning. It should be like, you know, 5 pounds a week. And so I think I struggled with that at the beginning, which was something, of course, you know, I'm guessing you and I both teach our clients. Is that the fastest way to lose weight for the last time is to let it be slow, right? So I think I struggled with that. I also was dedicated to not starving myself.

Like actually meeting your body's needs.

Yes. Like actually eating nutrients. So that was actually kind of scary at first for me. Like, okay, I'm going to lose weight for the last time. I'm going to love myself through it and I'm going to eat. I was breastfeeding too, so I was like, you know, I cared about getting nutrient dense meals and getting what I needed. And so that was a little scary, actually, for me to eat like real full meals. When you've been.

You've always like the way you've always lost weight is by totally restricting and eating like whatever one meal a day or something. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I can see that for sure.

So I felt like I struggled with that a little bit, but that was only scary at first. I still remember when you're like, Tell us the bad parts. And I'm like, Oh, I'm going to tell you some more good parts. I do remember, though, okay, I'm just going to trust this process. Like I'm not in a rush. Again, I, I had had Brooke as my coach for the past year as like kind of a life coach. And now I was utilizing her as a weight loss coach. And so because I trusted her, because what she taught me and I think that this is for you and me both with our podcast, I think a lot of people come into our programs already knowing and liking and trusting, and so they get results faster because they're like, okay, well, the other thing that she said actually did work, so I was bought in to what she was teaching. And so I was like, I'm going to go all in. And I do remember eating real nutritious, like full meals and like losing weight and be like, Oh, that's crazy. Again, it wasn't at the rate that my diet brain wanted it to be. But again, I was like, This is for the last time. It's like, this is better because I'm satiated. Like, yeah, I'm not starving and mad at the world, but.

It's also like such means to an end behavior, right? Where it's like, let me just I'm just going to suffer as long as it takes to get this weight off. And then I'll just like, figure out what to do after that, you know, which is nothing. And then you just go back to like, overeating everything. So what you really doing is. Figuring out like, how can you actually meet your body's needs and help it to get to whatever weight feels good for you to live in?

Yeah, totally. So I think it was that the commitment to the long game basically.

Like seeing that big picture. And so you talk a lot about future self stuff and would love to like weave that in a little bit because I think it's something that some people, especially, you know, my very sciency, analytically minded folks out there, they just really are like, what is this, this weird? Like you have to like visualize something. Like what? You know, I think it's actually super powerful work. If we can open our minds up to the idea of it. And I would just love to know, you know, your thoughts about that.

I definitely used her during that time within herself. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. And I'll that sounds woo woo in and of itself right there. But I definitely use her in those moments of struggle or disbelief because, yeah, it was going a little bit more slowly than I had wanted it to go. And I think so many of us come into this process and we want to lose weight. We want to lose weight for the last time. But it's so freaking hard to believe because we've tried so many times and quote unquote, failed. So it's like, how is this going to be different? Like, no way. And so. I taught future self stuff before this was a part of. What I coached in prior to weight loss. I did vision and goal coaching. I was like, Well, I've used my future self with all my other goals. Like, why can't I use her with this? And so I do think it's a little out there, but like to your point, who cares if it's out there if it works? That's the thing.

So we just have to like open our minds up to I know that I blocked myself a lot by just, you know, getting very I mean, I'm just gonna be totally honest, right? Like, you know, some of us, we can all be like. And like, what is that? And that's nonsense. And show me the data, show me the research. And I'm like, That's all fine. As long as you have the results that you want. That's what I had to come to, was just like, If that's working, then we don't have a problem to solve. So awesome. If something's not working and that is not solving it, like maybe we could open our minds up. I always just look at it like, I'll just consider it. I'll try something. I don't have to love it or find it helpful, but I think a lot of us will just kind of shut it down before we've even tried because we're just like, Nope, that's just, Oh, that's like ridiculous. What I'm supposed to, like, sit around with my eyes closed and think about myself in the future? Yeah, actually, yeah. Maybe it could be helpful to try doing that.

Yeah, why not? And I mean, I feel like for your MDs and dos. And just all the people listening, right? It's like they believed that they could become a medical doctor because they saw somebody else do it. And then they were like, Oh, well, if they could do it, I could do it. Right. Right.

So you're basically envisioning yourself where they are, which is your future self. Yes.

So that's just what I want to offer, is that you've already been practicing future self. You just didn't know you were. I get a lot of clients that will be like, I don't have an imagination. I don't have one. I just I can't. I can't. And I'm like, okay, let's just suspend the belief just for like, you can have it back, like in a month or a year or in ten minutes that you really don't have one. But let's just pretend you can. Like, what if I was going to give you $1 million or whatever you like to use? If you could create this picture. And it does, it feels like make believe, but it's mean. It goes to that point. It's like, yeah, that's what make believe is you make it up.

And then anything that we have was make believe like this water bottle in my hand. Someone had a vision, had an imagination thought of, you know what, there's no water bottle like this. There's 50 million out there, but not one like this. And it deserves to be made. And then they went and they created it and they made it real. It's your phone, everyone. I mean, can you imagine? I'm 47 now. I'm getting to be, you know, up there. But if you had told me, first of all, I didn't even know what a computer was. We are a little Apple two E that we had our first computer. They're like, you know, like that. You would have something like that in your pocket. It's ridiculous. Right? So, yeah, it's ridiculous. And also by doing that, that's how you create amazing, imaginative things in your life, like someone who solved their weight problem and co-exists with food very peacefully in their life.

Yeah. Think it's such a good point. Like they always talk about it. Like there's always two creations. The first creation is in your mind, and then the second creation is on the physical plane. And so there we go. I mean, it's.

Really not different. So so, you know, like I think and I think the point of this of this part of this conversation is, you know, you may be kind of turned off to it, but then when you kind of realize that, wait, that's how literally everything around you was created, someone decided, I'm going to write a book. Yeah. And then now there's a book. I'm just saying that because there's three books sitting out, you know, like whatever it is. Well, anything. Yeah. You know, like, I'm. I'm going to do that. And then they created it. And so if you want to create something different, it first has to come from your mind. And the way it comes from that is by you envisioning what it's going to be like to be there.
Now, let's just talk about a different part of this, though, because what I have found over the years with coaching clients is that when we talk about future self stuff, they often don't see their future self as like an actual normal human. They're like, Oh, okay, so my future self, she's at the weight I want to be at. She has this great relationship with food and she never like zero times ever struggles with food or has a negative emotion or gets impatient with anybody or gets angry, you know, or ever has like a life struggle. Not that they are really like intentionally thinking about their future self in that way, but that is who they're envisioning. And then when they get there, they're really disappointed. So how do you approach that?

Well, I think that's a difference between creating your future self and creating your future fantasy self. You're not becoming an alien or. Right. Or a.Robot. Yeah.

Yeah, a robot. Yeah. You are still going to be a human over there, which, like, I don't know, is great news and horrible news. Yeah. So you're still going to be a human. So it's like you talk about I think you talk about like life is 50 over 50 like this. Is that a fact that we can prove? No. But is it a great guiding principle? Yes. So over there, life is still going to be 5050. And I think that that actually can help us not to be in such a rush to get to our future self because and honestly, how you get to your future self is by being in the present moment. That's a whole nother conversation we could talk about in a minute. But yeah, you're still going to struggle.

And I was actually going to bring that up when I was talking to about my story in the beginning, and you're like, Come on, tell us some of the, you know, give us the gossip. And I remember, you know, and this still happens to me. You're still going to probably struggle from time to time with your relationship with yourself and with food because it's a relationship. Yeah, but I feel like the struggles are far more fewer and far between because you've worked on it. So yeah, visualize yourself waking up and going into her closet and getting to pick out whatever she wants and feeling energized and having a little bit of zest for the day because there isn't that sugar hangover or whatever from last night and you take that into your day and you know you've got the playlist on with your kiddos while you're making breakfast.

You're not picking at the pancake batter because you don't do that anymore and because you didn't pick at the pancake batter. You're not like, you know, a little bit mad at yourself and then taking it out on your kids. So I think creating this vision is, yeah, let's let's know that we're still going to be a human being over there and life is not going to be perfect, but we still can have the zest for the day, the confidence, the feeling like ourselves in our own skin like that is very much still available to you. So I do think you want to be careful. Like I notice my clients, like I know that they've created a fantasy vision when they're like, my husband brings me a latte in bed and it's 930 and my kid, my kids are already off to school. And then my husband books me a massage and then there's $1 million in my bank account out of nowhere, right? I mean, go for it if you want to. But it's like, yeah, life is still going to be 5050 and.

It's still going to be you in your life. But without these specific issues anymore. Yeah, right. Or like, I love what you said about like, you know, not like you weren't picking at the leftover pancakes that you made for your kids. So then you're not like, driving to work already, like, mad at yourself and, you know, swearing to yourself, pinky swearing to yourself that you're going to do better at lunch.

And then, you know, the pharmaceutical rep brings in, you know, whatever they bring in and you're like, Shoot, I was going to have that. But now I am because it smells so good and I'm running behind, so I'm going to have it and it's so easy. And then now you're really beating yourself up and then. Right? Like it's just it's those little things where it's just like, what if we just, like, took a sieve, you know, like a filter and just filtered out all that drama. So still your life and still some as you get behind with patients and still sometimes you're rushing around at lunch time and all of that. But it's not the added.

Like you're not adding insult to Injury. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that that is like I do think with weight loss. We talk a lot about think you and probably both talk a lot about like, you know what, it's not better over there. And I do think that it might not be better over there emotionally. But when you go through the processes that you teach in I teach, it's like I think it is a little better over there because we know we know.

It never gets old. For me, being able to look at a pile of Girl Scout cookies and just be like, I mean, I could take them or leave them. Like, I don't really care. Yes. It's not like I'm sitting there, like I don't eat those anymore. No, those are poison. Those are bad for me. If that works for somebody amazing, go for that. Go for it. That's do it. You. Do you. I just like being like it's up to just what do I want? What feels good? Like feeling connected and just not having it be such a thing. You know, someone ate the Last of the Thin Mints. I'm like, okay, so good.

Yeah, because your life is made up of things that are like what I've been calling, like the delectable dopamine hits, like the dopamine hits that like, actually give you what you want tomorrow. Exactly. And I think, yeah, when when somebody does eat your last thin mint and you're pissed about it, it's like, that's a really great news for you to be like, Oh, maybe there's maybe there's an opportunity here for me to fill my fill my life with something that, you know, is, is a true pleasure or because.

Usually we think, Oh, I need coaching on the fact that my kid or my spouse or whoever like ate that thin mint. And instead it's like, why do we care that much about the thin mint? Maybe we should coach on that. Like, why is the brain overemphasizing the importance of that one food? I always think about it as like there are so many amazingly delicious things on this planet that we will never have the opportunity to eat. Like we're missing out all the time on so much good food. So how is that thin mint any different? Right? Like we're not sitting here lamenting about all this other great, amazing food everywhere, all over the world, right? It's like, can we just get to some some piece around the fact that, yeah, like there's an amount of food that I will eat in my life and it will be enough. Yeah. Don't have to go and try to gather all of the amazing things.

That's so interesting. I think about that all the time too. Like on the flip side of like what were what was happening like 400 years ago? Were we like so upset that we didn't have processed sugar?

Well, people smoked. Oh, okay. They smoked, okay.

But they didn't overwork. You know, a lot of people had a much like very slower pace of life. Like when you look back, you think, oh, people were like farming. That's such hard work. But like they have, I don't know, people who research this stuff go back and read documents and things that were written and whatever, and like the amount of time that people worked hourly, like every day was crazy amounts less than what we do. They had so much more free time and like connection with people they loved. And a lot of people had like a strong faith and like, you know, all these other ways for people to fill their buckets, so to speak, you know? Yeah, exactly.

It's that dopamine hit thing again or whatever you want to call it, like the true pleasures versus the false pleasures.

And I think it was also the expectations in life were different. Like, I think this idea that we should feel amazing all the time is relatively new because like people I mean, humans suffered and struggled so terribly for the vast majority of the existence of humans, right? It was just like, yeah, this is how it is, you know, like this is just it was normal. Now we've normalized through, you know, advertising and messaging through society and everything. Like, no, if you're not happy 97% of the time, like you're clearly doing something wrong and it's your fault, you know?

Well, they even mean they've even done studies on other cultures that are like living today that just don't have the outside world influence. Right. Right. And they don't have the anxiety and depression that we have here. And they don't have all the youth. And not to say one is like bad or good or better or worse again, but, you know, they're they aren't using the antidepressants and anti-anxiety to the degree that we are. And again, nothing wrong or bad. No, you know, it's.

Just interesting to understand that because it's like, is this just the human condition? Maybe not necessarily. Right. Like there's just it's amazing that we have help for people who are struggling. And also it's like not our fault that we were born and raised into, you know, a certain culture and society that is this way. You know, it'd be very hard for us to go move to join like some tribe, you know what I mean? Like, like 47 years old. Like, I've decided I'm giving up. I'm, you know, going to go be a part of this.

Like, nomadic, Bring my Thin Mints.

It's like, so, so. Right. So amazing that we have support and help. But also, are there lessons that we can learn, which is like, okay, you know, there are benefits to kind of opting out of some. The things that it's easy to start thinking that you need to be a part of. Like, remember when Facebook first was like a thing for the general public and a friend of mine from college, he kept bugging me to get on there. I'm like, Why would I do that? Like, remember the time just being like, Why? Like, no.

And then he finally, like, convinced me to do it. I don't remember why. Like after years of him bugging me and then I got on there, I was like, you know, like it did exactly to my brain what it's designed to do. And I had to get myself off later because after several years, I was like, this is not good for me. Like, really not good for me, right? So it's like sometimes I just think about, like, what it was like to get ready in the morning. I mean, guess I always had the radio on when I was a teenager or something, but like, I used to just like, get ready and silence, you know? Now, like.

All these outside influences.

I'm listening to Marco Polo, listening to a podcast, listening to, you know, audiobooks, whatever it is. Just like, does it have to be that way? It really doesn't. We really get to choose what works best for us. And and when we recognize that and are willing to make that decision like that is I think let's circle back to what you were saying about, you know, the way you get to your future self is by being the present moment, right? Like I think so many of us I was going to bring up. Yeah. Like so many of us are just constantly unwilling or unable or so uncomfortable, you know, with being in the present moment that we're constantly trying to, like, escape it.

Yeah, totally. So with that and going back to like, is it better over there? Like there's a new set of circumstances over there, there's a new, there's a whole new set of whatever challenges or celebrations, whatever. So yeah, you're still going to be an emotional human over there. I do kind of think like physically, like for me personally, it can only speak for myself. Like I do feel better physically over here, so to speak, for sure. But if you're like, Hey, how am I? Like I would just offer to your listeners like, Hey, how am I going to feel over there, quote unquote, when I'm at my dream come true weight or my natural weight or when I weigh what I want to weigh, However, we want to say it like actually take yourself there.
Like how do you think you're going to feel? Is it light? Is it alive? Is it confident? Is it energetic? Is it just like yourself? And the work is how can I feel that now? Like, how can I feel confident today? Like right now in this moment and you teach again, I'm guessing you teach the model and you teach our thoughts cause our feelings.

So, yes, can you go and create this life where you weigh what you want to weigh 100%? But the way is by feeling how you think you're going to feel over there. Now, that's actually the fuel that that will get you there. So if you think you're going to feel really confident over there, how can you feel confident today? Like what thought can you think today? There is a way that you can feel confident today and if confident, feels like too big of a stretch. Okay. How can you feel capable today? How can you feel just 1% of that today and that will start moving you forward? What we want to do, I think, as humans is maybe because of the cultural conditioning again, is we want to punish our way there or hustle our way there or force ourselves there. And that ends up in all the other ways it's ended up before. And us being like quitting, giving up, throwing in the towel because we can't sustain it.

It's like, do we keep trying like a different flavor of the same punishment and hoping that this one won't hurt? It's like, Nope. Yeah, it doesn't matter what you flog yourself with, it's still going to be painful and you're going to want it to stop.

Yeah, totally. So I found that that, like, always grounds me is like, if I notice I'm in a hustle or I notice I'm in a rush, or I notice that I want to do a green juice cleanse or I mean, don't do that anymore. But like right now, listeners say, your listeners, I know I'm going to do Prolon. I know I'm going to do Optavia Again, not criticizing anything, but if you feel like it's maybe a quick fix or it's from your diet brain, it's very helpful to stop and be like, okay, what do I think that this is going to get me? Like, what feeling do I think this is going to give me and how could I feel this right now? And for me, that always grounds me and helps me to take like inspired action instead of like action from punishment or kind of like.

Throwing spaghetti at the wall, like just instead being like, what's the one specific thing? Because that's I think what holds so many people back too, is like, I, I know I can have it. They believe that they can have what they want, but they don't have the time. They don't have the capacity. It's like too much. It's like a part time job. And I get it. Like when you're stretched thin, you're like, listen, there's just no room for that. Like, I totally understand that. But think, you know, it's actually where this has come up recently is I don't even, like, really know anything about it. Have you heard of this thing, The 75 hard thing? Do you know what this is?

Oh, I do. But isn't it so fun Now, don't. Don't know about all the things anymore.

Really. Even. No. Now, I'm didn't plan to talk about this, so I'm probably going to get it wrong. But I think what you do for like 75 days, you're supposed to eat in whatever way you want to eat. Like whatever way is a supportive way for you. You have to work out like twice a day. One time has to be outside and I think it's 45 minutes each time. Is that right? Yep. And then you need to read, what is it, like ten pages of a self-help book every day and it can't listen. You have to read.

Oh, I didn't know that.

So that's three things. What are the other other five things? I don't even know. What else do you have to do?

I don't know what that well, either because you don't either.

Maybe there's some other things. Maybe that's just it. But anyway, what I was thinking about. No alcohol.

No.

No alcohol. Okay. Yeah. So I think that, like, what? I was thinking about it, though. It's a guy who's like, put it together. When I heard about it, though, it sounded very like masculine to me. It was like, we're like, bro, we're going to like, do all this and it's hard and we're going to do it, you know? And which is like a totally amazing thing for plenty of people. But I do think that for a lot of women, we try to do programs like this that just are not in alignment with our lives or what we even need or want. And so if you're someone who is like going from zero exercise to 45 minutes, twice a day, every single day for 75 days, like if you're not injured or like, you know, seeing a physical therapist or something, you know, like this is a huge life change.
And so instead maybe thinking like, so what is it that attracts me to a program like that? Is it that I just want to be more active, that I want to feel more connected in my body? You know, Is it like, do I need to be required to read ten minutes of a self-help book every day? Or could I just kind of go, you know what? What is that one thing that I know would help me that I haven't been doing and could I commit to doing that every day? You know, whether it's listening to something or filling out some worksheets in a program or like, you know, something like that, like, like looking at it like, even if you want to do it just because it sounds fun, like, what is the result you're hoping to get at the end of it? Because what's going to be different at 75 days, you know, or like no exceptions, right? So you're probably going to want to eat all the things that you haven't been eating.

You're going to want to have all the drinks. Like, is this not just the same thing? Isn't this just like another crash diet in disguise? It is. Unless we really, really are thoughtful about what do we want? What what is the takeaway we hope to get from this. Yeah. And making sure we get that. And I know someone actually one of the coaches on my team, Zoe, she did it because her son actually recommended that she do it. Hopefully she's okay with me sharing this, but she was saying like the main thing that she got out of it was that she really figured out she had to really manage her time.

And when she did manage her time, like when she did, she had to to get it all in, she had to manage a lot. And what she realized is when she really plans her day out, she can get so much done. It gives her so much more freedom and was like, See, that's an amazing result. Not like I can see abs or my body fat percentage is whatever or like something like that. Like if you want to challenge yourself in that way of like, I really want to get back. It reminds me of those days when I was in high school and I was like in marching band and on the swim team and like, I mean, there was so I had no time. I was stuffed before school after school. I mean, how did I get it all done? Honors classes. You know what? I organized my time and I got it all done. If you want to kind of do that to remind yourself, Wow, look how much I can get done when I, like, really get to work. Amazing. But not as a beat myself up.

Yeah. Not as a way to, again, punish yourself or like, have to get all these things done or I'm not good enough. Right. And there's two points here. Well, there's a million points that we could a million different directions. But one point I think that you just made so beautifully is what is the result I want out of 75 hard or whatever the thing is, of losing weight or whatever. And when I have that result, how is that result going to make me feel? Yeah, because that's always why we want a result is because we think it's going to make us feel a certain way.

And back to my point earlier, and this this is really for your people that are super analytical. Fine. Don't visualize anything. Don't like, you know, put them on your. I'm a weirdo. I have, like, all my visions on my, like, refrigerator. People are like, what is this? You're so weird. I'm like, Read it aloud if you want, but you're doing future self work by thinking, Hey, what is the result I want and how is that result going to make me feel and how can I feel that now in order to get that and think that's why the model is so impactful? Because it's like, Oh, if I could feel that now, do I still want that result? And for most of us with weight loss, the answer is still yes. I think you guys obviously get to decide for yourself. But for me, that that was the answer was it was still yes.

But what's really cool about this whole process, when you like back up, is you realize that like, you can do this to create the body that you want to live in, right? But then it doesn't just stop there, right? It's like, then what's the next thing that you want? Like whether it's the way you're showing up for your parents or your kids or, you know, at work or, you know, for your patients or whatever it is. Like it's literally the same thing. So it's like you're just learning this process. I mean, just like you were saying you were, What'd you say? You're a vision and what kind of coach were you performing?

I had a lot of different names. I was a I was a spark or shine coach, a vision and goal coach, a goal coach, a soul shine coach. I was like, you know, you could just call yourself a life coach, right?

A coach, right, exactly. It's like you basically already had that meta skill of how to use that visioning to help you create what you want. And then you used it here for your body and weight in relationship with food, and then you use it again for other things. And so that's what's really cool too. Like I always love something that's like multi-purpose, you know, like it's like this is not just like a one time. You got to like, figure this out and learn it and then you'll never use it again. It's like, no, this is going to literally going to build and your skill at doing it becomes, you know, higher and more well developed and then you're able to create it faster.
But like exactly what you're saying, like how are you going to feel like I was just thinking like with Zoe and feeling like, Oh my gosh, I can get so many things more, you know, done when I'm organized. I was just thinking to myself, like, how would I feel? And I would feel like so in control and so, like, energetic and ready to take on the day. Okay, cool. How could I feel that way now?

It's such an easy switch most of the time. Not 100%, but it is a it is a good hack. But to your point on, you know, we just keep repeating the process and getting better and better, like weight loss. And I think this could be for your audience too, like weight loss really was that one thing that I really thought I couldn't conquer? Yeah. And then I did it and my confidence just skyrocketed. And I was already like a pretty confident person. But I was like I was almost a little freaked out because I was like, Oh, like, if I can do this, I actually can do anything. And that's just to your point of 75 Heart or whatever it is.

When you learn the skill of setting a goal and then achieving it, it's a little. I remember back in my yoga teaching days, I had this one client who did those ultra marathons. She would do like 100 milers or whatever, and I would be like. I mean, if you can run a hundred miles, you could do literally anything in the world. And she just would always, like, laugh it off. And I'm like, No, really? And that's how I felt after I lost weight for the last time, I was like, Oh my God, I can really I really can do anything. And that's one of those, like, you know, cherry on top and unexpected benefits, whatever you want to call them, like byproducts, like if you lose weight for the last time and you've thought that you couldn't do it and then you do it, then you are you're unstoppable. It's like and you're and.

You're just questioning all the other things you think you can't do or like, Oh, I'm not far enough along in my career to put my hat in the ring for that promotion or that leadership position or whatever. And then you start going like, But what if that's like, not even true? Because I know that I want that. And I thought I had to wait five years, but what if I just put my name in now? Like, what's going to happen? They'll say no, or maybe I'll get it. And that would be cool. Like you just start to think about life and opportunities and what's possible for yourself in a different way, which is really, really fun and exciting. And I've seen it, and I'm sure you do too.

I've seen it so many times, like people being like, Yeah, wait, what? Wait in high school? But that's really not the best part. Like, the best part is like, my marriage is a dream come true. The way that I relate to my kids is infinitely better. You know, like I'm making more money, I'm taking less call. I'm like, it's like you're literally like, Are you serious? Are you for real? Like, you created all this? Yes. Just by working on.

Getting, like, testimonials from my clients or whatever. I'm like, They want to talk about that. They're like, Oh, my marriage. And, you know, and now I'm starting this business. I'm like, No, I want to talk about your weight loss results. They're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, when we are starting, we're like, Oh, it's this all consuming thing that I'm so tired of. And then we actually put it to bed and we realize, like, there's so much like that's really not that big a part of your life. It's only a big part of your life because it's such a struggle, just like collapses down into what I think of as like an appropriate kind of level of attention needing, you know, it's like, like what you were saying, you know, it doesn't mean that you don't ever have to kind of re circle or refocus on things like for sure, it happens to me too.

I'm like, Oh, oh, look what happened there. Okay? But I'm not like, Oh my God, throw it all away. I don't know what I'm doing. Obviously, this doesn't work. It's like, oh, little tweaks, little tweaks, you know, our lives change, our bodies change. We get older, different things happen. Maybe there's more babies or surgery or a diagnosis or medication you have to take or whatever it is, and you just make these adjustments as you go so that you're putting an appropriate amount of attention on it, meaning enough to give you the results that you want. And no more than that and no drama. You know, you're not like.

I think that like goes back to the relationship thing too. Like at the beginning we talked a little bit about just this whole process being a relationship, a relationship with yourself, a relationship with your body, the way it looks, a relationship with food. And it's like I always love the parallel between the relationship with our spouses or our partners or our kiddos or whoever's important in our life. It's like, yeah, to your point, it's not going to be perfect, but if my husband and I get in a tiff, we're not getting a divorce.
We're going to like, come back together and be like, Oh, hey, yeah, like, do we have a solid foundation? Are we kind of on cruise control for right now? Yeah, we are. But if something happens, we're going to look at that because we're committed to it. And I think it's really the same when it comes to like our weight, our bodies ourselves. And I just don't think that we're asked to commit to ourselves and our body and food in the way that we're asked to commit to our partners. If you do decide to get married in a traditional your.

Career, I mean, hello, all these doctors, right? Like such a commitment to the career.

Yes. You know, and the reality is, is, you know, we might as well make these commitments because we actually are going to be with ourselves for the rest of our lives.

Exactly. Like the career doesn't exist without us. Yeah, well, on that note, this was super fun. I just looked at the time and I was like, Oh my gosh, okay, well, we could do this for four more hours, but it's super fun and such a it's such a good conversation. I think people love I know I love hearing, you know, conversations between different people and just hearing other people's, you know, just their how they kind of came to all of this. And it's sometimes it's like it's as simple as what we talked about today. And, you know, it can be for some people, it can feel for a lot of people, it can feel like as hard as that to it's like as simple as your future self and feeling that way today. And some days you're like, I can't for the life of me generate one emotion. And that's where coaching can be so helpful, right? Like, like actually getting day to day help with that. So I'd love for you to tell everybody a little bit more about how they can find you and all of that.

So if you can't access those emotions, just ask your future self for some advice. Because if you can't get coaching right in that moment for whatever reason you're driving, you know, because I know your clients probably can get. Written coaching as can mind. But I just. I found that, like, take a deep breath. What wisdom does she have to offer me? What piece of advice does she and nine times out of ten is like, it's all going to be okay, calm down.

Do that all the time. Actually consult my future self on on certain things like is this a problem? What did I should I do something different? Yeah. Like, yeah. 99 times out of 100 she's like keeps stay on the path, girl. Keep going. You're on the right track And she does.

My future self will say calm down like you're supposed to. It's only time when someone can say calm down to me and I'm not pissed, right? My husband says, Calm down and I'm going to literally throw the you know what? The water bottle at him. But my future self can be calm. Like, calm down, Lauren. I'll be like, Oh, thank you, future. Oh, that's so kind.

So you can find me on Instagram at Laura Connelly coaching or on my website. Laura connelly.com. My name is Laura Connelly and I also have a podcast, the Yummy Mummy podcast with Laura Connelly.

So good. Well, this was super fun and I'm so, so, so glad that you were available to come and talk.

Oh, thanks for having me, Katrina. Thank you.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #331: Leveraging Your Future Self with Coach Laura Conley appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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We’re talking about something a little different in this episode, and that’s shame around reproductive struggles.

This looks different for everyone. For some, it might be going through IVF, for others, it could be experiencing a miscarriage or maybe making the decision not to have children. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with, you’re not alone. I think we need to talk about these things more because a lot of women do feel alone in these experiences, and that can contribute to feelings of shame.

In this episode, I’m sharing five things that you can try to overcome feelings of shame. Let’s talk about these things together so that we can all feel a little less shame and a little more self-acceptance.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The emotions that come with trying to get pregnant * My experiences with reproductive shame * The stigma around infertility and mental health * Examples of reproductive struggles that people feel shame about * Ways to overcome feelings of shame * The power of talking to someone about your struggles * How accepting the reality of a situation can help * Learning how to process your emotions * Strengthening your relationship with yourself

I’m sending you so much love, hope, and care. If I could reach through the screen and give you a big tight squeeze, I would. I want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a human being on earth having a very human experience. I hope this episode helps you practice some self-compassion and lightens your burden even just a little.

If you want to get more out of this podcast, check out the free Podcast Roadmap. The Podcast Roadmap will take you step-by-step through 30 of my best and most effective weight loss podcast episodes. Listen to one episode per day and apply what you learn. In a month, you’ll be well on your way to incredible results!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Episode 12: Processing Negative Emotions Without Comfort Food

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Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #329: Downshifting to Increase Life Satisfaction with Natalie Bacon, JD, CFP, Certified Life Coach

Ep #328: Letting Go of What You Thought Was Real

Ep #327: How Coaching Increases Well-Being

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Oh, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. This one is a little bit of a departure from some of our usual topics, but it really does actually play into weight and overeating and our relationship with food. And I will get into that somewhat.

But sometimes I do some episodes that maybe they're not quite, you know, related to actual weight loss for doctors, but they are episodes that I feel like are kind of like public service messages, You know how like on TV they'll tell you whatever it is, something that's a good message. And and you know, I know that there are a lot of people who are never going to listen to this podcast because either they're not doctors or they don't struggle with their food or weight. But that doesn't mean that I can't offer them some help. And so this is an episode that I want to encourage you to share with people. If you find that it would be helpful, maybe they'll never listen to anything else that I ever put out there, and that's completely fine.

I just have I've actually been ruminating on this topic. I mean, really like mulling it over, letting it marinate for years, literal years, and just never felt like it was like bubbling to the surface, like it was cooked and ready to go. And all of a sudden, two days ago, I was like, Yep, ready? I don't really know. I have an idea, which I'll tell you about in a minute, why I'm ready. But suddenly it just was like, Yeah, this is the time. It's time to talk about this. And this is an issue that so many women doctors and non doctors struggle with.

And I just have some thoughts and some things that I think can really help. So talking about reproductive shame and how to overcome it, I think what really kind of set this off for me well, first of all, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, then you know that the baby that I had that was stillborn, her birthday was a couple weeks ago as I'm recording this. And so it's been 13 years. It's been a long time, but still just kind of, I guess, you know, the topic's a little bit just more on my heart and on my mind, you know, around this time of year when it's springtime. But also one of the amazing coaches in my program, she was sharing about her struggles with just all kinds of problems with trying to get pregnant and have a full term baby and really just how much coaching helped her through that process and the amount of work that she has done on herself to be okay with that story or to be more than okay with it, to share it with others, to really talk about it a lot.

And that was kind of inspiring to me. I was like, Yeah, yeah, we do need to talk about this more. So thanks for talking about it. It's something that I think is just really important. Of course I coach clients on this all the time. The other coaches on my team, they coach our women physicians that we work with all the time on these issues. This is, you know, not like a new breaking news story that women who are typically more well educated and more professional tend to have children or try to attempt childbearing later in their lives, which can present some issues. Right. So I have some things I want to talk to you about. I want to talk a little bit more about the shame around the reproductive struggles that we can have and even some other experiences and emotions and things that we have going on. I just know that when I was struggling. If I listen to an episode where somebody actually talked about this stuff, I think it would have really helped me.

Just going to create that episode for whoever that is. And if that's you, who's coming here, who's been recommended to listen to this episode, I just want to welcome you here today. I really hope that my words can offer you some some guidance, some support, some sort of, you know, hopefully a place to land where you can feel like you're not alone. I think one of my biggest issues is I felt very alone going through the process.
And, you know, it was just really helpful to know that there are so many people out there besides each one of us who's struggling and, you know, to hopefully offer some sort of, you know, a direction like, you know, if you ever go hiking and they have like in a good place where they hike, they'll have, you know, kind of poles periodically and like little arrows with the path, you know, kind of directing, you like to go this direction. And I kind of think of this episode as one of those markers to just sort of maybe help direct you a little bit, especially if you're feeling like don't even know what to do anymore. I just need some help. What are my next steps? Hopefully I'll get some help with this too. And, you know, I have to say that I think I mean, this is probably so many years ago, maybe four years ago, five years ago, like really long time ago.

But after this podcast had been out for a couple of years, one of the reproductive endocrinologists that I worked with, her name is Dr. Ellen Hayes. She actually had reached out and was like, Hey, I really love what you're doing and you should actually consider maybe doing an episode on this. And at the time I just really didn't feel like I would know what to talk about. And today I do feel like I know what I would talk about. So thanks, Dr. Hayes, for kind of planting the seed way back in the day. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just very briefly, as concisely as I possibly can, just sort of tell you what my story is with my whole childbearing.

You know, probably about ten years of my life kind of looked like just because I think sometimes when people are talking around it, we're like, but what happened? But what happened? I know that's where my brain goes. I think it's just that Dr. Part of us is like, okay, so let me just give you the history so that we are like on the same playing field and you can actually hear me and what else I'm going to say after this. So very briefly, my husband and I decided that we wanted to try to have a baby while we were both still in residency. And I had been on the pill for a long, long time and just decided to stop it.

And I don't believe that I talked to any doctors about that. No one ever really kind of mentioned to me, or maybe I did know this and I just didn't think it would happen to me. Hard to know. It was a long time ago, like literally like close to 20 years ago. And so we were trying. It was not working. What ended up happening was after about nine months of that, I feel like I started actually ovulating. Like my periods super changed from what they had been like while I'd been on the pill, which was much easier to like. Oh right. This is what I remember from my teens and I was like, okay.
So probably it was actually nine months of just getting my body back on track. So this will hopefully go faster. And then it took another nine months. So really was like 18 months. It felt like a really long time. I remember laying on the couch in the house that we were living in and just crying and feeling like I was disappointing my husband and letting him down and saying to him, like, what if I can't have kids? Like, I'm so sorry. Like I was apologizing to him. So already at the very beginning, really of this whole stage, there was already this level of shame of like, there's something wrong with me, there's something wrong with my body.

Like it's my fault. I'm really taking all this responsibility. So then I did get pregnant on my own and had a full term pregnancy. And that's my oldest son, who's 17.5 now. And so then I remember thinking like, so funny when you're like, Oh, I'll just get pregnant, no problem. Like the issues that you think are issues like like I had him in November and that was a really tough time because where I live in particular, just being so north like we were, you know, a month later, basically we were in the longest Night or the shortest day of the year and it was just dark a lot.

And so for me personally, my husband is still a resident, so he was gone a lot. We didn't even have phones to text back then. We just had the pager. So there's just like, I had no idea when he was coming home. I had no updates on anything and I would see all the other dads in the neighborhood, like driving in 5 or 6:00 at night and sitting there with this baby by myself and just being like, I don't know, when is this going to end? When is he going to come? When am I going to get a break? And all my friends were working, you know, so like nobody to hang out with, really, or very few people. And then I knew who were, you know, home with small children and stuff.

So it was it was kind of a tough time. But I remember thinking, I do not want to have another baby in November again. So springtime or summer, you know, like, let's just plan for that. So I remember thinking like, well, do I want them like a year and a half apart or two and a half years apart? Like, how am I going to do this? Thinking that it was just going to be so easy? Now, in hindsight, I'm like laughing at myself because I'm like, Oh, little did you know, that was like the least of your concerns at all. So we start basically as soon as I got my period back, we start trying again and I'm not getting pregnant, I'm not getting pregnant.
And, you know, timeline wise, I'm kind of forgetting a little bit. I think it was probably around. 18 months to two years after my first son was born that I realized that I was still lactating. And I just, like, looked inside my bra and was like, what is that dried on there? And was like, Oh, weird. Like, I just totally didn't know. And so I had always thought like I would never go down the pathway of, you know, fertility help or anything like that. I think literally just because there was some sort of stigma that I had in my head around it, like when I try to think back, like, what was my problem with it? I think it really was just stigma.

Like I remember years ago having a thought of like, well, if it just doesn't happen, then like you just have to accept that that's the way it is. And it's a very, let's just say less mature way. I think that I was thinking it's just it's like if you do have children, you'll probably understand what I say. It's like, you know, before you have kids, you're the best parent in the world. You know, like exactly how every child should be parented. And then you have kids and you're like, Oh, that was cute. I did not know what I was actually talking about.

So anyway, I decided to go to my gynecologist about that and was put on Bromocriptine and was diagnosed with a prolactinoma in my pituitary gland. So I had hyperprolactinemia. So then it was like, okay, well I'll try the bromocriptine Like maybe that's why you're not getting pregnant. So I think we tried that for another like six months, nine months, something like that wasn't working. And so I just was like, shoot, Like, remember? Because my plan was to have these kids closer together. It's so dumb. But like, I was like, What is going on? This is not right. And a friend of mine, she had had to do IVF for all of her children.

So she had known that from early on. And so she was working with this one hospital system and she kind of suggested like you could just go and like get a consultation and just like find out, like, maybe there's something really easy to fix. And I was like, Yeah, I mean, that does make sense. So I went to this place and never really honestly felt like a great connection with the team there or the doctor. But just because it was a referral, I was like and honestly, it was like close to my office and I was trying not to tell anybody that I was doing this kind of stuff at work. Again, just really just stigma. Like just I told myself, I just want to be really private about this.
But really what it was, was I felt shame that I needed help with this. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that at the time, but that's what was going on. So I ended up doing Intrauterine Insemination II, and I think we did that six times. None of them worked. And I just I'm not going to get into it here, but just really didn't have a great experience with that team of people. And I just didn't really know what to do. And by this point, my son was in preschool and I went to go pick him up from preschool one day and they had like kind of like a bunch of copies of this, like a local free newspaper for parents that like circulates.

It's called Metro Parent or something. And I just happened to look at the cover of it while I was waiting for him to come out. And it was actually the picture that was the front picture was of this family. And I took care of them. Their son was my patient. And the basically the title, the headline was about how they had had to do IVF to have their son. And they had had like this lengthy, lengthy process to be able to get pregnant. And they talked about the doctor who had helped them. And so I read the whole thing and I was really like, maybe this is a sign. Like, maybe I should go have a consultation with this other doctor and this other hospital system just to see like second opinion, like what's going on here. And I went there and he was just exactly what I needed, just like balm for my soul. He just really took good care of me. He was just very, very kind and caring. Doctor So that part was a great experience. So he talks to us about IVF and I'm like, okay, I'll give it a try once. Like in my mind, I'm like, I'll give it a try once. So we did it and it actually worked and I couldn't believe it. So shocked.

Worked the first time and then promptly six weeks pregnant, had an ovarian torsion from the stimulation. So this doctor actually saved my ovary because I was still under his care. I called in like, I'm not doing well. Something bad is happening. They had me come right over. He ultrasound me right away, whisked me off. I mean, within a couple hours I was in the or worst pain I've ever experienced. Worse than childbirth. It was so bad anyway, so that was fine. And then kind of continued on with that pregnancy. Everything seemed normal. And then I that baby was stillborn at nine days overdue. So if you're looking for more information about that story, what happened there? I think it's episode 12 where I kind of tell more of the story there.

So that was obviously hugely devastating. Words cannot even describe how awful and hard that was. So went through that, right? Like full term baby in my arms who was not alive. It was super, super hard. So then right away I was like, I want to do over. Like, I really don't want my reproductive years to end on this note. And so they, you know, several people who are very knowledgeable recommended that I wait a bit. So I did. And then. And I did two more times. Both times were successful so that those resulted in my second son and my daughter. And then with my daughter, we actually had an embryo to freeze for the first time ever.

And so I was like, Oh, okay, maybe I'm having four living kids, like, didn't realize, you know. And so then we did transfers, we did the embryo transfer and it took but then at eight weeks I miscarried. So even I think when I went in, it was really like a six week ultrasound, you know, the heart rate was just like I think it was like just a little bit above 100 and like it was measuring on the small side and like it just wasn't looking super great. And then came back a couple of weeks later and it was like it hadn't grown at all. And the heartbeat was just like a flutter or something like that.

So then I had that miscarriage. So to a certain extent I feel like I've had, you know, a whole lot of different things, certainly not all the different things that can happen. But I mean, this whole process took, like I said, about ten years of my life. Yeah, it's about ten years of my life of like trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, thinking about what I'm going to get pregnant again, Like it was a lot. So throughout that time, I now in hindsight, because of course I did not have coaching during any of this, I felt so much shame. So let's talk about that. One of the things I remember really, really, really struggling with was the fact that throughout my life, you know, I was never like the smartest kid.

I was not that kid who got like top grades and didn't have to apply myself or work very hard. That was my husband. But for me, I got good grades, but I had to apply myself. I worked hard like I went to a college then that for sure was not like the smartest at all. I had to really, really work hard. But what I had had as my experience throughout my life was if I really, really work hard and apply myself, the historically up until that point, I had been able to create what I wanted.

I'd been able to, you know, get into the college I wanted to go to and the program that I wanted to go to. I'd been able to get into medical school and, you know, residency and like all these things, right? So it was just like, if you just work hard enough, you can get what you want. I think that was like a belief that I had, except that when it comes to this kind of stuff, that's not necessarily the case at all. And I think that's an area where a lot of women physicians and just women in general who have been high achievers really, really struggle because this is just really different. Right? Really, really different. And and in a lot of ways, there's just not much you can do about it.

I remember reading so many books and then like all these supplements and different things that, you know, you could try. I mean, I had my husband on the most disgusting cocktail of vitamins and supplements and all this stuff. I mean, who knows if any of it made a difference, But it was just like sometimes you just need to have something to do because you need to feel like you have control over something, you know? And it was so difficult. Oh, I didn't say that. You know, they worked us both up and could never it was unexplained infertility, you know. So after once the prolactinoma was, you know, handled and taken care of, they still didn't know why we couldn't get pregnant.

So that was also difficult because it was like if I could just know what the problem is, then I can figure out how to fix it. Well, then the answer is like, we have no idea why you can't get pregnant. Awesome. So it just, you know, for that scientifically minded person, you're, you know, evidence based kind of a person, you're just like, okay, well, tell me what the problem is so that I can fix it. Well, basically, you're told like, we don't know what the problem is. You know, And I do actually have to say, I mean, I definitely do not want to like suggest that before there were reproductive treatments that were effective, that women who struggled with conceiving, carrying a baby to term or, you know, weren't able to have a baby at all like that.

They didn't struggle because I know that that was difficult, to say the least, for lots and lots and lots of women. But I think to a certain extent, the fact that there are so many options now is it can sometimes for some people make it feel worse because there are so many more things to try and to fail at. You know, like it's not like, okay, well, we you know, this is just this is the reality. This is just what happened. It's like, okay, now we found this problem. We can fix that and we can try this thing and we can fix that. And let's try this and let's try that. And you know, so many people go through extensive like taxing on them mentally and physically and even spiritually.

Reproductive treatments that aren't working. And oh, let's not forget the financial expenditure and everything that goes into that, like to still be in the same place. Which is, you know, for in those cases, you know, possibly like having no children or not like children born of your body, you know. And so I do think that sometimes, like being on that infertility path can just be very, very, very exhausting and difficult. And people go into debt over this and people's relationships really can struggle because of it.

I mean, it is it's a lot. What I also know, too, is just like, well, being a pediatrician, people share more of this stuff with you. But then also, once you've had a pregnancy loss or, you know, spoken about your reproductive challenges, a lot of people will talk to you more about it and you just hear other people's stories. It's just it's something that so many women struggle with, Right. But when you are feeling shame, when you think something's wrong with you, Right. And you don't want people to know.

So what we tend to do when we're feeling shame is we hide. And that's exactly what I did. I didn't want people to know. I didn't want anybody in my office to know, particularly my partners. They were all men at the time. I felt so much shame that I was in this situation and now, of course, I would approach myself totally differently with the skills and tools and stuff that I have. But at the time and this honest truth, I felt so much shame. I didn't want anyone to know. So I had to come up with these, like, elaborate stories about why I suddenly had to leave the office and cancel patients in the middle of the day so I could go do my I. It was just, oh my gosh, it was a lot. It was really it was very, very, very, very stressful.

I did see a therapist a couple of times on the recommendation of a friend, but I was just thinking about like, why did I not continue with her? And I think it was still like there was just a lot of stigma around that. And I think that things have really changed over the last 10 to 15 years in terms of stigma around mental health services. Of course, it still exists totally in a lot of areas as well, but I think at the time it was kind of like, okay, I'll talk to her for a couple days. You know, a couple times like that should fix me and I should be better and I shouldn't need this help anymore.

Where in hindsight, I think, you know, seeing her regularly probably would have really helped me to be able to process what was going on. I did have that one friend that I could talk to about this, but other than that, I kept it from everybody else that I knew. I mean, it's so interesting. I just did not want anybody else to know. Once I got into the IVF process, I had to tell some people the doctor that I worked with wanted me to do bedrest for a few days after the embryo transfer. I had to tell my partners, Look, there's going to be a time that I'm not exactly sure when that's going to be and I'm going to have to take off a couple of days.

So I kind of shared with like one person that needed to know, but I really tried to keep it as quiet as I could. And I still even thinking about that time, I can feel a shame in my body right now. Like I just felt so ashamed that I was going through this. I mean, and so I just want to speak to what the truth was for me. You know, I'm not suggesting everyone should feel that way by any stretch of the imagination or that anyone listening to this feels that way. But I just really did. And so I think what was going on for me and for a lot of people as well is we have the shame, right? Something's wrong with me. Something's wrong with my body.

And then we're really not used to failing again and again and again, right? Experiencing that failure, feeling like a failure, even though it takes two to tango. It's very easy as the woman to take excess responsibility for the success or the failure of treatments and even just, you know, trying the natural way and stuff like that. So there's that. Then there's just the whole not processing the roller coaster of emotions that come with this. And that's where I want to talk about eating because I definitely emotionally ate during this time because it was such a hard time and I didn't know anything else to do.

So rather than having actual support and tools and skills and things that I could do to help me process all the ups and downs, the inevitable ups and downs, I was just like stuffing it down. I didn't want anyone to know. I just wanted to keep it all inside. And what helps to keep it inside is eating right for those of us who struggle with emotional eating. So right. Like sometimes we're like, Why am I gaining so much weight? Right? Because we're using food instead of actually processing our emotions, which totally makes sense when you have no other tools or skills.

No one's taught you how to process your emotions in another way. But once we identify what's going on, we can realize it more. We can actually get that help, you know, that we need so we can learn what we need to learn. I think for some of us, I think for me for sure, maybe somewhat for me, I think more so maybe for some people and probably not at all for plenty of people. But there was sort of like an image that I wanted to portray, you know, that I had it all together. I didn't want to be someone who, like people saw as like broken or that people pitied or like there was this facade that I wanted to, like, present myself behind, you know, And I wanted to uphold that.

And I didn't want to be a person who had a hard time conceiving. I mean, I started this I was 29, I think, when I had my first son. So like, you know, I didn't even have the age issue. Like I really in my mind was like, I should have no problem, you know, conceiving and having a baby. And so that was a whole thing to reckon with. Like, what is it about this image or this facade that I, you know, want people to think of me as? And does that even serve me? You know, just not saying you shouldn't do that, but instead just going like, well, what are the consequences?

What are the results that happen for me when I'm showing myself to the world in this way? And sometimes we can realize like, Oh, this actually doesn't help me. And then then we have the opportunity to decide to do it differently if we want to. And then I just want to speak to this because I'm telling you, I felt it, too. This is like just being fully honest with you. Yeah, sometimes we feel some competition with others, right? Even if we know it's not helpful or we don't want to. I mean, I felt a little competition, just sort of like kind of like I need to get my family complete or like I don't want to be left behind.

I think would be something that I would say that I sort of felt. I have known people who, you know, wanted to keep up with a sibling who, you know, one of their siblings who was having a family and having like the same number of kids that they had or, you know, just like since they were six years old, they knew they wanted to have many kids. And so just feeling like, you know, but so and so has that. And so I need that, too. And, you know, I think this is often something that consciously we're not really aware of or we would really deny that it's a thing for us.

But I do think that on a subconscious level, for a lot of us, there's some of that competition as well. Like, you know, just liking being successful and not wanting to have to change that identity for ourselves, right? Like, you know, if your identity is that you're someone who accomplishes what she sets out to achieve, and then as you do this, you're not getting that result. Like that really shakes your identity, shakes you to the core. It really can. So I just want to speak a little bit to just all the different kind of situations that people can be going through where they can experience some reproductive shame. And what I've really tried to be inclusive here. I just, just want to mention that if I don't touch on your particular issue or struggle, you know, please know, you know, what we talk about today still applies to you.

But I think it's easy to think that like, oh, the people who are struggling with this are people who are having infertility treatments. And it's not that there's so many different other kind of variations of this, for sure, trying to conceive naturally and it just not working. You know, that's kind of where it started with me. Some people will feel like, well, I shouldn't even complain because I know all these other people are really struggling. I don't even like deserve to complain yet or like some, you know, these stories that we tell ourselves like, no, it can be hard when you're going through that and it's not working.

Going through lots of pregnancy losses, you know, at any and all stages of the pregnancy, that is an area where it's like, I can get pregnant, but I can't keep the pregnancy. Sometimes it's a lot of genetic issues, a lot of miscarriages or things like that that can be just really, really, really difficult to go through. So much grief and sadness around that. And then when that's compounded with shame, it just makes it so much, so much worse. Um, some people have been able to conceive and carry the baby, but then the baby's born prematurely and maybe even kind of significantly prematurely. And then a lot of shame around that, shame around their body that their body couldn't hold the pregnancy longer, or that, you know, if they had just rested more or not pushed themselves so hard at work or things like that, then they wouldn't have, you know, deciding that they put themselves into premature labor or, you know, all the things around there.

There can be a lot of shame around that. And that can linger, too, for years. I mean, that child can be many years old and and women are still hanging on to that. There can be shame around waiting until later, you know, or just general age issues. A lot of women physicians, just from the sheer number of years that it takes to become a doctor, find themselves, you know, seeking out a partner or even if they're doing it on their own, exploring what needs to be done to start a family later than maybe others do and and are kind of early on maybe confronted with some of those age issues.
And then there I've coached many people who have shame around like, you know, I should have been working harder at dating earlier, you know, like somehow that they did something wrong or they're bad because they're at this age in this situation right now. And that can bring a lot of shame. Some people, you know, really kind of have that belief like, well, I froze my eggs.

So that's going to make it easier later or I won't have problems later. And then still struggling, right? It's like when you have that belief of like, Oh, I bought this insurance policy, I did this thing that was going to make it much easier and then it's still not working, right? That can bring so much shame. It can be so difficult finding out that you need to explore using an egg donor or a sperm donor can be a big issue for a lot of people, especially with, you know, older age and things like that. A big issue around this can be just when nothing is working and like when to call it quits and feeling so much shame around that, you know, like when is enough enough? Like how much are you going to put your body through feeling shame that you want to quit, but you actually, you know, feel like you're letting someone down.

If you do that, you know your partner or, you know, letting yourself down or it's just so much that can be tied up into that. And then I just want to speak to the people who just genuinely don't want children and then feeling shamed for that because that's a real thing too, where, you know, it's a personal choice, personal decision. Do not want to have children, which is I'm like, Great, then don't have them. But it's easy to be like, okay, then just like, go on your merry way and talk to many women over the years who are in this position who really feel just like othered in society for that decision.

And honestly, whether it was a personal decision, it was a choice on. Purpose or not. But in particular, if it was on purpose, just kind of being really surprised at how some people kind of regard them or just feeling just not feeling supported or accepted in that way. So it's there's so many situations, right, where all the shame can come up. So what do we do with this? And I, I have some things that I hesitate to even call steps because steps sort of sound like, okay, do this then when you're done with that, move on to this. And that's not really the way this is. I think these are kind of five things to do, five things to consider. You know, maybe you start with 1 or 2 or maybe you kind of jump in with all of them or like whatever. Just feels like it's going to be the right and most supportive thing for you is the way that you should approach this.
So the first thing I suggest strongly, strongly encourage you to do and suggest is to talk to someone about what's going on, talk to them about the truth and talk to someone. Or maybe lots of people. You know, like for some people like feeling like, okay, I'm actually going to be honest and talking about this with lots of people is even more freeing.

But everybody is different. And so maybe we'll just start with one person if that's what feels best or maybe talking to, you know, someone who's close to us who we haven't shared it with. We know that talking about shame helps to reduce shame because when we're hiding, when we're not sharing it, we we just compound shame. So when we share it, when we're honest, just doing that action can really, really help to start to reduce that shame just on its own, right? You know, are there ways to process shame and all that? Absolutely.

But then it's easy to be like, Oh, I have to do that by myself in secret, which only perpetuates the shame, right? So I just want to really encourage you to talk to some people. Now, this is the second part, kind of like maybe part two of the first part. But I do want to just talk about the gift of professional help. I think it's really good to include the people who are important to you in your life, for sure. In this. I think it's actually a very important part of doing this. But I do also think that for some people who are open to it, getting some independent help or impartial help can be very, very helpful. So that could be working with a coach, that could be working with a therapist, joining a support group, something like that.

I do think that for some people, depending on the people who are around them, whether it's their family of origin, friends, whatever their support system is, they may not feel that actually sharing about this gives them the support that they need. So it might it probably would help to be honest about it and be, you know, clear and share what's actually going on for you. But if you're not feeling like you're getting what you need from that, just really don't underestimate the power of therapist a coach.

And it doesn't even necessarily have to be someone who specializes in that. I think often we're like, Well, I need the person who like only does that. No, you don't. It's your brain. It's always just your brain. Right? I do want to mention something about support groups, Facebook groups in particular. So I actually have some experience with support groups. After my daughter died, I went to some infant loss support groups and several of them were actually quite helpful for me. And then once I got pregnant again, they had a different support group for pregnancy after infant loss. And that was a kind of a nice one. It was once a month, so it was like every month I went there, I'm like, okay, I made another month still pregnant, you know? So that was kind of helpful.

But I just want to talk about, I think the the easiest way, the most accessible way for most people to get support these days is through Facebook group and or some other online group. And I just want to encourage you to use some discernment if you explore those things. And what I mean by that is really checking in with how you feel when you're in them. Sometimes those groups can be an absolute lifeline. They can be incredibly helpful. So I'm not saying that they're not helpful. I think at certain times and for certain people they can be very, very helpful.

But also just be really aware that if you're spending a lot of time reading people's posts about their struggles as a person with a heart and probably, you know, a person who cares about others, it's easy to unintentionally start taking on the emotional roller coaster that others are going on or, you know, this person that you've kind of met through that Facebook group, now they're having a loss and you're feeling devastated for them on top of your own emotional journey and stuff. And I do find that for some people it can actually make it worse, makes them feel worse. So that's what I just want to encourage you to use that discernment, you know, and maybe it was great last week and this week it's not the thing. Or, you know, for a month it was so great.

And then now you're ready to move on to something different. Just know, right? Just be like checking in with yourself. Is this really the most supportive thing for me? And the way you're going to know is how do you feel? Not that you necessarily feel better, but if you feel worse, maybe that's not the most supportive thing for you. So it's okay to dip in and out of things. One of the things that I'm always working on, helping my clients. Particularly around weight loss to understand is you know you are really the expert in.

You know one's going to know better than you what's going to be supportive for you, whether that's, you know, a support group or what way to eat or how to move your body or any of that kind of stuff. Like you are the expert in your emotional state. And so, you know, make sure that you use that information effectively. Okay. So the next step is to work on accepting the reality of the situation. I know there are a lot of times that I just kept resisting what was real, you know, resisting what was true, thinking it shouldn't be this way.

Something is going wrong, just really pushing back hard against that. What I didn't realize is that that resistance creates so much suffering. It's already a difficult situation, and then it's made worse by the resistance. And so sometimes I think we think that if we accept the reality of the situation, that that means that we're like, okay with it or we're fine with it, or it's not bothering us or, you know, we're not allowed to have emotions or thoughts about it.

And it doesn't mean that at all. It just means being present with what's true and not thinking that it should be different than it is. And the reason we know it shouldn't be different is because it's not different. Right? This is what we're dealing with. So if we can work to lessen that, drop that reduce that in some way, it can help us to be more present to what we really need in the moment to most support ourselves, to be able to hopefully get the best result that we can. Okay. The next step or thing to consider is just learning to process your emotions as they come up.

You know, we have to learn how to let these things flow through us. I always talk about emotions as energy. They're just energy in us. And when we stuff it all down, we're trapping that energy inside. When we process it, we're moving the energy through us and out. And so sometimes that's going to look like the energy coming out your eyeballs because you need to cry or sob, you know, or scream into a pillow or just scream. It doesn't have to be into a pillow or, you know, just write and write and write all the things that are swirling around in your head or any of the tons of other ways that I teach about processing emotions.

You know, you don't have to know the way. There's not a right way. There's tons of different ways. And it's important that you have a bit of a set of tools, so to speak, things that you can rely on to help you to process and move those emotions through you as you get good news and bad news. I mean, and I'll just say, you know, I would get good news. I would feel better for maybe five seconds, like say I found out that my IVF took I'd feel like so excited for like five seconds and immediately be like, Oh my gosh, I hope everything's okay. I'm like immediately back into anxiety and negative thinking and think, that was protective, right?
Like, I didn't want to let myself feel too good because I was worried about feeling worse if it didn't work out, which is a whole other thing to talk about how we will intentionally reduce the intensity of our positive emotions because we're afraid of those negative emotions that we will inevitably feel, whether we feel a lot of positive emotions or not. It's just a protective thing that we end up, you know, unintentionally doing, but allowing even with processing emotions, you can even create space to be happy, to be excited, to be hopeful, rather than just constantly trying to protect yourself emotionally because you're stuffing it all down.

And then the final thing I want to suggest is to really work on strengthening your relationship with yourself. What I mean by that is how you treat yourself, and that means like how you physically treat yourself. I mean, even just like how you nourish your body and how you move it and you know how much sleep you get and things like that. But also your self-talk, right? The way that you are thinking about yourself to yourself, often especially in a reproductive issue, fertility issue kind of a situation, we often are allowing some very mean self-talk and that just makes us feel worse about all of it.

And really what it comes down to is the person we're with all the time is us 100% of the time, 24 over seven, always with us. And when it's not really fun to be with us, we try to escape, right? We like do all the ways that we escape. Eating can be one thing. So many other ways, right? Drinking alcohol. If you just found out you're not pregnant, Right? You might be totally drinking way more than you ordinarily like to. Maybe you're totally zoning out in front of social media or other electronics or things like that, like just trying to numb yourself to try to get away from that negative self-talk and how difficult it is to be with you.

And so what I want to suggest is that when you work on strengthening your relationship with yourself, that means that you do what you say you're going to do, but you are supportive and loving and encouraging and kind to yourself. And this is something that can make the whole struggle so much more tolerable, right? Like, I definitely had thoughts that were not very kind about myself when I was going through this whole process. And I just know that working. On that, really practicing that would have really helped me. And the other thing that's really good to know is like so many of these tools, these things that you'll practice, these things you'll apply in this situation. There are things that help you and every other part of your life too, right?
Being able to accept the reality of a situation works in any difficult situation in your life, right? Processing the emotions that come up is something that you will be you know, it's an opportunity you'll be faced with or it's an opportunity that will be brought to you every day for the rest of your entire living life. Right. Strengthening your relationship with yourself is only going to help you once you have that infant or once you are parenting an older child or accepting yourself in a situation where you're going to have a life with no biological children of your own.

You know, just like that way that you put yourself what it's like to be with you, in you as you. It's always going to help you to work on that and to strengthen that relationship. So, you know, if there's one person you can count on, you know, it's you, it's the best. So, so good. So this has been a little bit of a longer episode than typical. Had a lot to say here. And I wanted to just take my time and be sensitive around this because it really is an issue that so many women struggle with. And I just want you to know that if you're going through it, you're not alone. And if you're going through it, there are ways for it to feel less bad.

I'm not going to say there's ways to make it so that like it's a walk in the park and super easy and you're never going to feel the normal range of human emotions. But there's a lot of additional pain that we add on unintentionally that makes it even worse and more difficult. And that's the part that we can we can really work on while we're figuring out all the other things. So with that, I just want to send you a ton of love and hope and care and wish I could just reach through and give you a hug right now. Big, nice, tight squeeze. When you talk to other people who have gone through this or are going through this, you just start to realize like nothing's wrong with you.

Like you are a human woman on earth having a very human experience. And for some people they get pregnant very easily and then they have other huge challenges. That was something that that I would try to remind myself of. Like, you know, it's not like, Oh, if you can just get pregnant easily, then your life is, you know, golden and you're never going to have any other problems in your life. Right. It's like this is just the big challenge that I've been, you know, or essentially I'm signing up to pursue right now. And that doesn't mean don't get to feel all the emotions about it. But, you know, I'm going to stop expecting it to be any different than it really is.
All right. Sending you lots and lots of love. Again, if there's anybody just now or in the future who you think would benefit from this episode, I would love it if you would share it with them. This is just where, you know, we have to come through and support each other and think, this is one way we can do it. All right, my friend, have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you next time. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #330: Reproductive Shame & How to Overcome It appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you someone who feels like you always need to be doing the most?

It’s great that you’re ambitious, but if that ambition is interfering with your well-being, maybe it’s time to adjust your priorities and see where you can make some more time for yourself.

Natalie Bacon is here to share how she stays true to her ambition in a way that honors her time and personal life, ending the cycle of sprinting and crashing that she used to live in.

Natalie is a former Type-A lawyer and financial planner turned grounded, present-living wife, mom, and Advanced Certified Life Coach.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why it can be so hard to slow down * Making time for the things that are important to you * How we know that balance is possible * Being proud of yourself rather than seeking external validation * How to avoid falling back into unhealthy patterns of overachieving and overworking * Why you should practice saying “no” to things * Living in a more sustainable way * Moving away from the “all or nothing” mentality

What would downshifting look like for you? It’s a question worth asking yourself before you find yourself approaching burnout. Slowing down is not the same as giving up.

To find out more about what services Natalie has to offer, go to nataliebacon.com.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Visit Natalie’s Website

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You'll Enjoy:Ep #328: Letting Go of What You Thought Was Real

Ep #327: How Coaching Increases Well-Being

Ep #326: When More Knowledge Doesn’t Equate to Weight Loss

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. So glad that you're here today. I have a fun guest today. You know, as you probably have been able to tell, I haven't been doing a ton of guest lately. I do have some people that I am excited to share with you and today is one of those days. So today I want to share my conversation with Natalie Bacon.

She is a really cool, cool person. She'll tell you how we met in the episode and I've known her now for actually we were saying like something like five years or something like that. She is really an amazing person who first became a lawyer, then became a certified financial planner, and then kind of realized, you know what, I'm kind of struggling in life and became a coach. And through coaching, becoming a coach and actually being coached, she was able to really kind of shift down a bit from the hyper achieving, you know, type A really pushing, pushing, pushing herself all the time, kind of energy into to an energy where she's still accomplishing she's still true to herself and her ambition, but is doing it in a way that makes time for her personal life, makes time for her family and makes time for herself.

So that's something that's really much more sustainable for her and not so sprinting and crashing and repeating that cycle again and again. I know that so many people listening to this today are going to really resonate with her story. And I love just the idea of kind of downshifting. What would that look like? What would downshifting look like for you? What would the benefits be? Not to say that you have to do it, but it can be an interesting thing to play around with and to just think about what would it be like to try to maybe take it to a lower gear to carry the metaphor forward?

And I think that often when we think about like slowing down or doing less, you know, we just feel so bad right about ourselves. We feel just like it's not good, like our worth is so tied to what we accomplish. And so Natalie and I talk about ways to do a lot and have time for yourself and still have that self worth that we've overly attached to our accomplishment. So I'm very excited for you to listen to this conversation with me and Natalie Bacon. And at the end of the episode, she'll tell you more about where you can check her out if you're interested in finding more about what she does. All right. Please enjoy my conversation with Natalie Bacon. Natalie, I'm so glad to have you here on the podcast. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. Honored to be here.

So I would love for you to just start us off by just introducing yourself a little bit, helping us to know who you are, a little bit more about your journey. Give us some intel on you.

Yes. So my name is Natalie Bacon. I currently am living in Charleston, South Carolina, by way of Chicago. And as a born and raised Midwesterner, we may be heading back there. That's where my heart is always. I was an attorney practice for just about five years and then got my CFP to become a certified financial planner and did some wealth management and then started coaching. And now I'm a professionally trained, certified life coach, which you already know because you were a part of that journey and that story. Katrina was my teacher at coach training at the Life Coach School some three, four, almost five years ago.

That's a while ago, isn't it? Yeah.

It's the last in-person training before they kind of did it again here and there. So. So I've always been a big fan of yours. And. And from there, I have just coached a lot of women, a lot of professional women, a lot of moms as well. I coach them. All of the stuff that you talk about really, except mine, is geared a little bit just more towards a broader audience of women in general.

So you definitely have a background in your family with some, you know, people in the medical field. Right. I mean, I'm so curious about just sort of like your upbringing. I feel like when I saw that the people in your family, like there's just like an intensity there, I think. And I'd love to hear more about what that experience was like and even just expectations of you growing up.

Oh, it's such a good question. So yeah, my brother is only 15 months younger than me and he is an oculofacial plastic surgeon and I was a trained and am a trained lawyer. I don't practice anymore, but we were just taught that education is pretty much the most important thing. I mean, my parents didn't say education is the most important thing, but it was very clear that go to college was just given and it wasn't really like, Where are you going to college? It was, where are you going after college?

It was sort of the expectation. My dad was a dentist. My maternal grandfather was a dentist. And so lots of people in professional capacities in my family. And it was I would say the culture in my home was really academic focused. My brother is just incredibly smart, naturally, and it was easy for him to do all that. And I worked a lot harder, but still was able to be pretty successful in that way. And, you know, there wasn't any time where I thought, Oh my gosh, I have to do this. I sort of just taught that this is what you do. And so I wanted to do that.

Yeah, it's like a self-motivation, right?

Yes. So that was really the culture in our home. And it wasn't until I was working as an attorney and I left out the part where I had, I think, $206,000 of student loan debt when I first graduated law school. And that was my first introduction to money, more or less on a very deep level. And I went all in and that's how I got my CFP and learned a lot about money and paid off all my debt and started an online business. And that process, I just grew through so much and learned so much about myself. And over time, you know, as we all do into adulthood, learn like what's out there, besides the specific career path that people ahead of us are are helping us sort of follow, which of course isn't a bad thing. I just found personally that it felt very kind of if you think of a spectrum like too far on the spectrum for me, once I got into, I don't know, like late 20s, around 30 years old, like I'm so far into the rigidity, the type A the get more done, the work, work, work like it was too far for me.

And it's not that I wanted to go all the way to the other extreme and like not have any goals and not work and not do any of these things again but thought you know, this is just the beginning of my life. Pretty much. I would like there to be a little bit of a middle ground. And that's really where I started doing more work on myself and just opening up my mind to the possibility that it's not just one option, that I have to work 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, that other people make great livings feel fulfilled and have, for lack of a better word, some sort of of balance, whether that's internal or external, that I was sort of itching and kind of wanting to experience myself.

And I think that what you brought up is so common, right? I totally identify with what you're saying, like the go, go, go the like, basically like the hustle and grind culture, you know, like just putting everything you have, type A like and putting it all in and then kind of getting to that place of like for what, you know, like when you're trying to get degrees. And, you know, those initial jobs and stuff, it can feel more like, oh, I can see in front of me like the goal, like where I'm trying to get to. And it seems really measurable. And then you get to a point where you're like, Well, so now I'm doing it. And like, I'm kind of exhausted now and like, is this really it? Is this what I've created? And I think it's really common to feel like the only other option is, like you were saying, like the bull on other side of the pendulum swing. So opposite that we don't identify with at all. We're like, I don't see any gray zone in between. I don't see any other option. And that all or nothing thinking can think can keep us really stuck.

But then when we keep on exerting ourselves really in to that extreme, first of all, it becomes normalized. We don't even realize it is an extreme, you know, because also often we're surrounded like all our friends are like us, you know? So we're like, I think this is just how life is. But then we get burned out at a certain point. Like you can only keep yourself doing that for so long. And if it's not even like emotional burnout could be that you start having, you know, some physical symptoms or, you know, your body starts to let you know you can't do this anymore. And it can really be a difficult challenge to figure out like, who am I if I'm not the total overachiever? I remember when I first met you, I'm like, Dang, she is a baller. Like, she's like a lawyer and a financial planner and like, doing all this amazing stuff. I'm like, Wow, Like, this is so incredible. So you get a lot of positive feedback from people, but then inside you're like, Yeah, but there's a reason I'm here. My coach training.

Oh, interesting. You say that because I distinctly remember you asking me. Don't know. We were in class, so there had to be some more context. But you asked me like, what feeling comes up for you when I suggest that you could, like, work less and basically chill out And the feeling my response was terror. And I got teary eyed like, that's how far on the extreme that I was. I really thought that my primitive brain was going to the complete opposite end. Like, if I work less, I'm going to be, you know, homeless, sick, like everything's going to just fall apart, right?

It was very much that all or nothing thinking. And it was really just because of the way that I had, you know, wired my brain and my experiences and how my upbringing and how that was the path. And I wasn't practicing any sort of future focused thinking about like, what could it look like in between? And that was something that I had to learn and I really learned it slowly. A little bit of the thought work, of course, and then also with some actions like let's stop working at this time and just see that everything doesn't, you know, blow up and it's okay testing that out.

Beliefs are not going to come and arrest me because that didn't didn't work enough today.

That's right. And just seeing all that at the time I was doing my business already, like, oh, the business can still run even if I'm not thinking about it at all. And that for me was a huge internal shift. And looking back, I can see how I would reinforce that identity by calling myself, Oh, I'm just like this. I'm just really type-A. This is just who I am. And I would say it as if it was a fact. And now kind of being on the other side of that, I see how much that just kept me stuck in that identity. Like, I really did not know that it was possible to to feel as grounded as I feel now, or just have a sense of calm that is pretty accessible to me in a way that wasn't before.

Like I was always in my head and always go, go, go thinking that it was just me or my life or my circumstances. And now looking back, seeing, oh wow, a lot of that was me just reinforcing that identity of like, No, this is just who I am, this is how it has to be. And I think that sort of limited me. And now I can see that in a way that I live a much more, I like to say internally balanced. I don't my goal is not external balance. I don't need five hours of work, five hours of family time. You know, it's not necessarily about the hour allocation as much as it is about how I feel internally about kind of the overall way my life is going in each area of it, whether that's work, family and any other hobbies and just life in general.

Yeah, I mean, I remember when I met you when we you had the I think it was about a week together. We were together. I remember there was this kind of like intensity about you that is not there anymore. It was like this, almost like this urge that would feel like of you. I'm like, I have to go, go, go, go, go. Like, that's fast as possible. But the other thing I recall, I believe at the time, like you were single and you wanted to be dating, like you really wanted to find a partner, have a family. And you were like, trying to figure out, like, where am I going to fit that into my life? Nailed it.

That's exactly right. This is something that I want and I don't know, like I don't think it's possible to have both. And I think that what I love is that we're having this conversation so many years later where you actually have created that for yourself, where you have beautiful new baby. Well, he's not even so new anymore, right? And you're pregnant again, right? Like you're expecting another way? Yeah, over half way. Right. So, yeah.

So it's like, you know, you're married and, like, you just. You finally have this life that you want, and you're working, and you. Found this balance. So I just think that like a lot of people will talk about like this is how you do it. But like sometimes I'm like, do they How much did they really struggle, though? Did they really understand how hard it is for some of us, you know, to like, really slow ourselves down? And what I loved and I'd love for you to speak to this is rather than talking about slowing down, because some of us are like, I don't want to slow down. You talk about downshifting, and I love that term as a way of describing it, right? Like, if you think about it, it's like you're just you're still going forward. You're still, you know, accomplishing, but maybe just in a different gear so that there's room for other things in your life. So what did that process look like? Like you said, it was kind of slow, but like there were some actions too. I'd love to know more about what that was like for you. Yeah.

So again, for myself as well as a lot of my clients are professionals, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, all of that. And for the clients who are attracted to my work, a lot of them are on similar journeys. And again, I like to think of it as a spectrum because one of their concerns will be, Well, I don't want to lose this part of me. I like that I accomplish things. I like that I, you know, provide for our family and have this career. And so the fear is that if I, I call it downshift, if I create more space in groundedness and feel a little bit more calm in my life, that that will take away from the part of me that is so successful.

And what I like to remind them is that in myself is maybe, but probably not. And also, you could always go back, right? Like to calm the fear down like it never actually happens. There's still that part of you that is accessible. So I still love setting goals. I still love that I am ambitious, I still love building my business and creating and all of those serving my clients, all those things. So that part of me is still there. I just think of that spectrum and it's a lot more internally balanced, and when I have any fears that come up, same with my clients, it's just reminding ourselves that I could always go back.

Like there's no again, like police coming to say, you have to work this amount or not that amount. So for me personally, it was just reminding that primitive fear based part of my brain that I could go back to the way things were. And we saw that that wasn't working exactly how I wanted. As you mentioned, I wanted to partner. I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a family. And for me, that meant at least having some space for that. And I gave myself permission to slowly create that. And so I wasn't in a rush. I had a coach at the time as well who helped me through that process and helped me see that again, slowing down or you want to say downshifting or just creating some space intentionally for at the time it was dates, you know, myself, even just dating myself insofar as I'm taking time to care about me without thinking about what's next either on the to do list or or in front of me in terms of accomplishment. And part of that too, is like, I love to be future focused and set goals and think about what's next. And that's really fun for me. But again, take it to the extreme resulted in sort of missing the present and missing the opportunities just to feel a little bit of joy here and there right in your everyday life.

And I remember doing I call it like ten minutes of silence, just you could call it meditation. But for me, that word is so loaded, like don't know how to meditate that just to calm my nervous system down. And it's very uncomfortable because for someone who, like I was in that go, go, go energy to just sit still and not touch your phone, to not do anything is uncomfortable. And so knowing that I just allowed my body to slow down, calm down and get a little bit more regulated. And I would do that every day. And I really started to enjoy it and look forward to it in a way that I didn't expect. And that's sort of just one small action that allowed me to get just more grounded. I really felt like I was always sort of in my head and thinking about the next thing and. Now I do still identify as type A, but I don't identify so far on that on that spectrum. And I have lots of of space. Now, of course I fill it with things that I want to fill it with, but the difference is in really feeling aligned with my life and where it's going. Like I like this. I have my family life. Like you said, I'm pregnant with my second child. I have my business.

And and overall, I'm content with sort of how I've I've been able to balance things in a way that I genuinely just didn't think was possible. And I just want to point out that I didn't think it was possible as a lawyer. I didn't think it was possible as a certified financial planner, and I didn't think it was possible as an entrepreneur and a coach. And I think that that is worth mentioning because so often we think it's not possible given our circumstances. So, for example, if you're a physician, you might think, well, that's just not possible in the hospital I work at or as a physician.

And I think just allowing yourself the mental space to question that and just say, well, what if it was? Doesn't mean you have to take any action or make any changes, but just allowing yourself that imagination to think about that in a way that you haven't before, I think opens up possibilities. At least I know for myself it did, and I think for clients it does as well to see that it doesn't have to be the way that it is right now or the way that it's been in the past, that there are really limitless possibilities for how you might want to have your life look, whether that's doing more or doing less and and where you want your life to go.

Yeah, I love to think about it. Like all my clients, current and former, will be like, Oh yeah, she always says this, but I have often said I'd like to think of it as there's an infinite number of possibilities, right? Because often we're like, Well, I mean, maybe there's one way, but it's going to be like a needle in a haystack. It's going to be so hard or whatever. I'm like, okay, but what if there were infinite possibilities where you got what you wanted? And then all we have to do is find one that works for you. I love that. It's like, Oh, okay. Right. I love that. Expanding things a lot. Like, you know, because it's just as true as or not true as thinking that there's no possibilities. Right. But like, you're definitely not going to think of ideas if you think that it can't there aren't it's not possible that there are no ideas that will work, right? So you have to be able to open your mind to that and think.

Usually it happens in ways that we don't. Even have the idea of. But we have to have an idea to at least take steps forward. It's just that there are pivots along the way. Like I couldn't have predicted, I'm going to marry this guy or have these kids or even have kids at all. And I just knew that I had this desire to downshift a little bit to create more space for feeling calm and joy and the feelings that I wanted to feel and not be so high strung. And that desire was enough for me to just kind of give myself permission to think, okay, maybe this is possible. Train is telling me it's possible, so I'll go off of her.

And it's honestly the transformation that I'm most proud of and kind of circling back to what you said, people ask about your accomplishments. They ask about work. And even the way that we talk about our family members or our kids or it's it's a lot of it is accomplishment based, right? My neighbor was just telling me her son got chosen and selected for this gifted program and that is amazing. We want to celebrate that. And also the internal shifts that we make are something to be proud of as well and kind of giving yourself permission to see that as something that is. Worthy of your own pride. Like, I'm so proud of this transformation that I've made, and yet most people don't know about it or ask about it.

And you probably wouldn't talk about it, right? Like I was thinking. Like you were never like someone asks, Oh, how are things going? You'd never be like, Well, you know, my child just did this really thoughtful thing for this other kid the other day. Like, you wouldn't talk about that, right? Like, or it would be, you know, just kind of be like, socially awkward or something to bring that up. But it really is true, though, because you have to be able to give yourself that validation because you're not going to get it outside. If anything, people, you know, whoever you're surrounding yourself with, they might be kind of judgmental of that and just be like, Well, that's weird. Why are you not going after that promotion or, you know, whatever that big rant or something like.

Had another neighbor. It was a newer neighbor and I had just met her and I sort of was talking about my career path and she's like, Oh, lawyer to coach. Your parents must be real proud. I was so taken aback because like you said, you sort of surround yourself with people who who you're similar to. And I said, Yeah, they are. But it's just another example of that where socially we want that validation and knowing that you can give it to yourself and just asking yourself, Is this what's best for me? Is this good for my soul? Is this good for my life and for my family? Those questions are the most important questions. Not, you know, is my neighbor going to.

Yeah. Be impressed with my credentials. Right, right, right. So I have a question and I'm just very, very curious. So I think that especially for people who are, you know, like us, who let's just say, I think it is easy to fall back into these habits of overachieving and stuff and like, go, go, go, go. In our personal lives once we, you know, find a partner, but also specifically once we have children. Right?

Because the whole mothering thing, you know, parenting in general, but mothering specifically can really be what is the word to describe it. It's a lot. Let's just say, you know, it can be very easy to go all in on overachieving now as a mom or as a partner or things like that. Did you notice any of that starting to like flare back up again, so to speak, Or like, have you had to kind of be aware of like, okay, I'm going to want to be like this kind of a mom, but that's not what's best for me or my family. And dialing that back or How have you approached that?

Yeah, so because I was already practicing these tools and sort of had that bigger shift, three kids right around when I started to have kids, I really didn't go all the way back, quote unquote, to the extreme of the rigidity and the go, go, go and the the high strung that I once was. I, like you said, just became a lot more aware of the possibility that that could happen and just manage my mind and coach myself a lot. So I know that if I overplan which is personal, right? Overplanning for me, if I don't have enough white space on my calendar, then my mind goes into that hyperactive type-A got to get it all done.

And of course, are there times when that happens periodically? Sure. Things get messed up, someone gets sick, you got to move things around. Life happens. But overall, I really am aware and cognizant of, if you want to call it boundaries, but just how I want to plan my days and manage my mind around that in a way that has really allowed me to stay out of either end of the spectrum, so to speak, in a way that I maybe wouldn't have thought was possible again before. Because I think just the logistics of of family life and parenthood and in any life, right, you can be in that responsibility, energy all the time. Right? So much so that you can kind of forget or do it too much, that the whole point is to enjoy your life, right? Like there's no like.

Okay, enjoy those relationships.

Right? Yeah. We're not like clocking out of the responsibility ever. And so just being aware that that energy is something I naturally gravitate towards. Like you said, I always wanted to be a mom. I am the oldest of three. And so for me, that responsibility, energy is something that I naturally just can go into pretty easily as part of who I am. And that again, I like, but I really try hard to be aware of it and notice, okay, having my nervous system activated so much or being in that responsibility, energy so much isn't good for me. It's not even good for my health, let alone just for my life and my family and who I want to be.

So making sure that I'm having those time boundaries and saying no to things like I used to do a lot more in terms of travel and just realizing that, you know, every no is a yes and a yes is. A no to something else and for me, kind of my peace. Internal peace is, I think, something that I've learned to value a lot more than getting it done and just noticing the tendency for my worth to want to come from the to do list, which of course it never does. So trying not to outrun that and instead realizing that I could just leave everything undone and still love myself and still be okay. It's hard to do.

Which kind of is like, right? Like you just like 80% of everyone listening just went like.

It's so true. Like walking into like a messy room or a messy kitchen. I just again, it's not that I leave, you know, my house is pretty tidy, but I like to just play around with what's happening in my mind because I know that's the root cause of it. And I know that unchecked what's going to happen is I'm going to continue to do everything on a to do list indefinitely. Like the to do list does not end. It's never going to end.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I remind myself that that's also not a bad thing. Like we want full lives. We want to be invited to things and we want, you know, families. If you want that and activities or travel or whatever, we want those things. And yet how can we make sure that we're not prioritizing all of those to dos and activities and plans over ourselves? Really? Because I think that when I make sure to not do that, when I'm really taking care of myself, call it self care, I show up so much better in my life.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. It sounds to me kind of like like what you're trying to do or suggesting is kind of living between like a three and a seven, you know, in intensity in life. Right? Rather than going from the 0 to 10. Right. Where it's like, you know, so all or nothing, these huge swings of extremes, like trying to just bring it in so that it just takes an edge off that intensity. You're still totally doing amazing things. You're still totally experiencing the ups and downs of life. But just like bringing it in that feels more sustainable because I really do think that like and you see this all the time, whether it's a woman who is, you know, like has a career or profession and has children at home or is, you know, her career is taking care of her children at home, it really can be the priority of the family at the woman's own expense or the mother's own expense.

Right. And it's like, you know, it's okay. I'll sacrifice myself all for all of you. And then what's left, right like? And that's what so many, you know, people that we coach with. Right. Like the marriage relationship is in a shambles. Maybe their physical health or, you know, their emotional health isn't good. Like they're they're really like, how did I get here? And what I love is you're talking to people, you know, throughout the whole I mean, at any age really, or any stage of life, but is specifically to moms like I know that when my kids were little, your message would have been extremely helpful for me because it's just so easy to it was like, Oh, now I'm going to be amazing and awesome at this too. Except there's like the measuring stick is a lot harder to figure out.

I'm a human being and it sounds so obvious to all of us. And yet sometimes we try to take action and take care of other people, our lives, our careers, whatever it is, as if we are robots and we just plug in like a new battery pack and we don't need food, we don't need water. We don't. You know how often you always hear the typical professional, Like you're you're holding your bladder, You're not going to the bathroom because. Right. You don't want to take that time for your body. And so just reminding myself I'm a human being who has lots of needs and I am responsible for taking care of those needs. And it doesn't have to take a lot of time, but just little things like having my water bottle and taking bathroom breaks and just the self validation for me. I'm a big words person.

It's just my preference. And so the more I validate myself like, Hey, I'm doing a good job, or Hey, I made a mistake, but that doesn't affect or impact my worth. The more I give myself that validation, the less needing of it I am externally so the less I try to make my worth performative, the less I try to look for ways to do more, quote unquote good and then get that validation externally. It's yeah, maybe I did a good job on that. Maybe I didn't do a good job on that other thing. And that's okay. You know, that's part of it. I want to be growing and I still want to be accomplishing and doing things, but also not at my own humanness. Not at my own expense.

Yes, 100%. Well, Nellie, this has been such a great conversation. I know that so many people have gotten a lot out of it. And if they want more, I'd love for you to let the audience know where they can find you and what you're offering these days.

Yeah, so you probably like podcasts. If you're listening to this. I have a podcast called The Design Your Dream Life podcast with Natalie Bacon and everything else you can just find over at Natalie bacon.com.

All right. And bacon like the food. That's right.

That's right. So I always say we're like Kevin. Right? Take your pick. Well, Natalie, thank you so much for coming on and sharing about this. I think it's something that well, I think more people need to talk about it. And I'm glad that you are. And it's just been really fun to see you grow and develop over these years and just so happy for you. It's amazing. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a wonderful.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #329: Downshifting to Increase Life Satisfaction with Natalie Bacon, JD, CFP, Certified Life Coach appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Can I share a quote with you that I came across recently?

“One of the hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real.”

I read this and I knew I wanted to talk about it with you on the podcast because it’s something that shows up more in life than you might realize.

I think there are two ways of looking at this. There’s a more obvious interpretation and there’s a more obscure one, and I’m here to unpack both of them.

This is an episode about stepping out of your comfort zone, believing in yourself, and going after what you want. Who’s with me?

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* What it means to let go of what you thought was real * How holding onto what you think is real can hold you back * Why letting go of familiar thoughts can be scary * Changing what you think is real about yourself * Asking for what you want * Believing in what is possible for you * Letting things go in order to create something bigger and better for yourself

If you want to create a different experience for yourself, you have to be willing to let go of some of the things that are holding you back. Every now and then, that might mean letting go of what you thought was real so that you can embrace a new reality.

Learn more about how coaching can help you let go of what you thought was real so you can create a bigger and brighter future by signing up for Weight Loss for Doctors Only today.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Episode 101: Battling Impostor Syndrome

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #327: How Coaching Increases Well-Being

Ep #326: When More Knowledge Doesn’t Equate to Weight Loss

Ep #325: How Spiraling Is Okay, Normal, and Expected

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hello there, my friend. Welcome to today’s podcast. I’m so glad you’re here with me. I’m also glad that I’m getting this podcast recorded last couple of days.

You know, you get that feeling in your throat, like deep down in your throat where you’re like, Oh, it kind of hurts. And it kind of feels inflamed. And, you know, a virus is on its way. That’s about where I’m at AM right now. So I thought, I need to get this episode recorded before I lose my voice. If you have been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you may recall that at the end of last year I went through a period where I really just had a lot of vocal issues and lost my voice for over a week and it took a long time to come back and I do not want to replicate that, especially your listening experience. I don’t want to replicate that for you. So I’m glad that I can fit this in, get this one recorded, and then we’ll just kind of see what happens.

I should probably just take some vitamin C and rest, make sure I’m drinking lots of fluids right. And just take good care of myself. So. So I’m really excited about today’s episode. I actually had something different planned and I like to remain flexible. I like to allow some space for inspiration when I come up with my podcast topics. And I think this was maybe two days ago that I got this inspiration, I thought maybe I’ll do that this week instead. And so let me tell you a little bit about what my inspiration was. So those who are in the weight Loss for Doctors Only program, they may recall me talking about this, but it’s new. I think to the podcast.

I don’t think I’ve talked about it here. There is an app that I like to use that. I’m not saying that you should necessarily go by or anything, but just to share about it. It’s called the I Am app, just I am and it’s an affirmations app and it’s something that was recommended to me by somebody. This is not something typically I would do a lot with. To be 100% honest. I have totally, thoroughly enjoyed this app. You even have to pay for it. It’s like, I love this app. I think you get maybe two weeks for free or something, but you get to personalize it a lot. And what I’ve really loved is that you can use it in lots of ways so you can let it know different categories of affirmations that you want to see on your phone and you can let it know how often you want to be reminded of them.

You can set all sorts of different settings so you can get like notifications on your phone. I have like a widget set up on my phone, so the same thing pops up on just like the main screen of my phone. And then on the lock screen, you know, on the iPhone, there’s those I don’t even know what they call them. Now there’s like these little extra things you can add. So right from the lock screen, you can see like the weather or whatever, Well, you can make it so that it posts a little something for you there too. I don’t stress myself out about it. I don’t make it a big deal. You can also add your own affirmations. I didn’t mention that, so you can really adjust a ton of different things. But I do find that it is not uncommon for exactly what I need to hear or see to pop up on that phone or for it to be something that’s like super meaningful. And every single time something pops up, do I even pay any attention? There’s definitely times where I’m just like, not looking at that. But there are definitely times where I find it to be helpful and it’s just like a good reminder of what I want to be thinking, essentially.

So when we’re working on changing our thinking, it can be hard to remember, right, to be aware of our thinking and change it. So I find it to be helpful. So a couple of days ago, one affirmation popped up and I took a screenshot of it and I’m going to actually ask my podcast production team to put a photo of the like the the screenshot into the show notes page for you, which you can get@katrina.com forward slash 3 to 8. You can see it if you want to with my like my pretty backdrop that I’ve chosen from the app.

But what it said just really hit home to me really resonated with me and a lot of ways and I want to share with you the perspective that I have on it and why I think you should know about it. And what it said was one of the hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real. One of the hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real. And I think this shows up in our lives in so many different ways, like way more than most of us even understand or realize or see. And so I wanted to talk to you about that today because there’s the obvious kind of way of taking this.

And then there’s a different way of approaching it that I want to share with you. So the more obvious way of approaching this is that kind of like you thought it was one way and then what was really real is something you’re not happy with, right? So that is often something that’s very, very painful for us. So here are some examples of times when this has happened for clients of mine, friends of mine, people that I’ve known, not giving any, you know, specific details about my own life experiences, but let’s just say this sort of woven in as well. So what this would look like is a friendship that was super meaningful to you.

And then feeling like, Wait, shoot, now that I know that you really think this or you’re really doing these things, and I wasn’t aware of that. Like, it really does change things and it can be super painful, right? It can be super painful. When you thought a person was a certain way, you thought you knew them and then you find out the truth. You know, that’s one of those hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real. You thought that friend was what was real, what you saw that friend. And then you find out what’s actually real. And that can be really painful. We have to let go of that and can be so painful. Another version of this that I’ve coached on so many different permutations of this is a more intimate relationship, whether it’s a partnership or a marriage or a dating relationship, where one person finds out that the other person has been hiding something, essentially.

Right? So maybe they’ve been cheating, they’ve been unfaithful in some way, maybe they’ve been using drugs and the other partner didn’t know about it. Maybe there was some sort of secret addiction going on. Common things are gambling or looking at pornography. So you thought that your relationship was one way. You thought that was real. And actually, behind the scenes, without your knowledge, there was something else going on. And so what you thought was real is not actually what’s real.
It can be super, super, super painful, right? Another painful experience is thinking that a promotion or, you know, the opportunity to buy into a practice is a total given. Right? You thought or maybe we’re even told or promised. Yeah, for sure this is going to be yours. You’re going to be able to have it. And then finding out maybe even at the 11th hour. Oh, actually, no, you’re not going to get that. It can be very, very painful because what you thought was real was the promotion, you know, that that was going to be yours or the buy in was going to be yours. And you find out it’s not true. And that is something, you know, it’s it’s that adjustment that we have that can be so difficult.

Right? Needing to adjust to the reality when we thought there was a different reality. So that is something that I mean these situations I’ve have found that coaching can just be so incredibly helpful for, first of all, for processing the pain of it, which is nothing minor at all because so many of us don’t know how to actually effectively process our emotions, particularly our painful ones. What we tend to do is we try to avoid them, We react, you know, we’re yelling, we’re really grouchy. The people we love. Maybe we’re eating or drinking more than we’d like to. We’re overworking. We’re doing like anything we can to just avoid how we’re feeling.

And what we can create in a coaching environment is an environment where what’s actually emotionally true can be processed, which is super, super healing, and then helping with the decision of what to do moving forward. You know, it’s kind of like, okay, well what now? So if that’s true, you know, working toward acceptance, not meaning that you have to like it at all or think it’s right, but less of the resistance that’s so painful. And then getting help figuring out what the next steps are in your life in order to move forward. That’s, you know, done this so much with so many of my clients. And of course my coaching team has as well. So that’s kind of the more typical thing I think people would think of when they read.

One of the hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real. But there’s also a reverse version of this. And what I mean by that is it’s also really, really hard to let go of what we think is real that is actually holding us back. So I’m talking about things that are actually just like a figment of our imagination. We think it’s true, we think it’s real, and we allow that to hold us back from what we actually want in our lives. So here’s some examples. Oh my gosh, so many times have I coached on this. They would never consider me for the promotion. Right?
And then finding out like so maybe then you think nobody. They would never consider you for the promotion. Then somebody mentions to you, Hey, we should put your hat in the ring for that promotion. I have coached so many people on having a hard time letting go of what they thought was true, which is they never consider me. So then I don’t have to put myself out there can feel actually very, very scary to let go of what you thought was real. If what you thought was real was emotionally protective. Right? Like don’t have to put myself out there. I don’t have to risk rejection, maybe even public rejection. I don’t have to worry about being embarrassed or humiliated or, you know, exposed in some way.

If what I think is real is they never consider me, then I don’t even have to put myself out there. And that can actually feel, you know, safer, a lot more security. So it can be hard to let go of that supposed reality for the truth, which is, no, you have just as much of a right as anybody else to put your hat in the ring to ask for that promotion. I’ve coached so many people who’ve had a similar situation to this, put their hat in the ring and got the promotion and they’re just completely shocked, completely completely shocked. But if they couldn’t get over and process through letting go of what they thought was real, they wouldn’t have been able to create that experience for them.

Another example is thinking, I’m not as competent or smart or well-spoken or up to date on the latest research or data as my colleagues or partners. Thinking that you’re somehow less than this might also sound as imposter syndrome to some people. Which did another episode on that. I’m not even sure what episode it was, but I’m sure if you just Google imposter syndrome weight loss for busy Physicians or Katrina Bell podcast, it’ll come up. And and so this is a really, really common thing that we think that this is just the truth. We think it’s real, that we’re not as competent or smart or well-spoken or up to date, right? Our fund of knowledge isn’t where it should be.

We think this is just true and we have a hard time letting it go. I sometimes have found it so fascinating when someone comes to me for coaching and they are telling me basically trying to convince me essentially of why they’re a bad person or a bad mother or, you know, that something is really wrong with them. And, you know, one would think that if you had thoughts like that and then someone let you know, hey, you know what? You were actually confused and you’re actually wrong about that. That’s not true at all.
You’re actually amazing and completely, fully valuable, perfectly imperfect in every way you are just amazing that we would be like, Oh my gosh, really? Thanks. The best news ever. And instead we don’t have that response or that reaction. Do we know? We dig in deeper into our beliefs that what’s really true and real is that there’s something really wrong with us? Oh, you must not have heard me. Here’s some more evidence to support. Why think that I’m a terrible person or somehow less than right? It’s so interesting. It can be very, very hard to let go of what we think is real. Even when it’s something that’s creating a lot of pain for us. Another thought is there’s a hierarchy here and I’m too low on the pole to ask for what I want.

You know, this is such a common thing. Another one is I’m going to have to leave where I work in order for things to get better. If I want things to get better, I’m going to have to go somewhere else and thinking that that’s real and that’s true. I just recently spoke to a former client. I had coached her on changing jobs and, you know, lots of discussion on what to do. And then I saw her at a speaking event and I said, oh, hey, you know, whatever ended up happening, did you end up moving? And she goes, No, you know what? I went to my department chair and just said, Hey, look, this is what I need and want to stay here.

And that person said, okay, like, was like, what? She’s like, Yes. All I had to do was ask for what I wanted. I was like, Oh, man, isn’t that the most incredible lesson? We think that things are just not possible for us, that we have to blow our whole lives up. Also, maybe she would have had to move. You know, that’s a real possibility. But then someone else actually shared that she really needed her call schedule to be different. So she finally was in such a bad state about it. She went and talked to her boss and the boss was like, Yeah, okay, cool, we can do that.

And then within a couple of months, the whole department switched to what she had proposed because everybody wanted to benefit from it. That’s what happens when we let go of what we think is real. If what we think is real is that people won’t give us what we want, they’re going to think terrible things about us. They’re going to think we’re weak and whiny and complaining and we should just get over it and buckle down and stop complaining. We think that that’s real and we have to let that go. It can be a very, very hard thing to let go of. Okay. The way you’ll find out if it’s true is by actually asking for what you want. You know, deciding for yourself. You know what?
How do I know that it’s true that I’m incompetent or not well-spoken enough or don’t know enough? Like, what am I interpre editing What’s happening around me that my the meaning my brain assigns to it is that somehow I’m not measuring up and making the decision that you’re not going to make it mean that anymore, purely because it makes you feel terrible and it doesn’t help you to do better. Thinking that you’re not competent enough generally does not make you more competent. Thinking you’re not smart enough does not make you do whatever you need to do to become smarter or to become more well-spoken. Right? Thinking you’re not up to date enough on the latest research or data.

I haven’t found that that belief makes anybody dig in to the data to become more up to date. Know what it makes you do is sit there and feel terrible about yourself and judge yourself and find more evidence for why you suck compared to other people. Not helpful at all. So is what I’m saying. One of the hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real. So now let’s talk about this in the realm of weight loss and overeating. Okay. Using food to solve for your emotional problems. Another thought we so many people have, it’s not possible for me to lose weight. It’s not possible for me to stop overeating. People like me can’t have that.

My body shape means I’ll always be bigger than I like. It’s just my genetics. There’s no hope for me because I’m too old, right? Everyone gains 15 pounds during menopause. This is a one that I have debunked for a lot of people. So many people? Absolutely not. Do you have to gain 15 pounds during menopause? You know, so many people believe it’s real that losing weight equals feeling restricted, deprived, feeling overly hungry or starving all the time, being in agony, feeling so frustrated. Right. That it’s unhealthy. The reality is it’s unhealthy to try to lose weight. You wouldn’t believe how many people come after me. How dare you spend any time telling people they should lose weight? Well, first of all, I don’t tell anybody they should lose weight.

I don’t care at all what somebody weighs. But I do know that there’s a lot of people who feel really, really bad about their weight and would really feel a lot more comfortable living in a different size body. And my job is to help them to understand that that is actually available to them, not because they’ll be a better person, not because they’ll be, you know, viewed differently or anything like that. Not because they’re succumbing to diet culture, but because every single person gets to decide what’s best for them. Right.
But this is actually the most fascinating thing, is that people get very upset when there is a non diet culture, very supportive and healing method to dropping the struggle with overeating, finding peace and freedom around food and creating a body weight that you feel comfortable in, that’s terrible. But if there is a shot that you can take every week, all in, no problem, we have no problems with that whatsoever. I see so much in the papers like promoting these medications. There’s even somebody who pulled a quote from one of my podcasts like a journalist to put into some sort of article. Didn’t never even saw the article. I don’t know what it was. It’s just so interesting how people view different things differently. It’s a miracle drug, but we don’t want to look at other options as a miracle as well.

That’s an aside. The point is that our job to let go of these supposed realities, these quote-unquote realities that hold us back and keep us stuck. I understand that you may have data and research and, you know, just experience and evidence from your personal life. And I want to tell you that I don’t care. I’ve seen so many people go against all of that, myself included, to create something different. Just because your brain believes it’s true does not mean it’s real. Okay.

So if you’re in a place where you’re open to letting go, doing that hard work of letting go of what you think is real so that you can create what you want in your life, so you can create a different experience with food and maybe alcohol to create a different experience of living in your body. Then I want to invite you to consider the weight loss for doctors only program, where in enrollment right now, you can check out all the details about the program by going to Katrina, md.com/info info. I want to invite you to just check it out, right? If you’re willing to do that hard work of letting go of what you thought was real. So that you can get the thing that you want in your life so you can move past the struggle and this issue. We’re open to help you. Okay. We start in May and is going to be so great.

So, so, so excited. And just by the way, FYI, in case you missed this, we do have study data on our program and it shows that our program is just slightly less effective than semaglutide plus lifestyle changes. Okay, So almost as effective as Ozempic and Wegovy and Manjaro and all that stuff plus lifestyle changes. So if you’re wondering if this works, yeah, it does actually work. We’re in the process of working on getting the data published in a peer reviewed journal.
It’s the real deal. We’re not making this stuff up. Mean it. Okay, so just one more time. If you’re interested in checking out more about how coaching can help you, go to Katrina, md.com/info. Like I said, we’re going to be closing enrollment pretty soon, so check that out very soon. I want to encourage you to do that hard work to consider that what you thought was real might not be real and be willing to let that go in favor of creating something bigger and better for yourself in the future. It really is possible. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much for being here. I love and appreciate you so much and I’ll talk to you next week. Take care. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #328: Letting Go of What You Thought Was Real appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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How often do you take time out of your day to reflect on your well-being and what you could do to improve it?

Life gets busy and often our own well-being is the first thing to go out the window, but prioritizing your well-being actually sets you up to be able to handle all the other things on your list. So… How do you make it happen?

In this episode we’re talking about six of the most important areas of well-being, what you can do to work on them, and how they are all improved by coaching.

That’s right, coaching increases all six areas of well-being. Let’s talk about how.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* What activities promote well-being * Why we sometimes turn to the wrong things to try to improve our well-being * How to figure out what things really help you feel better * The value of insight and self-reflection * What happens when you feel like you’ve lost your autonomy * Improving your relationships with others * How to learn to love and accept yourself

I want you to start practicing self-reflection without judgment or criticism. It’s a powerful tool to help you improve your well-being without relying on food or other coping mechanisms. It’s time for you to start meeting your own needs, taking care of yourself, and protecting your energy levels.

To learn more about coaching and the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, join us for a free training on April 20th or April 21st to learn how weight loss is different for doctors (and what to do about it). Go to katrinaubellmd.com/different to sign up

Or, learn more about the program by going to katrinaubellmd.com/info.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Journal of Psychology Article: Insight, Rumination, and Self-Reflection as Predictors of Well-Being

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #326: When More Knowledge Doesn’t Equate to Weight Loss

Ep #325: How Spiraling Is Okay, Normal, and Expected

Ep #324: Is Peace and Freedom Around Food Just Magical Thinking?

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today’s episode. I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for joining me. I wonder if you’re feeling similarly to me. I mean, you know, obviously everybody’s not like me, but if you have children at home right now, I wonder if you’re feeling kind of the busyness of springtime picking up as I’m recording this.

It’s a Friday. Of course, you’re getting this on a probably on a different day of the week. But I’m just thinking ahead to like, what do we have this weekend? And what we have is, you know, two of my kids needing to be at a track meet before 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. It’s like, uh, you know, I think that I always grew up thinking that parents would be so excited to go spend their entire day at their children’s sporting events. And now as a parent, I’m like, oh, my gosh. I mean, if I’m just being 100% honest, which, you know, we can talk like that, I do not particularly enjoy going to, you know, a swim meet and sitting there.

I mean, I usually bring noise canceling headphones and a book and try to hide in a corner. I mean, it’s so loud, so much input. It’s just it’s a lot, but it’s, you know, it’s a good thing for for kids. And I actually personally have found a different periods of time in my life that running and exercise and just like being outside in nature and things like that have really, really helped me with sort of mental health and stress reduction and just feeling okay. Running for sure helped me so much through my first two years of medical school, and that only kind of happened because I decided to run a marathon for charity during my first year of medical school.

Don’t even ask. It’s a long story. But I did it. And and so it was about halfway through that first year of med school that I started running more. And I was so glad to have it because it really, really did help me. It was like a thing just for me. And what I found was so challenging. One thing that I found so challenging about medical school was that all my friends were med students and we all were doing the same thing all the time. So it felt like there was no kind of separation from that, where in college I had a lot of friends who were, you know, had different majors and had a different day, and we just had different things to talk about.

And so being able to be outside and run, it really, really, really was very helpful for me. So I really do think that being able to promote types of activities like that in our kids, like don’t care at all about winning anything or, you know, how fast you are or anything like that, but just learning to love being in your body, moving your body the way human bodies were meant to move, just enjoying kind of what it feels like to be alive in your body, I think is just a real gift that hopefully they can enjoy the rest of their lives. So that’s kind of our goal with track is just like, can we just enjoy ourselves and have some fun running? And they so far have really been enjoying it.

So I’m excited to help promote that. But, you know, sometimes especially I think when we have busy lives during the week, I think it’s normal to kind of be like, okay, how am I going to get my own needs met this weekend as well? I say this because I do think that for parents who maybe have a different setup where maybe they aren’t working outside the home, that it’s possible that the alone time that they get the rejuvenating time, the resting time might factor into their weekdays, You know, they have time to be able to recover so that they can power through on the weekends and do all those things and, you know, after school and at night.

And, you know, a lot of us don’t have that. Also will say that I was just reading an article in I don’t remember which newspaper it was. I was just reading an article a couple of days ago about how a lot of people find that when their children leave, you know, like their children are done living at home, they actually work more like they will think, you know, I’ll have all this time to myself. But they’re so unfamiliar with having time to themselves that they actually end up working more. And then they look around, They’re like, Why is my life so crazy? And so it’s interesting, right, how we will kind of fill that time because it’s what’s familiar anyway.

That’s just something I wanted to share. That’s kind of where we’re at here in my own home. I have my high schooler away at the State Student Congress Championship. It’s just it’s a busy time. We’re heading into to lots of different things and all good stuff. But still, you know, it’s important that we are being careful with our energy levels and taking care of ourselves so that we can keep it up. I know that when I’m not doing that, if I’m really getting low on sleep, just not doing the things that help me to feel good, it’s noticeable. It’s noticeable in my mood, in my enjoyment of life, in my interactions with others, particularly my family members.

It really does make a difference. And so just wanted to bring that up for you. I think it actually ties a little bit or maybe a lot into the podcast topic for today, which is about how coaching increases well-being. Now there are a lot of articles and published journal articles more and more seemingly all the time that are showing the effectiveness of coaching. Like this is a real modality. This is not like a made up thing. All it takes is a quick Google search. You’ll find lots of things for coaching in general, but also specifically for coaching in physicians and how it helps with burnout prevention and things like that.

So we know that coaching is a good, useful modality, but actually just recently heard about this one Journal article and the Journal of Psychology that I’ll link in the show notes page for this episode that I think is actually something that’s really an interesting thing to to understand. And basically the article was looking at insight and self-reflection and rumination as predictors of well-being. So they did a whole bunch of different psychological studies. I will link the article if you want to read through everything, you are welcome to do that. I kind of geek out on this stuff to a certain extent. When they start really digging into all the details, I’m like, okay, let’s sum this up here. Big picture kind of a thing.

But really what they were looking at is, you know, what types of activities actually promote well-being and which do not, and understanding like self consciousness, like the difference between self consciousness and self-reflection and self awareness. It’s actually really kind of I mean, I find this stuff to be pretty fascinating because they really are different and some help to promote well-being and others really take away. Right? So just let’s back out for one second. Why do we even care about this? Well, when our well-being is better, when we feel. More.

Well, everything is better in our lives, right? And when that is the case, we have much less of a need to ask food and maybe alcohol to try to improve our well-being, like when we are struggling, when we’re having a hard time, when our day to day life is difficult and we don’t know of another way to improve our well-being, how to feel more well, how to feel more satisfied and fulfilled in our lives. We will commonly turn to other things to try to help with that. Right? If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re somebody who probably turns to food and like I said, possibly alcohol as well. So if we can find other ways of improving our well-being, it makes sense that we would have less of a need to over utilize food and alcohol. So not to say that, you know, we can’t ever enjoy things that we eat or drink.

It’s not to say that. It’s just recognizing that, first of all, trying to improve our well-being with food and alcohol actually doesn’t improve our well-being. You know, we know this maybe in the moment it kind of numbs us out a little bit. Maybe it takes the edge off the negativity, but it doesn’t actually make us feel more well in the long term, we know that for sure, but we don’t know what else to do. And so it’s an interesting question, like what specifically helps us to feel more, well, what specifically improves our well-being? And that’s what this article was looking at. And what they found is that improving our insight and improving our self-reflection were positive predictors for well-being. And rumination is a negative predictor.

And I think that we all kind of understand that. I debated whether I should explain to you what rumination is, and then I realized, no, I’m pretty sure everyone listening to this knows what rumination is. It’s really interesting. They found that rumination seems to perpetuate a depressed mood and that it likely plays a role in sustaining anxiety disorders and depression. So I know that when I’m ruminating, it really doesn’t feel good at all. It is keeping us stuck typically in the past, you know, but interesting that they believe it plays a role in sustaining more mental health, you know, more significant mental health issues because as we know. Right, every human experiences anxiety, every human experiences, depressed mood or depression symptoms or feelings.

But, you know, when it kind of crosses over a line, then as described by the DSM, then it’s considered more of a disorder. So found that to be quite fascinating. So what’s really cool about this, though, is that what they found with insight and self-reflection, I mean, that is literally what we do in coaching. And I think a lot of people still are very confused like, but what actually is coaching? And I will say it is kind of confusing. And you know why? Because people coach in different ways. So I’m just going to speak to the way that I coach and the way that my team of coaches who I’ve personally trained, how they coach. So I’m just going to speak for myself.

I know there are other ways of doing this that maybe aren’t as related to this. So, you know, but so what was really interesting about this article like, so they said it was a positive predictor for well-being, having, you know, more insight and self-reflection, but like, how do they measure that? So they measured both subjective well-being. So just people being able to just tell them how they felt, you know, just what they had experienced. But they also measured their well-being with a scale called the psychological well-being scale. This is something you can Google online and find it. But what this psychological well-being scale does is it measures six aspects of well-being and happiness.

They’re actually referred to as eudaimonic or maybe it’s pronounced eudaimonic. I don’t really know. It’s a Greek word. I’ll tell you what it means in a minute. But eudaimonic well-being. So eudaimonia, it’s a Greek word and it’s often translated into happiness or welfare. So this is something that the classical Greek philosophers wrote a lot about. So we’re talking Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, even the Stoics. They they all spend a lot of time thinking about this. And it even then goes into moral philosophy and there is a whole rabbit hole that you can go down if you want to do that.

But basically there were six elements to eudaimonic well-being, and that’s what this scale measures. So what those six aspects of well-being and happiness are are autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self acceptance. So here’s what I want to just share with you, because I read this and I was like, Oh my God, this is like literally what we do every day in coaching. And so just follow me on this. Like when we do not feel that we have autonomy, which so many doctors feel that they don’t, right? They feel like their autonomy has been taken away from them. By administration, by legal laws and rules, and just the powers that be. Powers outside of themselves. Right. They feel like they’ve lost that autonomy. And so when you don’t have that autonomy or you believe you don’t.

Then you have less happiness, less well-being. And we see that so often in physicians when it comes to their work, right? So autonomy, environmental mastery is the next one. So many of us think that we’re just sort of subject to the environment around us that we don’t have control over that, that the environment, you know, physically, even, you know, who we surround ourselves with, just the way it is around us, basically, that we don’t have control over that. So being able to master that produces more well-being and happiness, personal growth, you know, I mean, I think it makes so much sense. Like we just are driven as humans to improve.

If we were not, we would not have all the advances that we have. I mean, just think back, even like just 50 years ago. Next week is my birthday. Turning 47. And I’m just thinking back to like some things that, you know, how it used to be in the late 70s and early 80s and how much has changed. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. And my parents are in their 80s and just thinking to myself like and how much change they have seen in their lives, like, why do we have any of that? The only reason we have any of it is because of humans drive for personal growth. So when we aren’t able to grow as humans, we feel less happy and less well-being. Right? So positive relations with others. Oh, my gosh, makes so much sense.

I cannot even tell you. We coach probably coach on relationships more than than any other topic. You would think we’d be like digging into the details of food all the time. We are not because that is simple and it does not require that much of your effort or energy. That’s the easy part. What we got to then do is figure out those relationships when we are not experiencing positive relationships with others, whether that’s at work or in our personal lives, it detracts from our well-being and our happiness.

Next is purpose in life. This is something that I think is very, very important. I think that where I start to see this being an issue is when people really are burnt out and start feeling like, what is the point why I’m even doing this? You know, I think that that’s where I see that in physicians who are not burned out. I think there’s less of this because I think that for a lot of doctors going into medicine at least had some element of purpose driving that decision. And so finding some personal value out of the work that you do, I think is in feeling really connected to that, I think is something that comes more naturally to doctors, but not necessarily I mean, especially if you decided to become a doctor because your family expected it of you or basically made you do it. That definitely happens, too.

There’s definitely, you know, times when that’s an issue. And of course, right when we’re not feeling like we’re fulfilling our purpose or we’re disconnected from that purpose would make sense that that would negatively influence our happiness and well-being. And then the final part is the self acceptance part, right? Which is basically what it all ends up coming down to, which is that we need to work on loving ourselves, accepting ourselves as we are. And I know that sounds so unfamiliar or uncomfortable for a lot of people. I remember hearing those words and being like, Yes, logically I understand what you’re saying, and that does make sense.

I would like to experience some self acceptance, but I literally do not know how and if that’s how you feel when you hear that, I want you to know that you’re not alone. That is a really, really common common experience, particularly for people who are higher on the achievement scale, right? Who are higher achievers, who really expect excellence from themselves. It’s just something that’s so unfamiliar. We do not know how to create that. Well, the good news that I have for you is that you can be taught. I was taught something. I teach others all the time. My team teaches others all the time. It’s something that we have to learn and practice. It’s a skill that we just have not been taught. And so again, right when you are rejecting yourself, when you don’t have a lot of self acceptance, it would make sense that your happiness and well-being would take a hit, right? So those are the six measures autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life and self acceptance.

So these are like six aspects of well-being and happiness and a way to measure whether these other activities are actually moving the needle with well-being and happiness. And so, you know, insight and self-reflection are what drives that. And, you know, I’ve talked on this podcast. So much about building awareness, understanding yourself and not with judgment, not with criticism, but to just understand yourself better. Why are we here? What has created this problem? Not because we’re bad humans and we shouldn’t be struggling with this, but because the facts are that we are struggling.
And something has led us here because we know that our results are always created by the way that we think and feel. So that’s not a bad thing. No judgment, no criticism. It’s just the way things work. It’s just how life is. So when we can build insight into that, build awareness, understand ourselves better, understand others better, just, you know, be able to look at a situation around us and not just see it as the total just face value, but be able to spend some time thinking about some other elements of things. Get curious about different parts of it that insight is what helps us to create those six aspects of well-being, right? Like just when we’re able to understand that, okay, I just had this argument with this person, so hold on.

What was going on for me? What did they say? And then what did I make that mean? That, you know, drove me to take the action of lashing out at them back, like reacting in that way. What was that all about? And that’s what I just described. There is part of self-reflection, right? It’s insight and self-reflection that are positive predictors for well-being and happiness. So we have to be able to reflect back on ourselves, not in a self conscious way, not in a critical way, but in a way where we can understand ourselves better so that we can make conscious choices to do better in the future.

And when we have more insight and more self-reflection, as the study has shown, we get to feel happier, we get to feel more well-being. And I see this literally every day, literally every day in my coaching practice where the people that I work with, the physicians that I work with, are truly having these results and noticing them and seeing them play out in their lives and seeing how much so many things have improved in their lives because they have been practicing and applying these tools of insight and self-reflection. So this is how coaching helps things to be better, right? Insight and self-reflection on why are we eating this food? Why are we not doing the things that we know we should be doing? Typically, when we ask that question, we’re so mean to ourselves about it.

Instead of genuinely wondering no for real, why am I not willing to do these things that I, quote unquote should do? There’s a good reason you have a good reason why you’re not doing it. So let’s figure out what that is. Maybe there’s a different thing that you. Quote unquote, should do or plays into what you think you should be doing that you are willing to do so that you do start getting those results. But when we just are beating ourselves up and we lack that insight and self-reflection, we are literally just stuck in a hamster wheel. We’re not making any progress. And I think that is what so many people who struggle with food and weight find themselves with where they just are.

Like, I’m putting forth so much time, effort, energy, and I feel like I’m going nowhere. Well, totally understandable. But the good news is, is there’s a way off of that, a way to move forward, a way to no longer need food and possibly alcohol to feel better and to understand yourself so that you are growing, which helps you to feel happier and more well in your life. Which mean what else could we ask for? Sounds amazing to me. So next week, actually in a couple of days from when this episode goes out live, we are going to be enrolling our next weight loss for doctors only coaching group.

So if you’re like, Yeah, this makes a lot of sense and I think I’d like to explore what that would look like. Then I want to first invite you to come to the free training that we have coming up later this week. We have actually a couple of different days and times. It’s going to be this Thursday and Friday, and I think it’s April 6th and April 7th. And the way to register for that pick, the time that’s going to work for you and day is to go to katrina.com/different So that’s how you’re going to pick that up get yourself there if you listen to this after that and you’re just interested in getting more information about the program, possibly talking to a member of my coach team to get more information or get your questions answered, just go katrinaubellmd.com/info.

You can get more information about our program and figuring out if it’s maybe the next best step for you so that you can actually create what you want. I mean, why do we eat? Because we want to feel better. I mean, plain and simple, it tastes good. Well, what’s good about a tasting Good? It helps us to feel better. We just want to feel better. And that’s one way. That overall takes away from our well-being. What if we could increase our well-being in a way that was more sustainable? That’s what we help you to do with coaching, and then you just don’t need the food anymore.

And guess what? When you don’t need the food anymore and you don’t need the alcohol anymore, your body goes to a natural weight for you, right? It doesn’t always have to be about, you know, slogging away and being so uncomfortable and so restricted and so deprived to get the pounds off. Right. We can be open to it being kind of a nice side effect that we got that we enjoy because we did this other work. And also, if you just want to get to work losing weight, we can help you with that too. All right.
Have a great, great, great rest of your week. Thank you for joining me. I would wish you a happy weekend if it was you know, if I knew it was the weekend for you, but it’s a weekend for me, so I’m wishing myself a happy weekend and you a great rest of your week. I will talk to you next time. Hopefully, you’ll be able to come to the free training that we have. How weight loss is different for doctors and what to do about it. It’s going to be later this week, like I said, go to Katrina bell.com/different thank you so much have a great rest of your day talk to you soon. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #327: How Coaching Increases Well-Being appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you sometimes feel like no matter how much you learn, nothing changes? Maybe more knowledge isn’t what you need.

In this episode, we’re exploring what we think we need vs. what we actually need when it comes to acquiring and applying knowledge. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably internalized some messages about how you learn that aren’t actually true. It’s time to unpack that.

If you’re ready to free yourself from the never-ending cycle of learning and start to see the results in your life, tune in to this episode.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Expectations vs. reality when it comes to acquiring and applying knowledge * Why you don’t have as much to learn as you think * How to start applying your knowledge to your life * The relationship between knowledge and application * How we develop skills and expertise * The importance of support when you are practicing a skill

Knowledge doesn’t always translate into adopting behaviors that create lasting change. There are other things you need to do if you want that knowledge to stick. That’s where coaching comes in. Coaching is often seen as a last resort, but I think it’s time for that to change.

If you want to learn more about weight loss coaching and how it could help you go to katrinaubellmd.com/info for more information about the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Enroll in Weight Loss for Doctors Only

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Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #325: How Spiraling Is Okay, Normal, and Expected

Ep #324: Is Peace and Freedom Around Food Just Magical Thinking?

Ep #323: Making Time to Create Peace and Freedom Around Food

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss Coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. How are you today? So glad that you’re here with me.

I’ve been thinking about what we’re going to talk about here for a little while, and I’m just really excited to share something with you that I think you’re going to really resonate with. I think it’s going to help to make a lot of things make a lot more sense for you. I know that when I was struggling with my weight and was, you know, losing through restriction and white knuckling and counting things and doing things that I knew I never would do for the rest of my life. But just very much like means to an end behavior, you know what I mean? Like, I will do this for now to get the result that I want, but there’s no way I’m doing this forever. I would have just found this information I’m going to share with you today to be so enlightening, honestly, Like really, really helpful because I have recently been thinking a lot about what we think is the way this is supposed to work and what we think we need and what we actually need.

And, you know, I can say this my business is going to be seven years old here in really just a couple of months. So I’ve been at this a while. I’ve been helping women physicians to lose weight permanently since the beginning. I’m not someone who’s, like jumped all around helping different people doing different things. Like, this is what I started with. This is what I remain committed to. And I have a big vision for the future. On how to continue bringing this information to the whole medical community to help people to really understand what’s going on when people struggle with weight.

And I just think this information is really, really key to understand founding why coaching works and why we should be considering coaching more because we’re just starting there a little bit. People are like, Yeah, okay, yeah, coaching can help. Like that’s when people really, really struggle. Like most people can probably just do it on their own. But like if you really struggle, then you need coaching. And I just want to share a different way of approaching this. This idea has been something that’s been simmering in my mind. I’ve shared with you before that I often have podcast ideas kind of on the back burner of my brain, sometimes for months, sometimes even for years.

And I know like when they’re ready, they’ll pop up, you know? You know, sometimes What is it? I think it’s like when you cook fresh pasta, you know, when it floats at the top, you know, it’s ready. It’s like when it comes to the forefront, I know it’s going to be cooked and ready to come out for you. But I recently got a message from someone who felt like they had tried everything with weight loss, and she wrote, I have a lot of knowledge, but that hasn’t translated into adopting behaviors and thoughts that create lasting change. In many respects, I feel that having a coach is the only thing I haven’t tried, and I think that that is such a great summation of where a lot of us are now. Maybe you’re someone who hasn’t struggled with their weight for very long.

I have also worked with people who are like, You know what? I never struggled with weight my whole life until just recently. And I heard about you and I want your help. And I’m like, Good for you. And I’m so glad that you can just skip over the kind of collective trauma we’ve all experienced through diet culture and the diet industry. That’s so amazing. But I will say that it’s more common that people have struggled for a while or have struggled on and off. I’ve tried lots of different things and are either still in a place where they’re struggling or are back to a place where they’re struggling and they’re just kind of, you know, exasperated by the whole thing.

And they don’t know what to do next. So let’s just like back out instead of zooming in. Let’s just like, don’t even know what you do on the focus on a camera. But like turning it so that we’re backing out so we can see a bigger picture view. Here’s what I think most of us think. I think it’s what I thought. And I just want you to consider if there’s a part of you that resonates with this or relates to this. I think that when we think about our weight, our eating, just, you know, food, drama, chatter, you know, just all the stuff, because it’s not all about weight, right? Like, it’s not even necessarily about weight for some people.

It could be just the relationship with food or like, you know, I could be happy with my body as it is right now, but I just would really like to not feel so controlled by food like all of that, that whole experience. I think that most of us believe that in order to get to where we want to be right, which I call peace and freedom around food, we need about 80% of that, like, you know, crossing that bridge from where we are now to where we want to be, that about 80% of that is going to be learning more things, acquiring knowledge, understanding more concepts, right? Frameworks like learning, reading, watching videos.

That’s what we think is going to be about 80% of it, and that about 20% of it is going to be the application part, right? We’re going to learn a bunch more stuff and then we’re going to apply it to ourselves and then we’re going to get there, right? Because it’s just like 20% of it is the application part. And then we’re going to be there at peace and freedom around food. And I think that belief really messes us up because in my experience in almost seven years of coaching women physicians on weight loss, I have seen that it’s actually the opposite.

We need about 20% more knowledge, right? Because there are some gaps in our understanding that we need to fill just some key things that we need to understand. And then 80% of. What we need to do is application actually integrating all this work and knowledge and learning into ourselves and our lives. Now if you had told me this. Eight years ago when I was doing this work myself, I kind of to be honest, I think I would have been a little disheartened. So if you’re feeling that way or kind of like let down or disappointed or bummed out, it’s okay. Okay. It’s okay. The reason why we want it to be so knowledge specific is because, first of all, we’re really good at learning.

We like to learn. We’re good students. We understand things quickly. We pick up on concepts. So this is like a muscle that’s well developed. We feel like in our zone when we’re learning more, we’re like, Yes, I know how to be a good student. If I need to learn something to succeed, I’m on it. No question about it. I’ve got this. So there’s some familiarity in that. So we want to believe that most of the work that we need to do is something that is very familiar, that we succeed at that we know how to excel at. But I also want to just point out to you that when you’re thinking about taking care of a patient, like think about just a patient interaction. And just for the sake of this example, I’m going to do it in a more clinic setting. So, you know, maybe we’ll skip this patient needing to have a procedure done just for the sake of simplicity. But of course we could factor that in as well. But if you think about it, a patient comes in, say they’re new to you and they have a problem. We’re just going to keep it general because, of course, we have people of all different specialties and backgrounds who are listening here. The patient comes in and what do you do? You immediately get their history, right.

You ask a lot of questions. You try to understand better what’s going on. And what you’re doing there is you are learning. You’re learning about the patient. You’re learning about their history, about their backstory, about how long things have been going on. You’re learning about specifics of their symptoms. You’re learning about what they’ve tried before, what hasn’t worked, if any things have worked. You’re just, you know, learning and discovering and understanding. This is something that you’re very good at. You do this all day, every day. It’s a skill that is very well developed for you. Then what you do is you apply that knowledge.

And when I say a little bit, I don’t mean like you’re not putting your full thought into it, but particularly if this is something that you’ve seen before, which, you know, for most of us in practice, you know, right when you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras. Like, we’re probably not seeing zebras all day long. We’re seeing horses. So that means that we need to just kind of rely on our experience and what things typically are. And so, you know, there’s some application of that information, but sort of into, you know, a bit of an algorithm that we already understand and we have some familiarity about what the next steps will be. And then we have some familiarity with how we explain that to the patient and what our next steps moving forward are going to be, whether that is some sort of medication or some sort of lifestyle change or whatever it is that you’re asking them to do.

All of that is still very, very familiar. Then you send the patient on their way. And if they do the things that you ask them to do, then they come back and, you know, in most cases, they’re going to have had success. Right. It’s going to have worked. Not always, but the majority of the time it’s going to have worked. And you get to feel good about yourself. Look at me. Help this person. Right? Like so awesome. I love that I was able to make a difference in this person’s life. And you get to feel good. You get a dopamine hit around that. That’s amazing. But here’s the part that you didn’t have to play in that patient. Having that great outcome. The actual application and integration of the doing of the thing right? Like you didn’t have to go and take the medication and figure out how to fit that part into your day to day life. Like you didn’t have to go and figure out how to make those lifestyle changes, right? Often we’re asking people to make changes to their habits and their, you know, day to day lives. And that really that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Like that’s the hard work. And we let the patients do that part. Maybe we give them some tips or some help. But like for the most part, they’re doing that hard. Part of actually integrating your advice and your help into their lives. And we get to skip over that part and then we get to celebrate at the end because things have gone so well. And, you know, they did this hard work of figuring it out. And then they, of course, also get to enjoy the success of that. But as doctors, we get to feel like, Oh, look, I learned a bunch of things.

I did a little bit of integration and application and look, something great happened. Forgetting that there was a lot of hard work done on the patient’s end to help create that as well. And so my point in this is that we have a lot of other situations in our lives where, you know, 80% of what we do is learning and 20% is application, and then we get a good result. So it makes sense that we think that working on our food issues and weight and, you know, all this stuff that drives us to use food to feel better like that, it’s also going to be that kind of 80 over 20. But when we think that that’s how it’s going to be and then we find out it’s not. We feel really bad about ourselves.

Right. So what we tend to do since we think it’s knowledge that we’re missing, we’re like, oh, okay, you know what? I still struggle here, so I obviously just don’t know enough. So I need to go acquire more knowledge. And I have had many clients who have become obesity medicine fellowship trained, right? Like if I become a obesity medicine fellowship trained expert in this, then I’ll finally know enough to be able to fix this. And they still struggle and they still come for coaching help because even that acquiring all that knowledge didn’t do the trick. And the worst part of the whole thing is that when this happens, our tendency is to shame ourselves, right?

Because we’ve believed that more knowledge is going to be the bulk, the majority of what we need to do. And so when we obtain more knowledge and it still doesn’t work, we start shaming ourselves and thinking something’s wrong with us. Like the knowledge should have worked. I know so much. So something must be wrong with me because I’m not actually doing the thing. And the only reason we get stuck in this shame spiral or shame cycle is because we’re confused and we think that it’s 80% knowledge when it’s 20% knowledge and 80% application and integration. So what I want to offer to you is that what it takes to lose weight permanently? May not be something that you even understand.

That concept may be very foreign to you. And I also just want to say that when you’ve had patients who maybe have had success in losing weight, you know, you probably talk to them about some of the stuff they did. But, you know, the actual hard work of digging in, you weren’t privy to that part, like you weren’t a part of that work that they did. And so then it’s easy to believe that that part was less than it really was, especially when this is what we believe, that it’s 80% knowledge, 20% application.

If you really think about it, though, this makes so much sense that it’s 20% knowledge and 80% application. Think about we’re going to give the surgeons and the people who do procedures some time now. And for those of you who don’t do procedures, you can still understand this. So if you think about being a surgeon. Becoming a surgeon. You can read all the books on surgical techniques. You can watch tons and tons and tons and tons of videos. On surgical techniques you can observe and assist in maybe retracting or, you know, holding the bovie or something like like doing some very basic assisting and watching other surgeons do these cases. But that really only gets you so far, right There is the knowledge that you need to know. Of course it’s very important. You need to fill those gaps.

You need to very much understand what it is that you’re doing, the anatomy of that area. You know what? To avoid common pitfalls. You know how to fix things if they go wrong. Of course, there’s some knowledge that needs to be developed there. But then why is a surgical residency five years or longer? Because you need reps. You need to get in there and actually do the procedure. You need to be the one doing it because that’s when you really learn, right? Like how does it become possible for you to be able to do, you know, a tonsillectomy, you know, or an appendectomy practically in your sleep? When it’s not complicated because you’ve done it so many times, because you have applied that knowledge and completely integrated it into, you know, your body, essentially. Right? Like it’s like it becomes almost like muscle memory. It’s just how you roll.

You just know how to do this. You don’t even have to put forth so much effort and energy and thought necessarily into it because you just know how to do it. But the only way to get there, like you cannot get there by reading more books or watching more videos or watching other surgeons do it. You have to actually get in there and do it. And that’s really honestly, the majority of your training is getting in there and doing parts of it and then more of it and then doing the real thing with other people, you know, watching closely.

And then now, you know, you’re attending can sit in the far corner of the room not even scrubbed in because they know you’ve got it. But just in case, right. Like there’s a whole process in supporting you as you become more and more skilled in being able to do these procedures. And that’s for a reason. The reason it’s like that is because that’s how long it takes to learn how to do it well, right. And all the different things that you’re supposed to be able to know how to do. And so that time of active participation, that residency is like what coaching is where you are still learning things, you’re still filling in some knowledge gaps, you’re understanding things maybe on a deeper level, understanding nuances more.

But then you start realizing, Oh, look like an area where I struggle or maybe I don’t have quite the dexterity of other people is in this one area, so I need to practice more there. You know, I have understood this one concept and I need to practice that more because when I’m actually in there, I start to lose landmarks and I start to get a little bit lost. I mean, I’m not a surgeon. This is I’m saying what other people have said to me, what my my recollection of back in the day. Right. But that is what coaching does.

Coaching is 20% of filling in those gaps, a little bit more knowledge, a little bit more understanding, and then learning more about yourself, how these things apply to you, then applying and integrating those things into your life with support, right? You’re not just sitting there as a general surgery intern doing an appendectomy completely by yourself. There’s so much support. There’s so many people right there ready to jump in the minute you need help. And then over time, you need less and less and less help. That’s exactly what happens with coaching. Sometimes I’ll coach somebody and I’ll be like, you know, this person essentially just sort of coached themselves while talking to me.

Like I created the safe space and the environment within which they can actually sit and think and express what’s going on for them. But they’ve been coached so much that they already can guide themselves. So far, I’m just there kind of providing some guidance and maybe, you know, kind of, you know, keeping them in their lane a little bit, but like not even doing that much of the heavy lifting because they’ve been coached so much very similar to the, you know, resident who’s got the attending not even scrubbed in, you know, or maybe going in between rooms because they know you’ve got it. That’s what happens when you use coaching to help you to create peace and freedom around food.

You apply, you integrate, you make mistakes. You figure out, hey, that didn’t work. Okay. So then we got to evaluate what worked, what didn’t work. We need to adapt. We need to try something different. I mean, with every different surgeon, there’s, you know, their way that they like to do it. You get to try out different methods, different people’s thought processes behind it, figure out how you like to do it right. Maybe learn a little bit more about that and you’re back to understanding how that applies to you. And that is exactly what we do with weight loss coaching.

When you start to understand that you need to actually spend 80% of your effort, energy and time in the application part with coaching support to help you to do that, you start to make real progress. But you can read and watch. You ever hear this when people are like, you know, I watch this procedure like the surgery on YouTube and I really think I could do that. You know, it’s kind of funny, right? Like, it’s like I hear you that you think you can do that. Then you get in there. But what I remember is I don’t know that people do it so much, but for a while there, when I was in practice, all of a sudden, like on Amazon, they were selling these super cheap otoscopes. And so you could buy for like 30 bucks.

You could buy this like piece of junk otoscope and and some ear tips and they would send like a little card. It was kind of like you can diagnose your if your kid has an ear infection or not like that was the thing that they said. So parents who were worried about that a lot or whose kids had a lot of ear infections, some of them would be like, you know what? I got this thing so I can, you know, check and, you know, whatever. So I remember asking one time to one of the patients I had a good relationship with, I said, you know, I’d love to see what that looks like.

Would you just bring that in? I’d love to see it. And this first of all, such a piece of junk, you couldn’t see a squat with this thing. But even the card that was included on like, what does an acute otitis media look like? Like terrible example. And then like, they’re like, well, I think I saw this and that, and I’m like, No, that’s not what you were looking at. You were actually looking at the wall, the ear canal, like you weren’t even actually looking at the tympanic membrane. And they’re like, Oh, like they were so disappointed because they were like, I can do this. Like, they’re just looking in there. I could just look in there too, not realizing that it literally took years and years and thousands of years for me to know exactly what I was looking at and how to diagnose that.

Like, what is it that I’m seeing and what does that mean? Right? Like, that’s the reps, that’s the coaching, that’s the application, the integration. God, I remember when you’re doing like your continuity clinic as a pediatric resident for three years, you know, if you’re trying to, you know, look in a kid’s ears and you know, even if there’s a bunch of cerumen in there, you know, maybe try to get it out. And if you still can’t see, you’ve got your attending, who’s going to come in and take care of it.

And I remember being out in practice, you know, first couple of days on my own and being like, okay, girl, it’s on. You mean, could I have asked one of my partners to come in? But I was like, I think my pride was like, No, you’re doing this yourself. Like it’s all on you now, so figure it out. And of course I did. Right? When it’s all on you, you will figure it out. But that doesn’t come overnight, right? It wasn’t like I graduated medical school, and then there was that day. There was a lot of practice and application and guidance and help and feedback and, you know, adapting and learning and doing better next time. That was in between that graduation and actually doing it on my own.

So that’s what I want to offer to you. I think you might be confused. I know I was I just thought if I just could learn more, I just need to understand it more. I really don’t think that’s the case. I can teach you the little bit more that you need to learn because there probably is a little bit more that would be helpful. I find that there’s a little bit more, but that’s not the main thing that you need help with. What you need is some coaching help to get you to like do the steps that are required to get those reps in to live life without using food. As I say, like your emotional support animal and then like, what does that look like then?

How do you do this? You don’t have to figure that out on your own. I think we’re very surprised when that little 20% that we thought was just our application time becomes a lot more challenging than we thought it would be. We’re really surprised and confused and want to offer to you that when you go into it going, You know what, there’s a little more I need to learn. And then now it’s application time and I’m going to be all in on getting the help that I need to be able to work through this so that I actually know how to do it.

Like we’re not like, okay, I’m going to spend five years becoming a surgeon and at the end go, You know what I mean? Most people don’t go, You know what? Forget it. I’m just not going to do that. Right? Like, because we get better at it and we start to realize, like, we’re making progress. And this actually could be enjoyable. And look at the results of me doing this. Like, that’s what we start to create when we’re applying coaching into our lives. When I hear this all the time from my clients where they’re like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I lost weight.

But that’s not the best part because the best part is them working through everything else that drove them to overeat in the first place, right? They enjoy their work again, their relationships are better. You know, their relationships with their kids are better if they’re in a marriage relationship that is better. Their relationships with their family and friends is so much better. The way they view the world is so much better, so much less negative and painful when that’s your experience of your life. Yeah, of course you’re not needing excess food to make you feel better. And when things aren’t going well, you also know how to deal with that. So you don’t need food to make you feel better. Now this takes practice. So we’re about to enroll our May weight loss for doctors only group.

And if this information resonates, if you’re like, okay, yep, that actually makes a lot of sense, then I want to invite you to consider looking into the program a little bit more because I just see people struggling and they’re very confused about what needs to actually happen. And so, yeah, I want to encourage you to check that out. You can go to Katrina. Com forward slash info info if you want to check it out right now. But as this episode is coming out next week, we’re going to have some trainings to help you to understand things a little bit more about why weight loss is different for doctors and what we can do about it.

And we’ll be enrolling our next group for May 2023. And if this is something if you’re going like, you know what, that’s it, I want to invite you to come and join us. We know that what we do works. We have actual study data to prove it. So this isn’t just like a thing where I’m just making it up. I mean, I’ve coached now over 1400 women physicians, so, you know, we know what we’re doing here. We’ve iterated and just very excited to help you with this application part, this integration part, this 80% that we mostly try to skip over or it just we haven’t given it enough attention. So anyway, that’s what I got for you.

It is 80 over 20, but it’s 80% application and integration, 20% knowledge. All right, my friend, I hope you have a great rest of your week. If you’re feeling some feelings right now, you might just be thinking you might be even, like, so disappointed. Like, Oh my God. All this time I thought it was the other way around. You know, it’s okay to feel. Just have a moment of Wow. Okay. But I want to invite you to just consider that this is an excellent opportunity, right? Like, once you actually understand what it’s really like, there is an opportunity to make this better, to fix this, to move forward, to actually put this issue to bed for good, to find permanent peace and freedom around food. That’s what we do. We’re not doing anything that’s, you know, fly by night or things that you would just do short term to get a result, only to go back to the old way.

All right, friends, That’s it. Chatty with you today. Enjoy the rest of your week and hope to see you next time. And maybe also on our free trainings next week, how weight loss is different for doctors and what to do about it. Have a great one. I’ll talk to you next time. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #326: When More Knowledge Doesn’t Equate to Weight Loss appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Let’s talk about spiraling.

You’ve probably heard of spiraling before, and you’ve probably felt it. Who hasn’t? But in this episode, I’m interested in reframing the way we think about spiraling.

We all experience highs and lows in life and I think we all know that they’re inevitable, but it can still sometimes feel like those lows are going to last forever. I want to share a way of thinking about the trajectory of your life that will help you move through the lows more quickly and easily so that they don’t feel so hopeless when they come.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The connotations of “spiraling” * How to visualize the non-linear progress of life * Accepting that it’s normal to experience some low points after some high points in life * How to move on from lows more quickly and easily so they don’t interfere with you life * Welcoming failures and challenges as opportunities to learn * How spiraling applies to different areas of life * Reminding yourself that you’re still moving forward, even when there are ups and downs

When things are going great, that’s awesome and you deserve to enjoy it, but when things aren’t going your way, it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that things will never go your way again, it just means that you have an opportunity to learn and grow.

For free resources to help you start making progress on your weight loss goals, go to katrinaubellmd.com/resources.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Episode 12: Processing Negative Emotions Without Comfort Food

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #324: Is Peace and Freedom Around Food Just Magical Thinking?

Ep #323: Making Time to Create Peace and Freedom Around Food

Ep #322: Intuitive Eating vs. Coaching

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss Coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today’s podcast. As I’m talking, I’m like, Oh, I’m a little sultry today in my voice. Oh man, I’m one of those people that I just talk a little bit extra than normal and I start to feel it in my voice.

And of course, you can imagine that being a pediatrician talking all day long over screaming babies, tantruming toddlers, you know, all of that could sometimes be really, really challenging. I actually had a period of time, I guess maybe a couple of years after I had my first child, where I was losing my voice for an entire week, like every eight weeks. It was brutal. And you’d think that people would be like, okay, well, you know, you just take care of your voice. They’re like, No, I still have all my questions. I’m going to make you try to whisper, you know, like, squeak out whatever I need you to say, you know, to answer my questions and stuff. It was really tough.

I ended up actually seeing a laryngologist and got a strobe and went to speech therapy even to learn how to use my voice better. I think maybe I needed to up my dose of acid reflux medications for a while. Anyway, the point is this is kind of par for the course for me. Maybe you don’t even hear it that much. I feel it. There’s like this kind of like, increased resistance when I speak that I feel. So I actually have a long day of talking ahead of me. This is the first thing I’m doing today. So you’re getting the best of me. And I’m glad. I’m glad for that for sure. My voice is a little bit off kilter because I just got back yesterday from spending some time with some new coaches that we’ve hired into our program who are super, super awesome.

I’ve spent a ton of time with them over the last several weeks, training them, onboarding them, and we had a really great time bringing them together and doing some even greater sort of development and preparation. And some of them actually started coaching today for the first time and I’m very, very excited for them. That’s super, super great. It’s just it’s so fun to really, you know, spend time with people, develop them and have them be an extension of my vision, essentially, right? Like I’m only one person. I can only do so much.

But through them, they’re able to really help to change women physicians lives, which is what we do every day in this company, which is so awesome. And of course on this podcast as well. So anyway, that’s why my voice is a little bit funky because I was doing a lot of talking and laughing and we just had a great time together and really meaningful time as well. So today. So this is interesting. You know, I’m sure you can imagine that I do prepare before I record these podcasts. It’s not like I just like hit record and just like, what am I going to talk about today?

And so I was doing some prep for this and I then looked at the spreadsheet that I used to keep track of episodes and just like we use kind of internally for tracking and making sure everything happens the way it should. And I realized the date that this episode is being released. And so the date, if you’re listening to this on Real Time, the day it’s released is April fourth. And April 4th is actually the anniversary of the baby that I had that died of her birth slash death. So I was like, oh, and so it’s been 13 years this year, which is crazy. Cannot believe it’s been 13 years. But guess it makes sense because I had two more kids after her and they’re nine and 11.

So yeah, that’s how it goes. But anyway, I think life has just been quite busy for me over the last several months and definitely in this month it’s March as I’m as I’m recording this and I just think I hadn’t even gotten to the place in my mind of like, Oh, April is coming. Like, you know, that just even thinking about the fact that the anniversary is coming, that it’s her birthday that’s coming. And what I found personally is that every year is different. Like every year is like kind of hits me differently. And what I find is really interesting is that as I’m even talking about it, like I feel it in my throat a little bit, I’ve got a little, little tightness there.

So I’m not sure how this is going to go. I’m like, Wow. It kind of surprised me because I had the whole concept for this episode worked out in my head, and then I saw the date and actually the concept, the topic today I think is actually I was going to talk about it and I will talk about it through the framework of weight loss and creating peace and freedom around food. But it actually totally applies to going through grief as well, and I think a lot of other challenges in life. So there we go. I guess it was like one of those like thanks universe kinds of things because I think this is just the perfect, perfect day for this episode to be releasing.

And so, yeah, I mean, I’ve obviously done a lot of processing and healing since the time that my daughter passed. I think it was episode 12 where I actually talk more about kind of the situation and what happened because don’t blame me if you’re like, Oh my God, I have to know what happened. Then I’m like, same way, so I’m not going to go. Through it all again for you here. But episode 12 of this podcast, I tell more of the details about what happened there. So in case you’re curious, if you’re not, that’s totally cool too. So just to kind of lay that out there, I’m like, Oh, maybe I’ll get a little I might get a little emotional on this podcast.

I didn’t expect that. But here we go. So what I really wanted to talk about today is the concept of spiraling. You know, it’s something that we use. It’s like a term we use colloquially just as a common word. And when I use it, I mean sort of like circling the drain, like I’m spiraling, like it’s maybe the intensity and speed of my emotions is like ramping up and my brain feels like it’s like pinball machine. So everything is going crazy and it feels like it’s like a ramp up. Like it’s getting more and more intense, right? When you think about like a spiral going, it’s just like, Oh my gosh.

Like it’s just, you know, whipping around maybe faster and faster. So it’s typically a term that we use with a negative connotation, but through several paths. I have also come to become aware of a different sort of metaphor where we can use a spiral as a way to explain what’s really a normal part of being a human, a normal thing that we should expect a normal process that happens to us in our lives as adults and honestly as kids do, but I think mostly as adults, or maybe we’re more aware of it as adults, but when it happens, we think that something is going wrong, like we think that something is off, that we’ve failed in some way, that we’re doing something wrong, that you know it’s not going to happen for us or whatever that is.

And I really wish that I could give a citation to whoever first came up with this. But I have to say that I’ve heard kind of different variations of it. I like read about it. I heard someone talking about it and nobody knew where they had heard about it. So I’m going to put my own spin on it today, and we’re just going to be grateful for the anonymous person who maybe first, you know, put this together because I don’t know who it is since this is a, you know, an auditory experience for you and not a visual experience.

I’m going to use words to explain something that I’m going to need to just use your imagination a little bit so that you can kind of understand what I’m talking about. So think about like either like a spring or, you know, something that is like a coil, basically. Okay, so think about a coil and think about it laying on its side so that the open ends are to the left and the right. And they’re kind of basically laying on a timeline, you know what I mean? Like, like time is passing and that spring is there. And then think about that spring, the right side of it being tipped up a little bit.

Okay. So the x axis of this is time and the y axis is your progress in your life, your personal growth, your development, kind of how close you are to reaching your goals? Like the higher you go on the Y axis, the closer you are to to getting to where you want to be, you know, whether that’s like something like self-actualization or whatever it is, that’s where we’re going in the Y direction. So we’ve got this spring that’s on an angle. And so what we think is going to happen is that, you know, over the course of time it should be just like a linear progression that, you know, when we start at the left lower part of this graph, you know, we haven’t made as much progress with our goals.

We haven’t developed as much, we haven’t self-actualized as much like whatever it is, we’re coming in more as beginners or new to the process. And then as time progresses, as we move along the x axis, we think that it should just be like a linear progression up. So we go up that y axis just, you know, in a nice linear progression that, you know, as time passes, we grow more and more. We just progress and progress and we succeed and succeed. And that would be super fun if that’s how it worked. But if you’ve had any experience in your life, then you know that that is not at all how it works.

It’s much more like a spring. Okay? And what I mean by that is you’re moving across time and as the coil moves up, you are progressing along the y axis, right? You are growing, you are developing, you are seeing successes, you are winning, you are succeeding. But then inevitably, at some point, the coil moves back down again. Right? Coil shifts down. And this is when we start to think something’s going wrong with weight loss. This is when we’re like, shoot. And we start thinking this isn’t going to work. Maybe we gain some weight back.

Maybe the brain chatter around food is back when we had a lot of peace there for a while. Maybe, you know, we have some sort of life event or, you know, physical issue that we have going on. And what was working is no longer really possible for us or it’s no longer sustainable for us. And so when we go. Down on the spring. You know, we’re moving downward. Time is still passing, but it’s like almost like our development, our progress towards our goals goes down, right? We retreat, we go backwards. You know, when people talk about it’s like, you know, one step forward, two steps back, that’s like what it feels like. It’s like these are the two steps back. We’re moving forward. We’re sliding backward.

And during this time, it is the hardest because it keeps happening to say we get through that time. Then finally, eventually you get back to the coil moving up again and you’re like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool. Now what is cool to note, I do just want to note that because the spring is moving up, you know, like to the top right corner, when you hit the bottom of that coil of that first loop, you are not going back to zero on the y axis. You are finishing a little higher up than when you first started, right? So there’s still was progress. It’s not like to say that it’s almost like it’s like nothing happened.

Like you learn nothing. You didn’t grow at all. Of course you learned. Of course you grew. Hopefully you learned a lot. Hopefully that spring is steep, you know, like the angle that it moves up. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a little flatter angle and we’re like, Well, I learned some things, but I’ve definitely had a backslide. But then eventually, right, the coil moves up again and that’s when we start applying, integrating those things that we learned, trying maybe something different that will work better for us and we start seeing results again. And that’s a really fun time, right? When we start moving up that y axis and it’s so great, but eventually always we will hit a peak and we will move back down that coil again.

Now, you know, the inner diameter of that coil also varies, right? Sometimes we’re really like, you know, moving up and down a lot. Sometimes it’s it’s a slower progress. Like we have long periods of moving up and growing and long periods of feeling like we move down, right? So that’s how we often will experience it. But when you think about it in this way, it’s very, very normal. Then when things have been going well for a while for you to hit some roadblocks, for things to feel more challenging, for you to feel like, you know what? I feel like some things that were working for me are not working for me anymore.

Or I just stopped doing the things that were actually really supportive for me. This is something I hear from my clients a lot. They’re like, Things were going great and then they’re not so much anymore. Well, what has changed? Well, I’m just not doing the things anymore that were really supportive to me. And this is not a judgment. This is normal. I’ve done it, too. Everyone does it. This is totally normal. So as soon as we recognize what’s going on, that’s when we have the opportunity to actually make the coil move back up again. Okay. So it doesn’t have to be that.

Well, now I’m stuck in this many months downward part of the spiral of the coil, you know, Got to wait till this part ends. No, we start to realize, you know what? I can actually control this. I actually have more control over this than I think. So now go back to your coil on your graph right now. Think of the coil as though it were a bit of a like a cone shape where the widest part is and the bottom left and then it still is coiling, but the inner diameter is getting narrower and narrower. Okay. So it’s more like a cone as you move up into the right because that is what I think happens when we implement coaching into this process.

Okay. Like I mentioned, right? Sometimes the coil is very big, sometimes the coil is smaller and the amount of time we spend in the downslide is longer. What I think happens is that with coaching and with dedicating time and effort into helping ourselves to be who we want to be so we can live the life we want to live in our lives, What we’re actually doing is we’re narrowing that diameter of the coil. And what I mean by that, like as we go along with time, what I mean by that is that the downward times are faster, they’re quicker. We pick up on what’s going on faster, we’re more nimble, we apply it more quickly. We’re like more nimble on our feet. We’re like, Oh, okay. Oh, look, so much more aware.

Look at that thing that happened. I’m not going to let this take me all the way down to, you know, almost back to where I was before on the y axis. I’m not going to make this mean that this is impossible for me. And, you know, I can’t have what I want. I’m going to learn from this and quickly pivot so that I can get into that upward part of the coil again so that I’m moving up that y axis. Now you’ll notice that the y axis is shorter too. But why is that? Because we’re not white knuckling so much.

We’re not like, Oh my gosh, I have to do this. I have to have success all the time. In some ways, we even welcome or relish the times when we fail or discover something that needs more work. I mean, that’s happened to me many times where I’m like, okay, look. Get that now. Guess I know what my next work is. Whereas before, you know, many years ago, when I was first introduced to coaching, it would have been a much bigger deal. I would have spent a lot more time, you know, stewing in it, feeling terrible and all of those things instead of getting the help that I need, reaching out, getting coaching, being more curious about myself, being more introspective and understanding myself better.

And so then, right, I’m able to move myself up faster, find an area where there still is more work to do. And then I recognize that, get myself back going and the spiral tightens and like and it moves up the y axis even faster. So it becomes a bit of a cornucopia. Okay. Do you know what I’m talking about? The North America. A cornucopia is the thing that we have in Thanksgiving. It’s like a kind of like a cone shape that has like the narrow part curves up. So that is what we’re creating with coaching. So what I want to do here is I want to normalize for you what you are experiencing now and what you probably have been experiencing for a long time.

But I also want to let you know that there is a way to leverage what’s normal and expected so that you benefit so that you’re able to move up that y axis faster. That means that you’re able to achieve the goals that you want faster. You’re able to create peace and freedom around food faster. You’re able to create better relationships, enjoy your work more, whatever it may be that you’re working on. It’s the same thing. So I did want to say, like going back to the grief thing that I talked about earlier, that coil, right.
Grief is actually so similar where you’re doing fine for a while. Things are good. And then, you know, it just kind of just there’s a downturn and you never really know when it’s going to hit, meaning like you just feel a little bit more, you know, just emotional about it. It may be it hurts in your heart or in some other part of your body more. You know, think what I’m feeling right now is a bit of like, oh my gosh, I could have a 13 year old daughter right now. Like mean. I also believe that her life was complete and so that was never in the cards for her. And I feel a lot of peace when I think that.

But I think it’s there’s no way to not kind of spend a little time just even contemplating like, oh, my gosh, that would be really different. Life would be really different. And just even wondering, like, I wonder what she would have been like and not in a way to torture myself or anything like that. But it feels to me more like honoring her and honoring her memory and keeping her memory alive. But when I do that, I feel a little choked up. I feel a little like, Huh? Yeah, that was a hard time. And I think, you know, to a certain extent there’s just some, you know, memories of how hard a time that really was just also seasons changing.

I know for some parts of the world it’s, you know, not spring or it’s already been spring for a while, but where I live in Wisconsin, for it to really start feeling springy in the beginning of April is like such a special treat. And that’s how it was that year, the year she died in 2010. It was like an early spring, and that felt even harder for me because I normally would have been like relishing that weather and so excited about it and so happy to have a baby that I could, you know, take out and walk because it wasn’t so freezing cold. And instead I was sitting with like this bright, cheery weather with this, you know, absolute hole in my heart.

And yeah, it was a really, really tough time. Really, really tough time. And, you know, don’t talk about this too often because I don’t know that it’s like always super relevant, but I feel called to do it today because I do think that a lot of people are going through grief of various sorts alone or, you know, don’t feel like they have language to express what they’re feeling or don’t want to burden other people. I don’t think it’s a burden. I think that the more we talk about what’s really true for us, the better it is for everybody. But also, I’m you know, I’m recognizing who my audience is.

And I think if you’re listening, you’re somebody who’s going to be a little bit more open to this than maybe other people in your life who are just like, Oh my God, why are you still on that? Like, have you not gotten over it yet? Like, what the heck? You know? So obviously it’s important to be thoughtful about, you know, just like reading the room, Is this the right person sometimes, you know, a coach or a therapist or whoever is a great person because they’re never going to be like, Really? You’re on this again. Like, when are you going to get over this? Or whatever it is? Honestly, some people, you know, they’ll say things like that, sadly.

So anyway, I just wanted to point out, you know, if you’re going through grief and you’re expecting it to be a linear progression, a linear experience, also not a linear progression. And and if we’re going to really extrapolate this concept even farther, I mean, I think this is what relationships are like. This is what our relationship with our work is like, right? We’ve got the good times, we’ve got the hard times. It goes up and it goes down. It goes up and it goes down. As long as we feel like overall in general, we’re moving forward, then we’re doing it right. You are doing it right. Okay. So that’s what I have for you today. In this case, spiraling is okay. It’s normal. It’s expected. Nothing’s going wrong.

If this is what it feels like for you, just know that there is help. There are ways to kind of propel that coil upward, but I don’t know of a way to straighten it out so that it’s a line. I think you might have to be a robot or a computer or something like that. That’s just not the way a human experience is, you know, it’s not how life is. So with that, I’m going to say goodbye. Thank you for your attention. Hopefully this is something that you can, you know, marinate on this week. You know, just really think about how this concept might apply to you, how it might be actually helpful for you, particularly when you’re going through a harder time or when things aren’t going your way or you keep feeling like you’re hitting roadblocks, recognizing, Oh, you know what, this is just a downward turn in the coil.

It’s totally okay. If you want, you can make it fun. It’s a slinky. You can tip the slinky a little, right? Those are those are more flexible so that, like, even when you’re in the up coil, you’re moving, you know, higher, faster or whatever, But whatever kind of, you know, visual works for you, just reminding yourself like, you know, when things are going great, that’s awesome and let’s enjoy that. And when it’s not going our way, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean it’s never going to go our way again. It means that we have things to learn. We have opportunities to grow and figure things out. And when we start applying that growth, when we start applying that development, that’s when the coil has the upturn again and we start moving forward upward in this case.

Well, I thank you for your attention. Thank you for joining me today. Always appreciate you being here and I hope you have a great rest of your week. I’ll talk to you next time. Take care. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #325: How Spiraling Is Okay, Normal, and Expected appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you think that creating peace and freedom around food is magical thinking?

I think before we can answer that question, we have to explore what magical thinking actually is and whether it’s good or bad. In this episode, I’m taking a deep dive into magical thinking and why people often think that certain weight loss methods are a type of magical thinking.

It’s time to get really familiar with your own mind and thought patterns. Do you think you can handle that? I sure do. Tune in to explore mindsets that are holding you back, how to get to know yourself, and everything you need to know about magical thinking.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why magical thinking isn’t always bad but can be disruptive * Examples of magical thinking * When magical thinking becomes problematic * Understanding how to listen to your body * How engaging in magical thinking can benefit you * Taking responsibility for your thoughts and actions * Why you shouldn’t settle for less than what you want * Getting to know yourself and what works for you

When you finish the episode, I want to know what you think! Peace and freedom around food: magical thinking or not? Wherever you stand, if it gets you the results you want, who cares? We all have to do what works best for us! Take this episode as permission from me to let yourself do what works for you, not what anyone else is telling you to do.

For free resources to help you start making progress on your weight loss goals, go to katrinaubellmd.com/resources.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #323: Making Time to Create Peace and Freedom Around Food

Ep #322: Intuitive Eating vs. Coaching

Ep #321: When Doctors Avoid the Doctor’s Office

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss Coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast Today. I am, as always, so excited to talk to you. This is a beautiful sunny day. Just I’m feeling good.

I actually got up early this morning, took my dog for a walk before I got the kids off to school and the sun was rising. And it was one of those I mean, listen, I have not seen a lot of sunrises in my day because either I was getting to work before it was light or trying to not have to get up so early. But anyway, it was just a beautiful pink sky. It was like such a special kind of feeling to be out there when it’s quiet and breathing some fresh air and getting some good light in my eyeballs. That’s part of what I’m trying to do, just trying to keep my, you know, trying to do good things for my circadian rhythm so that I can feel tired at the right time, go to sleep at the right time. Anyway, It’s just it’s one of those days. It’s those small things I’m really, really trying to enjoy.

Like remember to enjoy and appreciate what is really good. And in my life, right? Like what I’m feeling really good about. So today I actually want to talk about something else because it does impact our experience of our lives or how we feel about our lives. The impetus for this or like what inspired this show’s topic, which is talking about whether it’s magical thinking to try to create peace and freedom around food comes from me listening to a different podcast where somebody was not talking about coaching specifically, but this person was talking about actually Intuitive Eating, which I did an episode on not long ago about that, and saying that for her, intuitive eating was just magical thinking.

And it got me really thinking like, I know for me it’s not really magical thinking at all and I know for hundreds of my clients it’s not. But do people think that creating peace and freedom around food is just like a magical thinking type of a thing? So I thought, Oh, isn’t that interesting to explore? And I’m excited to talk to you a little bit more about it because it turns out in my Internet research that magical thinking is not necessarily a bad thing. Like magical thinking can be really, really helpful for us sometimes and sometimes really not. So whether it is or it isn’t, think is up for discussion, but I think it’s still interesting to explore, you know, like when is it good? When is it veer into not so good? So the first thing to discuss is like what actually is magical thinking? And really what it comes down to is thinking that you know what you do, what you think, how you feel can actually influence the outcome of a situation or affect someone else’s behavior or something like that.

So some of the easiest things to think about are sort of like superstitions because those fall into the category of magical thinking. So that’s like thinking you need like, you know, whatever, like your lucky eraser, you know, if you’re taking a test and have that on my mind because last week my 17 year old son took the act and then like five days later took the SAT. So it was just a big standardized test week in our household. Right? So sometimes it’s things like that or, you know, if you’ve been into a high rise hotel or or office building anytime recently, often they don’t have a 13th floor. And that’s because, like, they just literally don’t name it that, you know, it’s like if you just call it the 14th floor, then people are fine, right? Because of our thinking that something bad would happen in the 13th floor. Other things can be sort of like rituals that we do. Things like crossing your fingers, you know, or knocking on wood or touch wood, as the British people like to say. Those of you who are listening, you know, when you blow out your birthday candles, often people say like, make a wish, you know, things like that.

And, you know, these are not bad things. Right. I don’t think anybody is feeling like there’s any kind of, you know, recourse that’s bad from doing some of those things. So it can be, you know, harmless in that sense. But it really can be disruptive for some people, too. It’s really common, obviously, for children to, you know, just think in magical thinking. This is just a part of human development, right? Like young children thinking that, you know, if they wish for something, it’ll make it happen. Or like if they made a wish and then that thing happened, they’re like, Oh my gosh, I made that happen, you know? And then with maturity, of course, we generally, most of us figure out that, you know, that’s probably not actually what happened. It just was like, true, true, unrelated, more of a coincidence.

But where it can become a problem is when we start kind of using some of this stuff to try to maybe control our environments or lessen our anxiety in some way. Sometimes it’s even just trying to avoid every bad thing that might happen. Like if I just really can imagine every terrible thing that could possibly happen, then I can make sure that I don’t do any of those things and then it’ll be safe or then it will work out okay. You know, maybe thinking about, like, with an airplane, right? Like if you get there with enough time and if you, you know, make sure you keep track of all your stuff and, you know, you just really try to control the whole environment.

Like, you know, kind of either consciously recognizing this or deep down believing like, you know what? Then I’ll have a safe flight. When we know that those really actually aren’t related. Right. So what I was thinking about, like when it comes down to this person saying like that intuitive eating was more magical thinking is this idea that and I think this relates to the coaching work that I do as well, is this potential idea that, you know, looking at your thoughts, processing your emotions, you know, doing things that are, you know, what I call like active de-stressing, like, you know, doing active things to help yourself to get more into a parasympathetic state, like taking part in things that if you do all of those things, then you’ll get the result of the body that you want.

And this person was like, No, like that’s not how it works because that’s her personal experience. Now, she, as far as I know, don’t know her. I don’t think she’s taken part in any kind of coaching at all. What she was actually saying about intuitive eating is that her intuition is always saying that she should eat more and more and more and more. In my opinion, that is just her being confused about what the messages are, because I’m not saying she’s doing it wrong.

I just want to be clear about that, that I’m not like, well, she just doesn’t know her intuition. Like I know her intuition better than she does. And that’s certainly not what I’m saying here. But I do believe that when we really understand like how to listen to our bodies and, you know, part of listening to our bodies can be intuition for some people or that gut feeling. It’s not to, you know, overeat or do things that make us not feel good. So I think that that’s just, you know, her experience and what she was saying works for her is a lot of like calorie counting and things like that, which I’m not going to take anything away from that if that is what someone wants to do and it works for them. I’m like, totally, absolutely fine.

But I really was kind of like, I don’t think that what we do in coaching is actually magical thinking. But then I came to find out that magical thinking can actually make people feel really good. It can make people engage in their lives in a certain way that actually really benefits them. And so, you know, when I was reading is, was that like a lot of people who engage in magical thinking don’t see it as magical thinking. They see it as like personal beliefs or their theories about things. And, you know, for some people, they think that anyone who believes in a religion, that that’s just magical thinking.

But of course, people who are part of that religion and believe it don’t think that it’s magic at all. Right? It’s part of their beliefs. It’s what they think is true. And so we want to be really careful, right, that we’re not just thinking that, you know, magical thinking is harmful for everybody. It’s important to understand that really, is this like a belief system that helps me? Is this an adaptive thing or is this causing significant distress, disruption issues in your life in another way? Right.

So ways that it can be more of an issue is by thinking that you have to do everything perfectly or you can’t get the result. So I do see that in my clients a lot. Like they start thinking because I certainly am not telling them that this is the case. So somewhere along the line they just, for whatever reason decided that like, Oh, I have to do all of these different things and if I do all those things, then I can get the results that I want, right? Then I can feel the way I want to feel in my body, or then I can have the relationship with food and myself that I want to have. But if I can’t do all of those things, then it’s my fault. I’m weak. You know, being really harsh with themselves, like a lot of negative self-talk.

And so this is something I coach on all the time and helping them to realize, like it’s actually a belief that you have to do all those things in order to get those results. Like what if that belief is just not true? What if whatever you can do today is enough for you to get those results that you want? And that’s a belief system that actually could be really, really beneficial. And you might be like, But hold on, How could less still work? Well, it’s literally just a made up thing that we’ve decided is true, that the only way we can get the results we want is that we have to do all the things like, you know, we have to be doing yoga and we have to meditate and we have to, you know, get outside and exercise and we have to, you know, do certain things with our food in a certain way and all of these things.

And if all those things line up perfectly, then we can get the result that we want, but otherwise we can’t. And that’s a way of thinking that really holds us back, whether you want to call it magical or not. Regardless, what I have found that particularly with physicians, particularly women physicians, I mean, if you have the kind of life where you can like super consistently do all that every single day, I mean, I am super impressed, like go you. I think that’s amazing. But what I have found is that for the vast majority of people that is not possible.

And so we have to approach ourselves differently. I like to think of it as like you have a whole tool kit or like a tool belt, so to speak. You know, you have all these different things that can help you in all these different ways. And so then what you’re doing, rather than saying, I need to do all of these things every day, I need to use every tool and every skill, every single day Instead, you’re going based on my day to day, What would be the most supportive thing?

What’s going to be the thing that will potentially move the needle a little bit more or maybe even just what do I feel drawn to today? What feels exciting for me to take part in? What is something I’m curious about? Maybe I could do more of that, right? Maybe you kind of, you know, reacted to something yesterday at work that you’re like, that was a little weird. I’m not sure why got upset about that. Like, then maybe the best thing to do that night or the next morning is maybe a little journaling. Like, let’s just explore that a little bit more. Let’s just get curious about what that was all about. Maybe we can understand myself a little bit more, right? It doesn’t mean that like, you know, you have to do that and meditate and, you know, whatever, get on the peloton.

You know, I mean, for some people, you’d have to get up at like 3 a.m. every day just to be able to fit all these things in. And you’d still be rushing around, which defeats the whole purpose, right? That doesn’t sound like freedom to me. That doesn’t sound like peace to me at all. Like not even close a thing, though, that I think that some people think with the magical thinking thing about like intuitive eating or just like weight loss in general is like the magical thinking is in thinking that there’s a certain plan out there or a certain book or a certain person or a certain trainer or whatever the thing is that’s outside of yourself, that that is going to be the solution, right?

So again, that action, if I just get that information in my life, I get that person in my life, I join that program, I do whatever that thing is like, then the result will occur, right? So like if I sign up for weight loss for doctors only, then I’m going to, you know, very happily and all like take part and everything and always want to do every part of it. And like, I kind of always joke. It’s like we’re going to, you know, have had a brain transplant and we’re just going to be a different human being who loves doing this stuff all of the time. You know, it’s like, no, we’re still us. And I think the reason that’s, you know, talking about magical thinking, being a little bit more like childish or, you know, something that’s normal for us as children, I don’t mean this in any kind of offensive way at all, but it is kind of childish or a less immature way of thinking to think like, I’m not going to have to do anything.

I’m not going to actually have to take responsibility. Somebody else is going to do it for me. Like they’re going to have the answers. And then just me sort of being in their presence or being around all of it will just change. Everything Like that is magical thinking. Like that’s not how that works, you know? Like I’m just going to suddenly have peace and freedom around food because I watch some coaching calls like, No, that’s really not how that works. Now, am I open to that happening for someone? Sure. I mean, that would be amazing if it happened. I just don’t think that that’s going to be the experience of the vast majority of people. So I think what we have to understand is we don’t need to keep chasing diet book after diet book or plan after plan. You know, when we’re not actually doing our own personal work. Like, think of it as like it’s like a joint kind of a thing. Like I always say in with, you know, our program, our coaches and everything is like, we are showing up 100% for you. But that’s not enough.

Like, I need you to be showing up too. Like, I need you to meet us so that we can do this together because we’re totally here to support you. But, like, I cannot do it for you right? Like, I can super guide you. I can give you so many shortcuts. I can make it so much easier and faster, but I cannot do it for you. That’s the part that I can’t do. And if I could, I would. But not possible. Not possible for me to do it right. So I think it’s also for some people, they think, well, you know, peace and freedom around food, that’s just magical thinking. Like that’s not even a thing that could happen for someone who’s maybe had a lifetime of struggles with food and, you know, disordered relationship with themselves and food and all of that stuff. And, you know, my response to that is I just don’t know how it’s helpful to think that things aren’t possible for us if it’s something that we want, right?

So I think what happens for some people is we go, oh, that’s just magical thinking. That’s not actually something that’s available to someone like me. So we’re basically essentially settling for less than what we want because we’re telling ourselves that’s all we can have, right? Peace and freedom around food isn’t available or possibility for people like me. So I’m just going to have to work to be okay with counting macros because I know if I do what it works, even though I don’t really like it and it feels really controlling for me, but it does keep my weight generally where I want it to be.

So I’m just going to do that. I mean, listen, again, no judgment. People can do whatever they want, but my issue is why are we not believing that the thing that we truly want is possible for us? Why are we believing that that’s not possible for us? Like, I don’t think that that can be. I think we’re like, it’s like I don’t want to try to lose weight because I might fail, so I might as well just not, you know, not even try. It’s like the same thing. It’s like, well, you know, I’m afraid that maybe for someone like me, peace and freedom around food is impossible.

So I’m just going to tell myself it’s not possible and believe it’s not possible. So I don’t have to find out the truth that it’s not possible. Right. Or that maybe I’m just not, you know, don’t have enough fortitude or, you know, whatever. Mental strength or discipline or whatever it may be. I don’t see how that’s a helpful way to approach ourselves. What I like to think of is, rather than like it being a destination, it’s a place that we’re moving toward. You know, when I talk about having peace and freedom around food, the vast majority of time, I feel like I’m there.

And every now and then I’m like, oh, look at me. Like, you know, it just happened the other night. I had had a day that was really quite stressful and I was walking my dog in the afternoon and like after dinner and walking back into the driveway, I noticed myself having thoughts about, like, you know, what could I eat? And I was like, Oh, look at that, Look at that. There it is. And and one of the main things that helped me to not do that, not because I was feeling like I had to, like, resist against myself or stress about it or anything was that I got home and I don’t know how this happened, but like on a weeknight, everyone was available to play a game and so they had already pulled out my family, they had pulled out Pictionary and they’re like, Let’s play. And we had so much fun. I mean, the belly laughs.

We laughed so hard. And that was like literally balm for my soul. Like after that, I had no more desire to eat because I was able to, you know, essentially fill the hole that, you know, my brain was like, hey, food might fill that hole, which of course, we know it never does. Right? But human connection, enjoying my loved ones, you know, laughing. I mean, it’s so active de-stressing to to laugh hard like that, you know, So to say that like literally it would never occur to my brain to ever offer me to eat again.

Like, I don’t actually consider that peace and freedom around food, you know, is it something that requires some maintenance and awareness and working on it? Totally. But I would much rather me personally speaking for myself, much rather be doing that work than counting calories or points or macros or giving myself shots or like whatever those other things are, because that’s just my personal preference and this is just what I would like to have. And you know, probably the majority of the people who are working with me in my programs feel the same way, right? So this idea that like, I’m just going to tell myself that it’s not possible because I know other people can have that, but I’m like kind of too broken or I’ve gone through too much in my life or whatever it is. It’s just like too difficult. I think that’s selling ourselves short.

I don’t think that that’s a very loving way to approach ourselves at all. And so I just think that when we can use our brains, leverage our brains to think about things in a way that really helps us, right? Maybe we’re like, you know, I’m always going to be moving toward peace and freedom around food. I’m going to be continuing to work on figuring that out for myself, because I know that that’s something that, you know, I can experience more and more of and I’m excited about soon or, you know, at some point going throughout my life, at least half the time feeling that I’ve got peace and freedom around food, and then I’m going to work on it being 60% of the time and then 75% of the time and moving in that direction.

Like, I don’t think that that’s magical thinking at all. I don’t think that that hurts us. Right. But we have to be careful because we will start thinking in certain ways. Like the magical thinking can be very all or nothing, right? It’s like I have to do it this way. If it’s not done that way, then the result can’t be there. Like, you know, I have to cross my fingers and my toes and then I’ll get what I want or whatever, you know? And we may think like, No, those things are actually really different, but they actually have a lot of similarities with that. You know, it’s actually not as dissimilar as it may seem. So yeah.

So can magical thinking seep into any way that you’re trying to, you know, work on your overeating, having a healthy relationship with food, having a healthy relationship with yourself and your body, and it absolutely can creep in. And that’s where I think coaching can be so helpful because if a client comes and shares some of that magical thinking and says what they think is true, your coach who is, you know, holding clean space really there to help you evaluate your thoughts and your feelings, they’re going to be able to point that out to you, not in an accusatory kind of a way, not in a way where you’re being called out or, you know, judged or anything like that.

But just like, oh, that’s something interesting to explore. You know, what I always love is that like coaching is not telling you you need to change your thoughts at all. Coaching is just saying, let’s just understand what we are thinking and what the result is of that thought, and then we can decide if we want to keep it or not. And that’s totally up to the person being coached. Like, I don’t know what you should be thinking, but you’ll know once you see what the results are of your thinking. And once you become aware of what you’re thinking. So many of us have no clue what’s really going on in there. And once we do find out, we’re like, Oh, okay, well, that makes a lot more sense. I really understand myself so much better. And because of that, I’m now going to make a change that makes sense for me as an individual in my own individual life versus like everybody needs to be doing something in a certain way. I feel like the more I live this life, the more I realize that. There’s just not going to be one thing that works for everybody. Not one way of thinking, not one way of feeling, not one way of approaching things.

Like I feel like the more I learn, the more I integrate. Like, the more I coach, the more I integrate lots of different coaching methods and lots of different styles so that each individual client can get what they need and what works for them rather than here is just like the blanket way we do things. Or this is how you should think about it. How can I know how any single person should think about anything? Right? Like, that’s really my approach. So is it magical thinking? Yes and no. You know, is it magical thinking to decide that something is or believe that something better is possible for you? Some may say yes and others will say no. I say, you know, if it helps you, if it gives you the result that you want, who cares? Does it even really matter?

If it moves you in the right direction, then don’t see what the problem is. If it holds you back, if it’s making things worse for you, then we have to discuss, right? That’s sometimes what we call using coaching tools against yourself, right? Thinking like, well, this is the right way. And then if I, you know, I’m not doing it the right way, then I’m shaming myself for not doing it the right way. No, that’s not how we do this, Right? We are not using these tools unless we’re approaching ourselves, you know, in their use with love, compassion, support. And that’s why, you know, many of us find that we can only kind of get so far on our own.

And that’s when we need to really dig in and actually be coached, you know, get someone else’s eyes and brain on our brains so that we can really start to fast forward on that progress. All right. Well, that was a fun conversation. One sided, of course. But, you know, I envision you being there on the other side, like we’re just having a chat. There’s actually a new coffee shop that they’re about to open really, really close to my house and it looks really fun. So maybe we’d be hanging out over there just having a chat and discussing things, as I love to do.

All right. Already know what I’m going to talk to you about next week, and I’m excited about that topic as well. So make sure to come and join me next time. Of course, you know, make sure that you are checking out all the free resources that we have on my website, Katrina Dotcom as well. All right. Hope you have a great rest of your week. Take care. Sending you all the best as you just go through your day and work through all of it. I’m here to support you and you are just an incredible human being, just in case you needed to hear that, because it’s true. All right. Love you, my friend. Talk to you soon. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #324: Is Peace and Freedom Around Food Just Magical Thinking? appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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If you’re already feeling behind, pressed for time, and like there are never enough hours in the day, how do you make time to create peace and freedom around food?

For a lot of us, this is the million-dollar question.

Our thoughts and past experiences lead us to believe that creating peace and freedom around food is a lot more time-consuming than it actually is. In this episode, we’re reframing the way we think about it so that you can see how it will fit into your life and even end up saving you time!

When you work on your thoughts, the actions will follow. It took a long time for me to learn that it was my thoughts I needed to work on, so now I’m sharing what I’ve learned to help you get there faster.

I promise creating peace and freedom around food isn’t as time-consuming as you think.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How to cut down the amount of time you’re spending on food and weight loss * Why we’re wired to expect this work to be time-consuming * Leaving behind the weight-loss methods you’ve tried in the past * Preparing for a new way of approaching food * The value of learning how to listen to your body * How to find what is sustainable for you * Questions to ask yourself about your future self

I don’t only want to help you create peace and freedom around food, I also want to help you make it permanent and easy. This episode shows you how that’s possible.

Are you looking for support on your journey to weight loss and freedom around food? The Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program is the one program specifically designed by a physician to help female physicians lose weight permanently without ever counting calories. Go to katrinaubellmd.com/info to find out more.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:The Weight Loss for Doctors Only Coaching Program

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #322: Intuitive Eating vs. Coaching

Ep #321: When Doctors Avoid the Doctor’s Office

Ep #320: Complicated Relationships with Your Work

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss Coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. So glad you’re here today.

Thank you for joining me. You may or may not know. If you don’t know, I’m going to tell you I live in the great state of Wisconsin. It is chilly here, but I have to tell you, I can tell that spring is coming not because of the temperature outside, but just the way it feels. My husband is actually saying he wondered if just as humans, we have this, you know, just like our brains or eyeballs are somehow designed to be able to tell where the sun is in the sky. Because I kept saying, I’m like, you can just tell like, spring is coming. It’s somehow like when you’re outside, it’s like the sky looks different. Like somehow I don’t know how to describe it, but it doesn’t seem like January. It’s just, Oh, it’s so great. And it’s fun to see the little bunnies hopping around. Of course they’re tormenting my little doggy Augie.

Yes, His name is Oggy. Oggy, the doggy. You know, he’s a little terrier, so squirrels should really be his main nemesis. But for this dog, it is bunnies. Man alive. This dog, he really wants one. I think he just wants to play with it. To be honest, I think his prey drive is that strong. But he’s just like, Look at you. I don’t want to run after you. So anyway, it’s something that’s making me very happy. I’ve gotten into this habit lately that I’m loving, which is to get up earlier. I have not historically been much of an early bird at all.

I mean, like much of an early bird. That’s kind of funny. Like. No, like not at all. Like zero. Like negative early bird. Definitely a more of a stay up late at night kind of a person. But I have learned a lot more. I just keep learning more and more about sleep and sleep quality and things are, you know, my life is full right now. I’ll just say that I don’t even want to use the busy word, but my life is full right now. And so I’m really trying to make the most of my sleep so that the sleep is very effective and really helps me to get through my day more. And so one thing that I’ve actually known about for years, I read a book about it I don’t even know, probably like pre-COVID, I think even, which of course, I’m just thinking of it right now and don’t remember the name of it at all.

So I can’t tell you what it is. I’m sorry. Obviously didn’t have that much of an effect on me at the time, but but it was all about like circadian rhythms and how important light is. And so getting up in the morning and getting the morning sun in your eyes is, you know, really, really good. And then if you can, in the late afternoon or early evening, getting the light like at the natural light, when the sun is, you know, closer to the horizon, it just helps to signal to the brain what’s going on, you know? So like you get that morning light, it wakes you up, your brain’s like, okay, time to get up. And then the flip side of that as well. So I’ve been getting up. I mean, to go outside and just like stand there and stare at the horizon when it’s, you know, freezing cold outside. No. So I’ve gotten my dog up and we go out and have I mean, I always say it’s a compliment to call it a walk because it’s a lot of standing around while he sniffs everything. But it’s just it’s it’s kind of grown on me, like, I like to get out there when it’s still really quiet.

There’s maybe a couple other people out there walking their dogs, but it’s just kind of like a quiet, peaceful time in the morning that I’m really, really enjoying and kind of just sets me up for the day to be good. Like, I’ve already done something for myself. I’ve already gotten some fresh air. I’ve already, you know, like, quote unquote moved my body. Like, do I take steps? Yes, I do. Kind of depends. I do like one loop. And that’s like our standard for sure. We do that. And if he’s doing well and have the time, then I’ll do like an additional loop that’s like a little bit bigger. And if we do that, I think it’s I think it’s like a mile and a half total if we do that one.

Yeah, I think so. And otherwise the small loops like 0.7 miles or something like that. So it’s nothing like crazy at all, but it’s still just nice to get out there and move around and, and just, you know, get some fresh air. So anyway, that’s that’s where spring is coming for me, where I’m just like, it’s so nice. Like pretty soon I’m not going to have to bundle up like crazy to get out of here and walk my dog. Although I will say, you know, my middle son was born on the longest day of the year in June.

And I remember him being, you know, a couple of weeks old, getting up with him and realizing like, oh my gosh, the birds start chirping at 345 in the morning, like where we are in the time zone and everything. And like, you know, just guess like how far north we are. It gets light really early here in the summer and I do not plan on getting up that early to see the sunrise. That will not be happening anyway. Just a little invitation. Maybe it’s something that, you know, that you like to do as well or something you’ve never really tried. What’s really cool for me, I always would kind of like either get a second wind or just not really be able to fall asleep at a time that would allow me to wake up having gotten good sleep and feel like I’m ready to get up in the morning to go do something like this. But what I’m finding is that the more consistently I do it, the more ready my brain is to go to sleep at a good time and then I can actually get up. It’s like amazing what happens when we work with our bodies and understand our physiology. So good. I also want to say as I’m recording this, it’s International Women’s Day, So happy International Women’s Day.

Even if you’re not a woman, which there’s a few people who listen, who are not women so glad that you’re here, too. But I think the majority people who listen are women. So happy. International Women’s Day. I celebrate you here today. And I think our topic today, this podcast, will hopefully give you something to think about and make things a little bit easier and lighter for you, because I think it’s an issue that a lot of people really struggle with. So I want to talk about the time it takes to create peace and freedom around food.

So whatever that looks like for you, whether that’s losing some weight or considerable amount of weight, some people are like, you know, maybe it’s not so much weight that I need to lose, but it’s my relationship with food and just the way that I approach it all that I need to focus on. It’s really easy for us to think like I do not have time, right? Like you’re already feeling behind a lot of the time, just in your day to day life, feeling pressed for time, feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day. If you are someone who’s already feeling like you’re kind of like, you know, letting yourself or others down on a regular basis anyway because of a lack of presence or just not having the time.

It can understandably be just like I mean, literally, like I do not know when I would do this work. So like, as much as I would love to do it, I just I do not know how to fit it in. And that’s really what I want to address because I think that the way we think about it makes us believe that it’s a lot more time consuming and difficult than it actually is. And what I want to propose for you today is that you’re already spending more time on food and your weight and all of that. Then you need to spend when you’re creating peace and freedom around food. So by doing this work, you’re actually cutting down on the time spent on this. Okay? And your brain might be like record scratch. What?

Let me explain. So a big issue here is that we are just used to and conditioned to believe that weight loss or, you know, working on a relationship with food takes a lot of time and energy. We expect it to be this way because of our experiences. So I know for myself, I mean, God, I’ve tried like everything under the sun, right? So much time researching, planning, counting, mean standing in the grocery store. And God, back in the days when I first started doing Weight Watchers, we had a little cardboard slider to figure out the points.

Then later, of course, it was on an app and stuff. But you know, just so much time calculating, researching, planning, the whole thing, it’s just so much. So when we have had that experience in the past, then we expect that this time will be no different. And we just think that’s what’s required because that’s what’s always been required. And so then we unintentionally, totally, subconsciously, like not in our conscious awareness, but subconsciously we recreate that experience because we think that that’s what’s required, right? If that’s what’s required, then we need to have enough things to do. Like then we just believe we know, like I’m just going to need a lot of time.

There’s going to be a lot of actions that I need to take. And so I’m going to need to know that I have capacity in my life. I have space in my life to actually take this on. So we think that it’s like straight up true or that it’s factual, right? Like, it’s just like this is not up for discussion. It’s just true that working on our food, working on relationship with food, you know, losing weight, it just requires a lot of planning, right? Like, you know, you might have had experience with all kinds of different hacks and advice on spending your Sunday prepping for all the things for later this week.

And, you know, all these things like lots and lots and lots of of planning, complicated planning, finding ingredients for food that you would normally do. Like it’s just it’s so much. Right? Or it could be that you have had success in losing weight in the past, just not long term permanent success. But what you follow like the plan that you followed that did give you some success. S required you to do it with an unsustainable amount of time, right? Like you could get the results, but the amount of time and energy required to keep doing it so that you could keep the results was unsustainable for you. Right?

So then it’s really easy to tell ourselves, well, if my life were different, then I would be able to create this peace and freedom around food, but already know what it takes. I already know what to do. I don’t have time. I don’t have energy. I’m not at a place in my life or in a season in my life where that’s something that I can take on. And that may be true, but it presupposes that the way you did it before or what was required of you time wise and energetically, is going to continue to always be what’s required to get those results ongoing. And I want to take this moment to let you know that it just that’s just not true. Isn’t that so amazing?

Not true.It’s actually much easier and less time consuming to lose weight, keep it off permanently. Like to do all this work when you know how to listen to your body. It’s so much easier and less time consuming to keep the weight off, you know? So we lose the weight and then we are maintaining and it’s something that we’ve actually solved for it’s like a permanent result. It’s so much easier to do what you need to do when you have peace and freedom around food, when you are listening to your body and following its signals. What we have gotten so confused about is in thinking that all the like little action things, all the planning, all the documenting, all the calculating, that that is what is required. And it’s actually the opposite.

That’s what’s required when you have peace and freedom around food. Let me explain how I describe that or how I define it. Peace and freedom around food to me is being able to be around all foods, any foods, all foods, but especially in particularly the ones that have historically been more like trigger type foods or foods that are irresistible to you, ones that, you know, you feel like they’re talking to you from the pantry, Come and get me, you know, or from like the lunchroom or whatever. Like, oh my gosh, like, I can’t remember. I mean, so many times. And when I was in practice, you know, I had brought my lunch and then I found out that a drug rep was coming and bringing whatever thing for lunch.

And when I found out what it was, I mean, it was literally like there was zero contemplation on should I maybe not eat that and instead eat what I had planned? I’m like, Oh, I’m so smart. I’ll just eat that for lunch tomorrow. Can’t wait to have whatever this thing is that they brought in. It’s so funny. So to me, peace and freedom around food is when you’re like, all of those foods can just be laid out in front of you and it just doesn’t really matter that much. It doesn’t mean that when you eat the foods that they don’t taste good to you. It doesn’t mean that you don’t derive some pleasure from it. It doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy that time. You do.

But it is in an appropriate amount, in an amount and in a way that feels very rational and grounded and in control. It doesn’t feel like you’re possessed or somehow just completely have, you know, disembodied yourself and are just off doing whatever. It just feels like it’s just not that important. You can just as easily eat the food and enjoy it as you cannot eat the food and be equally fine and not having an emotional response to that. You’re not feeling restricted or deprived or sad or bummed out or, you know, telling yourself stories about how it’s such a bummer and it’s so unfair that other people can eat that and you can’t.

Or even telling yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t eat things like none of that even factors into it. It’s all about connection to your body, meeting your body’s needs and having an appropriate relationship with food and an appropriate amount of desire for food. So when you have created peace and freedom around food for yourself, the amount of time required to spend on and around food is like extremely minimal. Like I remember this is actually a thought I borrowed from someone who I’ve kind of fallen out of touch with. But we were friends many years ago, but still after I had found coaching because now, you know, I guess I’m one of the OGs.

I’ve been at this a while, so I remember her saying to me, It literally doesn’t matter to me where we go to eat or where we order food from because I know I can always take good care of myself. Like whatever it is, I can find something that works for me. And there was just not one ounce of drama or stress around it, right? Because even when we’re not trying to be, quote unquote good or follow any kind of plan or something, there’s still that chatter in our brains about like, well, what am I going to have? I mean, should I really have that thing? I mean, what I really want is the cheeseburger. But I mean, I probably shouldn’t really have that, but I don’t really want that salad either.

I mean, should I just have the burger? I mean, literally the amount of time, it’s incredible. So I remember her saying that and thinking, Oh, I wonder how I could create that because that sounds amazing. Now I can say that today as of recording this, I’ve been experiencing that for a long time. It just doesn’t really matter to me where I go and eat. Whatever it is, I’ll find something that tastes good to me. I’ll eat it, I’ll enjoy it, and then I’m going to move on so you can see how that doesn’t take a lot of time. You’re not like, Wow, what do they have here? What do they have there? All this planning, right? You know, in creating this.

Yeah, it can be helpful to think ahead a little bit, but even that is not like all of the difficult, you know, actions that require so much of you. And I don’t want to take away from some of them. If there are things that you love to do that totally work for you that you’re happy to do for the rest of your life, I’m not negating those things. Like if you love to do you know, all your cooking on Sunday or make all of your lunches once a week so they’re all ready to go or, you know, whatever, you know, kind of hack or tactic really works for you. Filling your freezer with frozen stuff.

Like I have literally no problem with that whatsoever. If that works for you. Amazing. What I personally found for myself is that those types of things would be helpful when I could do them, but I couldn’t do them consistently. Right? That was all fine and good when I had a completely open weekend and other time to rest and I wasn’t on call and my kids didn’t have anything else to do and you know what I mean? Like, then all it took was for me to be on call for the weekend. Then I didn’t do that. Then the whole next week was messed up and then it all devolved and fell apart.

So in my mind, then we have. Then that doesn’t work, right? Then we have to find something else. I love to realize that there are so many different ways to create peace and freedom around food. All you have to do is find one. Like if there’s infinite ways to create peace and freedom around food, then all you have to do for yourself is to create one way that works for you. That’s consistent. It feels easy. It takes up extremely little time in your life and energy because that’s how it’s going to be sustainable. That’s how it’s going to be permanent. So you can do all of those things if they help you, but you definitely don’t have to. So if you have a belief that those types of things are required, particularly those things that take a lot of your time and energy, right? Like, remember, I don’t want to stand in the kitchen all day Sunday preparing for the whole week like I’m exhausted.

This is what I’m supposed to be resting, You know, like it’s totally okay, because guess what? You don’t have to. You don’t need to find new recipes. You don’t need to research and buy new appliances or kitchen equipment of any kind. You don’t need to even learn to cook or force yourself to like it. There are a lot of people who are like, Look, I can do it. I don’t like it. Great, no problem. Then we find a way that doesn’t involve you doing that. That’s still also extremely easy and doesn’t take up a lot of your time. So one way I like to think about this is think of your future self. Think about you who’s living at a weight she’s happy with that feels good in her body.

Like you know it’s you in the future who has what you want right? So not struggling with food, feeling peace and freedom around food, feeling good in her body, feeling energetic, being able to do all the things that she wants to do. Clothes fit her the way that you want clothes to fit. So just think about her and ask yourself, Just really just spend a little time and let the answer come to you. How much time is she spending on food? Right? Like, is she spending hours every week planning, prepping, calculating, counting, you know, putting things together in her head around these things? Or is it just something that flows and is easy and natural? Does she just work with her body and it’s innate signals? Does she allow herself to sometimes need a little more food one day because she’s hungrier and a little less than next day because she’s not as hungry versus saying, hey, there’s a certain amount of calories they need every day.

There’s certain number of macros that I’m supposed to be having every day. Like, is she? Actually connected to what her body needs and is offering it that. Because that actually really doesn’t take very long at all. It’s actually so, so quick and easy. It’s so awesome. So whatever you’re envisioning, whatever it looks like for that future self, whatever her relationship is with food, with her body, with, you know, what it’s like for her out in the world, nourishing her body, you know, a few times a day. That’s what you’re working to create. Now often we’re like, I’m going to do all of these really hard things that take up a lot of time. Or maybe they’re not like actually hard, but they’re just like annoying or something we don’t want to do. And then we use them as a means to an end behavior to get the weight off. Then we have no interest in doing it again. I mean, this was me with Weight Watchers 50 million times.

Felt like. Right. No interest in counting points long term and having then done no work on how to maintain that without the points. So then what do we do? We end up gaining it back again. Or, you know, however you work to lose that weight. So what we have to think about is how do we make it easy now? How do we make it the least time consuming now? And this is not hard. Like you find simple things to make or to acquire. If you’re not cooking your own food that tastes good to you and you eat those things, you can still have variety in there, but you don’t need gobs and gobs and gobs of variety.

Like that’s how we make it more time consuming and more challenging for ourselves. More difficult. We can have an appropriate amount of variety and taste the things that we eat that taste good, right? Like those are the things we taste. They taste good, we get pleasure out of it, and then we move on. We get so confused when we think it requires more than that. Okay, so what you’re working to create now is what you’re envisioning it will look like in the future. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I really feel like deep down subconsciously for me, myself and I know I’m not the only one, I really felt like, let me just get this weight off. I’ll, you know, do this means to an end behavior.

I mean, there were so many of them. But just saying Weight Watchers, since I did that the most you’ll count points. I’ll do the whole thing. And then like I’ll figure it out then. Or I really do think that I thought or hoped, wished, prayed that I’d just be a different person or that it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Just like the issue would just go away. And even when I did it again and again and again, I think I still had that hope. And right like we see that it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, now I have so much perspective on it, like. Right. Yeah. Okay.

But once we have that perspective, we have that awareness that’s now an invitation to do it, a different way to do it in a way that doesn’t take a whole lot of time. That probably takes a lot less time than what you’re even spending right now. That is how we make this permanent and easy. Okay. So I just want to point out that this topic, this issue is another great example of how we think we need to focus on is actions. Like what are the things that I can do to make it more time efficient? How can I cut down on the time that I’m spending like lots of actions is what we’re looking for. But what we really need to work on is our thoughts. This is a thought issue.

This is not an action issue because the actions are actually less. Once we do the thought work, the actions become so much simpler and easier when we work on our thoughts. And this is exactly what coaching helps you with. So if you’re still going, how does coaching help with weight loss? This is the type of stuff we’re talking about recognizing that we have certain beliefs that actually hold us back and keep us stuck. We think they’re true and they can be true if we decide we want to believe them, but we don’t like the result that we get. So the way that we change that is by actually questioning our beliefs and deciding if we want to believe something different that can give us a result that we want more, that we like better, that serves us more. That is how coaching helps.

All right. Well, I’m excited for you to question your beliefs on how much time it takes to create peace and freedom around food. It’s less than you think, I promise you. So much less than you think. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you so much. Happy International Women’s Day. I celebrate you and all other women internationally, but seriously mean that. And thank you so much for being here and listening and I will talk to you next time. Take care. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #323: Making Time to Create Peace and Freedom Around Food appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you ever wondered if my approach to coaching is the same as intuitive eating?

This has come up a few times with my clients, so I thought it might be helpful to break down what intuitive eating is and how it compares to coaching.

There are a lot of amazing principles in the intuitive eating approach that I completely agree with and teach in my own coaching sessions, but there are also a few areas where I think it’s lacking, and I’ll explain why in this episode.

Before we dive in, I want you to know that I always support you in doing what is best for you, whether that’s intuitive eating, coaching, both, or neither!

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The differences and similarities between intuitive eating and weight loss coaching * Doing what makes sense for you * Some context around the release of Intuitive Eating * Accepting your body * Rejecting harmful behavior * Where to find actionable steps to help you create awareness around food * Why individualized help is so important

I hope this gets you thinking about what approach to emotional eating is the most supportive for you. I want you to know that you have options and you should always choose what resonates most with you.

For help getting started with coaching-based permanent weight loss, check out the Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss at katrinaubellmd.com/six

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Episode 306: How Your Relationship with Food Is Affecting Your Pet with VetCoach Nadina Cojocaru

Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

Follow Along on Facebook

Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #321: When Doctors Avoid the Doctor’s Office

Ep #320: Complicated Relationships with Your Work

Ep #319: Negotiation for Physicians with Linda Street, MD

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master Certified life and weight loss Coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to today’s episode. I’m so glad you’re here. If you’re new, then welcome. I’m so glad that you’re here for this conversation today.

If you’ve been listening for a while, then super glad that you’re here as well. I was just thinking of some people that I met a couple of days ago. I think I mentioned on the podcast that I had a presentation that I was giving at an OBGYN conference that was two days ago and it’s just always so fun to meet people, some clients, some people who have just been long time listeners. And so for those of you who said hi, we took selfies and hugs and hugs. Hello to you. I’m still thinking about you and just so glad to connect with people. I feel like I love me some virtual, don’t get me wrong, but every now and then peppering in some in person, there’s nothing like it. It’s just it’s cool to be around real people. I’ve actually been asked to do a podcast on public speaking and I was getting ready to record this today and someone on my team said, Oh, are you going to do it on public speaking? Now, granted, my presentation was two days ago and I was like, No, not yet.

Don’t feel that I’m ready. I don’t. It’s in the works in my mind. So guess we’ll call that an Easter egg, right? Sometime in the future I will do an episode on that because I know it’s something that so many of us struggle with. It’s definitely something that I have struggled with a lot, and even within my coaching programs, we coach on public speaking a ton. You know, it’s a common thing when you’re a doctor to be asked to go and give presentations. And it’s just it’s a difficult thing for so many of us. So I don’t feel that I’m quite at a point where I have some great lessons learned yet for you because I’m in the middle of learning them. So to be determined what they will all be. But I will have them for you sometime soon, I’m sure.

Okay. So today I want to talk to you about intuitive eating versus coaching. This is something that comes up from time to time, particularly in our coaching program. You know, clients will say, Hey, now that I’m learning a lot of these concepts, I’m starting to wonder like, is what you’re teaching? Intuitive eating? Is this intuitive eating what we’re doing here? And in my mind it’s different. And I’m going to talk to you about why it’s different, but there actually are tons of similarities.

So I think of it if you think of a Venn diagram, it’s one of those Venn diagrams where the majority of both circles are overlapping. So there’s some differences, but there’s also a lot of similarities or a lot of kind of philosophical things where, you know, they’re on the along the same lines. Now, when I say coaching, I guess what I’m really meaning when I say intuitive eating versus coaching is I’m talking about how I do weight loss coaching. So I’m just going to offer you my personal perspective on how I approach weight loss coaching. I’ve been at this, I think what is this year now? I think this is going to be my seventh year here pretty soon. Yeah, I think later this year it’ll be seven years.

So I’ve been at this a while. I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve worked with literally, you know, hundreds and hundreds, over a thousand clients, physician clients. And so I’ve just learned a lot over the years. And I have my own personal perspective, which of course factors into how I approach things. So I just want to be clear on that because for every different type of coach there is, there’s going to be a different philosophy. And if, you know, you just got to find what resonates with you. I would never dream of, you know, representing or thinking that I’m, you know, able to represent every person who calls themselves a coach out there.

So just to be clear on that. So talking about how I think about coaching versus intuitive eating and what I also want to say about intuitive eating is, you know, I am not a trained, intuitive eating expert. So there may be some people out there who are like, No, actually this and that. But, you know, I do know some about it and I’ve educated myself on it. And so this is my perspective based on that. Like I said, I think there’s just a lot of things that overlap and it’s just something I get asked a lot about. And I also just want to say that, you know, I am all for whatever works for people. So if you’re like, what? I totally disagree about what you’re saying about intuitive eating. It’s changed my life. It’s totally the thing that solved all my problems for me. Amazing. I’m so, so, so happy for you.

I am for whatever works for each individual person. I would never, ever begin to think of saying that whatever I say has to be the right thing for everybody. It just definitely isn’t. And we all you know, one of the biggest things that I talk about all the time and that I teach my clients is that we all have to become the expert in ourselves. So I just want you to filter this all through what makes sense for you as a human being, as an individual, and just see what resonates from there.

So just definitely don’t want it to look like I’m like somehow bashing intuitive eating because I’m definitely not. It’s just some areas that there’s like four areas where I think that, you know, there’s some differences that in my mind are actually drawbacks. So before we start with that. I do just want to mention that intuitive eating started with I think one person is a therapist, one person is a registered dietitian. They wrote a book that came out in 1996 called Intuitive Eating, and they called it a recovery book for the Chronic Dieter.

So I think what’s really important is to just have a little history lesson here. You know, what was happening in 1996? I mean, I was in my second year of college in 1996. And, you know, it was really the height of what we think of as the super duper toxic diet culture, meaning calorie counting, like thinness. And like no matter what the consequence is, like, as long as you’re thin, then it’s okay that you’re absolutely miserable or binge from time to time or like whatever it may be. I think, you know, all that calorie counting stuff really started in the 80s. And then, you know, by the time 1996 rolled around, there were so many people, women in particular, who were just in a really bad way, who were really, really, really struggling with the chronic dieting, right? With, you know, these crash diets and things that were completely unsustainable long term.

And so this book came out and it really was revolutionary. It just completely bucked the trends, like what was considered the norm, what was considered, you know, healthy the right way, in quotes, quote unquote, right way to think about weight and weight loss. And I think for a lot of people, it really was just like their permission to just opt out of that. You know, it was really like, oh, my gosh, this is so fresh. This is such a different way of approaching things. And it allowed them to just stop with all the craziness and all the diets and all the just nonsense, you know, eating frankenfoods, you know, all the things that are like completely, horribly processed and stuff. I mean, it wasn’t long after this that I went to Weight Watchers for the first time.

If I think about that, I mean, it was a little bit later, like maybe 2001, 2001, I think is the first time I went. They were really just sort of like, hey, there’s another way. And my understanding is that this book was not like a runaway bestseller, you know, had some sales and has been kind of trucking along. And here we are, I mean, guess almost 30 years later, I guess like 27 years later, it’s been a long time. But the lessons remain and the term remains. I think they coined that term intuitive eating. And so what are the similarities to the way that I approach things? I mean, like I said, I’ve never taken an intuitive eating class or anything.

I’m certainly not trained by them. But there’s a lot of information out there on intuitive eating that I have. You know, actually in preparation for this podcast I spent some time with as well. So there’s tons and tons of of similarities or let’s just say like philosophical agreements. So things like respecting your body, right? Like we don’t treat ourselves like crap, we don’t need to harm ourselves or take part in behaviors that actually hurt ourselves as we want to accept ourselves, accept our bodies, accept our natural body shapes.

If you listen to the episode that came out last fall that I did with Nadina Cojocaru, who’s a veterinarian who does weight loss coaching for veterinarians, she was saying how she says, like a pug, like the dog. A pug is never looking at a whippet, another kind of dog if you’re not a dog person and going, Oh, I wish I could just be like long and lean, just like the whippet, like the pugs, just like, yep, I’m a pug and I’m owning it every minute of it, you know? So that’s just what it reminded me of, you know, it’s like like really accepting your body shape, working with what you have instead of doing, like, what I did for so many years, which maybe you have too, which is to look at people like models, bodies, whatever was like the, you know, trend du jour, which when I was growing up was like the waif look.

Kate Moss, heroin chic, like emaciated and, you know, very low level of muscle mass, just extremely, extremely rail thin and thinking that that’s the only thing that’s acceptable or beautiful and then thinking, well, how can I get my body to look like that? You know, like some people like their bodies are more naturally like that. But it’s not a lot of people, right? So what they’re talking about is just accepting what is like your genetic makeup, you know, like what you’re genetically predisposed to look like.

I sometimes think, you know, for those of you who’ve been listening, you know, that that I come from a German background, German heritage, like literally 100% on 23 and me, I’m like almost 100% German. And so I just often think of like, you know, the woman who worked like on the dairy farm in the Black Forest or something. Like she probably looked like me, you know, like she was strong and muscular and could like, carry those buckets of milk, you know, like far from the field into the barn or whatever, you know, like, that’s the kind of work that my body is built for or that those are the kind of people that I descend from. So to look at someone like Kate Moss and think like, how can I get my body to look like that? Like, I literally think that even if I were in a very bad way with like, cancer, I wouldn’t look like that, you know what I mean? So, I mean, knock on wood, we don’t find out.

But it’s really so important for us to accept ourselves. No more diet culture, you know, just rejecting the dieting, like this idea that this is like a normal way to live, to be constantly gaining and losing weight. Totally agree with that. You know, rejecting that sort of means to an end behavior, right? Like, I’m going to do this thing that’s miserable and I hate it and it’s awful, but I’m only going to do it for a short time. So it’s okay knowing that when it’s all over, we go back to other behaviors and we’re gaining it right back again.

You know, slowing down and actually tasting your food. You know what I mean? Like actually getting some pleasure out of food, not just like plowing through it. Totally agree with that. Thinking about exercise more as like loving movement for your body. Right? Rather than looking at it as like, I need to beat my body up so I can burn calories and lose weight instead. Just like what feels good, like human bodies were made to move. So how can I move? That feels good. So I can actually enjoy having this body of mine. I think those are all things that are like such great messages. I absolutely love them. And you know, I picked up on all of these ideas through a different channel.

But I just want to say that like, I’m sure that if somehow it is possible to trace back the person who I learned it from or the, you know, the books that I learned it from and stuff like where did they learn it from? And the person that they learned from and what books did they read? It probably traces back to this intuitive eating book. So I do just want to say like that I’m really not trashing this, but I do see some areas where, in my opinion, I think that coaching wins out. So these are all things that I teach, like everything I just said, like I, you know, I teach my clients exactly how to do all of those things. But in my mind there’s like four differences.

So let’s go through what those differences are. So for me, it really ultimately intuitive eating is like incomplete, you know, like it just doesn’t cover all of the nuances. Like it’s a bit too surface level for me. It reminds me of many of the books that I read where I was like, Yeah, that’s so good. But like, what do I do now? Like, what do I actually do? It reminds me of when I read a lot of books by Jeanine Roth, who is an amazing author and has helped so many people. But I remember reading the books and being like, Yes, yes, yes, like waiting for the solution to come.

Like, when is she going to tell me what to do instead? When is she going to tell me how to stop doing this? And like that never came, You know, it’s just a bit too surface level for a lot of people, like for the person who’s really like, okay, but like in the actual moment, like, what do I actually do? You know? And I think that, you know, like I said, when this book first came out, it was when calorie counting was like all the rage. I think the modern version of calorie counting now is just macro accounting. And a lot of people, instead of looking at it like it’s, you know, to diet to get thinner, now it’s like for like longevity or to get all your lab parameters in a better place like this.

Very much the strong kind of group of people out there who are all about like almost like the word that comes to mind for me or the term is like extreme health. You know, it’s like constantly optimizing everything. And so they’re like, you know, if you just don’t eat this and don’t eat that, then like, this number gets better and then that’s better for you and that’s going to help you live longer. I think it’s really just like same thing, different flavor. I think it’s it’s actually really similar. So one of the things that I think there is really incomplete on is that there’s no real actionable tools on stopping emotional eating, right? They say, Yeah, don’t eat for emotional reasons, you know, like treat your emotions with kindness.

Like totally makes so much sense. What does that actually look like, though? Like, you know, like I know before I knew all this coaching stuff, you know, before I’d been coached and was trained to be a coach, like I would have been like, makes perfect sense, except I don’t know how to actually apply what you’re saying to what I’m doing. And and I know it’s not just me. Like I said, I’ve been doing some research on this and I was actually talking to a friend, a close friend, and she was sharing she’s been involved in coaching like way longer than I even have. But she was saying that, you know, she had struggled with her weight and the diet culture. I mean, it was terrible. Just terrible for so many years, really in a bad place. She discovered intuitive eating. It was like, oh my gosh, this is it. This is totally what it is.

And a lot of times they say with intuitive eating, like you’re going to have to gain weight, you’re going to have to be okay with just gaining weight because you’re going to let you’re not going to restrict yourself anymore. You’re just going to eat whatever you want. And so she was like, okay, I’m going to do that. I’m going to do that. And she said, So she actually became more miserable than ever because she was sitting there eating, constantly eating non stop thinking like, Well, this is what they said to do and just.

Pletely was not getting the experience that they promised about feeling like mean. They don’t use the terms peace and freedom around food. That’s kind of what I call it. But like she just wasn’t getting that at all. And then it wasn’t until she found coaching that she was like, Oh, right. Like she just completely did not have the awareness around the emotional eating that she was doing until a coach could help her work through it and pointed out to her and give her some actionable tools, like real steps on how to stop doing that.

And, you know, I know there’s like intuitive eating counselors out there and, you know, different people. And so there could be other coaches where like, yeah, I fill in that gap and I, you know, whatever And so amazing if they do that. But that is just something that surface level I think is is an omission. It’s pretty incomplete there. The next thing is it really doesn’t take human physiology into account. I think this is a really important thing to talk about because also food is, you know, in all the research I’ve done, way more processed so much weird stuff in our food, much more so than even in 1996. And so like a big thing they talk about is honoring your hunger and honoring your satiety. Which 100%? I’m all in for that.

Except that when you’re eating a bunch of processed food and you’re eating in certain ways, it can be really hard to interpret your hunger. You know, your hunger can feel really extreme because your hormones are not right, you know, because of the way that you’re eating. So what I have found is like one of the best ways to reeducate ourselves on our hunger and satiety is to take a break from eating those foods that jack it all up, right? Like, so that it becomes easy to figure that all out rather than like, while everything’s messed up. It’s like trying to listen for a whisper through this super loud cacophony of noise. It’s just really, really, really hard. And and same with fullness.

So I just think that, you know, it just doesn’t take into account, like the way human bodies actually function, particularly when they’re eating the food that’s currently available, at least in North America. Next, they do tell you how to think about food and and some of the ways that they talk about it. It’s quite disempowering to me. Like I just you know, I’m just like reading what they say and it’s just like it can be like kind of aggressive and like you just have to get angry at diet culture and was like, Well, but that’s so interesting because sure, maybe that anger is super helpful for some people. But you know, it takes away there’s not an individuality like a way of individualizing it taught.

And that’s one thing that I think is really amazing with the way that I go about it in my weight loss or doctors only program is it’s like completely tailored individually to each person, right? Like it’s not helpful to tell people how to think about anything because those thoughts might help half the people and they’re actually not helpful for the other people. That’s not the best way for them to think about it. So what coaching does is it helps each individual person to figure out the way that they as an individual want to think about food, right? So like you as an individual, like what are the thoughts that actually help you knowing that you are a unique individual who has all of their own unique experiences, heritage, familial background, you know, family of origin, people who raised you mean so many different factors that play into it.

So it can just feel like, you know, the regular intuitive eating stuff, it can just feel a little too, you know, simplified, I guess, because I think that, again, it’s like it all sounds so great, you know, here’s how you think about food and then like, but what if that doesn’t resonate for you? Because I think for a lot of people, some of those things really won’t. And what really works is when we figure out what works best for us and then we just do that rather than this is what works best for most. Okay.

And then the fourth issue that I have seen is that intuitive eating, like a lot of things these days, can actually be a little bit cultish. And what I mean by that is particularly in like online intuitive eating support groups and stuff, it’s the classic like, well, if you’re doing well, it’s because of intuitive eating. And if you’re not doing well, it’s your fault. Like the blame is put on the person who is struggling, right? Like, well, you’re just not working the steps well enough. Like you’re going back. There’s like ten steps that you’re supposed to follow and like, you’re just not doing it right.

There’s actually a New York Times article, I don’t know, maybe in the last couple of months where they were talking about this. And, you know, there was a woman who was saying that she thought this was going to be so great and then it was really struggling, like fully binging every day, like it was really not working for her. She was totally miserable. So she went to, you know, some of these intuitive eating groups for support and was completely shamed by people. Like she was like, I don’t even feel safe even bringing this up to anybody anymore because of the experience that I had where it was just she said. It was just like a complete pile on of people. And that’s, you know, I have some more to say about some of that, which will probably be a different episode.

But I just think that there’s no. Excuse for that. Like I just can’t think of how can people who want are like in this group to help others think that that is actually being helpful. Like it’s just really, really not. And we shame ourselves enough. Like we do not need other people contributing. Like that’s just not okay. It’s just not cool. So, so again, like if you’re going to do this on your own or just like work with a, like a therapist maybe or something, then maybe that could be good. But, but often a community, you know, can really be helpful when you’re really trying to cement this in for what you’re doing, you know, like changing your whole relationship with food. And and I just don’t think it’s helpful to be approached in that way at all. And I just really feel for people who’ve had that experience. I think that really sucks and I wish that hadn’t happened to them.

So really, that’s the way that I see the differences. I really see it as something that is there’s a lot to be learned there, but I don’t personally see it as just being like fully formed, completely like able to stand alone. But again, not to negate or take away anything from people who have found that to be very helpful for them. I just think that coaching is more comprehensive, it’s more individualized and it really meets you where you’re at. It’s like you get all these ten rules.

It’s easy to start feeling like you need to do everything all at once. You’re doing a terrible job at it. When you are coach, it’s like you’re able to really figure out what makes the most sense for you to do as your next steps and then meets you along the way to get to wherever it is that you’re wanting to go. So so that’s intuitive eating versus coaching. Hopefully that was helpful if you’ve ever been interested or intrigued in that. And yeah, that’s what I’ve got for you today, so I wish you just a great rest of your week.

And for me, I’m recording this on a Friday, so I want to say like, you know, have a great weekend, but know that you’ll listen to this, you know. Well, if it if you listen to it the day it comes out, it’s a Tuesday. So so anyway, I hope you have a great rest of your week, however many more days you have left in your week. And hopefully you will find yourself really thinking about what kind of way of approaching yourself when it comes to emotional eating. Really struggling with food is going to be the most supportive for you because we have options.

All right, my friend, have a great rest of your day and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free resources.

The post Ep #322: Intuitive Eating vs. Coaching appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you been putting off going to the doctor’s office?

You would think that as doctors we would have no problem going to get medical care for ourselves, but it’s actually pretty common for doctors to avoid going to the doctor’s office. This comes up again and again for my clients and I’ve dealt with it too, so if this is something you struggle with, you’re not alone.

Why is it that we avoid going to a doctor? It turns out avoiding the doctor is not that different from avoiding lots of other things in life. Let’s get to the bottom of what causes avoidance and how to make it easier for yourself to schedule that doctor’s appointment.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Avoiding difficult situations * What motivates avoidance * Understanding the cycle of your thoughts * The power in knowing that you control how you feel * Why you need to build a strong relationship with yourself * Trusting yourself to have your own back * Learning to process your emotions * Getting the support you need

I hope it helps to know that you’re not the only one who does this. Sometimes all we need is a little more support from ourselves and from the people around us. I want you to make sure that you’re getting the support that you need for whatever hard thing you’re avoiding. That support is going to make all the difference.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:The Weight Loss for Doctors Only Coaching Program

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #320: Complicated Relationships with Your Work

Ep #319: Negotiation for Physicians with Linda Street, MD

Ep #318: Work/Life Alignment

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. If you’re here for the first time, so glad that you’re joining me today. Quick update. I am back from Portugal. The last episode I was recording like on the brink of having to leave, I think maybe even that morning and and I’m back And it was a great, great trip. Super beautiful. We totally lucked out on the weather. And I super loved Portugal.

Who knew? I mean, not that I ever heard anything bad about Portugal. I’ve always heard good things, but definitely recommend it. And I have to say that going in February, for me, it was great. The weather was maybe in the morning in like the upper fifties by the late afternoons in the mid sixties, which was great because did you know that Portugal is very hilly? So you’re basically walking straight up or straight down all the time. We just never got like super hot and sweaty and super beautiful weather. We went to Nasri where they have those giant, giant waves and watch the surfers being towed in and surfing.

I mean, it was really cool. Lots of really great experiences for sure. For me, came back more tired than when I left, though. That’s okay. We have a beach trip scheduled for spring break, so we’ll actually get some relaxation time then. Right now, I don’t know if you can hear that coming through. You might. It is a big snowstorm and I think right now the whole US is supposed to be getting some weather of some sort. So I was actually secretly hoping that school would be called off today. I was like, Do you ever do this if you have kids at home? I’m like, Listen, it would be really good for me if they could have a snow day today. Just thinking about myself, I’ll be fine. They did not call snow day, though, unfortunately, so I’m going to have to go run out.

And I’ve got like the double pickup. I’ve got one kid who’s staying after school for I think it’s like a tap class that she’s doing tap dancing. So I got to go to regular pick up, pick up one kid and then come home and then probably 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, turn back around and pick the next one up. And then luckily I’ve got the third one can drive himself. But then I’m like, okay, be careful. You know, I mean, I’m not super, super anxious mom with him driving, but also you’re 17, so just be careful. All right. Today’s topic is 100% inspired by my clients.

So those of you who are my clients who are listening, this is for you. And it’s for everybody else who has this issue as well. Especially if you have any friends who’ve been talking about this, maybe you can refer them to this episode. So it’s so interesting, right? We would think if we’re doctors and we offer medical care as our profession, that we would have no problem going and receiving that medical care ourselves. But it’s relatively common for doctors to avoid going to the doctor’s office themselves, like we don’t want to go to the doctor ourselves.

And that has been coming up again. And actually one of my coaches suggested that I address this on the podcast I thought is a great topic. I will be happy to oblige because it’s actually something that I know I’ve dealt with as well, and it’s been some things for me too at times. So I would like to talk to you about that. I did do an episode a while back about how to talk to our patients about weight. Sometimes we’re on the other side and we don’t want to go and be told something negative about our own selves. But let’s just look at this even from a bigger picture for some of us, I know for sure, me included, we might have been really good about the routine care for ourselves. And then COVID hit and then we got all out of whack. I know I did.

In terms of going to the dermatologist and getting regular skin checks. I have skin cancer of various varieties, both sides of my family. And, you know, I’m just a fair person who spent the first ten years of her life in Southern California. So it would be a very smart thing to keep doing that. And I finally went this last fall, and I think she told me it had been like three and a half years or something. That’s way, way, way too long for me. And I had been thinking about it and I just oh, go and just, you know, I get it. But sometimes we just don’t want to go through the paces of doing that. We might be embarrassed about what people are going to see. Maybe you’ve gained some weight. You don’t want people to see that.

Maybe you don’t want someone talking to you about it. I definitely know that, especially when you’re working yourself on getting it all under control. Sometimes it’s just a very personal experience and we don’t want other people’s input. You know, It’s like if I know that I’m working on this, like, say you are in a place where you’re like, Yeah, I’m going to lose weight, but I’m working on all this other personal stuff first so that I can be in a position where the weight loss actually sticks this time. Then you go to the doctor. And the doctor, of course, meaning? Well, make some comments, right? We can just be in a real sensitive place that can just hit us in a place that we just don’t want to be hit.

Let’s just say it’s a little tender, tender place and so. It makes sense that we would want to avoid that. You know, I mean, sometimes if you really think about it, I mean, just completely illogical. Sometimes we’re worried, What if I go and then I find out something’s wrong with me? Well, right. We all understand that if something is wrong, it’s always better, like literally 100% of the time.

Better to catch it earlier than it is to wait till it’s more involved. Right. So that’s how we know that this isn’t always a logical thing, right? It’s not something that’s like based in a rational mindset. And that’s okay because we don’t live in a rational mindset all the time. We are emotional beings as humans, and that’s normal and completely okay. So the thing about this is that this is really not that different than lots of other things that we avoid. Like anything that you might be avoiding. This is literally the same thing. So here are some other examples. You may avoid stepping on the scale.

Maybe you aren’t doing that now. Maybe it’s something that you were struggling with in the past. But if you have ever avoided stepping on the scale, then you know what I mean? You’re like, I kind of want to know what I weigh, but only if it’s good. Only if it’s a number that my brain thinks is good.

I don’t want to step on the scale. If I’m going to see a number, that will mean that I’m going to feel bad about myself, Right? Or it’s the same thing as avoiding a difficult conversation, right? We’re sitting there just like, Oh, like, I know I should probably do it, but I don’t really want to do it. Of course, the thing is avoiding these things. It’s not like we feel amazing and carefree. If we don’t do it, there’s a cost to not doing it. There’s a cost to maybe not stepping on the scale or avoiding that difficult conversation or not going to the doctor when it’s recommended. Right.

And those emotions that we typically feel are going to be more based in anxiety. Right? We know we should do it, but we’re not doing it. We’re anxious, we’re avoiding it, thinking that we won’t have to feel whatever it is that we’re going to feel when we do it. So then we’re just anxious about what we might feel sometime in the future, right? Or we’re anxious about something we might be missing. But so if you think about it, what is avoiding your appointment or avoiding setting it up? Like just literally think about where that is in the thinking cycle. It’s an action. I mean, it’s actually an inaction, right? Because you’re not doing the thing. So when we understand where it fits in the thinking cycle, right, we have our thoughts that create our feelings.

Feelings drive our actions. So it’s an action or inaction that we’re avoiding the appointment. Then all we have to do is move up in that thinking cycle. So what are the thoughts and feelings that are preceding the inaction? Not setting up the appointment right? Not going to the appointment, maybe rescheduling. And so this would be a good thing for you to spend some time pondering. Right. What is the thought?

What is the feeling that is creating the inaction? And for most people, it’s going to be somewhere along the lines of fear. It’s going to be fear based in some way, shape or form. And that fear, we think it’s fear of like what we’ll find out or what someone will say to us. And it’s not actually that the real fear, even behind that fear, is the fear of how we’ll feel. While we’re there or after once we have the interaction, right. So how you’ll feel maybe stepping onto the scale or waiting in the waiting room or having to talk to the nurse or having a conversation with the doctor. Right.

Or they tell you some things. Then you get back in your car and you go home and you’re afraid of how you’ll feel then. So the cool thing to remember here is that how you feel is not and cannot be created or determined by other people or things outside of you. So when we think that what other people say or certain interactions or numbers on scales or lab reports or imaging results, those things determine how we feel.

Then we feel very disempowered. We feel like just at the effect of what’s happening around us, like the emotions are just going to happen and then we’re going to feel super bad. So we just want to avoid that. That’s how we can control how we feel. And what I want to remind you of, and if this is new for you, offer to you as the reality. And the truth is that what creates your feelings is the way that you think and everything else that goes on. What people say numbers on scales, imaging results, conversations, what other people say and do and how they act.

All of that is a fact. But it’s outside of your thinking cycle. All of those things happen and then you decide what to make them mean by the way that you think this is excellent news. This is really, really, really good news. This is extremely empowering for you because the doctor can say the same thing to 20 people and will have 20 different thoughts or reactions or meanings made of what was said. It’s optional. It’s something that we can control and we can decide. So that’s really cool.

Now, sometimes, though, like you say, the doctor gives you some results that you’re really not excited about. Like you need to start a new medication or you have a new diagnosis or something like that. I’m not suggesting that you just always want to think something positive and then you’re feeling carefree about it necessarily, but understanding that you’re in control of how you feel is very, very empowering.

No one can make you feel anything. So when you’re avoiding an emotion, what you’re really avoiding is the thoughts that you think you’re going to have and you get to choose those. So that’s the first thing, very, very important. But what happens when, like I said, you get some new diagnosis or you need to go on some medication that you were hoping to avoid or something like that, you need some additional imaging. There’s some concern about some additional issue. I mean, it’s normal to feel the feelings about that, to have a lot of feelings about that.

Or maybe, you know, the doctor says something about food or your weight and you really didn’t want to have that conversation and now you’re feeling away. Right. When you know how to process that, then you don’t have to be afraid of those emotions. Why are we avoiding going? Because we don’t want to feel that way. And we think that then, you know, we’re just stuck with those emotions. But we’re not. When you know how to process your emotions, then you can move them through you in a way you’re never stuck feeling anything. You’re only stuck feeling it when you think that other people are determining how you feel, right? When you think other people are determining how you think. Because if you keep thinking a certain way that keeps making you feel the way you don’t want to feel, then you’ll think, Shoot, I better not do that thing.

That makes me think that way. That makes me feel this way. And it’s very disempowering. And then all we want to do is just avoid it and hope that everything is okay. So what you need to know is that when you have a strong relationship with yourself, when you know you’ve got your own back no matter what. Then this is not an issue. This is not something that you need to avoid, because you know that whatever happens, you’re going to be there for yourself. You’re not going to beat yourself up. You’re not going to be mean to yourself.

You’re not going to make it mean all these terrible things about you. You know, that you will treat yourself with kindness and compassion and love. And from that place you can figure out what the next best steps are for you. And maybe, potentially those steps are doing nothing. I remember going, see this doctor? She’s trained an alternative. Whatever additional training, nothing like crazy, but like some additional stuff. And without any conversation at all. She hands me this, like, multiple page handout with all kinds of like eating recommendations. And, you know, kind of the way she talked about is very presumptive about the way I thought about food and exercise and stuff. And it felt almost a bit accusatory and it really took me back like I just really was very, very surprised.

But it didn’t have to flip me out or make it mean that, like, you know, that something was wrong with me. I mean, I looked at what she offered and some of the stuff. I was just like, This is not something I’m going to do because I know what’s best for me. No one else can tell me. Better than me. What works for me? Right. I’m the expert in me, just like you are the expert in you.

And what’s going to work? So we don’t have to make that mean something negative. I mean, sure, my preference would have been that we didn’t have that interaction, but it’s okay. It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t have to make it mean something negative about me or about her or about the interaction. And just remember when you know how to process emotions, you know, you can move those emotions through you and you’re going to be okay. It’s just like processing any other emotion. T

his is a skill that you can learn. And I just want to point out that if you’re kind of sitting there going, Well, that’s all great, Katrina, but I don’t know how to do that stuff. I don’t know how to build a strong relationship with myself. I don’t know how to process my emotions. Well, that’s exactly what I and my team teach you in the weight loss for doctors only coaching program.

Because you’re right, these are skills that you need to learn. I didn’t know. No one taught me this stuff until like seven years ago. Eight years ago, I didn’t know it. I had to learn and I had to practice. And it can really, really, really help to be guided through it by somebody else who knows what they’re talking about instead of just trying to, like, bumble around on your own. So very soon I will be letting you know about another opportunity to place your deposit on our upcoming weight Loss for Doctors only program that will be starting in May. So you can kind of file that one away. Keep listening to the podcast, will have more information for you on that coming soon. So just so you know, right. Like all of these skills, everything I teach you, none of this is just like one off kind of stuff. Or it only applies in this one way or this one part of your life, right?

Anything that you’re avoiding, which there’s so many things to be avoided in this world, in our lives. This is the same work. It’s exact same thing for all of it. So, I mean, listen, please take care of yourself and go to the doctor. I actually just yesterday finally set something up. I had had a abnormal mammogram. This is a while back. I remember a couple of years ago, and then I needed to have a biopsy that thankfully came back negative. And then I needed like additional follow up.

And I’m supposed to have like a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. And I had that scheduled for last month. And then my son broke his nose. And then the day that he had it set in the O.R. was the same morning, and I thought maybe I’d be able to get him home before I could go to that appointment. And then it just took forever. And I had to skip it, and then I needed to reschedule it. And I finally just rescheduled it yesterday. And probably knowing that I was going to be recording this helped me to be motivated to go ahead and do that. But, you know, I always look at it like, well, if I actually have breast cancer, I’d really rather know now then when it’s much more involved. Right. Like it’s never going to be convenient to have any of these things happen. And guess what? We can deal with it no matter what.

And of course, being in a coaching program or having a coach by your side to be able to help you, or whether if it’s not coaching for you, maybe it’s a therapist or, you know, a close friend or relative that you can talk these things out with. Like when you know you have support, then no matter what comes up at the appointment, you know you’re going to be okay. And similarly, no matter what happens with that difficult conversation, you know you’re going to be supported. You’re going to be okay.

No matter what the scale shows. When you step on it, you’re going to be supported. You’re going to be okay. So get yourself to your appointments, whichever ones you need to be doing. Interestingly, I just had my I think, you know, maybe you don’t know, but about five years ago I had appendicitis. And then when they took the appendix out, you know, just like overnight, which I didn’t upset on that long time ago, they found that there was a neuroendocrine tumor in there. And long story short, I’m not going to get into all the details, but I now get labs and an MRI of the abdomen and pelvis every year. And that’s not something that I avoid.

In fact, I actually had somehow fallen off their radar. I was supposed to have it in the fall and I realized it. And luckily I had the email of the doctor and was like, Hey, I think I have been forgotten by you guys. And so they quit, got me scheduled and luckily everything was all normal and fine again. But you know, why am I motivated to do that more? Because guess what? I really, really don’t want to have a neuroendocrine tumor growing without me aware of it in my body. That is not going to be cool. And so we’re going to keep doing that for probably at least another five years because they can be slow growing and we want to make sure that it’s not there.

So so it’s interesting, right? For some things, we think about it differently. For that, it’s like, yeah, I’m going to get in there and do it no matter what. But when it comes to this mammogram, right, Isn’t that so funny? Because that’s also preventing cancer. I never said that our brains make sense, right? But here we are nonetheless. So get yourself in. Do the things that you need to do. Get that colonoscopy. I just did it. It was not as bad as I thought I was going to be. Like everyone said, the prep was the worst part, but it was fine and got through it. It’s really just a couple of days of your life and then it’s good to know that you’re fine and you don’t have anything going on in there, right? So much better than waiting, waiting, waiting and having to deal with the consequences. All right, my friend, thanks so much for your attention.

Go to Portugal if you can. You don’t have to go to Portugal. But it was fun. It was it was a really nice trip. And then make sure that you’re getting the support that you need for whatever the hard thing is that you’re avoiding. With that, I’m going to wish you a great rest of your week, and I’ll talk to you very soon. Take care. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free help. Go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #321: When Doctors Avoid the Doctor’s Office appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you have a complicated relationship with your work?

A lot of doctors do. Some days are great and some are really hard; there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that.

I want to help you reconnect with your reasons for becoming a doctor so that you can feel more satisfied with your work, even on the hard days.

I recently came across this perspective on relationships with work: “the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave.” This statement immediately got me thinking, and I want to share why I don’t exactly agree with it and how I would think about it a little differently.

In this episode I’m offering a different way of thinking about your relationship with work that I hope will help you feel more satisfied, fulfilled, and happy with your job.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why doctors often have complicated relationships with their work * Approaching work in a way that works for you * How to improve your experience at work * Taking time to notice your thoughts and feelings * Reconnecting to your “why” * What your options are if you’re feeling unsatisfied * How to define the requirements of your job * Why you might want to do more than the bare minimum * How to generate more feelings of satisfaction, value, and fulfillment

When you’re putting so much of yourself into a career, it’s nice to feel good about it. There’s nothing wrong with going above and beyond at work if that’s what makes you feel fulfilled! Ultimately it all comes down to what works best for you.

For free resources to help you start making progress on your weight loss goals, go to katrinaubellmd.com/resources.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Style Coach Judith Gaton

Free Resources on My Website

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #319: Negotiation for Physicians with Linda Street, MD

Ep #318: Work/Life Alignment

Ep #317: What Women Physicians Need to Thrive

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

I’ve decided that today’s podcast might sound just a little bit like when you’re listening to some sort of like guided meditation or something where you have like ambient noise in the background because it’s pouring outside right now and I really, really need to record this podcast. I don’t have the option of recording it at a different time. Now, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a long time, then you know that I absolutely love a rainy day.

I grew up until I was about ten in Southern California, and so Rainy Day was a very, very special day. And because we were outside playing all the time, a rainy day meant that you were inside more and my mom would always make soup for lunch. And I remember thinking like, Oh, what kind of toys do I have in my closet? Like, it was such a fun day to rediscover some of the things you had forgotten that you had. And so I just have a special place in my heart for rainy days, so you may not be able to hear it all The rain.

I actually just tested recording with just the rain and I could hear it just a little bit. But it could be that once my podcast production team does their magic, which thank you to our team that maybe you won’t be able to hear it at all. But if you can, then just like it’s a vibe, right? We’re just going to groove with it. We’re going to feel nice and chill because of the rain. So the reason that I have to record this for you today is because I’m leaving in a couple of hours to go on a family vacation. Some of you who’ve been listening, if you’ve been listening a while, you may recall that last year around this time we went on a family vacation. We actually had to leave our oldest child home. This is what it’s come to. It’s come to this, my friends.

My oldest son is a junior in high school. And so now my kids don’t have the same vacations always. And so the younger to their school has a week off and the high school does not have that. And they’re super strict about not letting kids take time off. And honestly, his course load is so heavy that I think he would be probably pretty miserable anyway. So he is staying home per kid. So we’re actually going to go to Portugal.

So we wanted to maybe go to Greece thinking it might be a little bit warm. And the travel agent said, No, you don’t want to go to Greece this time of year because nothing is open besides things in Athens. But then I read an article in The New York Times that actually said that places like Mykonos were open, too, So I don’t really know. Anyway, their recommendation was to go somewhere else. So they said, How about Portugal? And I know so many people love Portugal, I’ve always heard such great things. And I thought, why not?

So the way that I do travel just stuff. Why I, in case you’re wondering, is I let them plan everything and then I just show up. So I’ve done no research. I could go look up what we’re doing, but I don’t really remember. And we’re just going to go check out some cool places and do different things and have a good time together. The four of us as a family, which actually is kind of I mean, if I’m being honest, it’s kind of nice that it’s just the four of us because already we have to get to hotel rooms. So if we had a fifth, I’m not even sure what we would do. Maybe we could cram one more in, but it starts getting really tricky. So. So that’s what I have going on. Of course, I am not packed properly at all, but I have to tell you something really quick in case you’re a procrastinator.

Packer Like I am my friend Judith Caton. She’s been on this podcast before. She is a style coach and she just happened to mention to me a couple of days ago about something that she teaches her clients that I don’t think she’d be upset if I mentioned it to you. It’s called a three by three. And so what you do is you pick three bottoms, you know, like pants or skirts or whatever, and then three base layers and then three tops, you know, like jackets or sweaters or whatever could go over it. And then you make sure that you make like a grid so that you have, like, you know, the base layers across the tops across and the bottom layers across. And then that means that you can get like a whole bunch of outfits. You make it so that they all go together.

So you can go like straight down, you can go diagonal, like you can mix and match and you have all these different outfits for so much for your clothing. And so I am not joking. I was like, That sounds amazing, but I’m guessing it’s going to take me a while last night really quick before bed. I’m like, Let me just see what I can do. And I put it together. I think it took me like 6 minutes for real. And I’m so excited because especially this time of year, I feel like, you know, when you’re traveling, if you’re going to be sweaty every day, this probably isn’t going to work, but it’s not going to be that hot.

And so I am super excited about this because it also means I don’t have to pack so much. It’s like so annoying when have to haul all your crap around, right? So I’m not super minimalist packer, but I’m excited to try this, so maybe I’ll report back. If you don’t know Judith, you should check her out. Judith Caton I think it’s Judith Caton. That’s probably her website and she Aton She’s awesome and you should check her out. She’s got so many great ideas like that. Like. I learned from a speaker that she had in one of her programs because, you know, she’s my friend.

So she clues me in on like how to apply lip liner. Like, who knew? I learn so much stuff. Like, I’ve always steered clear of it because I felt like I looked like the Joker or something. And then I just like, literally learned this one trick and I was like, Oh my gosh, this has changed my life. She’s. She’s amazing. You should check her out. Okay. That’s neither here nor there. Let’s talk about our topic today, which is when we have a complicated relationship with our work. And I think particularly right now, there are so many doctors that have that because it’s complicated. Right? Like some days are good, some days really sucks.

Some days you’re like, Yeah, this is good and I like this. And I feel like I’m, you know, getting value out of doing this. And some days you’re like, Why did I ever choose this profession? And I wish I had chosen to do something else. And this is so hard and so unfair and all the things, right? We just feel like it’s just so hard. And so in case you don’t know my process, what I do is I often have some ideas in my head that I’m just like mulling, like someday I’ll do a podcast on that, and then that someday often comes, right? So what happened with this one? Like, why I actually like what happened to actually bring this topic to the front of my attention is that we just recently had one of our amazing Master’s live events.

It was so good. And in the chat one of our amazing clients put something in there that I immediately when I saw it, I jotted it down. So just, you know, everything is inspiration for me. Like everywhere I go, I’ll be like, wherever I am, I pull out my phone, my husband starts to talk to me or something. I’m like, Hold on, I’m writing down a podcast idea. So everything is inspiration for me. And so what she wrote was, The job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave The job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave.

And I thought, Oh, that is such an interesting thought. Now I first just want to say that that is a totally valid approach. And if that is working for someone and they feel amazing when they think that and, you know, participate in the work in that way, no judgment here. I’m all for it if it’s working for you. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you know what, though? I think we can do better. Right? And it could be that that’s like a great monkey bar. Wrong thought. If you’ve heard me talk about that before, it’s also very well described and explained in my book How to Lose weight for the last time. You know, it could be that your thoughts used to be way, way worse and that this is kind of a range, kind of a thought, right? Like, you know, it could get better, but it’s not as bad as it was. And so you’re working on improving it. That’s amazing as well.

But I also think that sometimes we really settle for thoughts that we think are the way we want to think about things, but we don’t really spend enough time exploring them. And that’s what I wanted to do with this, because it’s totally normal to have complicated relationships. Most relationships have some complication to them. If you really think about it, you know, often it’s like, I think if a relationship is super smooth, it probably means that it’s either super surface level or it’s very new once you get into it, this is just how it is, right? But if we’re going to be spending so much time in our lives, such a large percentage or proportion of our lives at work or thinking about work, it might be nice if we had at least a reasonably decent experience, right? So here’s the thing.

It is true the job doesn’t love you. Like if you’re trying to perform at a super high level because you’re hoping to get love back from the job, you’re probably going to be very disappointed. And I think there definitely are people who have fallen into that trap and you know, they just can’t do enough. And, you know, the job is sort of nebulous. It’s like, who is the job? Is the job like the hospital system, the administration, whoever your boss is, is it the chair of your department? Like who specifically are we thinking of when we think of the job? Or is it even a person? It really might not be, but sometimes when it is a person, I think we do fall into this people-pleasing kind of a thing of like, if I can just be who I think you want me to be, then I can get love from you. Then I can feel good about myself in my work. Yeah, that can be a big fool’s errand and it can really burn you out and it can just be exhausting.

And it’s just not sustainable, I don’t think, for most people. So yes, it is true. The job does not love you, but when I personally, I’ve spent some time with this when I personally think the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave. Remember the thinking cycle, right? Thoughts create feelings. Feelings drive our actions, which of course create our results. When I think that thought, how do I feel? So here are some examples of feelings that come up for me, and I’d love for you in tandem to be thinking about what feelings come up for you as well.

So the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave. The first emotion that came up for me was combative. I thought that was an interesting one, but then I spent a little more time with it. I felt resigned. As in, this is just as good as it can get, right? I guess I just have to settle. I felt withdrawn, kind of like I’m not fulfilling my potential. I know so many of us as physicians are big achievers. You know, we like to set big goals. We like to achieve them. We like to feel accomplished. We like to feel proud of ourselves. And so for me, it just sort of felt like a moving backward instead of a moving forward towards, I felt some resourcefulness, kind of like, am I being taken advantage of, Right? Like, the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave.

It’s kind of like something nefarious is happening or they’re taking advantage of me. And so I better just like come in here and do what I have to do and then get out before something else bad happens. Another kind of set that came up for me was apathy, feeling apathetic. And maybe if it isn’t quite apathy, then maybe it’s just indifference, right? Just kind of feeling like you don’t really care that much. And the thing is, is that not really caring ultimately doesn’t feel that great, right?

Really, all of these emotions don’t create satisfaction or fulfillment in our lives. And so when you really think about like, why do you work? Yeah, I mean, so you can have money, so you can fund your life. Sure. But why else and why a doctor of all things are so many other ways to make money. Probably even way more money. So why? Why are you a doctor? Well, my best guess is that has something to do with wanting to serve, with caring about people, with caring about reducing suffering, with wanting to make an impact, wanting to make a difference with potentially the relationships that you can create. I mean, at least at some point. There was probably some of that present, right? Like why are we even here in doing this? There’s probably at least some of that there. If you’ve disconnected from that, if you haven’t thought about that in a while, it could be a good thing to get connected to.

Like, why am I doing this? Like, take the money away, I’m well supported. I have what I need financially. Why else? This is totally other ways of doing this right. So I think that we don’t have to pressure ourselves. We don’t have to be like, Well, I’m doing it wrong if I’m not feeling super fulfilled and satisfied at all times. Like, no, I mean, it’s still work. There’s still going to be a lot of ups and downs, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with setting the goal of, at least on occasion, feeling that sense of satisfaction, that sense of fulfillment. Right?

Like it would be a lot of your life to be spent doing something to turn back, you know, decades later and go, What was that all for? Like, that didn’t feel good, you know, at all, or at least the majority of the time. So if that’s the case and that thought the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave, then what do we do? Well, what we can do is we can recognize that it’s just a thought like any other thought it might be even a thought that somebody else offered to us. And we thought, Oh, okay, maybe that’s how I should think about this. The cool thing is we can always reassess what we think and what we believe.

We can decide to re decide to continue believing what we believe or think what we think. We can also offer ourselves the option to change, right? It’s always a possibility. We don’t have to take ourselves up on it, but it’s available to us. So I think before saying, well, that thought is bad and we have to think differently. You know me, I do not like dragging people to new thoughts. Like I always feel like the minute I’m trying to drag myself or if, you know, if I’m being coached, it hasn’t happened often, but feeling like I’m being dragged to a new thought. Like I immediately just want to rebel and dig my heels. Then I’m like, You can’t make me think that. I don’t want to think that, right? Sometimes think of it as, like, rolling out the red carpet for myself and it’s an invitation. Would you like to consider thinking differently? I mean, we could just explore it. I mean, no one’s saying you have to do anything. It’s just, you know, a possibility. Then I’m much more open to it. I’m like, I mean, sure, I’m open to having a conversation about it. Sure. Right. So that’s what we’re doing here is we’re just opening it up for a conversation. So why might we want to consider either doing more at our work then the requirements, or feeling different about us doing the requirements? Because it’s also possible that doing the requirements and leaving is totally enough.

Because how much is enough? We get to decide. Enough is a thought. It’s not an amount. So the old way of thinking right, or this original way, the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave. To me, has kind of like subtext of the requirements are basically like phoning it in, right? Like doing the bare minimum just enough to not get fired. You might have heard the term quiet quitting, you know, where you’re basically just like doing just enough to not get fired, but no more, you know. So is that what doing the requirements means to you or is it much more right when you look at what you consider the requirements, it’s what you’re very happy with. You think it’s, you know, enough more than enough. It’s something that you’re proud of, right?

Maybe you feel if you’re doing the requirements that you’re providing excellent, excellent care, top notch care, you know, being a good leader, whatever it is. If that’s the case for you, amazing. I just think that most of the time when we think of the requirements, we’re thinking of the bare minimum. And I just know that most of us like living a life where you’re just doing the bare minimum. Is that really the life we want? I don’t think that I would be satisfied with that long term if you are or if that’s the best place for you to be right now, it could be that that’s where you need to focus with work because you’ve got all these other personal things going on.

Amazing. I’m right there with you, but I just want to plant the seed that it’s something that we might want to have a look at. So why might we want to do more in our work? When we say the job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave. It kind of predisposes that if you do more, it’s only under the context of trying to get love from your job, which that’s one reason why you could do more. But there’s totally other reasons why you could do more than the requirements. And I think the main reason to do it is for you, like you are maybe doing more than the requirements.

You’re offering more, you’re providing more value, but who is benefiting from that? Besides, of course, like the patients And I mean, we could say like if you’re doing more, maybe you’re generating more income for the practice or something, but really it’s ultimately for you, it’s for professional growth, it’s for feeling like you’re making a difference in the world. It’s for feeling like you contribute, that you provide value, that you have some purpose, that there’s a reason why you get up every day. All right. So my suggestion is to do it for you and not for the job to do it for you, because then you get to feel good. You get to feel fulfilled.

You get to feel satisfied. And to me, that feels way better than apathetic, indifferent, resentful, withdrawn, resigned, or combative. Which were the thought or the feelings that came up for me when I thought that original thought The job doesn’t love you, so do the requirements and leave. And so I think this is something really, really interesting to consider. You know, I do want to offer to you that if you’re looking for permission to do the requirements and feel good about it, then I grant those to you. You get to feel good about the work you do, whether it means doing more or not.

But I also do know that at a certain point we’re looking for more, and I think that sometimes we end up burning ourselves out in other ways because we feel like so dissatisfied and unfulfilled in our work that we’re like trying to, you know, find side gigs and start a side business or do all these other things, which I have no problem with at all whatsoever. But are we doing that because we’re seeking that fulfillment, that satisfaction? You know, that can also create burnout when we’re totally stretching ourselves thin. It could also be that we create fulfillment and satisfaction in our current work environment, and then we decide from there what else we want to do. And that’s just for fun and extra, right? So that’s another way of looking at it. So in summary, the reason to do more is because you get to feel good, because you get to know that there’s a reason why you’re here.

It’s because you’re making a big difference. You have a purpose, you have a direction, you have a reason to get up every day and you are making a big difference. I remember hearing about people who had these corporate jobs and they were like vice president of X, Y, Z, things, stuff like I didn’t even really understand what they were talking about because they didn’t understand the corporate structure and then finding out, you know, like they’re working for whatever company that produces things that we can really argue hurt the world, you know, like it’s really not good for people.

And I remember just thinking, gosh, I’m so glad that every single day I get to do my work and know that it makes a difference, I get to directly see the value of the work that I do, that I get to go into a patient interaction, help them as best as I can. And leave, knowing that I gave them what I could. And that was great. And I think that’s actually one of the things that can be pretty unique and uniquely awesome about being a doctor. And sometimes we need to have that perspective, right? Sometimes it’s easy to think that we’re cog in the wheel. And trust me, I get that I’ve had those feelings too. But that might be a cog in the wheel in a larger systemic kind of standpoint.

But in your individual interactions, the work that you do, it’s extremely meaningful. It’s extremely meaningful to the patient on the receiving end, whether you actually interact with them personally or not. And so remembering that can help you to generate more of those feelings of satisfaction and value and fulfillment and all the good things that we want to feel when we’re putting so much of ourselves into a task or a career. So with that permission granted, you get to think and feel however you want. But I do think that we can just make it a little bit better.

What if we made it just 5% better? What if we made it just 1% better? Just a little bit more acceptance, a little bit less resistance, a little bit more opening up to seeing what’s good and maybe spending just a little bit less time in. I don’t mean it in a bad way, but wallowing. Sometimes we wallow. We all do. I do too. Nothing to be ashamed of. All right, my friend. I have so enjoyed talking to you. I feel like it started raining even harder. And so what a fun podcasting experience. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you when I get back. Have an awesome one. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to katrinaubellmd.com, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #320: Complicated Relationships with Your Work appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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How do you go about asking for what you want in the workplace?

No one really teaches you how to have difficult conversations when it comes to asking for the compensation you deserve, so it can be hard to speak up and advocate for yourself.

The reality is that if we want to have any hope of closing the gender pay gap in medicine then we have to learn to ask for what we want. On top of that, you deserve to be paid for your value!

Our guest, Linda Street, MD, is a former client turned negotiation coach who is also a physician in practice right now. She’s here to teach us about negotiation.

Whether you’re overdue a raise, you’re applying for jobs right now, or you want to strengthen your negotiation skills for future conversations, this episode is worth tuning into.

Dr. Linda Street is a board-certified Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist and Life Coach who focuses specifically on physician negotiations. She is the Founder and CEO of Simply Street MD Negotiation Coaching where she helps female physicians take charge of their lives and negotiate for the salary they deserve. She lives and breathes to close the gender gap, starting with you!

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why we need negotiation skills as women physicians * How to ask for what you want * The socialization of women that keeps us from speaking up * Preparing for uncomfortable conversations * Getting clear on what your goal is * Why you should identify your strengths and then what your employer is looking for * Diversifying the medical field * Learning to value yourself * Where to find data on ranges of pay * How to advocate for yourself

Everything that you bring to the table is valuable, and it’s so important that you’re paid for it. Figuring out what you really want is the first step to asking for it. Don’t sell yourself short. If you don’t stand up for yourself, who will?

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Listen to the Simply Worth It Podcast

Visit Linda’s Website

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #318: Work/Life Alignment

Ep #317: What Women Physicians Need to Thrive

Ep #316: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Eating Against Your Own Will | Chp. 8

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master-certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubell, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. I’ve got a really great episode for you today. I decided to invite a former client turned negotiation coach who’s also a physician in practice right now to come to talk today about negotiating. This is something that we know so many women struggle with and some men too, but in particular women. And if we want to have any hope of closing the gender pay gap, then we have to learn how to ask for what we want.

And before we can do that, we need to even understand what it is that we want anyway, Linda is really just a boss when it comes to this kind of stuff. I mean, she is the person that you want in your corner and she is the kind of coach who’s just not going to like, beat around the bush or mess around or feed you any fluff. She’s going to give you the actual steps and help that you need to be able to get what you want, the result that you want, which is, you know, the job that you want, whether it’s your financial goals or even other parts like benefits or other aspects to the work that you’re looking to negotiate.

She is your girl. So I am very excited to introduce you to Linda St. She’s a maternal-fetal medicine doctor in practice, working still full time and has her second job. She also coaches women physicians on negotiating. And I just we had a great conversation. I’m so excited to share it with you. I hope that you learn a lot with this. I think you will. And maybe pick one thing out and decide how you’re going to apply that moving forward. Right. Listen, for one thing, even if it’s just a different way of thinking about things that you can start applying. Because I think for a lot of us, this isn’t just like we learn something one day. The next day we’re making a huge change. It’s much more related to changing our mindset, getting our thinking straight, so that when we’re ready to take action, we’re in that place and ready to go. Have a great rest of your week and please enjoy my conversation with Linda St. Linda, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s like a full circle conversation here today.

It is a full circle moment here. I am very excited to have this conversation. As I told you before we started, I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while just recently. I think it kind of ebbs and flows for me a little bit. But before we kind of jump into everything, I’d love for you to just introduce yourself a little bit and then also tell everybody where did your interest in negotiating come from?

Yes. So I’m Linda Street. I am a maternal fetal medicine doc down in Georgia. And actually it’s fun because I accidentally fell into negotiation being a hobby. This was not something I ever said. I’m going to love this. This is going to be something that I do. But I was in my first job out of fellowship when I was actually doing your program, and I found out that my male partner was making 150,000 more than I was annually, and obviously that required some thought work and I had all sorts of thoughts.

I think I was born fighting the patriarchy a little bit, so my brain totally. Forrest When I found out this piece of information and nothing it offered me was rational, so I had decided that that was not okay and I needed to figure out a solution. But every time I thought about making a solution to this problem, I just felt like I went up against a wall because my department chair at that time I was in academics with someone who, personality wise, he and I did not mesh well and the idea of going up against him, which is how my brain was perceiving it at that time to ask for money, was just absolutely overwhelming to the point where it just shut down everything beyond that.

So I could not get past, Oh my God, I’m going to go talk to this guy and ask for money. And I knew that he wasn’t concerned about equity and fairness. And so that was not the approach that was going to make me successful. So I was actually getting coaching in your group about it and the kind of redirect was brought up of why does it have to be you versus him? And at first I was like, Well, because he’s a jerk and my boss. And that’s obviously that’s how this is going to be. That was my first instinct. But then I was like, okay, you know, this was a few months into the group, so I was like, okay, I can be an adult here. And maybe there is an alternative perspective here. It took me a week. I think it took several days to kind of come around to that point pretty fast.

I think. I mean, honestly. I didn’t have a timeline. I had a meeting, I think two weeks later. So I was like, okay, we’re going to timeline here. We got to get this done. We had to move it along this along. So really allowed myself to be curious and I didn’t want to. So for the record, for everybody out there who’s resistant to that thought, I did not want to. Be curious here. I wanted to be resistant, but decided that that was a possibility. I could entertain at least, and really came along to the perspective that it benefited him and me if I stayed. And that was something that felt very true. I was like, I can get on board with that.

I’m a sub specialist in an area that’s hard to recruit to, and there is a benefit for the department for me to be here, and if I leave, there is hardship associated with that so I can get on board with the fact that he runs a department. He wants to be financially solvent and complete, and I help with that. So I have some common ground here. And from there it was just really able to start actually thinking of a plan because I removed that barrier of, I can’t do this, it’s me versus him and he’s stronger. And so once that was out of the way, I was able to come up with solutions. And I got a 65,000 raise in academics that year.

So still not the 150, though. So tell me what your thoughts were about that.

Well, so my partner did have some responsibilities I didn’t have, so he should be making a little bit more than I did, not 150,000 more, because clinically we were doing about the same thing. But ultimately I ended up leaving that job a year later. So the 65,000 was a nice step in the right direction and it was a great confidence boost for me of I can do this. And I think that’s actually what kind of triggered the next cascade of me ending up deciding that I can do this somewhere else too, because my next thought was, oh, I’m getting paid better and that’s nice. But this is still a toxic environment for me to practice in.

So what do I do? Well I have a non-compete and family reasons to need to stay in the area. So I guess I just say and then over the course of several months that one took longer, less of a deadline. I ended up ultimately deciding, you know, a non-compete means I can’t work within 30 miles for one year. It does not mean that I have no options.

Right? It’s like the facts versus a story we tell ourselves about the facts.

It’s amazing how the basic things work when you allow them to.

Well, you mean this software thing, this coaching. It works magic. So that ended up leading to me leaving that job, which was actually during that non-compete year, was when I had pursued coach training in the year in between the Rays and the non-compete year. But that’s what led to this becoming a business because I was like, you know, I have all this time on my hands because I was doing locum tenens, so I’d go for a week and be gone and then I’d come back for a week because my kids were little. They were like four and seven at the time.

So also not a barrier because the thought of my kids are little, what am I going to do? I’m the breadwinner. My husband is not a physician. And so during that time I had extra time on my hands and I ended up making this a business because I was not the only one with this problem. And absolutely not. The same things that helped me have helped hundreds of other female physicians, because it’s some of it is structural. Certainly there are issues that are systemic, but there’s also a bringing yourself to the table piece, a mindset piece of just engaging and not being willing to accept that no is an answer.

Right, right, right. It seems to me like there’s kind of two sort of groups of people, you know, and maybe they kind of fall even some into both. But it’s kind of like the people who are feeling like from a feelings perspective, you know, one group that feels like very timid and scared and like, what if they’re mad at me? What if they look at me different? Like, so they don’t want to speak up for that reason? And then the other group of people who are actually much more in like the angry camp, you know, where they’re just like super mad and they’re so mad that they can’t think clearly to be able to put together any kind of negotiating strategy that could work. So maybe they don’t say anything and they’re just stewing and, you know, just getting eaten over the inside, you know, just like like just rotting from this anger. Or maybe they’re asking and then through their anger, you know, expecting these people that they’re angry at to respond with a no. So when they get the No, they’re like, right, exactly what I thought you proved my point.

There is no solution here. It’s just more expecting to have a confirmation of what they already believe. And I think both areas can hold people back, women in particular, from getting what it is that they want. I’m curious what your thoughts are about that.

Yeah, no, actually, most people that I’ve worked with I think, fall more in the people pleasing and but I was solid in that rage camp and so it required a little effort to be able to help folks who are more in the kind of timid people pleasing camp because that’s not something that I’ve personally had as many issues with because I don’t think I was ever timid. For more than 5 minutes my entire life.

But yeah, I think a lot of the kind of societal socialization really pairs into that too. And then you add on top of that medical socialization and you are just ripe to not ask for what you need not to advocate for yourself. Because as women were told, don’t rock the boat. You have to play nice in the sandbox. You have to be grateful for what you have. All of these things make it more difficult to advocate for ourselves or that make it seem like it’s selfish or it’s not a worthy cause to go fighting for. And then on top of that, there’s medical school where it’s you’re so lucky to have this spot. You’re so lucky that we get to abuse you 80 hours a week.

Like you should just be lighting candles left and right. That continues. And you forget that when you’re an attending and you now have some bargaining power, you have some leverage because you are in a system now where there are options available to you a little bit more broadly. And you’re just so in that mindset of I can’t rock the boat, I have to keep people happy, so I can’t ask for this because it could impact so and so and so and so. Part time is where that one comes up A lot.

A lot of clients that I work with want some type of adjusted schedule because for whatever season in their life that is going to be ideal for them. I think people actually have a harder time asking for that than they do money. And interesting, a lot of the time they want that more than money. And so asking about part time, one of the big kind of barriers as far as obstacles from a thought perspective that people come up against is, well, somebody has to do that work, so it’s going to fall on my partners.

I’m not being a team player. Then I’m hurting the team. Yeah, like this. It’s like apologizing, right? Like I’m coming in apologizing for asking for what’s best for me and taking responsibility for the effect on other people, which is essentially like a false ownership. Right. We don’t have to own. Absolutely right. And the other thing to think about is, are those other people factoring us in as they’re making their decisions? I mean, probably not if they’re men in particular. Really? Probably not.

Yeah. And even so, I mean, how many of those people would also love a similar schedule or some type of flexible environment in some way that you could be the person who really opens that door for them? Because if you need a mind hack, I mean, I believe that certainly you can ask for it just because it’s what’s best for you. But I find kind of a bridge thought for some folks when they’re really in the trenches of I don’t want to make things difficult for other people is what if there’s someone I can help by showing that there are different ways this can look?

Right? Right. You’re not just taking, taking, taking. You’re actually giving. Absolutely.

In a different way. I like that. That’s the that’s really, really cool. So here’s something that I have noticed from time to time coming up. And I think it’s a way, you know, women have been so encouraged, rightly so, to negotiate, to ask for what they want, you know, to put themselves out there in that way. And I’m all for it. I think that’s amazing.

But I have also noticed definitely some people who get a little bit confused about how one might go about that so that they could have a chance of being successful. Yeah, what I mean by that, like an example is saying, you know what, I want to make x, y, z amount of money. Um, and not coming prepared with any kind of support around. Why? Like saying I want to do the same amount of work, but I want to be paid more. And I have no, you know, nothing to compare this to. I don’t know anybody else who’s being paid this much. In fact, the people doing this work across the board aren’t getting paid that much, and I’m not offering any additional value. But I just want to ask.

Yeah, no, absolutely right.

And I’m like, I find that kind of fascinating because, of course, you can try to go about it that way. But I don’t think that you’re going to be very successful because, like, why would somebody pay more money for the same job when you look around at the area or, you know, just that job in particular and people aren’t paying that much, like when you are going to ask, you have to think exactly like what you did. How do we both win?
By me getting what I want and you have to sell yourself on it first before you can have any hope of selling another person on it.

But it really is essentially, in my opinion, I’d love to know what you think. A sales interaction. Right. Here’s the proposal. Here’s my pitch. I’m proposing that you pay me this and this is to your benefit in these ways. You know, I’m going to add this thing on. I’m going to do take on this project or whatever it is, or I’m not going to do that. But like, to your point, the cost to replace a physician is X dollars, which is ten times what I’m asking as an increase. So it would seem to me that it would work in everyone’s favor to do this. Like, to me, that makes the most sense. And I think a lot of people just haven’t kind of made it made that connection of it’s not just asking for what you want. There needs to be some like a foundation to it, sort of like not a justification, but like a like some support. Underneath why somebody would want to do that. So anyway, I would love to know what you think about it, because I think you’re going to be a lot more successful in getting what you want when you take the time to do that.

Right. It is preparation. You wouldn’t show up to your board exams having never studied, but we show up to these negotiation conversations without having prepared and it’s such a huge piece of your job satisfaction. I always tell people you’re not choosing comfort or discomfort. You’re choosing the discomfort of having a conversation that you may not feel as confident about. And I teach people this and have for years at this point and still have to prepare, Like I still feel uncomfortable having these conversations sometimes.

So I do the same preparation I ask other people to do. It’s not something that you’re just all of a sudden going to switch it on and, Oh, I can do this without preparation now, like you have to prepare same way as a physician that you have some patients that you can just do that consultation off the top of your head. You have other things that you have to prepare for before you go into that consultation because it’s not something you’re doing every single day. And so I think preparation is huge and skipping that is common and a fatal flaw to kind of elucidate what that looks like because people are like, okay, I need to prepare how a lot of it is a being crystal clear on what you want because salary is a piece of that 100%.

But what in your daily life as a physician, in your job, if you’re trying to renegotiate or if you’re looking for a new job in your dream job, what would that look like? Like having a clear picture of what you want is really helpful because you can much more easily ask for things if you know what you’re asking for.

It is a lot simpler to clarify and be able to look from different angles. If you know what your goal is, what the outcome you’re looking for is. And then the second piece that I think is most often forgotten is why are they offering me this job? Or why did they employ me? Why do they want me in this position? Because if you have a better feel for what they’re looking for, what value you provide to them, it’s a whole lot easier to leverage that in order to get what you want. And I actually have people draw like a Venn diagram. It’s like the simplest little third grade science thing of What am I offering? What are my skills? What do I bring to the table in addition to my clinical skill set? Because yes, all of us are physicians with a clinical skill set, but you’re also an individual human who has something to offer. It may be a different language you speak. It may be relationships with docs in the community.

That was something I leveraged hard in my last negotiation because as a sub specialist, that’s huge. I didn’t have to go and build a referral base. I had one. I just had to tap back into it and that’s a lot different process. That’s a lot faster. And for an employer who’s looking for growth, that’s going to be valuable and it’s not something we think about right off the top of the kind of gamut, but it’s important and looking for where they headed, Why are they hiring me today and where do they want to be in three or five years? And you can ask those questions in your interview to get that information as well, because, A, you’re going to look engaged because most people aren’t.

So if you’re asking like, where do you see this department going? Where do you see this division growing? Where do you see my role changing over the next few years? That gives you information you can use to show them why you’re the perfect person for that role? Because leverage is a two way street. Part of the leverage is what alternatives do I have? What better options do I have so that I have the freedom to say yes or no or walk away? And that part of the equation may be really robust for you. It may not be. It depends on your personal circumstances in whatever given negotiation you’re in, but the opposite side is always available to you. And what that is, is showing them why you’re the perfect person for this role, why they want you in this role, and not just a body in the role. Because the more they feel that way, the more they’re willing to go to bat for you, the more they’re willing to actually advocate on your behalf to be able to get you what you need and be a little more flexible.

Yeah. I mean, I. Wow. That’s, like, super good what you just said there. It’s like you’re really just painting a picture for yourself of what you envision and what you want, and then you’re inviting them into that picture, right? It’s like you’re creating it. It’s like we’re both winning in this picture, and it’s so much easier to say yes then. And I could not agree with you more. I mean, being a business owner myself, right? Somebody who has taken the time to really listen to, like, what is the vision? What are we really trying to accomplish here? And then sees how they can fit in or maybe even proposes a way that maybe I never even thought of before, of being able to add value and come in and help in some way.

I mean, it’s just, first of all, great to work with people who want to be there, right? Being like they’re not just there for the paycheck. They’re there because they feel connected in some other way to the work being done, and then there’s fair compensation for that work, right? So so I think that that really is so good. Exactly what you said, which is like, where do you expect this role to go? What are you looking to do? You can mak assumptions. You might be totally wrong. You know, like I’m just thinking back when I was in practice, you know, I was the first employed position they had ever had in 40 years of the practice.

And I’ll just say that I went into it with so many assumptions of what was on the table, what would be on the table in hindsight now, I’m like, Girl, oh my gosh. Like it’s it now that I know how it all played out, right? Like, I’m just like, wow, just wow. But at the time it seems so rational and like, I like I really thought I knew, but like, nobody had actually said anything and I hadn’t even asked. And I think that’s a big part of it, like having the courage or gumption, so to speak, to go in, especially if it’s a new job and asking those questions, not just looking at it like, Oh, I’m just so lucky that you’ve chosen me. I’m so blessed to be the one who comes and works for you, you know, like actually recognizing that you have a really important part to play and understanding how they see that part.

Because I think another area where people really get into trouble, where they just are so dissatisfied is when they didn’t ask, they were coming in thinking, I’m going to play this position on the team. The employee. You’re is thinking, no, you’re going to play this position on the team and they’re not the same. And then it’s just constant butting heads all over lack of discussion and just not being on the same page about the whole thing.

Right. Which is valuable too, because if you find out like they’re headed in this direction and that is absolutely not in alignment with where I want to be, you can say, you know, thank you for the opportunity. It’s been a great learning experience. I think that you and I are headed in different directions and I think I’m going to turn this down at this time. Like you can save yourself a whole lot of drama by not choosing something that wasn’t a good fit for you. And I think this is like shoes, because we’ve all grown up with this like impression of what a doctor looks like and what being a doctor looks like. And a lot of that is based in a very not today kind of perspective.

Like a Norman Rockwell painting.

Yes.

When doctors didn’t look like the workforce does today. So as our workforce has become more diverse, the jobs have not changed as quickly as the people have. And you’re not going to be able to fit a single mom with three kids into the same role as a good old boy with like a stay at home wife was able to fill. Like, those are different people. They’re going to fill the role differently. And it’s not better or worse. It’s just different.

And medicine and the way medicine looks hasn’t really kept up with the diversity that we’re starting to attract, which is it’s good. It’s good that we’re becoming more diverse. But there’s been a lag time between the jobs matching the people, filling the jobs. And yes, you can put on a shoe that doesn’t fit, but 3 hours into the day, your feet hurt and you have a blister. And it may not be debilitating at first, but it’s going to nag over time and rub and rub it rub. And then you get into an environment where it’s completely toxic for you. And all of it could have been prevented by the shoe fitting from the get go.

And I think so much of that is having the patience to find the right fit. Right. Like I think when we’re not, you know, in a place where our minds are managed well, we can accept jobs out of desperation. I know, like I’ve totally done this. I’m sure so many people have like told myself that I knew what was available and this was all there was, even though if I’m really being honest, I basically did zero research and it just was going based on what a couple people I know said, You know what I mean? Like, no, that’s not actually research, you know, and you don’t really know what’s available to you and you owe it, I think everybody owes it to themselves to put in that due diligence, to really figure it out, to spend some time thinking about what is it that I contribute.

If you have a hard time answering that question, then that doesn’t mean you don’t contribute anything. That means there’s some work to do on you. Seeing your own self worth, like valuing yourself in what you offer so that, you know, it’s kind of like you can’t come to the negotiating table thinking the valuable thing in question isn’t very valuable.

You know what I mean? Like, I’m really pretty terrible and, you know, I can’t do a very good job, but you should pay me more. Like, No, that’s not going to work very well. I’m curious what you think about this. My husband is a part owner in his medical practice. He’s said actually for many years how when they hire a new medical assistant, which I mean, they’re all women. They will I mean, pretty much across the board completely. Just they’ll say, you know, do you have a certain number in mind or whatever?

And they’ll just be like, oh, whatever is okay. And then they’ll be like, Is this number? And they’re like, okay, sure. And it reminds me of, Oh my gosh, I reminds me of baby sitting. You know, I am like 12 years old or whatever, babysitting. And then, you know, the parents coming home and saying like, oh, how much per hour? And me just being like, oh, whatever. You don’t like feeling so uncomfortable being like, Well, it’s $5 per kid or whatever it would have been back in those days. I’m sure I got paid way less than $5 for.

Like $2 an hour for a four-week-old and a three-year-old. Yeah, it was a mess.

It was like crazy. But. But I think that we can, you know, that that’s another part of that socialization. And also just girls and women not being taught that you can actually ask for something. Because here’s the thing too, that I and I realize this even just being as you know, as a business owner, like, you know, I’ve negotiated with people, they’ve come back and asked for more. And I really had to think, you know, I mean, that was higher than what I’m thinking. But I’m also like, well, I mean, okay, we can afford it.

That’s what this person needs to be able to come to work every day and not be thinking that they’re not being compensated properly for the work that they’re doing. I think that when you believe you’re being compensated fairly, you’re not even thinking about that. I mean, how many times do I have a thought of like, I’m not getting paid enough to do a whole lot, you know, like that’s just not even on the table. And so, yeah, I will look at the budget and go, Yeah, okay, yeah, we will pay you that because the person asked versus the person who didn’t ask, but then is harboring some resentment or having those thoughts or even saying it out loud, I’m not getting paid enough to do this, you know.

So anyway, I think that that’s something to, you know, almost like challenge ourselves on. And if nothing else, I mean, to help ourselves, but also to change the way the young women in our lives do things right. Because like, I think if I think about my daughter doing it like that, I’m like, what? Oh, you’re not working with me. I might be like, Oh, okay, whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Absolutely. And some of that’s that preparation. Like you should know approximately what is the range of expectation for pay for what I do in the region I’m looking in, because it varies by all of those things. It varies by specialty, it varies by region, it varies by type of job, academic versus private practice versus hospital employed. All of those things go into what is a typical range. And it’s not to say you have to be within that typical range, but most people will.

That’s why it’s typical. And making sure, though, that you’re not on the bottom end of that typical range that you know, Och, this is the 50th percentile, this is about the 25th and 75th. Like where do I want to be? I always tell people your stretch goal has to be the 75th or above, because otherwise I’ll ask what’s a stretch goal? And somebody will pick like the 35th percentile. I’m like, Anything below the 50th percentile can never be your stretch goal. The end, unless you’re working part time and getting paid like the 35th percentile for full time. We can get on board, but like a stretch goal has to be uncomfortable. That’s the goal. And by nature, most of us have been socialized in such a way that our default comfort level is going to be way too low.

And so you need that little pull or stretch to kind of get you to a better compensation range. But you should know those numbers. Ballpark, look at Medscape. It’s online and Free Docs Committee publishes data is online and free. There are better databases. So there are things like GMA and AMC and all the different initials, and those are available for smaller fees through several different places.

I always buy MDMA every year for my clients, but like, it doesn’t matter which one you pick as much as having a general gist of what is being offered or interview at a few places in the same metropolitan area. And then, you know, so and so offered me this so and so offered me that it’s not going to be the same. And that gives you an idea of what is a range for the same me at these different jobs. And does that match up with how well this job fits for me and what. And go from there. Because if you go in and that was my problem with my first job, I went in as a PGY five interviewing for a job for after I was a PG seven, because why not? And everything felt like a lot. I was like, compared to the.

Right comparative thousand dollars a year or whatever I was making.

Like swimming.

I was like, This is so much money. And it seemed like the highest pay ever. Well, it was the 25th percentile. It was not high, but it felt high in comparison to me as a high five. It is high compared to the average American, but I have a quarter million dollars in debt. At that time I had all these other things and it’s okay to make money like it’s all right for you to say, even if.

You didn’t have the debt, doesn’t matter.

Right? I heard being a different job. Yeah. The average person doing my job is making, say, 500,000. I’m just picking a nice round number. Then why would I want to make less than that? But you have to know those numbers to be able to position yourself well. And that’s where I here with a lot of fields, they’re like, well, I may insert here. They just don’t get paid well. No, but you could be the highest paid of that kind of job. Or yes, they get paid by or whatever. Like you get to choose how you believe about that. That number is neutral. But there’s a range for every specialty. There’s a range for every region. And so all of these well, I’m this or oh, I work in this city, those type of thoughts like and there’s still a range or if you can’t get the salary to a different level, how else could this job serve you better?

Exactly right. Because it’s not just about the money necessarily. It can be other benefits, time off, things like that.

Most people don’t leave jobs over money. Most people leave jobs over flexibility, autonomy, culture. Like, it’s not only the money and it’s almost the money is the easiest piece. Like there’s data on that. You can kind of pick a range, decide where you want to be and go for it. It’s the intangible things that really make or break a job for you. So if the money is you’ve tried it and you’ve gone at it a couple of different ways and it’s not moving, how else could you look at that? How else could this be advantageous for you? How could this be better for you in your daily life? And so there’s so much more to it.

Right, Right, right. I think it’s really important to mention that, too, because it is the whole package, right? It could be that you’re willing to be paid less because that’s what’s available. But, you know, you’re super connected to the work that they’re doing there or the culture of the organization or whoever your leader is going to be or the mentorship that’s going to be available to you or just whatever it is that’s super valuable as well. And a really important part of your day to day experience. I mean, my understanding is that some people are checking their bank balance every single day, but I think that most people aren’t thinking about like every single moment, how much am I getting paid to pay for this? Right? Like, what we are thinking about is what is it like to actually do this job here?

So in terms of impacting your actual day to day life, that might even be might even be more important. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so good. Yeah. Wow. Such good stuff to think about. Because, I mean, really what it comes down to is like, the world is better when women have money. You know, like women do good things with the money that they have or like being able to be satisfied and and fulfilled in their work and have the time and flexibility to do the other things that are important to them, be involved in their personal lives and whatever way they decide they want to.

I was just going to wrap up here with just encouraging anybody who’s listening. I think it could be really easy. I mean, you’ve given us some really great information here today, and I hope everybody applies it. But I think there’s also a lot of people who think like, I should just be able to do this myself, like I listen to this podcast or maybe, you know, you have a podcast, you listen to that and like, I should just be able to do this. And I just want to just emphasize the value that having a coach to take you through this process, you know, can really bring like whatever. I don’t even know how much you charge, but whatever it is, it’s like an investment to be able to get so much more right, like I’m going to pay this much to get help so that I can learn this skill that’s repeatable again and again and can get me compensated so much more fairly.

Or keep you in medicine.

Or keep you in medicine. I gosh, yes, I’m glad you brought that up, because I think so many people are like, Well, you know what? I’m not happy. I guess I got to leave. Yeah. And, you know, that’s not necessarily good for medicine. And then we’re like staff shortages and we can’t find anybody to work. I’m like.

You created this environment where people weren’t being treated like people.

Exactly. I don’t think about it very often because obviously, I have a very, very full and fulfilling life, the work that I do. But man, had I had coaching back in the day when I was practicing. I mean, it would have just made all the difference. And so, so, so, so, so many ways. Right.

And everybody doesn’t have to stay in medicine, but everybody who wants to should be able to.

Or at least give it a good shot before deciding, You know what, This isn’t for me because that’s okay if it’s not. But it’s so, so good. Well, how can everybody find you? You have a podcast. You obviously coach people, give us all the information.

Yes. I try to keep things simple because it’s nice and easy. Part of why I married my husband was his last name was easy, so my podcast is simply worth it and my website is simply st IMDB.com. So it’s just simply straight. Like you list one simply straight out dot com and I’m around. So the podcast comes out weekly and I’m on the website, on Facebook, all the places and really just no matter what, really be willing to advocate for yourself.

And sometimes that’s hiring a coach, right. Like that might be the only advocating you could do right now is going to. Or a coach to help me so that I can advocate for myself in other areas of my life.

You helped me and I was in a weight loss coaching program. Like it doesn’t even have to be me that coaches you to for you to be able to successfully negotiate. It’s all same human brain stuff, but being willing to have someone who can challenge you and really be a mirror for the process is certainly super effective. And then community having community of others. I know you and I both work with women physicians, having a community of other women physicians who have similar shared experiences is just a level of support that is very unique and incredibly valuable because it’s nice to see I’m not the only one who ran into this obstacle. I’m not the only one who has had this inbox issue or whatever. And crowdsourcing those solutions. Crowdsourcing just the I’m not alone part is hugely valuable.

Yeah, and I think having a community even within that, like a sub community of people who are actively working on trying to make it better because I mean, if we’re being honest, right, so much of the kind of social media communities and stuff is just like a lot of complaining and that can actually make you feel so much worse. Right? And a lot of just like heaviness. Right? Exactly. It’s just like when you start seeing a bunch of people chiming in in that way, it’s easy to start thinking like there’s no hope.

But when you have like this unique community of people who are like, you are, as you said, sharing every all of those similar experiences and are actively working on solving that problem and doing something different, it’s like it’s the opposite, right? Like you feel energized, you feel excited, you see someone else did it and they got this result and you’re like, You know what? Och, I think it might be my turn next.
I think I’m going to do it, which is, which is so cool. So, Linda, thank you so much for coming and sharing all this. It’s a really, really, really important topic. And I think to your point, I think it has a lot to do with physician satisfaction and fulfillment in their work and everything that we can do to help with that. That’s going to be better for all of us. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be taken care of or my family taken care of by a doctor who is burned out and hates being there and thinks that they’re underpaid.

You pay them all the money. I need them to take care of me when I’m getting older and need health care, please.

Exactly. Exactly. But thank you so much.

Yes, ma’am. Thanks for having me.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health? Go to https://katrinaubellmd.com/ and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #319: Negotiation for Physicians with Linda Street, MD appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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I want to propose an alternative to work/life balance. What if we worked towards work/life alignment instead?

I don’t know about you, but I cringe when I hear the term “work/life balance.” The more we try to achieve it, the worse we feel about ourselves. For something to be balanced, it has to be perfectly matched on both sides, and I just don’t think that’s realistic when it comes to work and life. That’s why I prefer to think of getting my work and life aligned.

In this episode, I’m talking about the difference between balance and alignment and why I think one makes more sense than the other when it comes to our work and lives.

If you feel defeated constantly trying to find the perfect balance, I feel you, and I’m here to give you permission to stop.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why I don’t like the term “work/life balance” * The difference between balance and alignment * Putting less pressure on yourself to achieve perfect balance * Allowing yourself to give more to work or more to personal life at different times * The value of flexibility * How to expand your possibilities * Getting creative with solutions * Why it’s okay to not love every season of life that you’re in * How to know if you’re in or out of alignment

Work/life alignment works with you. It’s more flexible than balance, and it’s going to make you feel so much better. Alignment is going to look different for you than it does for me or anyone else, and that’s a good thing! It’s okay to honor your own wants and needs. It’s time to stop beating yourself up for not having a perfect balance; you’re doing a great job.

For free resources to help you start making progress on your weight loss goals, go to katrinaubellmd.com/resources.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #317: What Women Physicians Need to Thrive

Ep #316: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Eating Against Your Own Will | Chp. 8

Ep #315: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Science for the Win! | Chp. 6

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Today, as this episode is airing, it is February 14th. It is Valentine’s Day. So whether you’re into Valentine’s Day or not, Happy Valentine’s Day. I sure am grateful for you being here. And I think Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be such a romantic thing necessarily. It can be more of something that’s just about celebrating love, celebrating the people that you love. And I certainly want to celebrate you. I love you and so glad that you’re here and so glad that you’re taking the time to give yourself a little spurt, a little few minutes of just realigning your brain, getting yourself where you need to be so that you can have a great week moving forward.

And that actually leads me into our topic today. Today, we’re going to talk about work-life alignment. I was actually coaching just yesterday in our weight loss for doctors only program, and there was some good coaching of several different clients that came up that I’m kind of going to synthesize some of the main points for you here today, because I know that what we talked about absolutely is going to apply to basically everybody listening to this podcast.

So I thought, you know what, I think you need to hear this, too. I don’t know about you, but if I hear the term work-life balance, I kind of cringe. My skin kind of crawls a little bit, like I just don’t love it. It’s been something that people have been talking about for a while now, and I think for the beginning of the time people started talking about it. It was like, Oh, that’s what we have to do. We just have to figure out a way to find some balance. And then what a lot of us found moving forward from that is kind of like, Yeah, but we actually just feel worse about ourselves.

The more we tried to create work life balance, the more we feel like we’re doing a terrible job at work because we’re thinking about our life, our personal stuff. And when we’re at home or doing our personal stuff, we feel bad because we think we should be at work. In some ways, I think it actually kind of backfired. It sort of made us feel worse about ourselves, put us more into a perfectionistic kind of a state and just makes us feel like no matter what we try, we aren’t making the progress that we want to be making or it’s just not the experience that we want to have.

And certainly, you know, I think the best way to figure out if a certain way of thinking about something is good for you is just how you feel when you think about it, right? If you think that you need to be creating work life balance and then you have a negative emotion, or you’re at least, you know, not even neutral or excited about it, then maybe that’s just not the best way for you.

Maybe it’s amazing for your friend or your coworker or whoever told you about it, but that’s great for them. It doesn’t have to be that way for you. It doesn’t have to be something that is going to be the thing. So what I prefer instead is to think about work life alignment. And what I mean by that is having your work and your life aligned to me.

The balance word it brings to mind like a seesaw or a teeter totter or whatever the other terms are for those kinds of things. But in a children’s playground, you know, not so often anymore. When we were kids, there were way more of them. But you know what I’m talking about, right? There’s a little fulcrum in the center, equal, you know, space on either side of some sort of board or, you know, pull or whatever. Or maybe there’s a seat back in the day, Right? We just sat on the wood.

We were fine. We hung on for dear life. So fun. And so if you are trying to create this balance in my mind, all it takes is one teeny little thing to change or be off and suddenly you’re out of balance again, right? To get it to be balanced, then it needs to be even. It needs to be evenly matched. You know, in our example, the weight has to be exactly the same. If there’s a little bit even just a teeny bit more weight on one side, it starts to tip. And I think that’s probably why it just hasn’t really resonated. It’s just too hard to accomplish that. Or maybe you can get it that way for a little while. But then when life does what life does and something new crops up, now you’re out of balance. And so what do you do? Right? Because the weight has shifted a little bit.

When I think about Work-Life Alignment, I think of it more as thinking about your day, you know, as 24 hours and you know, how like on your phone, if you want to know how much your memory is taken up and it’ll even show you like, you know, this percent of the storage space is used for podcast recordings or videos or whatever all the things are that are in there. And it kind of has this bar graph that goes across and each section is a different color.

And then when your phone is full, the whole thing is colored in. I kind of think of it like our day is that. Ma and it’s all colored in. But there’s just, you know, for simplicity’s sake, there’s two colors. We’ve got one color for work and one color for life or personal stuff. And when we are aligned, then we’ve got the transition from one color to the other color somewhere in the middle ish, right? Maybe between like 30% and 70%. You know, like the line is kind of around there. It’s not smack dab in the center. Sometimes it does need to move to one direction or the other direction, But we’re not overlapping, right? We’re not trying to do both at the same time.

I think where we really struggle is when we’re like, Hey, I should be putting 80% of myself into work and 80% of my self into my personal life. And that doesn’t work, right? And we feel totally burnt out. We feel exhausted. It’s just not sustainable. It’s something that doesn’t work for us. And we know that, right? We can feel it and it’s just not something that is a long term solution. But if you think about it like it’s just that bar and the division between the two colors work and life can slide back and forth, then you have some flexibility. What I feel like is part of the problem with work life balance is it’s quite rigid, right? It’s like it needs to be the certain way.

You need to figure out what balance is for you, what’s going to be the balance. I mean, when I think about that question, I feel pressured, I feel kind of confused. The first thing that comes to mind is like, I don’t know, and I just feel like I’m doing it wrong. That’s kind of the overriding experience that I have. And I’m guessing that you’ve had that too, that like there’s some elusive balance out there and I haven’t figured it out, and I don’t know if I can ever figure it out. And so therefore, it’s just not available for people like me, right? It’s not something that I can look forward to. Instead for work life alignment, it’s like if you’re going to give more to work, then life’s going to have to give a little. If you are giving more to life than work’s going to have to give a little. And that center division between the two colors of work and life can slide back and forth based on what you have going on.

So, for instance, say, God forbid someone in your family is having some sort of illness, or maybe your aging parents need your help with some things or just, you know, someone in your family had surgery and you need to help them with recovery and you need to devote more time to life.

Then you can do that. But then you have to recognize that something’s going to have to give with work. We’re going to have to figure something else out there. And similarly say with work, you’re short staffed. Or I’ve been hearing so much from all of my my clients and members that I work with how, you know, there’s just a lot of hiring going on, you know, looking for different doctors to fill different positions or maybe not even doctors. It could be other supportive staff. And while that position is vacant or maybe multiple positions are vacant, everybody has to step up and do a bit more to make sure everything is handled.

All the patients are cared for the way they need to be. All the work that needs to get done gets done. And so maybe that bar in the center has to slide over a little to accommodate for work, requiring a little bit more of you in this time. But that to me feels like something that’s more fluid, more flexible and more doable because things we just don’t know, like, you know, say you get pregnant and you were like, my last pregnancy was fine. And now this one you have hyperemesis, right? You’re probably not going to be able to function in your work life the way that you were before. You might not even be able to function in your home life the way that you were before.

You’re going to have to create some flexibility in there. One thing that I think is really important is making sure that the way we think about work isn’t super rigid. This was one thing that I was coaching somebody on yesterday. This lovely, amazing doctor is super committed to her work, super committed to all the different aspects of her work. I’m going to keep it real vague to protect her privacy, but very, very committed. On the flip side of that, she also has a family life and some demands and requirements. They’re things that she wants to spend time on. But if we’re really being honest, she wants to spend more time on her work. In her spending more time on her work, she’s developed a bit of a rigid way of thinking that makes her think that the only way for her to get all her work done is for her to spend as much time at work as she is, which the other people in her life who are important to her would like her to do less of.

They would like her to be more available at home. They would like her to leave earlier, more predictably, basically show up more and be more present in the home life because of this rigid way of thinking about work. She’s not able to see that there are other options in maybe getting all the work done that needs to be done, but over a shorter period of time.

And I think we all fall into this in some way, shape or form somewhere along the line where we look at whatever the thing is, the task or the involvement or whatever it is that we’re up against, and we tell ourselves the story that it has to be done this way. You’re the one who has to do all these things, and they’re just really is no other way. In the case of this client, if she leaves early, then the work just won’t get done and it will just pile up and pile up and pile up some more, only making it harder for her later.

So what she thinks when she’s telling me that is that she’s just telling me the truth and it is the truth of what her experience has been so far. As a result of the way she thinks about it. Right. She thinks she’s the only one who can get this stuff done. It takes a certain amount of time. If she leaves early, that work’s going to build up. And then, you know, there’s no free lunch. Like eventually you have to pay for it somewhere along the line, right? Because that has been her experience. That has been true for her.

But what’s been really interesting is seeing what happens when I offer a different way of thinking. What if you could get all your work done? In the time that you want it to take, right? Not like it typically takes us much time.

And so if I leave early, it doesn’t all get done and I have to deal with it later, instead going, you know what? I’m going to work, let’s say 2 hours less every day and all the work’s going to get done and nothing’s going to be compromised. And I mean, I get this because I’ve gone through this in my life as well. When you’re kind of challenged with that idea and your brain almost seizes up, it’s like, you know, rusty gears or something that are just like, oh, like totally screeching to a halt. Your brain’s just like, What did you just say? And no, that’s not possible. And so sometimes we just have to spend some time just being in the space of, you know, could it even be possible ever for anybody that this work could be done and I could leave consistently at whatever time, say, 6:00, and it would all be done and nobody would be harmed. Everybody would be winning.

It can be very, very hard for us to start seeing this as a possibility. The reason why I see it more as a possibility is only from practice, because I’ve done it so often in my own life and proved myself wrong. You know, I was so convinced it had to be a certain way and then realizing I was completely making that story up. Not the truth at all.

And then, of course, leading my clients through it as well. I’ve seen it time and time again, and we don’t want to force ourselves to think differently. Sometimes, right? We’re trying to just pick a different thought and believe it, and that’s just going to be the way. Except we don’t actually believe it. And it just. What I would say is that it just doesn’t have any traction. Then you can keep trying to believe that. But it’s just it’s too far of a leap. What we sometimes need to do is we need to just even work on expanding the possibility. Could it be possible for a person with this kind of a job and these responsibilities to get their work done and leave consistently on time?

And if we can just even open it up to like, okay, it could be possible. I know for myself, you know, when I’ve been, like, so committed to my old way of thinking. I usually could get myself to a place of admitting. Well, I mean, pretty much anything is possible. So, like, is it possible? I mean, I guess so. I can’t see how I could do it. I don’t think it’s possible for me. But like, could it be possible in this world for somebody? Okay, sure. That’s usually been the kind of the door cracking open. Like, okay, maybe. Yes, it could. It could be a thing. And then we can start opening up to, well, how would that work? What could that look like? We often think that it means that we just have to do all of the work ourselves faster or more efficiently.

And sometimes that is a huge part of the solution because there are a lot of people who think they’re being as efficient as possible and then they realize, Oh, actually no, I’m not. There’s so much improvement that can be made here and I’m spending way too much time charting. There’s so much more efficiency that I could build into my charting or all sorts of other things. I mean, over the years I’ve talked to so many different doctors who are like, Yeah, And then actually I spent, you know, 45 minutes talking to my partner about some stuff that probably was more procrastinating than actually like an important conversation that needed to be had. Right? It’s important to just be aware of that.

We’re not saying you can’t have that conversation, but let’s just be aware. There are some areas where we could maybe build in some more efficiencies, but what are we often have? A lot of rigid thinking is in thinking that the only way for things to be done, the way we want them to be done is if we do them. And this is an area where I think there’s a lot of room to explore. It may not always be the right answer for everybody, but it’s certainly worthwhile to spend some time considering.

So if you are recognizing that, you know, just the sheer volume of charting that needs to be done, even when you’re efficient, is more than what you’d like to be spending on it, then we can get creative. You know, there are definitely people who have hired scribes and that has helped them so much. But I’ve also heard from a lot of doctors who say, Well, you know what, I’d love to have a scribe and it really would help me, but my organization won’t pay for it. And so they think that’s like full stop the end. No more room for discussion.

And it may still not be the right thing, but I still think it’s worthwhile to actually crunch the numbers and consider how much would it cost for you to hire your own scribe? What more could you get done? What would that do for your productivity? What would it look like in terms of your compensation? And also, would you be willing to take maybe a small hit to your compensation in order to not spend so much time doing this, charting that you don’t really want to be doing and you get to leave on time every day? Like, could that be a worthwhile investment in yourself and in your enjoyment of your work? So we just want to get really creative. We want to open our minds up. Maybe we do some work that really the residents can do just fine, but we’ve convinced ourselves that we should really just do it.

Or you know what? Honestly, there really there’s an administrative assistant who could do some of this stuff, but we’ve just sort of felt bad asking someone to help us. I mean, these kinds of things come up again and again. But the only way we can even see that as a possibility is for us to open up to the idea that it is definitely possible for us to leave on time. And the work is done every day to the level that we expect, like whatever our level of work product is, that we expect that it is done.

Another way of looking at it is, okay, I’m at the place going in the future. I’m in the place where I leave every day at six. All the work is done. There is nothing that I’m doing on my couch at night. It’s all done, like getting to that place, connecting to the place where it’s done, and then asking yourself, How did I do it? Often your brain will be like, Oh, like this, this, this, and this. All it needed to do was really understand where it was trying to take you. When you don’t think that there’s another possibility your brain will not look for other solutions. The reason why it’s worthwhile to expand the possibilities, to really open your mind up to it being able to be different and still good or even better is so that your brain can do its amazing work.

You know what’s so skilled at which is problem solving? So when we’re going, well, I want my work in my life to be in alignment. But work is has so many obligations. There’s so much that I have to do. That’s something to be questioned. That’s something to be worked on. The other area that we have to look at is sometimes we tell ourselves that we have to do all this work and we have to be there longer. We have to help with all these things, take on all these additional commitments, because deep down, maybe even subconsciously, we don’t really like what it feels like to be in our personal lives.

And I see this time and again, particularly with people who have really young kids, they’ve got babies, toddlers, you know, just that season of life that is a lot. And not everybody feels that way. There are plenty of people who love that time or maybe love parts of it, but I’ve done other episodes in talking about it being okay that things feel hard. What we have to do is we have to honor that we’re not always going to love every season of life that we’re in. There’s going to be times where it’s like, Look, you I mean, I’ve talked about this before. My daughter was for, oh my God, she was just hard. She was so hard.

So sometimes what I prefer to maybe be at work where I could feel like I could be successful. And people gave me positive feedback and it didn’t feel like such a slog all the time. Of course, that makes sense. Okay, but let’s just call it what it is. Let’s just recognize, you know what? Personal life doesn’t feel super great right now, and that’s why I’m spending more time at work, not because I can’t figure out work life balance, not because my work is so difficult, it involves so much and they really need me and I can’t leave. So that really what we’re doing is working at the expense of our personal life, our relationships and all the other things we have going on. Just recognizing, you know, I don’t love that right now. Maybe some coaching would help make it more tolerable. In fact, I’m quite confident it would. But just recognizing, you know, the reason why I want to work so much is because home doesn’t feel so fun right now.

Or maybe you get home and you’re like, you know, I’ve been saying I want to be dating, but I’m not doing it. And so then otherwise I’m sitting home by myself and then I don’t feel good about myself. So I’d rather just be around people and be at work. Okay, let’s just be honest about that. But then we can’t tell ourselves, You know what? I’m just so busy at work.

I don’t have time to date. Actually not true. And it’s holding you back from the long term result, the long term outcome that you’re really desiring. So ultimately, wrapping this all up work life alignment is something that works with you. It’s more flexible, and the way you’re going to know that you’re in alignment is because of how you’re going to feel. If you’re constantly feeling like you’re doing a bad job in one area of your life. I would argue that you’re out of alignment.

I mean, in some way, shape or form, things are not matching up the way they’re supposed to. You’re trying to overlap two areas instead of finding what works right now. What we don’t want to find ourselves doing is ignoring the issues that we have for so long that there ends up being something that’s irreversible, such as a partner deciding, you know what? Like, I’m really, really, really, really tired of coming in second always no matter what’s going on at home. And so I don’t think I want to, you know, be in this partnership anymore or whatever it is, other relationships that are falling apart because we’re prioritizing work. So we just have to understand, we’ll tell ourselves these stories about how great work is. And, you know, it’s really meaningful. And what we do is important. And it is. Yes. To all of that. And. That’s not going to be there with you. You know, work is not going to pick you up from having your procedure or pick you up from the airport or, you know, be there for you when you’re 75.

Right. Your personal relationships are very important. There’s so much data on how important that is to people’s well-being and happiness. I mean, it’s ridiculous. So you really have to think, am I working on the alignment? Even if working on those relationships right now is really hard and uncomfortable? Right. It’s not always going to be super fun in both areas, but we can find a way so that it feels like it’s aligned.

And that’s what I want to challenge you to do this week, is to think about your work, your personal life and are they aligned. If they don’t feel aligned, then where’s the issue? Where is there some area to think about, to contemplate, to maybe get coached on so that you can get to a place where you’re like, You know what? I keep myself in alignment no matter what’s going on in both areas of my life.

All right. I wish you a happy Valentine’s Day sending you love. I love you. You’re very lovable. And I’m so glad that you’re here. Thanks for your attention. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I’ll talk to you next time. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free help, go to https://katrinaubellmd.com/, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #318: Work/Life Alignment appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you ever felt like it’s impossible to thrive as a woman physician in our healthcare system? That breaks my heart and it’s time it changed.

In this episode, we’re celebrating National Women Physician’s Day (February 3rd), and I figured what better way to celebrate than by talking about what helps women physicians to thrive?

I’ve learned a lot from coaching women physicians for so many years, so now I’m bringing it all together in a simple, actionable episode for you. I’m sharing four categories for you to think about to help you thrive.

You have so much to offer and what you offer is so valuable. You deserve to be thriving while you do it.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why women physicians are so great for healthcare * What it really means to get clear on your values * Honoring that our values are different * The importance of advocating for yourself * How to stop shaming yourself for what you want * Identifying and meeting your needs * Making yourself a priority * Supportive and functional ways to deal with your emotions * Why not all of your thoughts are true

You can thrive as a woman physician in the current healthcare system even though it’s broken. The first step is knowing that it’s even possible for you to thrive, so I really want you to let that sink in. Everyone deserves to feel good and like they’re living in alignment with the life they want, including you.

If you’re interested in Weight Loss for Doctors Only, the one program specifically designed by a physician to help female physicians lose weight permanently, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info to enroll or find out more about it.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:University of Toronto Article About Women Physicians

Weight Loss for Doctors Only

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Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #316: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Eating Against Your Own Will | Chp. 8

Ep #315: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Science for the Win! | Chp. 6

Ep #314: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Reframing Losing | Chp. 3

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

My voice is like a little husky, so we’re just going to go with it. And I also have my nine year old daughter on the couch near me. She’s home sick from school. And I told her, you know, I asked her to if she could just try to be quiet while I record and she’s doing so. So anyway, we got a little fly on the wall right now. I’m not used to recording my podcast with anybody else in the room, so it’s a little bit strange for me, but I’m so excited about this topic today that I think I’m going to easily be able to drop it. So last Friday, February 3rd, was National Women Physicians Day. And so I was thinking when I was planning this episode, I was like, Well, I mean, I could do it earlier or I could do it late because Fridays right in the middle of the Tuesdays. So I just decided to do it on this episode.

So it’s already past as you’re getting this episode. But I decided to take inspiration from this day that celebrates women physicians to talk about what really helps women physicians to thrive. This was a really fun episode for me to put together, really distilling down all the things that I’ve learned from coaching women physicians for so many years and putting it together in something that’s going to be really actionable for you. So first, I was kind of wondering, you know, when I went to medical school, I started medical school, let’s see, in 1998. Yeah, 1998. I remember them saying that we were one of the first classes they had had. I mean, we were the first class where it was half women, half men. And that was such a big deal. It was so exciting. And so many women are going into medicine. It’s going to be so good.

So I checked in to see since that time because it’s been, you know, 25 years now. That’s crazy. Since I started medical school. Oh, my gosh, how many US physicians are women? And it turns out that the latest data I could find was 54.2% women. So now there’s more women physicians in the US than there are men. I checked into Canada as well. The best data I could find is about 42% women. But in the family physician category, which is for those of you in the US or in other areas of the world and you know, I’m no expert in Canadian medicine, but I’ve picked up a thing or two along the way.

Family physicians are the primary care doctors. Like if you are going to go to the doctor, you’re going to start with a family physician. So there’s lots and lots of family physicians. And I saw, I think 60% or even higher of those doctors are women in Canada. And so, you know, it’s interesting. I actually found this article out of the University of Toronto talking about why women physicians are really great for health care. And and so I just want to share some of that with you. They were saying that it’s about they’re better for health care, but they experience gender pay gaps as we know, discrimination and depression. I just want to share some of the things that they talked about because there is just all this evidence showing that women tend to practice medicine in a style that is better suited for patients.

So compared to male physicians, women spend more time with their patients, they are more likely to adhere to guidelines. They’re more likely to offer more follow up care and are more careful in their prescribing practices. They’re also more likely to address mental health concerns and to establish collaborative partnerships with their patients. I mean, this literally, I was reading this. I’m like, Yep, check. Uh huh. Yeah, I’d say that. Yes, I agree. I agree. I agree.

Even as a patient. I agree. And of course it’s not. I mean, it’s a generalization. It’s not every single person I have been taken care of by male doctors and I continue to in some parts of my life and they’re great, but they’re the reason I see them is because they’re great. Right? I’ve also had plenty of other experiences, as I’m sure you have, too. They say, in turn, patients of female doctors have fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits than those of male doctors. And this is even more pronounced for patients who have complex medical issues. And patients of female physicians are more likely to be up to date on preventive screening, such as mammograms, and are more likely to be satisfied with their care. So I’m going to link this in the show notes. But if you’re interested in reading it all, the kind of everything I said, there’s links in there showing the data to support that in case you’re interested. But what they’re saying in this article is like, the problem is that like, that’s all great.

The problem is that the health care system has not changed along with practice style of the female physician workforce and that there are consequences to that. And so like I said, I mean, the gender pay gap, I’ve done an episode on that before. This is mostly talking about the arrangement in Canada, but I think a lot of it actually really applies to those of us in the rest of North America and in other parts of the world as well.

And, you know, a big part that they said here is female doctors are more likely to have a spouse who works full time than male physicians, and they take on a larger proportion of parenting and domestic tasks. And that’s really, really true and says add an. Old boy’s club work culture that is rife with gender-based discrimination, abuse and harassment, which has little hope of change without the representation of female voices in medical leadership, and then talking about how burnout, depression and suicide are a real issue as well. There’s a study by the Canadian Medical Association in 2018 that showed that female doctors had a 23% higher odds of experiencing burnout, 32% higher odds of depression and 31% higher odds of suicidal thoughts than their male colleagues.

And then my alma mater, University of Michigan, published an article in JAMA Network Open that shows that within six years of completing residency training, almost 75% of women physicians reported either reducing their work hours or considering part time work. And so there’s a big thing in Canada, again, like this is just because this is out of Toronto, but it says we do not have a shortage of physicians in Canada. I actually was just in Canada. I got home yesterday for a workshop that I went to and someone I spoke to, he said, Oh yeah, we have such a shortage of of doctors in Canada.

This author says we do not have a shortage of physicians in Canada. We have a shortage of support for our female doctors. Right. This was written by Rebecca Trinkaus, who’s a family physician and global journalism fellow at University of Toronto. So anyway, I thought it was a great article and so much to think about, right? We do such a great job, yet we suffer the consequences of that. So if that is all true, then what do we need to do to thrive as women physicians, Right? What do women physicians need in order to thrive? And so I have four specific categories of things that I want you to consider to think about, to journal on, to mull over in your brain, to marinate in, because this is some really, really, really good and important stuff to consider.

So much of what I see is physicians of all genders really feeling like they’re at the mercy of the health care systems that are in place. And those systems, of course, as we know, are very much broken in a lot of ways. And I think that so much of what we focus on are the things that we can’t immediately change or impact. Not to say that those things shouldn’t be changed or impacted, not to say that we shouldn’t put some effort toward changing them or making an impact on them. But what about today? What about feeling better today, now this week? Right. What do we do for ourselves to actually be able to keep afloat while this is all getting worked out? And that’s what I want to talk about here.

So these are going to be things you’re going to be working on more on a personal level for yourself. So the first thing is getting clear on your values. And if I’m 100% honest with you, when I hear people talk about values, half my brain just sort of shuts off. I’ve done plenty of different activities over the years where you’re supposed to pick the things that are most important to you from a whole long list of values. And and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not bad at all. I just often had a hard time figuring out how that applied to my actual day to day life. And so if you’ve had that experience as well, I’m going to make it clear for you on how it does actually impact your day to day life.

So what you’re doing when you’re getting clear on your values is you’re finding out what’s really important to you. So you as an individual, this is not what other people find valuable. This isn’t what your parents think should be important to you. It’s not what you think the quote unquote should be or or like a good person would think this or a good mom would think this or a good doctor would think this. What’s actually genuinely, truly important to you? And then understanding why it’s important to you.

And when you know this, when you have figured this out, this is how you apply it. You make decisions then for your life based on these values? Okay. So when you’re feeling out of alignment in your life, right. When you’re feeling out of balance, although, you know, balance is one of those words, right? Work life balance. It’s like, is that even a thing? But alignment is a really real thing. Do you feel like your life is in alignment right now or not? We generally have an idea on the answer to that. Like, does it feel like we’re aligned or does it feel like we’re out of alignment? If you feel like you’re out of alignment, then you are very likely out of alignment with your values.

So let me give you an example here. So years ago, I did a values exercise and found out that one of my top personal values is flexibility. So this means that having flexibility in my life is something that’s very, very important to me. So let me give you an example of where this felt, where I was definitely out of alignment with this. When I was in my pediatric practice, the way we worked our practice was that we would get, you know, like have our regular bookings for, well, checks and follow ups and things like that. But then we had lots of space available for same day appointments.

And I know other some other practices and specialties have a setup like this. It’s kind of uniquely, I think, very heavy in pediatrics, just because kids get sick, you know, and they just need to be seen much more short notice. And there is definitely more of a reliance on urgent care for adults and maybe even in some communities for pediatrics. But we really preferred to see our own patients, if at all we could. And we found that that gave better care to our patients. So we wanted to be able to see them when they were sick. And so that meant that some days I would walk into the office after just going to round on babies at maybe one or two or sometimes even three different hospitals.

So I already feel like I worked half a day and I’m walking in at 850, you know, to start the day. And maybe one of the medical assistance or nurses is kind of looping by and we’ll say something like, We’re already booking past 5:00 or hope you have your roller skates on today. You know, meaning you’re going to be just running the whole day. I remember feeling so defeated, like I barely even started the day. And you’re basically already telling me how to think about it, which is today is going to suck, right? Like, that’s basically what they’re saying. You’re going to be exhausted and today is going to suck. So, you know, for better or for worse, this is just how it was set up.

So, you know, the phones would start ringing at seven. They would just start filling in those sick appointments. And sometimes by 9:00 in the morning, we were already booking past 5:00. And so it kind of changed actually over the years that I work there, but especially when I first started working there, we really the idea was you stay until the last patient who’s called has been seen. So if someone calls at 530, even though the phones are supposed to be actually turned over to the answering service, if we’re still there and working, we’ll ask them how long it would take them to get there. And can you come right now? The argument over whether that’s a good way of running a practice or not is not within the scope of this podcast. But anyway, that’s how it was, right?

So we would just never really know when we were going to be done. And that made it really, really challenging. If we had any kind of activities that we wanted to get to after work. And so we would book out so far in advance. Sometimes, you know, things come up like with school and things like that. So I remember it was when my oldest son, who was now 17, he was in first grade. So how old was he? Probably six or seven. And his class did a class play. And so I didn’t know in enough advance to make sure I had that day off.

But it was in the evening because most parents worked. And so I thought it should be no problem while the school was on, you know, with good traffic about a 22 minute drive from my house. And I should also say that my office still that old office where I used to work is a half a block from where I live. So it was basically the same thing, work or home, 22 minute drive on a good day, like with no traffic. So I come to find out that the class plays at 6 p.m. on this day and I’m working on that day. And so I think to myself, okay, you know what? I’ll just make sure I’ll just tell the front desk like I have to leave. I just can’t see other people. Like I just, you know, whoever else calls in one of the other doctors is just going to have to see them because that’s just how it has to be. And so I told them I made sure they knew. Also recognizing that there’s going to be rush hour traffic, too. So it’s going to take longer to get there. And I think I even had to have my nanny bring my son because he had to be there early for like, you know, getting himself ready and stuff. So she was going to get him there. I was going to meet my husband there and, you know, do a trade off with a nanny.

Okay, great. So that was the plan. Even the day of I tell the front desk staff like I have to leave, like there was literally there’s no discussion. I have to leave at 5:00. So guess what ends up happening? They add people on, right? They add people on. And so then I’m thinking, okay, well, if I can get out by like five, ten, five, 15, maybe that’ll work. This thing starts at six. I’d love to connect with my son before he gets up there and does it. But, you know, I’m rather than just being like I’m walking out the door because, like I said, you know, I’m thinking to myself, No, no, no. I have to, you know, help out. If they gave them this spot, then that’s what I have to do. And so I cannot even describe to you the stress I felt of being pulled in two directions. Here is a patient I remember even specifically, one of the patients had, you know, a facial laceration. And so I’m like, okay, all right, I can draw them up on this. That’ll be fine. I can do it fast. But just feeling so much pressure to not let the patient know that I’m trying to hurry yet Trying to hurry, like getting myself out of there. Just the racing around, wondering if I’m going to miss, you know, this important day in my child’s life was also a very important person in my life.

Right. And and just racing out of there feeling so stressed in traffic, getting there right at the last minute, you know, finding a seat way in the back because all the other parents got there way earlier and just feeling so stuck. You know, like here is something that is important to me and there is no guarantee that I can make it there, at least in the way that I want to make it there. And really the issue there was that flexibility is very important to me. Being able to have some say in how my day is spent is just something that’s very important to me. It may not be for you, right?

This is why our values are also different. So that was one way that this particular arrangement at this practice was out of alignment. For me personally, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad job, doesn’t mean that someone else won’t totally love it. It just means that it was out of alignment for me. So when we’re making decisions, whether it’s going into a new practice, leaving a practice, going to a different practice, or any other decisions that we make in our lives, personal or professional, we want to make sure that they align with our values, at least to the best of our knowledge. Of course, sometimes we get into a job having asked all the right questions, and then we still find out, Oh, once I’m here, it’s actually a little different than I expected.

And then you have the opportunity to, you know, advocate for yourself so that what you’re doing is in alignment with your values. And if they’re not able to work with you on that, well, there is your answer on that decision. Should I stay or should I go? Right. That is how values can be really, really helpful. You know, for you to really understand. You don’t need to know like the 17 top values for you, but maybe 3 to 5. What are the most important ones to you? You don’t have to justify them to anybody. You don’t need to explain them to anybody. They’re important to you because they are. And then those are what’s informing your decisions. So good. Okay, The next thing that you need in order to thrive as a woman physician, you need to understand yourself well, or at least better. Right? So sometimes, you know, perfection is the enemy of or, you know, what do they say? Great is the enemy of good or something like that, right? Sometimes we’re like, Well, I need to understand myself really well. I would just say, let’s just work on understanding ourselves better. And in the process of doing that, we will understand ourselves well, right? What I mean by this is understanding what helps you to feel your best, what actually is fulfilling to you, what makes you feel satisfied? Like understanding yourself. Right. What do you like? Understanding your experience of things.

When I interact in this way, particularly professionally, it’s very fulfilling for me. I feel like I bring a lot of value. I feel like my energy is up. I feel really excited about what I accomplished. That’s going to be different from person to person, right? Good thing, because this way we can all cover all the different things that need to be done. You know, if long term patient relationships are fulfilling for you, then maybe a busy, urgent care job is the right fit for you. Or maybe locums is something that you can do as a short term fix, but long term locums isn’t going to be for you because you’re hopping around so much. Right. And for other people, they don’t care at all about long term patient relationships.

So good to know then that’s not important to you. Then you can allow that to inform what you’re doing, right. Just understanding who you are as a person. So whatever is true for you is valid and acceptable. Okay. There’s so much judgment that we often bring to ourselves where we maybe even understand what’s true for us. But then we think it shouldn’t be true or it’s bad that it’s true. And when I want to offer to you is that whatever is true for you is valid and acceptable. You don’t need to justify it. You don’t need to apologize for it. It just is okay. So here’s an example, a little bit of like a hot button topic for a lot of people where they get a little like, here’s the thing.

Some people don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time with their kids. But they think they should and that a good mom would. Right. And so they think that even though they understand themselves well and deep down, they don’t really want to spend a ton of time with their kids. They think that that’s wrong. And so even if they aren’t spending a lot of time with their kids, which is what’s actually best for them in that moment, they still feel guilty about it or they shame themselves, right? They make themselves think that there’s something wrong with them because that’s what’s actually true for them. But what I want to offer to you is what is true is valid and acceptable.

I’ve said this before, but I must say it again sometimes this is like just with the kid example. Sometimes this is just true for a certain season or age group of their lives. The older my kids get, the more fun I have as a mom. I personally am just someone who enjoys that time more. Other people, oh my gosh, they could keep them babies and toddlers for the rest of their lives. They would do it right so they can’t wait to be home. It’s also okay to be like, You know what? This is not my favorite time in my child’s life.

I’m definitely going to be a present parent. I will be around, I will be involved. But if there’s an extra shift to take, someone else can watch the kid. I might take them up on their offer and not feel bad about it. Understanding yourself well, or at least better, helps you to thrive. You don’t need to make any explanations. You don’t have to justify any of it. If it’s true for you, it’s true. So you don’t have to have traditional relationships. You don’t have to do anything the way other people do it. Whatever is true for you is valid and acceptable. And when we guilt and shame ourselves and judge ourselves, it’s very exhausting. And I think that really contributes to the burnout that so many doctors are experiencing, right?

That what’s true for me is not okay and resisting that. And then that creates that exhaustion. Right and burn out. Okay. The next thing that you need is we talked about being clear on your values, understanding yourself well, or at least better. The next thing you need in order to thrive is to identify your needs and then meet them. So what does it really mean to meet your needs? Because this is something that a lot of people talk about. But what does it really mean? What it means is fulfilling your healthy desires, right? So meeting your needs is not eating a quart of ice cream in front of the TV at night.

Right. That’s fulfilling a different need. And I’ll get to that in just a minute. So we have desires. And by healthy desires, what that really means is desires that lead to outcomes that are desirable for us that we want. Right? So when we’re eating a quart of ice cream in front of the TV, in the long run, that typically doesn’t give us a result that we’re happy about, right? So we wouldn’t consider that more of a healthy desire. So what meeting or identifying our needs in the meeting them requires of us is for us to take responsibility for our own experience of our lives. Right? Instead of thinking that it’s other people’s job, blaming other people, giving other people that responsibility, we have to take responsibility that we’re actually the ones creating our experience. And that’s actually really good news.

And the reason it’s good news is because if you’re the one who’s responsible and guess what? If you don’t like it, you don’t like your experience, then you get to change it. What’s so hard for us is when we think other people are responsible and then we think they need to change so that we can have what we want. And guess what? We can just cut that middle person right out of there. We get to decide, okay, so in order to do this, in order to identify your needs and meet them, you first have to value yourself and hold yourself with enough esteem.

To make yourself a priority. And this is another thing, right? We think everybody else needs to come first. And we’re if we’re even on the list, we’re at the very bottom right. So we have to build that self-esteem. Another term that I use a lot is your relationship with yourself. You need a strong enough relationship with yourself to care enough about yourself that you will actually make yourself a priority. Right. Because if you identify your needs but don’t prioritize yourself, you’re still not going to thrive.

So you have to work on that if that’s something that you struggle with. We work on this in our coaching program all the time, right? People coming in who have accomplished so much, but their opinion of themselves, their thoughts about themselves, maybe universally or in certain areas of their lives are not positive. We can just say, okay, so this is something that we can really work on together. If you’re taking part in activities that don’t support you. Right? Like the ice cream in front of the TV. What you want to do then is figure out what the need is behind that behavior and then find a better way to meet that need. Okay. So here I’m going to give you the example, Right. So you’re eating on the couch. You’ve got the tub of ice cream. You know, just as an example, right. You’re in front of the TV. You’re just like zoning out, eating alone in front of the TV.

So, you know, the need being met is not like an ice cream deficiency. It’s not a TV deficiency. Right. There’s something else behind that. Some other need that’s being met by that behavior. It’s just not being met in a way that creates a long term outcome that’s desirable. Right. So in this example, what might the need be? And it could be several needs, but it could be a need for connection, Right? Feeling included. Feeling some belonging. Right. If you’re there alone, you might really be longing for that connection. I actually saw something. Or maybe it was even you know that friends, the show from the nineties, the reunion show that they did a little while ago. Like there are all these people who were saying how watching that show during a period of time when they were feeling super lonely or isolated really helped them to feel better and help them to feel more connected.

So that’s great if it gives you some outcome that you’re happy about. But at the same time, it’s also good to understand like, Oh, I’m lonely, I’m desiring connection, What are some other things that I can do to solve for them? Right? So it could be a need for a connection, for belonging. Sometimes we just want to feel like we’re being cared for, right? Or we really just want to feel safe. And food often can come in, can sort of pinch hit for us, can be that thing that comes in and helps us to create that in the moment.

But long term creates other problems. Another need that a lot of people have is respect to be respected, to be treated with kindness and with courtesy. Yet here’s what’s interesting We often don’t treat ourselves with that respect and kindness and courtesy, right? Some of us, many of us have a lot of room to improve in how we treat ourselves. So if the need that we have is to be respected and we’re trying to fill that in other ways that don’t give us those desirable results, it’s important to understand, you know, what it is. I want to feel respected. I want to feel, you know, that I’m treated with kindness and courtesy. Maybe I could start with offering that to myself first.

So what would that look like? Is kindness and respect eating a bunch of ice cream from the TV? I’m not going to say it’s not, but I’m going to say that probably most of the time it’s not. I don’t always like to talk about like absolutes, like always and never. But probably the majority of the time. The vast majority of the time, that’s not actually kind or respectful to us. Right? So if there are things that you’re doing that you wish you would stop, understand, you’re doing that for a reason. It’s meeting a need. Let’s figure out what that need is and practice, explore, experiment with meeting those needs in other ways that give you the need fulfillment that you’re looking for and give you the long term result that you also are looking for.

Okay. The final thing that women physicians need in order to thrive is to review first get clear on your values. Second, understand yourself well, or at least better. Third, identify your needs and then meet them. And number four, last but not least by any stretch, is manage your mind and process your feelings. And you know, everything that I’ve just been talking about. This is all things that we work on in our weight loss for doctors only coaching program. We have so, so much on this. We work on this all the time, so very helpful, but in particular the managing the mind and processing the feelings part.

This is an area where coaching really, really shines. What we have been trained to do is to stuff our emotions, right? We have to be professional, whatever that means to us, and maybe the people who taught us that we should be quote-unquote professional, whatever that means. We’ve learned to deny our emotional needs, to assume that if we don’t feel our emotions in the moment, that they’ll just go away, which they don’t. Right. We just haven’t learned very supportive or functional ways to deal with our emotional life. And all of us have emotions. I remember learning about this and being like, Yeah, but what if you just don’t really have a lot of emotions? If you’re asking that question, guess what? They’re there.

You’re just unaware of them like I was. You can become more in tune to your emotions. I am living proof. Okay, so we have to learn to stop stuffing our emotions and instead learn how to process them. We need to move them through us. This is a skill that you can learn. You also need to deeply understand and buy deeply. I mean, not just like a surface-level cognitive understanding, but like in your bones deeply understand that your thoughts and your beliefs are what have created everything you have in your life, both desirable and undesirable. So everything you think and believe creates a result for you and your life if you have a result that you’re not happy with. Then what we need to do is look at thoughts and beliefs.

Okay, We have to work our way up to find what the root cause is, and that is the root cause. So it’s not like eating keto. How many carbs are eating? Has nothing to do with that. Has nothing to do with that. Has everything to do with the way that you think and what your beliefs are. Another important part of this is recognizing that not all of your thoughts are true. In fact, probably most of them are not. Thoughts are not fact, thoughts are not truth, thoughts are just thoughts. And we get to decide how we want to think about things.

If you’ve ever changed your mind about something, you know this to be true. You get to decide how you think and what you believe. So this is great news, right? If our thoughts and beliefs create all of our results in our lives and we want to change some of those results and we know we can change our thoughts and beliefs. There we go. Right. That’s what we help you with, with coaching. So really, ultimately, how you leverage your mind. That’s how you create more desirable results. Right. Understanding that there’s a lot of actions that can be taken and different things, but it always will come back to your mindset, the way you think and what you do with your emotions. This is an area where coaching really shines and I think a lot of people are still a lot of physicians, Women physicians are really struggling with this and don’t really understand this in a deep way.

And that, of course, is exactly what we can help you with. In our weight loss for doctors only coaching program. So it will be opening up another cohort very soon. We’ll be starting it actually in May. So if that’s something that if this is resonating, then you might really want to start considering whether learning more about the program would be in your best interest, because these are really what it boils down to. Right. And you understand. Right. Just to review, what do you need in order to thrive, You need to get clear on your values.

You need to understand yourself well, or at least better. You need to identify your needs and meet them. And you need to manage your mind and process your feelings. So guess what was not included in that list? Like you need your administration to change. You need to hire a new office manager. You need them to give you a different medical assistant. Like none of that factors in. So I want to just point this out very clearly that you absolutely can thrive as a woman physician in the current health care system, even though that system is broken and very messed up is a nice way of putting it. All right. You really, really, really can thrive. And I think the first step is recognizing that you thriving is even a possibility, because so much of what’s discussed right now is what’s wrong and what’s bad. And what I want to focus on is, yes, and that may be true. And what are we going to do about it for you today? We don’t want to have to take weeks and months and years and decades to wait for somebody else to fix things. That’s not a life well lived. A life well lived is going okay. And my immediate zone of influence, what can I do? And you always have influence over yourself. All right. I’m hearing somebody getting a little antsy over there. So a little bit of a longer episode anyway.

So she did great. All right. Well, thank you so much for your attention. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you listening. For anybody who is a woman physician or knows one, please, please share this episode with the other physicians in your life. Or, you know, if you go see your doctor, share this episode. Everybody wants to feel good. They want to feel like they’re living a life that is in alignment with what they want, and this is exactly how to get it. So please be sure to share this. You can share it on social media. Tell your friends and let people know. Send a text to somebody who needs it. And that way everybody can do better. And as we know, based on that article that I told you about, like when women are in charge, when women are taking care of patients, patients do better. We have so much to offer, so much to give. It’s so valuable what you offer. We want to make sure that you’re thriving at the same time. And that’s exactly what I want to help you with. You’re doing a great job. Keep it up and I’m here for you. Have a great rest of your week. Happy National Women Physicians Day and I’ll talk to you next time. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals. For lots of free help. Go to https://katrinaubellmd.com/ and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #317: What Women Physicians Need to Thrive appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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This is the fourth and final episode in the New Year, New Thoughts series, and it’s a special one because it’s the six-year anniversary of the podcast! Can you believe it? I can’t! Whether you’ve been listening since the beginning or you’re a new listener, thank you so much for being here.

Over the last few episodes, we’ve been reading from chapters of my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss. This episode is covering Chapter 8: Eating Against Your Own Will.

Do you ever find that you can’t stop eating even though you’re not really hungry and you’re not even enjoying it? That’s what I mean by “eating against your own will,” and I promise you’re not alone. That’s why I wrote a whole chapter on it!

Tune in to find out what’s causing this behavior and how to stop it. I’m sharing practical tools that you can start using as soon as you finish this episode.

Listen To The Episode Here: Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE* to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why you might be eating even when you don’t want to * Identifying emotional eating * Practical tools to stop you from eating when you don’t really want to * How to stop relying on food for an emotional boost * Dealing with your problems and feelings * The unconscious patterns of emotional eating * Why you need to understand how the brain forms habits * How to break habits * Leveraging your brain to work for you, not against you

Eating against your will doesn’t mean you’re weak or lazy, that something’s wrong with you, or that you’re a bad person. It just means that your brain is doing what it was designed to do: form habits! What’s cool about that is that your brain and habits can be changed. You might just need a little help figuring out how.

If you want to keep reading this chapter after the end of the episode, you can get your hands on the book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, here.

If you’ve read my book, it would mean the world to me if you would leave me a review letting other readers know what you thought! Click here to leave a review on Amazon.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Get the Podcast Roadmap and Other Resources

Get My Book

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #315: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Science for the Win! | Chp. 6

Ep #314: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Reframing Losing | Chp. 3

Ep #313: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] How to Change Your Food-Related Thoughts | Chp. 2

Get The Full Episode TranscriptDownload the Transcript

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hello, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. This is a special one and I’m so glad you’re here. Not only is it special because this is the fourth and final episode in the New Year New Thoughts series. But guess what? I’m laughing because I can barely believe it. This episode is the sixth year podcast anniversary. Can you even. I can’t. I know when I first started this podcast, it felt like I mean, I’ve told the story before about starting this podcast. At other anniversary episodes, it was just it felt like such a huge deal. If you’d told me then six years from now, you’re still going to be podcasting. I don’t even think my brain could have comprehended it. It just felt like a kind of a one day at a time, one week at a time, one episode at a time kind of adventure. And here we are, 316 episodes later and doing this for six years. I actually had noted by this one and my tracking system that this was the sixth year and I thought, No, it can’t be.

I literally had to count on my fingers. Really. Is it really? And it actually has been six years. So I know some of you listening are people who have been with me from the very beginning. And if that’s the case, I am so, so glad you’re still here. Welcome. I mean, so glad you’re here. For the people who are newer. I’m so glad you’re here as well. And don’t let 316 episodes overwhelm you. What I am saying lately is, of course, we have our podcast roadmap, which you can get for free, gives you 30 episodes to get started with. You can get that right away by going to Katrina, Hubble, IMDB.com, forward slash resources. That page will give you all the free resources that are there for you. So great opportunity for you to get some guidance. But another way of going about this is to just scroll and let your finger guide you, let your heart guide you which episode is calling out to you, which is the episode that just seems like it might have the answer that you need? I cannot even tell you how many things have started for me. Great things that have happened in my life that have started for me from just randomly listening to some person’s podcast episode that I was like, This one might be good. And then finding out about something and then that leading me down this whole long path.

And so just know that whichever episode you listen to, you’re going to get the information that you need. And when you listen with that perspective, you’re so much more likely to be able to really like, absorb, soak in the really good parts that, you know, are exactly what you need and what’s going to move you forward. So super, super good. So anyway, happy podcast anniversary. Wish I had some confetti to throw. It’s pretty fun if you’re doing the math and wondering because I just know that some of you are. When I first started the podcast, I started with three episodes just say, you know, I published three episodes at once and I remember it was like it was the last Tuesday of the month of January in 2017. So, so crazy. But here we are still doing it. And you’re here listening. I’m so glad that you’re here. All right. Well, before we dive into the final part of the New Year, new Thought series, I just want to be honest, I have been really kind of missing having a little chit chat with you. And I know some of you like that, and some of you are like, just get to the point already. So it’s hard to make everybody happy. But I feel like we need to talk about this. And so I’m just going to mention it. I started watching a show over the Christmas break and the year break that last week, and it’s like rocking my world and I’m late to the party.

So you probably have already watched it, or maybe you’ve already decided you’re not going to watch it. But in any case, I started watching The Handmaid’s Tale and I didn’t watch it at first. Well, first of all, we didn’t have Hulu and that was like the only thing to watch on Hulu. And I was like, just kind of, you know, on principle. I was like, I’m not paying for another streaming service to watch one show. Like now I’m surviving just fine without watching the show. So that was the initial reason why I didn’t get into it. And then after that, I heard from so many people how it was like very heavy and very dark and very dystopian and like that tends to not be my vibe. Like, I’m kind of like there’s enough real things like that going on in the world that I don’t feel like I want to watch that for entertainment. Typically, that’s kind of the way I look at it. So I just really didn’t think too much of it. I knew my husband was watching it and that he thought it was good, but I just, you know, whatever. I was doing other things. Anyway, in the fall, I listened to an interview with Elisabeth Moss, who is the actress who plays June, who’s the main handmaid in the show.

And it was really, really interesting. And I just learned more about the show and just kind of it piqued my interest a little bit. I just it sparked my interest in in maybe watching it. So I talked to Matt, my husband, and I was like, okay, so you’ve already watched this, right? And he’s like, Yeah. I said, Would you watch it again with me? He’s like, Yeah, because I really didn’t want to watch it by myself. But this is the thing is I really can be a quiet, little sensitive soul. I’m pretty soft and mushy inside and you don’t want to live with like. Nightmares or being, like, really scared. Like, I just didn’t know. Like, horror is not my thing. I was just like, I just didn’t really know what we were going to get into. And I thought, it’ll go better if I just have someone by my side. So. So anyway, we thought because, you know, I have small children. Well, not small children, but medium age children at home. I’m not going to turn that on when they’re around. So between Christmas and New Years, my two younger kids who are nine and 11, went off to winter camp. So the YMCA camp they go to in the summer, they actually have this amazing winter camp between the holidays every year. And it’s so fun.

Like literally they say it’s more fun than summer camp and they love summer camp. So it’s just four days, three nights the very last night they have a New Year’s Eve eve party every year. My oldest son, he went to it several times. They go skiing. It’s just very, very fun. So anyway, they went and I said to Matt, like, Oh my gosh, we have all day no kids. We can actually like binge watch shows like normal people do. And so that’s what we did. So we got through that first week. We got through the first season and wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Was all I could say. Like and here’s the thing. I had actually read a bunch of interviews that Margaret Atwood had given about this. Like, I already knew a lot about the show, but I just never seen it. And oh my gosh, is it powerful and disturbing? But like, not as scary as I thought it would be, but also really, like, it just hits you. But, you know, I want to say it’s like a good way, but it’s also extremely thought provoking, like these characters. And this story is so in my head, like, I’m thinking about it literally all the time. And it’s been a very long time since any kind of show or series or movie has kind of like occupied my mind so much. And I think partly it’s because, you know, several things that are depicted on there.

Well, Margaret Atwood said that every single thing that is in that book, in the book at least, has actually happened in real life. Like, you know, at some time in human history, it’s actually happened. And I think that’s something that really, really hits home where it’s like, oh, this isn’t just someone’s imagination. This is like, this is actually a thing. And just what we’re kind of facing moving forward. I think it’s very thought provoking. So certainly not saying that you should watch it if you decided you didn’t want to. It’s not for you. Cool. Totally get it. But wow, emotionally, it has hooked me. So I think right now we are halfway through the third season. There’s five seasons, so we’re about halfway through the whole thing right now. And then I’ve heard they’re going to do one more season for Handmaid’s Tale, but then Margaret Atwood, maybe a year or two ago, I think published her sequel, which is like 15 years after Handmaid’s Tale and talks about. So Hamill’s tale is kind of more about the rise of a totalitarian society. And the second book is about the fall of it. So I’m desperate to know more about that, and they’re going to make a show about that as well. So that’ll be the follow up. So I think we’re going to have Gilead, which is the name of their the country that America used to be, at least the the lower 48 Gilead is going to be in my life for a while to come.

So anyway, and if you’re into it, then you can share in my I also said Joy is a joy. I don’t know. It’s just like so thought provoking and so like, it’s very interesting. It just gives you really a lot to simmer on. And I will also just say that if you’re going through a hard time right now, probably not your thing, you can skip this one if you’re going through anything reproductive health ish that is a sensitive subject for you, then maybe this is also not a good show for you. So that’s cool. It’ll wait for you for another time or never and you’ll be just fine if you don’t watch it. I’ll just share that. Okay. So next we’re going to talk about this final little excerpt or segment of my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time Brain Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss. And I’m really excited to walk you through this part because this is like the meat and bones, like I remember when I was sitting there. Writing this chapter, just being like, Oh my gosh, like, what if people don’t get this far? They have to get this far. You’ll hear that even in the first and the first paragraph. But I want to read also one more Amazon review that Jenny Nick wrote, and it’s titled Mind, Body, Soul.

And she writes, As a physician, trying to live their best life. Katrina’s message resonated loudly. Her approach to focusing on your mind and emotions is revolutionary. I already recommend this book to my patients as part of an all encompassing approach to self betterment, including weight loss. And so, first of all, Jenny, thank you so much for posting this review and make such a difference. Of course, anybody who’s picked up the book and hasn’t left a review yet, if you could go to Amazon and please leave that it really, really, really does help more people. It basically optimizes it. So Amazon shows the book to more people so it can get that help to more people, of course. But the other thing that she talked about is encouraging her patients to pick it up and recommending it. And so if you are a doctor, which you probably are listening to this podcast, then I would love for you to share it with your patients. And if you’re not a doctor, then I’m glad you’re here as well. Maybe you can actually tell your doctor about it or you can share it with people who you know would help as well. And if you haven’t picked up a copy of the book yet, then maybe what we talk about today will put you over the edge and convince you because you need this book.

All right, here we go. We’re going to go through about five pages in chapter eight, starting on page 187. So if you’re following along, then you can hit me up there. But if not, then just listen. So the title of this chapter is Eating Against Your Own Will, and that’s what I titled this episode as well, because I think that this really resonates with so many of us, right in our minds and our hearts and our souls. We want to be doing the thing that really supports and nourishes us. And then yet again, we’re still doing the thing that doesn’t nourish and support us. Right? And so it does feel at times it may be like metaphorically eating against your own will, but sometimes actual literally. I have had so many people tell me and I’ve had this experience too, they’re eating the food and they’re even aware that this doesn’t even taste good and they’re eating it anyway and they don’t know how to stop or why that’s even happening. So that’s what we’re going to dig into today. Just a first little chunk of that. So like I said, I was concerned that people wouldn’t make it this far in the book. So here’s how it starts. Still with me. Okay, good. Because you’ve just arrived at the first of the two most important chapters in the book. This isn’t just where pounds change, but where your whole life can change for the better.

There are lots of diet plans you can utilize to help you lose weight. There are also lots of diet plans that pay lip service to the idea of maintaining your weight loss and changing your lifestyle. Not just dieting, but where so many fall short is in addressing the emotional aspects of eating and then, most importantly, what to do about it. So good, right? I felt that way so much like what am I supposed to actually do? Could you just tell me once you realized, Hey, I do use food to feel better in lots of situations, you’ve taken a very important first step, the step of recognizing that you emotionally eat. You need this awareness of the issue before you can begin to address it. But then how do you address it? You don’t just need the simple instruction to stop emotionally eating. You need tools you can use in the moment to keep the food out of your mouth. I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here. Like this book is practical. Like, what do you actually do to keep the food out of your mouth? But what we have to do in order to get to that place is we have to open our minds to the idea that, you know, cutting out this macronutrient or counting something in a novel way is going to be the solution, Right? That is not going to keep it out of your mouth maybe for a short period of time.

Right. Give us lots and lots of rules And we’re like, okay, sure, You know, I can do that for a while, but long term, we never stick with it. And this is why exactly what we’re about to talk about those tools are what you’re about to learn. Stay open to the idea that losing weight goes beyond just changing what types of foods you eat, what time you eat, and how much you eat. Those are all parts of the mechanics. But figuring out what to do so that you won’t automatically ask food to give you an emotional boost is the key to sustaining weight loss without having to constantly work at it. And that’s really what we want, right? We want to not have to work at it all the time. That’s when I talk about having peace and freedom around food. That doesn’t sound effortful, does it? And guess what? It’s not. It’s just the way that you go about your life. It’s a way that you coexist with food and with all the ups and downs of life. Right. That’s what we’re looking to achieve. Too many of our weight loss attempts have been centered around white knuckling it, putting forth all this effort and energy. And of course, we can’t keep that up long term, particularly when we’re mostly relying on willpower. So the header to this section is called Whatever the problem is, the solution is not in the fridge.

I could just stop talking right now and that could be it right there. Well, I’ll keep going. But whatever the problem is, the solution is. In the fridge when we’re no longer using food to feel better, we’re saying yes to the full emotional experience of being a human. That can feel risky. We can grow so accustomed to relying on food to numb us out or make us feel better that we never really learn how to deal with our feelings without that crutch. We go through life with a growing pile of neglected emotions that we’re not even aware of because we keep using food, drink or other devices to push those emotions back. This is so important for you to understand. There is a problem. You’re looking for a solution, and right now you’re asking food to solve that problem for you. Right. We’re asking food to numb us out or make us feel better rather than dealing with the real problem and not like, Oh, the real problem is that colleague of mine is a big jerk. I mean, I know you think that that’s the problem, but it’s really how you feel about that person that is the problem. You don’t want to feel that way. And so you’re looking to feel differently because you cannot change that person, right? That person is probably going to do what they do.

I love that old Maya quote When people show you who they are, believe them. So that’s what we’re really looking to address here is the feelings. I don’t know why I kept eating. My client, Chelsea confessed. I don’t even like pretzels all that much. Like a lot of my clients, Chelsea worked hard as a primary care physician all day and then typically came home to find antsy kids and an exasperated partner who can relate. Right. So many doctors are experiencing that. While Chelsea scrambled to make dinner, she would randomly grab a handful of pretzels from the pantry. She noticed this pattern after starting to write down everything she ate in her food journal. The food wasn’t always the same. It could be any snack sitting out in their kitchen, but the timing was consistent and the chaos was too, right. It’s just that witching hour with kids. Often we eat in order to avoid feeling an emotion. In Chelsea’s case, she was stuffing her face with snacks to avoid feeling overwhelmed and even more stress than she had already experienced throughout her day at work. But she wasn’t fully aware that that was what she was doing. Her brain had learned to interrupt and repress the feelings of being overwhelmed and stressed with a snack because feeling stressed at home was uncomfortable and felt unsafe. The pattern of eating as a way to comfort herself had become automatic, so important she wasn’t sitting there going, Well, I’m feeling overwhelmed and I don’t want to feel that way.

So what food can help me with that right now? Right. That was not what was happening. It was just this automatic thing. When Chelsea felt overwhelmed making dinner, it seemed like the pantry door magically opened, and the next thing she knew, there were chips in her mouth or peanuts or whatever else was available. Snacking simply became something she did every evening while preparing dinner. Who can relate? Oh my gosh. This was me with making my kids lunches. For the longest time, I just ate dinner. I had plenty of food. I was probably too full because I was always eating those massive salads. And so I’m making lunch and I’m putting crackers in slike crackers in the thing and then some for me. And then here’s some cheese and then some for me. And then here’s the grapes and some for me, right? We don’t even know what we’re doing. Chelsea realized that snacking had become a deeply ingrained habit when she was driving home from work, and her brain started offering her suggestions of which snacks she should eat later when she was cooking. She decided she wanted to stop this pattern, but despite her daily morning promise to herself that she wouldn’t eat snacks that evening, she still couldn’t stop herself from grabbing food from the pantry later in the day.

Who can relate? Oh, my gosh. Why? Well, our brains are designed to turn us into creatures of habit. Our brain chemistry strongly favors doing things we’ve already done over and over. It trains itself to recognize the situation and offer up the same solution that’s worked before. Right. It’s like I’m about to give you some other examples in the book, but it’s like if you had to think about brushing your teeth every single day. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense, right? You already know how to do that. I’m just going to be totally open here. You know what I do when I brush my teeth? I actually stand on one foot and I use a sonicare toothbrush. So it takes 2 minutes. So for two of the beeps for a full minute, I stand on one foot and then I stand on the other foot with the other two because balance is important. And I actually was really uneven. Like, I definitely had way better balance on my left foot than my right. Which is weird because I’m right handed. But anyway, nevertheless. And so how can I think about standing on one foot and keep balancing and make sure my teeth are clean? Right? Because we’re able to down regulate these things, right? We just start doing things and we do it again and it works for us. And so before we know it, the brain.

I mean, this is how the brain is efficient, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get anything done. So the brain’s just doing what brains do. And what that is doing is contributing to us overeating just automatically. That’s where we just are like eating against our own will. We don’t even know why. Very simply, when we’re bleeding, it offers up the idea of a bandage because that’s what we’ve been given since our first knee scrapes on the playground. When we’re cold, it reminds us to put on more clothes, get a blanket or turn up the heat because our brains know that’s work to warm us up before and get us out of discomfort. Then there are the other sorts of habits that are less physical need based. We get into particular routines and habits surrounding our schedules, what time we get up, when we brush our teeth, which shoe to put on first, what TV show we like to watch at night. Some of these habits are positive or neutral, but they can also be negative, as in the case of smoking, cigarets or overeating. The kind of accidental food habit formation that Chelsea experienced as common. When you do something enough times, your brain doesn’t even consider whether or not you really enjoy it or whether it creates a positive or negative outcome for your body or life. It just signals you to do it again. Might drop right there.

So it’s thinking you did this thing before when you were feeling like this and it helped. So it must be a good idea whether it’s eating ice cream after dinner most nights or having a glass of wine. As you cook, these habits develop into automatic conditioning that we act upon despite the negative long term consequences. This is an example of neuroplasticity or the idea that neurons that fire together wired together. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt and change its structure and function according to your behaviors and circumstances. The good and bad news is a it can take effort to change old habits, but b once you’ve done something different several times, you can form a new habit that’s also well ingrained. So that’s what’s really important here. I think it’s so easy for us to be like, Well, now that it’s downregulated, I guess I’m just screwed. No, Remember, you know how conditioning works. Pavlov’s dog. You can be conditioned to do something. You can also be conditioned to do something and you can be conditioned to do something else as well. The brain’s wiring about 100 billion neurons and 10 to 100 times as many synaptic connections between them is set up to make our lives easier so that we don’t have to stop and think about every decision we make all day long. Habits, Our brains. Shortcuts. They exist primarily in the basal ganglia without a whole lot of involvement from the prefrontal cortex, which helps us to think rationally and make carefully weighted out decisions.

Right. So think about that. Right. Your prefrontal cortex is like that part of your brain that’s rational. It can think about the future. It’s kind of like that mom who’s, you know, got your best interest in mind. But this is happening in a much more permanent part of the brain. It’s just like this is just what we do. There’s no analyzing it. How ingrained a habit becomes affects how well developed the neural connections are. When you keep repeating a habit, it literally thickens and strengthens the connection between the neurons so that it becomes the path of least resistance. If you’ve driven home the same way every day for two years and then decide to take a different route, your brain will fight you on it. What’s this? We’re supposed to go the other way. I mean, I’ll tell you what has happened with me with this is like I literally am like, okay, you got to go this way. And then before I know it, I’m back on the old path. It’s just so automatic, right? When Chelsea came home and started to feel overwhelmed, her brain knew how to solve that problem. The urge to open the pantry and eat whatever was inside became automatic. But what I taught Chelsea and what you’ll also learn as you practice, is how to change that pathway so it is supportive of your goals.

The good news is that even those thick, well established neural connections aren’t forever. When you make different choices, weak connections break easily and stronger connections fray and disappear over time. Our brains remain adaptable our entire lives, as opposed to what we once thought in the medical community about brain development stopping by age 30. So you can teach an old dog new tricks. You just have to be patient and persistent. And I’m telling you this, it’s like, Oh my gosh, you don’t get anything else. Listen to this part. It’s so, so, so important. I feel like, you know, for those of us who are real science based and how we approach things. Once you understand this, you’re like, Right, okay, well, that makes sense. Oh, okay. So it doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with you, that you’re weak or lazy, or that you’re just a bad person. If you find yourself taking part in these behaviors, it means that your brain is just doing what brains are designed to do. And what’s cool about that is you can redesign what it’s doing. You can really change it. It doesn’t have to be so, like, dramatic or also like so personal. There’s no shortfall here or some issue with you. It’s just how human brains work. So that’s good to know. If that’s how human brains work, then what can we do to leverage how they work so that they work for us? When we work with the amazing power of our body’s natural systems, including the brain, we move faster toward our goals and make our weight loss permanent.

In short, yes, you’ve probably dealt with your emotions by eating food for a long time without even realizing it, because food is a necessary part of life and is a big part of the human experience. It may not have even occurred to you that you were eating when you weren’t hungry or when your body didn’t need it, but you can and will learn new ways of dealing with your emotions without using food. And over time, those new ways will become your brain’s default patterns. You won’t automatically associate strong emotions with the desire to go grab a snack. You’ll have new associations that will provide you with other ways to cope, celebrate or process whatever you’re feeling. This is how we create peace and freedom around food. I mean, what I’m describing there is exactly what my experience was. I was like, Yeah, totally. I’m eating when I’m not hungry. Totally. I’m eating when my body doesn’t need it. But I don’t know how to stop. And through this process, I was not only able to stop, but I was able to stop even having to, like, catch myself wanting to go to that place and then switching it. It just is not how you operate anymore.

This is what we want to do, right? This is why, you know, eating the latest superfood, I mean, knock your socks off. I mean, that’s what you want to do. Great. But that’s not going to solve this overeating problem. Your brain down regulates repeated thoughts and beliefs to the subconscious level in order to conserve energy. Imagine if you had to re decide what you think and believe about everything in your life every day. However, when this happens, it can feel like our interpretations and reactions to the world around us just happen and are outside of our control. Our thoughts and beliefs will start to feel factual and true. Thoughts and beliefs are not factual. They’re just our interpretation of the facts. But by utilizing awareness to bring those subconscious thoughts and beliefs to the conscious level, you’ll see that you have much more control over your experience of the world around you than you previously thought. So I’m going to end it there. What the main point here really is, is you can change how you cope with things and then the next step after that, once you’re rewiring that brain, the next step after that is working on even how you’re interpreting things. So this is a kind of a multi layered, kind of like an upward spiral type of a thing, right? You master this thing or you’re applying it and then you move up and you get to the next thing and you apply that and it just gets better and better and better as we go.

All right. So we ended on page 191. If you want to continue with that chapter, which I know you do, make sure you pick up a copy of How to Lose weight for the last time if you already have picked it up and haven’t left an Amazon review yet, please go ahead and do that. I’d appreciate it so much. It really, really does help the book. And if you’re recommending this book to patients, they probably will be going to their local library looking for it. So you might want to call the library system in your area and just let them know, Hey, I’m going to be recommending this book. And so you might want to pick up a couple of copies if they don’t already have a few on hand. It just makes it easier for people to access it. All right, my friend, thank you so much for spending this episode with me. Six years. We’re going to do six more. In six years, I’ll be like 12 years. I’m here for it. And if you are two, I can’t wait to do it together. Have a great rest of your day and your week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #316: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Eating Against Your Own Will | Chp. 8 appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Are you ready to talk about science?

If you’re tuning into this podcast, I’m guessing you probably love science as much as I do. Science makes sense. It’s reliable, predictable, and fact-based.

In this episode, we’re covering chapter 6 of my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss. I’m sharing the five steps of the scientific method and teaching you how to apply them to weight loss. That might sound complicated, but I promise it’s really simple, and I’m laying it out for you step-by-step to make it super easy to follow.

Join me for a conversation about the scientific method of weight loss.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* The scientific method * How to set yourself up for success * Why your perfectionism is sabotaging you * Changing how you think about results * Setting goals that you can commit to * Anticipating obstacles and solutions * Why you shouldn’t compare your goals and results to someone else’s * What to do when you stray from your plan * Testing your plan for long enough to collect some data

This chapter of the book is so helpful because it gives you the tools you need to create a plan and test it. Now it’s time to try it out for yourself! Listen to the episode or pick up the book and start applying it to your life.

I hope you’re enjoying these episodes covering chapters from the book. If you want to read along with the podcast, you can get your hands on the book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, here.

If you’ve read my book, it would mean the world to me if you would leave me a review letting other readers know what you thought! Click here to leave a review on Amazon.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Get My Book

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Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #314: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Reframing Losing | Chp. 3

Ep #313: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] How to Change Your Food-Related Thoughts | Chp. 2

Ep #312: Ozempic, Wegovy, and Other Newer Weight Loss Medications

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. Today we get to talk about something that I super duper love, and I think you might love it too. It’s just a hunch. And that thing is science. What? Love science Besides me. Show of hands. I always love science. Science was my favorite subject. I’ll just tell you that whenever there is one of those things like where you need the backup security questions to get in, like in case you lose your password. And they say, What was your favorite subject in school? I’ll just tell you, mine is always science so easy. I always love science, and not even just the biological sciences. I always loved earth science and anything science just works. My brain loves it. It’s organized. I actually had a class. My high school was really pretty cool. They had a lot of really good science classes, and one of the science electives I took was botany and fun fact. One of my high school jobs was working at a florist, so that was fun.

And a lot of people thought for a long time that they would say, Are you going to become a botanist? And it’s actually the irony here. Anyone who really knows me is totally laughing right now, because, you know, what I always say is is like sending me flowers is amazing. Giving me a plant is which I now I feel bad because people there might be I’m thinking of someone in particular, one of my clients who I adore. She’ll know who she is who actually gave me a plant, I think last year. And I don’t want her to feel bad about this. But plants are not my thing. And the reason why is because it’s just another thing to take care of, right? Like I already have three kids and a dog and a spouse. So to a certain extent, when someone gives me a plant, I’m kind of like, Do you hate me? I always, when I receive a plant, I always truly am grateful and thankful. And I know that the person’s heart is in the right place. Maybe when I’m an empty nester, maybe I’ll desire something to nurture more and then I’ll get into plants. But for now, plants are now also just with my house. And the way it’s set up, there’s really no good place for plants. So anyway, this is a side note about science, because science is fun and science makes sense, and science is reliable and often predictable and something that is more factually based than belief based despite what a lot of people think these days.

Right. And so anyway, you know, also just another side note about science is so my oldest son, who is 17, craziness, he switched schools when he was in the middle of sixth grade. And the school he had gone to initially had sort of like an alternative curriculum. I would say just it wasn’t like the typical curriculum that other schools or other public schools would have in terms of what they taught in which grades. So then he switched schools to a different school. And in the process, we have realized that there’s some gaps in his education, apparently, and some of those are actually science based. So he somehow did not really get much of a biological education. He did have to take biology in ninth grade and that was fine. So you understand some of the basics. But a little while ago I was talking to him about something and I was like, Wait a minute, do you know, like how the kidney works? He’s like, Which one is the kidney? I was like, Oh, you have two doctors, four parents, and you don’t know what the kidney does. It’s like, But listen, the kidney is amazing. It is actually so cool. So I start going into how the kidney works and he starts getting this little, little grin on his face.

I’m like, What? He’s like, I can tell you’re very excited about this. I’m like, Science is awesome. Science is not really his thing so much. It’s just, you know, he can do it. He has taken chemistry. He’s in AP physics right now, and he does think it’s kind of interesting to see like how physics is actually in the real world and stuff. But science is not his thing. He’s a definite liberal arts kind of a guy, humanities kind of a guy. And that’s fine too. We allow children to have whatever interest they have. He’s actually said he’s like, Well, senior year, I’m not going to take a science class and I’m so excited about that. And I was like. Oh, but anyway, my point is, I think everyone listening here, or at least most do like science. Science resonates with them and at least they’re interested in what science has to say because this is not something that we can take for granted just in the world. Not everybody is in that kind of a place right now, for better or for worse. You know, whatever our personal opinions are about that, it is just the state of the way the world is right now. So those of us listening are people who do appreciate science and find science to be something that’s useful. And so I want to talk to you today in my New Year New Thoughts series about how one way that we can use science to really help us to take something that often is filled with, usually filled with a lot of drama, a lot of negativity, a lot of discouragement, a lot of sadness, a lot of beating ourselves up and just turn it into something that is so much more cut and dried by using science.

And so what I want to talk to you about is in my book, How to Lose Weight. For the last time, I want to talk to you about what’s in chapter six. It’s actually how we open chapter six. But before we get into that, as you know in this series, I’ve been also reading to you a testimonial a week from somebody who’s left a review for the book on Amazon. And of course, I just want to ask you once again, if you have purchased the book, even if you’ve just flipped through it, you probably know enough about it to leave a review. My goal is to get 1000 reviews on Amazon and I would super appreciate it if you would just take a moment to go in there and leave a review. And so I just want to read one of them because I want you to know that I do actually read these. And so this one is from someone who gave their initials, M. B, the title is Game Changer.

I love this book and I love Katrina Ubel. I mean, that’s a nice thing to hear always, she writes. Or he, but I’m guessing it’s a sheep. I’m not a doctor, but a dear friend of mine is and told me about her podcast weight loss for busy physicians. I highly, highly recommend it. And this book is excellent in all caps. Based on how much I had gotten from her podcast, I was thrilled to hear she was sharing her insights in a book and I preordered it. I was not disappointed. It is so easy to read, and she gives such practical tools that make weight loss doable and sustainable while actually enjoying your life and then in all caps, highly recommend if you struggle with your weight. This book is a must. So, Amby, thank you so much for that review. Of course, if you haven’t picked up a copy of the book yet, please go ahead and do that. You can pick it up at any major book retailer, even at your local bookseller. You can ask them to order it. If they don’t have it in stock, you can go to your library and see if they have it. And of course, there is an audio book as well that I read. And now that my voice is feeling a lot better and I sound like myself again, you can get a sense of what me reading the audiobook would be like, so please go ahead and pick up a copy or go ahead and download that audiobook if you haven’t done so, and then please leave a review on Amazon.

It really, really, really does help the book and getting this message out to the people who need it. So let’s talk about chapter six. Today. We’re going to be talking about literally three pages of this book, but they’re so good and so important. And so the title of Chapter six is Measuring and Analyzing Your Results. Now, I just want to say that this is so important because what so many of us do is we have no process in place for measuring or analyzing our results. And so even if we’ve maybe taken measurements or we’re just relying on the way our clothes fit or things like that, I mean, that gives you some information for sure. And I definitely don’t want to take anything away from that. But for the most part, besides that, there’s not a whole lot that we do to measure and analyze. Maybe we get on the scale, and so many of us have such a complicated relationship with the scale. Our thoughts about it, our beliefs about it are so complicated and generally so negative that that’s not usually very helpful. If anything, that induces more dramatic thinking and more feeling bad about ourselves. So what I wanted to do was to offer you a way to take away that gray area, to take away the drama, to take away the highs and lows of the emotions, to just figure out what in the heck are you supposed to do? Is it working or is it not working? How do we know? And what do we do Regardless if it’s working, what do we do if it’s not working, what do we do? And so that’s what I want to share with you, this very first part of this chapter, because, of course, there’s multiple ways to measure and analyze your results.

But I want to talk to you about this today. I have not shared it with you before on this podcast. So let’s get started. I’m going to read these three pages to you as well as give you all of my thoughts and additional information about it. So it starts off with, Do you remember learning the scientific method in high school? So are you going to stop? I sure do. Right. The scientific method. It’s so good. Widely accepted as the best method to use in conducting scientific experiments. It’s logical, incremental and uses objective evidence instead of emotions to make decisions. It teaches you to develop a hypothesis about a problem, collect data and analyze the results to find out if your hypothesis was accurate or not, or if more testing is needed. Right. So you could already see how it’s so clearly laid out.

This is totally the way scientific experiments are run. We all agree with the scientific method. We know it works. There’s not an argument about this, right? There’s not really much up for discussion here. And so if we can utilize this in the work that we’re doing with working to lose weight and keep it off permanently, imagine how much this is going to help us, right? What most of us do when we’re trying to lose weight is find or create a weight loss plan, follow it for a little while, and then start to question or doubt or change it, even though nothing needs changing. We get in our heads about what we’re doing, and before we know it, we’ve stopped following the plan and convinced ourselves it doesn’t work, even though we never actually followed through with it in the first place. I mean, seriously, right? How many times have I done this? I’m sure you have as well. Right. We don’t know if it’s working or not. It’s just, you know, we’re kind of like bumbling around in the dark. Their arms outstretched. Is it working or not? I don’t really know. And before we know it, our brains left unchecked, start telling us it’s not working. They start changing things. We hear about our what our friend did and she is trying something new. And we think even if it’s working, we think we need to change it because we don’t actually know or we’re following the plan.

We aren’t getting results and we know we need to make some changes, but we don’t know how, so we don’t do anything. When this happens. We make the whole process of weight loss much slower and much more complicated than it has to be. So in an effort to save us from ourselves, I applied the scientific method to the process of losing weight. This is what you’ll use to make decisions about whether or not to make changes to your protocol, which is your personal eating plan as you continue on your journey to reaching and then maintaining your ideal weight. Okay, so are you bought in? Do you see how this could be helpful? Right. It’s working and all of a sudden you’re not even doing what’s working anymore and you don’t know why. You just kind of like trailed off without even realizing it’s like you fell asleep at the wheel and all of a sudden you’re in some field somewhere. You don’t even know how that happened or it’s not working and you don’t know what to do. So you either stop, you quit, you decide, this isn’t working. It’s not possible for you to lose weight. No, we need to do is to just go through the scientific method, go through this process. And I tell you, if you do this again and again and again, you make logical decisions that support you and your body until you get to where you want to go.

And then they help you to maintain while you’re there as well. So I’m going to tell you all about each of the steps. There’s five steps. So step one is define the experiment. The question you’re answering is how to lose weight, a specific amount of weight over a specific time frame. So set your goal weight. It doesn’t have to be your ultimate goal. If that feels overwhelming or unrealistic to you, it’s fine to set incremental goals. Maybe your goal is to lose £10 in two months, or maybe it’s to lose £65 this year. Now, I do just want to say I’m just going to back up here. As I’ve said before, there’s so much I would have put in this book. It would have been ten times as long. Not possible. So I just want to add in here that it’s possible that setting a goal weight isn’t actually what you want to focus on. The thing about setting a number on the scale is that that’s what a lot of people focus on. You know, they know they want to lose £15. And so, okay, let’s get to work doing that. I definitely suggest that you choose something that is going to be, like I said, realistic, doable in a specific time frame. You know, if you have any idea of how your body usually responds to things, then maybe that can inform the decisions that you make.

But otherwise I would suggest setting yourself up for success. Maybe it’s even just deciding I want to lose £3 this whole month, especially if you look at what you have coming up this month. Maybe you’re going to be on service, you’re going to be on call a lot, maybe you’re going to be traveling. And this is not the time to go. I want to lose, you know, £7 or £8 this month. Right. You may be able to lose that. But is that really the best way that serves you the best? What we don’t want to do is have you do a bunch of diet mentality stuff to lose £8, only to gain six of it back the next month. Right. What we want to make sure that we’re doing is something that we can keep up with. So I would suggest that you choose something that is something that you’re like, Yeah, I think I can really commit to this. This allows for me to have some mistakes, have things not always work out perfectly and still be able to have success. I think so often those of us who really struggle with perfectionism. Or overachieving are like, Well, if I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do it at my absolute best. Everything has to go perfectly. And then when we don’t do it perfectly or, you know, here’s the thing, our bodies are complex machines, right? Like we’re not robots.

Sometimes we do all the things right and we still don’t lose the weight because we’re still sorting out what’s best for our bodies. So we don’t want to do all that and then interpret it as we’re not doing a good job or we’re failing or something like that. So I just want to say that there’s different ways to approach this. And also, if you don’t want to focus on weight at all completely, you don’t have to focus on that at all. But what you could do instead is decide that you want to do something else like you want to over the course of a month plan and follow your plan for eating for 28 out of the 31 days or something like that. Right. Just set yourself up. You know, what I always say is like, we often are thinking about what the results are, but you can also really focus on all the things that get you those results. The way you get the results is doing all the things that get you the results right. So you could also focus on just doing those things, knowing that the results will come if you do those things right. So planning your food and following your plan, food, journaling, following your hunger scale, so many different things like that, right? Like there’s there’s lots of ways to approach this and it does not have to be way based.

You can do it with moving your body whatever you want it to be, but for the sake of the book and for the sake of what we were talking about, it made most sense there. So step two ask yourself questions. These are really, really important before you set off. So most of the time we don’t even know the answers to these. Why do you want to achieve this goal? And so good to know, right? Why do we even want this? Do I even want this next? What do I need to do to achieve this? So important to understand that. What am I actually agreeing to doing? I want to achieve this. So what is it that I need to do? And then the next question is, am I willing to do what it takes? I mean, it’s okay if you’re honest, answer is no. So good to know. So often we set these goals for ourselves, but we’re not really willing to do what it takes. And then we’re all disappointed when we don’t get the results and we think it means something negative about us. No, it means that you didn’t really want to do it. So good to know. That’s fine. You don’t have to. The next question is, is this probable slash realistic? And that is also, again, what I was just talking about. You know, if you have a whole bunch going on, you have a bunch of events, you’re going to you’re going to be traveling whatever you’re going to be having surgery or something.

I mean. Right. Let’s be realistic and probable. What can I actually commit to doing? And that’s actually the next question. Am I committed to achieving this very important that you’re committed. If you’re not committed, that’s okay, too. But then don’t set this goal, set a different goal that you can commit to. And then finally, very important, what are the obstacles and their solutions. So what is going to get in the way potentially that you can anticipate between where you are right now and where you want to be and what are the solutions to those obstacles? So often we bought up against these obstacles and then we think that means that we’re not going to be able to achieve what we want to achieve. And that’s not true at all. The obstacles What actually creates the stepping stones to help you to get to the place you want to go to get to that result you want as long as you find solutions. And so often we can already anticipate what a lot of the obstacles are. Maybe even all of them, but at least most, and come up with solutions in advance. And I usually suggest that you have more than one solution because maybe that first solution isn’t the one.

Maybe that actually doesn’t solve it. So come up with lots of options that you can try. You’re laying it all out for yourself. So then all you have to do is just follow what you already, you know, did the heavy lifting, the heavy thinking on. You already know what to try. You can just go ahead and do it. So you want to answer all of these questions, make sure you’re really, really clear. Then step three is construct your plan, your protocol. Again, that’s what we call your personal eating plan. Your protocol is your hypothesis about how you will best lose weight. You’ve taken the knowledge you now have about weight loss and come up with a plan that you think will work for you. You’ve figured out what you will and won’t eat. Now ask yourself, how will I set myself up for success? So some examples are plan ahead Journal to uncover potential obstacles and possible solutions and practice processing my emotions. I think this is so important. So often we don’t set ourselves up for success. How often do we do this? Especially with New Year’s resolutions? You know, right now everybody’s talking about all the different resolutions. And, you know, after a couple of weeks, two thirds of people have already given up and all of these things. And, you know, statistics aside, I try to kind of ignore that stuff because it doesn’t really matter to me what other people’s experiences are.

I’m much more interested in how I can work with myself to get what I want. Right? And we look at what most people do well. Most people are operating from an unmanaged mind and they’re not aware that their thoughts create their feelings. So that is, you know, good to know that that’s how most people are approaching it. But in our case, we want to leverage the knowledge that we have and the resources that we have to create something different. So how will I set myself up for success? This is very, very important. How can you make it so that it’s as good as done? And the next question What will I do when it gets hard? Some examples review my reasons for wanting to lose weight, reach out to a friend for support, take a couple of minutes in the bathroom or outside to recenter myself. This is also really important. We kind of forget that there’s going to be times when you know that case that was supposed to take an hour and a half, took five and we didn’t get to eat and we’re so thirsty and we’re feeling sorry for ourselves and our feet hurt and the surgeon’s lounge is right there. And all we want to do is eat all the things and drink all the things. Right. What are we going to do when it gets hard like that? How are we going to support ourselves? The next question What will I do when I fail to follow my plan? And this is also really important.

We can assume that we will not always follow it. When we don’t take that into consideration and we don’t follow the plan. Then again, right, the drama. I knew it wasn’t going to work. See, here’s evidence that I can’t do this. No. Here are some examples of what you could try. Compassionately ask myself why I didn’t follow the plan and see if I need to make any changes work to make my daily plan as easy as possible. To follow. Journal To discover what’s going on for me when I eat off plan. Here’s the thing When you’re eating off plan, it has nothing to do with the food. There’s something else that’s going on for you, and food is helping you to solve it. Okay, That’s what I’m talking about here. So rather than going see, I failed, I’m never going to be able to figure it out. When you use this as a learning opportunity, then next time you can support yourself better so you can figure out what you actually need, which is if it is food, it’s going to be something nourishing, not like whatever ho hos Twinkies. Or like the fake healthy food that they sometimes stock now that like is in fancy packaging that looks like very natural. But still when you look at the ingredients is basically a candy bar.

Right. Okay. The final question to ask yourself as you construct your plan, how will I manage slash, allow urges? And so what I mean by urges is when we have that impulse, that strong craving, when we just really want to eat or to do whatever it is that’s in opposition to what we want to be doing. Right. So here are some examples. Plan for exception eats and exception meals remind myself that urges are temporary practice allowing and processing urges journal to discover what my thoughts are that are creating over desire for food. So important that I mean these are just examples, but so important for us to recognize that there’s going to be times when what we really, really want is to eat or is to drink. We just want to drown our sorrows or fill our bellies up so we don’t have to feel whatever it is we’re feeling. So if we are open to thinking about how we’re going to manage that, how we’re going to allow it, how we’re going to practice processing those urges, then we’re that much further along when the urges show up and we know what we need to do. I mean, sometimes I like to joke like, you know, then in the moment my brain just likes to forget. So if that’s the case, for you to write it down, put it in your phone, you know, take a picture of something written out so that you have it with you all the time.

If you prefer to write, you know, set yourself up so that you really can do this. So step four, now it’s time to get to work. So step four, test out your plan. Follow your plan 100% for three weeks, no deviations. And so this is really important because sometimes we go for three or four days, we’re like, It’s not working. I need to change something. It is too early to know that it is too early. Even even at two weeks, it can be too early. Right? So I like to go three weeks. You made your plan, remember? You made it so that it’s doable. You work through your obstacles and solutions. You know what you’re going to do, how you’re going to push yourself when it’s hard. You have it all planned out. Now just go and do that for three weeks. You don’t have to think for three weeks. There’s no adjusting. There’s no changes. At the end of three weeks is when we circle back to figure things out. When we change things all the time, then we don’t know what’s working and what’s not working. Even if you’re like, I don’t think this is working, do it for the three weeks so that you have some actual data, some documentation. Okay, Now I really know I’ve done this enough and long enough and enough times that I actually have some information that can be useful in figuring out what to do next.

The final step is step five Evaluate your progress and draw conclusions. And so this is the time. Step five is when you go, okay, let me gather up all the data and actually synthesize this into something that’s going to be useful. So here’s what it says. Are you on track to meet your goal? Are you making good progress? If not, see if you can figure out why not reevaluate step three, which is constructing your plan and make any changes you think may be needed. And then follow the revised plan without exception for another three weeks. What worked? What didn’t work? What can you do better and how will you improve? Repeat as many times as needed until you reach your goal. So you can see how this just chunks it all out into bite sized pieces. Pardon the reference, but it chunks it all out. It can be so overwhelming when you think of all these things. Like instead you could be like, okay, the next three weeks I’ve got vacation coming up. The next three weeks is really busy. I’ve got a family event. I’m going to be taking call for my partner and I’ve got this construction project going on at home. Okay, so what can I actually commit to doing? What do I think would be a great result that I’d be really happy with at the end of these three weeks? You can even think about it that way.

Three weeks at a time. These next three weeks, I’m going to do this and I’m going to keep doing it so I can learn. And then look the next three weeks from there. What can I take that worked, that I can learn from this and move forward with it for the next three weeks When you keep moving forward with that before you know it all of a sudden. You’re at your goal, right? It’s kind of like if you’ve ever you know, I mean, if you’ve known someone who’s been pregnant or if you’ve ever been pregnant yourself, it’s like nine months, feels like a really long time. And then you just chunk it out like month by month. And then before you know it, you’re like, Oh my gosh. Wow. Nine months passed. I have this baby soon, right? There’s lots of examples where we chunk things out, we break it down into little pieces and we keep learning and iterating and improving. And before we know it, we get there. When we look at the picture in a way that’s too big, in a way that’s too superficial or too big picture, then we’re not able to really do the changes and really do the work that’s required to make the progress that we want to see on that kind of day to day, week by week basis.

Except it’s the day to day, week by week basis that gets us to where we want to be. So I know that this is going to be helpful to you. I was going to say, I hope it was helpful. I know it was helpful. If you’re wondering what pages I was on, I was on pages 149 through 151. I highly recommend that if you picked up the book, you check this out and start applying it to your life. If you haven’t picked up the book yet, go ahead and get it and just rinse and repeat this. Do it again and again and again and again. Make such a difference. So this is a lot of like the, you know, nuts and bolts work. And then there’s the coaching part, right? Of course, we can’t skip the part where you work on your brain, so don’t forget about having coaching as also a support system as you’re working through this. Of course, we have the weight loss for doctors only program, which is amazing and we have lots of data to show how well it works. But also if you’re not eligible for that, if you’re not a physician in clinical practice, then of course, you know, consider finding another coach who can help you with this because this work is really important. You might really want to consider finding a coach who’s willing to read this book and then work through it all with you.

I mean, that’s a reasonable thing to do if you’re not able to work with me in my team in weight loss for doctors only. And of course, if you are able to work with that some weight loss practices, only then we want you in there. Let’s do it together because it doesn’t have to be so complicated somehow. We’ve lost the plot on how to do this. It’s not that difficult when you keep your wits about you, and the scientific method of weight loss is a great way to do that. So with that, I want to wish you a great rest of your week. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m just going to give you a little teaser. Next week’s episode is a big milestone. Super fun. Can’t wait to talk to you about it and can’t wait to have you join me. And of course, once again, please go ahead and leave that Amazon review. My goal is to get to 1000 reviews. We still got some more to go and I can’t wait to see them start coming in. So thank you so much for your time and attention. I appreciate you so much. I can’t wait to help you more with getting the peace and freedom around food that you so deserve. Talk to you next time. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Catrina, UBL, IMDB.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #315: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] Science for the Win! | Chp. 6 appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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We tend to think of winning or losing as black or white. It’s one or the other. What if that didn’t have to be the case?

Welcome to the second episode in the New Year, New Thoughts series. In this episode, I’m talking all about chapter 3 of How to Lose Weight for the Last Time – reframing losing. I’m reading some small sections from the book and then going even deeper right here on the podcast, so whether you’ve read the book or not, you’ll get a lot out of this episode.

The concept of reframing losing is an important one because it opens us up to so many opportunities. It’s not winning or losing, it’s winning or learning! Doesn’t that change everything?

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS. Click HERE to download the episode!

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Who might benefit from this book * Thinking of failures as learning opportunities * Why you have to change your thinking when things don’t work * Learning to rely on your own insights * Getting curious and learning more about yourself * Why some lessons have to be repeated * Treating yourself with compassion * The results that come from working on your mindset

If you’re not winning, make sure you’re learning. It doesn’t have to be winning or losing. How can you take what you learn in this episode and build on it to move forward? I want you to really think about that and use this as an opportunity to take action.

If you want to read along with the podcast, you can get your hands on the book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, here!

If you’ve read my book, it would mean the world to me if you would leave me a review letting other readers know what you thought! Click here to leave a review on Amazon.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Leave a Review of My Book

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #313: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] How to Change Your Food-Related Thoughts | Chp. 2

Ep #312: Ozempic, Wegovy, and Other Newer Weight Loss Medications

Ep #311: Coping with Loss – Krista St-Germain Returns

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Welcome, my friend, to today’s episode of the podcast. I’m so glad that you’re here with me today. We are on episode two of the New Year New Thoughts series. And if you didn’t listen to the last episode, just a quick update. The reason I’m calling it New Year new thoughts is because particularly in the publishing world this time of year is what they call New Year, new you and I don’t know that it is always serving us to think that we need a new us. I think it’s better for us to think about ourselves as already fully formed and whole and perfectly exactly as we are, and still keep some space and allow for some space for us to want to improve and to change. And so to me, New Year, new you feels like very pressurized, you know, like the pressure to become a new version of myself. And you know, what happens when we put that kind of pressure on ourselves? We try to go all out to all the things and then we end up doing nothing, and then we make that mean something negative about ourselves.

And that cycle goes around and around and around, and we just don’t need to engage in that. So instead, I wanted to call this series New Year new thoughts, because whatever it is that we want to change, whether it be just a very small, tiny little thing or something bigger, it all starts with our thoughts, and all of us would probably benefit from spending a little or maybe even a lot of time on what we’re currently thinking and cleaning up or changing some of those thoughts that aren’t serving us and aren’t helping us to create the results that we want. So that’s what we’re focusing on in this series. And so what I’m doing is I’m spotlighting a certain small section in my book called How to Lose Weight for the Last Time Brain based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, which is available anywhere eBooks are sold, is available on Audible as well for the audiobook, if you prefer that. And so what I’m doing is giving you an insight into more of the back story behind this small section of the book. Because writing a book, it seems like, Oh my gosh, there’s so much in there. Actually, it’s the opposite. You have to cut and cut and cut and cut. And there’s so many things in this book that I would have loved to talk so much more about, that I probably could have written a whole book on, but instead I had to really pare it down so much to get like the essence of the point across so we can move on to other things.

But it’s always good to spend a little more time diving a little deeper into it and hashing it out some more. So that’s what we’re doing on these episodes. Now, before we get started, I did just want to share something that I found really pretty interesting. So I had my regular, I was going to say, annual checkup with my internist, which is hilarious because I don’t think I’d seen him in like over five years. So I mean, theoretically supposed to be annual checkup a few months ago, about two months ago. And I’ve known this doctor, gosh, maybe since I was even a resident. I’ve been going to him for a long, long time. He’s just great. We love him. My husband sees him, too. His wife is our ophthalmologist. They’re just a great couple and we just think so highly of both of them. And so I thought, well, when I go see him, I’m going to bring a copy of the book for him and suggest to him that because I know he doesn’t struggle with his weight, but I’m sure he has patients that do. And so maybe he could lend it out to a patient and see what they think, you know, maybe give it to them or ask them to read it and give it back.

And he can pass around to different patients and stuff. And so I showed it to him, gave it to him and made that suggestion. And he said, thank you so much. I appreciate that so much. This is so great. And he said, But before I pass it on, I actually want to read it first because to be 100% honest, this is an area that I haven’t really kept up with in terms of, you know, CME continuing education on this. Like, I don’t know as much about this issue as I would like to. So I want to learn first and then, of course, I’m going to pass it on to my patients because I want to learn to I want to use this as an opportunity to build up my fund of knowledge and my skill level as well. And I was like, Oh, right, yes. I mean, of course. Right? There’s so many things for any person in any specialty to keep up on. I mean, it’s completely overwhelming and arguably impossible, right? If that’s you and you’re kind of like, yeah, I don’t even really know what to tell people either. Definitely pick up a copy of the book and read it yourself before you pass it on to your patients because it’s going to help you and help them as well. And I know lots of people have bought several copies and have sort of created like a little mini lending library for their patients.

Some people have gone to their local libraries and requested that they have a couple of copies on hand because they’re going to be recommending to patients to go check it out and read it. And I also just wanted to read one more of these Amazon reviews where there’s a an amazing woman physician who talks about how she’s done that. As well. And so I just have initials here. The initials are SM H. The title is Life Changing more than just a Weight loss book. And the subtitle is It’s a great resource for us to have to help ourselves and our patients. And it reads, I have recommended her book to many of my patients, and they too have found her words of wisdom to be truly life changing. She breaks down how we can change how we think about food as well as everything else in our lives. Losing weight actually becomes a side benefit of what this book really teaches you how to change, how you think about events in your life so that you can feel better and process emotion, excel and live your best life possible. I highly encourage you to purchase this book and also listen to her podcast. And you’re here so good, Good on you, which complements the lessons in this book nicely. Thank you so much, Katrina, for getting this work out there.

It’s a great resource for us to have to help ourselves and our patients. Thank you so much to Smarr for posting that. And of course, if you’ve picked up the book and haven’t left an Amazon review yet, I would love it if you could go hop over there and do that because it really, really does help the book get in front of people who need it and so many people do need it. So anyway, as we work through these episodes and these little sections of the book, really think about this in terms of yourself, but then also the people that you take care of, right? The patients that you see, the people that you influence. And, you know, I think doctors are in a unique position where most people in the general world aren’t walking around going like, hey, I know what you need. Here’s a book on weight loss. But, you know, being a physician, you absolutely can do that. And it makes so much sense, like when, you know, there’s research that shows that when a doctor recommends that a patient make a life change, they are more likely to do it than when somebody else recommends it. So what you say is influential and I think it’s one thing to tell people what they need to do. It’s another to help them with the how. And that’s what this book is, because everybody is aware that losing weight for people who struggle with that could be beneficial to them, but they don’t know what to do.

That’s going to work and they need some help and they would love for some guidance. And that’s exactly what this book will do for them. So pick up a copy and give it to your patients and help them. It’s going to make such a big difference. So we’re going to be in chapter three today starting on page 86. And it’s really not that much of the book that I’m going to be reading to hear, but it’s such an important, important concept. I can’t wait to talk about this. So the little subtitle of this little section is called Reframing Losing, which is of course, the title of this episode as well. And the very first sentence is so important. So it starts. Business coach Dan Sullivan says if you’re not winning, you’re learning. So Dan Sullivan is a coach that I’ve been working with, I think since maybe the end of 2018. I’ve been working with him for quite some time. And he’s I mean, he’s been doing business coaching for a very long time. He’s well into his seventies now and he has several different kinds of quotes that I think about again and again. And in this case, he’s talking about business. But this applies to our whole lives, including with weight loss, because usually what we think is if we’re not winning, we’re losing, right? So if we’re not having success, if we’re not getting the results that we want, then we’re losing.

We suck, we’re doing it wrong. Might as well just quit. You’re obviously a horrible person, but I mean, like we make not winning mean so many bad things about us and about what’s possible for us. And what he’s saying here is he’s offering you a change in perspective if you’re not winning your learning. And so if you don’t focus so much on what isn’t working that you’re losing, or that it means that you’re never going to be able to have what you want, you instead can open your mind to learning what there is to learn from the failure, right? So you’re not winning. It didn’t work. Whatever. You tried it. This is not the thing, right? It’s not the thing that’s going to be helping you move forward. But there’s a lesson in there. There’s something to be learned. And those lessons and that education essentially, of what you’re getting about what’s not working when taken as such has a lesson, can help you to do better next time. And for so many of us, women physicians who are so focused on perfectionism and getting it right the first time and I mean, I’m raising my hand over here to it’s something I have to work on a lot. It’s it’s you know, it’s high achievers.

We’re used to putting in the effort and then eventually seeing the results. And if we don’t see the results for a long period, it can be very demoralizing because it’s just not something that we’re used to, you know? So we have to change our thinking on things not working. Essentially. We have to open our eyes to the fact that like, that didn’t work. And that’s good information. Now I know some more things that don’t work. That narrows the pool of options for things that do work. And I’m going to try something else or I’m going to iterate. And innovate and find the new thing to try. And we’ll see if we win with that. And we’ll just keep iterating and iterating and editing and editing until we find what works for us. If there’s one thing that you hopefully have picked up from my messaging and what I teach her on this podcast is that what works for one person isn’t going to necessarily work for the next person. You have to become the expert in yourself. And when you do that, you’re able to rely on your own insights. You’re able to look at what happened and figure out what the next thing to do is, rather than thinking, Well, how could I possibly know anything? I’m the one that got myself into this predicament in the first place. I’m obviously clueless, so I better just quit or I have to find the next new person who I’m going to decide is the person who’s going to pull me out of this.

Which, of course, that is not a thing. They will not be able to pull you out of it. We have to do it ourselves. Okay. So moving on. Losing in quotes, is another state of mind that isn’t very productive. Instead of interpreting those imperfect moments as screw ups and evidence that you’ll never be successful, think of them as opportunities to deepen your knowledge about your mind. Become very curious about yourself. Each time you question yourself about your thoughts and feelings, you get a better idea of what makes you tick and what you still need to work on. You may find some patterns that you didn’t notice at first. Maybe there’s a specific time each day when your willpower seems to peter out. You might discover that you eat mindlessly when you’re on the phone because it feels like sharing a meal with a friend or that you believe you can’t enjoy winding down after work without snacks or wine. That last line believe you can’t enjoy winding down after work without snacks or wine. Oh my gosh, this is so good and so important. I almost want to read it again, but I want you to maybe just like hit rewind a few times if you want to listen to it again. This is such an important part of this process. No one can tell you these things.

They have to be discovered by you. Right? So how do you get yourself to stop needing snacks or wine to wind down after work? You have to spend some time becoming curious about why you’re doing that in the first place. What is the problem that the snacks and wine are solving for you? Right? Rather than going, Well, something’s wrong with me, or I just have to cut this out cold turkey, then feel even more miserable because you have no other support or tools to help yourself. And then you just go right back to doing what you were doing that you didn’t want to be doing, which is eating the snacks and drinking the wine. Right? So every time something doesn’t work out, there’s a quote unquote failure. It’s such a great opportunity for you to learn more about why you do what you do. And, you know, I say in this line, become very curious about yourself. Curiosity is one of the best emotions that you can generate for yourself when it comes to this type of work, because it’s very easy for us to hop right into judgment, into despair, into hopelessness, and to thinking it’s not going to be possible for us. And instead, what I want to encourage you to do is to shift into curiosity and interest, to become very interested, like anthropologists studying undiscovered civilization. You know, why do they do what they do that’s so interesting that they do that.

I wonder why. What could be going on there? You want to be approaching yourself in a similar way. That’s so interesting. I just ate a full dinner. I’m not hungry yet. I’m in the pantry looking for something to eat anyway, rather than being disgusted with yourself, being so frustrated with yourself. Why do I always want to do this all the time? That will not give you any insight. Instead, what you need to do is go, Huh? This is a pattern. Is this just a habit? Is my brain just telling me, Oh, this is the time that we do this? Or this is something that I do to try to stop feeling a way I don’t want to feel. Maybe I could just take a break from eating that for a little bit so I could explore what that’s all about. So that I could learn more about myself. And if you still want to eat it, then eat it. But now you know more, right? You’re still learning and you can synthesize that into the next steps you’re going to take. Now, of course, being in a coaching program like weight loss for doctors only is so helpful because, of course, you can bring that to coaching and get some additional help and feedback and thoughts about that. But you can do this on your own as well. So next, those are all positive steps forward, even if you have to keep repeating the lessons.

Now pause here again, repeating the lessons. What are your thoughts about repeating the lessons? So many of us are like, Oh, I’ve already been coached on this. I’ve already learned about this. I’ve already done work on this. Oh, we’re just exasperated with ourselves. What if it was going to take you ten times learning the lesson before you could really, really deeply understand it enough to move forward? What if it was 50 times? What if it was 100 times? What if it was 1000 times? Would that be okay? Would you be willing to keep moving forward? If you look at them as positive steps forward, then it would be worth it, right? Where it’s not worth it is when we don’t learn anything and then we just keep repeating the same mistake again and again and again without any new insight, without any new learning, without anything new coming from it. Then it’s just silly, right? Then it doesn’t make any sense. But if we look at it as there’s a lesson to be learned here, maybe it’s this. Let me try applying that and see what happens. Maybe it wasn’t that. What else could this be about? What would another way be that I could potentially approach this and really coming from that place of being on your own side? Like I think about it like when families would come in to see me and they’d have whatever issue with their baby or their child.

One of the things I love to do was just to sit there and problem solve with them. Tell me all the things. What about this? Have you tried this? What else have you done? What do you think? If you try this like you can do the same thing for yourself. It’s such a for me at least, and I know it is for so many physicians out there as well. Like it’s so satisfying for someone to come in. They don’t know what to do. And you take all of your experience and all of your knowledge and combine it with what’s the problem for them? And you help them to actually solve that problem. You already know how to do that. You just do it for other people. What if you did it for yourself? You have to keep trying and iterating When the person comes in and goes, You know, we try that with getting our toddler to sleep and then they came back with this other new thing. We’re not like, Well, guess what? This kid’s never going to be able to sleep, right? You’re going to be up until they go to college. No, we’re like, okay, let’s iterate, let’s innovate, Let’s figure out something different to try. That’s the kind of energy we need to bring to this work. I’ll just start that paragraph again. Those are all positive steps forward, even if you have to keep repeating the lessons.

Hey, we don’t all get there on the first try. Some of my clients get used to this new way of thinking right away and are able to change their habits quickly, while others take weeks or months to find their groove. Keep using your opportunities to learn and to fail forward, to make something productive out of failure so that it keeps you moving toward your goals, even when it feels like a setback. And that’s, I think, the main message of this podcast for you. Failing forward. We think failure means stop or it means you’re stuck or it means any hope for the future is gone. You’re not going to be able to create what you want. And instead I want to offer to you that the way to fail forward, the way to incorporate failures which are inevitable into the process so that they drive you forward toward that goal or result that you want is to learn from them. Right? It’s not going to be that linear point A to point B, and then you’ve solved the problem kind of a situation. There’s going to be those ups and downs and how you approach the downs is arguably way more important than how you approach the ups when you’re winning. What’s most important is to treat yourself with the compassion you would offer a good friend, and instead of feeling shame about your eating, feel genuine interest and curiosity.

So there you go. I already told you that. Keep getting to know yourself better until you can tailor a plan that works just right for you. Once I did that, I never looked back. I couldn’t believe I spent so many years trying to count points and calories without ever really understanding what motivated me and what was behind my eating habits. And this is what I’m telling you. It doesn’t matter if you’re on ozempic or whatever. Like, you know, it’s counting points, calories, macros, you know, getting surgery, taking shots, pills, whatever you’re doing. This all still has to be done. You need to really understand what motivates you and what is going on behind your eating habits. Like as I said a couple episodes ago, there is no medication that’s going to change your thinking or your feelings in this kind of scenario. While it helps you lose weight, there were very few stumbling blocks of temptation. Once I got to that mindset. It really is possible and probable to experience freedom from thinking about food all the time. Give yourself the gift of understanding yourself better and you will find that losing weight and maintaining your weight loss becomes much easier than you expected. And I think that is the thing that is so powerful here too. Like I’ve been hearing from some people who have been trying ozempic that they’re actually super disappointed at meal times because they really were looking forward to enjoying a meal and they’re just full and they don’t want to eat and they actually feel emotionally worse even though the weight is coming off.

And this is just like health aside. So I’m kind of talking about people who are otherwise healthy and are just trying to use medication to lose some weight. Like this is so interesting, right? Like our emotional connection to food is still something that we want to participate in, at least a little bit. Like for so many people, if you said to them, Hey, I could give you a shot or give you a one time pill, that would make it so you would never feel hunger ever again and you would just only eat for sustenance and you and you just wouldn’t even care about what it was that you were eating. Most people actually don’t want that. But. When we’re in a situation where we feel like we’re in dire straits or very, very frustrated, sometimes we tell ourselves, Oh, I totally would do that. But when push comes to shove, we really wouldn’t. We don’t want that. We want to still be able to enjoy food and experience food and participate in mealtimes, particularly with other people and what that signifies and means to us. We just want to do it in a way that serves our bodies and in a way where we feel like we’re in control, like we’re not just completely shoveling everything down and can’t control what our experience is.

Right? So taking that away and feeling full is not really the solution either. It’s finding a balance for ourselves, figuring out how to change our thoughts and our feelings so that we can be around this food and have it basically occupy an appropriate role in our lives rather than something that we’re overly obsessed about and thinking about too much and relying on more than we should for emotional help and support. Dialing that back to an appropriate amount, but not taking it away completely. Right. And that’s what we’re able to create when we work on our minds. And first, we have to reframe that losing you cannot get to where you want to be, which is permanent weight loss and peace and freedom around food by making every time something doesn’t work out for you mean that you’re not going to be able to figure it out, that you knew this wasn’t possible for you? Getting mad at yourself, getting mad at the world, getting mad at your body. Right. It’s just not going to work. So we do have to change that framework that we have. It’s not winning and losing. It’s winning and learning. And so if you’re not winning, make sure you’re learning. What is the lesson here? How is this happening for you? How can you take what you have experienced here and build on it to move forward? Those are the questions to be asking yourself.

All right, friends, thank you so much for enjoying me. What a great little segment of the book. I mean, I barely covered in grand total a page, and this is just one part of this great book. So I again, want to thank you. If you’ve already purchased the book, if you haven’t picked it up, go ahead and pick up a copy. Like I said, it’s on Audible as well. I did do the narration for that. I did read it. And so if you’re more of an audiobook kind of a person, go ahead and pick that up or you can get the actual the book you can hold in your hands at any major book retailer. And then once you have it, or if you already have it and you haven’t yet done so, please go ahead and leave it. Amazon Review. It really, really, really does make a difference. And and I appreciate you doing that so much. All right, my friend. Have a great rest of your week. I want you to really think about this. Where are there opportunities for learning that you haven’t been taking advantage of? And let’s make sure you’re doing that. And I’ll be back next week with another episode in the series New Year. New Thoughts. Can’t wait to talk to you then. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.

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This is the first episode in the New Year, New Thoughts series that I’m hosting here on the podcast.

I’m rejecting the concept of “new year, new you,” because I don’t think you need to be a new you. I think it’s okay to accept yourself just the way you are right now.

In this series, I’ll be elaborating on some of the chapters from my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss. I’ll talk about what is said in the book, and then I’ll dive deeper into it here on the podcast.

This episode is all about chapter 2, “Emotional Eating: Why You Always Want Food,” and we’re talking about how to change your food-related thoughts.

If you ever feel powerless against your thoughts about food, this episode is for you.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why you don’t need to be a “new you” * The problem with approaching yourself with judgment and rejection * How to embrace the energy of the new year * The value of repetition and creating habits * Being willing to invest time into creating a change * How I know that it is possible to change your thinking * Identifying what your thoughts about food are right now * Listening to your body’s signals

I hope this episode gives you some actionable ways to change your food-related thoughts. I promise you it is possible to change your thoughts and take back your power.

If you want to read along with the podcast, you can get your hands on the book here!

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Weight Loss for Doctors Only

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Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #312: Ozempic, Wegovy, and Other Newer Weight Loss Medications

Ep #311: Coping with Loss – Krista St-Germain Returns

Ep #310: Blazing New Neural Pathways

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad that you’re here. So glad that you’re joining me today. If you are someone who’s been listening for a while, I’m so glad you’re back. If you are new, then welcome. So glad that you’re here. I’ve got the first episode in a special series starting today, and I’m so glad that you’re here to listen to it. So I wanted to talk to you about something. This is actually a new thing to me that I learned in publishing my book How to Lose Weight for the last time. Within the publishing industry, there is like a term for the beginning of the year, I think probably even in periodicals and in other spaces that this is a term that they use. It was new to me. I’d never heard of it. And they called this time of year, New Year, new you. And so I was thinking about that and how I understand the ultimate energy behind it. But I don’t know. That’s the best way to think about things.

So I’m changing it for our purposes. And calling the series The New Year New Thoughts series, because I think that when we are thinking about it like New Year, New you, what we’re basically saying, like what’s behind the new You part is that who you are now is not okay and an incremental improvement isn’t going to be enough. Like you have to become a whole new person. And of course, so many of us have tried this year after year after year with the resolutions, and this year it’s going to be different. And even even now, you know, several like a week and a half or so into the new year, many of us have already dropped those best of intentions that we had. And so I don’t think that thinking about it like, oh, this is my chance, this is my year, I’m going to create a new version of me or the best version of me. While it sounds great and it can actually be inspiring at times, I think that the underlying message is one of judgment and lack of acceptance. And what I know from literally I’m now in my seventh year of doing this and then my own personal journey with weight. Is that coming to ourselves with judgment, lack of acceptance and rejection of who we are? Generally doesn’t work out in our favor. So I don’t think that that’s the way we should think about it.

I think we should look at it like, Hey, you know what? There is this energy with a new year. We just had our new weight loss for doctors only program start, and I am so excited to work with these amazing women physicians. It’s such a great time of year because there is this energy, right? It is the new year and this sense of kind of starting fresh and having a new chance. And I love that. And I want to leverage that energy to change the way we think because the way we think creates ultimately all of our results. So if we want a different result, then we don’t need to think that we need to become entirely new people. We need to break it down on a much smaller level, on a much more achievable level. Like if you say, like, I’m going to become a new version of myself, what does that even mean? How do you even start? I don’t even know what the first thing you would do is. And when it is so big and so overwhelming, we tend to take very little action. We tend to quit. We tend to stop because we don’t even know what to do next. So instead, I want to focus on us changing the way that we think and knowing that when we work on that, when we just work on the way that we think, no matter what we do, we will start to get more of the results that we want.

And it has to be that way because this is how the world works. Our thoughts create our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions. Our actions create a results. This sounds familiar. It’s because it’s what cognitive behavioral therapy is based on, just created by Aaron Beck, the preeminent psychiatrist. So this is very well established as a thing. This isn’t just like some some made up thing. This is actually how things work, right? So if we want different results, if we want to be taking different actions, we have to back the truck up essentially. And we have to, of course, spend some time with our feelings, our emotions. But even before that, we can spend some time with our thoughts. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. And so what I’ve decided to do is to take some pieces from my book and elaborate on them some more. I was going through a few chapters. I have this whole series plan. It’s going to be so fun where we’re going to delve into some pieces of the book and I’ll talk about what I talk about in the book and then also elaborate on it a bit more for you here, because it’s so fun. There’s some good stuff in here. We’ve got great reviews on Amazon. It’s a bestseller on Amazon, and I would love to invite you to get a copy of the book if you haven’t already.

I know my voice doesn’t sound super great right now, but I did actually read the audiobook, so if you prefer to listen, then go ahead and check that out on Audible or any other place that audiobooks are sold. But we’ll just this will give you like a bit of a taster and then elaborate on things a little bit more, which I think is super fun. I did want to start today by reading one of the amazing Amazon reviews that is out there because listen, we’re at almost 250 reviews, you may recall, if you’re a longer term listener, that for a while there, my goal is to get 100 reviews. And it was so fun to get to 100 and then bypass that and then to go all the way up to almost 250. It was actually 249 when I just checked. It’s so exciting and so awesome. So now my goal is to get to 1000 reviews and I would love your help in doing that because we know that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of copies of this book out there, and we have 249 reviews. So if you have read this book, if you have purchased the book and flip through it and you found it to be helpful, you don’t have to have read every single word to leave a review. I would just invite you and ask you to please go ahead and leave a review on Amazon.

If you want to leave a review somewhere else, like on Goodreads or Barnes Noble or something, you’re welcome to do that as well. But Amazon is the one that moves the needle the most. I know it’s annoying to do it and I don’t even like asking, but it really does help the book. It really makes it so that more people can find it. And when you read these reviews, there’s so many doctors who are like, Everybody needs to find this book. So today I’m going to read a review from someone who just left her initials. Her initials are K, M. S, So thank you so much, CMS, for leaving this. The title of the review is from a doctor who was on the journey, and I’m assuming this is a woman, so I’m going to say she she writes, I have followed Katrina for a few years now and I am excited to have her wisdom all in one place to read and reread. The words marry medical science and practical common sense. It is full of excellent information that can be utilized in weight loss and life in general. It truly is a missing piece of the weight loss journey and perhaps the most important piece. So there you go. If you have not picked the book up yet, I strongly recommend that you do so. There’s such good stuff in there, if I may say so, myself.

And many doctors agree. So. So thank you, CMS, for that. And if you haven’t left a review, please go ahead and do so. So what I’m going to be talking about today is chapter two, and chapter two is titled Emotional Eating Why You Always Want Food. And so I’m not going to be digging into every part of this chapter. It’s actually quite a good kind of a juicy chapter. But there is this one segment that I want to spend a little time on. It’s actually on page 59. So if you I don’t know if you want to read along or something, you’re welcome to do that. Of course you don’t have to. And what I want to do is I want to read it’s really just not too much of this. And I’m going to pause and give you my additional thoughts on this. Right. Because this part of it is titled How to Change Your Food Related Thoughts, which is the title of this podcast. And I think that this is so important because so many of us do not recognize how much control we actually have over our experience around food. I see this time and time again with my clients in weight loss for doctors only. They come in really feeling at the mercy of their thoughts, at just feeling like they’re powerless against them. That the way that they think about food is just the way that they think about food.

And there’s no way around that, that it’s just the way it is. And so I really felt like in this book we had to create something that was very how to write, because it’s great to talk about these bigger conceptual ideas, but then like, what do I actually do? Like how do I actually change my thinking? And so I want to use some of the examples in the book and lay that out for you so you can see how this book really does actually give you actionable steps. It takes you through the specific things that you should do to get the help that you need. And what I want to offer to you is once you know how to change your food related thoughts, then you know how to change your thoughts about anything. We just happen to be using food and eating as the entry point into getting to that place of changing our thoughts. That’s just what I happen to be talking about. But if that’s not what is bothering you right now, or there’s something else that you feel like is more important on your mind, you literally just substitute in whatever your thinking is that’s creating a result that you don’t like or that you prefer not to have. So I just want you to know, right? This isn’t just like a one and done single use kind of a tool. This is something that once you know this, you can’t unknow it.

You literally are going to be using this right and left all the time. Changing your thoughts is about repetition and creating a habit of your new mindset. So even though even after the first sentence. So let’s just take a moment here. This is not something you do once and you go, Oh, that didn’t work for me. Or you tried it for like a weekend, and then you go, I don’t know. I don’t think that works. This is something that you have to put some effort into to repeat it. Now, I do want to just say if you’re like, Oh, I just like, feel so hard and I could just, you know, I just wish there was a magic pill or magic shot. Like everyone’s trying that now with the terrible weight loss medications. I’m telling you, this part is going to be waiting for you because you’re doing this in other areas of your life, too, where you’re not liking how it’s turning out. Right. There’s no way around this part about repetition, becoming aware of your thinking and then actively choosing to think something different. This is something that is a skill that you should know how to apply to your life and you should know how to utilize whether you want to use it for food and weight or you want to use it for something else. But I just want to say that when it feels like a lot of work or a lot of effort, think about how much work and effort you’ve put into losing weight up until this point, right? Think about how much effort you put into and how much energy it takes to think negatively about yourself and about your life and about your body.

So, like, you’re already expending this energy. How about we instead expend it towards something that actually changes the way experience your life and your body for the better? Okay. So you’ve done it before. About so many things. Once upon a time you probably thought ring pops and fund it were irresistible to and that you’d be miserable without Saturday morning cartoons and that you would never love anything more than your sticker collection or your Beanie Babies. But just like you outgrew the thoughts of your childhood, you can also outgrow your unhelpful thoughts about food. The future version of you can think more supportive thoughts and leave the unsupportive ones behind. So I think that’s just such a great example, right? There are so many times where like I am never going to think differently, and then we’re like, Hmm, you know, time passes, we have different experiences, we grow up whatever ends up happening, and we do think differently. So we know it is possible to change our thinking in this case, right? Like thinking about Saturday morning cartoons. Like as you get older, you realize maybe that’s not the best use of my time.

It might still be fun to watch them from time to time, but it’s not how you really want to be focusing your time. And those old thoughts that maybe were supportive for you before are no longer supportive. You weren’t given the opportunity in the invitation to change them to a different way of thinking that is going to be more effective for the stage of life that you’re in and for what you want to create. This was what changed everything for me. I’d successfully gotten to my goal weight before by counting points and counting calories, but I never kept the weight off because I had never addressed the underlying thoughts and beliefs I had, which kept me in a cycle of feeling deprived and tired of all of the effort at the first excuse to blow it. Often a vacation or holiday, I would. And once I started gaining again, it all felt too hard to get back on track until I was right back to where I began and feeling disappointed in myself. Once I fully owned that, my thoughts were creating the results I had both the ones I wanted and the ones I no longer wanted. My relationship with food and overeating began to drastically change for the better. And so I am hoping that you have that realization today as well. This is an invitation for you to understand that it’s not a blame situation.

This is not a situation of judging or, you know, encouraging you to feel guilt or shame over anything. It’s just an invitation to take ownership of the results that you’ve created, understanding that, you know, no one can make you think anything. Like you get to choose that for yourself. And so if you don’t like the way you are thinking about something or you don’t like the result, that that way of thinking creates, even if it feels true. You still have the opportunity to change it. It is still available to you if you want to. To change it. And understanding that deeply is a very, very, very important piece of the puzzle in terms of being able to change. And that’s really what we’re asking ourselves to do, right? We’re asking ourselves to become just a little bit better, just to change a little bit in the right direction that we want to go. Right. So start experimenting with me right now. You don’t have to wait until you finish this book before you start putting it into action. Just start where you are. Pay close attention to your thoughts about food this week and notice where you’re taking actions that you don’t want to take anymore. What might be a different way of thinking about food that still feels true and believable but moves you closer to feeling and acting the way you’d like to create some space between your feelings and the actions you take in response to them, rather than acting on your immediate impulses.

Pause to ask yourself what thoughts are creating the emotion you’re feeling. So this is such gold right here. We just often say, I hear this from clients all the time. I don’t even know why. All of a sudden I just eaten it or, you know, before I realized what was going on. There was food in my mouth. And so what you’re initially asking yourself to do is to figure out what the heck you are thinking, because a lot of the time we don’t really know. I know I didn’t know when I first learned this. Honest to God, this is the truth. I said to my coach, I don’t think I have thoughts in my head. I just have songs from the radio on repeat that shows you how long ago I started on this work because I still listen to the radio back then, but literally I thought I just had song lyrics in my head. I was like, I don’t think I’m thinking things. So I was so out of touch. And you might be too. Maybe not quite as bad, but you may be too. So what we have to do is build some awareness. Interesting that I’m wanting to eat food, that I’m reaching for that like we have to keep ourselves from going into that fog that just puts the food in our mouth and instead stay aware.

Be open eyed, open eared, open hearted to finding out more about what we do so we can understand it better. I’m not saying you can’t eat that food. I’m just saying let’s just find out more about why you’re going to eat it. Okay, here we go. I want you to write this down in a journal, notebook or wherever you normally take notes. Each time you’re confronted with a challenge around food, whether that’s a particular craving or over hunger in general, I want you to write down everything you’re thinking. You might write things like this. I know I’ve already had a lot of cashews today, but I want more. It’s hard to stop myself because they taste so good. I’m craving salt. Cashews are nuts. And nuts are such an easy snack. I don’t have any self-control when it comes to portion sizes. So when you listen to me, read those. Right. How many of those are you like? Yeah, that just sounds like the truth. I know I’ve already had a lot of cashews today, but I want more. Right. We think that this is not a thought. We think this is just like a fact. It’s just the way things are. It’s just reality. But it’s not. It’s a thought, right? It’s hard to stop myself because they taste so good. We think we’re just conveying the truth. No. When you think it’s hard to stop myself because they taste so good, guess what? It’s hard to do.

Yeah. Stop yourself. Okay. All right, so you write these things down. What do we do next? Next. It’s time to fact check yourself. Circle any facts that you can find in what you wrote. Anything that is objectively true is a fact. If everyone in the world would agree with you, then that’s a fact. Like, cashews are nuts. But anything that’s subjective, like they taste so good. I don’t have any self control, etc. is a thought and therefore optional. Anything you wrote down that isn’t a fact is a thought. If you’ve ever changed your mind about anything in life, then you know that it’s possible to change the way you think. Just thinking about all the times I’ve changed my mind. In fact, that’s one of my little mantras. I’m always like, I’m going to do this, but I reserve the right to change my mind. I reserve the right to think differently at any time I want to. And that’s available to us all the time about all the things. Okay, here we go. Next, ask yourself how you feel when you think one of these thoughts. The thought I want more might create the feeling of desire. The thought I don’t have any self-control when it comes to portion sizes might create the feeling of despair. It’s very important to recognize that your desire does not come from the food. It comes from your thoughts about the food.

Your feeling of despair does not come from your overeating. It comes from your thoughts about your overeating. I’m literally like, Go back, hit the rewind button and listen to that paragraph again. Your feelings are coming from your thoughts. So, so, so important. And listen, we understand this conceptually. We are smart people, right? We pick up on things quickly. But there’s a difference between like a cognitive knowledge and actually knowing it deeply in your bones and seeing the evidence of it. Because deep down, our beliefs contradict this knowledge. It’s our job to figure out that discordance and work through it. Okay, then identify what you do or don’t do when you feel this way. When you feel a desire for cashews, what do you do or not do? Most likely you eat more of them. You probably don’t listen to your body’s signals and stop eating when you feel despair about your ability to control how much you eat. What do you do or not do? Maybe you eat more to distract yourself from feeling the despair. Maybe you beat yourself up with negative self. Talk about how repugnant you are. Maybe you don’t plan your food for the next day like you’ve committed to doing as a way of punishing yourself. Right? This is what we do. You know, it’s so funny. The reason I used cashews in this example, I don’t even like nuts that much. It’s just they’re really not my thing.

I mean, if they’re candied, then sure, I’m a lot more interested, but, you know, just regular nuts are just. They’re just not really my thing. But people love nuts and they’re afraid of sugar and flour and they’re just like, you know, people talking about how they’re just like, you know, healthy fats are so great for you. So after I actually lost my weight, I was still working out, you know, my new way of eating. And I got on this nut kick because so many people, my clients included, like everyone was Anita eating nuts. And I thought maybe I can, like, learn to like, nuts. This was before I had had my revelation of I only eat food that tastes good to me, which is also in the book. And talk about that some more as well. But I thought, okay, I’m going to eat more of these. And you know, what’s interesting is often in a hotel room, if they have a little snack bar or mini bar, you know, where you can spend a gazillion dollars on snacks in your room, they often have cashews. And so I tried to convince myself, cashews are a good thing. You can do this if you’re not eating fine, which you can probably eat as many cashews as you want. Well, because I was still working on the overeating piece, Right. I’d lost the weight, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve solved every problem.

Right? So many people know that, right? You can lose a lot of weight and still need to work on those behaviors that create the weight gain and also just discomfort in your body. So I was doing all of this cashew eating and other nuts, but largely cashews because I do like cashews a little bit better than other nuts. And I started to notice this pattern of not really feeling good in my belly and just really having some some GI upset, some gastric distress, just being like, I don’t really feel good when I eat these and I was still overeating them. So also overeating anything is not what your body is really asking you to do, right? So I was thinking to myself, I’m like, I bet you there’s so many people who overeat cashews. Cashews are the thing. And also, I think sometimes we’re like, well, of course, over eating cookies, but like nuts, man, a lot of people are like, don’t take my nuts away. So I thought that that was such a good example to use. But what we’re talking about this paragraph that I just read that the main point there is that we think that it’s just eating the cashews, but it’s not right. We don’t listen to our body’s signals. We keep overeating, then we feel despair. Then to stop feeling despair because we don’t know any other thing to do with our emotions. We try to eat more right? Then we beat ourselves up.

Like you see how this just layers on the discomfort, the feeling bad about yourself, right? You chewed up food, you swallowed it. Not a crime. But when you add on all these emotional layers and thought layers, it starts to feel on that level. It starts feel really, really bad. As you go through this process, it starts to become clear why you struggle with your weight. When you think certain thoughts, you feel certain feelings, and then you do certain things that create your results. This is not something to rush through because deeply understanding how your thought process is creating what you don’t want will make it easier to adopt a different thought process that will consistently create the long term weight loss that you do want. And listen, I’ve talked about this before on this podcast about rushing. When you feel like you’ve identified the thought, you’re like, Oh, that’s the bad thought. Okay, I want to change it immediately, right? Like, give me the thought, Katrina. What’s the new way of thinking that I just really strongly discourage you from doing that? Because what I found, I mean, for years and years and years of doing this is that that new thought will not have traction. You can’t just, like, skip over it. You need to spend some time deeply understanding that when I think this way, it consistently creates this way of feeling and then this action that does not serve me that I don’t like and I want to stop doing from that place.

When you deeply understand that it is so easy to change your thinking because you’re just like, I am done with this, I am over it. I see it so deeply, I’m not doing this anymore. It’s kind of like, you know, what’s coming to mind right now is like the Christmas Carol. That old story by Dickens, right? You know, by the end of it, Ebenezer Scrooge. She’s like, I get it. I need to change my life. Like it’s clear. Let me out of this third ghost or whatever Ghost of Christmas Future or whatever it is, you know, like, we can get to that point where we’re like, I hear you loud and clear. I deeply understand. I do not want to participate my life in this way anymore. That’s when changing your thoughts becomes so much easier. So as you become open to considering new ways of thinking, respond to the original thoughts you wrote down in your journal with alternative thoughts that could possibly create the feelings and actions needed to produce the results you want. So here now we’ve identified what the old way of thinking is. We’re understanding it better. And then instead of trying to convince ourselves to think something that’s like very rosy or kind of Pollyanna ish, or essentially even trying to gaslight ourselves, instead we want to just start thinking like, what else could be true? Or if I think this thought, what might be another way to respond to this and understand that when we choose different thoughts, it might create a different feeling.

And that’s something that we could experiment with rather than needing to escape so quickly that we feel like we need a new thought and it needs to work immediately and my brain needs to be forever changed. Neuroplasticity needs to happen in 15 seconds or I’m throwing out the whole idea. No, right. We need to spend some time with this experiment, be willing to go through the process. So here are some possible ways to respond. The reason I keep wanting more cashews is because my brain is overemphasizing their importance. Right? So you can tell like this is also true, right? You’re not telling yourself some lie. You’re asking yourself to think something you don’t believe that could really be true as well, but gives you a different feeling. I will ask myself if my body needs more food. If not, I will drink some water and focus on something else. So that’s a way of thinking that can help redirect you in the direction you want to go. Cashews are just food. They just sit there. They have no power over me. That’s a good reminder. That can be a really good thought. The less I resist my cravings, the faster they pass. I’m choosing to make positive changes in my life.

That’s so good, too, right? The more we resist them, the way I think about it is we push against them when we’re resisting them. We push so hard and they just push back just as hard, if not harder. And now all of a sudden, we want those cashews more than life itself. And we just want to plow through all of it. So we need to drop this resistance. We need to stop pushing back. And what you’ll see is that over time. That desire reduces. It’s so cool. I have been eating out of boredom. I’ll find another way to entertain myself. This is so good, too. Sometimes we have that light bulb goes on and we’re like, Oh my gosh, you know, I’m eating out of boredom. I’m going to find a different way to entertain myself. Don’t have to keep eating. And finally, my relationship with myself strengthens every time I follow my plan. I treat myself as a top priority, even if that doesn’t even feel totally true. Yet something you could play around with. You could consider it. What might it be like if you did believe that? If that was true for you, how would that change things? And that’s where you can spend some time on. So I ended up at the top of page 62, so we didn’t make it very far. But I think that this information is so, so good. Right. You can really delve in and apply this and come back to this again and again.

And so I just give you these real actionable examples and maybe it’s not caches for you, maybe it’s something else. It probably is something else to spend a little time on that. If you’re not sure what you think, just the next time you want that thing, if it’s ice cream or whatever it is. Before I get the ice cream, let me just jot down what my thoughts are about ice cream. Ice cream? We’ll make this better. I just want to feel good. Like, whatever it is, let’s find out. And then once you know, you don’t have to judge yourself or beat yourself up or be mean to yourself, but what you have the invitation to do then is to change the way that you think the next time. How you approach this gives you the opportunity to consider some new options. And as you do that, you’re working with yourself. You’re not beating yourself into submission. You’re not thinking that being mean to yourself is going to be the way out of this. You’re working with yourself as a supportive guide. And of course, this is exactly what we help our clients with in weight loss for doctors only. And we are here to help anybody who would like some additional assistance with this because, you know, I think you can make a lot of progress on your own. And sometimes you need someone to just let you know that cash is really are just nuts and they’re not that important.

I know it sounds funny. I’m kind of joking, but also kind of not like that’s sometimes so powerful in coaching where someone just like notifies you that this thing that you just thought was true is actually not like what? How come nobody told me before? Okay, So with that, we’ll wrap things up. I’ve gone a little over time from what I usually do, but this is just such good, important material. I want to make sure to get it to you. And next week we’re going to delve into another chunk of another chapter. So make sure you come and join me for my New Year new Thought series. It’s so good. And remember, pick up a copy of the book, How to Lose Weight for the last Time. Brain based solutions for Permanent Weight Loss. Any where books are sold. You can also pick up that audio book and if you have already purchased it, I would appreciate it so much if you would leave me a review. Thank you so much for your attention. Oh man, this stuff gets me excited. So excited for you to see how much this can change your life. Have a great rest of your week and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free help. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #313: [New Year, New Thoughts Series] How to Change Your Food-Related Thoughts | Chp. 2 appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Have you ever wondered if weight loss medication could work for you?

These medications have been getting a lot of attention on TikTok and other social media platforms lately, so let’s talk about them.

In this episode, we’re taking a look at how weight loss medications fit into the journey to permanent weight loss.

Could they work for you? What are the side effects? How effective are they? These are all questions I’m answering in this episode.

I’m also addressing how the results from the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program compare to weight loss medications and why, no matter what route you take, you can’t skip the work.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why weight loss medications were created * How these medications work * What the known side effects are * Who fits into the criteria for these medications * What we don’t know about them * Weighing the risks against the benefits * The importance of doing the work in your brain * Thinking about what you want for your life long-term

I am all for using medications that can positively impact your life when you meet the criteria for them, but I’m also wary of using weight loss medications as a quick fix. The truth is the quick fix doesn’t exist; there will always be work to do. If you think medication could be a good fit for you, please do reach out to your doctor about it, but always do your research and weigh your options when making a decision about your health.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Weight Loss for Doctors Only

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #309: Self-Investment Potential

Ep #310: Blazing New Neural Pathways

Ep #311: Coping with Loss – Krista St-Germain Returns

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. I’m so excited to invite back my friend and excellent, excellent coach Krista Saint Germain today. I look back, she did her first two episodes with us in 2020, so almost about two and one half years ago. It’s episodes 176 and 177. If you’re interested in going back and checking those out. Krista has a really interesting story that she, of course, goes into in her previous episode. So you can definitely start there and listen back if you’d like to. But she herself is a widow and has just become this incredible coach for widows and more broadly an incredible coach and knowledge base on grief and what to do about grief and how to work through grief. And as I mentioned, a little bit more on this episode, but I want to mention here is that, yeah, maybe there isn’t a loss that you’re processing right now.

Maybe this isn’t going to be information that’s going to directly apply to you right in this minute. But I know that you touched a lot of people in your life, and maybe it’s patients, maybe it’s family members or friends. There’s going to be people out there who have struggled with a loss, who are currently struggling with the loss, or it could just be even be that this time of year is difficult for them because it brings up memories of their person that they lost. And that could be a spouse or it could be any number of other people in your life. So I was very excited to bring Krista back to be able to share more about current trends in grief and something really interesting she calls a grief plateau, which I know you’re going to want to learn more about. And so I am just excited to let you listen in on my conversation with Christa Saint Germain. Please enjoy Christa, So glad to have you back on the podcast.

So happy to be here. It’s been too long.

It has been too long. We’ve just been chatting about other things. From here we go. So excited to get into this stuff. You know, I love talking about grief, truly. I mean.

You’re one of my weird friends that likes to talk about grief.

It’s really true. Okay, so let’s just start off because you have been on the podcast before. Let’s just start off with a little bit of a refresher on how you define grief.

So I like to think about grief first. It’s just the natural response to a perceived loss, right? It is the natural thing that we go through when we perceive that we have had a loss. But then more specifically, I think a lot of people think of grief as just a feeling like just the emotional experience of the loss. But I like to think about it in more broad terms. So the totality of our response to the loss, which includes all of our thoughts, all of our feelings and how they adjust over time, right. How they change grief is not something that has an end, right? It’s just something we adapt to. It becomes part of the fabric of our of our being. It changes the way that we see the world. So it’s not something we ever get over or move past. It’s something we move forward with. You know, it’s not just a feeling. It’s so much more than that.

I like that too, because, I mean, you know, I’ve told you, I think I’ve said this on the podcast before. I told you this before when my daughter passed, like I read this book and it had this quote in their grief as patient, it will wait for you. It’s like and even just that idea of like, yeah, if you try to avoid it, it’s going to wait for you, but it’s also still present with you ongoing. That was actually very helpful for me to understand that early on because I kept being like, This hurts so bad. This feels so, so bad. When do I get to the other side and finding out there isn’t another side and that it will just change and evolve? I was like, At least you know what it was is it set my expectations like, okay, now I know what to expect. Like I can deal with if I know the way it’s going to be. So. So this is actually kind of perfect, though, because so many people talk about like what can make grief better and it’s time, right? You know, time heals. And as this episode is going live, you know, we talk about the holidays and holidays can be very, very difficult for people who’ve experienced losses. You know, whether the loss was around the holiday period or this is, you know, a time when they’re remembering the person that they lost more than you say, that time doesn’t really heal.

Nobody likes me when I say that.

And so let’s talk about that.

Yeah, nobody wants to hear that. As with anything, I think it’s just it’s nuanced. It’s not black or white. So it would be unfair to say as a blanket statement, time heals, but it would also be unfair to say that time has nothing to do with healing, right? So it’s just a little bit more nuanced. So part of what has to happen in healing is that the brain has to go through a learning process, right? The brain has to relearn your relationship with the person. So when you have a significant bond with someone, the brain actually encodes that bond. And so, of course, it makes sense then that it has to relearn. It’s kind of like if you think about phantom limb syndrome, right where people are, that the limb is no longer there, but yet they’re reporting that they can feel it. But we know that it’s not really there. But the. Brain hasn’t really rewired itself yet to catch up. And the same thing happens in grief. So, yes, time has to pass for the brain to relearn that when the garage door goes up. It’s not your person that when you pick up the phone to try to text them, they’re not going to respond. When you reach over in the middle of the night and they’re not there.

You know, the brain is expecting them to be there. It has to relearn through exposure over time that they are no longer somewhere you can find them. And it will keep yearning and longing for you to find them until it learns that. So in that way, time is necessary for healing. But also it’s important to consider what are we actually doing with our time? Because what I see so many widows struggle with is that. They just believe that time heals and all they need to do is just let time pass. And so then instead of giving themselves the opportunity to feel their feelings right and stay present with themselves and explore what the loss means to them and kind of do what we would call, quote unquote, the work of grief. Then they just kind of white knuckle their way through and distract themselves and try to stay busy or they turn to coping behaviors that maybe create results that they don’t want, like overeating, right over drinking. They do things to distract themselves because they think they just need to hold on for a certain amount of time to pass, and then they end up doing themselves a disservice and creating more hardship than is necessary. So time in and of itself doesn’t heal. Time is necessary for healing.

Right? Okay. That’s really good stuff to think about. Wow. I love that. I love our conversations so good. So when you were on before, we talked briefly about post traumatic growth, but we didn’t really get into it so much, particularly how it looks with grief. So what is post-traumatic growth and how do we create that, particularly in a scenario where there’s been a loss?

Post traumatic growth, I think for me, when I heard about it was incredibly encouraging. I also appreciate, though, that for some people it’s a little bit confronting when you hear the term because kind of the last thing you’re thinking about after you’ve lost someone important is growing. Think right? Like, yeah, don’t really care. I’m just in pain. But post traumatic growth is a term that was coined in the mid nineties by a couple of researchers, Tedeschi and Calhoun, and they were noticing that some people after a traumatic event, which of course is very subjective, some people were experiencing a decreased level of wellness perpetually and at that point in time, kind of before their work, it was thought that the best you could hope for or the end goal was there was the level of wellness. Before the traumatic event there was a decrease, and then the goal was to get back to the baseline that the person was experiencing before the last. And what they noticed in their studies is that some people were actually reporting a greater level of wellness, so greater appreciation for life, greater spiritual change. They were considering new possibilities, their relationships were improving. They were perceiving themselves as stronger, more resilient. And that just didn’t match up with anything that had been studied before. So that’s the idea that it is possible and some people don’t even have to work at it to experience growth after something traumatic. I know for me in some ways it was something I worked at. In some ways it was just something that happened. You lose someone precious to you. It can be a tremendous wake up call. You know, life is short. Maybe you aren’t living the life that you want to live. Maybe you aren’t living the values that you have, or maybe you are kind of just going through the motions and taking things for granted.

Or maybe you aren’t really making the impact in the world that you want to make, and that can be just such a beautiful time to reassess and live a life that’s even more aligned. But what will hold people back from that sometimes is that they they make it mean something that it doesn’t need to mean. Like if I’m more satisfied with my life after this person that I love so dearly died, then what does that mean about my love for them? Right. And to me, it doesn’t mean anything. I like to think about it like I live in Kansas, so we have tornadoes here. If a tornado came and knocked down your house, you needed to rebuild the house. You could just rebuild or try to rebuild a house as close as possible to the one that you had. That would be fine. And also, if you had lived in that house for any number of years, you probably would have learned a lot about what you like and what you didn’t like. Right. There may be some things that you would really like to change about that house, not because there’s anything wrong with the house, but because maybe you want more light in the kitchen, right? Maybe you want a different layout of your master bedroom, Right? Whatever it is, we have the ability as humans to take what we have learned and apply it going forward. Why not? Why would we miss that opportunity? To update the design of your house is not an insult to your previous house. And that’s how I like to think about it, right? It’s just an opportunity that we have. And why not?

It’s like a yes and yes. We love that person. We never would have wished that ever on our worst enemy. And it happened. And here’s what we did moving forward. Yeah, nothing of that.

Yeah. When my husband died, it was because of a car accident. And so I had to replace my Camry. I could have got another Camry. I probably could have found that exact same Camry. But it didn’t make sense in my life at that point. I was, like, toting my daughter’s cello around. And, you know, it made sense for me to change cars. Right. And so I did. So I got a minivan. Like, does that mean the Camry was bad? No, It just means I learned some things and adjusted.

Yeah. And you had another opportunity. You know, maybe it was an opportunity what I’ve chosen. But the opportunity presented itself to redesign something.

Yes. 100%. Yes, 100%. I did not choose that. And and just because. Right. Like you do go on to redesign your house, that doesn’t mean. You are also saying, I’m so happy that this happened. Not at all. Not at all.

Right. Or glad that it happened. Yeah, absolutely. Think that’s so good. So the DSM was updated and now. Prolonged grief disorder is an official diagnosis. So tell us more about that and what do we think about that?

Yeah, I’m mixed on this one. So it used to be called complicated grief. And I actually preferred in many ways that term complicated because, you know, when you think about complications, you can just kind of understand that like in healing, there can be complications, right? Things can interfere with healing. And the same thing can happen in grief. So complicated felt just a little more approachable to me. But now we have the term prolonged grief disorder, which in some ways I hope will be helpful. My biggest hope is that people won’t use it against themselves. But basically what we’re saying is that, you know, when you have intense yearning, when you are intensely longing, when you are preoccupied with thoughts and memories, and it is disrupting your life for an extended period of time. And I’m not obviously trained to diagnose because that is left to the folks who are licensed to do such. But if we declare something a disorder. Then, of course, insurance will cover treatment. And so I can see the benefit there. I can see the benefit of people who are thinking that there’s something wrong with them feeling validated that there is a term for what they are dealing with. What I hope will not happen with this term is that people will start diagnosing their loved ones. Right. And saying that because grief doesn’t end right, deciding that a person’s response to their loss is somehow wrong or disordered and they will misuse that term. And it’s really only about 10 to 15% of bereaved people like generally speaking, that would even have prolonged grief disorder anyway. So I’m very mixed on it. I hope that what people do here is at a certain point, you know, six months or beyond, for most people, if grief is really interfering with your daily life and you are adapting to it, then there is help available for you. And let’s get that support right. Let’s not let it really impact the quality of of our our lives on an ongoing basis.

I think that’s really helpful. Thank you for explaining that, because, you know, so many of the people listening to this are doctors who are taking care of patients. Right. And, you know, so it’s like so it’s like, of course, you know, the people who are listening and like directly helping them that so many people who listen also directly help so many other people. And so just even educating, you know, the people who listen to this, you know, episode on what’s available and ways to look at this can really help them to direct their patients to the help that they need.

Totally. And I think Columbia Center for Prolonged Grief used to be Columbia Center for Complicated Grief, but now they’ve changed their name as well. Dr. Katherine Shear. Her work is very accessible to anyone, both clinicians, in terms of mental wellness, but also the general public. And she has some incredibly useful tools in terms of educating yourself and sorting that out a little bit. And I think it’s important to know, too, that it’s kind of a common misconception that prolonged grief only happens when there was a conflicted relationship with the person who died. Not true at all. Prolonged grief can happen and maybe even more likely to happen when someone had an amazing relationship with someone or if the death was sudden, or it was unexpected or violent if it was a young person. But yeah, the more information we have, the better. And most people are not trained about prolonged grief.

Okay, so you talk about a grief plateau. Can you explain what that is and how would someone be able to tell if they were stuck in one and what to do about it?

A grief plateau is the space I found myself in where everybody was telling me I was doing so great and I didn’t feel great and I didn’t know what to do about it because I was past acute grief. So there’s like the acute grief experience, which most of us have different for everyone. You know, I don’t want to make any super blanket statements, but basically it’s that beginning experience where it feels like your world just exploded and the rug got pulled out from under you and your hormones are a hot mess and you’re not sleeping and you have grief, fog and just everything. Just maybe you feel really numb. Your emotional swings are intense and intrusive. If you wanted to go back to work at that stage, you probably couldn’t because, you know, the biggest thing you’re celebrating might be a shower, right, in early acute grief. And then there’s that kind of back to normal from the outside perspective in that I’m functioning, I’m getting the things done. I am back to work. If I wanted to be, I look like I’m doing okay. The kids are getting fed. We appear to be back to quote unquote normal. And this is the grief plateau. This is where you probably not really thinking you’re ever going to love your life again. You are feeling more robotic, more empty, more hollow than you want. The joy just isn’t where you want it to be. It’s not depression, right? It’s just you’re not excited about your day. You’re not jumping out of bed and ready to chase a new goal. You’re probably not even dreaming again, necessarily. You’re thinking about the near term and you’re getting things done in the near term, but you can’t really imagine what you want five years from now, ten years from now. It’s very much a surviving experience and not anywhere near thriving.

Would you say that people in that phase, they’re often feeling like they’re not sure who to talk to about how they really feel? Because like I feel like so many of the people who are your loved ones, they want you to be better. And so if you share what’s going on, sometimes they’re like, Oh, it’ll get better. Like they just want you so badly to be better that maybe they’re not the best people to talk to about it. And people keep telling you how great you’re doing. And so it’s like, I would imagine it could feel quite lonely and isolated to be in a grief plateau.

Yeah, And that’s one of the struggles that people who are experiencing a grief plateau often have is they don’t know where they fit in socially or they don’t feel like they fit in socially. They’re kind of trying to manage other people’s feelings about them, and they might be playing their cards very closely and picking and choosing who they talk to or being very chameleon like in social situations because they don’t really want to bring it up. But also they’re not really experiencing the connection that they want to experience with people. Everybody else is kind of gone back to their way of living, but they don’t want to rock the boat it can feel. Very isolating and very lonely for sure. And by the way, Grief Plateau is a term I totally made up. It is what I wish somebody would have have given me and said, This isn’t all there is. Like, this is where you are right now. You haven’t done anything wrong because you’re there and you don’t have to stay there. It is possible for you to actually love your life again. And what’s so sad to me is that most people who when I talk to them about what I describe as a grief plateau, this is the point where most people go, Oh, this is my new normal. I’m going to make it, but I’m never going to be truly happy again. I’m never going to really love my life again. And I should just count my blessings. That breaks my heart. Those are the women that I’m like, get into my program. Like when they’re widows, right?

Like, I guess the rest of my life is just going to be like this.

I’ll be exactly.

Sad and hollow my whole life. Yeah, I was going to say, so these are the people that you really serve, right? These people who are like, kind of through that acute phase or close to it. The dust has settled a bit and they’re like, you know, life is continues to move forward and is this it? Yeah. And so just to give just, you know, maybe one or two ideas or kind of tools that you use to help women who are in that grief plateau to start moving out of it.

So it kind of depends on what they’re particularly struggling with. But generally speaking, you know, we’re working on like coping self efficacy, right? Like how do we get our attention focused on what we can control? When it is largely focused on what we can’t. And sometimes that means getting super clear on a lot of the things we think that we can’t control are actually things we can and vice versa, right? Helping us understand that. So like an example of that for me was if you had asked me if my life was going to be better in the future, I would have told you probably not. And I wouldn’t have thought at the time that was something I could control, right? I thought that was just something I was experiencing. And so it was a newsflash for me that my best days are probably behind me was actually something I was thinking and could choose not to think. That in itself is is completely transformative. And then how do we navigate the emotional experience we’re having? Because most of us are kind of, you know, instead of being in a position where we’re better poised to allow the whole emotional experience of being human, we’re actually shrinking. We’re like stagnating because we’ve just been through this intense emotional experience.

The last thing we want is more intense emotion when we’re exhausted from what just happened, and we don’t really have a skill set that points us toward another less awful experience. So can we develop the capacity to allow our emotions to flow through? It’s just a lot of the work that you do too, right? So that we aren’t kind of shrinking into that stagnation zone and we actually are able to and actively pursuing the full breadth of the human emotional experience because that’s what really living again is. But we’re afraid to do it and we kind of understand why. Like if you want another relationship, but you’re so terrified that someone is going to be taken away from you again as just happened and you don’t believe you have the capacity to handle that emotionally, you’re not going to put yourself out there. You’re not going to be vulnerable. You might have ideas of a dream of something you could accomplish or could create for yourself that you really like. But if you can’t stand the idea of the emotional potential downside of that and you don’t believe you have the capacity to handle it, you won’t pursue it, you will stay small. And so it’s those kinds of muscles that we need to be developing.

I don’t really see how the post-traumatic growth can come from that, though, right? Like if someone comes and works with you or, you know, just with therapy or coaching or whatever, if they’re if they came into their loss without that skill set, without that knowledge, without that kind of experience and introspective ability, then it’s like if a good thing can come from the loss, it could be developing yourself as a person because you could have probably benefited from that before the loss as well. It just happens to be that through the loss, this is your opportunity to learn from that and that can be that way. Where you go, you know what, that happened and it was awful. And through the process of healing, I’ve took steps forward.

Yeah. And we also kind of have to or at least have the opportunity to go from we to I. Right. So if you have lived your whole life or most of your adult life in a particular way as a we, the transition to AI has a lot of complications. And so even things like decision making, right, when you used to have a person that helped you make decisions or perhaps you leaned on them to make certain decisions, right? And you never even made those decisions yourself. You might not have the skill of decision making or you might not have ever dealt with the financial aspect of your life. Maybe your person did that, or you might have more. I see this a lot. You might have more money than you have ever had because you got a life insurance payment and you have less security. You feel less secure than you’ve ever felt, where you have no peace around that money. You don’t like how it came to you. You resent having it. You don’t want other people to know that you have it. You don’t want to spend it, all kinds of things. Or maybe, you know, maybe your spouse had a business and now you’re trying to run that business and you don’t really want to run that business. That business wasn’t your dream. You can imagine there are endless opportunities, but no limits.

I love the work that you do. That’s I’m seriously I like. So I just feel like so honored to know you because I think what you do just make such a big difference for people. I really, really mean that this is oh gosh, there’s so many people who need this. And I just think back to like, you know, generations before how people just, you know, suffered and struggled and thought that that was all that was available to them. And it’s so great to know that for people who are open to it, for people who are interested, there is help available. And and I just I just know that what you do really, really transforms people’s lives. And I made what a gift.

I honestly sometimes have to pinch myself. And even what I have been realizing recently after now, having done this work for a few years is it’s not only the widow’s life who I get to transform, it’s the ripple effect that that has into the world and the way that then she is able to help her children and what they see her role modeling and. Just that part is like that. If you want to make me cry, we can, you know, like, that’s where it will happen, right? It’s just seeing the impact of that in the world. Yeah.

This is why we get up every day and do this work, right, and deal with running a business and entrepreneurship and all the lovely things that we were talking about before, you know, the ups and downs that come with it. So I would love to know. First of all, the name of your program is Mom Goes On and they can find out more about that where.

They can go to coaching with Krysta dot com. Krista and I have a podcast called the Widowed Mom podcast, which of course is very specific but very useful for anyone who’s just interested in learning about grief. Right? If you want to learn about grief or how to support someone, or if you want to learn about post traumatic growth, it’s a very useful podcast. Oh, I do have an advanced certification coming up, so if anybody is listening, that is life coach school certified. What I find is that people are a little hesitant to coach around grief. It’s a little bit scary to them and I don’t think coaching around grief needs to be scary at all. All of everyone in the world is going to experience grief. So if you are a coach and you are not comfortable coaching grief, you’re not helping your clients to the fullest extent. So I’m working on right now an advanced certification just to help people see that grief coaching doesn’t have to be so scary, right? Yeah. So that’ll be coming out soon too.

Especially if they haven’t really, as a coach, really gone through a big loss. I could see that being because that changed everything for me. I’m like, Oh, okay. That’s why I’m like, I love talking about me.

Yeah, But I do think you and I are the exception to the rule. Most people are like, Oh, I don’t know, maybe I should refer out. No, you don’t need to. Like, we can help them, Right?

Right. Or maybe it’s a yes and right. Like, we can coach on this and, you know, maybe there’s some additional help that would be helpful. So.

Well, yes. And that’s not to say coaching is the only answer for grief. I don’t mean to say that, but you don’t need to send someone to a grief coach if you are a coach and it falls within the bounds of coaching. I want you to be comfortable coaching on all subjects, right?

Definitely. Definitely. So good. So good. Chris, thank you so much for being here. As always, an absolute pleasure. And I know for those who are struggling with grief on the holidays, this is going to be really helpful because I think that’s something that, you know, not a lot of people talk about, but this can be a really, really tough time for people. A lot of people, actually. And it’s just always good to feel seen and understood. And I think that that’s what we’ve offered people today. So thank you so much, Krista.

Thank you, Katrina.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #312: Ozempic, Wegovy, and Other Newer Weight Loss Medications appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Could you use some help processing a loss or supporting someone else through their loss?

Those of you who have been around for a while might recognize our guest in this episode, Krista St-Germain, from her earlier episodes on the podcast. Krista is here to talk about how to cope with loss and grief.

She’s sharing some of the latest research and insights into grief, what the grief plateau is, and the tools you can use to cope with a loss.

Whether you’re processing a loss right now or not, this episode will set you up with skills to cope with loss in the future or to support other people in your life who are grieving.

Krista St-Germain is a Master Certified Life Coach, Post-Traumatic Growth and grief expert, widow, mom, and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast.

When her husband was killed by a drunk driver in 2016, Krista’s life was completely and unexpectedly flipped upside down. After therapy helped her uncurl from the fetal position, Krista discovered Life Coaching and Post Traumatic Growth and learned the tools she needed to move forward and create a future she could get excited about. Now she coaches and teaches other widows so they can love life again, too.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* How to define grief * Why time doesn’t always heal * What your brain has to learn after a loss * What post-traumatic growth is * Who can be affected by prolonged grief disorder * Getting help when you need it * What a grief plateau is and what to do about it * Tools you can use to move out of the grief plateau

I hope this episode expands your toolkit for coping with loss. Everyone deals with grief at some point in their life so it’s really important that we talk about it and learn how we can support ourselves and each other.

If you want to get more help with this process or find out more about Krista’s work, go to coachingwithkrista.com.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Visit Krista’s Website

Follow @lifecoachkrista on Instagram

Follow Krista on Facebook

Tune In to The Widowed Mom Podcast

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #308: What is Toxic Independence?

Ep #309: Self-Investment Potential

Ep #310: Blazing New Neural Pathways

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Hey there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. I’m so excited to invite back my friend and excellent, excellent coach Krista Saint Germain today. I look back, she did her first two episodes with us in 2020, so almost about two and one half years ago. It’s episodes 176 and 177. If you’re interested in going back and checking those out. Krista has a really interesting story that she, of course, goes into in her previous episode. So you can definitely start there and listen back if you’d like to. But she herself is a widow and has just become this incredible coach for widows and more broadly an incredible coach and knowledge base on grief and what to do about grief and how to work through grief. And as I mentioned, a little bit more on this episode, but I want to mention here is that, yeah, maybe there isn’t a loss that you’re processing right now.

So happy to be here. It’s been too long.

It has been too long. We’ve just been chatting about other things. From here we go. So excited to get into this stuff. You know, I love talking about grief, truly. I mean.

You’re one of my weird friends that likes to talk about grief.

It’s really true. Okay, so let’s just start off because you have been on the podcast before. Let’s just start off with a little bit of a refresher on how you define grief.

Nobody likes me when I say that.

And so let’s talk about that.

It’s like a yes and yes. We love that person. We never would have wished that ever on our worst enemy. And it happened. And here’s what we did moving forward. Yeah, nothing of that.

Yeah. And you had another opportunity. You know, maybe it was an opportunity what I’ve chosen. But the opportunity presented itself to redesign something.

Okay, so you talk about a grief plateau. Can you explain what that is and how would someone be able to tell if they were stuck in one and what to do about it?

Like, I guess the rest of my life is just going to be like this.

I’ll be exactly.

Yeah, But I do think you and I are the exception to the rule. Most people are like, Oh, I don’t know, maybe I should refer out. No, you don’t need to. Like, we can help them, Right?

Right. Or maybe it’s a yes and right. Like, we can coach on this and, you know, maybe there’s some additional help that would be helpful. So.

Thank you, Katrina.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #311: Coping with Loss – Krista St-Germain Returns appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Why is it so hard to break old habits and create new ones?

Really it comes down to the science behind how your brain works. The more you think a certain thought, the more you strengthen that neural pathway in your brain, and the easier it becomes to think that thought again. In this episode, we’re talking about the challenges of blazing new neural pathways alone vs. with help.

I have quite a story for you to illustrate my point that involves a very chaotic family ski trip and a lot of learning curves.

If you want to learn how to effectively change habits or create new ones, this episode is for you.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why understanding how neural pathways work will help you change your habits * What goes into creating new habits * How neural pathways are strengthened * How my ski strip is a metaphor for creating new weight loss habits * The value of a guide who knows what they’re doing * The struggles that come with creating new habits and neural pathways * Getting the help you need

It’s not easy to change old habits, but it is easier with help. If you need help losing weight for the last time, I want you to know that in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program I will meet you where you’re at with whatever help you need.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:Weight Loss for Doctors Only

Leave a Review of My Book

Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

Follow Along on Instagram

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Free Resources

Email me!

Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #309: Self-Investment Potential

Ep #308: What is Toxic Independence?

Ep #307: How to Approach Food-Centric Holidays

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. I’m so glad that you’re here with me. I am excited to tell you more about today’s topic because this is something that I think so many of us deal with, and it also involves quite a story. And who doesn’t love a story? I always love a story. So I’m so glad that you’re here with me today. Today, we’re going to talk about blazing new neural pathways alone or with help. And so we’re going to talk about it through the lens of weight loss. But I’m going to tell you an unrelated to weight loss story that will help you to see the metaphor there, the equivalence and how it’s really the same thing, because, I mean, it’s no surprise to anybody that when you decide to change your habits, whether it’s with the way that you’re eating or maybe with drinking alcohol or maybe the way you’re moving your body or maybe even just your habits with how you finish your charts or how you approach sleep.

I know back when I would take all, I totally knew that it made sense to go to bed early, but I would end up staying up late thinking, Well, I don’t want to sleep for just a little bit and then get that kind of, you know, ten 1030 11 p.m. page from a patient because they’re thinking, Oh, let me call the doctor before she goes to sleep. Then I basically just had a nap and now I can’t fall back asleep again, so I might as well just stay up. Well, sometimes that worked out and sometimes I was glad I hadn’t gone to sleep. But so many times I should have just gone to sleep because then I was woken up however many more times later in the night. Or I could have had a really nice long night of rest and I missed out on it because I stayed up late. Right? So whatever kinds of habits we’re trying to change when it comes down to losing weight and losing weight, permanently changing our relationship with food, changing our relationship with ourselves, changing our relationship with our bodies, there’s just new things that need to happen, right? The old ways of thinking that led to the old feelings that we regularly and familiarly that a word that we feel, and then the actions that we take are giving us a result that we do not want, right? We don’t like feeling like we think about food so much or we think about our body so much, or just the way we think about ourselves is mean.

We are feeling bad about ourselves most of the time, or we just feel like we’re out of control around food. We go in with the best of intentions and a plan and then push comes to shove and we’ve eaten all the food and we don’t know what happened, right? Like we come home exhausted every day. We don’t know what else to do besides eating and drinking something, right? Like new thoughts and feelings and actions have to be put into place. And that’s going to take time. Now, we understand, if you understand the concept of neuroplasticity, we understand that the neurons in our brains have synaptic connections, right? There’s these connections between them. And the more often we fire those connections, meaning like the more often we think those same thoughts, It’s kind of like it bulks up that neural connection, like it gets thicker. It’s like when you’re working out and your muscles grow. When you work out that way of thinking in it and you really repeat it and practice it a lot, it becomes something that is really automatic, really easy for us to think. And so those old thoughts, feelings and actions that give us those results that we don’t want become very, very easy.

So when we want to do something different, that initial neural connection is very thin. It’s not well worn yet. It’s not all built up in bulked up yet, and the old way is still alive and well and present. And so it takes some work, right, to be able to form those new synaptic connections to really literally change our brains, which is what neuroplasticity is going. You know what? I don’t want to make those neural connections anymore. I don’t want to be thinking those thoughts the same way I have been. And I want to be thinking new ways, and I want that to become the new automatic, totally available to us. So conceptually we’re like, Yeah, okay, totally make sounds. Yes, I’d like to do that. And then we embark on that journey and it’s not always smooth sailing. Sometimes it’s a really big challenge. And so I want to talk to you today about just something that happened to my family. So last year, in 2021, my family decided to travel between Christmas and New Year. So this is something that we had historically not done for lots of reasons. First of all, everybody knows, even like pre-COVID, that, you know, it’s just like a crazy travel time. For several years there, my oldest son was doing ski race team and that week in between the holidays was a big time where they call it Christmas camp, where the kids were going to have to be on the snow with something like seven, 730 in the morning.

I can report back soon because my other two are going to start doing that this year. So I’m going to be up with them getting them there. But, you know, we are busy doing that kind of stuff. My husband is a surgeon and so everybody. Always wanted to get their surgeries taken care of, especially their elective things, before their deductible re ups, which of course in the US is totally like a thing with our health care system. If you’re not in the US, you might be like, Yes, I’ve heard of this. It sounds very strange to me and it’s strange to us too, but it is just the system and how it works. So what can we do? But so anyway, he always wanted to work because it was a time to really be able to take care of a lot of patients before that year ended. And they really wanted to do that. Here’s what changed. So what happened was my oldest child went off to high school, and the school that my younger children go to goes all the way up through eighth grade. So for a while there they were all in the same school. They had all the same vacations, which meant that they had a week off in February. And because we do like to ski and it’s like for us because I mean, I learned to ski when I was three.

My husband learned when he was in college. But it’s something that he’s really developed a love for. It’s really just a great family thing to do together. I grew up doing it for my family. I always loved it and it’s something that provided your body can cooperate with you. It’s really a sport that you can partake in for your whole life or most of your life, and you get to be out in nature. And, you know, it’s just it’s a good time for us. We really enjoy doing it. So we would take a ski trip out west that week of February, and we had been doing that for a long time. We have dear friends that live in the Denver area, so we would wrap up a visit with them into the whole mix and it was something we did for a long time. And then this past year, in 2021, our oldest son was in a school where they don’t have that week off and of course the year before that as well. When he was a freshman, it was COVID year, so nobody did anything. So it’s the last year we were really like missing our ski trip. We thought, you know, we really want to do this, really want to do the ski trip. How can we make this happen when one of our kids doesn’t have that week off? Now, you might be thinking, okay, well, you know, he could just take that week off.

We could just excuse him. But the high school he goes to is actually quite strict with time off and stuff and they do not mess around and you’re really not supposed to take kids out. So when I first saw that when he was a freshman, I’m like, Oh, okay, well, like, I know you’re not supposed to, but like, how big of a deal is this really? You know? And you can tell I’m not a firstborn. I’m always like, Well, I understand the rules, but do they really apply to me? I don’t know. I’m going to find out. So anyway, as I looked into it further, it really is like, you’re really not supposed to take kids out. But even besides that, as you might imagine, and I know so many of you who have children around the same age or had children on the same age know like, I don’t know, somehow we birth these kids who are just really high achievers. I am telling you, just like it was internal to me, my parents didn’t have to tell me to go get good grades. Like I just wanted to excel and succeed. It’s the same for him as well. And so with his course load and the difficulty level of his classes, he was like, There’s just literally no way I could miss a week of school.

Like, it’s just this is not going to work. So we were like, okay, we can’t take a trip. And he loves skiing probably more than the other four of us put together. So we thought, Well, how can we do a family ski trip? We really want to do this as a family. And so I looked at everybody and said, You guys, I think we have to take a trip between Christmas and New Year’s. Like, I know it’s going to be busy time, but, you know, maybe with COVID, like still a lot of people weren’t traveling. We’re just going to have to deal with the lines and whatever, and we’re just going to have to do it. So we all agreed. Okay, yeah, I think that’s what we’re going to do. So then the question was, where are we going to go? And so we decided to go to the ski resort called Heavenly, which is on Lake Tahoe. And it kind of borders. It’s literally like the actual scheme. The mountain is actually like straddling the Nevada and California border. So half of the ski resort is in California and half is in Nevada. So it’s right in that area. Now, I live in Wisconsin. That is not close, like not even remotely close, but the summer before that. So the summer of 2021, we actually had gone out to Lake Tahoe for the first time and had loved it like super duper loved it.

It’s so beautiful there. We went hiking and spent time on the lake and just really enjoyed it. And we thought, you know what? Like we could see the heavenly ski resort. We thought, you know what? We should come back here and ski here because how beautiful would it be to be like on the mountain and then have the view of the lake with the snow like so, so pretty. And I thought, this is what we’re going to do. We had gotten a direct flight from Milwaukee where I live, to Reno, which is where you fly into to go there. I thought, this is brilliant, no problem at all. So I booked us this Airbnb. We don’t really know like that much about the area, but I book us in and that’s that. Okay, so I’m going to pause here for a second and just rewind to several years prior. I mean, I’m thinking how many years prior? Seven, eight, nine. Something along those lines I mentioned. We used to go to Colorado all the time for that week in February, and we would visit our friends and we would go skiing up in the mountains and stuff and. So where we usually ended up skiing, we had tried a couple different places, like we had tried Breckenridge and we liked it enough, but it was like extremely windy and cold.

Like somehow, just like it wasn’t really our favorite. And we tried a couple of other places and then those friends of ours who we’ve known for ever since residency, they were telling us that they loved skiing at Vail and that they had a connection for us to be able to stay in a condo in Vail like East Vail is where they were. They had it’s like kind of like family member has it, and they don’t really put it up for rent for regular people. But through friends and family, you could rent it. And it’s not like the fanciest or like the most updated, but it works. You know, it does the trick. The amount they charged us was like, stupid, cheap, like, you literally could not say no to this where you’re just like, are you even kidding me right out? So even early on, because a ski trip is a very expensive trip, it was like, wow, it really helps to offset the cost of this trip when we can stay for so little in this condo. So the first year we were there and, you know, you’re kind of like trying to figure things out, like where’s the ski school? But our friends had given us a lot of tips and we had actually even been up there as well with them where they were kind of like, okay, definitely like set up ski school here and then you’re going to stay here.

And then like, here’s the situation with the bus system and like if you want to drive in park, then park over here. So they gave us like a whole tutorial on the best ways to kind of take advantage of what was on offer there. And then over the course of the subsequent years, we kept going back, first of all, because the skiing in Vail is really, really, really good if you’re an advanced skier. So my oldest son, because of his ski racing, even though I think it’s literally where we ski here in Milwaukee, we have 180 vertical might be yards. I don’t know, whatever it is, it’s a very I mean, it’s a hill. It’s a hill. Okay? There’s no mountain here at all. Even on that. They can really teach kids to be excellent, excellent skiers. And so with like three years on race team, my oldest son was like literally 12 years old and skiing all of the terrain in all of Vail, like no problem whatsoever. And my husband loved going with him, too. So they super duper loved skiing of Val. It wasn’t totally my favorite because I’m more someone who likes more of like the groomed blue runs. But I figured out all the places that I like to ski and we would kind of like split up and then meet up for lunch on the mountain.

And we had our way of kind of doing things. And so year after year after year, we got better and better at making this an amazing trip. Like we had it all figured out. Like, exactly, You know, we would go and then I’d get help dropping the little kids off her ski school and there’s like special parking there. Then I drive over to where my oldest son and my husband wanted to be dropped off, so I drop them there. Then I would drive to a different part of the mountain where they had a better parking situation and better access to the ones that I like to ski on. And I would park there and the deal that I have with myself, because after too many years of being like this ticket was expensive and I need to ski until I’m half dead, I finally just realized, you know what? I’m only going to ski until I’m done. And if that’s an hour, then I got my money’s worth. Like, I’m not going to keep forcing myself to ski after my legs are tired because that’s, of course, how you get hurt or if the weather isn’t good or I’m just not having fun. Like, guess what? I’m a grown up and I get to do what I want. And I knew that I never would want to ski as long as the boys would want to.

So I had the car then available in the car keys. So I would like ski, have fun, have lunch, maybe do another run or two, then go get the car. Maybe I’d go like hit the hot tub by myself before it got busy. Then go pick up the little kids when they’re done from ski school and then go round up, you know, my husband and the oldest. And then what we actually figured out was, you know, what’s so much easier is if you just plan on eating really early. Because what we found is if we went back to the condo and did the hot tub and the whole thing, then like nobody had the energy to get dressed again and go out to eat and I could cook. And I had years where I did do all the cooking. And it was just such an exhausting trip for me to do all the cooking and skiing and everything. It was just it was too much. So we figured out we’re like, You know what we do? We pick everybody up, we go straight. We like would eat dinner at like 430, like walk around the village a little bit, eat a really early dinner, go back, hot tub, relax a little bit. Everyone’s exhausted. Anyway, go to bed, start again the next day. So over the course of time, you know, we got help from our friends to, like, you know, get that initial learning curve up and going.

And then every year was like we were iterating, iterating, iterating, making it even better, even easier. It was just really like, not hard. It was like sometimes, you know, one year, I think the last year we went, we decided, you know what, we want to actually stay in a nicer place. So we stayed in a place that was a little bit different, but it was still like enough was the same. It was just like a slight change, you know? So the main reason that we decided not to go back to Vail in 2021 was because historically somebody in our family, at least one person, ended up having a lot of trouble with the altitude. So Vail Village is at 8000 feet and so it’s high. And, you know, every time you go, as I’m sure you know, every time you go into altitude, you can have different experiences and stuff. And we even took medication and we put the little kids on medication. And I’m telling you, it was like without fail, someone was puking in their bed from altitude. And then it’s like, if they’ve been sick, they can’t go to ski school. And then it just was like such a thing and just like not sleeping well and not feeling well even with medication. And I just had been pushing for a couple of years.

You guys like, could we maybe just go somewhere that isn’t so high and maybe we could all enjoy it a little bit more? So that’s when I was really like, You guys, look how beautiful this would be. We’ll go to Heavenly. We’ll be able to see the view of the lake and try something different and it’ll be so nice. So that was the whole idea. So that was our experience leading up to things I’m not even going to get into for, in the interest of time the hassle that it was to get there. It took us literally three days to get there, partly because we had gotten a direct flight to Reno in the summer, but they weren’t offering drug flights anymore. By the time we were booking into, you know, the end of the year. So we had to connect. And if you remember at all last year in the wintertime, like just travel was super hard. There were tons of delays. It was very challenging, let me just say. So we started off the trip with things that there’s just no way we could control it. It was just a bunch of weather stuff, you know, there were some airline issues. It was just really like, you name it, the problem existed pretty much. So let’s just skip over that part. We finally we get into our Airbnb and we got ourselves settled and we’re like, okay, we’re going to go skiing.

And so we done a little bit of research online and we realized like where our condo was that we hadn’t chosen based on location. We chosen it based on like how many bedrooms it had and like, you know, just kind of, you know, amenities and stuff. And so we realized, okay, our condo is closer to the California side, so let’s just ski from the California side. We’ll set up ski school from the California side. Like, we’ll just do that. Well, what ends up happening is we’re brand new to literally everything. Plus, they had also had this huge snowstorm. So there was just like a ton of snow everywhere. And so I think that kind of slowed things down as well. But we didn’t know like the best way to get to the parking lot and really how early you needed to get there or there wouldn’t be any parking left. And so it ended up being just like one challenge after the next challenge after the next challenge. We got there a little too slow and little too late, and we didn’t understand like the way they did ski school. There was just like very different than anything I’d ever experienced before. And so I had to go and figure out like just the whole thing. It was very, very challenging and confusing. Then I and my husband goes to park the car, so we decided to split up.

There was no parking at all. He had to go down this like side road, like way far down and park on the side of the road and then like hike up with his stuff because we hadn’t realized, like he had like skis and stuff. We had realized like, how far away he was going to have to be. So we got that all settled. And then we’re like trying to figure out all like the whole mountain. The mountain is just different and how does this all work and where should we go? And I think, yeah, they didn’t have any actual paper maps of the trails, like they were all just on your phone. Except that when it’s really cold, your phone doesn’t always work very well. So we realized like, Oh no, you know, what we need to do is we need to know where there’s actually maps, like actual physical maps, like on the trails, and then realizing that like sometimes on the ski lift there’s actually a map and we should really utilize that. And then because of COVID, they wouldn’t let you just go and eat at lunch time, like on the mountain. You couldn’t just like go to the lodge and eat. You needed a reservation. So luckily my husband had actually figured that out, that we needed a reservation, just kind of randomly chose a time or like, I guess this is when we’re eating.

Okay, fine. So we get there and there’s the longest, longest line. We’re like, Oh my God, we still have to wait in this huge line waiting there for a while until we realize, Oh, wait, this is for people who didn’t make the reservation. So we walked down there, realized, Oh, no, we do have a reservation. Okay, Now we can wait in a shorter line to be able to get a table. And you know, it was all like assigned and stuff. And so then we’re sitting there, we’re eating our lunch, and then they come overhead and the announcement, they’re like, We’re closing the gondola due to high winds. If you are a beginner skier, you need to exit the mountain now. And like we were like, what is going on? Like, is this okay? I mean, we’re not we don’t consider ourselves beginner skiers, but like, what’s going on? And it’s like finally someone who worked there and walked around, they’re like, Oh. Yeah, this happens actually here all the time. It’s actually pretty common than the afternoon. The winds get really, you know, pretty bad. But, you know, you can go over here and go over there. It shouldn’t be as bad. Okay. Good to know. Also, is extra extra busy because it was the time of year, you know, a lot of people had off of work and stuff and because they’d had so much snow, So a bunch of people had taken off work who probably wouldn’t have ordinarily or maybe wouldn’t have driven in like local people because they wanted to take advantage of all this snow.

So it was just packed. The lines for the lifts were so long, like everything that we had told ourselves, like we’re just going to have to be patient and deal with it. Like we were just dealing with all of it, just all of it. So then the trip home was super difficult to in terms of just travel, missing flights. It was just a disaster. If you were in the Denver airport around New Year’s last year, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was incredible. It just absolute incredible. So the point is this, right? What was different about Vail versus this trip to Heavenly, particularly like our first time that we went, the very first time we went, we had our friends there who had already been several times like lots and lots of times, and actually they ended up purchasing a place in that area. So they just knew it like the back of their hands. And so they were able to really be a local guide for us. They told us good restaurants to go to and they were like giving us like letting us borrow some of their kitchen equipment so that we could like make some easy meals and stuff.

They just were guiding us through the whole process of getting acclimated to a new vacation spot, you know? And this gave me such appreciation for people who go back to the same place again and again and again on vacation. You know, there’s just something to the familiarity. It really is a lot easier, even if there’s things that you don’t super love. Like a veil is just it’s not my favorite place to ski. It really isn’t. But there’s something to be said about familiarity, you know? I know the different runs and I know the different places that I like to go. And and so not having a guide, like had we gone to Heavenly and had someone local there or someone who had been there a bunch of times to be like, okay, look, really the Nevada side is the side you want to go on and you know, or whatever it was like, just here are the tips and tricks are like, do not think that you’re going to show up there at nine and get a parking spot Like you have to get there before then. Like, you just have to get up. Like, okay, that would have been great to know. Like so many things like that. We learn the hard way if we just keep experimenting. But a guide can make it so much faster, right? And then our brains have adjusted, right? Like we’ve got the new neural pathway and we know how we do this.

It’s familiar, it’s easy. We’ve got this sorted and weight loss can be so much the same in the sense that, you know, there’s so much we can figure out on our own. I mean, you can read my book, How to Lose Weight for the last Time and start applying the stuff yourself for sure. Right. But what if you had a guide who’s taken literally well over 1000 female physicians through this process? You know, who can just help you to know, Hey, listen, here’s an area where you might get stuck. This is the way to get through it. Or you know what? I understand that that didn’t work. Well, here. I have some other ideas for you or you’re struggling in this area and someone’s like, you know what? I’ve taken people through that before. I know exactly how to help you. You don’t have to bumble around by yourself and experiment with 100 million things that aren’t going to work. Like, here’s the thing that’s going to be the best thing. That’s what the weight loss four doctors only program offers to you. That’s what coaching in my program does. We have done this with so many people. Whenever I coach, I never worry that someone’s going to bring me something that I don’t know how to approach.

I’m like, Yeah, we’ve got so much experience. We’ve been doing this for so long and my whole team is so excellent at being able to meet you where you’re at and effectively, efficiently and quickly guide you to where you need to be, right? Because not everybody is showing up at the same place. Some people are coming in. They’re like, You know, my friend told me I needed to do this. And I listen to a couple of podcasts and it sounded pretty good. So here I am. And other people are like, I’ve been listening to your podcast for four years and I’m already lost a bunch of weight myself, and now I need help in this area, right? We will meet you where you’re at with what you need and help you to get that help that you need so that it’s faster so it’s smoother. And so that neuroplasticity changing your brain so that you are starting to think, feel and act in the ways that give you the results you do want. So that comes so much faster and so much more quickly and so much more efficiently. Because when you’re bumbling around and it’s taking forever, you’re so much less likely to go like, are we going on a ski trip this year? No, we are not. And heck no, Are we going to heavenly? I’m not sure I’ll ever go back unless someone can go and really help us to figure it out, because it was such a difficult experience and we have had that so many times with weight loss.

You know, we tried some sort of plan or did this thing that someone said or we tried to do and it didn’t work. And then we keep thinking that it’s our fault or something’s wrong with us. It was my fault that I didn’t have a great experience. That heavenly. No, I’m sure heavenly. It’s amazing. I just didn’t have the help that I needed to really get me off on the right foot to be able to make it an enjoyable experience. You know, weight loss can actually be enjoyable, believe it or not. You know, I like yeah, I don’t really believe it, but guess what? It really can be. I remember myself thinking like, Oh my gosh, like I can do this. This is not a hardship. Like, I literally can do this. And I know so many of the women physicians that I’ve worked with have felt the same way, too, where they’re just like, Oh, this is different. This is really, really different. And so why wouldn’t you give yourself that leg up? Why don’t you give yourself that boost to help you to move along that much faster, to learn it more quickly and just speed up the whole process? Right. That’s what we offer in weight loss for doctors only.

So if you’re traveling this year over the holidays, I wish you the very best. I really hope that you have a better experience than we did. So much of what happened to us was just it was just happenstance, just things that happened, weather and whatever. And there’s no way you can plan for that, but you definitely can plan for getting help with the parts that you know, you can predict. Or once unusual things do happen knowing how to work through that. And that’s exactly what we can help you with. And weight loss for doctors only. If you’re interested in learning more about the program, go to Katrina. Hubble IMDB.com for info info gets a lot more information about the program and how we might be able to help you, how we might be able to work together to help you create peace and freedom around food. And with that, I will say goodbye. If you are someone who celebrates Christmas, then Merry Christmas. If you celebrate other holidays. I wish you the best in those celebrations. And we’re winding up this year. So crazy. Please know that me and my team were here for you and we’d love to help you in whatever way we can. Have a great rest of your day and your week, and I’ll talk to you next time. Take care of a baby. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #310: Blazing New Neural Pathways appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you struggle to spend money on yourself?

Whenever the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program opens up, I always hear from women physicians who are interested in it but can’t bring themselves to sign up. They want results, they know it would help them, but they just can’t do it. I want to explore why we struggle so much to invest in ourselves.

As a doctor, you are highly influential in other people’s lives, so it’s logical that when you are at your best physically and mentally, you are better able to positively influence the lives that you touch. If investing in yourself is the way to achieve that, isn’t it the best thing to do?

In this episode, I’m teaching you how to reframe your thinking about investing in yourself and sharing an example from my life of a time I almost talked myself out of investing in myself.

If you feel guilty about spending money on yourself, this is for you.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why we struggle to invest in ourselves as we get older * Putting yourself in a position to positively impact people * Setting yourself up for success as a physician * Why your burnout might be more noticeable to others than you think * Reframing how you think about spending money on yourself * Examples of times I have invested in myself * Trusting yourself to follow through when you invest in yourself * Getting a return on your investment * Allowing yourself to fulfill your potential

How could investing in yourself allow you to better serve your patients and fulfill your potential? Take some time to reflect on that and see how it changes your perspective on investing in yourself.

If you’re interested in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, you’re in luck because it’s open for enrollment right now! Go to katrinaubellmd.com/info to learn more and enroll.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #308: What is Toxic Independence?

Ep #307: How to Approach Food-Centric Holidays

Ep #306: How Your Relationship with Food Is Affecting Your Pet with VetCoach Nadina Cojocaru

Read the Transcript Below:Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast and welcome to my sexy voice. Sound like Kathleen Turner or something like that? I’ve got that raspy voice. There’s been a virus going through our family, and man, this is. This one’s a bit of a doozy. I had no voice for literally over a week. And by no voice, I mean zero voice. So anyway, this is really good. I’m actually doing pretty well croaking my way through things today. And incrementally. I think every day is just getting a little bit better and better. But I just, you know, thank you for being patient with me as I sound a little different for you today, I’m glad that you’re here today to come and join me as I’m recording this. We are enrolling for our weight loss for doctors only program right now, and it’s just something that I believe in so much. I’ve been doing this now for over six years and I mean, we have data that shows how well the program works. And I always find it’s so interesting to hear from women physicians who are interested in the program, who can’t bring themselves to sign up.

So they want the results. They know that it would help them. And really, when push comes to shove, they’re just like, I just can’t do it. And why might that be? And I was thinking about this then in a broader kind of landscape as well, when we are struggling to see the potential that exists, when we invest in ourselves and how often we downplay that. And I think it’s actually something that’s really important because it doesn’t apply just to your weight and your relationship with food and your body and things like that. It’s actually a bigger, bigger issue because, you know, it’s so common. How we do one thing is how we do everything. Very often the way we approach certain things in our lives. I was think of it as like little finger like projections, like it’s over here in this one area we’re talking about. But you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s going to be found in other areas of your life as well. And so what I hear most often is, again, we got these women physicians who are like, look, I know weight loss for doctors only would help me. I know that it works. I’m not pushing back on that at all. But what they say is that they feel guilty when they think about spending the time and the money. So spending the time to actually help themselves to get the help they need to lose the weight, to get themselves to a place where they are peacefully coexisting with food and their bodies, and that they don’t want to spend money to help themselves with this.

And they feel guilty about doing that. And I find this to be actually really, really fascinating. It’s given me some food for thought and thinking about investments that I’ve made in myself over the course of my life. I think sometimes when we’re younger, we’re used to investing in ourselves more because we’re sort of building up what we need to be able to have the life we want, right? People aren’t telling you like it’s not worth it to invest in your education, right? Like pretty much most people would agree that, particularly if you are working on becoming a professional, like a physician, that it’s a great investment and that it’s a smart way to spend your time and money. So why does that change as we get older? I sometimes find that the older we get, the less likely we are to want to invest in ourselves. And it makes me wonder, like, what is it about that? Do we think that our lives are just shorter? It’s not worth it anymore? Do we think, Oh, you know, the time to prioritize ourselves has is over. We should prioritize other people, you know, maybe other loved ones instead of ourselves. Like what changes? Why is it actually different? And what I find even more fascinating is when you really think about a doctor, a physician and that job, there are few other jobs that are as unique as a doctor is in terms of how many lives each doctor touches.

I remember when I was back in practice as a pediatrician, I would often think about, you know, so many families that I touched directly on a day to day basis. I would sometimes think of people that I knew who had big corporate jobs and maybe their job titles were very important and they were being paid a lot of money. But when it came down to, you know, does the work you do actually directly, positively impact the world or a person’s life? I mean, I don’t know so much. I mean, I think it would be hard it would be a stretch to make that leap right now. I always felt so much value from that. I felt that I was a valuable contributor to the world because of the assistance that I gave every patient and every family as they came through the door. And I’m sure you as a doctor can totally relate to this as well. I mean, I can think of so many patients right off the bat. I will never forget this conversation I had with one dad who was raised being spanked. And he had you know, I already had a relationship with this father. He talked about how he had spanked his young son.

We had a really in-depth conversation about spanking and what it actually does and why it’s an ineffective tool with children in terms of helping them to behave the way we want them to behave. And we had this great conversation at the end. He said, you know what? You change your mind. I’m not going to do that anymore. I understand this. I’m not going to approach my son this way anymore. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it to me. And I was just like, Oh, my God, I have literally just changed the outcome of that child’s life and his relationship with his father. Like, I remember feeling so great about that, and that’s just one example. And I’m sure you have so many for yourself as well. You know, I didn’t have probably the I mean, on occasion I did did have experiences like this. But just recently, my husband, who’s an ear, nose and throat surgeon, he went and had to go deal with an emergency. And he came home and my daughter was asking him, you know, a little bit like why he had left and what he had to do. And I told her, I said, you know, he just saved someone’s life today. He just went. And there was it was actually a kid who needed his help. And without his help, that little child very likely could have died. And, you know, it’s easy for us to kind of downplay that or it’s just kind of like normalized.

It’s just, you know, what we do. But that’s a huge freaking deal. It’s a really, really big deal. What you do really, really, really matters every single day. So as doctors were in such a unique position, we’re highly influential on other people’s lives. We touch so many people’s lives. So it is logical. The next logical step we can take is understanding that when each individual doctor is really dialed in mentally and dialed in physically, feeling mentally their best, feeling physically, their best, that they are better able to touch the lives that they touch, that they’re better able to be a positive influence on the people that they influence, and that overall the world is a better place, that people are healthier, that people are getting the help that they need. So often in the health care world right now, particularly in the United States, it can be really confrontational. It can be this sort of like us versus them mentality on both sides, Right? The patients feel like it’s like us against the doctors, and the doctors feel like it’s us against the patients in general society and all their, you know, unrealistic expectations of us. Right? It isn’t like let’s get on the same page and really co-create the results that we both want, right? So when doctors can get to that place of feeling really focused and centered and feeling their best, it’s better for everybody, right? Everybody benefits.

And the opposite is true as well. When they are not, it also comes through. Have you ever been taken care of or had a family member taken care of by a doctor who seemed flippant, who wouldn’t explain things, who was mentally in another place? Right. Like just not there and present. We could tell they’re sort of checked out, maybe they’re burned out. And I’m not blaming that person at all. It just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t make you feel confident in in the care that you’re receiving and that your family member is receiving. Right. But we also can’t necessarily blame that doctor as well. We don’t know what’s going on for them. We don’t know what’s happening for them. But we do know that when we think, you know, that when we’re struggling, that we’re doing a really good job of hiding it. Like, you know what I mean? Open your mind to the possibility that you might not be hiding it as well as you think. Right. That it might be coming through that. Right. You think that you’re able to keep it under wraps, but then when you come out and then you have, you know, a strained relationship with your support staff in the office or, you know, it just you’re just struggling, right? Like it comes through. It comes through in the culture of the practice, comes through in the interactions. And this is not a judgment, it’s just the truth.

It’s just reality that when we’re not feeling our best, it comes through, right? We might be saying the same things, but the energy is different, the connection is different. And so we could then argue that as doctors, part of our responsibility in doing the best we can for our patients besides, you know, keeping up to date on the latest information and, you know, doing our best to connect with them and understand how we can best help them. Part of our responsibility is to be at our best mentally and physically, whatever that may be for us. Right. And so ultimately, you know, what’s the expectation of us as doctors for us to perform our best, for us to be able to be present and dialed? Right. Ultimately, each individual that we interact with even in. Our personal lives. But then even expanding bigger, the world ultimately expects us to be at our best. And so that is not a pressure kind of a thing. That’s not a, you know, shoot, if you’re not your best and you’re doing it all wrong and you should feel even worse about yourself. Instead, it’s an invitation to recognize that it is not an indulgence to invest in yourself in whatever way you might need to be invested in. So when we talk before about people saying, hey, you know, I know that weight loss for doctors only would be really helpful for me, but I feel guilty when I think about spending the time and money.

Guilt is an emotion that comes from thinking that you’re doing something wrong. But we could really argue that not investing in yourself with time and money and energy is the thing that is actually wrong, that’s doing something wrong. Having the opportunity to improve, to invest in yourself, to do better, to feel better, to be able to show up in your life in a way that you are more proud of and not taking that opportunity. We could argue that that’s doing something wrong, right? And so if you think about this, there are so many times in our lives where it’s difficult to invest in something in a service or a person or, you know, just even in ourselves. At first I was thinking about this summer and I was thinking about this as it relates to this actual podcast. So I’ll tell you a little story about this podcast. So I had never dreamed of having a podcast. I’d become a certified coach, and I had kind of just known that people did blogs that like blogging was a thing. And I always knew I was like, You know what? Like if I know doctors and I think you do, doctors aren’t sitting around reading a bunch of blogs like we all would love to read more. We don’t have time, right? Like, I just was like, deep down I’m like, I can write blogs and there’s going to be some people who are going to read them, but that’s probably not going to be the best way to reach these women physicians who I just know need my help.

So I knew that a podcast would probably be a better modality to reach the people I wanted to reach, but it seemed really overwhelming. First of all, I had this whole kind of idea of like, Oh my gosh, like big important people have podcasts and I’m just like, little old me. Like, I can’t just like, start a podcast. Actually, not true. Yes, you can start a podcast. But I also was looking at some other coaches who had podcasts who had been doing it for several years, and I was also looking at myself as just a brand new coach. I had just a handful of clients. I was still definitely in the red in terms of like the finances of this business. You know, I’d invested a lot and really hadn’t been making much yet. And so I was really in this conundrum where I thought, Well, I could do a podcast, but then I have to do all the production of it myself because I’m not making enough money to pay somebody to help. Like, I knew that there were people who could help you. But in my mind I’m thinking that’s like for people with like really successful businesses and stuff. And I did actually know a coach who had a successful business and she did all the editing and production of her podcast herself.

And on top of it, I know this sounds so silly. It’s always so funny when we think back to like our old way of rationalizing things, but in my mind. So I have three kids. I still have three kids, have three kids at home. And so I often was looking for like other women who had successful, like entrepreneurs, who had successful businesses, who also had children at home, was having a hard time finding people who could be an example for me. But there was this one coach, and not only did she have three kids, but she had four, and two of them were younger than my youngest, so she had like really little ones at home and her husband was working full time and she had this business and she was doing her podcast herself. So like the way my brain, like, logically thought about it was, Well, then you should do it yourself too. Like, there’s no you don’t have an excuse. Like, you totally should just do it yourself. Like you don’t get to spend the money on having someone help you. Like you totally have to do it yourself. So I spent a little time trying to learn more about how to do that. And, you know, there were even like courses on how to do it yourself. But of course in those costs, money. And I was like, Oh, I shouldn’t be paying for that. And every time I looked into doing it myself, I had so much resistance, like I just didn’t want to do it myself.

I had no interest in learning. I honestly didn’t really have the time to do it. I knew it would take a bunch of time. It just felt very tedious to me. And so it was really like a roadblock for me. It was really like the circle. It’s like if you’re stuck in a traffic circle. I just kept going around and around. I had different options, you know, to get out of that traffic circle. But nope, just kept circling, just kept circling. And then I’d come back to like, people aren’t really going to be reading blogs. I think a podcast would be better. But no, I don’t want to spend the money. You see how I’m just going back and forth, right? I feel guilty about spending the money because not really earning anything yet, making more of an investment. I’ve already invested so much in myself. Should I really be doing that? Probably just be able to do it myself. Yeah. Deep down, I was like, I don’t want to do this myself. I don’t think I’m going to be good at it. I don’t really want to learn how to do it. I don’t want to do this. So then I found out that it’s not just people who can produce it. There are people you can hire who will actually help you get the whole thing, like off the ground from, like, soup to nuts.

So, you know, figuring out like the title and the music and the style of it and how long and like all the nuts and bolts that go into creating a podcast and also doing the production and then like getting it up into all the places so that where people listen to podcasts, your podcast shows up. So I find out about this and I’m elated. I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need. I need some full service flipping help. I need someone to just come in and help me like I’m a good student. I just need someone to walk me through the process and help me write. And so I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is it. This is going to be the thing. So this is after like several months of going back and forth with myself and I should be doing myself. That was my thought. So I’m looking at this one website. I’m like, Amazing, Oh my gosh, I’m totally going to do this. And then I get to the part where I talk about how much it costs. And so to get it up and running, I remember this. This was in 2016 to get the podcast up and running and to get three episodes up. It was $6,000 and my heart just dropped into my stomach. It was like it took my breath away. I was like, I’d been on such like a high, so excited.

There are people who help me. And then I found out the cost and I immediately just was like, Oh, no, no, I can’t spend that kind of money. It’s so much money. I can’t spend that money on just a podcast that I don’t know if anybody’s going to listen to that if anybody even wants. I mean, you have to understand, back in this in these days, no doctors had podcasts. There was like the White Coat Investor and that was it. It was like nobody had a podcast. I’m like, I don’t even really know if doctors will listen. Like, I don’t know that, but. Oh, man, I really do think that they probably would. So I had been in my office. It came out, my husband was in the living room and I was like, Oh, listen to this. He kind of knew the ups and downs I’d been going on. So I just found this amazing company and they totally will help me, man. But you will not believe how much it cost. It’s $6,000. And he just looked at me and this was like, probably it was like right after Thanksgiving. He looked at me. He’s like, Well, do you just want a podcast for Christmas? And I looked at him and I was like, I think I do. I think I really do. It was like the permission I needed was, Well, if I’m getting it as a gift, then it’s okay to make that investment, which is so funny now, right? Like, of course, it had been a different time of year, you know, maybe we’d have a different conversation.

But that was what finally pushed me over the edge, right? It was just like, okay, this will be my Christmas present. And I am not going to, you know, just sit here and blow this off. I’m actually going to really participate. So that was my Christmas present. I signed up with these people in this company, and it was the last Tuesday of January that my first three episodes went live, right? So it was less than two months later I had this podcast, this one that you’re listening to right now, weight loss for busy physicians up and running with the first episodes out. The reason there were for three episodes is they always recommend you start with a few so that people have a few to listen to. You don’t just start day one with the first one. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but that was what was recommended. So that’s what I did. So in hindsight, those 6000, it’s like laughable to me now, how I was so reluctant to spend that. Of course, at that moment I couldn’t anticipate that 309 episodes later here, I’d be still talking to you. Years and years and years later. I couldn’t have anticipated that this podcast would be the main way that I connect with and offer help and make an impact in the world to the people.

I want to impact women physicians in clinical practice. Like there’s no way I could have anticipated that. But I did kind of deep down know, I think a podcast is the way I need help and I think these people can help me. And I’m so, so, so glad I invested that money and I invested that in myself. And then I didn’t then just blow it off, right, that I actually signed up with all meetings and did all the things and all the stuff that I was supposed to do, because doing that, taking advantage of that investment created so much more for me, like literally like orders of magnitude more for me. I mean, it’s really incredible actually, when you think about it, you know, And so it’s really not any different when you think about investing in weight loss for doctors only. Right? Yeah, There’s initial financial investment, time investment when you participate and you can’t even begin to imagine how many things are going to change in your life. And I see it all the time in my clients and clients who worked with me years ago and the impact they’re still making in their organizations, in their personal lives, just how much happier they are in their lives, and not just because their, you know, relationship with food, their body is different. That’s fun, and that’s great, too. But because they actually work through the problems that they were using food to solve for them in the first place.

Right. So I want to offer to you that you can also think that not taking advantage of the opportunity is doing something wrong. Right? How often do we think we shouldn’t need household help or we shouldn’t need help with yard or with snow removal or whatever, right? We should just be able to do it ourselves. We finally decide to make the investment and then sure enough, it changes everything for us. The investment pays off again and again and again and again. It’s so worthwhile. Or maybe you had this thought, you know, for a long time. You did your own taxes and, you know, invested like Dell research to invest your own money. And then you get to a point where you realize, you know what, there’s a lot more to this and other people are experts. And yeah, you know what? Like, I will pay them some money to help me with this, but that investment, me paying them, is going to help me so many times over, right? Save money in taxes. Our investments grow so much more. There’s so many examples of this where the potential that lies ahead of us when we invest in ourselves is bigger than we could even ever imagine. But when we tell ourselves we’re doing something wrong, if we invest in ourselves, all we’re doing is holding ourselves back. And I know why we do it.

Because if you know what, if we think we’re just doing something wrong, then we don’t actually have to stretch ourselves. We don’t actually have to take the chance and risk it and get out there and try and maybe it doesn’t work the first time or even the first ten times, right? Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and try again and try again until we really figure it out. And so if we just tell ourselves that, oh, doing that, you know, it’s just doing something wrong, we’re going to feel guilty about. That, then we just don’t even have to try. And so in the short term, that can give you some relief. But in the long term, it keeps you from fulfilling that potential. And if there’s one thing that I know about women physicians is that we like to fulfill our potential. We know what we’re capable of, and we want to get out there and make that difference. And the best way to do that is to be at your best mentally and physically, to be as well in all the areas as you can possibly be. And so I want to invite you to consider enrolling in weight loss for doctors only. You can get more information by going to Katrina about IMDB.com forward slash info to investigate whether this program is going to be the right fit for you. If it’s going to be that self investment that’s going to help you to fulfill that potential that, you know lies ahead of you.

If it’s going to help you to be able to show up for the world, for all the people you influence, and there are so many at your best, that’s how you get to feel satisfied in your life, how you get to have that ultimate fulfillment. And then, of course, everyone whose lives you touch gets to benefit from that as well. And that’s people are close to you. People are more acquaintances. Any kind of larger community work or advocacy work that you do, all the patients that you touch and take care of. It really, really, really does make a difference when you invest in yourself. And so I want to invite you to do that with a weight loss or doctors only program. So like I said, to check out more information about it, go to Katrina you about IMDB.com for info info. I am excited for our new group that’s starting with us in January. I love the energy that the new Year brings. It’s always just so fun. Such a great time to get started and I hope that you’ll consider being a part of that group as well. So with that, I wish you a great rest of your week and I’ll talk to you very soon. Take care. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free help. Go to Katrina, UBL, MD, and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #309: Self-Investment Potential appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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You might have heard of toxic positivity, but have you heard of toxic independence?

In this episode, we’re talking about how to move away from toxic independence and closer to an appropriate amount of independence.

You’ll learn what toxic independence is, where it comes from, and how to overcome it. You might be surprised to learn as you listen that you have more traits of toxic independence than you think! I was surprised too. I hope this episode helps you become more aware of your own thoughts and actions and maybe even gives you the push to start depending on others a little (or a lot) more.

If the thought of giving up your independence makes you cringe, don’t panic. It will all make sense when you tune in.

Listen To The Episode Here:* Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn:* Why you might be an extremely independent person * Identifying toxic independence * Getting help with tasks you don’t enjoy * What can happen when you overcome toxic independence * Unpacking your own thoughts about independence * How toxic independence can interfere with relationships * The benefits of depending on others * How to start asking for more help

Let’s work on relieving ourselves of our toxic independence. I know I have more work to do, and I want to encourage you to join me. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to become the least independent person ever. Independence can be healthy! But I am asking you what life might be like if you asked for help when you needed it or let someone share your burdens. Being a physician is exhausting enough without trying to do it all alone.

If you’re interested in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program, you’re in luck because it’s about to open up! Go to katrinaubellmd.com/info to learn more and enroll.

Click the image below to download a handy one-page printable toshare How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with your patients!

Resources Mentioned:10 Behaviors That Reveal Toxic Independence | Power of Positivity Article

What’s Wrong With Being Independent? | Psychology Today Article

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Additional Resources:Follow the Podcast

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Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more.

Other Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy:Ep #305: What to Do When You Stumble on Your Weight Loss Journey

Ep #306: How Your Relationship with Food Is Affecting Your Pet with VetCoach Nadina Cojocaru

Ep #307: How to Approach Food-Centric Holidays

He’s in his eighties. He made a comment one time.

About how life is like a roll of toilet paper.

The thickness gets less and less and less, more and more quickly as you keep going on. And I always thought that was kind of funny. Probably not describing it properly, but.

But anyway, I’m very excited to bring you this topic today because it’s a term that I have just recently learned about. It’s certainly not an issue that’s new to me, but the language around it is something that really sums it all up in a way that I think is so good. And as I did some more research on this, I actually relied heavily on two articles on the Internet for the content of this episode, and we’ll put that in our in our show notes page if you want to check those out. While I learned about this, I was like, Oh my gosh, yes, a lot of this used to be me. Some of these things I’m still working on. And I know for a.

Fact that so many women physicians out there are struggling with this.

I coach my clients.

On these subjects all the time.

This is something that definitely needs to be out there, and I’m so glad to bring it to you. So what we’re talking about today is something called toxic independence. So we’ve heard about toxic positivity that’s kind of a newer ish term. Today we’re talking about toxic independence. And even when I saw this phrase, I thought it kind of took my breath away a little bit. I was like.

You will take my independence out of my cold, dead hands, right? Like, No, it’s mine. Like, this is what keeps me safe.

This is something I can rely on. And I bet that you are going to identify with at least some of this as well. And not to worry, I have some ideas about things that you can do to help move yourself away from toxic independence and closer to an appropriate amount of independence, because we’re not saying that it doesn’t have to be such a stark pendulum swing, right? Like you’re too independent over here. So the solution is you have to become extremely dependent. Know, what we need to do is we need to bring that pendulum down a couple notches so that it’s an appropriate amount of independence. So where do we get so toxically independent from? Course, it’s going to be different for each one of us. I think particularly where I live in the US. I mean, rugged individualism is just a part of our culture. It’s part of the way that the people who founded our country saw themselves even several hundred years ago. It’s just kind of baked into our culture to a certain extent. So just understanding that it’s, you know, it’s this very subtle or sometimes not even that subtle messaging that is throughout so much of what we do. So we can’t blame ourselves or anything for that. It’s just kind.

Of the soup.

That we’ve been swimming in. Right. But the other thing to understand is that while some people are naturally more independent, right, that’s just our personalities. For whatever reason, some of us an extremely independent person or an extremely independent mindset or an extremely independent way of approaching the world can be secondary to either having your needs unmet when you were growing up or possibly from some trauma as well. And this makes sense, right? If the people that you relied on, even as a child or even as an adult, if those people that you relied on were not able to meet those needs, then it would become clear that, oh, I have to meet those needs, even if maybe it was inappropriate, like especially if you were young. So here’s an example. Maybe we’ll just say a hypothetical person. Maybe we can envision a young ish child who does not have family at home to provide regular meals for them. So this could be for lots of reasons. It could be because the caregiver or the parent is out working several jobs to try to make ends meet. It could be because of some sort of substance abuse issue. It could be whatever it may be. But you have a child who needs to eat and no one’s going to prepare, supply that food for them. So they go and they figure out a way to do that in a way that would not be expected of other children of that age.

So maybe you didn’t have that particular experience. That’s just kind of an easy one to understand, but there could be emotional needs that weren’t met. There could be safety needs, security needs that weren’t met. There are a lot of experiences. Sometimes when we start to reflect on things a little bit, we start to realize, Oh, you know, it was right around here that I realized, Oh, you know, my parents are so preoccupied or spending so much of their time focusing on maybe a sibling or another family member who is ill or has a lot of other needs. So the way to be in their good graces, the way to get. Approval and love from them is for me to just be independent and to never ask for anything that I need for me to just take care of myself completely, even though it would have been completely appropriate for me to ask for what I needed help with or in a different situation, it would have been completely inappropriate for me to not ask. So just even understanding that I think can help us sometimes when this really comes up or I see it so much is when people think that they shouldn’t need help. Losing weight like this is kind of flummox me a little bit in the sense that.

I’m kind of like.

I’m sorry.

Why? Why shouldn’t you need help?

Like, often the explanation doesn’t really make sense. You know, we kind of do the whole like, I know what I should be doing, but I’m not doing it well.

So.

But if you know what you should be doing and you’re not doing it, doesn’t that then like the next logical step in that line of thought is that there actually is something that you’re missing that you don’t know yet, or else if you had everything you need, you would be doing all of those things that you know to do, right? It’s like a way that we subtly shame and blame ourselves. Like I have everything I need already. It’s just that something’s wrong with me. I can’t get my act together and actually be consistent and doing this like, is that really the truth? Is that really effective? I mean, thinking about it in that way, how often does that actually motivate us to go do those things that we quote unquote, know we should be doing? I mean, like, never really. I mean, really think about it when you approach yourself in that way for any kind of goal that you want to accomplish, does that actually create for you what you want? I don’t think so. I don’t really think it does at all. So this toxic independence can often just sound like we’re being logical.

Even when what we’re saying.

Actually doesn’t make sense. Another example that I can give of.

This.

Is for a while there I’ve always had someone helping and cleaning my home when we first got married, when we were in medical school. My husband and I, we actually got advice from another to physician couple that and what they said, like their best marriage advice for us was to always have a cleaner that way. Even like when you’re an intern and you feel like you can’t afford it because nobody wants to be post call in arguing about who’s going to clean the house. So even when we probably shouldn’t have been doing that, we did it anyway. So I haven’t had help with that. I very much felt like permission through that conversation with those family friends. But when it came to moving forward with getting some help with some other household tasks, it started to.

Feel less comfortable. And so one.

Thing I struggled with for a long time.

Was.

Getting somebody to come and pull the weeds for me. So I personally believe that a great job for children in terms of their contribution to the household is to mow the grass and to trim. And so we’ve always had our kids do that. I mean, basically from when they were old enough to do it. So I don’t need really a lawn service, but I don’t like gardening. I like the look of a beautiful yard, but I don’t want to do the work myself. And I forced myself for years and years and years and years and years.

To do it. I would avoid it. I would notice the.

Weeds and the trimming and the things that needed to be done, and I would of course mention it to my husband, hoping that he would just suddenly decide that he liked gardening and that he would go take care of it. Of course he doesn’t.

Like to do it either, and so it wouldn’t get done. And then I’m.

Frustrated and mad. And finally I thought, you know what? I bet you I could find somebody, maybe the person who does our fall cleanup stuff. Like maybe that person could come and maybe stop by every couple of weeks and just go through and pull the weeds for me. And when I finally got past that toxic independence and decided, yeah, this is something that I would like to rely on someone else for, I found an amazing person. He’s been helping us for years. I love supporting him and his business just been a great asset to our lives and all of that because I decided to drop that toxic independence. Another example.

Is.

When I decided, you know what? Like, this makes no sense. And I’m spending all this time doing laundry. Nobody wants to help. You know, it’s the putting away part. It’s the folding in the pudding away. I don’t actually mind the sorting and the washing and then the advancing to the dryer. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s the folding of the pudding away. And as much as I try to get my kids to do it and whatever, and then, you know, I have this standard where I want it folded in a way that everything doesn’t look like it needs.

You know, like it just was like balled up in a corner, you know, and nobody wants to do it my way and, you know, literally, like, what am I doing?

And I remember having so much struggle going. I mean, it’s ridiculous to ask someone like hire someone to come to your laundry. And then I was actually in conversation with several other amazing women physicians where they’re like, Oh, no, listen to me. You hire someone to come in and do that. And I was like, okay, tell me more.

What how, how does this work?

And even feeling so nervous of how others, particularly family members, might judge me for making that decision. And it was one of the best things I ever did.

Right?

So another example where that toxic independence like, only hurt me. It only hurt me. Someone else that I was talking to recently, she was talking about how she went to a gym to learn how to lift right to work on strength training and all that. So they taught her how to do it. And then she’s like, Oh, I don’t need their help anymore. I don’t need to pay for that. I don’t need their assistance. They showed me what to do. I’m just going to go do it myself. And so guess what happened? She didn’t do it right. And that fitness that she had really built up, that strength that she had built up, you know, quickly was gone again and all that again because she had that belief, like, I should need help. I should be able to do this myself. Now, it doesn’t mean that we always have to rely on other people all the time to do things. But, you know, I’m sure that you can think of some sort of scenario in your life, and maybe it’s even with weight loss right now where you’re thinking like, there’s really just no reason that I should be getting extra help. There’s no reason I can’t do this by myself. And maybe that’s true. But what I want you to open your mind to today is whether you might be wrong about that.

Or.

Whether that might actually be toxic independence. That’s, you know, worming its way through kind of trickling through into your life. So let’s talk about healthy dependance, like what are we trying to do? And then we’ll talk more about toxic and dependance behaviors and then we’ll talk about some of the benefits of depending on other people. So people. Who report feeling the most emotional balance, feeling most satisfied with their lives, and feeling the most optimistic about the future. Do you want that? I want that. I want to be emotionally balanced, feeling satisfied with my life, and optimistic about the future. People who report that have an ability to lean on and confide in others at times while also being able to work independently as needed. So it doesn’t mean we’re giving up all our independence. We’re like, we’re cool if we’re on our own, we can totally do that. But we also have the ability to get the help that we need. And finding that balance for ourselves overall. So good. So, so good, right? So some of us are naturally more independent. Sometimes we have to think what has created that when we say. Quote unquote, naturally independent. I mean, is that again, because that was our coping strategy, the way that we adapted to our upbringing, or it could really just be us. I mean, I think for me, that’s definitely some of the situation for me that I was just overall a pretty independent person.

But again, we’re not trying to dampen that. We’re trying to prevent it from becoming extreme and toxic. Right. Okay. So let’s talk about some of the behaviors that are examples of toxic independence. So number one is it can feel hard to ask for help. So, I mean, here we go with everything I was just talking about with so many different things, but particularly with weight loss. Right. I shouldn’t need help. I don’t want to ask for help. Maybe you’re a new attending or maybe even a bit more seasoned of an attending, and you’re really not sure about what to do with a patient, but you feel like I can’t really ask for help. I’m just going to have to figure this out on my own. Like, it would just be really uncomfortable for you. Or think about when you’re maybe on service and you see the list of patients that you have to see. And it is a lot, arguably too much. Do you find it hard to ask your colleagues for help? Do you find it hard to ask them to come and assist you so that you don’t have to stay there all throughout the night? What ties into this is that often another behavior of people who exhibit toxic independence is that they dislike people who they consider to needy. So back to the being on service and having the patient load be too much example, right.

If when you’re not on service and another doctor who is on service asks for help because they believe that the workload is too much for them, it’s interesting to think, what are your thoughts? Do you judge them as being needy or you know that they shouldn’t be doing that, that that’s a sign of weakness? And if you do and we’re not judging this, we’re not saying it’s good or bad, but just like the reality, do you have thoughts like that? And if you do have thoughts like that, then it would make sense that when you’re the one who’s on service, you wouldn’t want to ask for help because you wouldn’t want others to be considering you as needy because you are independent. Right. This is a strong thing that you believe by yourself. So interesting how those two things can tie together, right? We don’t want to ask for help. We don’t want to be seen as needy. And then we judge others who ask for help as being too needy. So interesting. Another behavior prefer to do things for ourselves. And again, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but sometimes it can be. I know that I was brought up with a certain mindset of if you want something done right, then you just have to do it yourself. Well, that.

All sounds.

Good until it’s not working for you anymore. Until you have a beautiful full life and you start believing that no one else can do things like you, right? That you have to do it yourself. So that leads into the next behavior, which is that it’s hard to delegate tasks and responsibilities. I can’t tell you how many women physicians we coach in our programs who struggle with this so much. They want help, right? They don’t want to do it all. Yet they have a hard time giving up some of those tasks and responsibilities. Right. Another behavior is being proud to be that workaholic, really having a lot of pride in yourself, in that you overwork. Right. So interesting. Really what that is, is tying accomplishment to your self worth. If you want to feel good about yourself, then you need to be working a lot. You need to be overworking. You need to be taking on tons of tasks and responsibilities so that you can have those positive, worthy thoughts about yourself. For some people with toxic independence, they feel like they have to decide everything for themselves, right? They can’t really delegate out the decision making either. So this could be like, maybe you’re in a partnership with a romantic partner and you find that you want to make all the decisions for everything. I know I’ve struggled with this myself, right? You know, if I let you make that decision and you choose wrong, then I’m going to suffer. So I’ll just do everything.

No, I’m.

The only one who suffers is me.

The only one who.

Suffers is me. So deciding everything for yourself, I mean, it could have been a super helpful quality and trait and capability that you’ve had in the past. But now, moving forward, does it really still serve you or can it be helpful to be able to let other people in to help with that? Now, some people with toxic independence will be intensely private. And this isn’t just like being sort of more introverted or just liking some privacy. It really means like keeping people at arm’s length. So people with this will have a fear about being more open and. Honest with other people, lest someone judge us unfairly for being vulnerable and sharing about what’s really going on for us. So I definitely know that I coach people on this as well. People with toxic independence often have a history of personal relationship problems. And I mean, don’t we.

All be like, that’s the story of our lives? But what I.

Mean about this is if you’ve had some relationship problems in the past, particularly if they’re unresolved or on process, then moving forward with new relationships or ongoing relationships, you can find yourself sort of shutting down or not allowing yourself to be more independent, protecting yourself emotionally by staying more independent, which can actually be at a detriment to those relationships. And the next behavior is taking too much responsibility. I know I struggle with this to where I start thinking that every single thing that’s happened, like somehow it’s my fault. I just have to figure out what it is.

And so I’m.

Working on that right now, going like, okay, well.

What.

Is appropriate for me to take responsibility for and what is really not mine to own? And finding that delineation. Sometimes I see this in clients who take too much responsibility for their children. I mean, so much of the coaching that I do on parenting is around feeling overly responsible for their experience of their life, particularly once they’re at an age where they’re making decisions for themselves and there’s results or consequences of those decisions. We have to understand what we are actually responsible for, what we want to take responsibility for and leave the rest. And then the final behavior that people who exhibit toxic independence can have is extreme perfectionism and self criticism.

So this is something that so many doctors struggle with, right?

So that extreme perfectionism, what ends up happening is just ongoing perpetual disappointment, right? Because perfection doesn’t exist, which means that things are not done to our liking, that extreme perfection. And so then we leave a bunch of things undone. Then it feels like there’s so much we can’t delegate it because we’re the only ones who can do it. But it has to be done at this very, extremely unrealistically high level or quality of work. And so that just cycles, right? And then they’re overly critical and demanding of themselves. We see this all the time. If you’re listening to this and at least one part of you is not like, Yeah, that’s me.

I’ll be shocked. Right?

We all can work on that. I know there’s there are several years ago I was working with a coach and I remember it was like week after week after week, so much of what we talked about. Like every time she asked me what my feeling was when I was talking about something, it was like literally 90% of the time. Disappointed is how I felt so much disappointment. And so this completely resonated with me as well. So here’s the thing is when you avoid asking for help, I mean, there’s research that shows that people who avoid asking for help suffer significant social and professional costs. So they tend to avoid valuable help, help that is available to them.

And that would.

Make their lives better because they think it makes them feel needy or that they don’t deserve it or they shouldn’t need it. And then when you isolate yourself in that way, in order to stay self reliant, you’re at an increased risk of feeling unsupported or worse, depressed. And I know so many women physicians, in particular in those who are in intimate partnership, very often feel unsupported and they think like, oh, you know, my partner needs to support me more, and maybe they do.

But also.

It could be that we’re contributing because of our toxic independence behaviors. So what are the benefits of depending on others? Right. Sometimes we’re like, okay, I hear what you’re saying, but still.

Have a lot of resistance to.

Becoming more dependent on others. So the first benefit is lightning your load. I mean, women physicians are tired, are exhausted. It’s so much so many responsibilities, so many responsibilities. When you allow yourself to depend on others, you create space to lighten that load.

We may resist that all we want, but it really is going to be the thing that’s going to.

Help, right? Another benefit of depending on others is learning more. When we’re open to asking for help or finding a mentor or reaching out to someone who maybe has the. Physician or, you know, career that we want or anything that we want in our lives, they often are really open, right to some mentorship or to assisting you in some way. And even just thinking about people who decide, Yeah, you know what? I do want some help with weight loss. They come into our program, into weight loss for doctors only, and they really do learn what they need to learn.

So they can lose weight and keep it up permanently. And these are people who insisted.

That they already.

Knew what they needed to know. But obviously they didn’t because they were not able to get themselves to do it. This is what I’m talking about, right? I’m only laughing because I’ve done this, too. Like, our brains are so fascinating. Another benefit of.

Depending on others is increasing our effectiveness through collaboration. So some of us don’t always have, like, the most positive opinion of teamwork. I mean, think about, you know, in school when you had to do work in teams and then, you know, sometimes it was one or two people and the whole group who was doing most of the work and whatever. But in general, especially once you work through that, you’re willing to have some difficult conversations maybe, and really work on getting everybody to contribute. When you’re able to collaborate together, you’re able to create so much more effectively. So essentially, like you get everybody coming together, rowing in the same direction rather than, you know, this person’s over here trying to get that done. This person is over there trying to get that done. And when you think about it, even from a medical research perspective, so many different labs across the globe will collaborate with one another rather than thinking they need to do everything themselves or going, no, you know what? We bring this to the table. They bring that to the table. When we come together, we’re really going to be able to pool our resources and our knowledge, and we’re going to be able to be so much more effective. And so that can be in the case of weight loss. Right? You’re coming with your knowledge and your experiences.

And I and my team are coming with, you know, everything that we know and all of our expertise. And then together we collaborate to more effectively help you to lose weight, keep it off and create peace and freedom around food. Right. And then the final benefit of depending on others is just improving relationships. And this is one that, you know, is something that a lot of people work on. I know. I definitely do. Basically, when you depend on someone else in a relationship, it communicates trust and appreciation. And overall for humans, it increases our health and our well-being. So it’s kind of the opposite of what we think we’re like. No, like our fear is if I depend on somebody else and then they let me down, then I’m worse off. But we can probably argue that most of the time we’re going to be better off. But there is that risk that, yeah, some of the time we might be worse off and you know, we’re going to have to adjust with that. But when we never take the opportunity, there’s so much that we’re missing out on, right? So research shows that balancing independence with healthy and mutual forms of interdependence, right? Different people relying on one another helps people feel better about themselves in their lives. I mean, who doesn’t want that.

Right?

So ultimately, being able to rely on others, being able to be dependent, more dependent on others leads to us feeling more empowered and not less. I’m going to say that again because it’s so important. Being able to rely on others leads to feeling more empowered and not less. So what do we do? We have to start working on doing the opposite of maybe what comes naturally to us, right? We’re going to have to start to practice small things. I mean, part of it might be, you know what, I am going to sign up for weight loss for doctors only and get the help that I need so I can learn to collaborate with a team that brings other knowledge and experience and expertise so I can actually figure this out instead of sitting around thinking I.

Should do this myself. And if I haven’t been able to figure it out myself, then it means.

Something’s wrong with me. What? No, that makes no sense. But another way of working on this is just asking maybe someone in the office for some help. If there’s something, a task that you’re doing that someone else could do, asking your medical assistant, asking your nurse, asking one of the receptionists. You know, whoever is helping in your office, asking for help in that way, maybe you have to ask the administration. It could be that you know that other people have scribes and you have felt like, Oh, who needs a scribe? I should just do this myself. But you actually go and ask for a scribe. Or maybe your administration won’t pay for a scribe. They tell you you have to pay for it yourself. But when you crunch the numbers, you realize you’ll be so much more efficient that you’ll actually be able to improve your productivity so much that it.

Counteracts.

More than counteracts the cost of the scribe. And you go, Yeah, you know what? I’m going to go ahead and do that. I’m going to rely on the scribe. I’m going to depend on the scribe to help me to be more effective in my life. I mean, there so there’s endless examples of how you could start doing this, but maybe pick one or two places and just start to practice with it. Notice the discomfort that comes up. Work through that. And see how it turns out. See what ends up coming from that. And over the course of time, you’re going to start seeing the benefits sometimes quickly. Sometimes it might take a little bit of time. Sometimes relationships are going to have to shift a little bit because people get so used to you always refusing help that they offer that they no longer help anymore. That doesn’t mean they’re not willing to help, but it means that they might be surprised when you actually reach out to them. So there can be some adjustment that needs to happen here, but it’s all for your own benefit. Let’s work on relieving ourselves of our toxic independence. I know I’m going to keep working on it and I want to encourage you to do the same. And just so you know. Weight loss for doctors only is going to be opening up here very soon. So to find out more information about the program, go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com for info info. All right, my friend, have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you next time. Take care. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.

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Do holidays make you feel out of control when it comes to food? The holidays can be a challenging time for those of us who are trying to find freedom around food and put our health first. It’s a time when there always seems to be an excess of food! This episode is all about […]

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Could your relationship with food be affecting your pet’s health? Nadina Cojocaru is here to talk to us about how pets become overweight as a result of being overfed by their owners. When a pet parent is no longer emotionally eating, it is common for them to start offering more food to their pet instead. […]

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Have you ever had a little stumble and felt like you ruined your whole plan; like you’ll never be able to lose that weight? If you stumbled on the sidewalk, it wouldn’t stop you from ever going for a walk again, right? So how do we take that approach to stumbling and apply it to […]

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When you are faced with a problem that you don’t know how to solve, what do you do? This episode is all about weight loss problem-solving. Sometimes we come up against a problem that we don’t know how to handle and then we start to tell ourselves that we just can’t do it. Trust […]

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Many physicians experience burnout at some stage in their careers, putting themselves, their patients, and even their colleagues at risk. With the amount of responsibility and ever-increasing hours, it’s not hard to see why this is such a common occurrence. However, this inability to find a work-life balance is not sustainable and should not just […]

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We’ve all had those experiences when something was not what we expected. Whether it’s having kids, starting a new job, or a relationship in your life, you have no doubt experienced the phenomenon where reality does not match the expectation. In this episode, I’m sharing the three steps to help you overcome difficult situations that […]

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Do you pay attention to the way you think about aging? What do you think about yourself as you age? You may not realize it, but there are sneaky ways in which your own self-talk can hold you back when it comes to aging, and that’s exactly what I’m diving into in this episode. Listen […]

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Today, I’m turning the tables and answering questions from my physician clients all about weight loss and so much more. If you’ve been wondering what I eat every day or what my funniest intern or residency memory is, this is an episode you won’t want to miss! Listen in to this fun and informative episode […]

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There is some really good evidence that celebrating success – no matter how small the success may be – can boost motivation and improve your self-confidence. In this episode, I’m sharing how to stop downplaying your weight loss success and learn to celebrate all the small steps you take toward your goals instead. Listen in […]

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Today you’re in for a real treat because I’m taking you through lessons learned from Masters Live! If you’re not already familiar with Masters, it is the continuation program from Weight Loss For Doctors Only that offers additional support to those who want to continue on their coaching journey and expand their knowledge even further. […]

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We all have goals, and we’d all love to reach our goals in the quickest way possible. But what if the quickest way wasn’t the best way, the way that would lead to permanent and lasting success? In this episode, I’m talking about how to reach big goals (weight loss included!) while also enjoying the […]

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There is often a barrier between doctors and patients with discussions that include the sensitive topic of their weight. How can doctors make sure that the message they are trying to convey to patients is interpreted in the way that it was intended? In this episode, I’m sharing some approaches and best practices that can […]

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I’m getting vulnerable in this episode and sharing some emotions I’ve been feeling as the release of my book is approaching. While this has been an exciting time, it has also come with some surprising feelings of anxiety, fear, and the occasional urge to crawl into a hole and never come out again! In this […]

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In the United States, it’s not unusual for doctors to be aware of the legal ramifications of their actions, and in recent weeks there seems to have been an uptick in medico-legal fears among doctors. We all know there is a line between what is considered malpractice and what is not, and we all go […]

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There is something that we all do that is rarely talked about in a good light: emotional eating. In this episode, I’m diving into why emotional eating often gets a bad rap and why being able to recognize that you are an emotional eater is an absolute gift. Listen in as I share what it […]

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There are certain themes that seem to come up again and again… and again. Whenever this is the case, I know it’s something I need to talk to you about, so in today’s episode, I’ll be covering one of those themes that has come up quite a lot: how to know when it is time […]

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In this episode, I’m talking about everyone’s favorite subject: failure! So often I see people use failure in many different ways to prevent themselves from getting the results they want, and today I’m exploring how we can redefine failure so that it no longer prevents us from moving forward. Listen in as I share how […]

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Let’s talk about the future. For many people, especially over the last several years, thinking about future long-term plans has been difficult, if not downright impossible. If you’ve found yourself living day-to-day, or even hour-to-hour, you are certainly not alone. In this episode, I’m sharing why it’s important to expand your future vision and think […]

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There is a saying that the U.S. Navy Seals use: “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” While weight loss and the military are vastly different topics, in this episode I share how this saying actually applies really well to losing weight permanently and sustainably. Listen in as I explore what this military saying really […]

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There’s a lot of talk about stress and de-stressing, and for many, de-stressing means indulging in food and drink. If this sounds like you, this is an episode you won’t want to miss! I’ll dive into how to work through the stress that we accumulate in our bodies–without resorting to food or alcohol to help […]

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If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you have no doubt heard me say that the key to losing weight permanently is to manage emotions. But do you understand how emotions tie into weight loss? In this episode, I’m sharing how feeling your feelings will help you to lose weight and keep […]

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There is so much weight loss advice out there, but unfortunately, that means that there is also some bad weight loss advice that may be steering you wrong. In today’s episode, I will discuss one piece of bad weight loss advice that needs to be debunked – throwing out all of the junk food in […]

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Does permanent weight loss really exist? For many, they hold a belief that sustained weight loss is not possible, resulting in frustration and lots of time and money wasted trying all the new diet trends. In this episode, I’m breaking down this conviction so you can start to believe that permanent weight loss is possible […]

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The struggle is real: for anyone trying to lose weight, navigating parties and eating FOMO can be a serious challenge. In this episode, I’m breaking down why the fear of missing out happens and what you can do to overcome FOMO so you can enjoy that next party without the after-party food guilt. Listen in […]

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Why does it always feel like the last 5 pounds are the hardest to lose? Is it because the body is resisting the weight loss, or is it because we believe that those last few pounds are the hardest to lose? In this episode, I explore where the belief that the last 5 pounds are […]

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What if I told you that if you struggle with sleep, your mindset might be to blame? There is a lot of talk about sleep and how to improve it, but not a lot of talk about the mindset that goes into getting good quality sleep. In this episode, I’m sharing some of the new […]

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Expectations are a natural part of being human, but how can you salvage a situation where your expectations were not met? In this episode, I’m sharing a personal story from a recent trip I took and the three lessons I learned from this (not entirely positive) experience. Listen in as I dive into the story […]

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Throughout my years coaching people who are trying to lose weight, I’ve noticed how often they start out focusing on the wrong things. What are the wrong things to focus on when it comes to sustainably and permanently losing weight? Tune in to find out! Today, I’ll be diving into the most common things that […]

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How do you define weight loss maintenance? Is it a number range or a state of mind that dictates your weight loss success? These are all great questions that I get asked frequently, and in this episode, I’m sharing my thoughts on what constitutes weight loss maintenance. Listen in as I share the different options […]

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Jody Moore is a coach, a mom, an author, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and my soul sister from our time together in the Master Coach Certification. She primarily works with moms, helping to empower them to face the many challenges the world brings, and in this episode we […]

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Do you ever wish that you could change your thoughts so you could change how you feel? What if the better solution to change how you feel was to process the emotion instead? In this episode, I’m diving deep into how to know which path is the better one to take so you can change […]

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There is a really useful and healing process that is especially helpful for people who overeat or overdrink: reparenting yourself. In this episode, I’m sharing some information about this process and examples of how it can be helpful for weight loss. Listen in to find out what it means to reparent yourself, how it differs […]

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Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

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Do you sometimes feel emotionally numb, have trouble falling asleep, or have a decreased interest in activities that you used to find enjoyable? These are just some of the signs that you might be experiencing vicarious trauma, which is an unfortunate but common reality for most doctors. In this episode, I’m talking all about vicarious […]

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What if it were possible to lose weight in a way that didn’t make you feel miserable? As we’re heading into summer, you’re probably thinking that now is the worst time to start a weight loss program, but it doesn’t have to be an awful experience—and in this episode, I’m going to tell you why. […]

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Emma Caronna has been a coach in Weight Loss For Doctors Only since 2019 and she is super passionate about written coaching. In this episode, we’re exploring how journaling, writing, and self-coaching through writing can be such a powerful tool to help on the weight loss journey. Listen in as we dive into what the […]

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Andrea Mazurat is a nephrologist from Winnipeg, Canada, and she is another Weight Loss For Doctors Only (WLDO) success story that I can’t wait to share with you! After starting off by losing weight using some of the tips and strategies I talk about on this podcast, Andrea ultimately decided to join WLDO to get […]

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Food exceptions are an important skill to master when you’re trying to lose weight permanently because it teaches you how to interact with food in a healthy and sustainable way. You may know exceptions as “joy eats” or “cheat foods,” which are common terms in the diet industry—but ones that are often misused. So, in […]

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One of the biggest challenges when it comes to permanent weight loss is how to deal with those urges and cravings that can sometimes feel so much bigger than us. In this episode, I’m sharing some great information that is going to help you weather the cravings storm so you no longer have to feel […]

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Do you ever wonder how you could make a weight loss plan work for you as a busy doctor? I know that eating food on a plan is not always easy (especially when you’re busy!), but in this episode, I’m sharing actionable tips that you can start applying today. These have made such a huge […]

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Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

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If there was a definition in the dictionary of what an overeater of healthy food looked like, my image would definitely have been beside it. When it came to skill level, I was at the top level for overeating healthy foods, so today I’m sharing the three main reasons why we overeat healthy foods and the solutions to stop ourselves from doing it.

Tune in as I talk about the trap we often fall into of thinking that more is always better, as well as how to change our thinking so that we stop eating more food than our bodies need. You’ll learn why it’s important to develop a keen awareness of what’s happening with our bodies for so many reasons (with overeating being one of them!). If you feel like you’ve been sucked into all the ways to lose weight by eating healthy but are not seeing results, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP268.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * Why we tend to overeat * How we justify overeating healthy foods * The importance of developing awareness around what’s happening with our bodies * How our thoughts play into our desire to overeat * The solutions to overcome the desire to overeat healthy foods

Featured In This Episode * 6 Steps To Jumpstart Your Weight Loss * Ep #247: [Back To Basics Series] The Hunger Scale * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 268.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like yo come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Hello there, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. If you’re new here, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome, and welcome to March. Who can believe it? Time’s just a flying, it sure is. I am super excited to bring this topic to you today. It is something that I can’t believe in 267 episodes before this one, we haven’t talked to about it. I think it’s such a great topic and it was actually suggested by one of you lovely listeners. Her name is Teresa, and she brought the idea to me of overeating healthy food. I’ve got a great episode for you today. If you find yourself struggling with overeating, even the healthy stuff, even the stuff that you should be eating or you know is better for your body, that’s what I’ve got for you today.

Before we jump into that, I want to let, especially if you are new to starting to lose weight or are getting back into it or just new to this podcast, I do have a really great resource for you called Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss and it’s for free. If you’re looking for permanent weight loss and some steps to help you get there, make sure you download for free, the Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss. Again, go to katrinaubellmd.com/six, S-I-X.

Okay. Today we’re going to talk about overeating healthy foods and why we eat healthy foods. Teresa is a listener, big fan of the podcast so, hi Theresa. She actually wrote in a few months ago, but hopefully she’s still listening and will get this. She is a rheumatologist who was asking about overeating healthy foods. What she was saying is that at work, breakfast and lunches, she says they’re limited in how much she can eat, because time is limited. She has to get going. She has to see patients. She needs to get her work done, she eats what she has packed and then she’s done and then she just moves in. Generally, she’s pretty tuned in to her hunger scale when she’s doing that. It’s at dinner and on the weekends that everything flies out the door and she has some difficulty with that. She wanted to see if I had any suggestions.

I thought that was such a great, great thing to talk about. Listen, I was on the skill level of over eating healthy foods in my past life, I was like the top level, whatever that is. I seriously could overeat some healthy foods with the best of them for sure. That was for sure something that I did. I’ve talked before about the massive salads that I learned to eat with Weight Watchers, because I was afraid of not being full enough. I mean, just became this habit. Also, I just have to say that, kind of growing up in the, well, I was born in the seventies, but growing up in the eighties and nineties, I just remember hearing so much about what’s healthy to eat and what’s not. That was back when fat was such a horrible thing to eat and it wasn’t healthy and all the stuff about what’s healthy and what’s not healthy. How many grams of fat does this have and how many grams of fat does that have? Oh look, candy doesn’t have any grams of fat. Remember that?

They’re taking fat out of all of these foods, thinking it’s so much better if we do that. It was so easy to say, “Okay, well this low fat item is healthy, whatever that even really means,” if you think about it. That kind of then meant that it was like a free pass to eat as much of it as you wanted. During college, the good old SnackWell’s, remember SnackWell’s? I mean, I would have probably been so much more satisfied eating one or two real cookies, but instead I ate piles and piles of these low fat or fat free cookies and all the different treats and stuff that they offered, that didn’t really taste that good and really weren’t that satisfying, all in all, right?

As I was thinking about overeating healthy foods and why we do it, I came up with three main reasons why we overeat healthy foods and then I’m going to give you the solutions to each of those reasons. If you’re someone who’s like, “Listen, I’m in the bag of Cheetos, I’m eating the sugar cereal right and left, okay,” this is probably not going to be something that’s super relevant for you. If you are like, “No, look,” because I do, I hear this all the time. “I eat really, really well. I don’t eat a ton of sugar. I don’t snack. I don’t eat at night and I still can’t lose weight. What is going on?” We’re going to talk about that exactly, okay? It’s not as complicated as you think it is. Okay.

The first reason why we overeat healthy foods is because we will overeat anything, okay? Whether it’s healthy food, whether it’s junk food, whether it’s whatever it is, if it’s a digestible substance, we’ll overeat it, right? That may be what’s going on for you. It can be truly habit overeating, habitual overeating. When this is going on, what’s happening is we’re confused about the hunger scale and our body’s messages. Now, if you have not heard about the hunger scale before, then literally just go into your web browser and Google Weight Loss for Busy Physicians hunger scale, or Katrina Ubell podcast hunger scale, that comes up too. You’ll find where I’ve mentioned that before, where I can teach you all the details about the hunger scale, because there’s definitely several times that I’ve discussed it in the past. The hunger scale is basically just giving you some sort of framework in describing how hungry you are versus your satisfaction or fullness.

When we are used to overeating, we start to think that overeating is normal. We start to think that the distended overly full feeling, is the normal feeling that indicates that it’s time to stop eating. We get confused. We don’t remember really what it feels like to be just satisfied, having had enough. We are regularly eating past that, and then that becomes normalized.

That’s totally what happened for me when I was eating my massive salads. The massive salad story is that in Weight Watchers, I don’t actually know how it is right now, but for a while there with Weight Watchers, because I’m lifetime member, did Weight Watchers so many times, they would not have you count points for vegetables. That meant that they were quote, unquote free. You could eat as many as you wanted. Well for an overeater, that’s not actually not helpful, right? It’s like, “Great. I can stuff myself as long it’s vegetables.” What I would do, is I would have all my points for the day and I would eat my dinner and I would be terrified of being hungry later because I’m such a rule follower, or at least I was at the time, right?

If you really think about it, “Okay. If I’m still hungry later, then I can eat more. If I don’t have points left, who cares, because points are a made up thing. This isn’t even a thing.” In my mind, I’m like, “No, I have to get the A. I have to lose weight when I get on this scale again next week.” I was like, “Well, I can’t have anything more later.” Terrible way to think, “I can’t have anything more later.” No, I’m an adult. I get to eat whatever I want to.

Anyway, that it would create fear in me that I wouldn’t get my needs met. I would make sure that I really got full enough at dinner. The way I would do that, is by having my regular meal but then I’d also make this huge salad. Healthy stuff, good veggies in there, right? Nutritious food, lots of vitamins and minerals in there, but I would totally eat it to the point of distention, too full, definitely too, too full every single night. You do that enough times and it just feels normal. You normalize the whole thing. You don’t think that you’re overeating. You actually do not realize you’re overeating. People say to me, “I’m not overeating.” I’m like, “Is that really true though?” Maybe. I don’t know, but we should probably look at it. We should probably question whether it’s true, because if you are really eating in a way that’s very supportive for your body and you’re not losing weight, there’s a good chance it’s still too much food for your body, right? It’s still too much food.

When we are confused about the hunger scale and those body messages, we think it is totally normal to be super full. We think super full is normal full, okay? What we have to do, is recalibrate that, right? We have to understand what our body’s actual messages are.

Another reason that we overeat is because overeating dolls are negative emotions. I think one of the best ways to think about this is if you think about a wine glass, like a crystal wine glass, you put a little bit of water in it and then you moisten your finger and you rub that moist and finger around the rim, it will vibrate. It’ll make a sound, right? If you add some more water, the sound will change. Actual, whatever note, changes. Adds more water, it is still there vibrating, making a sound, but a different sound. If you keep adding water to the point where it’s completely full, it will no longer vibrate and it will not make a sound anymore.

What we’re doing when we are filling our bellies to the brim with food, is we are dulling the vibration, so to speak, of the emotions that we’re feeling. We do not like how we’re feeling, so we eat and eat and eat and eat. That dampens that vibration or that physical sensation of those emotions in our bodies. If you think of your body as the wine glass, the food is the water and we are eating, eating, eating, eating, whether it’s healthy or not, right, it’s still nutritious food, but we’re still eating too much in order to stop feeling the way we’re feeling. This can become a habit too, where we don’t even know what we’re feeling. We’re not aware at all. Like I have people say, “Well, I don’t think I’m doing that.” Well, how do you know? You probably haven’t even really thought about it yet. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t, but first we need to develop some awareness around what’s actually going on in your body. How are you actually feeling? Why are you eating all of that food?

Another reason that we overeat healthy food is we think that eating more will make a good thing even better. When we think that good, nutritious food is so good for us, then a little more, it’s got to be better, right? If some is good, then more is better. We’ll just think, “Well, it’s not a big deal to have more because this is healthy, right?” Think, “Well, I’m feeling really good. I’m enjoying the weekend. I’m enjoying the dinner with loved ones or friends. Some more will make it better.” Then we realize, “Wait a minute, why am I overeating this food? Why am I eating past the point of a normal amount of fullness?”

Overeating anything, right? We are just overeaters and we just overeat anything. The solution has to be to recalibrate that hunger scale to actually figure out what a normal amount of fullness feels like in our bodies. I overate for so long. I remember being so surprised at how comfortable my body felt after eating a meal when I stopped after eating less food, right? In my mind I’d been thinking if I eat less food, I won’t be as satisfied. It won’t last as long. There were downsides to eating less, but there were not downsides to eating less. I felt so much better. My digestion was so much better. I was not hungry too quickly, turns out. I felt so much better. You do that enough times, and then that becomes the new normal. Then eating the right amount of food for your body, becomes that normal feeling of fullness. Eating as much as you used to eat, is totally uncomfortable. You would never do that to yourself.

We have to be willing to be open to understanding our body signals and the messages that it’s sending us about whether we need more food or not, slowing down, getting in tune with the body, actually repopulating the body, getting out of your head and into your body to find out what is it actually telling me about this food. That is how we find out, “You know what? This is enough. I’m not hungry. I feel nice and satisfied, but I’m still energetic. It’s not too much, but I’m not left feeling like I need more. Okay, that’s the point that I want to reach with my meals.” It can take some practice. You want to be patient with yourself while you’re figuring this out for sure.

The next reason we overeat healthy food is because we think that healthy food is virtuous. This is a very common thing. I got sucked into it as well. I feel like I’ve been sucked into all the things, all the ways it could go wrong, just about. I’ve been there, totally thinking like, “Well, this is this good, healthy, whatever oat cluster thing that I made,” or whatever. “It doesn’t even really taste that good, but it’s quote unquote healthy so it’s good for me. It’s okay that I overeat it, right? It’s got whatever, matcha in it, or whatever the latest thing is. It’s got turmeric. It’s got whatever antioxidants. Oh my gosh, it’s healthy so it’s good for me to do this,” as though eating more food than your body needs, is actually helpful or good for your body. It is not. It doesn’t matter how many antioxidants it has or fiber or whatever good thing it has, it’s still too much for your body. Okay? It’s still too much.

When we’re thinking extra food doesn’t count because it’s healthy, it’s nutritious, it actually does still count. It’s still too much food. Too much food is too much food. It doesn’t at what the nutritional makeup is of that food, okay? There was a girl, gosh, the very first time I did Weight Watchers, I was still in medical school, my last year medical school. There was this young woman who would go to all the meetings and I remember her saying… I think they’ve changed the program or over the course of time. I think even for a while, fruit was free, I don’t know. At that time, some vegetables were free, some weren’t and with fruit, you did have to count the points for fruit. Again, rule follower here, I always counted the points for fruit. There’s this young woman she’s there every week for a while and always raising her hand saying stuff. At one point she raises her hand and says, “I’m just really getting frustrated because I’m not losing weight and I’m totally not eating more than my points. I just don’t understand why this isn’t working.”

The leader was at asking her a few more questions about things and she’s like, “Well, I mean, I don’t count fruit because I mean, come on it’s fruit,” and then went on to the next thing. I thought to myself at the time, “Yeah, but you’re supposed to count fruit. You can’t just be oh, but it’s fruit so it doesn’t count. It does count, right? That’s why you’re not getting results.” We have to remember, our thoughts and aren’t necessarily going to contradict how our bodies respond to things, right? You might be like, “Well this is just this healthy food, so it’s not really. Sure I overate it, but who cares? It’s healthy.” No, but it’s still too much food for your body. The end. It’s more food than your body needs, okay? We have to get real clear on that.

I do want to just mention something that we haven’t actually addressed on this podcast before, there is something called orthorexia, and it is not officially a recognized diagnosis. The term was coined in the nineties and it’s characterized by an obsession about nutritious food to the degree that it can damage your wellbeing. People who suffer from orthorexia, believe that eating healthy food is righteous. Ultimately, orthorexia is an unhealthy focus on eating in a healthy way. I just want to point that out because someone listening might be going, “Oh, hey. Yeah, actually that does sound like me.” If it does, I want to encourage you to do a little bit of an internet search on some of the key factors for that. I don’t know that I would’ve really qualified for the diagnosis, even though it’s not technically a DSM recognized diagnosis, but I definitely in my life have had tendencies. I’ve had some real tendencies toward this. I just want to point that out as well.

It’s like judging food, is it good or bad? Back in those fat free days and stuff, right? Any food that have fat, it was judged so gross and so bad. Part of orthorexia is judging what other people eat. I definitely did that and cutting out certain food groups and not eating this, not eating that. I mean, it really can get to the extremes. If you are feeling like that’s going on for you, definitely want to get some professional help for that.

I think that like so many things, there’s a bit of a spectrum. I think at certain times in my life, have had a toe on that spectrum for sure. Really believing healthy food is virtuous. Eating these things with these nutrients, it has this and this and this and this is supposed to be so good for you and this ingredient’s supposed to be so good for you. That obsession, and even one thing I read was talking about being obsessed with healthy living blogs and following people on social media. I totally had a phase where I did that big time, eating things that did not taste good to me because they were healthy and then not feeling satisfied and then overeating other things.

In hindsight, it was not healthy what was going on there. Not healthy for my mind. It was not good for my wellbeing for sure. I just want to point out that if any of that kind of resonates, you may want to look into that a little bit further. I will say that, anything that really feels out of control, of course want to get some professional help. I never did and I was able to move past that by changing the way that I think about food. Regardless of whether it goes to that extreme or not, when you’re overeating because you think that healthy food is so good for you, what we want to do as a solution, we want to address the thoughts and beliefs that we have about healthier, nutritious foods that drive the action of overeating them, right? If you think about the thinking cycle, remember it’s our thoughts and our beliefs that create our feelings and our feelings drive our actions. There are thoughts and beliefs about these nutritious foods that ultimately drive us to overeat. We want to become more aware of what that is.

Once we know what’s creating the problem, we can decide how we want to think about food in general, so that it serves us. Okay? We want to be thinking less about what’s quote unquote, good food and quote unquote bad food and healthy food and nutritious food and junk food and bad for you food. That creates a lot of problems for a lot of people. If you like think that way and it’s not creating problem for you, amazing. I think for a lot of people, it does create issues. What we want to focus more on, is how does your body feel when you eat this food? If you get connected, when you get connected to your body and how your body actually feels, then you can connect, “Well, I eat this food. How do I now feel? Should I eat more of that food or not based on how I physically feel?”

Your body will let you know, you just have to learn to listen and think about collaborating with your body instead of trying to override it all the time, right? Staying up in your head and thinking about things and forcing certain things onto your body. Instead, we really want to be collaborating, we’re in this together, why not eat this? What is the response? You may find that there are quote, unquote healthy and nutritious foods that you do not feel help your body. Everybody says X, Y, Z is so good for you and when you eat it, you don’t like it or it just doesn’t sit well with you, then do not eat that food. Please don’t eat that food. I don’t care how nutritious it is. That is not what we do. Okay? This is very much a thinking area that we need to focus on and also getting connected to the body to really truly understand how our bodies to certain foods.

All right. The third reason why we over eat healthy food, is because simply we have an over desire for healthy food. We just want healthy food, nutritious food, more than it’s appropriate for how much our body needs. It’s as simple as that right? We’re thinking about it a lot. We want it. It tastes good to us, right? What’s characterized typically as nutritious food, tastes delicious to me. I like that. I like all of it. Well, not all of it. A lot of it. Don’t send me Brussels sprouts. I’m not into them, and don’t tell me you have the best recipe. It’s a hard, no.

When we are thinking thoughts that create too much desire for any food, whether it’s nutritious or not, the solution is to reduce our desire for that to a normal desire, right? A normal amount of desire means that when you’re getting physically hungry, you’re thinking about food and what you’re going to eat. Then you eat and you enjoy it and that tastes delicious and you stop and your body’s had enough. Then you stop thinking about food. You’re not mulling it over. You’re not planning what the next meal is. You’re not totally thinking all the time about food and qualifying it and how many calories is that? Did I get this macronutrient and whatever? You put it down, you go live your life, you go do other things. Then several hours later when you’re hungry, again, it’s time to think about food again.

What we have to remember is that desire is an emotion and it is created by the way that we think. Again, we want to be looking at what are our thought that create desire for food and what are thoughts that create over desire for food? 100%, you can change this. I am a living proof of it. If I hadn’t actually done it myself, I’d be much more skeptical but I am telling you, if you had told me that I could ever get to a place where I did not care about eating peanut butter, I wouldn’t have believed you, but it’s true. Same with coffee. I didn’t even try to reduce my desire with coffee. It just happened. I’m sometimes bummed by it because I’m like, “Coffee would be good, except I don’t want it.” Bummer.

If you’re thinking that your issue with overeating nutritious food is simply just over desire, you want to be really aware of what you’re thinking. You have to understand that they are thoughts because they’re going to sound just like the truth. They’re going to sound like, “That just tastes good. I like that. It’s good for me. The simple stuff, I want that. I like that.” Simple stuff like that, you want to just understand what do you think? What do you make that food mean? What are your thoughts about that food? Then, understand what those thoughts create for you. It’s not like you go to, “I hate that food.”

One way of thinking that has really helped me when I’ve wanted to reduce desire, is reminding myself that this is one of a whole array of foods that can be consumed and digested. This is just one of them. It’s not any more important than any others. Just taking the wind out of the sails, taking away some of that importance so that it doesn’t have such a power, right? We think the food is controlling us. It has all this power. It doesn’t. We’re giving it power with the way that we think. We want to understand how we’re doing that and then understand that we can actually take the power back anytime we want to. That is how we reduce our over desire for healthy foods.

If you are one who can relate to this, you’ve got some great things to explore for you to start figuring out what are the next steps so that you can eat food that supports your body, in an amount that supports your body, right? Anything like portion control, words like that, they all sounds so restrictive. It’s not restrictive to give your body the amount of food it needs and no more. The way you know how much that is, is by listening to your body. Actually tuning in to your experience of being in your body after you’ve eaten.

A lot of people allow themselves to get real confused. They start thinking this is a difficult thing. I promise you it’s not. Don’t be indecisive about this. Just check in. “Do I feel comfortable? Was that too much food maybe?” We’re not judging you. There’s no court of law here. You’re not in trouble if you overate. Just recognizing, “Okay, that was too much food. Next time I want to try to eat a little less and see what happens,” and just continue to essentially make friends with your body. You and your body are in this together. You’re on the same team. You want to figure out how to work together.

All right, my friend, if you would like some additional assistance in getting going losing some weight, be sure to download the Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss. It’s free. You can pick and get started katrinaubellmd.com/six, S-I-X, is how you can get that right now. Have a great rest of your week and I’ll catch you soon. Take care. Bye-bye

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #268: Overeating Healthy Foods appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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I am so excited to share today’s weight loss success story with you! Elisa Boden is a gastroenterologist who was first introduced to Weight Loss For Busy Physicians while on a trip through the Amazon River. And on top of being a wonderful human being, she is also a perfect example of what can happen when you keep showing up, doing the work, and opening yourself to digging deep.

In this episode, we’re diving into Elisa’s weight loss journey, from her childhood weight gain to how being a gastroenterologist factored into her decision to join my Weight Loss For Doctors Only program. We also talk about the challenge that so many physicians have when it comes to weight loss: knowing what you need to know to lose weight, but not having the right tools to make weight loss permanent and sustainable.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP267.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * Elisa’s lifelong struggle with her weight * Her experience finding the Weight Loss For Busy Physicians podcast in the middle of the Amazon River * How being a gastroenterologist factored into her decision to join the program * How Elisa overcame old habits that were holding her back * How she now incorporates coaching tools into her work as a physician * How a member of the Coach Team helped her to overcome an obstacle in her life * Elisa’s advice for anyone on the fence about joining Weight Loss For Doctors Only

Featured In This Episode * Get Off the Weight Loss Hamster Wheel * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT

Share The Love: * + Help improve the show by leaving a Rating & Review in iTunes (Here’s How) + Join the discussion for this episode in the comments section below

Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 267.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, my friend. I am so glad you’re here with me today. Are you ever in for a treat? Oh my gosh! I’m so excited about this conversation that you get to listen to today. So exciting. It’s just so good. I know it’s a little long, but I want you to listen, even if it takes you a couple commutes or a couple of days or chores or whatever to get through it. It’s totally worth it. It’s so good. Before we get into that though, I do want to just take a brief moment to invite you to come join me on the free training that I’m hosting this Thursday, February 24th, 2022.

It’s called, Get Off the Weight Loss Hamster Wheel. If you think about what a hamster wheel is, hamsters like them, but we humans, we’re not fans, right? You know what that means when you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel. You’re just exerting so much effort and energy and running as fast as you can and you’re getting nowhere. That’s how so many of us feel when we’re trying to lose weight. Even if you have some temporary successes, if the weight keeps coming back again, which for most people it does, then we start feeling like we’re just in this cycle that we just cannot get out of.

It’s just this race to nowhere and we don’t know how to get off and actually solve our weight problem once and for all. So what I’m going to be teaching you on this free training is how to get off that weight loss hamster wheel, how to actually understand what the real problem is when it comes to weight and overeating and how to solve it. You’re going to get some great actionable tips even in the beginning of the training.

You don’t have to listen, listen, listen, listen to get one tiny pearl. There’s some really good stuff in there and I want to make sure that you have the opportunity to learn this. This is the stuff that I don’t care how you decide to lose weight, you need to understand this information. So regardless of whether you’re ever interested in working with me in any of my programs or just doing something else that’s working for you, you need to know this information. So definitely make sure that you register so you can come and attend live.

It’s this Thursday, February 24th. It’s at 8:30 PM Eastern time, 5:30 PM Pacific. You can register by going to katrinaubellmd.com/loseweight, L-O-S-E W-E-I-G-H-T, and we’ll get you that live information. We will send a replay as well, but I really, really, really want to urge you and encourage you to do your absolute best to come live because you will get so much more out of it and then you’ll make sure you actually get the information. The way I approach these things, is if it’s important to me, then I’ll make the time to be able to come.

Now, with that said, sometimes emergencies come up, you might be on call or have some other commit that you’ve already made. If that’s the case, we will send the replay, but then maybe book yourself time on your calendar where you’re going to watch the replay because we always have the best intentions and then it just doesn’t end up happening, watching that replay, and you need this information for sure. So go to Katrinaubellmd.com/loseweight so you can join me for a free training this Thursday and you can learn how to get off that weight loss hamster wheel.

Speaking of the weight loss hamster wheel, my guest today, Elisa Boden, MD, she got off the weight loss hamster wheel and she’s going to tell you all about how she did it. She’s a gastroenterologist. She’ll tell you much more about herself and her whole story. But she is just really just such a wonderful human. I mean, all the people that I work with are wonderful humans. They really, really are.

I just really love someone who just keeps showing up and keeps doing the work and keeps being open to diving deeper to really understand themselves better and understand what needs to happen in order to create what they want. Oh my gosh! Such amazing, amazing things happening in her life because she decided to join some random weight loss program that she heard about while she was in Brazil on the Amazon River. Not Amazon the company, Amazon the river. She’s going to tell you all about it.

If that doesn’t peak your interest, I don’t know what will because it sure peaked mine. I was like, “What?” Anyway, please enjoy my conversation with Elisa Boden and I’ll talk to you next week. Elisa, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today.

Elisa Boden: Great. It’s so fun to be here with you.

Katrina Ubell: I’m so excited to have you here. We have weight loss success stories, clients from all different stages. What I always find so fun is to hear a little bit more of the longer term, because anybody can be like, “Yeah, I just lost 20 pounds in the last couple of months.” But what happens when years go by? I think that this is going to be such a great example of how there’s a lot of work to be done around the food and then there’s so much more to dig into and so much progress to be made in other parts of our lives and you’re such a great example of that.

So I’m super excited for us to get going. What I would love for you to do is just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do so everybody knows you.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. So my name is Elisa Boden. I am a gastroenterologist in academic medicine. I live in Portland, Oregon. Actually, relatively new to Portland. We moved here about a year ago. I was just reflecting back that I’ve actually… This is the three year anniversary of my joining your program, so I am a long-termer. I’ve had this work for several years now and it’s been such an amazing part of my life, so I’m so excited to talk to you about it.

Katrina Ubell: Amazing. It’s fun from the coach perspective to see the layers of development and to see you through so many different things. So, okay. So let’s start off. We always talk about your experience with food, weight loss, weight struggles. When did that all begin for you?

Elisa Boden: Yeah, I’ve been struggling with weight since I was a teenager. I first remember going on diets around the age of 13. I was a gymnast when I was a kid, so I was very fit, I had practices three or four times a week, was doing a lot of exercise. Around the age of 12 or 13, I started transitioning out of that and my body started changing and I gained quite a bit of weight during that adolescent period. I just remember being really unhappy with the way that my body was changing, starting to go on diets and being on and off diets then throughout my adolescence and teen years.

Then I went through a period where I just thought… because I had been through so many diets, so losing weight and gaining weight back, where I was just like, “Okay, maybe I’m just a person who is overweight.” I think I took that on as part of my identity and stopped dieting for quite a while. Put on a little bit more weight every year as I went through college and medical training. There was a period around the time I got married where I dieted again and lost some weight, but then ended up putting it back on as I got through the whole wedding piece of it.

It wasn’t until about three years ago when I started seeking out help and your podcast came up on my feed that I really pushed myself to get back into trying to lose weight. I had gained a lot of weight, a few pounds every year throughout all of this and then I had a period of time where I was doing in vitro fertilization when we were trying to get pregnant with my son. We came through all of that, I think my son was around four years old at the time, and I was like, “Okay, I’m done having children.

No more IVF. It’s time for me to really get a grip on what was going on with my weight.” I remember really vividly finding your podcast because… I was on vacation with my husband. My husband is from Brazil. We go there every couple of years. We had gone to visit his family and me and him had taken this side trip off to the Amazon. We’re in the middle of the Amazon and here I am on this beautiful vacation and I’m thinking about how I have to get my weight under control.

I had started doing Weight Watchers and I had actually lost about 10 pounds at that time, but I was like, “I just know I’m going to put this back on. There must be some better solutions.” Ended up in a PMG, a physician mom’s group, subgroup on weight loss, and everybody was talking about your podcast and I was like, “Okay, I better listen to this. I have to figure this out. I want to be able to keep this weight off long-term.” Started listening to your podcast.

I think it was right around the new year, so you had had some kind of losing weight for the last time webinar and I was like, “This is amazing. This is just what I need.” I think I came back from the trip, and about a day later, I signed up for the program after probably binge listening to about, I don’t know, 20 episodes of your podcast. That’s how I came to you.

Katrina Ubell: Wow! Yeah. That’s so fun. Sometimes it’s so interesting how people make decisions. Some people are like, “Well, I went on a cross country road trip and by the end of it, I signed up.” And other people take years sometimes and anytime in between. I think you might be the first person to discover me in the Brazilian Amazon though. I think that’s really exciting.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. The internet was really interesting for listening to your podcast. I think it was interrupted multiple times. It was-

Katrina Ubell: You persevered.

Elisa Boden: Yeah, one of those interesting things. Here I was on this vacation and I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was still thinking about how unhappy I was with my weight and that aspect of my life.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I remember having those experiences too, and especially having some success with Weight Watchers and then thinking, “Well, how am I going to be on this trip?” And then doing the points thing, which felt so overwhelmed and so difficult. It felt so all or nothing to me, like either I had to micromanage everything and stress about it all and constantly… I mean, back in my day I had the actual paper, cardboard slider thing. Now they have an app, but before we had apps… Or just eat everything and gain the weight back and start over again when I got home never realizing there could be something in between that.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. I mean, for me it was just like, “I need to find a way to be able to sustain this. I can do this for a couple of months, I can do this for one vacation, but I just still don’t want to be counting points for the rest of my life.” And I-

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Totally.

Elisa Boden: I didn’t believe I would be able to keep the weight off. I think that was really it. It’s like, okay, I’m going to go off this diet and it’s going to be back to the same up and down. Your approach was such a breath of fresh air because it gave me hope that there was something I could do, there were changes that I could make that would be sustainable for me in the long-term.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I’m curious if being a gastroenterologist factored into any of this at all or just… I mean, not that you would necessarily be expected to be any different than any other person, but just curious if that factored in.

Elisa Boden: It’s so funny because we always joke in GI. GI and nutrition is part of our boards, but we never learn anything about the nutrition piece or… I mean, even if we did go deep dive into the nutrition piece, I don’t think what we learn in books is really applicable to how we live in the real world. I think about this a lot for my patients too because a lot of them we’re prescribing specific diets for.

And it’s like we tell you what to eat, but we don’t give you the tools for how to actually change your behavior so that you can do it in a sustainable way. I mean, again, I think all of us as physicians, it’s easy to tell our patients to do something, but I didn’t have those tools to know how to create a framework for myself in which I could live in that way. That’s what I learned from your program, was how to implement all of the advice I was handing out.

Katrina Ubell: Right. It’s one thing to advise someone to make behavioral changes, it’s another to give them the tools to be able to actually do that. It’s not as simple as just do this other thing. If it were that simple, we wouldn’t have so many people struggling in the way that they are. It’s simple like that, but also as hard as that. It’s not so simple to do that, especially on a day-to-day basis living a normal life.

Elisa Boden: Frustration for me in my life is I felt like I knew what I needed to do to lose the weight. When I went on Weight Watchers, it was fine, I could lose the weight. I ate less, according to my points I lost the weight, but I wasn’t able to sustain that for the long-term. So it didn’t end up being a good solution. So it is like that. It’s like it’s so easy to know what to do, it’s so hard before you have the tools to be able to do it.

Katrina Ubell: Right. What I think is so easy, particularly for women, to do then is to make the inability to do it mean something negative about us as a human being, right? Like we’re weak, we’re worthless, we’re undisciplined. Whatever our negative thoughts are about ourselves, that becomes the reason why we can’t do the thing, rather than recognizing, no, there’s just actual tools and skills that we haven’t learned yet.

Elisa Boden: Right. I think the other thing for me was like, “I’m just not a person who can do that. I’m just genetically not a person… or in terms of my discipline not a person who can do that.” And when you don’t believe you can do something, you just give up.

Katrina Ubell: A lot harder to do it, right? Yeah. It’s true. It’s totally true. Totally true. Okay. Not surprisingly, because I think this is so common, you came into the Weight Loss For Doctors Only program and you’re like, “Yeah, the thought work thing, I don’t really know. Let’s just lose some weight.” Tell me a little bit more about that.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. Well, I had no idea it was a coaching program when I signed up. I didn’t know what coaching was. I thought it was some woo-woo out there thing that people were doing. I just didn’t know anything about it. I mean, I jumped in feet first with the food changes and basically was like, “I’m just going to follow whatever Katrina says. I’m going to do whatever she says. I’m going to be the best A plus student in this program and I’m going to lose the weight.”

And I did. I mean, I really did jump full speed ahead in terms of making the changes that I needed to make with my foods and I started losing weight really, really quickly. I had lost maybe 10 pounds before I started and maybe 35 in the first six months, so a lot of weight and very, very, very quickly. But I think within a few months, I started seeing my old patterns pop up just in terms of my thoughts around food and feeling a lot of scarcity around food and when was I going to eat next and still being very obsessed with everything about food.

Really starting to use the tools that you provided in terms of thought work was so helpful at just being able to catch myself when I would fall into these old patterns. The old patterns looked something like, I planned for this today, instead, I went off plan and I ate a cookie. Now the world has ended and I should just give up. Diets don’t work and this is why and I’m just going to go back to eating the way that I used to eat and being able to catch myself in that pattern of all or nothing thinking and recognizing that I wasn’t going to be perfect throughout this.

First of all, I’m not perfect at anything, but certainly wasn’t going to be perfect throughout this and then having those tools to be able to support myself through those mini failures and recognize that I could just keep going, and that if I did just keep going, I would keep losing weight even when I wasn’t perfect. Just getting those tools in place was so helpful in the beginning. Then I think obviously more as I went through your program, it was, well, figuring out why I felt like I needed to use food to comfort myself.

I think you’ve said this on your podcast a number of times. I didn’t think I was someone who ate for emotional reasons, I just thought I liked food. I thought I had trouble stopping eating because I just really liked it. When I started recognizing that I was wanting to eat because I was wanting to not feel something in my life or because I was trying to… I think part of what I do with food is I use it as an escape. Like I had this crazy day at work and then I’m using food to get my mind out of there and just have some peace from all the things in my head.

Just being able to recognize that and to pause and say, “I’m asking food for something. Can I give that to myself in another way and not use the food for comfort?” There’s all the little tools of how to manage urges and all of those things and then I think really there are the bigger picture tools, which are, what am I asking food for? How can I give it to myself in a different way? And how can I change my thought patterns so I don’t feel like I need to escape all the time? That was a big one for me, is, why am I creating this environment for myself where I want?

Katrina Ubell: Right. Totally. Before we jump into that, I just want to point something out that jumped out for me from what you were saying, is this idea… Like you were saying, I’m not going to be perfect at this. And I just think whether we identify as being perfectionist or not, we are all striving for excellence. None of us is typically satisfied with mediocrity, I think we can agree.

So whatever language you want to use around it, what we put into that to create that is a lot of effort and hard work and toil and we just work and strive to get to that thing that we want. When it comes to permanent weight loss, that can actually harm you. It can make it harder and slower. What we have to learn to do is actually come to ourselves and add ourselves and approach ourselves with love and compassion and a softness that I think many of us maybe confused for weakness or we just aren’t familiar with it at all.

It’s just like something that seems completely foreign to us. And it really is. It’s not just like, “Oh, I already know how to work hard over here. I can work hard on the weight loss.” I know you can do that. You can count points like a champ. I can too, right? We know we can do that, but this deeper part requires a different approach to ourselves and a different energy.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. I think that that is something that I have really learned and been able to apply to other pieces in my life where I am also not perfect and allowing myself to not be perfect and not to make that mean that I don’t try something or I don’t learn something or get better at something. Because I think especially in my life, I’ve definitely been a perfectionist to the point where I don’t even want to try to do things sometimes that I think I might fail at.

I honestly think that’s why I just gave up on losing weight for such a long time because I was so disappointed in myself at failing at it. So just being able to have that skill of coming at myself with love and being like, “Okay, failure is part of this, is just going to be part this process.” How I treat myself after I make a mistake or I don’t do as well as I wanted to is the most important part of moving forward, because if I’m beating myself up like crazy, I’m not going to want to keep going.

Katrina Ubell: Totally. Totally, 100%. 100%. Or it just drives us back into looking for some relief or reprieve from that punishment that we’re putting down on ourselves, and the way we do that is through food and then it just creates this whole cycle that is exhausting and unsustainable completely, completely. So you mentioned realizing, getting to this place of, why am I creating this experience of my life that’s so intolerable that I need food to get a break from it? Let’s dig into that, because your thoughts about your work, it’s been fun to witness the whole progression. Talk about that a little bit.

Elisa Boden: I think like a lot of other female physicians, I put a lot of pressure on myself at work. I had an intense feeling of responsibility for my patients. I was worried that I might make a wrong clinical judgment on them and I spent a lot of time thinking about the decisions that I made and sometimes replaying them in my mind over and over and over again, pulling other people about things and just really having this hypervigilance for making sure I was doing well by my patients.

I also had a lot of problems with boundaries in certain ways. I think it was because of this fear that I might miss something on somebody. I never wanted to be unavailable for my patients. So I often gave people my cell phone number, the nurses knew that they could call me or page me or text me at any time to ask me things about my patients. I created this for myself, I think, out of this feeling that I needed to be always on guard for something bad that might happen to somebody because I thought that that would mean I was a bad doctor if something bad happened to somebody.

Or I think, moreover, I felt like it was my responsibility to take care of everything and to be there for every single thing for all of my patients. It really created for me a lot of overwhelm and also a lot of ways in which my work-life spilled over into my home life. So I would just take a lot of things home with me, take a lot of anxiety about my patients home with me, be answering calls at night, be double and triple checking my charts at night, and not able to really take that time off to be with my family.

And it’s interesting. I mean, one of the things that I did about it well before starting your program is I went down to 50% FTE clinical activity because I wanted to reduce the amount of patient work that I had. But what was so interesting about it is it just kept spreading. I was seeing fewer patients, but that worry and care and… I call it hypervigilance for everything going on in my clinical life, just spread out into that other time that I had.

So it made things better, I changed the circumstance by seeing less patients, it made things a lot better for me, but it was always still there. I mean, this was a lot of the work that I was doing the second year that I was working with you and trying to make this overwhelm at work and this over-sense of responsibility at work less with my thoughts. But I think I just didn’t believe that it was possible. I truly believed that being a doctor meant that you were responsible for everybody who you were to taking care of.

That meant that my brain could never really rest. It all changed really for me because we decided to move last year and I had a six-month period where I was taking time off of work, where I was thinking about taking time off of work. It was in the middle of the pandemic and the kids were changing schools and I didn’t whether they would be in person or not and so I just decided I’m just going to take a six-month break from work and this will allow me to realign my priorities at home and make sure everybody is settled.

At that same time, my previous job was asking me to still do some telemedicine for them because they hadn’t replaced me and they needed a little bit of help. In my mind, this was like the biggest drama ever, was like, “Do I take this six months off and have peace from all the voices in my head and peace from all of this responsibility and truly have a break from medicine for the first time in my life? Or if I take on this extra responsibility doing telemedicine, I won’t have this break and I won’t have this freedom.”

I got coaching on this from one of your amazing coaches, Emma. She was just really showing me that this idea of having to be responsible for everyone was a thought in my brain. She was like, “You could just choose to let that go whether or not you decide to take this job. It doesn’t really matter whether you decide to take the job, you can choose to have freedom in your life and not have this overwhelming sense of responsibility.” And I was like, “No, no, no, no. If I am taking care of patients, that is a huge responsibility. I will never be able to let that go.”

What’s so interesting is I did do some telemedicine, but I took like a good two-month chunk of time I’m off. What I recognized was that I was not taking care of patients, I had no patient responsibilities, and yet my brain just decided that it was going to be hypervigilant about all the other things in my life. I was so anxious about all the things around the house and around the move and around the kids and around school. I had just transferred all of this energy that I was spending on worrying about my patients being hypervigilant about my family.

Katrina Ubell: It was so fascinating. It’s like, “Oh! It really isn’t being a doctor.”

Elisa Boden: I thought this was just like, I chose to be a doctor, it’s like Hippocratic oath. I am-

Katrina Ubell: Like this is just the truth that this is what it’s like to be a doctor.

Elisa Boden: Then I realized that it was just me. I was creating all of that stuff. I was creating all of that fear and worry around my patients, and then when they were gone, it was like, who can I transfer it to?

Katrina Ubell: Right. There’s certainly something that I can be worried about around me.

Elisa Boden: And just recognizing too that when I was in that state of feeling like I always needed to be watching for the danger in the world, that that was the feeling I was trying to escape from with food.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it’s like that hypervigilance was… On a subconscious level, you believe that you needed to be hypervigilant to keep everybody safe, all the important people in your life safe, whether it’s your patients or your family members or whatever, it’s your job to keep everybody safe, which is like a primal, very deeply primal desire. So when you’re feeling a lack of safety frequently and then trying to use the hypervigilance to feel better, which also feels bad, it’s like it makes so much sense. Of course, how could you not eat? You know what I mean? And if it wasn’t food, it would’ve been something else to just provide some sort of respite from that.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. I mean, it was so amazing to be able to have the tools to watch my brain during this period and to have the coaching to help me really see what was going on, because, yeah, I just didn’t even recognize that at all before all of this happened.

Katrina Ubell: That’s what’s so powerful about coaching. We can do a lot of work on our own and sometimes it’s like we just can’t tell. They always say the fish doesn’t know it swimming in water. We need someone on the outside to just be like, “Hey, PS, this is what’s really going on,” for us to go like, “What? I have no idea.”

Elisa Boden: You think this, I’m choosing this experience? I never, never would’ve thought that it was me choosing to feel that way. I mean, the great thing about it was, is before I started my new job, I had like four or five months where I really, really dug into this and figured out and just decided how I wanted to experience my new job. And it’s been-

Katrina Ubell: Which is fun, right? It’s like a clean slate. You get to start over and train all the sports staff and everybody to work with you in a different way.

Elisa Boden: Exactly, and to show up as the human that I wanted to be, the doctor that I wanted to be, and also the example that I wanted to be, because I now have fellows and students and younger faculty who watch the way that I am and I get to model to them what it means to be a physician and to be a caring physician and to be a good physician who doesn’t think about their patients all the time.

Katrina Ubell: Right. Right. I think that’s one of the reasons that we struggle so much, is because we didn’t have an example of that, like particularly female staff who were living a regular life feeling like they could share with us how they made it work. I think even if they… I don’t know. At least in my experience, I’m sure they all had their struggles. But even if they had it really figured out, I didn’t feel like there were any insights being passed down for better or for worse. There just wasn’t communication about that and I love that you have the opportunity to do that now.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. One of the things I’m really deliberate about, is when I’m thinking something on purpose that’s really helping me through my day… And I actually use something that you gave me, all of the time when I’m coming in the middle of the night to care for pay patients, where I really truly do believe and feel so excited that I get to come in and save somebody’s life. I get to save somebody’s life, that is so amazing. And to share that energy… And I say that out loud to the fellows.

I’m like, “How awesome is it that we to stop this person’s bleeding in the middle of the night?” Because it’s so easy to be so sorry for yourself that you’re waking up in the night, I’m like, “These people are bugging me again. Can’t they figure this out?” All these things that naturally come into your head, and then I’m like, “This is amazing. Look at what we get to do as physicians.” It’s totally different energy to come at it at because it makes you feel so good about what you’re doing that you can catch up on sleep the next day. I mean-

Katrina Ubell: Totally. And you can allow yourself to ride that high of, I just did something really awesome, which PS, was the whole point of becoming a doctor in the first place, right? Right? We think about, why did we even take the first step on this journey? It’s to help people, and what a cool opportunity to be able to do it. It’s also not like you’re doing it wrong if you’re not having that experience every single time, but it’s so cool to be able to remember, “This is the point of all this,” and share it with everybody.

You’re doing your part to change the culture of medicine, which is so victimy in general. Things are happening to us and we have no control. That, in my opinion, just feels burnout so much more. So you’re doing your part to influence your surroundings and that’s only going to help them. We were just talking about this on a coaching call the last week or two, which is when you’re a trainee and these attendings who are so many years ahead are sharing their thoughts about certain things you have to do, like getting up in the middle of the night to go do things, when they tell you, their thought is something very negative.

It’s very easy to just adopt that. You never even decided. So you are taking the opportunity to evaluate what you think and redecide and decide something that not only benefits you, but benefits other people as well.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. It’s really changed everything about the way that I see work and I’m not feeling these days like I need to escape from it, which is amazing.

Katrina Ubell: That’s incredible. That just makes my heart sing, because I think that’s so… Oh gosh! It’s heartbreaking. And I was one of these people too and I was in practice just really struggling. There’s parts that are great and parts that really aren’t great and being able to help you get to a place where it’s so much better is just incredible. Okay, so that’s so great. I want to take it to the next step because you’ve also become a coach and you now are working to incorporate coaching tools in the clinical work that you do. So I would just love it if you’d mention a little bit about that.

Elisa Boden: This is one of the other things that I have done that has changed my experience of work so much, is that I’ve really decided in a very deliberate way how I want to spend my time at work and I want to spend it doing things I feel really passionate about. I think earlier in my career, I chose pathways because I thought that they were the things that other people wanted me to do. Other people saw things in me and they were like, “You should be a basic researcher. You’re so good at this.”

That was the pathway that I saw to success in academic medicine and I followed that for a long time, but it wasn’t exactly my passion. It was just easy to burn out in something that I didn’t feel like I had chosen for myself. So coaching has been something that has changed my life in so many ways. It’s funny because I talk about it with my husband. We talk about before Katrina and after Katrina. It’s like BK and AK.

My life has so drastically changed and the way that I think about my life has so drastically changed just from being exposed to coaching, having coaching in my life and coaching tools, that I really felt compelled to become a coach because I wanted to show my patients really how they could use these tools to change the way that they experience their disease. As I said, I’m a gastroenterologist. I take care of patients who have inflammatory bowel disease. These are chronic diseases of the GI tract that result in inflammation.

These patients have a lot of pain, they have a lot of diarrhea, rectal bleeding, things that really impact their daily life, and they often need to be on chronic medications or require surgery. These are lifelong diseases with no cure. What I found myself doing after I was in your program for a little while is I would hear people talk to me about all the issues that they were having, the trouble that they were having taking their medications or staying on their diets or doing other things, and I was like, “If they only knew that this was their thoughts, then they could do something about it.” But I wasn’t quite ready to… I mean, I wasn’t ready to start coaching people against their will and-

Katrina Ubell: Right. Just like dropping that bomb on them in the clinic room.

Elisa Boden: Do you realize that you can stop being the victim here, you actually have some agency? But I just saw it as this great opportunity for myself and for my patients to really learn from this. So I did coach training during this six-month time when I was off of work. And I actually created my own business. So I have my own business coaching women who have inflammatory bowel disease who are not my patients.

But I’ve been having such a good time doing it and really enjoying it and I feel like it could have such a great impact for all of my patients. I really truly feel like the role that everyone in the world needs, actually people who are dealing with chronic disease. So I’m working on creating a coaching program within my university and we’re actually heading up and spearheading a big behavioral health medicine within GI at my institution, which has been supported by my chief and everybody there and I’m super excited about it.

I think bringing coaching into the clinic, I think, is the next wave in medicine and I’m hoping to study it so that we can really, really show how impactful it can be not only on people’s perception of their autonomy within their disease of course, but really showing that it helps people to get better.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I mean, that’s just incredible. The more that we can show, like actual research data, that that it works, the more funding there is, hopefully we can get financial coverage for it, and things like that, which is so… I mean, can you even imagine? Gosh! I just think back to when I was like, “I think there might be a few people who would be interested in this. It’s just so fun. Yay!”

Elisa Boden: Yeah. I mean, I am so passionate about it, and again, I think this is something I’m so excited to bring to other people. But even just for myself and my own experience of work, having something that I feel so passionate about and that I truly believe is going to make such a big difference in my field is everything.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I love that and I love thinking about it even as… Not like a pressure-based kind of a thing, but just thinking about even what is your legacy going to be as a clinician, as a doctor? Obviously, every person you interact with, but even thinking about it from a bigger picture, creating this program, being able to change possibly at least the culture of how GI patients are treated at your institution. I mean, that’s incredible, so exciting. So, so, so cool. I just love that.

Okay. I wanted to just do… because we’ve been talking here for a little while, but I just wanted to give you the opportunity to mention one thing that you had mentioned to me beforehand, was how there was one time where you were actually listening me coach another client about something that was going on and how that coaching actually significantly impacted another issue that you had going on in your life without even actually being coached on it. Would you be willing to share a little bit about that?

Elisa Boden: Yeah. I wanted to tell you about something in your program that had really impacted me that I didn’t realize was possible, which is that when you were coaching somebody else on a topic that I didn’t think related to me at all, it actually opened my eyes up to something that I was really missing in my life and it was a big aha moment for me. This was, I think, during my first six months of the program and you were coaching somebody, a woman, who had a child who had a pretty significant handicap.

She was having a really, really hard time and you were coaching her through the grief of the loss of the child that she had expected to have. You had made a recommendation for her to write a letter to this child that she had expected to have and to put everything in there about that expectation and then to say goodbye to that child so that she could say hello and bring into her life the child that she actually had.

Even though it didn’t apply to me at all, I have a child who has no handicaps, but was just not exactly the child that I had expected. I thought throughout my life that I was going to have this child who was a miniature version of me, total people pleaser, total overachiever. I have a child who is super, super spirited and loud and boisterous and adventuresome and willing to be different from everybody else. It was really hard for me to accept that.

I spent a lot of time trying to change who that child was and it created a lot of struggle in our life. When I was able to realize that I was actually doing the same exact thing that you were coaching somebody else about without even really realizing it, I actually did the exercise where I wrote this letter to my child, my expected child, and I said goodbye to them. By doing that, it really, really allowed me to drop the reins on my child and to allow them to be this wonderful person who they are and to love them unconditionally and not try to make them into someone who I wanted them to be.

What was really interesting about the whole thing too is here I was wanting my child to be this people pleaser and overachiever and these are the exact same things I’m trying to distance myself from all of these stuff that happened to me in childhood because I was putting myself behind everybody else. It’s allowed me to hopefully not create that same pattern for my child, which has been amazing.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I have had similar experiences where just what was being coached on had nothing to do with my life at all and I still had a major breakthrough. I just think it’s so cool to hear about those stories because group coaching is so powerful that way. We often think, “Well, I need someone to be coaching me on all my stuff all the time.” But sometimes we don’t even know that we need coaching on that. We would never ask. Who knows if we would’ve ever even gotten there?

It’s like by listening to someone else, you’re able to be guided in this way that really makes a huge difference, which I just love. And I love that you were open to letting it come through, letting it absorb in. So great. Well, and I have to say, Elisa, it’s been so fun being your coach and seeing you progress. Well, one of the things I love about you is I think your brain works somewhat similarly to mine where we’ve definitely had coaching sessions where I can tell where you’re like, “I just don’t know about this,” but then it comes around later.

That’s very much how I tend to be. I’m like, “I don’t know.” And I just love how you just keep showing up. You just keep showing up for yourself and you keep just doing the work even when it’s hard, even when it feels like you’re going around in circles. I think that’s all a normal part of the process. Continuing to show up for yourself creates those amazing results that we want, which is exactly everything you just shared. So, just good for you. I’m so happy for you.

Elisa Boden: One of the things that you have really taught me is that if I just keep showing up and I’m not so anxious about getting there, getting somewhere else, getting to the goal weight, getting to whatever that next goal is, if I just show up for myself every day and love myself through the process, then I just end up there. It’s—

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I love it. I love it. Life keeps throwing challenges our way and then the process continues. We believe in the illusion of the “there”, the place where all the birds sing all the time, there’s never a problem. We only set ourselves up for this disappointment when we can continue to lead a very human life where there are struggles and new challenges and stressors and other things that come up.

Changing that idea, I think, makes such a difference. It doesn’t necessarily make it a lot easier in the short-term, but in the long-term, it really does because you can stop letting go of this idea of some utopia somewhere that you just haven’t… You just have to figure out how to get there, and once you do, that’s going to be it.

Elisa Boden: Yeah. I love just being able to love the process of every day.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Well, Elisa, if somebody were like you on the Amazon in Brazil, happens to come across this podcast and were considering life coaching, weight loss for doctors only, what would you tell them?

Elisa Boden: I mean, I can honestly say this was the best investment of my money and time of any investment I have ever made, including medical training. This changed my life in a way that I would’ve never expected and I’m so, so grateful for. So it is without a doubt such a great investment. Don’t think about it, just do it. I mean, the other thing is just having the community of women physicians that I have met within your group has been so important in my life. Having people who I really truly feel I can feel vulnerable with, who share a lot of the same struggles with me, who I just relate to on this other plane has been amazing. So it shouldn’t even be a question, do it. You’ll have your before Katrina and after Katrina moment.

Katrina Ubell: Oh, that’s so exciting. Well, thank you so much for saying all those amazing things and thank you so much for coming out and sharing. I know this was your dare for yourself to get yourself to come and do it. I thought it was just such a great conversation. So thanks so much for letting all our listeners listen in.

Elisa Boden: Thank you again, Katrina. Thank you so much.

Katrina Ubell: Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #267: Weight Loss Success Story: Elisa Boden, MD appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Welcome to another episode in the Back to Basics series! I’m incredibly excited for this one, because understanding and mastering this topic is arguably one of the cornerstones of permanent and sustained weight loss. Even if you’ve lost weight, you’ve worked with me before, or you think you’re beyond the basics, I promise this is still an episode worth checking out.

Listen in as I dive into the topic of emotional eating, including what it is (and what it’s not!) and how you can tell if you are prone to emotional eating. I also share my own personal experience with emotional eating, as well as why it’s important to create space and awareness for your emotions to avoid reverting back to old cycles and habits that lead to weight gain.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP266.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * What emotional eating is * How to know if you emotionally eat * My journey with emotional eating * How to create awareness and space for your emotions * How emotional responsibility intersects with emotional eating

Featured In This Episode * Get Off the Weight Loss Hamster Wheel * Geneen Roth * Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Compulsive Eating by Geneen Roth * Why Weight? A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating by Geneen Roth * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to The Weight Loss For Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 266.

Welcome to The Weight Loss For Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master-certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion, and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello they’re my friend. How are you today? I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to another back to basics series episode. I’m really, really excited about this one, because we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects. And really, really, arguably the most cornerstone principle, foundational kind of thing that you need to understand in order to lose weight permanently. I can’t wait to talk to you about emotional eating today, it is going to be so good and I’m so glad that you’re here.

And even if you’ve been listening to me for a while, and even if you’ve worked with me, and you’ve lost weight and you’ve had great results, I still want you to listen to this one. The basics are the basics for a reason. They’re so important. We need to understand them deeply. I feel like every time I teach this concept, I actually learn it on an even deeper level.

So please, make sure you don’t gloss over this or start thinking, you know what? I don’t need this. I’m ahead of the basics. Always good to come back and review those foundational prints of bowls that help you to create the results that you want. I do just want to also share with you that we just had such a great Master’s Live Event. It was really just a few days ago and we, it was such a good one.

I mean, they’re all good, but I just loved it. Lee, who’s one of my clients who’s been around with us for a while, and she’s been going through it lately. So Lee, sending you a lot of love. And I know all of your master sisters are sending you love too. She said, “It’s always a great day at Masters Live.”

I was like, “Yes, it is. It’s so, so good.”

I also wanted to share a quote that one of our members, Petra, put in the chat, that I thought was so good. And I don’t know who said it, so I’m just going to give attribution to Petra for being the person who brought it to my attention. But she said that she reminds herself all the time, old keys don’t unlock new doors, right? Those old keys, they opened the doors that got you to where you are right now.

But to create new experiences, to have just something new in your life, you need those new keys. And those new keys are what we’re really going to be talking about today on this podcast. It’s what we do in coaching. I just love that perspective, right? We don’t need to be upset about anything that’s happened in the past because it’s got us to where we are today. And now, based on today, what are we going to do moving forward?

We can create new keys for those new doors with the new information we’re going to learn. And who knows, this episode could be one of those new key moments where you’re like, yes, I could open the store. I’ve been stuck for so long, and now I know how to move my way forward. So I can’t wait for you to hear that today.

I do also want to offer you another new key opportunity. I am going to be hosting another free training called Get Off The Weight Loss Hamster Wheel. And it’s coming up on Thursday, February 24th. It’s at 8:30 P PM, eastern time, 5:30 PM Pacific. And it’s really for you if you are just tired of eating your feelings, tired of constantly thinking about food.

If you just feel like you’re just racing to nowhere, just like being on a hamster wheel, running, running, running, maybe making some progress and then just right back where you started again, just not really making the progress you want to make, then you’re going to want to join me for this free training, for sure.

You’re going to leave the free trading, understanding how to create the peace and freedom around food that you so desperately want. This can be taught. And I’m telling you, if I could learn it, you can too. Trust me, decades and decades of struggle. We all think we’re the hopeless cause, I’m telling you, it’s just not the truth. You can find that peace and freedom around food.

And really, peace and freedom around food is what creates permanent weight loss. We often get it backwards. We think it’s the other way around. I need to lose the weight first so then I can feel peace and freedom around food. I promise you, that is not how it works. Okay?

I’m going to teach you on this free training how it does work. So to register, come and join me at katrinaubellmd.com/lose weight. L-O-S-E W-E-I-G-H-T. You can register, and we’ll get you all the information you need to come and join us, get this information so you can get off that weight loss hamster wheel, get on with bigger and better and more important and things in your life.

All right, so let’s talk about emotional eating. The basics of emotional eating. So what is emotional eating? For a very long time I did not understand what it was. I don’t know that anyone actually taught me, or that I actually sought out anybody to teach me. But I will tell you that I firmly was planted in the, I just like food camp. I did not think at all that I could be an emotional eater.

In my mind, someone who was an emotional eater was someone who was very emotionally labile, who really did not have their you-know-what together, struggled to live a functional life. And I just didn’t identify with any of that. I literally had this image in my head of some poor woman in the corner of a room on the floor with a big bag of chips, sobbing and shoveling chips into her mouth as she’s sobbing. I just did not identify with that at all.

So why would I think that I was an emotional eater? I just was like, no, I just like food. Food is fun. It tastes good. That’s all there’s to it. There’s no emotional component to this.

And so as I start to realize that doing the Weight Watchers program a hundred million times, only slightly exaggerating there, and losing weight only to regain it again. And it just, being literally the exact same cycle again and again. Once I finally realized, hmm, maybe that isn’t working, maybe this isn’t the right program for me, I started trying a bunch of different other things.

And one thing that I tried was working with a dietician, she was a very lovely person. There really wasn’t a whole lot working with her that helped me, but there was one thing. And so I for sure will give her credit for that. And that was that she asked me to read any book by the author Janine Roth. And Janine Roth has written several books on compulsive overeating and things like that. I have to tell you, I was like, I’m not compulsive about it, I don’t overeat like that. I really was resistant.

But she said, “Just look at all the books she’s written and just pick one and read it. ”

So I picked the one that seemed like the easiest to read, and kind of the most lighthearted. It seemed when I looked at them that they seemed very, very heavy subjects. And she really is widely known and seen as this amazing, amazing teacher. I just, like I said, I was like, yeah, that’s not for people like me. I don’t have that problem.

So I found this book, and I’m reading through this book. And she starts describing emotional eating. And I was like, hmm, well, that’s interesting. And even then though, I did not have the aha moment. I didn’t have that light bulb moment even then. But I read the book, and was sort of more contemplating what in that book applies to me? What in that book … Basically, what can I get out of this? Put the time into reading it, there’s certainly just got to be something.

And it was truly one of those shower moments. I was in the shower, and I guess thinking about that book, or just thinking about the whole kind of situation, when it was like my brain put two and two together, and I finally saw it. I was like, wait, so emotional eating is eating for any reason other than needing food for fuel for your cells, for your body to be alive and healthy.

And if that’s what emotional eating is, then a hundred percent for sure I do that. Yes, yes, yes, for sure. I do that. I was just so incredibly disconnected from my emotional life and what my emotions were, that I could not even see the connection. I was like, no, I’m not experiencing emotions and then avoiding them, actively. I could not see any of that, but I could see that I definitely ate at times when I was not physically hungry.

That was really the opening for me. I was like, yes, there are times that I do that, 100%. So if that means I’m an emotional eater, okay, fine. Then I’m an emotional eater. But I still didn’t feel like I knew what to do about it. I read this book and I thought, okay, well then she’s going to tell me what to do. There really wasn’t a whole lot of what to do next. It was more of an awareness-building kind of situation.

So I didn’t know what to do next, so I continued my epic quest to understand this better, which of course finally led me to life coaching. But what I had to understand in order to move into understanding emotional eating very deeply, and then from that place know how to move away from it, was I had to understand what feelings were, and had to recognize that I did experience them.

Not like I really, deeply didn’t think that I experienced them. I just thought that I was extremely even-keel. I just thought, I don’t experience a lot of extremes. I just kind of get things done, I just do my thing. I don’t know about this emotions thing.

But what I came to understand was that what creates our feelings are the thoughts that we have in our brain. And what creates our thoughts … What are actual thoughts? Thoughts are when two neurons in our brains have a synaptic connection. So, right? Synapse fires, and a whole chemical cascade is triggered. And of course it depends on a whole bunch of different factors, but essentially this chemical cascade is triggered. And the result of that thought, those neurons firing together, is a chemical, hormonal experience in your body.

I think that one of the easiest ways to understand this is to think about what it feels like to be nervous. Most people can come to that one. You’re feeling very, very anxious, or really worried about something. I think of it more like nervousness like, I have to go give a big presentation, or I have to go have a hard conversation. That butterfly in the stomach feeling, a hundred percent I can, yes. I know that feeling.

Well, that feeling is created by our thoughts about whatever the thing is that we need to go and do. Right? So we have these thoughts, this chemical cascade is triggered, and it goes across the blood brain barrier, and it goes into our bodies, and it creates sensations in our bodies. And that is what we call a feeling. Okay?

So it’s our thoughts that are creating those feelings or emotions. I use feelings and emotions interchangeably. So it’s our thoughts that are creating those feelings. If that’s the case, we have to figure out what we’re thinking. I literally was like, I don’t know that I have a lot of thoughts. I really think that I just sing songs from the radio in my head all the time. Which just goes to show how long ago this was, because I listened to the radio on a regular basis when I learned this. Who listens to the radio anymore, except maybe NPR? I don’t know. But most people don’t, right? You’re listening to a podcast right now. That’s what most people are doing these days.

But anyway, I just was so disconnected. I was like, I don’t know what I think. I never even, I just had never come across my path of life to even think about what I was thinking about. So I needed to start thinking, okay, what are those thoughts?

Just becoming aware, watching and observing what was going on in my brain. I also, like so many other people, thought that my thoughts were just the facts or the truth. I was just reporting on what I was noticing around me, when in actuality most of those things were not facts. They were just my thoughts, my interpretation.

So our thoughts are our interpretation, our brain’s interpretation of what’s happening around us. And facts are things that everybody would agree upon. Right? So we got everybody in the whole world to come and look at this thing and be like, yes, that is a water a bottle sitting in front of me. Everyone could agree, that is a fact.

But, that person was mean to me is not a fact. It’s really our thought, it’s our interpretation of what has happened. It doesn’t mean that we’re wrong, it doesn’t mean that we should change the way we think about it. We just need to recognize that it is a thought. And that thought will always create an emotion.

When we start to understand that we actually have emotions, we can start to identify some names for those emotions. What do I actually feel? I know I was feeling so much frustration that I just thought was normal. At certain times I felt quite a bit of anger. I had a lot of negative emotions that I did not recognize as being emotions. I just really just was living in this haze or this fog about what was going on for me.

And so what had happened for me, and very likely has happened for you as well, is that you are at a point where you’ve been overeating, or just eating food, or possibly drinking alcohol in order to avoid feeling those emotions for so long that you really are completely disconnected from what you feel.

If you’d asked me, what feeling are you avoiding by eating food? I had literally no idea. No concept at all whatsoever. And the reason for that was, because that thinking cycle, which is that thoughts create your feelings, and then feelings drive your actions, the action of eating and sometimes having alcohol, was quick and fast, and it’s such a well worn path, so habitual, that there was no stopping at the midway point. Right?

It’s like when people are like, do not pass go, do not collect $200, the Monopoly game, that’s what was happening. My brain had an interpretation, which within a split second was driving the desire to eat or to drink something. I just did not know what was in between, and I had to figure that out. That’s exactly what I help my clients to do now.

Now, one of the quickest ways to find out what’s in between what those emotions are, is to decide to take a break from overeating. To take a break from eating for any other reason besides physical hunger in your body.

So when you decide, you know what? I will eat when I actually feel physical hunger and I won’t eat even if my brain suggests it if my body is not experiencing physical hunger, you’ll start to figure out something out, right? Because you think of that thinking cycle, thoughts create feelings, feelings drive actions, right?

If you create a space or a little pause between the feelings and the actions, the actions being the eating or the drinking, you can take a little moment to figure out, what is it that I’m actually feeling?

So a lot of people think, oh my gosh, then I just can never eat for emotional reasons ever again? This sounds terrible. And what I like to do is to say hey, if you could do that, if you can just stop, that’s amazing. If you feel like that’s going to be too difficult for yourself, what you can do is tell yourself, you know what? I can have that snack. I can go grab the ice cream, or whatever it is that you want at night. I can pour myself another glass of wine. But first I need to know what my emotion is. That’s my contract with myself.

Once I identify what my emotion is, then if I still want the thing, I can go and have it. But at least we’re creating some space first. We’re creating some awareness, we’re understanding what’s creating the problem in the first place. We’re understanding what’s driving it.

Now, when you look at the mainstream weight loss industry, what they are focusing on is your actions, right? They are completely unconcerned with what you’re feeling or thinking. So this is why this is what creates permanent weight loss. You have to understand what is happening, thoughts and feelings wise, that’s driving that action. You have to understand, what’s gotten you to where you are right now before you can meaningfully make a change.

And what I mean by meaningful is permanent. Ongoing, you are actually changed. Not just a temporary, different thing that you’re doing for a while, which is what it’s usually like when we’re dieting, only to just go back to old habits again. But to actually change it for good.

So when you understand that your thoughts create your feelings, which then drive your action of overeating or drinking more than you like, or would like to, then you start to understand what is the issue here.

It doesn’t really matter which diet plan you’re on, you know what I mean? It doesn’t matter if you’re counting macros, you’re doing the keto thing, or whatever you’re doing. A hundred million different options that we have for losing weight. That’s a lot less important than understanding why you are driven to take actions that cause weight gain in the first place, or at least don’t promote your body being at its ideal weight and staying there long-term.

Okay? So we have to understand what those emotions are that we’re unwilling to feel. What emotions are we numbing out, are we avoiding? And a lot of the times we figure that out and then we’re like, well, okay. But now what? So I realize that I am really, really mad a lot of the day. Or I realize I’m super frustrated with everybody at work all time, or frustrated with the world, and the current state of affairs, and the situation that we’re all living in, or whatever. So what, I’m just supposed to feel frustrated all the time? Well, there’s two things.

The first is kind of, yes, in the sense that you do need to learn how to feel the frustration or the emotion that you’re experiencing all the way through, rather than trying to avoid it by eating. When you avoid it by eating, you’re effectively just hitting the pause button on it. You’re just saying, hey, not right now, but maybe later.

And when you do that again, and again, and again, and again, you have built up so much emotion that is just waiting to be processed, of course you’re going to eat. You’re going to be like, I don’t even know what I’m going to find. I’m scared to death. This is years and years, possibly, of emotions that are all stuffed down. And I don’t know what to do with any, I’m afraid there’s going to be this volcanic explosion of vitriol or whatever’s going to come out. And so it’s normal to feel that way.

What we have to learn to is recognized you know what? I’m feeling an emotion right now. We have to learn the actual skill of feeling it, which is exactly what I teach my clients, so that you can allow it to move through you. I like to think of emotions as energy. It’s just this energy in your body, and you can dull the energy by eating, but it’s still there. Or you can allow the energy to move through you and out of you, and have it be gone.

And when that’s the case, you don’t need the food or the alcohol to make it go away, or to numb it out. You have allowed it to move through you. Now, the best part about this is that most of the time we find that the process of processing these emotions takes much less time than we think it’s going to.

We’re like, well, yes, if I had hours a day, of course I could process all my emotions. Who has that time, who has that energy? But it really, really isn’t as difficult as you think. And it doesn’t take as much energy or as much time as you think it will.

I see this time, time again. I remember being totally shocked and surprised about it, and my clients so often are as well. They’re like, oh my gosh, wait, that’s all I had to do? And a minute ago I wanted to eat everything, and now I literally don’t care? And it’s just not even something on my radar anymore? Whoa. That’s really powerful. And it is really powerful.

Now, when you get to a place where you’re like, you know what? Okay, yeah, I can process this, but you know what? Maybe I just like to not feel so frustrated at work every day. Because you know what? I’m the one who’s feeling the frustration. And I would like to not feel that so much.

What we often think, and what so many people around us say and the way they think about it is that you just need a different job, right? Or someone needs to be fired, or you need a promotion, or something needs to happen outside of you so that you don’t have those emotions anymore. But remember what creates your emotions? It’s not who’s around you, it’s not who you work with, it’s not the administration, it’s not the setup of the system, it is your thoughts about it.

Now that doesn’t mean that maybe working somewhere else isn’t a better thing for you, it very well may be. But before we jump to that and start blowing our lives up and making all these changes, we have to recognize that it’s our thoughts that are creating that frustration.

So just like your thoughts about your current situation can create frustration, your thoughts in a different situation or a new job can also create that frustration for you as well. So before you start making all those changes, it can be really, really a good idea to understand what your thoughts are that create that frustration.

We call this emotional responsibility. That means owning the fact that your emotions are 100% created by you. That means not blaming your emotions on other people, outside forces, viruses, systems, or any of those things. It doesn’t mean that we don’t think those things should be changed or that we think they’re all great, it just means that we own that we create our emotions, always and every time.

Okay? When you understand that you can look, okay, well, what are the thoughts that create all that frustration? If I didn’t feel so much frustration, I wouldn’t have to process so much. It might be easier for me to not over eat, eat, right?

So then we can start going, hey, you know what? This is one way of interpreting the situation. Is there another way that also feels true and believable to me that makes me feel less frustrated, or a different emotion than I would prefer to feel? And can I correct my brain, right? Because we can really develop this negative filter, where we’re just interpreting everything through the lens of, how is this not working out? How is this happening against me? How is this a problem for me? How is this not right? And then that’s all we see.

So what we can do is we can change our filter, essentially. Thinking about different things, deciding to interpret things in a different way. You might be hearing my dog barking right now. And if that’s the case, then I apologize. I know my microphone’s pretty good, so I’m going to hope that you’re not hearing it, but he’s pretty loud right now. So we’ll see.

So we have to own and understand our thoughts, create our feelings. We decide and choose how we think. And we are creating those emotions. Again, this is not a blame thing. This is not saying that there aren’t systems of oppression in the world. We’re not saying any of that. We’re just saying, you know what? There are facts right now, and then there’s the interpretation that my brain offers on those things, and that I have control over. Okay?

So understanding the thoughts and the feelings is where your major focus needs to be so that eating the way you want to eat, that supports your body, and promotes weight loss, and promotes weight loss maintenance, is so much easier. So much easier, right?

If you are in a place where feeling a negative emotion equates eating food or drinking alcohol, you’ve created this connection that is adaptive, or has been adaptive, but now you understand is maladaptive. So what you want to do then is essentially divorce those two things from one another. There’s eating food and drinking alcohol, and then as a separate thing, there are your emotions.

And so when you’re experiencing emotions, you process those, you take good care of yourself. You look at the thoughts when you’re ready, you decide if you want to change them. Sometimes we want to, sometimes we don’t. And then sometimes our bodies need fuel, and we eat then, and then on occasion we have some food for pleasure. And maybe alcohol for pleasure. A little bit of pleasure, mostly for fuel. Which is two separate things.

And honestly, this is how naturally thin people approach food. They’re not asking food to solve an emotional problem for them, and that’s why it’s easy for them to just leave the food. It really is just not an issue for them. Now, they may have issues with something else, right? But when it comes to food and their emotions, that connection does not exist. So the good news is that we can identify that connection, and we can create a separation. We can burn that bridge and understand that these are two separate issues.

Through habit, possibly in your childhood you learned to do this, through some adaptive process you figured out, hey, you know what? It actually really helps me if I eat or maybe drink alcohol when I’m feeling this way. And in the short term, it probably did. The issue is that it’s now creating a problem that’s more longer-term. And if you’ve tried to stop doing that and you have a hard time, this is that work that we need to do.

So that’s emotional eating. Emotional eating is eating for any reason other than feel for your body. And the good news is that this is totally something that can be remedied. You can learn how to stop doing this. And I’m telling you what. If I can learn to do it, I promise you, you can as well. Okay? I’m going to give you more tips, more tools on exactly how to do this at my free training, Get Off The Weight Loss Hamster Wheel. That’s February 24th, Thursday at 8:30 PM Eastern time, 5:30 PM Pacific. So be sure to sign up for that, register for that, so that you can come and join me. I can give you even more details on how to stop emotional eating.

So to register, go to katrinaubellmd.com/loseweight. L-O-S-E W-E-I-G-H-T. And we are going to do it. I’m telling you, if you’ve been waiting for a sign, this is your sign. Okay? This is the information you need to understand. I don’t care how you lose weight, it literally doesn’t matter to me. You need to understand this information. Okay? And you need to know how to apply it to your life.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Back To Basic series. If you would like some additional basics information, you can just Google search back to basic series, Weight Loss For Busy Physicians, or Katrina Ubell podcast, that comes up too. That works as well. This is really just those first episodes that you should be listening to, to get yourself started, get yourself going.

All right. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Have a lovely rest of your week. And hopefully I’ll see you Thursday night, February 24th, take care. Bye-bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #266: [Back to Basics Series] Emotional Eating appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

Why Weight? A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating

Feeding the Hungry Heart: The Experience of Compulsive Eating

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Let’s talk aging! It’s something that none of us can hide from, no matter how much we spend on anti-aging products – so instead of running from it, let’s flip the script. Today we’re talking all about redefining what it means to age and embracing the changes that getting older (and wiser) brings.

In this episode, I’m bringing back Em Wong, one of my past Weight Loss For Doctors Only success stories who is now a coach and resident expert in aging. Listen in as we dive into how our basal metabolic rate changes and what that means for weight loss, why what we think we know about metabolism is probably wrong, and why it’s just as important to talk about menopause and perimenopause as it is to talk about menstruation.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP265.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * Em’s background in medicine and her interest in aging * the limiting beliefs women tend to have around aging and their bodies * the factors that contribute to weight gain as we age * the importance of talking about menopause and perimenopause * how to redefine what it means to age

Featured In This Episode * What We Think We Know About Metabolism May Be Wrong –The New York Times * How To Lose Weight Permanently * Ep #208: Weight Loss Success Story: Emily Wong, MD * Ep #260: Cycle Struggles * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Share The Love: * + Help improve the show by leaving a Rating & Review in iTunes (Here’s How) + Join the discussion for this episode in the comments section below

Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 265.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there, my friend. How are you today? I’m so glad you’re here with me today. Whether you’re new or a returning listener. I’m so glad you’re here. This is a really, really fun interview that I’ve got today that I can’t wait to tell you more about. But before we get into that, I just want to let you know that I have some really awesome free resources available on my website. The one I wanted to spotlight today is the digital book that I wrote called How to Lose Weight Permanently. And when I say digital book, it sounds like oh my gosh, this is going to be hundreds of pages. No. It’s a nice, short, sweet, easy read that gives you some really, really important information you’re definitely going to want to have. Especially if you are thinking about trying to lose weight or actively trying to lose weight right now. Because of course doing it in a way that’s permanent is the most important part.

So I want to offer to you to download that for free, just by going to katrinaubellmd.com/ebook. E-B-O-O-K. You can download that and it’ll just get you started with some really, really important information.

Also, I just wanted to let any of my clients who are eligible for joining us in the Masters of VIP Program, which are the continuations programs from the Weight Loss for Doctors Only coaching program that I do. We are going to be opening up enrollment on February 17th and we’ll be going for about a week. So make sure if you are eligible for that and you’re eligible if you’ve been a member of the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program, that you check your email for that, because we would love to have you join us. We’ve got some really, really great, just awesome updates and some just really exciting things going on with the Masters and VIP program. So can’t wait for you to know about that too.

And if you’re currently in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program, you’ll hear about that soon. And if you are not, then what are you doing? You should come into Weight Loss for Doctors Only so that you can join us, because it’s so great.

So today, I brought back a guest that I had on the podcast a little over a year ago. Her name is Emily Wong. We know her as M. She was actually in episode 208. I looked it up. So in case you want to go and listen to more of Em, if you can’t get enough of Em and you want more, then that’s how you can listen to the other episode that I did with her back then. She was one of the weight loss success stories, because she did go through the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program and has continued on as well. Just a great asset to our community. Then she became a life coach, and now she is one of the coaches in our program who we just super love, and our clients love her as well.

But one thing that she has a specific interest in is aging. And I have an interest in that as well, just because I’m aging and so are you, believe it or not. So I just thought it would be really fun to bring her on to discuss aging. Because first of all, I haven’t really talked about it too much on this podcast. But, there was something that happened that I’ll actually allude to a little little bit in the episode in the interview, but I wanted to give you more of the specifics here.

There’s actually an article in the New York Times that I read. I’m just looking at it now. And it looks it was published back in August of 2021. And it really kind of blew my mind. The title of it is What We Think We Know About Metabolism May Be Wrong. A new study challenges assumptions about energy expenditure by people, including the idea that metabolism slows at middle age. It basically talks about an article that was published in the Journal of Science. And I won’t go into all the details. If you’re interested, you can find that article, and the paper is linked right in the second paragraph. So you can find that really easily. But it just made me immediately think of Em because she is just an amazing human being as you’re going to find out. And also, well she’ll tell you more about herself, but she’s trained in integrated medicine. She has kind of an interest and focus on aging.

So I thought wouldn’t it be fun rather than me just riffing on this to have her come on and we can talk about it together? So she definitely knows way more about it than I do. It was just a fun conversation just discussing what happens when our bodies age, but also most importantly, our thoughts and beliefs about all of that and how that is one of the most important things for us to be looking at.

But what this article really brought to light for me is we should always be questioning even conventional wisdom. We should be just rethinking things and just deciding if it serves us. So many of us think that our metabolisms slow down when we get older. And then basically, this article tells us that that’s not the case. And so with Em, we discuss why it’s much more likely the reason why that happens and things that we can do about that. But I just think it’s always so interesting when there’s something that we think is just the way, and then it turns out that it’s just not the way, or it’s just not actually how it is.

And I think it’s just another reminder to not take everything at face value and to not believe everything you think. Okay? Or not believe what everybody else thinks always either to really take some time to believe on purpose and to think on purpose. Particularly, to create results that really work for you. All right. Well, I can’t wait for you to listen to my conversation with Em. I had to get up early. She stayed up late. She’s in Hong Kong. So I just appreciate her taking the time to have this conversation with me. Please enjoy my conversation with Emily Wong.

Hi Em, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast.

Em Wong: Thank you.

Katrina Ubell: So glad to have you here. So you are kind of our resident expert in aging, all things aging.

Em Wong: Oh gosh.

Katrina Ubell: And thoughts about aging. So this is just a topic that I think is really interesting, probably just as I’m aging myself. And I know it’s a concern for so many of our clients. It’s something that I think about a lot. And I just knew that having you be kind of a co-presenter or not even presenter necessarily, but just having conversation with you would makes so much sense. Because you know way more about this stuff than I do. So I’m so excited that you’re here, so we can talk about all of this stuff. So just remind everybody what your background is, because you are a doctor yourself.

Em Wong: Yeah. Yeah. So I am trained as a general internist. And I sub-specialize in women’s health as well as integrative medicine. Yeah. So I’ve been working with you now on your team for almost a year. And it’s been amazing. So I live in Hong Kong. I have a practice here. Yeah. So I do some brain health coaching on my own.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Awesome. So it’s kind of more an interest, aging for you in your practice too, right? It’s not necessarily all you do, but really looking at it through a lens of health aging, which is probably a big part of-

Em Wong: Yeah. I mean it sort of naturally kind of comes with the territory. Because when you’re doing brain health coaching and for me specifically working with caregivers and dementia prevention, you’re clearly working with an older population from the get go. Those are the people who are going to be interested in the kind of work that I do.

Katrina Ubell: So good. So one of the things that I think is so interesting about aging is just like anything else, there’s all kinds of beliefs that we have that we pick up along the way that are almost never intentional. Like generally speaking, we are not deciding on purpose, I’m going to think about aging in this way. It just kind of happens. And it can be from anywhere from when you’re a small child, maybe people who were older saying things about themselves. I mean, even my own dad has said things like, “Getting old isn’t for sissies. Things like that. Kind of this idea that it is so hard. And I don’t want to take away, there are challenges for sure. But also societally, there’s such a messaging system that getting older … now, and this is in, obviously different cultures are different.

I’m kind of talking more of the more specific North American kind of messaging, because obviously there’s parts of the world where aging is totally revered, and elders are massively respected, and it’s totally different. But where I am and where you live for a long time, really the messaging is do everything you can to sort of avoid aging in terms of your appearance, but also just this kind of idea that at a certain point particularly for women, you no longer are desirable, important, valuable. I’ve read articles of women saying, “At a certain point, I just feel like people literally don’t even see me. They do not even notice that I exist.”

So of course when you’re living in that kind of societal soup so to speak, it’s going to inform what you believe is possible for you as a person. So where this comes up in terms of weight loss and particularly permanent weight loss that we see all the time is women who are let’s say maybe 50 or maybe even kind of around the menopausal period, whenever that is. Late forties or fifties and older, having these deeply held beliefs that it’s not possible for them to lose weight. And then because we work with doctors, they often have data to back it.

So one of the things I think is so powerful is just questioning what you think is true. And deciding again, if you want to keep believing that or if you want to believe something different. I think this is particularly difficult when pretty much everybody around you agrees with you, right? So your friends or your peers, people who are in that same age group are thinking similarly. So it really does take some concerted, not even necessarily effort, but a decision to kind of question it and decide a thing in a different way. So I would love to just hear your take on all of that.

Em Wong: Sure. Yeah. It’s interesting because when you had me on before, I talked a little bit about how I’d grown up believing that I was always going to be overweight because in my family, right, we have a bunch of people are overweight. So I was like it’s just in the genes. Right? So it’s the same kind of belief. And I think that my personal experience, and I’m sure other people can relate to this is that I sort of felt like I got to this age. I don’t know, I had my kids my late twenties into thirties. And then I felt somewhere around sort of 35, I started putting on maybe half a pound to a pound every year. And then it sort of crept up all the way up kind of around 40. And I remember thinking, “This can’t go on.” So then I got into this big fitness boom, where I was like, “Okay, I’m doing triathlons and I’m doing half marathons,” and stuff like that. And trying to basically outrun my diet. Yeah.

So I think that a lot of people kind of have that experience. And when you look around you at your peer group, a lot of times I worked at a women’s clinic at the University of Washington. And I just saw the nurses, the MAs, the other doctors, they would almost all also be sort of putting on a little bit more weight each year. And I was just like this is just inevitable. It’s just what happens to people. And I have to say that I actually was out of vanity, was kind of like, “Well, do I dye my hair? Do I do Botox? What am I going to do to make myself look younger?”

And what I actually ended up deciding is that the one thing that I could do to make myself not only look younger but feel younger is actually just to take care of myself, and lose some weight, and get to eating a little bit more healthy, sleeping more, exercising more, and really coming back to those basics. And all of that happened around the same time as I was doing this integrated medicine fellowship at University of Washington. And I think that just a lot of the basic principles that he teaches around sort of taking care of ourselves is much more sort of the very basic what do we do for ourselves? Nothing with fancy supplements, nothing with whatever. It’s just basically what can we do for ourselves with our self-care?

Katrina Ubell: What I love about that is that the foundation of that is that our bodies know what to do if we just support them in doing that. Right? Our bodies can be very, very healthy and function at an optimal level. It’s like a less is more kind of a thing. You know what I mean? Because I think there is in so many areas, this big push to do a gazillion different supplements. And before we start recording, we’re talking about you can drink these disgusting ketones drinks. All these different things that in theory, are supposed to create some sort of improvement. It’s kind of, what brings to mind is my kids do ski racing. And you can buy those fancy suits that are basically skin tight and have a little padding so that they’re not in their big, bulky snow pants and stuff.

So we kind of always joke once we’re talking about fractions of a second in terms of what your place is and the race, then it’s probably worth it to invest in that. But up until that point, your snow pants are not slowing you down to justify the cause.

It’s like if you are someone who has already optimized everything and then you’re still interested in something else, yeah, maybe that is a great next step for you. But for the majority of people, it’s not really going to be making a measurable difference. And, it’s really the same thing as with weight loss how it’s like if you could just take a pill and lose weight, would you do it, right? We’re like yeah. Because we often don’t really want to do the work of examining our thoughts or actually doing meaningful lifestyle changes like getting the sleep that we need and meditating.

Em Wong: Looking for that fast kind of fix, or the hack, or whatever.

Katrina Ubell: Exactly, exactly. Just working with your patients, just people you interact with in general, and working with our clients, I’m just curious what you see for women let’s say 50 and up. What you find are some of the more common limiting beliefs that they have about, particularly around aging, but more specifically even their bodies and what’s possible for them.

Em Wong: Yeah. I think that a lot of what I see is people want to blame something. Right? So it’s kind of like I’ve tried everything, and nothing works, and it must be because of menopause. It’s a hormonal thing. Right? Or it must be because I have reached this certain age, and then my metabolic rate is somehow slowed down. I think that people also tend to believe that their genes kick in. My whatever family member is like this. So this is just the way it’s going to be.

So I think that for me, the sad part about it is that that kind of belief sort of ultimately tracks back to it’s my body that’s broken. Something’s wrong with me. So it’s almost like however much you may have dealt with issues of not loving yourself when you were younger, you only get to hate yourself more the older you get. And I feel like that is a lot of what I work with in terms of really trying to address this issue.

Katrina Ubell: So it’s almost like you give yourself more reasons to reject yourself.

Em Wong: Yes, yes. Yeah.

Katrina Ubell: Which is interesting too. Because for those of us who struggled with that kind of thing, it’s not like when we were 20, we were like, “I look awesome,” right. We just had different problems. We had acne that we didn’t like, or whatever it was that we thought was wrong. And then we just swap it out for different ways to self-love essentially.

Em Wong: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Katrina Ubell: I feel like this is the case. I feel like it’s such a disempowered, I mean anytime we’re blaming anybody, we’re giving away our power. But it’s just like well, there’s nothing you can do to stop the passage of time and your body getting older. So there very much can be this just sort of giving up energy around it. Just like, “I mean, I guess I can sort of try. But who are we kidding?” It’s not going to-

Em Wong: Yeah. Yeah. And I want to say that because there are so many societal messages around ageism, like youth is the best time of your life. And your life goes downhill after whatever 35 or some age like that and some arbitrary number. And I do think that our brains have a way of using that against ourselves. And I think that you just have to kind of wake up to I want to say this messaging, this marketing messaging that is just like why do we have to assume that everything is just downhill and degenerating after a certain age? Right? That’s really actually not even true. Because you probably know and I probably know people, I mean I do know people. They’re feeling better now in their sixties then they ever were in their forties. They’re taking better care of themselves. They’re at a better level in terms of energy, in terms of their weight. Everything, because they shifted their focus. Right? And they’re not as stressed out as before, and they’re really sort of making an effort in that direction. So I just think that there’s a societal narrative that it’s really easy to buy into that you don’t have to.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Right. And I think the first step is recognizing that there is a societal narrative, you know what I mean? That this isn’t just the truth or just the way it is.

So one thing that really brought this up for me was that article, this was several months ago. Maybe in the intro, I’ll look it up and give the actual citation so that anybody listening can look it up if they want to. But I saw it in the New York Times basically. And I think the article was published in the Journal of Science, I think.

And basically saying that we have this so many people talk about this. This is just absolute fact that your metabolism slows as you age. And this study basically showed that between the ages of 20 and 60, it really doesn’t. So essentially, any weight gain that you may be having just isn’t because of your metabolism. And I was just like, “See, now that is just the perfect example.” See, now that blew my mind. I know it didn’t blow your mind as much as it did mine because you already were in a place of questioning now. But people are so committed to this belief that it’s your metabolism is the problem. And that if you’re a woman, you’re kind of screwed because your metabolism isn’t on par or whatever with what men experience. And that hormonal changes like menopause is a major cause of it. And of course, there are so many hormonal influences that I personally of course definitely don’t, I’m not an expert in that. But I think there’s just a lot that’s still not understood.

So not to just say that there’s nothing that’s causing it, but it’s just such a paradigm shift. It’s such a reminder to just question whatever the conventional wisdom, it is not necessarily true. And you can question that even without data to support it. You can just decide you know what, that actually isn’t a problem for me. And what I think when you get into that different mindset, you’re thinking differently. You’re getting into a place where you’re just more focused on creating results, creating what you want in the future, rather than resigning yourself to accepting whatever terrible result or undesirable result may be there.

Em Wong: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I will say that in that particular article, they put a lot of emphasis on this thing we call the basal metabolic rate, which is kind of the amount of energy that your body burns, just your organs kind of just to keep itself functioning. And there are other factors that as we get older … and I would say probably the biggest factor that I think of that contributes to weight gain is actually that we lose a little bit of lean muscle mass every year. So about half a pound of lean muscle mass every year after the age of 40. So what happens there is that that half pound doesn’t just disappear from your body. That half pound actually just becomes adipose tissue, right? Which is fatty tissue. And that fatty tissue not only is three times the volume for the same amount of weight as lean muscle mass, but it is metabolically less active.

So in the study they actually corrected for lean muscle mass, meaning that if you had more or less lean muscle mass, they didn’t factor that into the basal metabolic rate because that’s not considered basal. So I think that what I try to encourage people to think about as they’re aging is that you are losing that lean muscle mass. So the only way for you to really prevent that loss is actually to lift weights, right? To actually proactively be doing that resistance exercise and building back that muscle mass so that you’re sort of staying toned, and you don’t have to be a weight lifter or anything. But it is a very important part of maintaining your strength as well as your sort all the things. Agility, flexibility, all of that. Yeah. As well as weight.

Katrina Ubell: Just curious what your thoughts are about that half pound of lean muscle mass loss. Do we know that that just happens regardless for adults as they age, or is that also a situation of for many people as they get older, they just aren’t as physically active? Even if it’s just I’m just not running around after small children anymore or even carrying small children anymore. And they’re heavy, you know what I mean? And that’s your strength training right there for a lot of people. Is it more situational, or is it-

Em Wong: I think it’s, yeah. I mean, I don’t know the answer to your question, because I haven’t looked at those studies in detail. But my understanding is it actually is a lot hormonal. And when I say hormonal, I’m not talking … I mean, there is some like loss of testosterone for both men and women as we get older. And that’s a big builder of lean muscle mass and growth hormone as well. So human growth hormone also declines. But I would say that there definitely is a component of the activity as well. Because the point is that you don’t have to lose that muscle mass. You can proactively sort of maintain it.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is why it’s so important to find a way of moving your body that you enjoy. Right? Because to think, “Well for the rest of my life, I have to do this thing that I hate.” Who’s like, “Sign me up. Me, me, me. I can’t wait for that”? You have to find some way of moving your body that’s enjoyable. It can be gardening. It doesn’t have to be actually lifting weights in a gym that smells like gross people or something like that.

Em Wong: And I also think about that too. In the old days when we were thinking about the sort of diet mentality, calories in, calories out, right? You would always go for the cardio exercise because that burned more calories than lifting weights. Right? Or doing any kind of resistance exercise. But our metabolism is so much more complicated than that. Right? And there’s all these hormones and all these other factors going on. So really, what we’re finding is that the lean muscle mass is actually equally if not as important as cardiovascular exercise. So don’t just simplify it too, like the calorie count. Because that’s just a tiny bit of the equation. Yeah.

Katrina Ubell: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I feel like that message is trying to get through about the strength training. I’ve sort of noticed it. There’s been more of a push just in various areas where I notice people kind of mentioning it. It’s just coming up more for people, which I think is great and also can hopefully help to prevent injuries and things like that, which is another reason why people become sedentary.

So much of this idea, it just ties in in so many areas. Because as you know and as I’ve talked about on this podcast before, I’ve done a lot of personal work on chronic pain. And just this belief, whatever XYZ thing’s wrong with your body and you’re going to experience pain from that forever. You can question that and aside that’s not actually … pain or even other symptoms. I mean for me, a big part of it was ongoing heartburn.

So just questioning the idea that even if you do have that injury from whatever when you ran track in high school or something like that, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are destined to have this … that you won’t be able to do things that you really enjoy doing.

Em Wong: Right. Right. Yeah. I think that the way that we sort of pick up beliefs is just so subtle. And I sort of even think of like it’s not even the programming in your brain that’s the computer, right? It’s not even the software. It’s the operating system. Right? It’s kind of like you don’t even realize it’s there. But when I think about aging, and weight gain, and all of that, I get so much of that messaging from my mom, and my aunties, and all these women that I’ve grown up with. Right? And a lot of their idea of what it means to age. Right? And I think that we have an opportunity in our generation here to really redefine what that means, what it’s going to look like.

Katrina Ubell: And I think a big part of that is deciding to become a part of the solution in the sense that you do your own work to clean up your own thinking and decide to believe different things for yourself. And then you share that with other people as well. You don’t allow yourself to get caught up in those conversations about poor us. And isn’t it so awful? Not like you’d necessarily be this big evangelist trying to change everybody else’s beliefs, but being an example to other people that you don’t have to view it in this way that most people look at it.

Because I just think too, in my mind I’m like look, it’s hard enough to lose weight. We don’t need to also then believe that this thing that we have no control over, i.e. how old we are, is sort of like that ball tied to our ankle that’s making it that much slower and harder. We could just decide. That’s really not an issue and drop it, and just move forward. But I think it’s like we have to change the whole narrative around it.

One of my very good friends is 10 years older than me. And she’s a great example for me. She just does not literally ever, ever say anything negative about age. And I think if possible, it’s great to have someone like that in your life. And if not, you can become that person for yourself and for others. And then of course, so many things, all of our belief systems that we’re passing down to younger generations, we can have that influence in that way.

I kind of think of it too as there’s so much support for young people as they go through puberty. And I actually just read an article recently about why is there not more information for women about perimenopause and menopause? And I’ve been so flabbergasted at the lack of support and explanation. And even when I’ve asked what about this? It’s just perimenopause. It’s almost this waist basket diagnosis. I don’t know what you’ve got. But whatever it is, it’s probably because your hormones. So it’s like immediately go and blame the hormones, blame the body. It’s just not a great place. I find that I feel disempowered. I’m just stuck like there’s nothing that can be done. And that is not a great place.

Em Wong: Well, it’s interesting. Right? Because I’m trying to remember, it was a podcast you did not long ago where you were talking about cycles and how the whole menstrual cycle is something we don’t talk about. It’s sort of like somehow, low grade shameful in some way.

Katrina Ubell: Or even high grade shame for some people.

Em Wong: Yeah, yeah. And I feel like menopause is even worse. If it’s bad to talk about your period, it’s way worse to talk about menopause. Because all the memes out there, all the societal messaging is menopause is a bitch. And your wife is going to become a whatever, crazy person when she goes through menopause. And you’re going to have horrible hot flashes and never sleep. And all these things.

And I’ve been a women’s health specialist for 30 years now. And I can tell you that walking people through the perimenopause and menopause conversation is equally as important, if not more important than taking a young woman through her first pap smear or a young girl through her first, “This is how a pelvic exam works. This is how we’re going to do it. You can tell me to stop at any point.”

Making it safe for them is such an important right of passage. And I think that we as women really go through these life stages, right? We have a certain point in our life when we’re childbearing, and then we have a certain point in our life when we’re not. And it’s actually something to celebrate when you go through that phase of life. And it’s sort of like I’ve done my time in this stage. And now it’s time to move on. And I look forward to the next stage when I’m going to be free of hormonal swings all over the place, and have this freedom from whatever other burdens I was carrying in this earlier stage. So yeah.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s not going to be me. But I would love to see there just being more support. And it seems to me like the foundation is being laid for that to happen. Like apparently, there’s going to be some books to be published very soon and things like that. Not like there haven’t been books in the past, but it just has felt like there’s this dearth of information and support.

Em Wong: Well, it’s been very sciencey oriented. So it’s almost like how I want to say maybe 10 years ago, we would talk about sex in a certain way that was very sort of almost clinical. Right? And then, there wasn’t so much of the experiential piece of it. And now it’s getting to be a little bit more, people are maybe willing to be more vulnerable or sharing more from a vulnerable place, like their personal experience. And I feel like that is the kind of I guess support that is really more meaningful.

Katrina Ubell: And learning to celebrate it like you said. It’s just even like how many girls get their first period and are told by some older woman, “I’m sorry,” or something like that, rather than this is-

Em Wong: Now you have a curse.

Katrina Ubell: Now you have curse. Exactly. This is like a celebration of what your body can do. It really is just again, what is the story you’re going to tell yourself about this experience? And when you’re not intentional about it, you just take on the story of those around you. So it’s just self-perpetuating, right? Just continues on and on from that.

Em Wong: So I’m trained in acupuncture and Chinese medicine. And the messaging that we get around the menopause time is that that is when your body, the yin part of your body is weaker and there’s going to be vulnerabilities that show up in your body. So that is actually a time when you need to be extra nurturing, when you need to actually pay more attention and potentially try and rebalance whatever is out of balance in your body. And I think that that’s the kind of I want to say mindfulness and intentionality that I would love to see more people embrace as they go through this perimenopause time.

Because a lot of times, it actually coincides with a lot of other things going on in people’s lives, right? So their kids may be growing up, their parents may be aging. They may be looking at career changes or whatever else is going on in their lives. And I think that to just keep powering through may or may not serve them during that time.

Katrina Ubell: And I think it’s just like what you were saying, what came to mind for me is there may be actual physical imbalances. But I think there can be life imbalances too. There can be priority. I think that as you age, one of the best parts about it for me is understanding yourself better and understanding who you truly are better. And then, learning how to show up in the world in that way. And that may or may not be well received by those around you. But rebalancing that, you’re not who you were 20, 25, 30 years ago. But are you pretending to be still that version of yourself, allowing yourself to grow and then letting things kind of settle out from there?

But I think yeah, you’re 100% right. The demands and challenges are different and can be a lot more depending on what you’re going through. And I was just thinking literally, balancing can be like you know what? I need a rest. I’m not going to run from kids sports game to kids sports game from Friday at 5:00 until Sunday evening at 8:00. I’ve got to put myself on the list of what’s important, and get creative and figure that out. I just think that that’s an overall important message of just looking at things as a whole and deciding how to put yourself back on the list, on the to-do list. Or not even on the to-do list, the list of importance. What are the things you value? And having yourself be at least on the list. If not, relatively high or top.

So I think that this has been a great conversation. So thank you so much for that. I think it brings us back to the idea you’re the expert of your body. Anybody that you follow, or work with, or interact with to help with any of these things is a consultant that you were bringing in. And then you get to decide, does this work for me? Does this make sense? Because there’s so many different ways of approaching this. You can decide, “Yeah okay. I’m going to really look at this differently.” And then it can get super overwhelming when you start looking at, or even just talking to people. Asking friends, crowdsourcing. So many different options, it can be almost paralyzing to know what to do next. But literally, what you can do is maybe move your body. You know what I mean? Maybe do a little strength training, maybe prioritize sleep a little bit more. Do some things that would move the needle for yourself and make a big difference, and kind of build from there, and looking at what your thoughts and beliefs are.

I think that’s one of the things that’s so powerful about coaching is as coaches ourselves, we know because we have experienced it too, where we’re like, “No, but blah, blah, blah.” And then the coach is just like, “That’s not—” and you’re like, “What?” Even as a coach, we’re so in it, we cannot see it. And that’s where coaching can be so helpful.

And we’ve seen so many women come in. I was actually, we were just looking at this, how many of our clients are 50 and over. And it’s almost a quarter. So I think a lot of people think, “This is just for younger people,” or whatever. And it’s not, it makes a really big difference. And I always find it really fun when I’m coaching women who are a little older or more toward the end of their career. It’s so fun to help them to see so much more possibility for themselves just in terms of career or just what they want to do. It’s so easy to just think, “Well, now I’m washed up and I have so little value. Why even dream or think about what we want to do in the future?”

Em Wong: That just breaks my heart when people say that or even think that. Yeah, yeah.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Or I’m near the end, I’m like, “You’re 52. What are you talking about?”

Em Wong: Yeah. It’s taken me so much coaching to actually be able to say, “I’m 55 years old. I’m postmenopausal. I don’t have any shame about that.” And I want to say that the last 40 years of my life, I feel like it has been kind of like, “What’s my age?” Ha ha ha. Let’s not talk about that.”

Katrina Ubell: Right. It’s like your birthday. 29 again and then 39 again. Right. Right, yeah. Just accepting it is, it just is, yeah. I guess the first thing would be looking at it from a neutral perspective, right? If you’ve had this negative of a viewpoint, can we get to a place where it just is? It’s not good or bad, it just is. And then deciding if we want to put a positive spin on it. Just to share something that I have decided just from a little bit of traveling that I’ve done in foreign countries is you can tell just by looking at older women, that the priorities can be different. And seeing how beautiful these women are and kind of deciding for myself as I always say, I reserve the right to change my mind.

But right now, it seems like almost a cool challenge. I’m going to see if I can do that. Still obviously take amazing care of myself, and also allow myself to look my age. You know what I mean? And without shame. This is an amazing thing. What a gift to be able to lit that long rather than this burden where we’re just sitting around waiting for the end, I guess. Whatever it is.

Em Wong: Yeah. And you can tell. You can tell people who have decided that they have totally bought into that narrative. And then you can tell people who haven’t. And people who haven’t, we say, “Oh wow, those people are so extraordinary.” But really, you can be one of those people. Right?

Katrina Ubell: Totally. Right. And really, what it always comes down to is the way you think about it. That’s going to be the root of everything. So it’s like no matter what actions you want to be taking or how you want to be showing up, it’s got to come from your thoughts and your beliefs, which is yeah. And just even recognizing that we can change those I think makes a really, really big different.

Em Wong: Yeah. Just having that awareness. Yeah.

Katrina Ubell: Amazing. Amazing. Well Em, thank you so much for coming on and talking aging with me.

Em Wong: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Katrina Ubell: I’m just going to age super gracefully.

Em Wong: Absolutely. I don’t think it’s just even gracefully. I think that aging is awesome, and I absolutely look forward to … I always tell people my grandmother is 102.

Katrina Ubell: Is she really?

Em Wong: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m 55. So I’m like, “I have a pretty good chance of living to at least 102, if not 110.” So really, I’m just halfway there.

Katrina Ubell: Right. So much more time. And if you think about it, right, it’s like you could spend 30, 40 years of that time just sitting around, waiting to die. If you weren’t thinking about it differently. Right?

Em Wong: Absolutely. Yeah.

Katrina Ubell: Just kind of sitting around.

Em Wong: Well, I’m determined to basically bring my best energy, my best kind of focus, my best attention, my best creativity. This is my time. Right? My kids are grown. I can do what I really want to do with myself. So yeah.

Katrina Ubell: I love it. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Em Wong: Thank you.

Katrina Ubell: It was a great conversation. Thank you.

Em Wong: Okay. Really appreciate it. My pleasure.

Katrina Ubell: Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #265: Misconceptions About Aging [Coach Spotlight: Em Wong] appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know how much I believe that your thoughts truly matter when it comes to your weight loss journey. That’s why in this episode, I’m talking all about whether it’s possible to experience permanent and sustained weight loss without working on your mindset first.

Listen in as I dive into why I believe anything is possible—except maybe this! I’ll be sharing why I think permanent weight loss is not possible without a change to your thought patterns, why food is not the real enemy of weight gain, and why no matter how hard you try, you can’t escape doing the hard work if you want sustained weight loss results.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * Why you can’t escape the hard work for lasting results. * How thought work plays into weight loss. * Why food is not the real enemy of weight loss. * The importance of looking inward and shifting your mindset.

Featured In This Episode * Get Off The Weight Loss Hamster Wheel * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 264.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there, my friend. How are you today? Welcome to February. Can you believe it? I can’t, except I can today because it’s really, really cold here. You don’t know, I live in Wisconsin and it is cold here. I have my space heater on. Actually have in my attic office, I have an electric fireplace, which I wasn’t quite sure when I’d think of it, but I actually super duper love it because, even though you can tell it’s not a real flame, it does what a real flame does. Like how it kind of, you know, just like you can’t stop looking at it. It’s very peace inducing and very calming. It still does that. And then the heat part is optional, which is really cool. So I can have the fireplace on when it’s warm out and not make the room super hot. So I get to kind of decide if I want the heat on or not, but when it gets this cold, I really do need the extra heat.

So I’ve got that running. I’ve got super cozy socks on. I’m wrapped up in a blanket. I have a wool sweater on and I’m still a wee bit chilly. That’s what we got. It’s a beautiful whole sunny day and I love a cold sunny day in winter. If it’s going to be cold in wintery, I want it to be a clear sunny day. So thank you universe for giving me this day today. I wanted to tell you about something that I’ve gotten into recently that you’re going to laugh about. You probably have already come and gone on this, but it’s new to me and that is Downton Abbey, have you watched this?

Okay, let me tell you my complicated history with Downton Abbey. So when this was a thing, everybody was talking about it’s on PBS and it’s part of Masterpiece Theater or whatever. And I’m like, I don’t think that’s going to be for me. I just right away was like, hmm, I don’t think so. And so I never got into it, never watched it. And people were so excited about it. I have to say one problem that I have historically had when I watch films that are Irish or Scottish or English mostly speakers is I often am not sure what they’ve said. I can sometimes have a hard time understanding. So I now know that close captioning is my friend with this. And that is a really good thing for me to have.

But I think it was when we had one of our kids. I mean my oldest child, sorry, my youngest child is eight years old right now. Maybe it was when she was born. Anyway, it was many, many years ago. Someone in our family, when we had a new baby sent us the DVDs, that shows you how old it is, sent us the DVDs for it thinking, oh you have a new baby. This would be a good thing to get into.

Well, we turn on the first episode. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience where you’re playing it, whether it’s like a DVD or even sometimes it just happens when you’re streaming, where the sound is just slightly off from the actual video. So as people are speaking, the sound is not coming out of their mouth, just the way it really should be. It’s either a little delayed or a little bit ahead. And that was happening with these DVDs. And that is something that I just have zero patience for. I cannot tolerate that. So I’m like 20 minutes into this thing. I’m like, I hate it already. I don’t know what they’re saying. The sound is all off. I was like, nope, this is too slow. I’m not going to get into this. And so I just never did.

And I don’t know what, I honestly don’t know what it is that made me come back to it. But I think I just saw that it was on Netflix and I think I thought, oh, maybe I could just try with some closed captioning. I know people loved it so much. I don’t know why. Maybe I just thought it would be kind of calming. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the vibe I need right now. I don’t know. Anyway, I decided, well, let me just try it again because, I mean, the critical acclaim and just in general people loving this thing, it was just so much like, it’s possible that maybe I could like this and I’m obsessed.

I think I’m halfway through season two and totally, totally loving it. It’s just, yeah. I just love it. And it is kind of nice to have something to watch that is a little bit more, it’s still like very exciting, but it’s just a little bit a more chill vibe. Like I said, just a little bit calmer, very beautiful. And just a change of pace from what I typically do. I often will watch a series or watch a season of a show and then I’ll tell myself, okay, well, before we start the next thing, let’s read the some books. So I kind of try to go back and forth and do some different things. But sometimes I also just need to know, like sometimes even reading feels like more effort than I’m willing to put in or more energy than I really have. And I need something that I can just very passively watch before it’s time to settle down for bed.

So anyway, loving Downton Abbey and so maybe you had similar thoughts to me. Maybe you were just like, hmm, I’m not into it. I don’t know. Maybe you’ll try it based on this recommendation, who knows. And my husband watched it all, I mean, many years ago. And so I’m like, oh my gosh, this is good. He’s like, oh, what part do you want? And he doesn’t even really remember any of it. So I’m telling him all these parts again and he is like, oh wow. Yeah. And so anyway, I’m also learning a lot just from a historical standpoint. I mean, obviously it is fiction, so it’s not like it’s going to be a documentary, but it’s still kind of interesting to learn a little bit more about those times. So anyway, that’s what I got for you, Downton Abbey, it’s on Netflix right now.

Okay. Before we get into the topic at hand today, I do want to invite you to come join me tomorrow for a free training that I’m offering. It’s a new one, it’s called get off the weight loss hamster wheel. And you are definitely going to want to join me. It’s at 8:30 PM Eastern, 5:30 PM Pacific time. And really what it comes down to is when you think about running on a hamster wheel it’s exhausting, it’s unsustainable and it gets you nowhere, right? So much energy expenditure for really nothing. And that is the experience of weight loss for so many of us where we put forth a ton of effort and maybe we do get some results for a little while. And then before we know it, it’s right back to where we started again, maybe even worse than we were doing before. And we just feel like it’s this never ending, just exhaustion that we feel.

And so I want to invite you to come. We’re going to talk about lots of different things, but in particular, as relates to the topic of this podcast, we’re going to be talking about how you’ve been conditioned to emotionally eat and how you can overcome it, like really what needs to happen to overcome it. Ultimately to lose weight and keep it off forever, we need to stop obsessing about food. We need to stop thinking about food so much. We need to stop eating our feelings and then that results in permanent weight loss. And that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you out on this training. So you’re going to leave with some great actionable takeaway items for what to do, regardless of how you decide you want to lose weight. Because honestly that’s not even really the most important part.

So to register, go to KatrinaUbellmd.com/loseweight, which is, has one O, L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T. And then you’ll get the login information to come and join me. I really want to encourage you to come live. Think about your old student days. You know, you probably didn’t get to where you are from skipping class and copying off of other people’s notes, at least not all the time. And so I really want to encourage you to channel that good medical student energy that you had and come and attend this live. It’s kind of like thinking about who is the person that I want to be? Is the person that that future version of myself who doesn’t struggle with her weight, does she come and attend this live so she can get her questions answered and actually engage or not?

Because here’s the deal, and I am as guilty of this as anybody in the world, there are so many times where we really, really do want to watch a replay of something and we have every intention of doing it and then we still don’t. It’s happened to me so many times. Like I wanted the information, then I still didn’t do it. So going live, I just know this, even for myself, it’s something that I really want to do. I have to make sure that I attend live. It’s the only way that I’m really going to get the information and learn what I want to learn. So I want to encourage you to commit to doing the same thing.

So again, to register, go to KatrinaUbellmd.com/loseweight. And we have some fun too. We have a good time. So come and join me.

All right, today, we’re going to talk about whether permanent weight loss is possible without working on your thoughts. And if you look at the mainstream weight loss industry, you would believe that yes, it is possible because they don’t even talk about working on your thoughts or really not in any kind of meaningful way. And so it would be easy to think this thought work piece or this part about like emotions and stuff, do you really have to do this? Is this really required? And I think it’s actually a really good question. I really thought about it long in heart. Is it possible without thought work? And you know, my answer is yes and no. So let’s dig into both parts.

Yes. Is it possible? I say yes, because first of all, I believe that anything is possible, of course. I would say, though, that if somebody really insisted that they completely permanently lost weight, no longer struggle with food or their weight anymore, and they didn’t devote any time or effort or energy into any kind of mindset work or anything like that, and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be for or more organized, it could just be on their own. Then I would venture to guess that probably what ended up happening is that they’ve now just substituted something else to overdo instead of using food.

So they were using food in order to manage their emotions or to deal with stress or anxiety or whatever they had going on. And they decided to no longer do that, but now they’re probably doing something else that has some sort of detrimental effect over the long run. So maybe they’re drinking more than they believe they should. Maybe they’re spending more money than they should. Maybe they are having trouble in their relationships, really struggling and reacting, acting out on people in their lives. Maybe they’re gambling. There’s lots of things that we can do. I mean, even just spending too much time on the internet, more than we’d like to, playing video games. So lots of different things that we can do that can distract us from what our emotional true life is. And so I would say that probably they’re just doing something else if they haven’t actually solved that problem. So is it possible? Yes. But I always look at it like, why would we want to swap one issue for another issue? Why don’t we just solve the issue?

So, because of that, I say, is permanent weight loss possible without thought work? You know, no. Because anyone who loses weight permanently changes their mindset. Whether they realize it or not. And this is something that I find interesting is I actually know a few weight loss coaches who have done this, but one in particular that I’m thinking of, she lost weight on her own and really made some shifts for herself in terms of, she just decided like, I’m going to change this, I’m going to change the way I think about this and really did a lot of work on her own, lost the weight. But then people were coming to her and saying, “Hey, can you help me to have the same results as you?” And what she found is she didn’t know how to help them, because she barely even really knew how she did it herself.

So she had made changes, but she didn’t really have the full insight into how she had done it. And so then she became a coach so that she could learn the actual tools to be able to help others get the results that she had gotten. So somewhat unknowingly to herself, she made those changes, or maybe it was knowingly in the sense that she just kind realized like, okay, when I think about things in this way, I’m overeating, I need to change that.

And so of course learning coaching tools and developing her knowledge has helped her to take it to an even deeper level. But she’s just an example of someone who didn’t go through any kind of formal program, created permanent weight loss for herself yet she still did thought work. She still shifted her mindset. So I do think that if you want that result, if you want to no longer overdo something or overuse something in order to avoid feeling the way you feel, to deal with the negative emotions that you’re experiencing as a human, that changes have to be made. That’s just really what it comes down to. Ultimately personal work is going to be required. And so the important part to understand here is that when it comes to losing weight and really solving the problem forever, it really is not just about what you eat and how you move.

And I think that this is something that just, it was drilled into us for so long, to focus on the food and vilify certain food groups and macronutrients and ways of eating and to focus on essentially blaming us or the problem, right? Like we’re not eating the right things or we’re too lazy or undisciplined, we’re not exercising enough. We need to be exercising more intensely. But we have believed for so long and been told for so long that that is the problem. And of course changing those things is the solution. It makes us think that I think the thought work part is like superfluous. So that’s just extra or that’s for people who really, really struggle. That’s not for everybody. And what I would say though, is all you have to do is look around and look at the trend with which people struggle with their food to understand that that just can’t be the case.

I mean, how come people can be totally managing their food and moving their bodies and still struggling? It’s not the only issue. And so I’ve said this so many times before and I always come back to it because it is just the truth, the food, the weight, the overeating is just the symptom. It is not the actual problem. Okay? So when you think it’s the problem, you go to try to solve the problem. You change the food, you do portion control to help you with overeating, right? You put food into boxes or you compare it to parts of your body or you weigh it and measure it or whatever way you try to control it from an outside source, like someone else, knowing how much you should eat, that will give you some results in the short term. But almost always, it will not give you the results in the long term because it’s not really what the problem is, it is the symptom.

So if the overeating and the weight and the food and the obsession with food and the brain chatter about food is the symptom, then we need to look deeper to figure out what the actual problem is. And this is where the thought work comes in because the actual problem comes down to the way that we think about things, our interpretation, the filter through which our brain sees the world and also our ability, or lack of ability, to deal with our emotions. And I think the emotional component is one of the absolute most important parts. That’s what emotional eating is. That’s exactly what I’m going to be talking to you about on my free training tomorrow, how you’ve been conditioned to emotionally eat. How were you conditioned to do that? You were conditioned to emotionally eat when you were raised in a situation, whether it was your family of origin or society in general, or some other part of your life, to dampen your emotions, to not have a vocabulary around your emotions, to not know that it’s not only normal to have emotions, but safe and healthy. And there’s a way to allow those emotions to be a part of your life without it being a bad thing, right?

Those are the things that we never were taught. And so when you have emotions, because you’re a normal human being, yet the messaging is don’t have those emotions. You will figure out a way to tuck them away or shove them away. Jam them down so you never have to think about them ever again. And the way that so many of us have done that is through eating, right? We figure out that food distracts us food makes us feel better. Food dulls the sensation of the emotions that we’re feeling. And we don’t know how to feel them. No one has taught us how to work through that. We don’t like it. And so therefore we eat.

So it doesn’t matter if you’re counting points or calorie or macros or whatever that is not going to be the solution. The solution comes down to working on yourself, personally. Working on your thinking, understanding that your thoughts are what create your emotions and then working on learning to actually feel your emotions. I feel like whenever I say that, that sounds like so basic or someone might just be like, what do you mean feel your emotions? I mean, that’s how I felt like what does that even mean? Like, do I really have to do that? It felt like such a black hole unknown that it wasn’t even something I was afraid of because I just literally had no idea what it was. Just no idea. And so what we have to do is learn to become in touch with what our feelings are.

Now I’ve shared on this podcast before, besides just eating to avoid feeling my emotions. I also, from a relatively early age, expressed physical complaints as well. So I actually had physical symptoms like pain and other physical physiological problems that were also related to emotions. And this has been just like the most incredible thing to actually understand and connect the dots on. Even just last night, this was coming up, I was having a conversation with somebody. It was about something that was kind of, well, not even kind of stressful for me without a real obvious solution. And it wasn’t long and all of a sudden, both of my wrists had pain in them. And I was like, oh, isn’t that interesting? And I even just verbalized it like, well, both of my wrists are hurting. So I think that this is like letting me know that even the emotions I’m feeling right now, it’s not all of the stress that I’m, that I’m experiencing from having this conversation.

What I’ve now learned to be able to do is recognize like it’s not like something is wrong with my wrists all of a sudden. It’s like, no, I’m experiencing this physical pain because there are emotions that are not being dealt with. Or sometimes I like to think of it as this is just another way that emotions are being expressed. Rather than making it mean that I’m doing something wrong like I’m not processing them properly, I look at it more like this is just something for me to notice and be aware of. This is something that is emotionally difficult for me, and so I want to be aware of that and stay with myself and not avoid it in other ways.

So when you get behind the idea that the overeating and the weight and the food and possibly alcohol for you is really just the symptom and not the problem, then you come back to understanding that, for weight loss to be permanent, thought work and personal work is required. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to dig up your entire childhood and that you’re digging into the past and whatever. And some people are like, I don’t know, this starts to sound pretty woo to me. I don’t know. It’s a little bit out there. And I always think of myself as I’m interested in the woo. I’m a little woo adjacent. I’m not against it. I’m not totally dive into the whole thing, but I’m interested in hearing more. I always think of it as it’s totally available to people if they’re interested in it and it’s not required either. And what I know is that you don’t need any of that in order to lose weight and keep it off permanently.

What you need to recognize is the thinking cycle, which is cognitive behavioral therapy, which is that your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions. So if your actions are overeating, we need to look at what is the feeling and what are the thoughts, right? That’s really what we have to look at. And that is thought work. So my answer to the question of whether permanent weight loss is possible without thought work, I think the answer is no. I think that work really is required. And I’ve seen it time and time again with clients of mine who are like, yeah, I don’t know that I’m going to really do that part. I just want to lose the weight and they do, they lose weight fast. And then they realize, you know what? I’m right back to where I was struggling again. I do think now I have to address what’s really going on for me.

So if you be in struggling with your food, weight, overeating, I just want to encourage you to try a different approach and that approach is going to involve looking within. So I will tell you more about that and all so much more detail about why you have been struggling with your weight and what to do to get it off and keep it off forever on my free training tomorrow. So I do want to encourage you to come and join me tomorrow. 8:30 PM Eastern, 5:30 PM Pacific. And to register, go to KatrinaUbellmd.com/loseweight. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T.

If you have questions about this episode, come and join me live, and you can ask me about them. We can really dig in because I think sometimes just getting to the point of recognizing, I actually have to do something different than just, you know, cutting out certain foods and controlling things and not even dessert anymore or whatever we think is required to lose weight, I actually have to do something else. It’s important that we really get behind that and believe that so that we can take the required next steps forward, whatever that may be. So we can get those results that we want.

As you know, I do not care what you weigh. It’s not important to me at all. But what I do care about is you having freedom around food and feeling peace so that you no longer are beating yourself up about your body and the way you’re eating and taking up so much of your brilliant brain space and energy, thinking about food, thinking about your body and just obsessing about all of it. Everybody deserves peace and freedom from that. And what I can tell you is when you do this work and you find that piece and freedom, the vast majority of the time weight happens to just fall off too, which is kind of fun. So I’d be happy to tell you more about that on that training tomorrow, get off the weight loss hamster wheel. Can’t wait to see you there have a great week and I’ll talk to you very soon. Take care. Bye bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free go to KatrinaUbellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #264: Is Permanent Weight Loss Possible Without Thought Work? appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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So often we look to therapy or self-help books to give us the solutions to things that we’re dissatisfied with in our lives—but what if instead of trying to change what we don’t like, we work with what we’ve got? In this episode, I’m diving into the topic of how to opt in to the life that you have, rather than trying to run from it.

Listen in as I share what it means to opt in to your life, as well as how doing so can make your life so much easier (especially when it comes to weight loss). You’ll learn how opting out of your life actually creates more resistance and friction, and inadvertently sets you up for failure by creating more of the emotions that you don’t want to feel.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP263.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * What it means to opt in to your life. * Why chasing the emotions we want to feel can actually set us back. * Why it pays to opt in to your current life. * How to create change in your life without adding resistance.

Get The Full Episode Transcript

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Share The Love: * + Help improve the show by leaving a Rating & Review in iTunes (Here’s How) + Join the discussion for this episode in the comments section below

Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 263.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there my friends. Welcome to this very special episode of the podcast. You might be thinking 263 episodes, what’s special about that? Well, not that I expect you to be keeping track, but in case you’ve been keeping track, which I’m sure you haven’t, this episode marks five years of this podcast. Five years. That’s a long time, right? I think it’s a long time. And if you do the math, the division, you might be, how does that work out to five years?

When I first released this podcast, I actually started with three episodes. I dropped the first three episodes to start at the end of January, and then we went from there. So it’s always subtract three episodes and kind of go from there. So we are at our fifth anniversary. It’s very, very exciting to me. I mean, when I first started, if you told me I was going to do it for five years, I would’ve felt so overwhelmed. And I’m sure I would think that I would run out of things to talk about, but apparently I haven’t.

So that’s really fun. And I have, still have ideas for days and days and weeks and months and years. So much still to talk about. So very, very excited to share that all with you today. But anyway, you can celebrate with me in five years of consistent every single week publishing an episode. I have not missed a single week. And if I had missed one, that would’ve been okay too, but I haven’t. So I’m just going to celebrate myself and that. Very, very awesome. I hope that you are doing okay wherever you are in the world. I know it’s been a time that’s been pretty challenging for a lot of doctors, especially.

I know a lot more people have been getting sick with COVID and hopefully they haven’t been, especially doctors, haven’t been feeling as sick as some people did when they got sick with it earlier in the pandemic. But I know it’s still never fun to be sick and it’s still just a lot of shortages and it’s just a stressful time. And so I just want to send out my love and support to you and just also my gratitude for being out there and doing it.

And it’s something we’ve been coaching on a lot in our programs and weight loss for doctors only, and in our continuation programs as well. And it’s just something that is really… is something that really mindset shifts make a big difference for. It doesn’t mean that you’re walking in there going, “This doesn’t bother me at all, and I don’t care at all that half of my co-workers are home on quarantine.” But it’s learning how to process the difficulty of it and then not resisting it and making it worse and more uncomfortable than it really has to be.

And it’s been just truly my privilege to be able to guide and lead and coach so many doctors through this. So I just want to thank you for showing up here, especially thank all of my clients who just keep showing up and asking for help and never thinking they shouldn’t need help anymore. We all have a human brain and guess what? Human brains do what human brains do. And that’s why I still get coached, and we just need help to get through this. We need each other. And so there’s lots of ways that we do that. One way is through this podcast, and so I’m glad you’re here and glad that you’re listening.

On a lighter note, I feel like I haven’t shared with you anything fun or interesting recently, but something that I got for Christmas, that of course I bought myself for Christmas, but I did open it as a gift that I’m super duper loving that I thought about for a while then finally just bit the bullet and did it that I’m loving are certain kind of slipper slash sandals. So I would not wear these outside of the home because that’s just my personal preference. Not saying that you can’t wear these outside of the home, but Birkenstock makes some sandals now that have a shearling lining.

So it’s fleecy. And I’ve sometimes struggled. I find Birkenstock sandals to be very, very comfortable, and I like how my feet feel when I’m wearing them around the house. We definitely are a shoes off family, but we like wearing sort of slippers or inside shoes in our home. Just keeping things a little cleaner. And we have hard floors, so it’s just a little bit more comfortable on our feet. And what I’ve noticed over the years is that I, if I wear my regular, I Birk’s with socks, sometimes I don’t like how that feels or the straps don’t feel quite right or it’s kind of stretched them out.

So then when I try to wear them barefoot, that doesn’t work anymore. And then I have some great actual warm slippers as well, but sometimes my feet get hot and then they’re real sweaty and that’s not so nice either. And I thought, I wonder if this is a nice little combo deal because you’ve got the snuggles, but there’s still some open air. So it’s nice and warm, but also your feet are getting a little air and they are great. And I super love them so much that I actually took them even on vacation with me for a week.

I was, I’m not leaving these at home. They’re amazing. So I just have the, I don’t know if they have them in any other style besides the Arizona style, which is just the traditional two strap kind of style, but I just found them super comfy. I’m wearing them right now. And my feet are very toasty and happy. I also just want to say one other thing because we’re friends and we talk about things, right? Just in case you feel like it’s only you.

So the deal with Birkenstocks is that they have kind of a… And I think they actually call it narrow, a narrow fit and a regular. But the narrow, they say fits almost all women’s feet in terms of width. And I have tried on several occasions to try those ones that are more narrow and it just never works out for me. I think just the width of my foot is just slightly too wide. And over the course of time, I was thinking, I’ll break them in, it’ll be fine. I’m just going to work through it this time. And eventually, it just makes my foot sore.

And that totally goes against the whole purpose of wearing these shoes in the first place. Actually, just recently sold online another pair that I had tried that I thought was so cute. So part of the problem, my complaint with Birkenstock is that many of the really cute styles that they make, they only make in the narrow width. And the regular width is what they have a lot of, like the men’s styles in. And they have some that they kind of gear more towards women, but not even remotely as close as many. And so anyway I, as much as I was these ones are cute, those ones are cute, I just know now, if they’re in the narrow width, it just isn’t going to work.

So oftentimes, regular stores do not carry the wider ones. So the way that I found the ones that I have in the color of this strap that I wanted, and also the fleecey shearling was to go to Birkenstock’s website directly. And so if you struggle with this at all as well, then I suggest you give it a try, shopping that way because the regular retailers just often don’t carry all those different options and then you can get the ones or at least you can see what’s available that will work for you.

So a little tip on a Tuesday. Why not? All right. One more thing that I want to tell you before I get into the real meat of this episode, and that is that I’m going to be hosting a new free training on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022, which is kind of fun, right? Because it’s 2, 2, 22. It’s at 8:30 PM, Eastern, 5:30 PM Pacific. And the title of it is fun. It’s called Get Off The Weight Loss Hamster Wheel. So if you have any idea of what a hamster wheel is, and I think you do, right? It’s just a race to know where you’re just sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, and nothing is happening.

You’re working very, very hard and not getting the results that you want. And really, I just think, and I know from my own personal experience in talking with so many, so many other people is that most weight loss plans are just simply unsustainable. And they’re really exhausting. Think about running on a hamster wheel forever, it’s just exhausting. So what I’m going to teach you is how to stop obsessing about food and how to lose weight permanently.

Basically, getting off that weight loss hamster wheel so that the weight is lost and you are now done. So what that means then is you no longer are eating your feelings, you’re no longer thinking about food constantly and you actually have that peace and freedom around food that you want. So I’m going to talk to you about how to stop obsessing over food. We’re going to talk about feeling excessive amounts of hunger and how to get how to get your body dialed in on that.

So that’s appropriate. How you can peacefully coexist with all the foods that you have trouble with overeating. If the last several months you’ve struggled or even just at all, there’s just foods that you struggle with. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to just talk about all the things, how you’ve been conditioned to emotionally eat, how to overcome that. And you’re going to really, even in the first seven minutes, learn the crucial missing piece that is totally required for keeping weight off forever.

And the vast majority of weight loss programs do not address this. So you’re really going to want to come and catch. Even if you just have a few moments to catch this very, very important information. It is really fun to put something new together for you. So like I said, it’s called Get Off The Weight Loss Hamster Wheel. I’m going to tell you how. The way to register is to go to KatrinaUbellmd.com/loseweight. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T. Again, KatrinaUbellmd.com/loseweight.

You’re going to get all the information, the calendar invitation, you’ll get the Zoom link, you’ll get all that info. And you can also opt in to get text reminders. So make sure you go and register for that. Okay. Today, we’re going to talk about opting to your current life. This is something that has actually been on my list to do an episode about for quite a long time. And I’m excited to do it today. I think it actually kind of dovetails really nicely with this episode coming out at the beginning of the year as well.

I feel like over the years I’ve gotten maybe, I felt personally, somewhat conflicted sometimes with the whole resolution type, new year’s resolution thing. I mean, I love me some goals, don’t get me wrong. I do think that there often is a lot of energy with the new year and it’s just exciting. It kind of feels like a clean slate and that kind of thing. But I think at the same time, if we approach the new year always the way we’ve done it for the last several years or many, maybe possibly even decades and we never end up really getting the results that we want for the most part, then probably doing it that way isn’t working.

And so then we need to possibly consider something different and, or just reconsider it. Maybe there’s a different way, maybe the way to create what we want is not to resolve to be different, but to first accept ourselves fully for who we are. And part of doing that means not trying to opt out of what you currently have, but instead opting in for what you currently have. So let me explain a little bit more about what I mean by this. So very often when we find a coach to work with, or possibly a therapist, or even just a self-help book, we do this when we’re unhappy or when we’re feeling dissatisfied with our current life.

Whether it’s relationships, our current job, what your body looks like, any habits that you have, just things like that, right? That’s when we’re, okay, I need some help. I don’t like the way this is and I want to change it. And listen, if there’s easy things to change, we just change them, right? If there’s low hanging fruit and it’s, you know what? I just make this change and this makes my life so much better, absolutely. A hundred percent, we’re going to do that. We don’t have to accept every single difficult thing.

It’s kind of like if you had a tack in your foot, you wouldn’t just be, “Well, at first I need to accept the fact this tack is in the bottom of my foot before I pull the tack out.” No, you’re going to pull the tack out. It’s, that’s the solution there, right? But what we often find is we do the low hanging fruit first and that’s great. And it does provide a lot of relief and it really does help things. But then we find that we still don’t really feel the way we want to or the way we think that we should feel. And when I say feel, I mean emotions, right?

The emotions that we’re experiencing are not the ones that we want to have. So we thought, Hey, my life is the problem. Whatever it is in my life is the problem. If I can change that, then I will get to feel the way I want to feel or the way I think I should feel. Well, what ends up happening? We make those changes. Maybe we do feel some relief for a short time. And then we’re kind of going back to the old way, or it’s just not as good as we thought it should be, or we hoped that it would be.

And so then it’s really easy to start getting onto this path where we just keep trying to change, “Well, I changed that one thing and that help and, but still not enough. So maybe I need to change this other thing. Maybe I need to work on this other relationship. Maybe I need to just constantly improve myself.” And what we are thinking in this situation is that change will at the feelings that we want, right? Sometimes we change our relationships. Sometimes we decide to start a family and we think that’s going to do it. Sometimes we get a new job. Sometimes we move, we get a different house, or renovate, or there’s so many different things that we can change thinking that’s the thing that creates the feelings that we want.

And we may not be actually thinking it’s the feelings that we want, but it is the feelings that we want. The way we feel creates our experience of our lives. If you want to have a happy, good life, it’s because you want to feel happy and good, right? How do you know if you have a happy life? Because you feel happy. That’s how you know. So when we’re doing this, right? We’re, okay, I need to change this thing then I’m going to feel the way I want. Then I’ll have the life that I want. What we end up doing accidentally, right?

Our intentions are so good, but accidentally what we do is we actually create the feeling of resistance. And so the more we chase these emotions that we want, the more resistance we create. So first we resist one thing. Then we try to change that and try to make that better. And then we’re just resisting the next thing and resisting the next thing. And how do we know what to change? Is because it’s the thing that we’re resisting. And resistance is an actual feeling. What we inadvertently are doing is actually creating more of the feelings we don’t want by thinking that changing our lives will create the emotions we do want.

Okay? So we’re on accident, by mistake, creating more emotions that we don’t want to be feeling in the chase to create the emotions that we do want to be feeling. So examples of this. I mean, I’ll just give you one from my own life. So in our backyard, we, gosh, when we redid our house and did an addition, that was probably about eight, seven, eight years ago. And we did our backyard the same time, because the whole thing was torn up. It had to be redone. And we had a play set in there for the kids.

And so really over the course of the years, because actually now that I think about it, that place that was there even before we did it, we actually kept it. So I think it was about 15 years old, made out of wood, good quality, but still just started rotting and really was literally falling apart. Pieces of the roof would were falling down. We’re, okay, this is obviously a safety hazard. This thing has to come down. And so we were thinking, well, what do we want to do in that place?

I mean, we literally could just put more grass down and just let it be grass under there. Or we could change that little corner of our yard that we don’t really do much with and try to utilize it for something else. So we decided, okay, we’re going to go ahead and actually put a patio there and we’re going to get a hot tub and put that in and that’ll be fun. And the whole while thinking how will we feel, right? The only reason I want to change that is because I’m thinking, well, how am I going to feel when I have a different setup there and have awesome lounging furniture, and I have this fun hot tub that the whole family can fit in and we can all chill in there together and with the night sky and the snow falling down or whatever.

Right? The only reason I wanted that is because of how I thought it would make me feel. Now that we have it, I love it. It’s amazing. I absolutely love that hot tub. It’s super fun. Like anything, it’s got its downsides too. I still don’t know how to do the chemicals. Not that I can’t learn or check the pH or whatever. I just haven’t taken the time to actually learn yet how to do all of it. So sometimes that creates a little bit of a limiting step in waiting for the person who doesn’t know how to do it.

But as soon as it’s there, right? We think, oh my gosh, we’re going to be so happy. It’s going to be so great. I’m just going to be enamored with my backyard. I mean, it’s nice, but it’s not as great as my brain thought it was going to be when I was designing it. And of course, managing all the people and everything that went into designing the whole thing. I mean, it was basically a nine month long project, it ended up being. So it’s easy for me to then say, well, oh bummer. That backyard project didn’t do it. What else can we change?

You know what? I need new furniture. You know what? I need to, whatever, change something else in the house. Very often I’m, I need to get rid of some things, thinking that’s going to be the thing. And all it is, is just me resisting. Right? Resist the furniture that I have thinking, oh, this now was the problem. I thought it was the backyard that was the problem. Now, it’s the furniture that’s the problem. And just creates this never ending stream of resistance to my current life because I think something’s wrong with it, which is explains why I don’t feel the way I want to be feeling.

So why is this kind of confusing and mixed up? Because it’s not our external environment or even our relationships or the job that we have or the people we surround ourselves with that determines how we feel. Our feelings are created by our thinking, not by whether I have a hot tub in my backyard or not or anything, right? The way we feel, our emotions are always created by our thoughts. So you can see how, when you don’t really fully get that deeply, you’ll put yourself on this never ending cycle that can really ultimately end up leading you to feeling exhausted and burned out.

And especially when you’ve been working on yourself, you might start feeling burned out on self-improvement or even wellness. Thinking, oh my gosh, I’ve done so much work and I still don’t have that experience that I thought I was going to have, or don’t have that result that I thought was going to be the thing that was going to really make me feel the way I wanted to feel in my life. So I could feel like I made it, like I finally had what I wanted. And you can start to feel like, what was the point of all of this?

Yeah. Some things have improved, but all in all, it’s really not that much but better. And I mean, I have so much compassion for this because I think it’s easy to get into this cycle of, well, you know what? Maybe I just need a new therapist. Maybe I need to try a different coaching program. Maybe I need to buy these books or go to this retreat or go to this conference and find some new person to follow or whatever it is. And all of that can be fun, but it’s just another distraction, right?

It’s just another way of not really fully deeply owning that the way you feel about your life, your experience of your life is created by your thoughts, your beliefs, the way you decide to perceive what’s going on around you. So what that is when you are resisting that is opting out. Saying the current life that you have is not acceptable. You want to opt out and create something new, which is totally fine. But first I suggest that you opt into what you currently have. And by opting into what you currently have, even if it’s not your first choice, what you’re doing is dropping the resistance that you have to it.

Okay? So there is the whatever it is, the job, the relationship, the actual physical surroundings that you have, there’s a resistance to it and there’s what it actually is. You can have thoughts, like I don’t prefer this. This isn’t my first choice. But then you can have also resistance thoughts, which are it shouldn’t be this way. I don’t deserve this. Something better is out there for me. And that may all be true, but if it’s creating resistance for you and making you feel more dissatisfied with your current experience, it will just keep fueling the dissatisfaction.

It’s like the filter your brain will create in terms of how it’s perceiving your whole life. Because your brain cannot focus on every single piece of input that’s coming in through all of your senses. It will just be, how is this not okay? How am I dissatisfied with what is happening to me right now? And so by opting into your current life, what you’re essentially doing is showing appreciation and gratitude for what you have. You’re finding the good things that already exist and you’re enjoying them.

And by doing that, you’re creating thoughts that generate the feelings you want to feel, those ones that you always wanted. Feeling content, feeling happy, feeling joyful, feeling playful, all of those things come from your thoughts. And that is available to you now with your current life, with your current job, with your current relationships and with your current body. Okay? So even if you’re, “No, Katrina. Listen, I have all this weight lose or listen, I drink way too much alcohol and I know it.” Or whatever it is that may be, and all of that can change.

But first, we need to love our lives enough to find the positivity that’s in there. Because well, let me back up. One of the reasons we’re resistant to doing that is we think then we’ll ever change anything. And that is not how it actually works. When you’re grateful for what you have and you see what’s so amazing about your current life, it actually becomes so much more clear what you really do want to change and why, right? Then you just change it because you want to.

You’re not going, “You know what? I’m going to change this because then I’m going to feel so great.” You’re going, “No I’m going to change it just because I want to,” which is honestly really what I did with my backyard. I was just, well, it would be fun to have a area back there and it’d be fun to have a hot tub. And also, we’re going to have to be really careful that it’s locked and no neighbor kids fall in and we’re going to have to manage the chemicals and all the things with it. But it’ll be really fun.

And sometimes it’ll be paying the rear. And overall, it’s just going to be this other thing that we have, which is awesome. But it’s not like my life will finally be there or be better or be how I always wanted it to be once I have this thing. And the same goes with your body. If you think that by getting to your goal weight or a certain body composition or whatever it is that that’s be the thing that’s finally going to make you feel the way you want to feel, you will very likely be disappointed when you get there.

Because you will still be you, your brain will be the same just in a smaller package. And you will still think the same way, your brain will still be filtering things through that lens of dissatisfaction. And then you just won’t like something else about you, right? Then your skin will be all wrong or you’ll need whatever tuck here and there, the other thing. Or now it’ll be your face or your neck or your hair won’t be right or whatever it is. Something, it’ll just transition the dissatisfaction, the opting out to some other part, either of your body or of your life or relationships or whatever.

So what I want to encourage you to do is think about what areas of your life you feel like you’re just constantly opting out of. And I do think that the current state of medicine is one of those, right? We think we don’t like it, it’s a so awful and it’s so hard and all the things, but when we think we’re stuck, we’re actually not telling ourselves the truth, which is that every time you walk in the door to go to work, you’re opting in to that current life.

So if you’re going to decide to show up there anyway, then maybe it could be worthwhile to stop telling yourself that don’t want to be there or that it’s so awful, right? And I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy or even desirable for you to be just loving every minute of it. And it’s so great, but you can be with yourself and the emotions that you’re having and not think that it should be different. If you’re taking care of patients in a completely overwhelmed hospital, that’s short staffed during the middle of a pandemic, do you think it would be normal to feel overwhelmed or to feel angry or to feel sad sometimes?

I think that’s normal. I think you’re doing it right, if that’s your experience of it. But when you’re then having that experience and then resisting it going, “It shouldn’t be this way,” that’s when you’re trying to opt out of your current life. And that’s what makes it feel so much worse. Or if you’re judging yourself for feeling the way that you do, that’s the same thing. So what I want to encourage you to do and invite you to do is to drop that resistance, to recognize that you are here in your current life. There are things to be grateful for. There are things to appreciate and move toward it, move toward feeling the whole array of emotions.

It’s a great opportunity for you to practice feeling emotions that you might typically eat to make them go away or avoid in some other way, zone out on your phone, whatever it may be. And instead go, “Yeah. This is what anger feels like. This is what it’s like to feel anger.” And that doesn’t mean you’re reacting and jumping down people’s throats or anything like that, it just means that you are getting to know that feeling. I always say, it’s like you want to become best friends with it, right? Go into your body. Understand how do you even know you’re angry?

What physiologically happening? What are you sensing in your body that makes you think that you’re angry? Just get to know it and be with it. It’s a normal human emotion and you’re getting really good at feeling it and being with yourself while you’re feeling it right now. That’s opting into your current life. When you can stay with yourself and experience it, then what you can do at some point, if you decide, “You know what? I’m tired of being angry about this.” And you can start understanding, okay, what are my thoughts about this that are making me feel so angry?

And maybe there’s a different way. Maybe I’d like to just put down the anger. I’m not ready to say goodbye to it forever. But for today I would just like to have an anger free day. I’m just going to put it down for a little while. All that becomes available to you when you opt into your current experience in your current life. And with that, my friend, I’m going to close down this five year anniversary episode. Can’t believe it, five years. Should we do another five? Let’s do it. Let’s plan for it.

All right. Very good. Well, I’m sending you all of my love. You’re doing a really excellent job and we just all appreciate you. Okay. Thank you so much for doing what you do. And if you are interested in joining me for that new free training called Get Off The Weight Loss Hamster Wheel, go to KatrinaUbellmd.com/loseweight. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T. And get yourself registered. And we’ll talk about exactly what you need to do so that you can get off the hamster wheel. Okay. Everyone wants off of that. It’s the best. All right. I love you, my friend. Take care. Bye-bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to Katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #263: Opting In to Your Current Life appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Welcome to another success story from the Weight Loss For Doctors Only program—this time with a bit of a twist! Dr. Emmie Ruth Strassberg is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Physician who committed to doing the work on herself first before losing weight. If you’ve ever wondered what it means to do the work on yourself before permanent weight loss, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!

Listen in as we talk about the common struggle of losing weight in fits and spurts, how to overcome time scarcity as a busy doctor trying to lose weight, and the benefits that come from doing the internal work before losing weight. I know Emmie’s story will inspire so many of you and answer the often-asked question: why does the internal stuff matter in the weight loss journey?

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP262v2.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * The journey that led Emmie to join Weight Loss For Doctors Only. * Her experience losing weight sporadically. * The internal work she did on herself before losing weight. * How she overcame her time scarcity challenge.

Featured In This Episode * The Podcast Roadmap * Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard C. Schwartz and Martha Sweezy * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 262.

Oh, hello there my friend, how are you today? I’m so glad that you’re here joining me. I have a really fun and interesting success story for you today that I can’t wait to share with you. I think this one is going to be really, really impactful and it addresses a certain angle that we haven’t really touched on in previous success stories. So I’m really excited to bring you Emmie Strassberg today.

But before I jump into that, I do want to let you know that, especially with it being the new year, if you’re like, “Yes, I’m all in. I want to start learning what to do to lose weight and keep it off forever and actually work on my mind in order to make that happen,” it can be pretty over overwhelming to find several hundred podcast episodes and not know where to start or what to do to get going. And so what I want to offer to you today is my free podcast roadmap. It is the first 30 episodes that I recommend you listen to when you’re listening to this podcast so that you get the initial information that you need. You start applying what I teach you in those episodes, you can start seeing some results right away. And then of course you can filter back in and listen to all the other ones.

But it just gives you a great start to know where to start and what to start with. Especially for new, or if you need a refresher or you want to remember which are those most impactful kickstart your weight loss and success episodes, then you’re definitely going to want to pick this up. The way to get it is just to go to katrinaubellmd.com/start, S-T-A-R-T. So katrinaubellmd.com/start and you’ll get that free podcast roadmap. So make sure you pick that up.

Today’s guest is Emmie Strassberg. She is a maternal and fetal medicine specialist. What she’s going to be talking about is what it’s like to take a break from weight loss, to lose weight, gain it back and realize you know what? I got a lot of work to do before I’m really ready to lose weight and what that all involves. So she’s going to talk today about that. And then we also talk a lot about time scarcity that she had at work and how she was able to really improve her experience of her job so much. So I know that you’re going to get a ton out of this, especially if you feel like you’ve had a lot of weight loss in fits and spurts, you lose some, you gain some, you’re just back and forth. You’re not able to really dig in. Or if you’ve ever wondered when I talk about saying some people need to do some work on themselves first before they can really lose weight permanently, that’s what we’re talking about today. So please enjoy my guest, Emmie Strassberg.

Emmy, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.

Emmie Strassberg: You’re welcome. I’m really excited to be here.

Katrina Ubell: Yay. Okay. So I always love to have everybody start with telling us a little bit about themselves. So tell us a little bit about you, what you do and where you live and that kind of thing.

Emmie Strassberg: Well, my name’s Emmie Strassberg and I live in Northern Virginia right now, west of DC over in the horse and wine country area. And I’m a maternal fetal medicine physician. I’ve practiced and lived here for now about four years. We have office in Winchester, Virginia and then also in West Virginia.

Katrina Ubell: West Virginia, the state or West Virginia. Does that get confusing when you live in Virginia?

Emmie Strassberg: It does. Yes. Because I live in the Western part of Virginia.

Katrina Ubell: Okay. I always wondering about that. Awesome. So I would love it if you would tell us a little bit more about your experience with food and weight loss through the years. When did you start struggling with all that and how did that lead you to joining Weight Loss For Doctors Only?

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. Since I was a kid, I probably can remember back to when I was eight years old, noticing that I was bigger than my friend. Now, my best friend was always a very petite, small framed person and I don’t think you could probably ever describe me that way. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just my thought, but I didn’t really start any diet or exercise or anything like that until I was in high school. And then the high school I thought, well, maybe there’s something to fix here. I should work on this. My mother also struggled with her weight and my grandmother, and so they were always doing something with that as well. It seemed like—

Katrina Ubell: In hindsight, how much weight are we talking here? A little five to seven pounds, more than that when you’re turning lose weight?

Emmie Strassberg: I weighed anything from 130 to 170 at different times of my adolescent to adult years.

Katrina Ubell: Okay. Got it. So there’s a lot of fluctuations and that kind of thing.

Emmie Strassberg: Yes, a lot. And what the WLDO program helped me realize is that just a lot of it was how much food was in my family like a celebration, definitely huge comfort. I don’t know if this is just a Midwest thing, but I don’t think so, I think it’s… I don’t know. But you were expected to eat at meals. And if you weren’t hungry, you were expected to eat anyway. And my parents didn’t always make me eat everything, but it was definitely expected that you would try some of everything and not waste a lot of food.

Katrina Ubell: And what’s interesting about what you’re saying, your mom struggle with her weight and your grandmother struggle with her weight, unintentionally of course, when you grow up around other people who struggle with their weight you see that they struggle with it, but also any habits that aren’t serving them are then passed down to you as this is just what we do like finding comfort in food and entertainment in food and you should eat all the food and don’t waste it and things like that.

And again, they of course have the best intentions, but it’s, I think then even easier because as a kid you’re just like, “I don’t know, what do we do with food? How do we use food besides to fill our belly so we’re not hungry anymore,” and easy to pick up on some of that.

Emmie Strassberg: For a lot of years actually, we had a wonderful Ecuadorian babysitter that would pick us up at school and take us to her house because my parents worked till late, couldn’t come pick us up from school and she would feed us this amazing Ecuadorian food. And then we’d go home and eat dinner with my parents too.

Katrina Ubell: You were still going in too.

Emmie Strassberg: Eating a lot of dinner.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. So when you tried to lose weight in high school, what did you try?

Emmie Strassberg: Oh gosh. I don’t remember trying anything specific, but trying to eat things that were healthier. And I remember I would wake up early and workout. I would do aerobics or yoga or whatever. I found all my mom’s old books from the eighties and was working on that sort of thing. I ended up losing weight. I went on exchange to Germany and when I was there, it was interesting because my exchange student had come to me first and she had gained 20 pounds when she was in the US. It was a really rough experience for her. She went home and shut herself out from the world, lost the weight and then reemerged into… or whatever she was doing.

I don’t know, it was weird. The German girls in high school, they did not eat in front of each other. They are always talking about other people’s eating and so I just never ate in front of anybody and I ended up losing 20 pounds while I was in Germany.

Katrina Ubell: Oh interesting.

Emmie Strassberg: Which was effective for a short period of time until I came home. I mean, it was such a good experience in so many ways, but I thought that was interesting too?

Katrina Ubell: And then what happened after or that?

Emmie Strassberg: So then in college I would go to the gym, but I never really worked on diet very much. Actually my doctor put me on a diet at one point when I was in college, which was… I think it was metagenics or something like that. Involved a protein shake and eating vegetable. It was horrible. And I love my doctor very much and I still am in contact with her, but that was not my favorite. It worked for a couple months and nobody can eat this way forever.

Katrina Ubell: Right.

Emmie Strassberg: And then what else did I do? I think the next time it became a really big deal for me was when I was in med school. And I was actually at the highest I’d been in a long time. And I had to have a echocardiogram done for heart murmur, which of course on my medical school physical they’re like, oh, you have a heart murmur. So I had to get those echos done and it was nothing exciting. But for a while they thought it was my bicuspid aortic valve, so I was like, “Oh, not to freak you out or anything but…” So I was getting this echo in med school to try to follow up on that. And I was like, “Gosh, I really don’t want to have any medical problems.”

My husband who I had just started dating at the time, he was actually much heavier then too. And we just together… I just decided I was going to try to work on it seriously and he saw my progress and like, I’m going to do it too. And of course he ended up losing more weight than me. But we ended up just using MyFitnessPal and working out and just calories and calories out. And it worked pretty well, especially when I was a fourth med student, I could spend half the day at the gym. Suddenly when you’re not doing that anymore—

Katrina Ubell: Right. And then you got into residency.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. Then you’re an intern and you’re like, “I don’t know how I’m going to find myself healthy food.”

Katrina Ubell: Right. And if you’re relying on a lot of exercise, which for a lot of people does work when they’re younger, you just have to find that time and if you don’t or you’re just too exhausted or whatever, it becomes a self limited type of thing.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. I’ve always felt that exercise was really important because I found out pretty early, I think back in high school when I started exercising how much it helped my mental health.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Talk a little bit more about that because that’s something that I personally have also discovered for myself more recently. People were like, “If I don’t exercise, I’m just a grouch or mean.” I always think, “Oh, I wish I were like that.” And now I’m like, “I think I might have become that person.” So what do you notice when you exercise or what did you notice back then in terms of mental health?

Emmie Strassberg: It’s like a way that I allow myself to feel my feelings. It’s like a permissible area.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I think so too. Just any negative emotion, anger, whatever, it’s just like, channel it, right?

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. It just works really well and it just lifts my mood too. So I especially working out to good music.

Katrina Ubell: So you’re in internship and…

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And then I gain weight back. Oh my gosh. And then I did this… have you heard of the Dukan Diet.

Katrina Ubell: I have. I remember I took care of a family and the mom did it. She lost so much weight. And I remember looking into it and just being like, “This is not something I want to do my whole life.”

Emmie Strassberg: Nobody should live like that.

Katrina Ubell: I know.

Emmie Strassberg: And it’s also not based in any scientific fact. It’s just some random guy’s opinion about what might work. I’m not sure how really healthy it is. It involves eating a whole lot of protein and then occasionally vegetables and almost never anything else.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah.

Emmie Strassberg: Again, not sustainable. And then when I was in fellowship, I did a lot CrossFit. I lived away from Gordon, so he stayed in New York and I moved to Pennsylvania by myself for three years. I had a lot of time for working out again, so I did CrossFit and I started running, which I never thought I would be a runner. But I started running and I really loved it. And then one of my friends from college got me into Beachbody so I did that. So all the container counting and all of that. Again, doable for a short time period. The Beachbody thing is not a bad thing when it comes to workouts. I think they actually coordinate quite well.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. I know a lot of people do workouts a lot.

Emmie Strassberg: But I actually only just stopped my subscription because I started being completely addicted to the Peloton.

Katrina Ubell: I know. I don’t know what crack they’ve got going on with the Peloton, but I’m on it too. I’m addicted too.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. So anyway, I did that for a while and then wasn’t sure what to do once I got here and became an attending and then I got pregnant and I started listening to you actually when I was pregnant. Because one of my co-fellows actually recommended the podcast to me and I don’t think she’s ever been a member. She just like the podcast. And I listened to it all of the…. while I was pregnant. And then I looked at joining the program and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t do that. That’s a lot of money.” And it’s so funny now because I think about it and, no, it’s not.

Katrina Ubell: Like pennies for what you get, right?

Katrina Ubell: So what made you know though? You tried all these other things, what was it that you heard in the podcast? I’m just curious, what was it where you were like, “Yeah, this is the thing that I need”?

Emmie Strassberg: I knew it was my brain that had to change.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. And that’s what hooked me too in learning this. I’m like, “I’ve tried all this other stuff. I can white knuckle my way through lots of things for a certain period of time, but it’s like I keep winding up back in the same place. There’s got to be something else, something different.”

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And it made a lot of sense in a lot of ways. Giving up flour and sugar, whatever, just seemed so hard and impossible, but it’s really not.

Katrina Ubell: It’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be. I know.

Emmie Strassberg: But the thing is when I started, I have a lot of time to think about this, I was such a rule follower.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. That’s so common though, because it’s like with every other diet it’s like with Beachbody, fill the boxes and just eat what’s in that and these are the rules. So we’re like, “Great, what are the rules? Let me get onto the rules.” And just like with anything else, at a certain point we’re like, “Screw the rules. I hate the rules.” And then the work really starts, right?

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And then COVID came around, and I think my weight regain happened even before, then I went home. Well, I took my boards in the fall, my MFM boards and I passed but I think I felt that I would get a higher score than I did. And I don’t know why that bothered me so much. I mean, retrospect, I passed. That’s what needed to happen, and it’s one stupid test.

And then I just got progressively more angry at myself for gaining the weight back, and somehow being angry at myself wasn’t making it any better. And I think I got to a point in, I don’t know it was July or August where I was just like, I need to just stop. I need to stop. I need to just work on my relationship with myself, because I never really thought of myself as somebody that doesn’t have high self-esteem, but I get a lot done… not anymore, but I got a lot done in my life by really talking to myself negatively.

Katrina Ubell: Totally. And I think that that’s so important to understand how you did and I did and so many people listening did. And that is a habit. We think we cannot motivate ourselves any other way, especially when we have evidence like in the past I did this or I talked to myself in this habitual way and then I accomplished X, Y, Z. We’re just afraid to speak nicely to ourselves because we’re afraid that we’ll just become average or mediocre or never accomplished anything ever again. Even though I think rationally we understand that that’s not true, I think deep down it’s a legitimate fear that I think is important to acknowledge and work through.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And you know what I realized, and I loved that internal family systems book that you recommended. I had that mean girl voice and then also the rebellious voice. So one would be like, “No, you’re going to do this.” And then, “You can’t tell me what to do. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Katrina Ubell: It’s a lot of conflict going on inside.

Emmie Strassberg: I think just realizing that neither of those voices are actually me. Neither of those personas are really who I am, and so just really spending some time finding out really who I am.

Katrina Ubell: And I think that that’s so important. When I’ve talked about before and I’ve mentioned this on the podcast many times, some people really do need to take a break from trying to lose weight to do some work on themselves first so that they can get the results they want. Because you could white knuckle it again and you could lose a bunch of weight again, but if the same patterns, the same ways of approaching yourself are still present, we know how that story’s going to end. So we could also just decide let’s hit the pause on actively trying to lose weight. Doesn’t mean it’s free for all, eat everything, gain 50 pounds. But just taking a moment, however long it needs to be to actively work through improving just your opinion of yourself, your overall self worth and how you work with yourself to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And that’s exactly what you’re doing. So I would love it if you’d share a little bit more about what that process looks like for you.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. Well, it’s funny that you said… because I heard you say that so many times and I was always like, “Yeah. But I don’t need to do that.”

Katrina Ubell: She’s not talking about me.

Emmie Strassberg: I mean, that sounds nice and all, but let’s get to work here. We don’t have time for that. We have goals to achieve. I just spent lot of time… I guess it was more of just time being in my body and feeling my feelings and just not judging myself for anything really.

Katrina Ubell: Let’s just get into the details of that though, because people are always like, “Well, how do you do that, not judge yourself?” Can you give an example of what that process actually… if we really go into the actual what are you doing kind of thing. I know everyone would love to hear what does that mean? What do you actually do?

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. So if I ate something that technically wasn’t something I would’ve eaten when I was doing weight loss work, instead of just being like, “Oh, I can’t believe you still are eating that crap.” Or if I overate something, why would you do that to yourself? And it’s so subtle.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Little digs. Just letting you know how to satisfied you are with yourself.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. You should be better than that. The first thing you have to do is recognize it, because you can’t just go from unconsciously doing that to then stopping. So recognizing it. And then I really focused a lot on cultivating the feelings of curiosity and compassion and love. And a lot of that just was spending time in my body trying to generate what that felt like.

Katrina Ubell: Which of course it’s your thoughts that create that. So what you’re doing then is you’re figuring out what thoughts actually create that feeling where I know that I’m feeling it in my body is what you’re-

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah, exactly. And the more I could be curious, the less judgemental I would be. It’s like, oh, that’s so interesting that I think it’s so important to be upset about this.

Katrina Ubell: Right. Gives you a little perspective. And I think what it does too is, with anything, even if it’s a habit like biting your nails, you just have to develop awareness. So many people who struggle with chewing their nails will say everything was going fine and then this thing happened at work and all of a sudden I looked down and everything was chewed off again. There’s that lack of awareness, it’s like a checkout. You know what I mean? I’m just going to go into this fog for a little while and then come out.

And so the same thing is, what you have to do is you have to become aware of I actually have my fingers in my mouth. Oh, interesting. And now I have the urge to put my fingers in my mouth before I’ve actually even done it. Getting into the nitty gritty of it so that you can create some space in there and consciously make a different decision. And that’s essentially what you’re doing here because it’s the habit way of thinking is some something negative like, certainly something’s wrong with you. We just have to figure out what it is so I can let you know. That’s basically-

Emmie Strassberg: Exactly. Because when I was taking this break, my husband and I often liked to watch Netflix and eat chocolate chips from a bag. And I would think to myself, okay, you can do that. I mean, you’re checking out. Why are we checking out? Let’s think about that for a second. Okay. Because I’m tired and I just want to be entertained when probably I can just go to bed.

Katrina Ubell: The fact that you’re even aware of it is so important. Versus just like, take the chocolate chips from my cold dead hands. You know what I mean? I need to have them. This has to be the way that it is. Or poor me, I can’t eat the chocolate chips. And you’re just like, oh, interesting. This is what’s going on for me. I like to think of it as like, okay, now I know what’s going on, so it’s not a mystery anymore. And at any point when I’m ready to address this, I will. I think what’s good to think about is what’s the difference between being gentle with yourself and being permissive. Because we don’t want to be permissive.

I think of it as humans like rules and boundaries. We thrive in them. Think about small children. And even employees and everybody, we just want to know what are the rules so that we can play by the rules. We know what the boundaries are. When you’re being gentle with yourself, you’re creating some boundaries and you’re treating yourself kindly within them. Being permissive is there being no boundaries. It’s like, do whatever.

And the if you think about it from a toddler or a young child standpoint, a permissive parent is usually the one who’s like, “I don’t know. This child runs the household. It’s like crazy town in here. They won’t listen to anything we say.” But you can still be a gentle parent and have boundaries and guidelines that keeps the child safe and helps them to thrive. And so that’s the way I like to think about the difference. You can be gentle with yourself, but understand that, well I’m eating chocolate chip now, but I’m going to draw the line there. I’m not going to go and grab the box of Oreos too. Or I have this much and then that’s enough. And at some point I might be ready to maybe work on having that. But for today, that’s what we are going to do versus it’s a free for all and just eat until you’re ill.

Emmie Strassberg: Well, yeah. I mean, part of it is just bringing the consciousness into it because I would be sitting there like, “Do I really even like this? Am I even tasting it? What exactly about this is appealing to me?” And a lot of it I noticed was just the checking out. I’m like, “Or I could just go to bed.”

Katrina Ubell: Right. Exactly. You’re like, read a novel or something or some other kind of-

Emmie Strassberg: Or doing some tea. I mean, it doesn’t have…

Katrina Ubell: Absolutely. Yes.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And I think now when I… and because I did the work, I’m like, “Okay, why am I eating this?” I just ask myself the question. That’s it. And I’ve actually just recently gone back to making a plan and protocol, stopping flour and sugar just because I feel like I’m ready to do that. But my ground rules are, if there’s any sort of deviance from the plan that I will not beat myself up. That voice is not going to be the one in charge of my head, and nothing is off limits. That’s the other thing as far as the… If I tell myself like, no, you can’t eat that, then that just is not going to work.

Katrina Ubell: Right. And you want it so bad. I know.

Emmie Strassberg: Right. But the answer is, you can always eat if you’re hungry and if you really want eat, you can just eat it. It’s really not a big deal.

Katrina Ubell: Right. What that is though is taking away the emphasis on how important food is. Because I approach it similarly. I’m like, “I can eat that if I want to, but do I really want to?” And when there’s not so much emphasis on it, I’m like, “I could or I couldn’t.” Well, then maybe we’ll just let this one go. I probably don’t need to have that.

Emmie Strassberg: Oh, I’m never going to eat that again. I mean, I could if I wanted to.

Katrina Ubell: Right. Exactly. Totally. I think that creates so much freedom when you’re like, “It’s just food and I’m sure it does taste delicious and I could have it or I could not have it.” So what do I actually want, rather than this pressure of like, this is my chance or this is what I always do. Or I need to hit the easy button and escape from whatever negative emotion I’m feeling. It’s separating the food from using it to try to make our lives tolerable or more tolerable and more exciting.

Emmie Strassberg: And also not eating things that I don’t like.

Katrina Ubell: I know. Isn’t that huge?

Emmie Strassberg: If something just doesn’t taste good like my dinners, I don’t have to eat it.

Katrina Ubell: I know. So good. So you mentioned that your self confidence has improved so much. And for so many people who want to lose weight, they think, well, I’ll just have a lot more confidence. I’ll feel more confident with myself once I’ve lost weight. So they tie their emotions and the thoughts about themselves and create those emotions to the size of their bodies or what their body looks like. And so what I love is that you have spent this time really divorcing those two. You can feel confident in yourself, and that has nothing to do with your body. And then you can just decide to lose weight because you want to, not so that you can feel a different emotion. So I would love it if you could speak to that.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. I think part of what I did when I was pausing the weight loss work is I just focused on other things like what kind of clothes do I want to wear? Really just getting rid of the stuff that I don’t like. And it’s funny, when I initially lost weight, I bought a bunch of stuff that honestly really isn’t me. And it was just a novelty to be able to fit into it and try on that persona. But I was like, “That doesn’t really feel like me. That’s not comfortable and no wonder I didn’t want to stay there.” So really what do I like? What feels comfortable. It’s why the purple hair happened.

Katrina Ubell: Right. Nobody can see if you have super fun purple hair. I love that.

Emmie Strassberg: Yes.

Katrina Ubell: Expressing yourself. Letting yourself be seen for who you are.

Emmie Strassberg: Exactly. Decorating my little office in here, which you can’t see, but has all my stuff in it. Just curating my life just how I want it. The other thing was really prioritizing fun and rest and not having to be protective and achieving really just more like, this is the time you want to spend with your family. You’re going to do that. And I went through the LifeBridge School and I got coach certification and I had all these ideas like all, I think baby coaches do about, oh, and I need to do this and this and this. Or I have a job that I love already and I have created a few things to set up a coaching business if that ever happens, but it doesn’t have to happen right now. I can just let it happen when it needs to happen. And I have a doctor job that I love.

Katrina Ubell: I would love to talk about that though, because I don’t want to make generalizations, but I’ve done this now for many years and I’ve worked with many, many, many, many OB-GYNs and fellowship, other MFM and sub-specialties. It seems to me in my experience that so many women in that field really, really struggle, not just with their weight, but struggle with their experience of the job. It’s very, very stressful. Actually, I don’t know. I was going to say, it seems like it maybe takes people off guard how challenging it ends it being for them when they’re out in practice. Maybe that’s actually not true though, but it just seems like people really struggle with it. And you’re like, “I love my job.” And the MFMs are the ones who are like, “No, my job is so stressful. You don’t understand. Everybody’s high risk. It’s so hard.” And you’re like, “I love it.”

And so I just find that to be so inspiring. And I really hope for all of our OB friends who are listening might be in that other world, if they could… I just want them to even know that it’s possible. So let’s start talking about that though, because I know you had a lot of time scarcity and you really, really struggled with that. So let’s talk about that a little bit more.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah, So first of all, just in case any OBS are wondering, I do not deliver babies. I do not deliver babies. I have a wonderful 8:00 to 5:00 job and my weekend call is by telephone mostly. So it’s really not that bad, which is great. I mean, I’m still making difficult decisions a lot of the time, or I guess high stakes decisions, I should say. But I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was eight years old. And I thought I wanted do family medicine. Turns out I didn’t want to be that. And I really loved OB so I did OB and then it turned out I really love maternal fetal, because I could do more of the medicine, less of the surgery, which I enjoy surgery, but surgery stress me out. And the fetal ultrasound is just a bonus. That’s the fun part. Because the maternal conditions are really what interests me.

My mother was really sick when I was growing up with lupus, and had a very high risk pregnancy with my brother and with me. But I didn’t remember that because I was not conscious of it. And I think a lot of my experience loving my job is just wanting to take care of women like my mom. And what I really love about my job is being able to advocate for my patients to get appropriate medical care. Because I don’t know if you know this, but sometimes pregnant women are seen as unicorns and people get very confused about what medical care they can and can’t have.

Katrina Ubell: Yes, nobody wants to touch the pregnant lady.

Emmie Strassberg: I had a preconception patient the other day that told me that her rheumatologist just discharged her from the practice because she said she was about to start a family. And I was like, “You do that? That doesn’t seem right. And I can’t prescribe your HUMIRA because that’s not my job, but I agree that you should have it.” So just being able to be the one to direct that and guide that a bit and it’s awesome.

Katrina Ubell: That’s always been your experience of it? I know you had significant times scarcity concerns, so that can put a little damper on the joy, right?

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. I think part of it was just figuring out my flow as a new attending physician. And in medicine, people complain all the time about time and schedule and that’s just what I learned to do. And that was a fun thing to unlearn. I was like, “This doesn’t have to be a problem. Isn’t that fun?” But really if something was added to my schedule, it’s like, “Oh gosh, it was already a busy day. I can’t believe that was added to my schedule.”

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. So much victim mentality.

Emmie Strassberg: It’s like, man, I’m not in control.

Katrina Ubell: Exactly. Yes. I mean, listen, I was the queen of that so I hear you. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Emmie Strassberg: Sorry, I think that you coached me about where this came up sometimes is I would get a patient referred later in their pregnancy like a 36 weeks or something and be like, “What am I supposed to do now? Why did you wait until 36 weeks to refer this patient to me?” And maybe that’s not a problem either.

Katrina Ubell: Right. Yeah. But I love what you were saying though, about how everybody complains about that and then you just start thinking it’s a problem too. I think that that is massively overlooked when it comes to doctors and burnout and overall life satisfaction, all the other things that we struggle with. So much of our negative thinking or terrible thinking or painful thinking or thinking that holds us back is thoughts that other people gave to us. We observed. What do we do? So much of our learning is shadowing and we’re just like little sponges picking everything up including all these other people’s terrible thinking. We’re like, “Oh, I guess this is how we think about it.” And then we just think that’s just how it is. And really it’s doesn’t have to be that way.

Emmie Strassberg: I definitely had people that didn’t complain. I don’t want to be-

Katrina Ubell: Yeah, no, of course not. And I’m not saying everybody is like that, but if we’re going to make a generalization, there’s plenty of that, let’s just say, especially when you are that sponge. And I think it’s like, you know how you need so many more positive reviews to counteract one negative review in your brain? You can have all these people that you shadow who are really happy and it won’t leave really a mark, but the person who’s complaining and whatever we’re like, “Oh yeah, I remember that person.” It just sticks with us more.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah.

Katrina Ubell: So did you mostly just work on questioning those thoughts that you had? Is that how you worked through it?

Emmie Strassberg: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So the time scarcity one was actually really interesting. What I did was I kept a little track of every time I noticed the time scarcity thought coming in my head, and that just brought the awareness to it. And so I would be thinking, oh gosh, I don’t have time to do whatever, or worried about time, stressed about time and I just check, check, check. And after a while, it just became amusing. Every day I get through all the things. Pretty much always get everything done. Occasionally maybe I don’t, but somehow most of the time it works out.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Maybe I don’t have to be miserable while I’m doing it.

Emmie Strassberg: So some of it was coaching and finding new thoughts and maybe finding different ways to think about whatever was happening. And other times it was just like, there it is again. All right. And then it was just almost like, poof, there it goes. I don’t have to coach myself on it anymore. I just don’t need that.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Well, and what I love about that too, is I think so often we’re like, okay, I’m ready to get rid of the time scarcity. What’s the new thought going to be? It’s very effortful. And you’ve heard me say this a million times and I’ll say it again, you got to slow yourself down. If you’re in a rush, then it’s unlikely to work as effectively as if you’re willing to sit in the awareness of how the way you’re currently thinking is creating the problem, which is exactly what you just described with marking it off, being aware of those thoughts, looking at the reality, which is almost all the time, you’re getting your work done regardless. So it’s actually maybe not true that you don’t have time to do things because it turns out most of the time you do.

Then you start to see it’s kind of ludicrous. You start to see like this literally doesn’t even make sense. And then it’s so easy to think something new. You don’t have to convince yourself, force yourself. It just becomes clear, this old way makes no sense, so I think I’m just going to opt out of that and it’s going to be this new way. But it requires you to be willing to stay in the current situation, which is why we don’t want to rush. So when you’re at work now, what is your experience like now?

Emmie Strassberg: Well, I think part of it too, is that I have more trust in myself to get things done and I have more of a leadership role than I did when I started. I’m more aware of the ins and outs and how the schedule fits together and I have more control to say things like, “Hey, if you’re going to add a patient in at the end of the day, it would be really great for me to know about that.” And part of that too was just-

Katrina Ubell: Which is advocating for yourself. That’s really what that is, letting the people in charge of that know what your preferences is and communicating that.

Emmie Strassberg: Exactly. And so just doing that. Of course the schedule’s not going to work here and there and schedules, almost always something is wrong at some point. It’s never perfect. If I’m feeling really sorry for myself I’m like, “Listen, this is my job. Tomorrow will be different.” It usually is. It’s usually one hard day and then the next day is fine. Or maybe it’s one hard week, but then the next week is fine. Just realizing that it’s temporary too.

Katrina Ubell: Right. I love that, that transient nature of it and reminding yourself of that, because when it is so hard… I mean, at least what my brain always did was like, they always do this. This always happens. That was thinking in absolutes when the reality was that was not true at all. It just got me more riled up and more upset and then I was like, “Ah, I hate feeling this way.” And then using something around to eat. I mean, I think that is really what it comes down to is being willing to…

Well, first of all, I feel like so many people have resistance to it even being a good experience. When you tell them it could be better, they’re like, “No, you don’t understand how bad.” We think we want to feel better, but often there’s…. And when I say this, I don’t mean it in a a negative way, but a bit of self importance that we get out of being, were very important that people want to get on our schedule and we’re so overbooked and whatever. And it’s important to just own that and open up to that. And you know what, I use this as a way to bolster my opinion of myself. And then I complain about it. Maybe I could just have a good opinion about myself in a different way that doesn’t have to involve so many work days being so challenging or just an overall negative experience.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And some of that too is learning how to have difficult conversations with people where it wasn’t like I’m the victim and you’re the villain. And it’s like, no, there’s something we have to talk about but-

Katrina Ubell: Let’s work together to find a solution.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. Exactly. That this doesn’t have to be that kind of conversation.

Katrina Ubell: Adversarial. Right. Exactly. You know what it reminds me of, it’s really moving into emotional adulthood. It’s really like growing up emotionally and moving into, I’m actually creating the experience of my life enough. I want something different. That’s up to me. I remind myself of this constantly. If there’s something I want in my life, no one’s going to just stroll down the street and be like, “Here you go. Here’s that schedule you want. Here’s that time off you want. Here’s the time to whatever you want to do.” It’s not going to happen. I have to take responsibility and make that happen for me if it’s something that I want. And that goes for all of us, no matter what we do.

And is it hard sometimes? I feel like it’s a relearning. I come back like, oh, there I’m doing it again. It’s like a regression and then maturing again. But overall it moves you forward and I feel like I can get out of it quicker when it does happen, because of that experience like, oh, it’s this again. Okay, I know how to handle it.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah, definitely. Anytime I feel righteous indignations, I’m like, okay. I imagine myself-

Katrina Ubell: Hold on a second. I know what this means. I got to pause. As we wrap up, I wanted to just read something that you wrote when you’re thinking about coming on to this episode. You said, “I’m showing up as a person I want to be in my life consistently. And this has been the best gift of all.” I mean, that is so cool, because we so think we’re like, “Oh, I’m just here for the weight loss.” But that is everything. And then the weight loss comes when you’re ready to lose the weight, because then you are the person that you need to be so that you can lose the weight and keep up.

Emmie Strassberg: I mean, it’ll be nice to lose weight, but I care less about it now too. That’s not my goal at this point.

Katrina Ubell: Well, and you don’t think that that’s going to be… then you’re going to be golden, then life’s going to be amazing once you’ve lost the weight, then you realize you’re like, okay, so my body will be different. And maybe like you’re saying, health and whatever, maybe you get to a point where you’re like, I think something that would be in my body’s best interest would be a little different than what I have now. Very different than you’re a good person when you’re thin or something like that.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. And I’ve really been undoing that belief too and really especially I counsel a lot of obese patients and just centering my compassion and non-judgment of my patients and other people around me has really helped too, just questioning I will notice I’m having thoughts. I’m like that’s interesting. No wonder I think the same thing about myself. And not judging and not being like, “Oh, you shouldn’t have thoughts like that.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. Well, and I think that that’s just when you grow up in a society that over emphasizes the… first of all, just objectifies women’s bodies and all that. And then the message is like, you’re never good enough unless you look this; someone that an extremely small percentage of the general population looks like that. It’s going to come up from time to time. But when you have the awareness, you’re able to just go like, okay, diverting away from that. We’re consistently working to undo that. And what a gift to give to your patients as well to have a doctor who isn’t just like, “Well, you know if you lost weight this would solve that problem or things would be better or whatever.” Even though that may be true, it’s possible that that could be true, but is that even a useful or helpful thing to say to a woman in that situation? Is that really going to help her to get the results that she wants?

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. Because by the time I see them, most of the time they’re pregnant.

Katrina Ubell: Yeah. So here we are.

Emmie Strassberg: You want them actively losing weight, so why make anybody feel bad? I mean, nobody should make somebody feel bad about that anyway, especially not in pregnancy. But I think the reason that I’m going back to having a food plan and following it is, it’s not even so much the desire to lose weight, it’s really more, I just feel like it’s the next thing for me to get to the next level of work.

Katrina Ubell: Totally. Because it’ll bring up all the things that you haven’t… It’ll just keep bringing it up.

Emmie Strassberg: Hence that effect might be weight loss.

Katrina Ubell: Right. Exactly. It is a fun little side effect and you figure out, where do I really have some growth waiting for me. And then you have the opportunity to embark on that. And final thing I was going to read that you said was, even if I have not “achieved weight loss,” the freedom this program has given me to love being myself is the greatest value of all. I mean, that seriously, wow, touches my heart. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, yes, this is what I’m always talking about.” Learning to, first of all, accept yourself as you are, and then loving yourself, unconditionally loving yourself. Not saying I’ll love myself once I get to some ideal or some level of perfection, whatever that even means. It’s like, all of me right now is completely lovable. I’m going to offer myself that love and I can still decide I want to do something different with my body if I want to.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. I was just telling Caitlin earlier, my coaching girl, I wish I had figured this out earlier. It’s the best news. I can just love myself and I don’t have to have any conditions for that. That’s amazing.

Katrina Ubell: I know. Right. It’s like, why did nobody tell me that so I didn’t get the message? Oh my gosh. So good.

Emmie Strassberg: And I had a great childhood and very loving parents.

Katrina Ubell: Yes. Well, and it’s not just our parents that influence us. You know what I mean? I think sometimes we think we… Those are obviously important key relationships, but there’s so many other experiences that we have as we grow up and just the community and the society that we live in. That’s all influential too. And so I think of it as, I don’t know anybody gets into adulthood without something to work through. Even as parents, the goal isn’t to create this environment where the child comes out totally evolved and never has a problem. Completely knows how to handle it all. The way that you evolve and figure out your problems is to actually have problems and work through them. That is how you do it.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come and share your story with everybody and to talk about what it looks like to decide to maybe not go completely hardcore on the weight loss and then maybe work on the thoughts later. To prioritize these important parts and then knowing the weight loss is waiting for you whenever you want it.

Emmie Strassberg: Yeah. Thank you. This has been great.

Katrina Ubell: Great. Well, thank you so much.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals, for lots of free help go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #262: Weight Loss Success Story: Dr. Emmie Ruth Strassberg appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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No matter where you are in your weight loss journey, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at it for a while, this is an episode that is going to be fundamentally important for you. I’ll be going back to the basics and tackling the topic of impulse choices, including how to utilize your brain to help you get the results you want.

Learning how to make decisions ahead of time is a crucial tool to understand and practice, not just because it will affect the actual food that you eat, but because how you plan ahead can affect your relationship with your mind and your body. So, in this episode, I’m diving into what to do about the impulse choices you make, how to work with your brain to stick to your pre-planned decisions, and why you will almost certainly fall in love with this tool once you start practicing it.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP261.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * The issue that so many people struggle with when trying to lose weight. * The different areas where this topic comes up. * Why planning ahead can positively impact your relationship with yourself. * How to determine if your plan is realistic so you stick with it.

Featured In This Episode * How To Lose Weight Permanently * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 261.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello, hello, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. And if you’re new, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve got a great episode for you today. This is a really good one. I don’t care where you are in your weight loss process. I don’t care whether you are considering the idea that maybe you should start trying to lose weight, if you’re actively losing weight, if you’re maintaining the weight that you’ve lost, this is going to be very important for you. So everybody, including active clients of mine, make sure you listen to this one. Sometimes when we see back to basics, we’re like, “I don’t need basics. I’m much further past basics.” No, everybody can always review the basics. Those fundamentals are so, so, so, so important. So very glad to share this episode with you today.

But before we dive into it, I do want to just let you know that if you are thinking about getting, going losing weight, or if you have been losing weight and just really want to make sure that your efforts create permanent weight loss, meaning you no longer ever struggle with your weight ever again what you do actually solves a problem.

Then I want to offer you a digital book that I created called How to Lose Weight Permanently. It is the information you need to know that will ensure that what you do, if you solve these for these problems, that your efforts at weight loss will result in permanent weight loss. It’s very, very important to understand these concepts. These were things that at I didn’t learn anywhere else in all of my attempts to lose weight, all the million different ways. Once I learned these things, this is really what has changed it. And it changes it for all my clients as well.

This is really what makes that weight loss last, which is what we want. We don’t want temporary weight loss, nobody’s signing up for like, “Hey, can I lose this weight and then just gain it back again in four to six months.” So to get this How to Lose Weight Permanently digital book or ebook, I’m always like “Who wants an ebook?”

Ebook sounds terrible. But it’s a short digital book. It’s pleasant to read. I promise. Just go to KatrinaUbellmd.com/ebook E-B-O-O-K, KatrinaUbellmd.com/ebook. Now this is not the book that’s going to be publishing in September of 2022. That will be an actual physical book. And of course it’ll be in ebook format as well. This is just a short digital book to get you started with the information that you need.

Okay, well, we are going to see what’s going to happen. I brought my little doggy up here. My Oggie doggy—my dog’s name is Oggie. I thought he was settled. And now I hear him moving around. If for the people, the old timers, those who are seasoned, who’ve been around with me for a while. Before I had my attic office, I had a tiny little closet office and I could just easily open the door and let my dog in or out whenever he wanted.

And now where I’m up in my attic in order for me to let him in or out, I have to cross the whole room and go all the way down the stairs, which is not that big of a deal. It’s just not as convenient. So I just heard him go down. I think he’s waiting at the door and he’s just going to have to wait because I’m talking to you. We’re recording a podcast, so I’m not going to get to him right now. He’s going to have to wait. And that is fine.

Let’s talk about making decisions ahead of time. This is an incredibly important tool, which is why it is included in the back to basics series. This is something that is incredibly important for you to understand, and for you to practice. Not even so much because of the food that you will then eat, although that will also result in the weight loss that you want, but because of what it does in terms of your relationship with your mind and understanding how to help your mind to help you, how to utilize your brain, to get the results that you want. Rather than letting it just kind of run wild, which is what most of us are doing most of the time.

So really the issue that so many of us struggle with when we’re trying to lose weight. And I know I for sure did all of the time, is what to do about the impulse choices that we make. The decisions in the moment and just having the best of intentions. And then all of a sudden before we know it, the food’s just in our mouths. And then we’re making excuses about why that was worth it, or beating ourselves up about why we’re so weak and undisciplined and something clearly must be wrong with us because why can we not just stop doing this? This came up for me I could tell you a million stories, but the one that mostly comes up for me when I think about this is when I was in practice as a pediatrician.

And we would have pharmaceutical reps come visit us from time to time. And I think it was actually on a schedule somewhere. So theoretically, you could check to see when somebody was planning to come or not, but I never looked at that. And I think sometimes they would plan to come, then they wouldn’t come. And I just was like… I always thought, “Well, I should just bring my lunch every day because you never know what they’re going to bring, or they might not show up.” And this way I just didn’t have to worry about it. So I would plan and create and bring with me something that I felt like was healthy and on plan at the time. And then I would find out, oh, we have lunch today. Somebody is bringing lunch. And there are many times where it was just kind of like regular old catering nothing special, didn’t really want it.

There were other times when it was food that I really liked. And so if you’ve listened to this podcast at all early on, I actually… It’s a very long story about why I was vegan for five years, but I was vegan for five years. And really part of the reason why I did it was this idea that a lot of the vegan people kind of tout, which is like, if you eat vegan, you won’t struggle with your weight anymore. So that was part of the reason, probably a big reason why I did it. And so food from Qdoba, if you know Qdoba, it’s kind of like a fast casual restaurant where they will… It’s similar to Chipotle. It’s like you can get like a custom made burrito or tacos or taco salad, or like things like that.

It’s like an easy thing to cater with this food. So oftentimes drug reps would bring this and that food was vegan. I mean, if I didn’t eat the meat or the cheese or the sour cream. But guess what was vegan? Their tortilla chips and their tortilla chips are made every day by them. And they have this special kind of like lime salt that is really good. And I mean, trust me, I’ve definitely had plenty of sweets in my life. But there’s certain salty foods that I just really, really enjoy. And these chips are amazing. Especially sometimes like a big chunk of salt would like land on one of the chips and it would be like extra salty. Those are my absolute favorite. My mouth is literally watering as I’m telling you about this right now.

I haven’t had these chips… I can’t even remember last time. It’s been years. Literally here I am. Pavlov’s dog, apparently. Just remembering these chips. And so the drug reps would bring these massive bags of these chips. I mean, just if you think about a normal bag of chips from the grocery store, I mean, it probably held maybe two, three times that many. Just tons and tons and tons, huge big bag of them. And so I would walk in and I wasn’t necessarily so interested in the beans and the rice, but I saw those chips. And even if I was planning on eating whatever I had planned and brought for lunch, I knew always right in the moment of course I was going to have some of those chips. So such an impulse choice. Were those chips anything I had planned for? Were they going to support me in my efforts, either lose weight or stop gaining so much or whatever?

No, of course they weren’t, but it was just habit. If there were Qdoba chips, I was eating them. And then what also happened was there was no way everyone in the office was going to eat all of these chips in one day. And so for several days after, until the chips were gone, we would eat those chips. So I’d plan my meal. And it was almost like my dessert was having these chips. I literally have to swallow because I have so much saliva in my mouth because of this. So that’s just an example of that impulse choice. The decision made before, was I going to eat whatever this healthy food is that I brought or supportive food and I’m have anything else. But as soon as that food’s in front of me, the impulse just hits and I’m like, “Oh, of course I’m eating that.”

Like, there wasn’t even a consideration not to. So this comes up for people in so many different scenarios, parties are one or different events. You show up thinking like, “Oh, this won’t be a big deal.” Or maybe you don’t have a plan or maybe you do have a bit of a plan, but then you see, “Oh, but they’re serving this.” Or, “I didn’t know they were going to have that.” Or, “That’s my favorite.” And then we just throw the whole plan away and we’re totally doing those things that don’t support us. Travel is a big one as well. Often we really tell ourselves we don’t have any other possibilities. This is all we can have. And that may be the case, but we don’t have to overeat things even when we’re traveling. So a lot of impulse decisions can be made there, vacation as well.

Lunch at work like I was saying, or really like, anytime at work. There is one family. I won’t mention her name, although I probably should shout her out because she’s just incredibly talented as a baker. But there was somebody who brought her family to us as pediatricians, we saw all of her kids. She’s literally a neighbor of mine. She just down the street and she makes the most incredible chocolate chip cookies. And she would, for a long time actually bake them and bring them to us straight out of the oven, warm still. So you could tell that this family was in the office because you could smell the cookies. You’d be like, is, “Mrs. … Here? Mrs. So-and-so here?” There are all those cookies and I’m telling you some of the best cookies ever. So it did not matter to me whatsoever what my plans were, because if she showed up and there were those cookies I was going to… And you know I didn’t just eat one. So there you go.

So there’s so many scenarios in our lives where this just shows up and sometimes it can even just be you get home and your partner is like, “Hey, do you want to open a bottle of wine?” And you totally hadn’t planned that. But you’re like, “Okay, sure. That sounds good.” And then before it you’re like, “Wait, how, how did I end up over drinking tonight? That wasn’t the plan.” So when we don’t have supportive tools at our disposal and we don’t really know how to handle situations like this, we can either feel really like restricted or deprived if we are not engaging. Let’s say there’s lunch, the bag of keto tortilla chips. And I’m like, no, I’m not allowed to have them. Then I feel so sorry for myself. I feel like I don’t get my needs met.

I don’t get to have what I want. I might feel a lot of self pity for myself, sorry for myself, white knuckling through the whole thing. Or we end up just eating it and then regretting it later. And that can look like a lot of self-flagellation, berating yourself, saying very nasty things to yourself, thinking very nasty thoughts about your body and what you look like. Thinking like if you just beat yourself up, then maybe it’ll do better next time. Saying really mean things is going to help you to do better. Never helped me to do better. That’s for sure.

So what do we actually need? Because these scenarios cannot be avoided, this just happens in life for everybody, no matter who you are or… I mean, unless you are like a hermit and you never interact with any other humans these things are going to come up. So what do we do? What we need to do is we need to take out the drama that our brains create and what I mean by that is the over desire. We see the thing, whatever it is. And it becomes so important that we’re willing to just throw away everything that we had planned, everything that we know is good for us and just go with it.

We literally are allowing the decision making… The part of our brain that allows us to make good, positive, helpful decisions to just go offline. We’re like, it doesn’t matter what you think. This is what I’m doing in the moment. So the part of your brain that is driving you to do that in the moment is what I call the primitive brain. It’s the limbic part of your brain, limbic system. It’s just more primitive, it’s less developed.

And really its job is just to keep you alive. And it does a really good job of that. So it wants to keep you safe. And part of keeping you safe is making sure that you eat enough food, because if you don’t eat enough food as a human, you could get sick and die or you could become really weak and a predator could get you. And so we need you to live long enough to perpetuate the species. I mean, that’s what we’re going back to like really the very, very beginning. This brain doing its job was really, really useful, but it’s still doing that job regardless. Meaning it’s like, “There’s tortilla chips. Those are the best ones, you need to eat those, they’re incredibly important. You need to eat them right now.” That is the message. Sometimes the message comes across in the form of like a toddler tantrum.

“Like it’s just not fair that I don’t get to have those. And, but I just want them, and I’m going to have them. And you know what? I work really hard and I deserve this. And so I’m just going to have it.” That kind of thing. Sometimes I think it’s like a little two or three year old, but then also I’m like, that’s also kind of how we are as teenagers as well. In any case it’s not particularly the mature the way that we approach that. The other part of your brain is the prefrontal cortex, which is what I consider like to be the supervising mother. The part that really does have your best interest at heart, it can really think about the future. It can plan. It understands like if you have that, this will be the outcome in the future.

Whereas the primitive brain doesn’t care about anything, except right now. It’s like totally living in the moment, doesn’t care about the future. It doesn’t care about the past. It’s just all about the moment. So what we want to do is utilize the prefrontal cortex, which tends to be a little bit of a quieter voice. And it’s advice sounds much more rational. Where the primitive brain’s voice is much more dramatic and emphatic and its urges and cravings. And just over desire, just wanting food more than is appropriate for what your body needs.

Obviously, my body never needs tortilla chips for me to live and be very healthy and to thrive. But my primitive brain didn’t know that. It was like, “You need to have these right now. They’re very, very important.” So we want to take that drama out. We don’t want to hear the suggestions of our primitive brain and think that we just have to follow whatever our brain says in the moment.

So we kind of want to push it offline. We’re not going to be able to get it to stop making suggestions, but we can do things that will allow it to become much quieter. So that it doesn’t feel like it’s like collaborating you over the head with requests and demands. Really, they’re not requests or demands. And where it’s more like, “Ooh, that would be good.” And you’re like, “You can be quiet over there.” Not in a mean way, but just recognizing it’s just a suggestion. It doesn’t need to be acted upon. So we don’t need to seriously consider what it’s suggesting. And that’s what we want to get to. Where it goes, “Hey, those tortilla chips. I mean, those are the best ones you should eat. Those.” And it’s not dramatic in your brain.

You’re not immediately going, “Yeah, I’m going to throw out the plan that I had. I’m going to go ahead and eat whatever comes up.” So what we want to utilize when we’re using this tool, making decisions ahead of time is our prefrontal cortex, because it can think about the future. It is good in terms of making decisions that will help you in the future, that will give you that result that you want. So what this looks like, what this tool looks like is deciding at least the day before what you’re going to eat. Now, before I really get into this, you might be thinking like literally for the rest of my life. And we’ll get to that. Maybe, maybe not. But if you are struggling with impulse choices in the moment, then yes, for now, you’re going to be doing this until we get to a point where you don’t need it anymore.

So I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but it’s not going to be like three days and then you’re over it. Most likely it’s going to be a little while. What you’ll find though, over the course of time is that this tool creates so much peace for you. You actually fall in love with it, and it doesn’t feel like super rule based or oppressive in any way. It’s something that actually really helps and supports you.

So what this means is the day before you decide what you’re going to eat. Now, when you do this, and this may take a little trial and error, when you do this, don’t think about it, “This is me if I just never was a hungry person and never experienced hunger and didn’t care if my meals weren’t satisfying.” Sometimes we create these plans that it’s not enough food, or it’s not really going to satisfy us in the way we want to be satisfied.

So it’s very important that the plan you create is realistic. And one of the best ways that you can determine whether it’s realistic or not is to ask yourself on a scale of one to 10, how confident am I that I’m going to follow this plan the next day? You should be in eight, nine or 10. So if you’re like, “I’m a five.” That probably means you’re like, “Nah, I might follow it, I might not.” If that’s the case, just being totally honest and upfront, then we need to change the plan. So we can get you to an eight, nine or 10. Seen this with many clients where they’re like “I made this plan and then I threw it all out the window that weekend or whatever.” And I say, “When you made the plan, how confident were you that you were going to actually follow the plan?”

And it’s never an eight, nine or 10. Sometimes it’s like a two. Sometimes it’s like, we’re just going through the motions. Well, I made the plan, even though I basically knew there was not a chance that I was going to follow it. That’s fine. It’s just good to know. We need to make sure the plan is something that we think we’re going to follow that we’re willing to commit to in that way. So create a plan the day before and make sure you’re an eight, nine or 10 on the scale of likelihood. Are you going to follow it or not? Then here comes the magic. Ready? The next day, all you have to do is follow your plan. There are no decisions needed. All you have to do is just eat what you said you’re going to eat. So new things will pop up. The Qdoba chips are going to show up.

They’re going to be sitting right there on the table. And all you have to do is ask yourself, “Did I plan to eat that?” If the answer is no, then there’s nothing to contemplate, there’s no decision to make. There’s just nothing to consider. You’re just going to eat what you said you were going to eat. And so, especially in the beginning, your brain might be like, “Oh, but, but, but, but, but, but.” And you just notice that that’s there and you just remind yourself, “All I have to do is follow my plan.” Now, when things come up. If it really is strong “Oh my gosh, it’s the chips. And they’re extra salty today or whatever.” Super important. You’re not going to eat them that day. But telling yourself I can’t have that is not true because you’re an adult and you get to eat whatever you want whenever you want.

So be sure to not add to scarcity and over desire by telling yourself that you can’t have it. That just creates more of that feeling of deprivation. It’s a thought that creates deprivation, the feeling and restriction. It’s just not true. So you can have them, but you need a plan for them in advance. So, I mean, here’s what’s funny. I can go to Qdoba store, restaurant, anytime I want to, I could even order a huge bag of chips like that if I wanted to. But I didn’t, which is very interesting. So we have to get just real clear with ourselves. You know what if I really want those tips, if they are that amazing and that whatever over the top, so good. Then one day coming up, I’m going to plan for them the night before, the day before. And then the next day I can have them and I won’t overeat them. I’ll stop when I get to four.

So you’re not telling yourself you can’t have it. You can have it. You just need to plan for it. Let’s say it’s the mom who brought in those cookies that were so good. Well, I wouldn’t eat them that day, but I can package a couple up, bring them home and plan for them for the next day. That is how you handle this. If it’s something very special. You’re never going to be able to have this again. And it still feels very important that you have it. Then what you do is you wrap it up, bring it home, plan for it for the next day. So you’re not telling yourself you can’t have it very, very important. So what we have to do here is just create this scenario where you know that you are in control, where you build up evidence for yourself that you can plan your food and follow that plan.

I’ve talked before about your relationship with yourself. This is very important. Your relationship with yourself is how you treat yourself. Do you do what you say you’re going to do? Every time you make a plan and you don’t follow it, you are eroding that relationship. You told yourself you would do something. And then in the end you didn’t actually do it. And to your own detriment. So what we want to do is build that relationship by doing what we say we’re going to do, and then managing the thoughts that come up.

If your brain’s really having a hissy fit, it’s losing its mind. You’re just like, “This is the worst.” See if you can become the observer or watcher of your thoughts and notice, “Wow, there’s a tantrum going on in there right now. And I wonder why that is? What is it about this food that makes my brain think it’s so important and that I must eat it? What are my thoughts that create so much over desire for this food? What are my thoughts about wanting to eat something and not eating it in the moment?”

Sometimes we just rebel, because we’re like, “Don’t tell me what to do.” What is that? Is it like anytime we feel like there’s some sort of limit placed that we have to push back on it immediately. This is such a great opportunity for you to understand why you struggle with food more deeply. And you need to understand that so that you can work through it and get to that place where you truly experience peace and freedom around food. And I’m telling you, it is the most worth it exercise to do.

Now, when we talk about, do I have to do this for the rest of my life? What I will tell you is do I plan my food, five years in laying it all out every night? I don’t, but it’s because I know I don’t need to anymore. Because I did for a long time and now I don’t need to. And it was a gradual process to undo it. And I will also say that if I ever felt like my eating was out of control or something was off for me, planning my food the night before, making decisions ahead of time would absolutely be what I would do. That would be one of the first things.

Whenever we feel like we’re out of control, we’ve fallen off the wagon. Even there isn’t though there is no wagon. That’s not actually a thing. But when we start feeling like we’ve derailed and we just are out of control. What we want is to actually create some stability and control for ourselves, our brains are out of control, but we can create some control around our food.

These are the things I’m going to eat. When I eat them, they make my body feel good. They support me and my body is satisfied. I get what I need. Then I’m going to work through all the objections that my brain comes up with. Figuring out what’s going on in my brain, because it’s not the food that’s the problem. It’s what we’re thinking and our reluctance, our unwillingness to feel what we’re feeling. So can you decide to back away from this, you totally can. Over the course of time, as you’ve built up that relationship and you have lots and lots of evidence that you in the moment will make decisions that are in your best interest and create a long term result that you want. Now I’ve had clients who have been totally successful in being able to do this. I’ve had others who have tried it and they’ve realized you know what, I’m not ready.

And some of them also find that what? I think life is just better when I do it like this. It’s just the way I have you plan food is so simple and easy. It takes so little time that it’s really not a hardship to do it. So you can also just continue to do it moving forward. And if you don’t know what they’re going to have at some party or whatever, you can choose larger food groups or decide I’m not going to eat, or whatever they serve I won’t overeat it. That’s another thing you can just be like, this is just a hunger scale meal where I’m only going to eat when I’m hungry and I’m going to stop when I’ve had enough. When my body is satisfied. There’s so many different ways to move through this.

And the reason why it’s so important to recognize that there’s lots of options is because when someone just tells you, there’s just this one way and you have to do it this way and as though that works for everybody, it’s unlike to always work for you. We have to have options. There needs to be an individual approach where we have to look at ourselves as people, how do we thrive? Then we create our own individual plan, taking that information into consideration.

Because the plan that helps you to thrive may not be the same plan that helps me thrive and vice versa. So me telling you exactly what I do and how I eat, it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t really matter for you. What we need to figure out is what works for you. I will tell you though, that all of us have a primitive brain and all those primitive brains just want us to stay safe and our brains have gotten confused and think that food is excessively important. And so this can really dial it back. When you have those urges to eat and you just follow your plan and you do this consistently, the brain starts to actually quiet down.

You start having messages of like, “Oh, you should eat that. Or that looks good.” And they’re quiet. And they’re just little nudges and suggestions, very easy to just skip over or ignore rather than the total, full bore toddler, tantrum, face down, kicking the feet, slamming the fist against the ground. You know what I’m talking about. The full blown, “But I want to eat it right now.” That gets better the more that you practice this.

So I want to suggest and encourage you… Suggest that you go ahead and give this tool a try. It really makes a big difference. It’s one of the very first things that I have all of my clients do. And it really starts to help you to see what is the real issue underlying you’re overeating. So it gets your eating under control and then you see what’s really going on for you.

And we need to see that so that we can work through that and actually solve the problem for good. Rather than just like, but should I be eating more of this macronutrient or should I be calculating that, or keto is the thing like that. None of that really matters when it comes down to it. All right. I can’t wait for you to try decisions ahead of time, such a great tool. I hope that this makes a huge difference for you. I really think it will, as you go ahead and implement this. And I hope you have a great rest of your week and I’ll catch you next time. Have a great one, take care, bye-bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help go to KatrinaUbellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #261: [Back to Basics Series] Making Decisions Ahead of Time appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Today we’re talking cycle struggles—and how those struggles can tie into our weight loss journey. This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a very long time, and it’s something that so many women struggle with, but so few of us talk about publicly. So today, I’m breaking down what cycle struggles mean in terms of our eating, how we often ask food and alcohol to make us feel better (to the detriment of our weight loss!), and more.

Listen in as I dive into the three primary struggles I see women deal with when it comes to their cycle, as well as what you can do to overcome those challenges if you experience them. You’ll learn the best thing you can do if you struggle with your cycle and why it’s important to listen to your body and the messages it sends in order to get through those challenging times.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP260.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * How the messages we get in society have made cycle struggles a taboo topic. * The three main struggles that I see people deal with. * How to overcome challenges with eating and your cycle. * Why emotional work still ties into cycle struggles. * The best thing you can do if you struggle with your cycle. * How to support yourself without turning to food.

Featured In This Episode * Information on Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 260.

Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast and happy new year. I’m so glad you’re here to join me today. I love the energy and momentum that a new year brings, and I hope that you can feel some of that energy. It’s so exciting. We have our new group of Weight Loss for Doctors Only clients starting here very soon, next week. It’s just such a great time to lose weight. I think it’s not the only time, I think there’s other great times to lose weight throughout the year as well, but there’s something about January, it’s just like, okay, we’re turning over a new page, turning over a new leaf. It’s just fresh and we’re going to start with good intentions and not even just intentions, we’re going to create some good results as well. I have some great things planned for you this year.

I’m so, so excited to share them with you as we go along throughout the year, but I’m actually super excited to share with you today’s episode because it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a very, very long time. And just for whatever reason, never kind of was the right time for me to discuss this with you on the podcast. But it really is something that so many women struggle with. And I mean, really no matter where you are in your adult life, hormonal changes and just struggles with our cycle and what that means for us in terms of our eating and how we’re feeling, how we ask food and alcohol to make us feel better. It’s just something that we struggle with again and again. And a lot of people don’t feel supported in that, or just kind of feel like, well, there’re other ways to support myself, but the way most people do it is by eating a drinking.

So how do I not make great progress throughout the month and then just unravel it in those few days, leading up to the start of the period, or maybe even just first few days of the bleeding actually beginning. So, we’re going to talk about that today. Before I dive into that though, I do just want to remind you, especially with it being the new year, especially if you’re new to this podcast, that I have several awesome free resources available to you on my website, it’s katrinaubellmd.com/resources. If you also just go to the website, you’ll see a little tab at the top and you can click on it, that just says free resources. So, that is how you can get some great information. You can get just some steps to get you started. I have a whole digital book in there about how to lose weight permanently.

And I also have the podcast roadmap, which is the first 30 episodes you should listen to of this podcast if you want to get going, losing weight. So it kind of gives you some direction, considering we are on episode 260 today. So, those are great, they’re free and I strongly encourage you to make sure you get whichever one feels like it’s exactly what you’re needing at this time. So again, katrinaubellmd.com/resources. Okay, let’s talk about cycle struggles. I am not an OBGYN, but I have coached lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of OBGYNs. And also, when you are a pediatrician, there’s a little overlap there as babies are born and moms recovering, and there’s often kind of a bit of an intimacy, even amongst women just sharing what they’re going through and how they struggle.

And this is something that is really actually something that even just like a couple decades ago, it was largely considered pretty inappropriate to be discussing these kinds of things. You know, really the messaging, so often, particularly like marketing messages and advertisement messages are, if you’re struggling with your period, there are things that you should be doing so that you can just act like everything’s normal. Like I particularly remember, I think it was when I was in high school or so, there were these tampon ad units. So they probably were on TV too, but I definitely remember seeing them in the kind of teen magazines about very slender, very attractive young women who weren’t feeling great, but then did whatever was being recommended. And then there they were wearing white and playing tennis and feeling awesome.

And really, that’s awesome, we love solutions, right? There’s no problem with that. But the messaging is, if you’re struggling, if you don’t feel like playing tennis in something white, then you’re doing it wrong, right. Or there’s something wrong with you. And so, very often we’ve been taught to just keep things under wraps, to not discuss things. So often when, even as adult women, if we share something relating to our female reproductive organs, it’s like, sorry, this is TMI, it’s too much information and if anything, what we need to be doing is sharing more about that. Being more open about it. It’s not anything we need to be ashamed about, embarrassed about or feeling like we need to hide it. In fact, the more that we do that, the more we just pass on that belief system to other women and of course the girls who are growing up as well, like this is something that you should be embarrassed about.

This is something that’s dirty. This is something that is unnatural when it’s anything but, it’s completely natural. And, your body knows exactly what to do and how to take care of itself. And really what we need to be doing is, rather than thinking about our bodies or approaching our bodies as though they’re the enemy and we have to somehow overcome these problems that our bodies create that slows us down and is something that’s so difficult for us to have to deal with month after month. I prefer to think about it, like how can we work with our bodies? How can we listen to the messages that they’re actually sending us and work with them to get through these times that sometimes can be particularly challenging.

And you know, this isn’t even just when you’re in your regular reproductive years. As you go into peri menopause and into menopause, there can be a variety of different struggles and challenges that come. And just to mention too, so many women are not super consistent. Like you may find that your symptoms are very consistent and you also may find that a couple months out of the year is when you really struggle, or you’ll have a streak of three months in a row where it’s really tough. And then for whatever reason, things are a little better again. And so, I want to just let you know that first of all, that’s normal, but also that it’s okay to really meet yourself where you’re at. Like, what do you need today? What does your body need with this cycle rather than like, why haven’t I cracked the code and why can’t I just figure out exactly what’s going to work every single time?

Like that frustration is just resistance to what our bodies do and the magnificence that our bodies hold, because without all of this, we wouldn’t be able to perpetuate the species. And that’s the whole point of this anyway. So whether you decide to perpetuate the species with your own body or not is not necessarily something that we have to take into account, but that is the purpose of this. So, there’s three main struggles that I see my clients and people that I coach dealing with. And so I want to address each of those. The first is, being extra hungry. So just noticing additional hunger leading up to the start of the period, sometimes those first couple of days the period’s starting as well. The second is just physically not feeling well. And that can be any number of symptoms, pain and bloating and just discomfort and constipation and diarrhea, and so many different physical that we can experience during that time.

And then the third is emotionally not feeling well. So that is possibly your kind of more typical PMs type symptoms, or just feeling just really irritable and not knowing why, people just being on your last nerve for a day or so. So let’s dig into each one of those. Let’s start with being extra hungry during this time. So I have had clients who are like, listen, I could literally eat whatever, an elephant, just this insatiable hunger it sometimes feels like during this time. But I do just want to mention that if you are not already fat adapted, then that might be one of the first things you want to consider if you find you’re extra hungry during this time. It may or may not make a difference, but it’s not going to hurt you for sure. And it may make a difference.

So the best way to become fat adapted is to take a break from eating sugar and flour on a regular basis for arguably four to six weeks or so at least. And what that does is it allows your body to more happily access your fat stores for energy when your cells need some energy, rather than making you feel like crap so you just go ahead and eat something. When that is how your bodies functioning, we call that being a sugar burner. And when you’re a sugar burner, you tend to have more hunger, more intense hunger, more out of control hunger on a regular basis anyway. So if you’re already operating from that place, and then you add the hormonal changes on top of it, it can make it even more severe. So coming from that place of being fat adapted is a great first place to start.

The next thing to address is what your thoughts and beliefs are around actually experiencing hunger, like being hungry. Are you someone who is able to tolerate being hungry without making it mean something negative? You might be like, well yeah, Katrina, I’m a doctor. There’s a lot of times when I’m hungry and I’m not allowed to eat, or I can’t eat for whatever reason. So obviously I can be hungry at times. But what are your thoughts about that? Are you feeling totally sorry for yourself? Are you thinking this is ridiculous? Why did you become a doctor? Nobody should have to live like this. Like, are you resisting that? Or are you recognizing, you know what, my body’s just asking for some food and if I don’t eat it, it’s okay because it knows how to take good care of itself. It knows how to access the energy that it needs to fuel my cells if I’m not able to eat.

When we have thoughts and beliefs that make the experience of physical hunger mean something negative, then that is just resisting the relative discomfort of the hunger that we’re already experiencing, which makes it worse. It’s like the resistance is what creates the suffering, right? There’s the discomfort of being hungry or hungrier than usual, or the amount of food that you normally eat isn’t quite satisfying you in the way that you would like it to. And then there’s a resistance to that and that’s what makes it so difficult. So when we are feeling sorry for ourselves, when we have those negative thoughts and beliefs about it, that can make it so much worse. And when we’re feeling extra worse, we’re feeling a lot of suffering, we’re feeling really not good about that. We often will eat even more or when we do have a chance to eat, we overeat basically to compensate.

We think that’s like what we deserve or it’s our reward for having to experience that. So that would be something that we would want to examine, look at, become curious about and decide if there might be a different way of thinking about it. You know, so there’s a couple days a month where I’m hungrier than usual and the way I work through that is I drink extra water, keep myself hydrated. And I just remind myself that this is not a problem that necessarily has to be solved with food every time, it’s not like I’m starving myself, I am feeding myself. My body is just a little confused right now and thinks it needs more, or something to that effect. Now that’s one way of approaching it. Now, there are other people who are like, listen, I really do need more food.

I am fat adapted. I looked at my thoughts and it is just, I am hungrier. And if that is the case, it’s completely fine. It’s another completely valid option to just decide to eat more during those times. What I suggest that you do though. And what I have my clients do is to create a special plan for those days. So you have like your regular way that you’re eating and then when you can anticipate your period coming, then you know, okay, there’s going to be one day, two days, three days where I’m going to be extra hungry, and when I have those days, this is how I approach that. If I eat a typical amount of food and I still am not at a plus four on the hunger scale, I’m not satisfied, then these are the things that I eat to get myself there.

What I would suggest though, is that you get really clear with yourself on how you’re going to tell the difference between extra physical hunger and emotional hunger, because you might be telling yourself a story of like, oh, I’m so hungry, this is the time when I need more food. And so you will experience emotional hunger, which can feel like hunger until you get really more acquainted with your experience of it and then you’ll notice that it actually often is experienced in a slightly different way than physical hunger, meaning it’s not necessarily located in the same place. It often comes on much more strongly and quickly than a physical hunger does and it often will go way extremely quickly as well, even if you don’t do anything, which is a little bit different than physical hunger. So this is something though that you want to experience for yourself.

You want to get really curious about, and this is of course what we guide our clients through. So if it’s something you’re interested in getting help with, and next time we open up our program, you might want to consider coming and joining us to so that you can figure out those nuances, understanding the difference. And so the thing is, if you’re actually physically hungrier than normal and you need more food, then what you could plan on doing is eating like another serving of vegetables, or maybe having a little extra salad dressing that’s fatty and more filling rather than, oh, I need ice cream. You know what I mean? Or like the only way I can make this hunger go away is by eating something that’s off plan. And so that’s not what we’re doing. If you’re actually physically hungry, then nutritious food solves that problem.

If you are emotionally hungry, it typically won’t and it’s going to want you, what’s going to solve or what makes that emotional hunger dissipate, if you don’t do the emotional work around it is usually something that is much more sugar based or flour based, or very salty or crunchy, like highly palatable foods, basically. So in your plan, you would not be like planning for eating Doritos, even though that might be what you like to do, you would be planning on something maybe even like an extra piece of fruit or something like that, and really being aware of your hunger scale. And what you’re doing here is you’re letting your body know like, Hey, if you’re hungry, I will support you, but I’m going to support you with actually nutritious food that fuels my body, not something that is emotional, trying to make myself feel better with food.

Now let’s talk about physically not feeling well. Again, so many symptoms that can come into play, I’m not going to list them all off, but there are just a lot of physical discomforts that we can often experience leading up to the start of the period and those first couple days of the period. So if you notice that you struggle with that and you find yourself eating more, drinking more, I mean, literally remember it was my first year in college when somebody suggested that a good way to deal with the menstrual cramps I was experiencing was to have some alcohol. And I tried it and it worked. I have to tell you it did help. So we just have to be really aware of those patterns. I mean, I was like 19 or something and that was my education into the world of being a woman like, Ooh, you could do that.

Alcohol, luckily is not too big of a thing for me so that wasn’t something that I continued on. But for a lot of people, it really is the way that they deal with things. It’s really part of that solution. So what you’ll want to be paying a lot of attention to is when you’re overeating during that time, are you trying to feel better with food? You know, are you just trying to comfort yourself? For many of us, particularly, depending on how you were raised, that was the main way that we learned to comfort ourselves, was through food. And if you eat something and you still don’t feel better, you’re like, well, maybe eating something else. I mean, how often have you been told, well, if you have a headache, you probably need to eat, when it’s so much more likely that you probably need to drink some water.

And so again, for not feeling well, oh, maybe you need some alcohol. So, you want to become really aware of how often you’re eating, thinking that food is going to be the solution to your physical discomfort. And so once you recognize, this is a discomfort that I could deal with in lots of other ways than food or alcohol is one possible way, but then you can start building up your list of other supportive activities that you can do. So ideas for this can be just sleeping more. Sometimes we really just need to just really nurture ourselves and take good care of ourselves and sleep is what we need. Sometimes, particularly with bloating and aching and things like that, a warm bath can feel really good or a warm shower. For a lot of people, exercise can feel good and that can even just simply be walking or stretching, yoga, things like that.

It’s often, what I found, not something that we really feel like doing in the moment, but once we’ve done it, that was exactly what we needed. So having this at the ready, it’s so easy to just be like, well, I’m just going to grab this snack. But if you know, Hey, when I’m struggling this way, I have this list of things to try. Then you can remind yourself to see. And then there’s also various supplements that sometimes people take, and even possibly medications, of course, that would be something that you would want to be talking to your healthcare provider about. But there are so many ways that don’t involve eating and drinking that we can engage with in order to help our bodies feel better when they’re physic not doing well during that time. The other thing to note is that eating more food than your body needs, doesn’t actually make you physically feel better.

So if you really start paying attention, and what I mean by that is approaching this in the way that you always have been, but really being aware of what the after effects of doing that is. How do you feel physically, you were feeling uncomfortable, physically, then you ate some food to try to feel better. Does your body actually feel better? Did you overeat and now you just are experiencing different discomfort in your body? So maybe it’s just like distracting yourself from one discomfort with another discomfort, because ultimately your body does not want you to eat more food than it needs. It really doesn’t like that. It taxes the system, it doesn’t make you sleep as well, or it impacts your ability to sleep effectively and in a way that really is rejuvenating for you. It’s just not something that your body wants.

And so you may be with good intentions, inadvertently making yourself feel worse. Once you start to see that connection, it can be even easier to remind yourself in the moment, hey, you know what, I know food seems like a good idea right now, of course it’s habit based, it’s what I always do, but I actually will feel worse if I do this. So let me try something else that doesn’t have that downside later. And then finally let’s talk about emotionally not feeling well. And this is what so many women really struggle with. Whether it’s regular PMs symptoms or, maybe wouldn’t even call it that, but just emotionally struggling. I do just want to say that I am not really talking here about PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. That’s something that, of course, you would want to be working with a doctor on.

There are tons and tons of symptoms of PMDD that it would be too many to list here, but just so you know, those symptoms, to qualify for the diagnosis, they’re so severe that you really have trouble functioning at home, at work, in your relationships, it’s really like an extreme form of PMS. I did actually find that Johns Hopkins Medicine had a nice resource that really explained a lot about it. So, if you’d like to learn more, hopkinsmedicine.org would be a great place to go to. And of course you’d want to talk to your doctor about whether medication would be the right thing for you. But even when you look at the treatment options, medications are one of them, but there are other options as well. Other things they recommend. And those are things that I already have been discussing here. And so everything I’m talking about here is still potentially going to be helpful.

But if it’s really on the extreme end, you’d of course want to check in with your doctor about that. So one thing I just want to tell you, some of us maybe dabble in the things that are a little woo, woo or like maybe our little woo curious or a little woo adjacent, meaning we’re not a 100% fully immersed in all the woo, woo stuff, but we’re interested and we think there might be a little something to it sometimes. Just to let you know what people in that world kind of believe about this time in a woman’s cycle where she is more emotionally charged, maybe feeling more intense emotions or more negative emotions than usual. They think about this as though, the term they’ll often use is, the veil is thin, and what they mean by that is, you’re more in touch then with what’s actually emotionally true for you.

So let’s just say you find yourself to be just so angry during those couple of days leading up to your period, what might really be going on for you is that you actually have a lot of anger all of the time that you’re just really skillful at repressing and maybe you’ve been using food and alcohol to not feel that, but during that time, when the hormones are changing, it kind of bubbles to the surface and you become more aware. So what I’ve noticed is that often we’re like, why am I so out of control? What is wrong with me? Wouldn’t it be so interesting to think about it more like, oh, this is more like the authentic truth of what my emotional experience is like. I wonder if I’m feeling a lot of anger now, maybe there’s other anger that I’m not even in touch with throughout the rest of the month.

It might be worth looking into that further, or maybe it’s sadness or maybe it’s impatience or whatever it may be. So, take it or leave it. But I think that can be an interesting way of exploring that time and also moving toward it and allowing it to have something to teach you, being open to learning something from that time and what you’re emotionally experiencing, rather than just wholeheartedly, blankly rejecting it, like it’s wrong and bad and you shouldn’t be feeling that way. Which leads me into the first thing that I want to talk about. So often we believe that we should be feeling differently during this time, we think something is going wrong and then we are upset about that. And what I want to offer to you is one of the best things you can do is to stop believing that you should be feeling any different than you are any day for no matter what reason, whether it’s hormones that are making it maybe a little bit more intense or any other reason why you’re experiencing what you’re experiencing, your feelings are valid and they’re important and it’s worth caring about them.

And so when you think that you be feeling that way, when you think you should be feeling differently, when you reject yourself for the way that you’re feeling, you’re sending yourself the message, the way you are is not okay, your emotions are not important and they’re not to be shared with yourself or the world. They should just be locked up and put away forever. And when we believe that, that is when we are so much more likely to be using food and possibly alcohol to get us through because we have this belief that we shouldn’t feel the way we feel. And if we don’t eat the food and drink the alcohol, then those emotions are there. So, that’s like the sure fire way of keeping them under lock and key. And so what it takes here is a mindset shift in recognizing, actually feelings are super important.

They’re like the spice of life. Emotions are what make our lives meaningful and they’re what gives us a full experience of everything that is available to us. When we are thinking that things shouldn’t be the way they are, we are denying ourselves that experience. So that would be something for you to explore. The next thing is asking yourself or becoming more interested in finding out what are the emotions that you’re asking food and alcohol to solve for you, something’s going on for you and food and alcohol or just food is the solution that you’ve been seeking. And so what is the actual problem? So we know what the solution has been, but what is the problem so we can find a different solution? What is it that you’re feeling that you don’t know how to process, that you don’t know what to do with, that you’re unwilling to feel?

We need to understand that so that we can then learn how to process it and move that energy through us instead of trapping it inside us with food. And finally, there is never a more important time to be cultivating love and compassion for yourself than when you are struggling hormonally. And, at 45 years old, I am firmly in perimenopause right now. And it has been a really interesting experience so far, really cultivating this, even for myself, just being willing to be with myself even on a day where I’m struggling, even on a day where I had other plans and I really wish that my body were responding differently and it’s not. Just being willing to be there with myself. This is again letting my brain and body know that they’re both important, that I’m with them, I won’t reject them and I find that their experience is important and I care about it.

That alone, can help us to weather that time without needing food or alcohol to make us feel better. We just want to be seen and validated and understood. And when we’re not rejecting ourselves, when we’re instead loving ourselves and offering ourselves compassion, we’re able to have that experience that we want. So those are the things to approach for yourself and just to explore, just to see, what are these things? It’s probably going to take several months of just understanding, genuine curiosity. What is my deal when this is going on? What’s going on for me? Trying different things to support yourself. But knowing that if you’re really struggling, there are ways to support yourself that don’t involve eating a bunch, gaining back the weight that you’ve lost the weeks prior, or even if you’re in maintenance, knowing, well, now I’m going to gain weight and then I’ve got to lose weight, every, I’m back to losing weight again. It’s just recognizing that there can be still some emotional ups and downs and physical ups and downs, but we know how to deal with that.

And what I want to say is that when you can learn this skill, since this comes up relatively monthly, what you’re then also doing is building the ability to weather other storms that come up in our lives, right? There are other times where we physically don’t feel well, maybe we’re going through a special treatment, or we need to have surgery. You know, if we already know how to approach ourselves when we’re physically not feeling well, that’s amazing. When we’re emotionally not feeling well there’re often times where emotionally things are very hard. If we already know how to handle those things with ourselves, like all the better. So, so good. Right?

So it just makes approaching the rest of our lives a little smoother. We just are able to move through that, I guess yeah, just more, I wanted to say effortlessly, but I don’t know if it’s effortless, but it’s not quite such a rocky experience. So I hope that these are helpful for you. I’m sure they will be. And of course, if you’d like some additional free resources to help you get going with losing weight, head on over to katrinaubellmd.com/resources, there’s some great ones there for you to choose from and we’ll get you started losing some weight. All right, happy new year once again and I’ll talk to you next week.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

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In this episode, I’m talking about something that I could talk about forever: the body positivity movement. It’s a topic that comes up pretty frequently, so I’ll be diving into how the work that I do fits into this movement (or doesn’t!) and why accepting your body is always the work that needs to be done, no matter what movement you subscribe to.

Listen in as I share what the body positivity movement is, how it has evolved over the years, and some of the issues that I take with any movement that doesn’t encourage loving your body exactly the way it is. Weight loss is about so much more than fitting into society’s unrealistic standards, and no matter where you are on your journey, you can’t skip learning to love and accept your body.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * What the body positivity movement is. * How it has evolved for better or worse. * The issues with the body positivity movement. * Why you can’t skip learning to love your body. * How what I teach fits into the body positivity movement.

Featured In This Episode * The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World by Jamil Zaki * 6 Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 259.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here with me today. I have a great episode for you that I think is actually a really… it’s coming at the perfect time, just as we’re heading into the new year, when there’s usually the biggest push for people to lose weight, all the messaging that comes with that. I think this is a conversation that I’ve had many times individually with people and in other formats, but I’ve never really addressed it on the podcast. So I’m excited to talk to you today about body positivity and that whole movement and how that can play into the work that I do with my clients and what I teach you here on the podcast.

But before we get started, I have another amazing book for you. Are you ready? I love this book. I was totally taken aback. I have to be a hundred percent honest, based on the title, I was like, eh. What happened was, I heard about this book from someone’s email list that I was on. I think they said that they were having their team all read this book kind of as like a book club, and I thought, eh, I’ll get it. I’ll see. I’m kind of the sucker that way, and with Amazon and how easy it is to buy things, IU look up the book. I’m like, boom, sold.

So I got this book, and this is another one that I read, I think over the course of two days. And that’s kind of how I read. I tend to just kind of do it in spurts it seems like. And I really, really enjoyed this book. I got a lot out of it, and I kind of fell in love with this author. He is great.

The book is called The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. So what I was expecting based on the title was, the war for kindness. I was like, oh gosh, what is this going to be? But it ended up actually being really positive. I think it explained what’s going on really well. And it also gave some other really good information. There’s a specific reason in particular why I’m recommending it to you. I’ll get into that in a minute. The author’s name is Jamil Zaki. He is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and he’s the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab.

And so his story is that he’s an only child of Peruvian mother and a Pakistani father, that both his parents had come to the US for school, higher education, had met each other, married. It was just kind of like not a good match at all and they broke up and separated when he was quite young. It was pretty contentious between the two parents, and so Jamil grew up just kind of struggling with two parents who just did not get along. And he writes about how each one would try to kind of pit him against the other, but he really ultimately loved each of them. And what really helped him was finding empathy for each one, understanding what their motivations were, each one of them, and why they would act in the way that they do, because ultimately he loved them both and he wanted to be in both of their lives. And so it kind of makes sense that over the course of time, this is what he ended up studying and spending a lot of time focusing on. And so I actually have listened to a podcast interview with him too, and I found that really interesting as well.

So the reason why I thought this was helpful is just because so many of us are just trying to be good people and trying to understand what we should be doing moving forward with just the world the way it is. And there’s some really great information in here. He really gets to some of the different scenarios and people that he has studied. But the chapter that I thought was most relevant, and when I read this chapter, I was like, okay, for sure, I’m going to talk about this on the podcast, is the one that he does on neonatal intensive care unit and the people who work there. I thought, oh, this is a good one. So he talks to doctors, he talks to the nursing staff. And interestingly, I think it was maybe a year and a half or so prior to him shadowing them in this NICU, his wife gave birth to their first child, and I believe it was a girl. She had some significant health issues, like she had a stroke and was in that at specific NICU for quite some time.

So he had the experience of being there as the family of a patient, and then also coming back and actually shadowing and interacting with some of the doctors who had taken care of his daughter, and it gave him a really neat perspective of both ends of it. And he really talks about how you can have empathy for your patients but not burn yourself out. How do you have that balance? He doesn’t write like, oh, I have the answer for you, and this is exactly how it’s going to work. It’s more of a discussion and just kind of thinking about different ideas.

I thought it was great. I mean, he talks to people who are former neo-Nazis who have now focused their entire life’s work on helping to get people out of hate groups, people that it can be really hard to have empathy for and how they do that. I thought it was a great book. I really enjoyed it. So I’m a little bit of a psychology nerd in that sense that I really like reading these kinds of things. He also works with Carol Dweck, who, if you know Carol Dweck, she wrote the book Mindset, which is just this seminal work. It’s so good. It’s amazing. And I found out she was one of his mentors. I was like, what? Of course. It makes so much sense because both of their work is so great. So anyway, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, Jamil Zaki. If you’re interested, if you like to read, I thought this was a good one. I really liked this one. All right.

I also want to let you know that, especially if you’re new to the podcast or you’re just kind of like, okay, I mean it now. I’m really going to buckle down and get myself together in terms of my eating and my weight, I do have a free resource for you that I think could be really helpful in terms of guiding you as to what you should do to get started. It’s so easy for us at the beginning of a new year to jump in head first, we’re just trying to do all the things all at once, and it’s like a little flame that burns out really quickly, rather than us thinking about it in terms of sustainability and being able to make longstanding, long term change.

And so the resource that I have is called Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss. What I recommend that you do is that you read through them and you choose one of them, one of the steps, and you start applying it to your life and you start allowing that to be a regular thing that you do. And then when you’re ready and that feels normal and just kind of how you roll, then you incorporate the next thing, and you just build on it rather than, I have to do everything all at once, and then you’re not able to sustain it. So also, all the things that are on there are not like the usual stuff that you’ve heard a million times.

So feel free to download it. Like I said, it’s free. To get it, just go to katrinaubellmd.com/six, S-I-X, and you can get that right into your email inbox, read through it. It’s not very long, and you can pick out the thing you want to start with. So with listening to this podcast and applying those steps that you have there, you’re going to get yourself off on the right foot with a new year. So make sure you get that, katrinaubellmd.com/six.

So today I want to talk about body positivity. This comes up relatively frequently, where people kind of ask me, what is my take on the body positivity movement? And how does the work that I teach fit in with body positivity? Or does it not fit in? And how do we think about this basically? What do we do? And so I wanted to just, first of all, give you a little information if you may not have heard of the body positivity movement, or you might not be totally clear on what it is.

In fact, as I was doing some research on the internet, the good old interwebs, to find out a little bit more details about it, I found that there’s actually quite a bit of history to this. It actually started in the 1960s when people were pushing back against fat shaming, and over the course of time, it’s evolved. I believe it was in the 1990s that the term body positivity kind of was first and attributed to this. And it’s kind of evolved, and it’s actually evolved to the point where now it’s splintered out into various factions. There’s people who are still on the body positivity side. Some people say that people who are thin and small have kind of taken over the body positivity movement and it’s leaving others by the wayside yet again. Others are moving toward what’s called the body neutrality movement, which I’ll explain to you what that is in a minute.

I think that it’s a little bit outside the scope of this podcast to get into the history of all of this. If this is something you’re interested in, there’s lots of resources on the internet that you can explore. There’s tons of people who, this is like their main thing that they do, and I certainly would not want to pretend like I can be the speaker for exactly what this movement entails. But I looked up on Wikipedia and verywellmind.com, and what they basically said there was that the main message behind body positivity is that all people deserve to have a positive body image regardless of how society and popular culture view ideal shape, size, appearance, but also race, gender, sexuality, being differently abled.

And some of the main goals of the movement are to challenge how society views the body, promoting acceptance of all bodies, and addressing unrealistic body standards. And I think that that is all amazing. I am a huge fan. I’m all in. I think it’s so good. We are living and have been raised in a kind of societal soup, so to speak, where the messaging has been smaller is better, and if you’re not small, something’s wrong with you and something’s wrong with your body. And then the unrealistic body standards. I mean, I’ve talked about this before, how, when I was in teen years, the kind of model look that was so desired and was all over all the magazines was the waif look, like Kate Moss, like extremely thin, like all heroin chic. That was a thing there, like where you look like basically one step away from being a drug addict, or maybe you are a drug addict. Who knows. Where basically you’re just doing drugs and never eating, not having very much muscle mass at all.

And basically, for me personally, my body could not be different. I put on muscle extremely easily. I just do not have that body. So the way that my brain interpreted that was that that was the right way to be, something was wrong with my body, and maybe there was a way that I could create something that looked like that. And that was really an unrealistic standard for me to explore. To look like that, I would have to be like significantly ill in some way, shape or form. So I think all of us to a certain extent can recognize that there has been an impact on us in terms of how we think about our own personal bodies, particularly in relation to what’s considered the standard or the ideal. And often that’s not very positive, right?

So I have said this many times before on the podcast, but I do just want to say it again, that what I’m a fan of, what I’d like to propose is that no matter what your body looks right now, you learn to change your thinking around it so that you truly love it, you respect it, you accept it as it is, and then you lose weight just because you want to. What so many of us do, and I know I did for so many years, was to try to lose weight so that I could be acceptable, with the idea that once I got to be a certain size or shape, or wore a certain size of clothing that I could finally think positively about myself, but that is not how our brains work. If your brain is convinced that something’s wrong with your body, it may decide today that weight loss is going to be the solution. Well then you create weight loss for yourself, but it is not just going to be like, okay, you solved it. We’re done. Because there’s still this underlying, deeply held subconscious belief that something’s wrong with your body. So it will just find something new that is wrong.

This is well reported amongst people who have more than one plastic surgery procedure, right? You can get some sort of body shaping sculpting procedure done on one part of your body and then maybe that it looks better. But then now your attention is just on this other part of your body that isn’t acceptable. And same thing with people’s faces, right? They get their nose done, but then now their lips don’t look good. And then now their chin is a problem. Now their cheeks are a problem, right? This is something that is like, the way we look is not the problem. It is the way that we’re perceiving our bodies. It’s basically like, something’s wrong with you, let me figure out what it is, and I’ll try to fix it so that I can stop thinking this way, except the filter still exists. Something is wrong with me. I have to figure out what it is.

So that’s essentially what body positivity is promoting, is like, nothing is wrong with you. The reason you think and feel the way you do is because of all the societal messages, and you should accept your body the way it is. So I 100% agree. Now where things get a little more challenging is that I don’t actually think that this is sort of a, quote unquote, official part of the body positivity movement, but it definitely comes up, is this a idea that you should accept your body exactly as it is, and therefore, if you try to lose weight, you are no longer being body positive. You’re no longer a part of that movement.

There have been several plus size celebrities or models who’ve lost weight for any number of reasons, and then there’s been this huge backlash that they shouldn’t have lost weight and they shouldn’t have to do that. And here’s the thing, there’s lots and lots of reasons why someone can take action, right? If you think about the thinking cycle, you have a result that you maybe created. There’s weight loss that was created, that someone created. They took actions to create that weight loss. There can be lots and lots and lots and lots of different feelings and thoughts that derive those actions that result in weight loss.

So I definitely do not recommend that you lose weight from the mindset of, I will be finally acceptable. I can like myself. People will like me better if I’m thin. My relationships will get better if I’m thin. I don’t think that we consciously think I’ll be a different person if I’m thin, but I think deep down, we really often hope that we will be, that all of our perceived flaws will have been handled and kind of will melt away with the fat that we lose, that somehow we won’t be us anymore will be this better version. And what I want to impress upon you and make sure that you really deeply understand is that when you lose weight, you are the same person, but with a smaller body. And so the way that you perceive the world will be the same if you do not change your brain. And if you don’t think you’re acceptable when you’re larger, you will very likely not think you’re acceptable when you’re thinner, or it’ll be maybe different things are unacceptable. Maybe you solve one problem, but then there’s another one.

It’s often actually kind of disappointing for people because they really so deeply, deeply, deeply want to believe that the truth is that if they just lose weight, things will be better. And then they do it, and they find out, you know what? I still am living my life. Ugh. It’s really disappointing. And so often, the weight loss won’t be permanent because they were losing the weight on the promise that things would be better when it’s not better. It’s like, what’s the point? Why do this work to keep the weight off?

So what I want to impress upon you is that you can be completely body positive. You can totally be a proponent of challenging how society views the body, promoting acceptance of all bodies, including your own, changing, your thinking so that you are no longer beating yourself up for how you look, really learning to love and accept yourself and your body, and still decide you want to lose weight.

So to me, these are not mutually exclusive things. I definitely don’t suggest that you lose weight so that you think that society will accept you more. Or, if you think I’m going to lose weight so that other people think differently or have a more positive opinion of me, not a great way to do it. I don’t suggest doing that. Hating yourself thin, it’s not going to work. You will not keep that weight off.

So I am all about not approaching it in that way, but I also think that there’s nothing wrong with knowing that you feel more comfortable in the body that you live in when it is smaller. I was just actually coaching a client today who was talking about how she had gotten to a point where just being active in the sense of like walking, her joints were really bothering her, and then she lost 30, 35 pounds, and she finally is like, okay, now I can finally move again and not be in pain. I don’t think there’s any reason to judge that. I think that’s just as good of a reason to lose weight as any. And I don’t think that anybody can say, no, you shouldn’t lose weight. You should just accept that your body hurts when you move it. There’s a disconnect for me on that. That doesn’t connect or really make sense.

So I think the idea that, if you’re part of body positivity that means that you shouldn’t lose weight, or if you do lose weight, you’re no longer a part of that, is actually just another way of judging people. I think there’s more layers to that thought process that need to be excavated. And I’m not saying everybody who is a proponent of body positivity thinks this weight. It just is something that does come up from time to of time.

Now there is this other kind of splinter faction called the body neutrality movement, which seems to be smaller. And what they say is, you know what? How about you just don’t even worry about your body? How about you just remove your body from being the center of your self image. When you’re thinking about you, you just don’t think about your body. Some people say you should focus more on what your body can do for you rather than what it looks like. Now, then other people point out, yes, but that’s usually coming from people who have able bodied privilege, right? If you’re focusing on all the amazing things your body can do for you, people whose bodies maybe don’t function in that way are like, well, easy for you to say.

But here’s the thing with body neutrality, is I think all of these things can work for you or against you. I read something online with an actress who’s talked about this more, and she was basically saying, I just pretend like I don’t have a body. She said she’s basically like a floating head in the world. She just doesn’t think about her body. And I was like, what do I think about that? And you know what I thought to myself was, well that’s basically how doctors are all of the time. We just completely decapitate ourselves. We’re like, what’s going on in the body is not anything that I want to pay any attention to, i.e. any hunger signals, thirst signals, needing to go to the bathroom, being tired, something hurting. We just push through, push through, push through, and we have to actually learn to repopulate our bodies. That’s the way I think about it, to reconnect the head, the brain and the body so that we can learn to feel our emotions. We can learn to process what’s going on.

Rather than looking at the body as the enemy that you need to avoid and get away from, instead moving toward it and understanding how to work with it. You and your body are on the same team. And so, I think that with body neutrality, I think the idea that, yeah, guess what? You don’t have to think about your body all the time. I totally agree. You get to decide what you think about, and if your brain is consumed by thoughts about your body, you might want to look at that and decide if you want to think differently or focus on different things. I think that it’s probably not useful for most people to be thinking about their bodies and what they look like on a, whatever we would call excessive level, more than what is maybe needed or appropriate.

But at the same time, if you are just like, okay, I have all these negative thoughts about my body, and then I’m just going to not think about it anymore, what you’re doing is you’re just stuffing down the emotions that are created from that. You’re trying to pretend like those negative thoughts and the emotions that they create don’t exist, but they do. And we know that when we just try to avoid them, they end up coming back.

I guess I should have probably said this in the beginning, but I don’t particularly believe that I am a member of any of these movements. What I believe is that there’s just no reason to go through your life hating yourself and your body, being disgusted by yourself, no matter what you look like. Because I have worked with women who have very little weight to lose, if any, who have an extremely negative body image. And I’ve worked with women who have several hundreds of pounds of weight to lose, who actually have a very good body image. Because your body just consists of what your thoughts are about your body. That’s literally all it is. So that’s what we do here, right? We identify what we think. We decide if we like the results of thinking that way, figuring out if those thoughts, if those belief systems serve us. And then if they don’t, we decide to think a different way, and we practice that until that becomes the way that we think.

So regardless with your body, we need to do that work no matter what. No matter what your body looks like right now, no matter what size you are, accepting and loving your body exactly as it is, is the work that needs to be done. I think that if you have these conditions on your love and acceptance for your body, meaning it has to weigh a certain amount or you have to be a certain shape or size in order to feel like you deserve that from yourself, that’s only going to come back around to haunt you in the future, because you will age, your body will change. Certain things could happen. Injuries could happen, illnesses can happen, all kinds of things can happen. And then where are you? You’re right back to having a negative opinion of your body again.

So like I said, just to kind of sum this all up, I think that body positivity is amazing because I don’t think that it’s ever useful to be hating on yourself, really for any reason. I don’t see what good comes from that. It certainly doesn’t make you thinner. Certainly doesn’t make you live a happier life. And so whatever your body looks today, absolutely do the work to accept yourself, accept your body, love on it, become a true partner with your body. And then from that place decide, do I want to lose weight just because I want to a smaller body? I’d like to live in a smaller body? Maybe it’s more comfortable. Maybe you sleep better. Maybe you’d like to be able to be active in a different way. I don’t think there’s a lack of validity to those reasons for losing weight. I think it’s completely fine.

So I just want to stress again, I am not of the mindset that thinner is better, that you’re only acceptable if you’re thin, that there’s judgment to people, like we should judge people who aren’t whatever ideal. I don’t fall into those ideals either. So I’m doing the same work just like anybody else. And so I think that it’s just important to decide for yourself what you want to do. If you want to accept your body and not lose weight, I am all in, but just please do the work to stop hating on your body, thinking that something’s wrong with your body. Just love it as it is. When there are things that you wish were different, you can get to the place where you’re like, you know, I just don’t focus my thoughts on that. That’s where I’m at. Rather than just being like, I love every little dimple. I’m like, you know what? I just don’t think it’s really useful for me to spend a lot of brain energy focusing on the fact that there’s dimples. It’s just like, let’s just not think about that.

So you can decide what you want to think about when it comes to your body and that’s what creates your body image. And then you decide what you want to do moving forward. And I will tell you that if you’ve lost the weight and you haven’t done this work, you can’t skip it, because I just don’t know of really any women. I mean, I think for some people it’s a lot easier to think positively than others. But there are a lot of women who would be considered… Models, people who are considered to have the ideal body have so much stress and self hatred typically around their bodies and what they look like. So what we know is that this is a brain issue, not what your body shape or size is or what it looks like.

So that’s where I stand on this. I think that, yeah, let’s be positive, but let’s get to the root of the negative first. Let’s figure out what this hatred is all about. Sometimes there’s some deeper trauma that needs to be resolved, feeling like our bodies let us down. I’ve worked with many, many women who’ve had pregnancy loss issues or had a pregnancy issue where their child came out not as expected, and has maybe ongoing issues to be dealt with, so easy for us to blame our bodies, to feel like our bodies are the enemy, or battling against our bodies, no matter what size or shape they are. This is the kind of stuff that we need to work on so that we can release that shame and guilt and anger that we are hanging onto.

Anyway, I guess I could talk about this forever it seems like. I could go on and on, but I think we’ll wrap it up now. So think about this as you’re going into the new year, as you’re thinking about your weight loss goals, I just strongly want to encourage you to really think about, what areas do I have to improve upon, and what do I need to work on first? I think trying to lose weight can often be, like the actual weight loss process, can be a distraction that people use to kind of trick themselves into thinking that they’re taking care of the negative thoughts that they have about themselves. Like I’ll just change myself and then my thoughts will change. Well, they might, but also you haven’t really dealt with what the main problem is, so let’s focus on that first. And that’s exactly what we do in Weight Loss for Doctors Only, this is exactly what I teach on this podcast. And if that work resonates with you, then you know you are in the right place and you’re going to get tons more great help.

So if you are looking for those Six Steps to Jumpstart Your Weight Loss, just to kind of start with something, get that ball rolling, just go to katrinaubellmd.com/six, S-I-X, and you’ll get that delivered to you for free, and you can get started losing some weight, because you want to, not because you’ll be a better person or more acceptable or more lovable when you’re thin. Okay?

All right. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will catch you next time. Take care. Bye bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #259: Body Positivity appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World

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If you are opposed to food journaling, you are definitely not the only one. In fact, I had a lot of reluctance toward food journaling myself, but I want to let you know that it’s actually a lot easier than you might think—and it’s super useful not only for helping you lose weight, but also for learning how to manage your mind.

Listen in as I dive into the importance of food journaling, the common objections surrounding it, and what you can do to overcome them. I’m also sharing my own tips and tricks to make food journaling super-easy to do—even if you’re a busy doctor.

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * The common objections around food journaling. * Why it’s not a tool you need to use forever. * What food journaling really entails. * The importance of food journaling. * How to overcome the objections you have around tracking your food intake. * Tips to make food journaling easy.

Featured In This Episode * The Podcast Roadmap * Ep #247: [Back to Basics Series] The Hunger Scale * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 258.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time, by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. And if you’re new to the podcast, then you are in luck today because we have another episode in the back to basics series. This is going to be a great one. We’re going to clear up a lot of questions. It’s going to make a lot of sense to you, what the method is to my madness, why I ask my clients to do the things that I do. I’m so excited to share this with you today. We’re going to talk about food journaling, which everyone loves to hate. You’re going to learn to love it, and I’m going to show you how, okay? But before we get started on that, I do want to just let you know if you are new in particular, or if you’re just looking to guide yourself in terms of which of these episodes of the podcast to listen to first, I do have a podcast roadmap that you can get for free.

All you have to do is go to katrinaubellmd.com/start, S-T-A-R-T, and you can download it. And the whole point of it is to help guide you as to which episodes of the podcast are going to be the ones that you should start with. If you’re coming in new to this, or also maybe just wanting to refresh things, wanting to focus on what’s going to be the most important in terms of helping you to get the results that you want, this is what you need. So it’s a list of the top 30 episodes in order that you should listen to, I designed it with the idea that you would listen to one episode a day and start applying what I teach you and in 30 days, you’re going to have a totally different relationship with food. You’re going to start, hopefully noticing some changes in your weight or the way your clothes are fitting.

Just really starting to get the ball rolling. Kind of getting that snowball, outgoing, getting that momentum, moving forward that you need so that you can start getting the results that you want. So again, to get that podcast roadmap, to help you to figure out which of these episodes you should be listening to first go to katrinaubellmd.com/start. All right, let’s talk about food journaling today. Now, I want to start off by telling you that if there was ever a person who hated food journaling more, I haven’t met them, okay? I always thought like, well, people who food journal, they just like to journal. They like to write stuff down. That’s just not me. I had a lot of reluctance. I had a lot of objections to food journaling, and you might too, maybe not. You’re probably not as bad as I was, but in case you are, I’m going to help you to see how I was convinced that this is actually not that big of a deal.

It’s a way easier than you think it has to be and it actually is super, super useful. Not only for helping you with weight loss, but for helping you with learning to manage your mind as well. But first, before we get into all of that, I want to talk about these objections, this reluctance. I want to make sure that you realize that you’re not the only one who is like, “I don’t want to do that. I’m going to skip that part. She can’t tell me what to do.” That’s where I start going. I start getting into like teenager, like, “Don’t tell me what to do.” That’s where I start getting. So I want to help you to understand that I get it. And so common objections that I personally have had, and what I’ve heard from others is, I mean, first of all, we just don’t want to feel bad about what we’re eating, right?

If we decide to write everything down that we eat, then we think then I have to feel bad about what I ate and I don’t want to feel bad so how about, I just pretend like it didn’t happen. Sometimes that looks like food journaling, the things that we think we should be eating and then deciding not to actually journal the things that are off our plan. Kind of like, if I don’t write it down, then it didn’t happen. Another way that we go about this is sometimes we decide to just journal everything we ate at the end of the day. And during the middle of the day, when we were maybe eating something soft plan, we will literally not bring that into our conscious awareness enough so that by the time nighttime rolls around, we’ve actually forgotten and that we ate it. And this comes up all the time where clients will say, “Well, no, listen, I am following my plan a hundred percent.”

“Okay. But when are you food journaling?” “Oh, at the end of the day.” Hmm. I wonder if maybe there’s some times that you are overeating or eating off plan and you’re simply not even remembering when it’s time for you to write it down. So we think that we’re going to feel bad if we have to write down everything that we eat. Many times, we think it’s too much work. That was one of my big objections. I’m like, who has time for that? Who’s going to like carry a notebook around, write it all down, or enter it into their app on their phone or whatever. It just feels like too much. Now I will tell you that a lot of that came from me having had experience counting macros, or even calculating all the Weight Watchers points. It was kind of a lot of work and you needed the package and if you didn’t have the package, then you needed to weigh and measure things. And it was just like a whole thing to figure it all out and it really did feel like a lot of work.

Sometimes we just think it’s annoying. Like, I just don’t want to do that, just straight up. I don’t have an excuse. I just don’t want to. I think it’s annoying. And that comes up a lot too, right? We just are like, I don’t want to do this thing that I think is annoying. Some of us really feel like it feels punitive and this comes up a lot. Like we think of it as, if I write down what I’ve eaten, then it will be judged. And I may not get the A that I want, I may not get the approval that I want. This comes up a lot.

Like back in the day, I used to ask my clients to submit their food journals to me. And I stopped doing that on purpose because the person you really need to learn to be accountable to is yourself. And if you’re accountable to me or any other person, what happens when that person no longer is involved in this. Either they’re no longer in your life, you’re not paying them anymore or you just don’t have that relationship anymore if it’s someone that you is like a friend or family member. So assuming there’s not someone in your life, who’s going to be really interested in looking at your food journal and everything you’ve eaten for the rest of your life. We probably need to learn how to do this for ourselves, right? The point is not to get it right, so that we can get the approval of the person looking at it.

The point is to find out what the heck we’re actually eating, it’s information gathering, but we are high achievers here, most doctors. And so it can often feel like if I don’t write down what I’m quote unquote, supposed to write down, like all the things that are on plan, or if I’m honest and actually put on there what I have eaten, then I’m going to sort of fail or flunk or someone will think negatively of me, my coach, whoever’s looking at it might be disappointed in me. Depending on who you’re working with, you might get a talking to and you just want to avoid that. And if you’re thinking of food journaling as something that’s punitive, then it totally makes sense that you’d be very reluctant to doing it. I mean, completely of course, right? And then also I often have thoughts of like, well, no naturally thin person is walking around, writing down what they ate.

I mean, really is this what has to be done? And what I would say is that in the short term, yes. And in the long term, maybe. So I never look at it like you need a food journal for the rest of your life, but it’s a great tool, especially in the beginning when you’re learning how to lose weight and keep it off permanently. And then it’s a great tool that you can use any time you need to use it in the future. So do I food journal, every single thing that I’ve eaten, many, many years out now? No I don’t, but I know that I have that tool available to me. If things start getting a little whackadoodle with me, then I know one of the first things I need to do is I need to get really honest with myself about what I’m actually doing in eating and gather information, find out what’s going on.

So the first thing that I want to mention about this, right? As an objection, we say, it’s too much work and it’s annoying. I mean, I agree if you have to write down a whole bunch of things and it’s like very complicated, there’s all this math involved and stuff, it really can feel like too much, particularly too much to do ongoing relatively indefinitely. Like it’s just not something you want to do forever more. Now, some people love doing that. They’re probably not listening to this episode. Probably not listening to this podcast because if counting macros or calculating points or any of that, the other more complicated programs work for you ongoing, then you wouldn’t be struggling and here where you are, right? So how do you get over this? You just make it less work. If it’s too much work, you just make it less work.

And we make it really, really simple. And so what I have you do is I literally have you write down what you ate and that’s it. So what I mean by that is writing down like, for instance, my dinner last night, would’ve just been grilled salmon, roasted potatoes salad. Now, I wouldn’t even write down the dressing because we eat the same dressing pretty much every night. But if I got a wild hair and decided to have different dressing, then I maybe would write down the different dressing. But I just know that if I have salad, it’s with our typical dressing that I make. And if I don’t write the dressing, then it means it’s that dressing. So how long does it take to write grilled salmon, roasted potatoes salad? I mean three seconds, maybe four, very, very fast and easy. So we are not weighing and measuring.

We’re not comparing amounts to a deck of cards or your finger or your hand or any of stuff. We’re just literally writing down what we ate and that is it, okay? So I don’t think that’s too much work. I don’t think anyone could argue that that’s too much work. It’s very, very simple and easy to write it down. What we’re doing is we’re just moving into curiosity and information gathering, like there’s a mindset that we have when we’re gathering data versus when we’re judging ourselves, right? So when we think, well, I don’t want to feel bad about myself if I write down what I eat, well, the only way you’ll feel bad about yourself is if you judge yourself for what you’ve eaten, right? Similar to standing on the scale, right? If you only get to feel good about yourself if the number has gone down and you have to feel bad about yourself as the number has gone up, of course, you’re not going to want to stand on it.

Same thing here with food journaling. If you have to be perfect, whatever you deem perfect to be in order for you to feel good about yourself, of course, you’re going to avoid food journaling because you don’t want to have to feel bad about yourself when you actually are a human being and maybe things don’t always go perfectly, whatever you think perfection is. So the point of this is to not judge and not to even look at it as like a good or bad thing, or even being any reflection of who we are as a human being, our value on the earth. Once we start tying this into our self worth and our self concept, it starts becoming very, very heavy. And we just want to forget all of it. What instead I want to suggest that you do is that you just move into curiosity and interest and truly a data gathering mindset.

You are just getting information. I always think about this as doctors. We’re not going through a patient’s chart, looking for various lab results and imaging results and judging them. We’re like, let me just get some data. Like data is just data. It’s just neutral until we interpret it. And so you gather that information by food journaling, and then when you’re in the right mindset, you’re not judging yourself, right? You’re not punishing yourself. You’re not telling yourself that you’re bad or good or anything. You’re just like, oh, interesting. This food was chewed up and swallowed. These beverages were drunk. That is basically we are wanting to find out so we can get that information and then compare it to the results that we’re getting on the scale or what our clothes are feeling like. And then we can make informed decisions from there.

Now, another thing to remember is that success leaves clues, right? So when people are successful and when we ourself are successful, we leave clues usually. But if you are just following whatever plan you want to be following, and you’re getting results, and you’re not writing down what you’re doing, you will not remember what you did to create that success. You may think you’re going to remember, but I promise you, you will not remember. It will not happen, okay? You will not remember. And so, then when you get to rough patch, when things get a little topsy turvy, when you’re struggling, you have nothing to go back to, to even identify like what you used to do that was creating success for you. All you’re doing is just laying out there. When I do this, it works, interesting. Good information to have in case in the future, we get stuck or we forgot about that way of eating.

What happens so often when we’re trying to lose weight is we end up repeating the same meals again and again, and again, I’ve seen this so many times with clients who ask for a food journal review, and they’re like, “I’m really stuck.” And I look back over the last several weeks and they’re eating the same things again and again, and again. Now, first of all, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. And most of us do that anyway. I mean, if we eat breakfast, most of our breakfasts are relatively the same and lunches are often very similar as well. It’s more dinner where we typically get our variety, but regardless when you’re eating the same thing again and again, and you’re not getting the results you want, we need to start mixing it up.

Now sometimes we’re like, “Oh, I can’t think of what else to have. I’m just kind of like in this rut of eating the same things again and again.” But when you have a food journal that you can refer back to, you can go back, “Oh, you know what? I forgot about eating that. Oh, you know what, that would be a good idea. I haven’t had that in a while.” It’s such just a treasure chest of information for you to access at some time in the future. But that means you have to keep track of it today, okay? Now you may be thinking, “Well, if I just write this down, how do I know if it’s the right amount of food?” Well, this is when we build in the hunger scale. Now, if you’re new to the hunger scale, there’s a back to basics episode on that as well.

So make sure you go back and find that episode. It’s not from that long ago and listen to the hunger scale because the hunger scale is the tool that you use to help you to determine when you should start eating and when you should stop eating. So when I’m talking about my salmon and potatoes and salad. I know that I started when I was at a minus four on the hunger scale. And I stopped when I was on a plus four. So how much that ended up actually being isn’t actually relevant. I don’t need to know how much that is. I don’t need to know how many ounces it was. It’s not relevant because I know that I ate as much as my body needed and no more and no less, okay? So the hunger scale is what ends up helping you to make the food journaling incredibly, incredibly easy. Very, very simple.

Now you want to allow the information that you gather to inform your decisions moving forward about your eating, right? You want to be making decisions from information and data and not from mind drama. And I see this also again and again, someone’s in a plateau and then they just start freaking out and making it mean that they knew that they weren’t going to be able to lose weight and keep it off forever. And they knew that their body was broken and they knew that their genetics had set them up to really be struggling. And they knew it wasn’t possible for with them. This was too good to be true. That’s all the mind drama rather than looking at it and going, oh, interesting. I wonder if you just kind of switched things up a little bit here and there, what would happen?

That’s just from a more logical place, looking at the information, like making decisions that are data based and not a not even anecdotally based like drama based, like fear based really is what the drama is about, right? Fear that it’s not going to work, fear that you won’t be able to get the result that you want. So when you take away that fear and you move into abundance and you go, you know what, I know I’m going to be able to create this. I just have to figure out what the next step is to get through this obstacle that I have of being in a plateau, you’re able to logically and rationally figure out what the next best step is for you. So having those food journals is so important to help you to guide those decisions moving forward. Now, I want to give you another special trick that makes this even easier, okay? Did you think it could get easy? You probably didn’t guess what it’s going to get even easier.

So here we go. I recommend that you make decisions about what you’re going to eat by using your prefrontal cortex. This is the part of your brain that can plan. It can think about the future and it can understand short term versus long term consequences. When you’re making decisions based on what your primitive brain or that limbic part of your brain wants in the moment. That’s like letting your toddler run wild, make all the decisions. They mean well, but they just want what they want and they want it now. And you know what that’s like, right? You have planned this nice lunch. And then when it comes time to eat, you’re like, “I don’t feel like that.” That’s the toddler voice telling you. I don’t feel like eating that, right?

And the prefrontal cortex is more like that supervising mother who’s like, “No, listen, I understand that maybe this isn’t your first choice, but it’s what’s available. It’s on plan for us.” Long term you’re going to feel so much better. Your energy will be better. It’s in our best interest to eat this now. And so what we want to be doing is planning our food, especially while we’re losing weight. Again, this isn’t necessarily something you have to do for the absolute rest of your life. But when we’re first doing this, what we want to do is plan our food for the next day, the night before, that way you have all the decisions made. And then the next day, all you have to do is follow your plan. You don’t need to think like, well, should I go through that drive through? Should I stop and get that treat for the kids?

What was the plan? All you have to do is follow the plan, just do what the plan says. And you know the plan won’t lead you astray because you did it with your prefrontal cortex. And you know you did it with your prefrontal cortex because you planted it advance, okay? That primitive brain, it doesn’t think about advance, it thinks about now. So when you’re planning the night before you’re using that part of your brain that makes you human, that is so special to humans that helps you to recognize, no, this is what’s in my best interest, okay? So you plan your food the night before. And again, this does not have to be fancy.

You’re just writing down what you’re going to eat. For instance, I could have decided, okay, I’m going to have grilled salmon, roasted potatoes and salad, super easy, right? If you do any kind of meal planning, or if you don’t shop every day at the grocery store, if you shop several days at a time or a week at a time, then you’re basically already doing this anyway, for the most part, you’re deciding what you’re going to have for your meals.

So you plan out what going to have, and then the next day, if you just follow your plan, as it’s written, you don’t have to even journal anything. You can just put a little check mark after it. If you want to, you can add the numbers of where you were when you started eating on the hunger scale. And when you stopped, if you want to get fancy, you can do that. Or you could literally can just be like, “Yeah, I followed my plan, done.” So easy. Right? And if something comes up, like say you had planned on using some of the spinach that you had in the fridge. And then when you got into the spinach, you were like, “Ew, this is gross.” And not looking edible anymore. Then you would cross out the spinach and maybe use kale instead. And you write down kale, just an example, right?

So if something spoils, if someone eats your food by accident. Someone in your family ends up eating it or taking it for lunch and you didn’t expect them to, you could tell that happens in our house a lot. I have it all in my head. What’s going to happen. And somebody ate that. I’m like, “Oh, okay, well, what are we going to do now?” But anyway, the point is, if that happens, then you make a decision that’s in accordance with your plan, your overall plan, like the overarching way that you’re trying to eat, and you come up with something then of course you would make that adjustment on your plan, on your journal. But most of the time that doesn’t happen. Most of the time you can get it all set up so that all you have to do is just eat what you said you were going to eat.

And then that’s it. So, so, so, so easy. So ultimately we think we don’t want to feel bad about ourselves. If we write down what we ate, if you approach yourself with love and kindness, regardless of how and what you ate, then you don’t need to be afraid of that, right? Or afraid of being like found out we’re afraid of being punished. And so many of us are overeating anyway, in secret, in hiding, we don’t want people to know. And if we wrote it down, then it would be real. Then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. And I want you to know that one of the most important things is bringing it to your awareness, to the light of day. And of course, if you’re being coached as well, it’s so helpful to have someone else know, someone who can actually help you, someone who isn’t just going to be like, “Yeah, it’s no big deal that you’re binging all the time, whatever, live a little.” Right?

Someone who’s going to be like, “Okay, interesting. What do you want to do? What are your goals? How can we move you forward?” This is exactly what my coach team and I do in the weight loss for doctors only program. You want to learn to change that inner dialogue from constantly looking for how you’re screwing up and how you’re a horrible person and how this food journal is just evidence of that. And instead move into, “Okay, I’m going to love myself and be kind to myself no matter what happened.” But that doesn’t mean that I’m just going to be like, oh, well you ate off plan. I love you anyway. I mean, you can do that. But sometimes the most loving thing is not just allowing everything to just go the way it goes. Like if you have ever been around children that have no boundaries and that are running the show in a home, you’ll see that they actually aren’t very happy.

It’s not good for anybody when that’s the case. So that primitive brain in new needs some structure, it needs to know that someone else is in charge and has its best interest at heart. And when you are approaching yourself with love and kindness, you’re not just going like, well, it’s okay that you ate whatever again, you’re instead going, huh? That’s interesting that I did that. And that wasn’t on my plan and it doesn’t move me forward toward my goals. I wonder what’s going on for me with that. What’s that all about? Let me see if I can figure it out, right? That’s being loving and kind to yourself rather than, you’re such a whatever, horrible thing that you say about yourself, right? You’re a disgusting mess. You’re so undisciplined, you’re never going to be able to figure this out.

All of that kind of language, it’s not going to move you forward. If anything, it’s going to make you hide more. It’s going to make you try to forget what’s going on. Many people end up going into binging behaviors where they’re just eating as much as they can, as fast as they can, because they feel like this is their chance before they start having that stream of thinking that beats them up so badly and breaks them. So like the answer to all of this is love, kindness, acceptance, and then having our own best interest at heart, right? Deciding, you know what, this is really what I want for myself. I really want to learn how to be okay with not feeling super awesome in the moment so that I can feel better later. I’m understanding that my lack of ability to delay my gratification is creating a lot of problems for me.

And that’s really what I want to work on. And I’m willing to fail and screw up as many times as it takes until I learn how to do it. And I will not beat myself up while I’m in that phase of learning. Can you imagine if you were learning something new and then just every single time you made the most minor mistake you just got completely lambasted. I will say that some of you might be like, “Yes, in fact, I do know what that’s like.” Depending on what your training environment was like and the quote unquote toxicity of your program, maybe that was your experience. And maybe you’re like, “Yeah, I actually know what that’s like.” But regardless, can we all agree that that’s not the best way for anybody to learn? And what we’re trying to do is learn how to feel our emotion and lose weight and keep it off forever.

And it’s probably going to be a lot easier and faster to do that when we approach ourselves with love and compassion and kindness and acceptance, while still holding ourselves accountable rather than beating ourselves up to smithereens and hoping that we get a different result, just a doesn’t work. And if you really think about it, you probably already know that. You probably already have a lot of evidence that shows you that that is what ends up happening again and again for you when you’re not being kind and loving to yourself.

So that’s food journaling, it’s so easy and I promise you it’s so, so important. It’s such a nice way of showing yourself of who you are and what’s going on for you. Either way, either it’s like a love letter to yourself or you see, you know what? Like how well I’m taking care of myself or it’s an opportunity for you to understand that you’re struggling in some way and you need to figure out what it is. Like, huh? Interesting. I totally am eating off plan there or I went back for seconds when I really didn’t need it. I wonder what that’s all about. Maybe I want to try to figure that out.

There’s no room in there for yelling at yourself, being mean to yourself, getting frustrated with yourself, giving up on yourself. It’s all in the name of moving you forward toward having freedom around food and just complete peace over your weight. Just maintaining the weight you want to be at and no longer having all that mind drama. So with that, I encourage you to start doing some food journaling and you know, people often ask like, can I use an app? I really suggest that if you use an app, you just use like a notes app rather than something just literally where you can just type in what you ate rather than use saying any kind of app that requires you to put in any kind of measurement or requires you to see numbers of calories or macronutrients or anything like that.

We don’t want to be looking at that stuff. We really want our brains to just be focusing on what’s important and we don’t need to see any of them. So if you want to keep track of your weight in an app like that, that’s totally fine. Just so you can see the graph, the curve but in terms of your food, let’s just skip that part and just use the app on your phone. But if you’re a paper girl, a lot of us are then totally fine for you to use a notebook and a pen. Just keep something on hand and there you go. And you’ve got it. All right. Let’s give it a try. Food journaling. I’m telling you, it makes a big difference. We keep this so simple. Weight loss does not have to be as complicated as everyone makes it out to be. Okay?

Super, super simple. Just write down what you ate, that’s it, but make sure you write down everything you ate, even a little lick, little tastes, little nibbles, all those things need to be put on there. We need to know what we’re consuming. All right. And if you are ready to apply some other tools that will help you to get started with your weight loss, then I highly recommend downloading that free podcast roadmap to just direct you to the episodes that are going to give you the most bang for your buck when you’re first starting out listening, and to download that you can go to katrinaubellmd.com/start, S-T-A-R-T. And you’ll be able to download that for free and get yourself going. All right. Thank you so much for joining me and I hope you have a great rest of your day and your week. Now, I’ll catch you next time. Take care, bye-bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help. Go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.

The post Ep #258: [Back to Basics Series] Food Journaling appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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Do you ever wonder what is keeping you from solving your weight issue once and for all? Do you find yourself going back to old habits that don’t serve you, even when you know they’re hindering your weight loss?

If this sounds familiar, you may be caught up in familiarity addiction. In this episode, I’m sharing what familiarity addiction is, how it can get in the way of your weight loss, and of course, what you can do to overcome it.

Listen To The Episode Here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/katrinaubellmd/WLBP257.mp3 * Never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes, Stitcher or by RSS

In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * What familiarity addiction is. * Why we tend to stay in familiarity. * The rewards that come with getting out of your comfort zone. * How to get “unaddicted” to familiarity.

Featured In This Episode * Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Share The Love: * Help improve the show by leaving a Rating & Review in iTunes (Here’s How) * Join the discussion for this episode in the comments section below

Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 257.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master-certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there, my friend. How are you today? So glad you’re here. Thanks for joining me. I’m really, really glad that you’ve taken the time to just take a few minutes for yourself to listen to something that could maybe change your life. You just never know. Have you ever had that experience? I totally have. I have totally listened to a podcast and within the first four minutes, I learned something that’s like, “Oh, yeah. Life is never the same again after that. So good.” Now, I cannot guarantee that that will be your experience today with this episode, but I’m just glad that you’re taking the time to even just input positive, helpful information into your brain. It is one of the first steps, right? We have to actively do things to make sure that we’re either getting onto the right track or staying on the right track, and you’re doing that today, so pat on the back to you, a little high five.

Okay, I have another book to discuss with you. As you may or may not know, especially if you’re new, you may not know, I’ve been just periodically on the podcast talking about books that I’ve really, really enjoyed reading that have made a difference to me in some way or that I just really liked. Part of the motivation for this sharing of books is because I am working on publishing a book as well. It’ll be published next year in September ’22 and I just have a really… My eyes have been opened, let’s just say, to what it takes to get a book published and to get the information out in book form so that it even has any hope of transforming somebody’s life or making any difference or even just entertaining someone. It doesn’t have to change someone life, necessarily. It’s just so much. It’s just so much, and so I just think that we should be sharing more about books and which books we’ve really loved. I love a good recommendation. I’m betting that you do, too.

Maybe you’re not a reader and you don’t care, but you know what? Sometimes I ebb and flow. Sometimes I’m more into like, “I’m going to watch the show.” Sometimes I like documentaries and sometimes I’m just big into reading. Whenever I read, I am always glad. I’m never like, “Oh, well, that was a waste.” But that’s also because I’ve given myself permission to not finish a book if I don’t really like it, or I don’t think it’s helping me, or I feel like I already got out of it what I would like to get out of it. I don’t know about you, but there have been books that I’ve forced myself to read over the years where I’m like, “This probably should have been more like a pamphlet. I don’t know that there was really enough in this to actually turn it into a book.” It’s like, “Wow, this is like really repetitive.”

I used to think, “Well, no. You have to read the whole book, or you just stop and then keep telling yourself that you should go back and finish that book.” Now, I just give myself permission. If I feel like I’ve gotten out of it, what I wanted to get out of it, then I’m allowed to put it down, and so that just makes things move a lot more quickly. But I’m only sharing books with you that I’ve read all the way through, that I’ve really thoroughly enjoyed.

I’m really excited to tell you about this book today because here’s a funny thing about this book: I have bought so many copies of this book that Amazon will no longer let me buy this book, okay? This is a thing. At a certain point, when you buy a certain thing in enough volume, Amazon is onto you. I’m guessing that they think that you’re buying things at a discount from them and then probably trying to sell them on your own at full price. That’s the only reason I can think of why they would stop letting you buy something. But the thing with this book is that I used to give it to every single one of my clients as a gift when they first started working with me, and so I just bought more and more and more and more of these books.

I love this book. It’s absolutely one of my favorites. It’s called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. If you have not read this book, you have to read this book. When I first read it, we were actually on vacation, and I don’t get super carsick, but I used to as a kid, so I’m just always careful, just aware. I know how to manage it, but reading in the car is generally not something that’s a good idea for me. I was so into this book that I didn’t even care, I was fully reading in the car, and I remember my husband being like, he was driving. I’m trying to give him directions, or, “Okay, the exit number is this,” and then my nose is in this book again. I just absolutely loved it. Oh, my gosh, I’ve had everyone in my life read it, and I have, like I said, bought dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of copies.

Let me tell you who Angela Duckworth is. She’s actually a PhD psychologist, a research psychologist, and she does most of her work on grit. That’s part of what people are calling the positive psychology movement, which is the study of how to make life better rather than the study of ways that people struggle or suffer with their mental health, and so this is a culmination of her research, at least up until a few years ago. I just love that she talks about her own family, too, and how you want to raise kids who are gritty and have grit, but then, can you push it too much? Where are the lines? She doesn’t even necessarily claim to know what the answer is to that, but I just want it to be really, really interesting conversation/discussion of this concept.

I think for those of us who are high achievers, anyway, it’s important for us to understand how we can use that natural internal drive to succeed to accomplish for the betterment of everyone involved, meaning we’re not changing the world or helping other people or changing some sort of system at our own expense, right? We’re accomplishing all these things, but at our own expense. We’re the ones suffering. We want to figure out how everybody can win in the equation, including ourselves. How do we utilize what comes naturally for us where there may be some areas where we could become a bit grittier, and then how do we not turn into the kind of parent that’s really driving their kid hard when maybe that’s not necessary?

I know for myself, I will feel it in me when I start feeling that, “What is that feeling?” It’s like this drive that I felt as a high schooler in particular to achieve, to accomplish, and now in hindsight, I can see that so much of that came from this feeling of lack or being less than in some way, and if I could just accomplish these things, then I would give myself permission to think positively about myself, but maybe only for a couple minutes or a couple of days, right? I just want to make sure I’m not passing that along to my children or anybody else who I influence in any way, so whether you have kids or not, it’s just a really interesting way of thinking about things.

Anyway, I’ve actually listened to interviews with her, Angela Duckworth. She just sounds amazing, just like this great person. I actually know somebody who studied with her and got a master’s in positive psychology, and a couple years ago, I was like, “Oh, do you think that Angela Duckworth would come on my podcast as a guest?” This friend was like, “No, she’s too busy for that,” and I was like, “Oh, all right. Bummer.” But I have kept her to myself, for some reason. I don’t know why I haven’t shared her work with you before. It’s a great book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. I love a nonfiction book that reads really nicely where you are getting a lot out of it, but you’re still being entertained. It’s a nice combo of that and just a great book, a really good one. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I’ve bought dozens and dozens and dozens. I mean, really, hundreds of copies of this book. That’s how much I like it.

Okay, so I also want to let you know that as of today, the day that this episode is airing, you have two more days to enroll with us in the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program that is starting in January, 2022, so Thursday, December 16th, 2021 is your last day to enroll. If you have been thinking, “You know what? I’d like to know more about that. Maybe I want to do it. I want to. ’22 is my year. I’m just going to like get off on the right foot and really take good care of myself and really figure this weight-loss thing out,” then you’re going to want to go to the information page that we have all about the program so you can decide if this is the right next step for you.

The way that you can access that page is by going to katrinaubellmd.com/info, I-N-F-O, and you’ll get all the information about the program and be able to make your decision from there. If you have any additional questions, of course, you can always reach out to us, but it’s pretty comprehensive. It has most of the frequently asked questions and the details that people want to know. It’s obviously an amazing program, if I may say so myself. Really, really effective. It’s really good. It is for female doctors who are in clinical practice who want to lose weight and keep it off forever and really want some freedom and peace around food. That’s really the key thing, right? We want to figure out a way to coexist with food that is rational and normal, and isn’t based in obsession and controlling and lack of control and just everything that’s tied up into it for most people who struggle with overeating and their weight. Like I said, we’d love to have you come join us to check out the program and see if it’s the next thing for you. Go to katrinaubellmd.com/info.

Okay, I want to talk to you about familiarity addiction today, which is a term that I think I coined. I wrote this down. I keep notes because I get ideas for podcasts all the time, so I mean, literally, is it is not uncommon that I have an idea when I’m driving and then at a stoplight I’m quickly typing it into my Notes app so I don’t forget. I don’t think I heard this term anywhere else, but I don’t want to claim that it’s mine because somebody else might have been already talking about this, but maybe several people had similar ideas, because I don’t think I heard anybody talking about this. But I was thinking about how, why don’t we just go ahead and lose weight and keep it off already? What’s our deal, you know what I mean? What is the barrier? What are the obstacles? What is keeping us from just solving this weight issue once and for all? I was thinking about familiarity and I was thinking, “You know what? We’re really like addicted to familiarity.”

Now, I do want to just say that I looked up the definition of addiction and I was like, “Okay,” so I don’t mean addiction in the formal sense of the word when I talk about it here. I do just want to mention that here. I mean more like how people talk about like, “Well, I binge-watch this TV show,” like we use “binge” sometimes in a way that doesn’t necessarily actually mean binging, and I think with addiction, we sometimes use the word similarly: We’re not really implying a true addiction, but just that idea that it’s something that we’re really drawn to, even if it’s not in our best interests.

What it comes down to is this: What we really like is familiarity. We’re addicted to feeling that that sense of familiarity, that what is happened to us is familiar, so what we think we want is something different from what we have, right? We think we want to not care about the donuts in the doctor’s lounge. We think we want to not obsess about our next meal or constantly think about food all the time. We think we want to figure out a way to lose weight and keep it off forever. But what we really want is what’s familiar, even if what’s familiar is actually painful or creates a result that we don’t want because here’s what you get when you stay in familiarity: You get certainty. Even if you don’t like the result, you’re certain of what the result is. You know what’s going to happen.

You don’t want to eat at night, but if you’re being 100% honest with yourself, every morning you promise yourself, “I’m not going to snack tonight,” or, “I’m not going to have that third glass of wine,” but if you’re really being honest, you know you probably are. You want to be the person who is totally like, “Yeah, I don’t do that anymore. No big deal. No wine, no problem at all.” But if you’re really being honest with yourself, what are the odds you’re probably still going to have that snack or have the extra cocktail? That’s pretty high, right? We like that certainty. We know the food is there for us. We know that the alcohol is there for us, even if we don’t like the end result, the long-term result of having eaten or drunk it. Drank it? Drunk it? That’s one I struggle with. I’m sure someone out there is the grammar police and will let me know.

Okay, so we are also really wanting with familiarity the comfort that comes with it. Again, even if what we’re creating is uncomfortable, there’s still a comfort to the familiar. We know what it will be like, right? We know. I’m just thinking about a house that’s really, really messy. There’s some comfort in knowing what to expect when you walk in the door, even if you really wish it were different and you really, really, really find it uncomfortable that it is in that way, if every day you walked in the house you had no idea what it would look like, that would be more uncomfortable. There is comfort in that familiarity. There’s a lot of comfort and predictability, right? You don’t have to guess, “What will it be like?” You just know.

That’s one reason why we’re so drawn to food and alcohol. We know the food predictably will taste a certain way, especially with all the packaged things and stuff like that, it’s just really consistent, or chain restaurants. One of the things they’re trying to do is make it so that it’s really consistent. Or even Starbucks. I remember reading something a long time ago about how they were going through their food selections and they wanted to make it so that it really didn’t matter which Starbucks anywhere in the country, or maybe even the world, which one you frequented or went to, it was going to taste the same. There’s this predictability, like I know I can go to Starbucks, and maybe it won’t be the best cup of coffee, but I know exactly what it’s going to taste like.

There’s reliability in that, too. I can count on this. I can count on the food and alcohol to be there for me. I can count on my clothes fitting a certain way. I can count on the routine, even if I don’t like the result of the routine, so there’s no surprises in this. Many of us don’t like surprises. We want to avoid change. Change feels hard. It feels difficult. There’s things that are unknown in that and we’d rather just know what it’s going to be like and not get what we want than do what it takes to get what we want. I think that’s just how brains work. I mean, I’m no research psychologist like Angela Duckworth, but I will tell you that I think that this is what our brains do. We just like the familiar, even when there’s discomfort in that.

Then what we do is we concoct stories. We start creating these little fiction tales in our brains to support our “habit,” that familiarity addiction, right, our habit of just going back to the familiar, even if it doesn’t give us the result that we want. We make up these stories to support that, so we start saying things like, “I just can’t lose weight. I don’t know. It’s my age. It’s the fact that I’m breastfeeding,” or, “It’s the fact that I have toddlers,” or, “It’s the fact that my kids are too busy. I don’t have time to focus on that.” There’s always something if you have children, some stage or phase that they’re in that makes it impossible, we can tell ourselves it makes it impossible.

We can tell ourselves stories like, “Diets don’t work for me. I can look at everyone in my family and we all struggle with our weight. Genetically, I’m predisposed to this,” “I don’t have time. I mean, look at all my other responsibilities. I have too many other things going on,” “I don’t have enough support,” this is a common one, like, “I need everybody in my life to be on board. I need everybody to always say the right thing and never say anything that could make this more difficult, always anticipating exactly what I need, and because they don’t do that, it’s not possible for me to change.”

Then we often get down to the old faithful beliefs of “Something’s wrong with my body,” or, “Something is wrong with me, right? That’s why I have to stay in what’s familiar,” and so if we tell ourselves that we get you believe it, because a belief is just a thought that you’ve decided is true, and then you get to stay in what’s familiar, even though ultimately you don’t like the result. That way, you don’t have to have the change. You don’t have to have the surprises. You get to have that reliable, predictable, certain experience of your life.

But here’s what’s really cool about this: When you employ grit, which you can learn more about, like I said, I have no affiliation, no kickback on this book, it’s just a great book, that’s why I’m talking about it, but when you employ some grit and you decide, “No. You know what? I’m actually going to step out of that familiarity and I’m going to create some change for myself,” the cool thing is is that you can make anything familiar, right? Right now, you’re making what you don’t want familiar. What if you created what you do want and you figured out how to maintain it, how to keep it, and then that became what’s familiar and then you’re addicted to that familiarity?

This is what this looks like, right? You go through the process of losing the weight, but of course, you have to do it in the way that I teach, which is you also have to look at the thoughts and feelings that are driving you to overeat in the first place, right? There’s a lot of mind work that needs to be done there first in addition to, of course, looking at what foods you’re consuming and how and why and all of that. But you go through that process, you create what you want, and you routinize it in the sense that it just becomes this thing that you do, it really becomes familiar.

If you’ve listened to any of the success stories that I’ve had from clients who’ve had success in my program in the past on this podcast, you will see that so many of them talk about like, “No, following my plan is so easy. I literally barely even think about it.” It’s so familiar to them now that it’s just as easy for them to follow it as it is for them to not follow it, right? You create this scenario where doing the things that support you and not doing the things that don’t support you become normal and familiar to you. They become predictable. They become reliable. You have certainty in yourself that you’re going to follow this plan. You’re going to do these things.

Then you get to like the results that you create, right? You’re like, “Yeah, when I do all these things, I sleep better and my clothes are more comfortable and I have more energy. I’m able to move around more. My feet and my joints aren’t hurting at the end of the day after standing all day long,” just all these great things that happen when you’re taking good care of yourself and living at a good weight for you, and then that becomes the new familiar addiction.

What we want to do is step out of that familiarity addiction, do the uncomfortable thing, and then once we create our results, make taking those actions, thinking the thoughts, feeling the feelings that create those results that we want become just the new normal. We don’t have to change any of it then, right? We always want to avoid change. Great. Create what you want and then don’t change it. If it’s working for you, then just keep going, and then you’re like, “Yeah, this is what I’m familiar with. This is what I know to be true and what works and I’m just going to stay doing this,” so I don’t think we have to constantly think about like, “We have to be uncomfortable all the time.” I just don’t think, I mean, at least for me, I’m like, “There’s a lot of things that I’m uncomfortable about a lot and that’s enough.”

But sometimes, we’re like, “Yeah, and I’m going to do some more here because I believe in the result that is to come on the other side of me going through this process,” and that is worth it to me. It’s worth it to me to figure out why food is the solution to my emotions and figure out how to actually process my emotions and feel them instead of stuffing them down or trying to avoid them. Once I have that skill, once I know how to do this, I can create what I want, and then I can just rinse and repeat and just keep it going, keep it going, keep it going, and that can be the new thing I’m familiar with.

It’s like when I think about actually overeating every night, like I used to, like, “Ugh, absolutely not,” but that was total familiarity addiction I was so afraid of running out of my Weight Watchers points, so afraid of being hungry after dinner if I had eaten everything that I would eat these massive salads because vegetables were free, didn’t count for points on Weight Watchers, and so I just basically trained myself to overeat these massive salads in order to ensure that I might not have some hunger later. Now, of course, what’s so silly is that’s how big of a rule follower I am. The points police were not going to come and I wasn’t going to get in trouble for eating some food if I was really hungry, but in my mind, this was logical and made sense, and so I trained myself to overeat and had other ramifications, like digestive issues, because I was overeating regularly, and then thinking that that level of over-fullness was normal, so that was very familiar to me, even though it gave me results I didn’t like.

I’ve not done that in so many years now that it’s a total new sense to familiarity in terms of connection with my body, what’s the right amount of food, and stopping when I’ve had enough, and knowing that I always get to support my body with food or sleep or rest or movement or whatever it needs anytime it needs it. I don’t have to be so strict and rigid with myself. We know how to get our A-pluses, right? Then we take it too far. That’s the issue there.

I want to encourage you to really think about the things that you would like to create in your life that you’re not creating and understanding on a deeper level why you’re not doing it. Then you can ask yourself, “Am I willing to step out of this familiarity to create familiarity with something that does give me the results that I want?” If you are interested in doing that, you will definitely want to check out the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program. Like I said, we’re starting in January, and just in a couple of days is when we close down enrollment, so check out all the information at katrinaubellmd.com/info. You’ll get everything you need to know there about the program and you can decide if it’s the right fit for you. I am so excited for you to come and join us. The program is so great, so fun. We’re just changing lives, right and left. So great. Yeah, if you’re a reader, you like reading books, go check out Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.

All right, friends, have a great rest of your week, and thanks for your attention today. I appreciate you and I appreciate just you taking the time to even listen to this and take this in and even consider it, even on any level. Have a great day and I’ll catch you next time. Bye-bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight-loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #257: Familiarity Addiction appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

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It is probably no surprise to you that most weight loss solutions are not permanent. In fact, less than 10% (and that’s being generous) of people who lose weight manage to keep it off long-term. In this episode, I’m diving into why that is and what you can do to get off the yo-yo weight loss treadmill.

Listen in as I share the main reasons why so many of us struggle with permanent weight loss, why thoughts and feelings are a key part of long-term success, and how the Weight Loss For Doctors Only program is different than other weight loss programs. If you want to stop feeling like you just can’t diet right, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!

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In Today’s Episode, You’ll Learn: * Why many people struggle long-term with weight loss. * How thoughts and feelings play into long-term weight loss. * The key to long-term weight loss success. * How Weight Loss For Doctors Only is different.

Featured In This Episode * How Losing Weight is Different for Doctors (And What to Do About It) * Weight Loss for Doctors Only * Follow me on Instagram! * Free Resources * Email me! * Interested in working with me? If you’re a practicing MD/DO physician, click here to learn more. * Sign up for my email list!

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Katrina Ubell: You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 256.

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I’m your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you’re looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you’re in the right place.

Well, hello there, my friend. How are you today? I’m so glad you’re here with me. How is your December going so far? It’s the end of the year. Here are. I know it was my dad who told me this once, but someone said that life is like a roll of toilet paper. It just starts rolling faster and faster. The older you get, the more you pull off. It’s like, “How did another year fly by?” So crazy. But I’ve got something really cool coming up in just two days that I want to make sure to invite you to. And I’m not only just invite you like, “Hey, you should come,” but like grab your hand and pull you along.” Like you’re coming. What I mean by that is that I’m hosting a free training on Thursday, December 9th. It’s at 8:30 PM Eastern, 5:30 PM Pacific. And it’s called How Losing Weight is Different For Doctors and What To Do About It.

And I really want to encourage you to get this information. It’s so important for you to understand the differences. Because so often we’re like, “I don’t know, this should just be working and it’s not working and we don’t know why.” And I’m telling you, I struggled and struggled for years and years and years, honestly decades and I didn’t really understand what it was about my life as a doctor. And that made losing weight pretty particularly permanently that much more challenging. And not like, “Oh, Boohoo, poor us. Doctors have it so hard.” It’s not that a mindset. It’s just understanding what the actual problem is, how we got to where we are, and what we can do about it. That’s going to be different than what you’re going to be getting in any other weight loss program out there. So it’s just really important for you to understand this. Really no matter how you decide to lose weight, whether you work with me or you do something else, it’s just really important for you to understand this if you are a physician, if you’re a doctor, you’re going to want to know this information.

So the way to register for this free training is to go to katrinaubellmd.com/different, D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T, katrinaubellmd.com/different. You’re going to want to go and register. If you cannot join me live, which I strongly encourage you to do, but if you can’t join me live, you will get a replay. The great thing about coming live is you get to ask all of your questions.

The other thing to know is that I will be opening up the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program for January of 2022. Doesn’t it sound weird? 2022. What is that? But yes, I open up this program three times a year, and this will be the start of your opportunity to sign up. So we’re only open for a limited time and there’s actually some really great bonuses that you’re going to want to know about, one in particular that is a very limited time and you’re going to want to hear about that. So come live. If you can’t come live, make sure you listen to that replay ASAP so that you don’t miss out on the bonuses. Okay? How Losing Weight is Different For Doctors and What To Do About It? Come and join me, katrinaubellmd.com/different.

Okay. So along those same lines, today we’re going to talk about why most weight loss solutions aren’t permanent. And this is no surprise to you if you’re like, “What? They’re not?” Then you probably haven’t been trying to lose my wait for a long time or you don’t know a lot of people who’ve tried to lose weight. All you have to do is look around, talk to people that you know> for almost everybody when people lose weight, it’s not permanent. And there’s statistics and data to show this and it can vary anywhere from 0.5% of people are able to keep it off long term, 2% of people, 3% of people, maybe even up to 8% or 9% of people, but that’s still a very small number compared to the total number of people who try to lose weight every year.

So I want to talk to you about why that is. Okay? That isn’t because you haven’t found the right diet, or you just need to wait for the latest diet book to come out. I was just thinking, “Except my coming out in September, maybe you’ll want to get that one.” But besides that, what you need to focus on is something different than just what the food is and how you’re moving your body because that is how the majority of the weight loss industry approaches weight loss.

The list is endless. You should eat according to your body type. You shouldn’t be eating gluten, you shouldn’t be eating dairy. You should be vegan. You should eat all the meat. It always felt like to me like no matter what, I always felt like I was doing it wrong. This person would be like, “You have to do it this way. There’s no other way.” And then I’d catch one of someone else’s approach to weight loss and they were completely contradicting everything. The first person had said. And they made sense too. And then I was just totally confused. I didn’t know what to do. And none of it was working permanently.

If you have lost weight and gained it back again, you’re probably like most of us, which means that you can follow a plan if you’re trying to get that A plus. If you somehow are looking to get the approval or validation of somebody else, maybe who you know in you’re life, or maybe the person that you’re working with to lose weight, you can follow things, but can you do it long term? Are you willing to do it long term? Often the answer is no and that’s why we struggle.

So when we think about weight loss just collectively as a whole, as a society, when we think about weight loss, what we tend to think about our actions primarily. So we’re thinking about the actions that we take. Like you sign up for any weight loss program, they’re going to tell you what to do, what not to do, how to eat, maybe they’ll give you a meal plan, maybe they’ll give you a grocery shopping list. They’re trying to make it really simple for you to take certain actions. There’s lots of things to do. You should write down what you eat. Maybe you should weigh yourself, maybe you shouldn’t weigh yourself, whatever they say. Maybe you should exercise in a certain way. Maybe they’ll give you certain workout plans, or exercises, or just a whole plan for you to live your life. And if you do these things and count things in this way, then you will get that result in.

And so here’s the thing. Very often if you actually do all of that stuff, you will get results. Okay? These things often do work if you’re able to do all of that. If you do all of those things that are required, and don’t do the things that you’re not supposed to do, then you will very likely create the result of losing weight. So there’s certain actions we talk about and those create certain results. So when people are like, “Oh, that didn’t work for me. That weight loss plan didn’t work for me,” what we’re really saying, almost always is, I wasn’t able to take the actions that I was supposed to take. I wasn’t willing to, I wasn’t able to, it didn’t work for my lifestyle, but not so much that if I actually follow the plan, it doesn’t work. That does happen on occasion. But most of the time, that’s not really what the issue is. The issue is that we’re not able to or willing to make the adjustments necessary to take the actions that are part of the plan that are required to get the results that we want.

So when you think about yo-yo, your weight loss. Your weight yo-yoing up and down, which is the case for so many of us. I know for me, oh my gosh, endless. Just up and down my weight. It would not stabilize out. That is a result. The weight going up, the weight going down. Whatever your weight is, that’s the result that you’re creating. And so of course, if your weight is yo-yoing up and down, that’s not permanent weight loss. So permanent weight loss means you create a result, and then you keep that result. That result stays. It continues on, it’s permanent, it’s ongoing. Okay?

And so when you are thinking about what’s happening with yoyo weight loss, or yoyo dieting, meaning, you’re losing weight and then you’re gaining it again, you’re creating different results. When your weight is going down, you’re taking certain actions. And then for whatever reason, you stop taking those actions and you take different actions and that results in your weight going up. And then you change your mind and say, “You know what, I’m going to take some day for action so my weight can go down.” And so then you do that and you get the result of weight going down. And then you stop taking those actions and you take different actions again and then you create the result of your weight going up. And this just continues on and on. And that is what yoyo weight loss is. Yoyo dieting. Okay?

So there’s a big, big, major component that we are, well, I was going to say ignoring, but in my case, I just literally didn’t know about it for almost the whole time that I was trying to lose weight and get control of my overeating. And that is the thoughts and the feelings that precede your actions and results. So up until now, we’ve just been talking about those actions that you take and the results that they create. Well, when we think about the thinking cycle, what we have to remember is that what drives your actions are your feelings or your emotions, and what creates your feelings are your thoughts and your beliefs. Your beliefs are just thoughts that you think are true that you’ve likely been thinking for a long time.

So there’s thoughts that create feelings. Feelings drive your actions. Actions create your results. So modern medicine and the weight loss industry, largely glosses over how power the brain can contribute to our results. And we just think it’s actions, all actions. This actually came up for me again recently. I went and visited a doctor and it was just totally like, “Here’s the foods you should be eating.” They hadn’t even been asked. I did not bring up the conversation at all. It was just like, “Oh, and by the way, these are the foods you should be eating.” So fascinating. No discussion at about anything besides those foods. Because here’s the thing. You could eat those foods, but if you’re overeating them, it’s still not going to be helpful for you. So, so interesting.

So here is what you need to understand. When you are creating the result of losing weight, you have certain thoughts and feelings that support the actions you need to take in order to create those results. Let me repeat that. When you are losing weight, you have certain thoughts and feelings, certain thoughts and emotions that are driving the actions, fueling the actions that you’re taking, that you need to take in order to create weight loss. When you’re creating the result of your weight going up, so meaning, the weight is yo-yoing back up again, what’s happening is, you have a different set of thoughts and feelings that are driving different actions that create the result of weight gain. Okay? So it’s not like we can blame the diet or blame the eating plan. What has really happened, the true source of the weight going back up again, of the weight loss not being permanent is that we’re thinking and feeling differently. Okay? This is so, so important because it’s not discussed. No one is talking about. It’s. It just we’re not even aware that this is an issue.

So here are some common things that I hear from doctors in particular. And I want to help you to understand how this creates the problem of you not having permanent weight loss. The most common one I hear so often is, I know what to do. I’m just not doing it. I’m not stupid. I’m a doctor. I have plenty of people who work with me who are obesity, medicine certified. They’re fellowship trained. And they’re like, “And I still can’t get this under control.” “I thought if I became fellowship trained, then I can get this under control and they’re still struggling.”

But think about what that statement is, “I know what to do. I’m just not doing it,” it’s all about actions. I know what to do, the actions to take, the actions not to take, but I’m just not doing it. And so what we often think then is, well, something is obviously wrong with me. I’m somehow defective in some way because I’m just not doing it. I’m just not disciplined. I’m weak. If I are a stronger person, if I are a better person, if I are more valuable person, whatever it is, we think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us. And that’s why we are not doing the thing that we know to do.

And what I want to just… I have some great news for you. What I want to convey to you and help you to understand is that you as a human being are perfect as you are, and that has nothing to do with whether or not you’re doing what you know you should be doing or not. If you know what to do when you’re just not doing it, it’s not a personality flaw or fundamental flaw with who you are. What it means is that you have certain thoughts and feelings that do not drive the action of doing what you know you should be doing. That’s what we need to figure out. If there’s certain things that you know would help you and you’re not doing them, what we want to do is figure out, what your current thoughts and feelings are that are driving you to do the opposite of the thing that you think would be helpful. Those actions that you know to be taking.

We have to understand what’s creating the current situation. What are those thoughts and feelings so that we can change them? Because if you had the thoughts that drove the action of you doing what you know to do, you would have the results that you’re looking for. I know what to do. I’m just not doing it. All that is a reflection of, is that regular old diet industry mentality of focusing on actions and results and not paying any attention or focusing at all on what comes before that, which are your thoughts and your feelings. Okay?

The next one, I can only follow a plan for a while and then I rebel. I think this often just happens. I can do it for a while. I’ve got some momentum. And then I just don’t want to do it anymore. And so this just happens to us. So if you put that on that action line, following your plan. So for a while you follow that plan and why do you follow that plan? Because you have thoughts and feelings that drive the action of you following that plan. And then we think, “Well, and then I just rebel. I just get tired of doing it. I don’t want to do it anymore.” Well, that’s so interesting. Like what are we rebelling against? Who are we rebelling against? Often, usually ourselves, or maybe the person who gave us the plan.

But if you think about what that is, now you’re taking different actions. You’re not follow that plan anymore. And the reason why that’s happening is because you have different feelings and different thoughts. So if you can only follow plan for a while and then you rebel, the only thing that’s happening is you’re changing the way you think and feel as though that just happens to you, which if you’re not aware of this, it does just happen to you. You don’t realize you’re actually in control of this. You don’t realize that this is something that is essentially a choice it’s just being chosen subconsciously without the benefit of your prefrontal cortex actually evaluating and thinking about it.

And another one, going on vacation ends all my progress. I do great, and then I go on vacation. This was the story of my life for I cannot even tell you how long. The number of times that around Easter time, I would go like spring, go back to Weight Watchers and lose weight. And then it would be around July, August or so when we would go on vacation like our next vacation would be and I would be, “Maybe close to goal or at goal.” And that vacation just messed everything up again. And then I would start overeating, again, overeat, overeat, overeat until usually about the end of the year. And then I’d go back and lose weight. The cycle, it just continued and continued.

So what we think is that the action of going on vacation is what’s messing everything up. But instead, what’s happening is, we’re eating a certain weight. We’re taking certain actions that are creating weight loss at first. We’re creating some progress for us on this front that is being driven by certain thoughts and feelings. Then we change things up and we go on vacation and have new and different thoughts and feelings. That create the actions of going off plan. Eating all the things, drinking all the things, all the things. And not driving the action of us going back on plan when we get home.

Because here’s the thing, sometimes that happens if you overeat on vacation. Okay. The most important thing is, what do you do when you get home again? Are you back on plan? Are you jumping right back on track again? In my case, I never ever did. And that’s why I gained the way back again. But it’s not vacation that’s the problem. Even gaining weight on vacation is not the problem. We want to be taking certain actions so that we get certain results. The way to ensure that we continue to take those actions that support us so that we get the results that we want is to be intentional about the way that we think and we feel. We have to know what we’re currently thinking. Then we have to decide, does that actually help support us? Does that help to drive the results we want? If not, then we have the opportunity to change our thinking to create something different. And then once we find something that works, we have to intentionally on purpose continue to think that way.

So often, so often I get the question of, how is the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program different than this podcast? Had so many people say, I’ve lost so much weight listening to your podcast. It helps me. So it’s amazing. How is it any different? I feel like I would just spend a bunch of money and it would be the same thing. Which first of all, in some ways I’m like, “Really you think that I would give you the exact same thing and charge your money for it?” I’m like, “Okay. Give me the benefit of the doubt here that I wouldn’t do that.”

But what I’m doing here is I’m helping you to understand what the problem is. In the program, what we do is we help you to discover what those thoughts and feelings are. Can you do that on your own? I think you can, but I will tell you that it is so much faster and more effective when you have a coach helping you. Okay? When you are in a program where the whole purpose is aimed toward helping you to figure out what you think and feel. What the ramifications are of those thoughts and feelings, i.e, what are the results that you create, helping you to decide if you want to keep those or if you’re ready to make a change, or if you even need to make a change, maybe you’re getting the results that you want in certain things?

But we do this with every area, not just with weight loss. Because very often when our thoughts and feelings are pretty uncomfortable or not exactly what want them to be in other areas of our lives, one of the actions that we take to feel better is we eat, or sometimes we drink alcohol. And so this factors in everywhere. So what we’re doing in the program is we are uncovering and then working through those thoughts and feelings. Of course, in addition to a whole bunch of tools that I’ve never taught you on those podcasts and all sorts of other amazing things, but that is really the gist of it.

I have had more people come into the program who are like, “Listen, I lost 50 pounds, 40 pounds, 60 pounds, however much listening to the podcast, but I know I haven’t really done the brain work and that’s why I’m here now.” And I have plenty of people who are like, “Look, I know I’m not going to do it. So I know I’m not going to do it by myself. So I’m here to lose weight and to work on my brain.” And the cool thing is, by doing all of this work, you get to lose weight and improve your experience of your whole life because your thoughts and your feelings are what creates your experience of your whole life. If your experience of losing weight’s been miserable, it’s because of the way you’ve thought and felt about it.

Now, also, maybe there are some plans that are a little bit more comfortable for you or work a little better for you than others. And we can take that into consideration. But really it’s not the plan that’s creating your experience. It is the way you think and feel about it. And that is your choice. Now, this is not about toxic positivity where it’s something that’s totally uncomfortable and you’re like, “Well, I’m just going to be happy about it. Nothing to complain about here. I should just be whole love and light and good vibes.” You can do that, but I don’t think that that’s very helpful.

It’s really important that we recognize that all of our emotions are just as valid as any other emotion. It’s not like all the positive feeling emotions are the good ones and we want to try to avoid the bad. What we want to do is stop avoiding the bad and actually learn to process them. When we’re overeating and over drinking, what we’re doing is we’re avoiding those emotions and then they just get stuff down and they wait for us for later. And then we have to keep stuffing them down and keep stuffing them down. And we don’t know what to do with them. That’s the main thing. We don’t know how to actually process them. So we have to learn how to do all of that. This is a tool and a skill that vast majority of us have just not learned. So if you’re like, “I don’t really know where I would’ve learned this. Did I miss something?” No, you didn’t miss anything. I’m 45 years old. No one taught me this. No one taught me this.

So that is why most weight loss solutions aren’t permanent. Okay? Because we are not addressing the thoughts and feelings. So I don’t care how you’re losing weight. If you’re not addressing the thoughts and feelings, the chances of it being permanent are incredibly low in my opinion. All you have to do is look around and just see what people do and see the results that they get. It’s literally all you have to do to have the evidence that you need.

So Weight Loss for Doctors Only really is different because we are addressing that part of it, and getting it so that we can keep our weight off ongoing because we know how to manage our minds. Not even just today with the way life is now, but as new challenges and life changes come into your life as they do, which is normal, you know how to handle that as well so you don’t end up losing weight when life is really pretty good, and then there’s a new challenge and you’re right back face first into the ice cream, or the wine bottle, or the margarita or whatever it is.

All right. So there we go. And if you are interested in understanding How Losing Weight is Different For Doctors and What To Do About It, I really want to strongly encourage you to come and join me this Thursday, December 9th and 8:30 PM Eastern, 5:30 PM Pacific so you can really understand why as a doctor things really are a bit different. Now, the good news is, I’ve been doing this for five years and I have never met a doctor that we couldn’t figure out a plan that would work with their life and schedule and all of that.

It’s just… And before that, I couldn’t find anybody who could help me. So I always feel like this is like my superpower. I’m like, “We can figure out something that will work for you.” I don’t care how crazy, irregular your schedule is. There’s something that we can figure out for sure. And we will figure it out. And that’s what we do in Weight Loss for Doctors Only.

So if you’d like more information about the program, make sure that you come and check out that free training. We’ll give you information about the program as well. And the way to register is katrinaubellmd.com/different. All right, my friend, can’t wait to see you in a couple of days. And come and join me live if you can. So fun. Love it. Have a great rest of your day. Have a good one. And I’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to Katrinaubellmd.com and click on Free Resources.

The post Ep #256: Why Most Weight Loss Solutions Aren’t Permanent appeared first on Katrina Ubell, MD.

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