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Hello? Hello. I hope this is working. Hello. It is Dr. Orlena. Super excited to. I cannot believe it is the beginning of December. So here's an amusing story for you. My mom came to stay this weekend and it was lovely to see my mom.
Now she lives in the UK and she's driving back to the uk, well, she lives in France and the uk so she's driving back. So I texted my sisters a few weeks ago and said, is there anything you want for Christmas thinking? That I could buy it in Spain and then send it back with my mum. Now, obviously my sisters didn't get round to me.
Until yesterday when it was a bit late, and they all want stuff online anyhow. And now they're all, oh, we've organized Christmas presents, we've got this for your kids, blah, blah, blah. I want this. And I'm like, oh my goodness, it's the 5th of December. How are you guys so amazingly organized and my brain is not.
Even thinking about Christmas yet, other than how many days we have left of school, hooray. Nearly the holidays. Okay. Today, today, today I want to talk to you about nine big mistakes that I see people making. And these people might be people in general. They might be my clients. I think a lot of the time I'm seeing what my clients are doing and showing how I can help them correct it or how, you know, you can avoid this in the first place.
So what we're talking about, Is leading your healthy life, so losing weight in a way that is. natural, and what I mean by natural is eating healthily, applying my four pillars, which is eating healthily, loving exercise, exercise that lights you up. Delicious, healthy sleep, and emotional well set. Well, excuse me.
Emotional wellness, emotional wellness, including mindset and stress, and all of those pillars are important, and here's why. If you have a weak. There's a knock on effect. So for example, sleep is a really good example. If you don't prioritize sleep, then you have low energy levels and you start eating worse, you feel more hungry, and you start eating less healthy foods.
And so you can see how this spirals down. So what I help people do is spiral up the positive spiral. So you know, creating habits in all of these areas, but it doesn't happen overnight. It is a spiral. You start building up. So for example, when I look at the ladies in my Healthy You Healthy Family program, one lady has been in there for over a year and really been focusing on healthy eating, and she's lost weight and done reason really amazingly.
such that she says, yep, it's a habit now I just eat healthily. I fix my relationship with food. I eat healthily in a way that I don't even think about it now. And so now she's focusing on building up exercise and building up strength more. Now, that's not to say she didn't do any exercise of at all. Of course she did do some just walking counts as some exercise.
But it's more about, okay, this is the thing that I'm focusing on. So here you go.
That's the first one. And I haven't even included that in my list of my list of big issues that I see really trip people up. So this is the idea. This is, you're standing here right now thinking, okay, I know I want to lose weight, but I want to lose weight in a way that is healthy and I want to lose weight in a way that is creating a lifestyle that I love as opposed to doing something for two or three weeks and then going back to normal.
And here is what I see happens. Now, I will just remind you that, that doing things without think. Is obviously habits and I have talked a lot about habits. If you have not listened to me talk about habits, where have you been? You must be new. Hello and welcome. So I have lots of podcasts on habits. I have lots of workshops on habits.
I do need to update the, there's a VIP section that you can sign up to where I try and put all the workshops in, but it's a little bit out of date. . If you have not heard me talk about habits, feel free to either email me or message me and say, Dr. Alina, I need to know about habits and I will point you in the right direction.
So, okay, let's get on with the list. Now, my big mistake that I see, number one is underestimating the small changes. And I think I can go slash trying to make this difficult. So I really think that small change. Really, really add up. So I will give an example, an a sort of negative example, if that makes sense.
So for example, having a big dinner and then sitting down watching the World Cup football and getting out a packet of malters. Now it sounds like such an easy thing to do, and yes, malters are delicious. Chocolate is, we all like chocolate. We all like sugar. There's no debating that, but. . Okay. If you don't eat that one packet of chocolate, it's not gonna make a big difference.
Of course it's not. But over a period of time it is. And those small little changes, if you're doing the right changes, it adds up. And I think the, the, the sort of flip side of this coin is people trying to make it difficult and really thinking, oh my goodness, I have to. so much staff, I have to make it really difficult.
There's this big obstacle and so many of the ladies in My Healthy You Healthy Family program say, actually, do you know what? It was easy and it was fun. And the reason it's easy and fun is because they have my expertise to. Tell them what to focus on. There's no point in really busting a gut to make changes that aren't going to really move the needle forwards.
And a big example of this is the exercise nutrition debate. And you know, I gave you that example earlier of somebody who had really sorted out nutrition. And then moves along to exercise. But a lot of people do it the other way around. They go, okay, I'm really gonna focus on exercise now. It does depend where you are.
And without talking to you, I can't tell you which one you should prioritize. Although what I can tell you is that if weight loss is your goal, you are much better off focusing on your nutrition than you are focusing on exercise. And again, that doesn't mean don't, don't exercise. Of course, exercise.
Exercise is amazing. So, mistake number one is estimating the small change, underestimating the small changes. And I think this really goes along with not a hundred percent knowing exactly what it is you should be focusing on.
So mistake number two that I see people making is not planning so that they end up hungry and then they don't have any healthy food.
And I think this goes along with not really liking healthy food. So this is all sort of like jumbled in. . And it's that, oh my goodness, I've got home from work. Yes, I love this idea of being healthy, but oh my goodness, there's nothing, nothing in the cupboard. I haven't decided what I'm going to do. And if you missed the the Facebook Live that I did recently with Carrie on meal planning, go and check that out.
But it really, this really unravels, you know, shopping. Meal planning how you are providing food. Now, it doesn't matter how you do this, as in it doesn't have to be exactly the same way as me, but you do need to have a system. And I think people don't create a system that works for them. . So it is worth sitting down and creating your system and having a look at, okay, what happens?
How do I shop for food? How do I plan for food? How am I gonna eat food? And you can do this by yourself. And obviously if you're in my Healthy You Healthy Family program, it's something that we talk about. And I was talking about it to one of the ladies recently, and she'd got a little bit off track. We were talking about, oh my goodness, why are you off track?
She had been busy at the weekend and realized that Basical, she hadn't done her weekend shop and she hadn't prioritized her weekend shop. And the knock on effect of that is now I'm going out and I'm eating more restaurant starly food. Now it sounds really obvious when we talk about it, when I've given you the answer, but when you are in the depths of things and you are there, it's kind of like being in that hamster wheel.
You are there going, oh my goodness, I'm hungry. I need to provide food. I don't have the healthy stuff. Well, then obviously you are providing unhealthy. So is that you not really planning.
Now, number three, I think, goes along with both of these and it's not making it routine, and I think this is a really big mistake that people think, oh my goodness, I'm going to do this once or twice.
That's great. It worked the first few times and then it stopped. I didn't carry on doing it. So going back to mistake number one, underestimating the small changes. Yeah, it's, there's no point in just skipping those malts or cutting out sugar for a day or two. It has to be a routine thing. And I'm not saying you never have to eat sugar.
I really am not. I'm saying you need to look at how much you are eating with what I call open. And equally the planning, the planning of the meals. There's no point in doing it for one or two days. It needs to be a routine that you get into. Now, it obviously needs to be a routine that works for you because there's no point in me giving you my routine.
My routine is I get up on Sunday morning, I go to market. I buy lots of fruit and vegetables. That's clearly not gonna work for you if you don't have a market on Sunday morning or if you've got other stuff to do on Sunday morning, but you have to come up with your. And you can do this by yourself.
Obviously if you are in the Healthy You Healthy Family Program, it's something we do together and we figure it out. And another thing I would say about this is it's one thing to make a routine and go, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. There's also. Feedback afterwards to make sure that it is working and it doesn't always work first time round.
So you make your routine and think, okay, this is fabulous. And then a few weeks later you realize, yeah, but this bit isn't working or this bit works really well. I should be doing more of that. So there is that evaluation of looking back and going, I need to do that. There you go. That could be another mistake.
I'm losing count of these mistakes. The not evaluating could be another mistake all by itself. Okay, so.
Mistake number four, and I think this is a big one, which is easily fixed with hey, routine, but it's the big mistake is this skipping meals and waiting until you are hungry to eat with the idea that if you skip meals, then you are giving your body a chance to lose fat.
Now that can be true and you do need to give your body. To use its fat, use its energy store up, but skipping meals isn't always the way to do that. Again, I refer you back to 0.3. It needs to be routine and once it is routine, you get used to eating at that time. And hunger is really just a signal to say, have you remembered to eat now, the problem with skipping meal, And I'm not talking about intermittent fasting.
It doesn't matter how many times you eat in a day, that is up to you. But what I'm saying is it needs to be routine. So you can eat once a day if that works for you, or you can eat three times a day if that works for you. But if you start skipping meals and waiting until you are hungry, what actually happens quite often is you then end up eating unhealthy.
and you start looking for foods you know, you haven't planned. You're like, oh my goodness, I'm gonna skip this meal. Now I'm hungry. Now I'm reaching for the donuts, or the cake or whatever else is available and overeating. Whereas if you do it routinely and say, okay, actually I'm gonna have a healthy breakfast or a healthy lunch, and I'm gonna eat the amount that I need that is gonna keep me going until my next eating opportunity.
And keep going. Once you've got that routine, your body knows what's going on. And this idea of hunger is your body basically saying, Hey, you know what? Normally you eat it this time. So hunger is one of those things that we do a little bit of work on because you don't need to be scared of hunger, but equally, you don't want to totally ignore it until your ravenous and then make unhealthy decisions.
That was big mistake number four, big mistake number five is feeling overwhelmed as if there isn't enough time in the day to do all the things. And I think I've put a slash with this, which is not taking care of your own emotions. And so this idea of. Feeling overwhelmed. I see very commonly, oh my goodness, I've got this long list of things to do.
I have to do my job, I have to do look after my kids. I have to do various other things, but also I now have to do healthy eating and exercise and all of these things, and I just have too much to do and I can't do it. And I think really what this is highlighting is the change, because if you were already doing it, like I do all of these things, but it's just routine for me.
I just do it because I've got a system. , not because I'm Superwoman, but really this comes back to being a little bit scared of change and not having your system sorted out. So it could just be, oh my goodness, I just haven't really figured it all out yet. And that's fine. Things happen in sequence in time.
It's fine to go, okay, I identified this problem and I'm making changes to, to sort it out. So for example, It might be that you have young kids and you don't have time. You don't have any time to do any exercise, but after Christmas, they're going to nursery or they're gonna start school. So you will have time or you can get someone to help for a little bit of time, but you're making a plan.
Yes. Right now it's not happening, but you're making a plan for it to happen in the future. . And I think the other thing about taking care of your own emotions is really identifying your emotions and realizing what's going on. So for example, Seeing what is driving your emotional eating? Is it that really what's going on is, yes, we all love chocolate?
Yes, we all love that. Those, you know, tasty, sweet things. But what's going on is you're feeling undervalued. You're feeling that you don't have time for yourself, and you haven't made time for yourself in your busy day stroke week. And how do you solve this? Well, you then identify what is going to make you.
like you are looking after yourself, that you do have the time to do the things that you want to do. Obviously you need to decide what those things are and then create time in your week for it. Now, I know you're gonna be saying, I'm busy. I can't do all of this. But I think really, and again, this is another big mistake that I should have put down, is that people see routine as a drain.
Oh my goodness. It's really constraining, but. . It's not having a routine that works for you is freedom because it allows you to incorporate the things that you want to do. So if you say, look, I like to be spontaneous and go and do something that I haven't quite decided, that's fine. You can put into your routine, okay, I want a couple of hours of free time to do whatever I want to do.
But if you have. Taken oak shopping and meal planning and all of this, and made it routine so that you don't have to think about it. You then free yourself up time to do those things, which might be reading books or going to the theater or whatever it looks like. So really just having that mindset shift of.
Okay. Actually, routine really can help me routine's, what I call routines, habits and systems. They can help me to maintain this life in a way that I don't feel like I'm juggling lots of balls because I just feel like I'm doing the next thing that I've set up a train and I just do the next thing. So like a really simple example is I live in a house and the sun, obviously I live in a house, but the sun shines in the bedroom.
We've got this lovely wooden top to a chest of. . The sun shines in in the morning, and when it shines in in the morning, actually I can see all the dust on it. And we live in Spain. It's super dusty here, and when I see that, I just wipe it. Now, I don't do it in the evening time because it's dark and I don't notice the dust, but in the morning I see it and it triggers me to just wipe it.
Now it takes like 10 seconds to do. It really doesn't take a lot of time, but it's not something I ever think about. I don't think, oh my goodness, I have to wake up and wipe that. I only do it when the sun shines. So that is just a habit that I have built up. It's something I do without thinking about it, and it frees me up because on then Saturday morning, I'm not thinking, oh my goodness, I need to tidy my bedroom because I've wiped it several times.
I'm just keeping it clean. Now, if I stopped doing that, yes, I would have to spend time on Saturday morning and think, yes, now I have to clean my bedroom. It's just an example of how actually having routines, habits, and systems freeze up your time and obvious. , you can create your habit systems and routines yourself, but it's something we work on in Healthy You Healthy Family Program.
Okay, next thing, number six, feeling stressed and how we think about things. Now, stress can be caused by lots of different things. So it might be relationships, it might be financial, it might be all number of things. It might just be work. I say just, you know what I. It might be any number of things that is causing you stress.
Now, stress is one of those things that, yes, we need a little bit of stress, but too much stress is just gonna have detrimental impact on your health. On weight loss. Being stressed isn't like your stress hormone is the, the same as. Like steroids essentially, and it's not gonna help you lose weight. And the other really interesting thing about stress is it doesn't actually solve the problem.
So normally, well, it does depend on the problem, obviously, but most times stressing and worrying about a situation does not help the situation. and there's lots of things that you can do about this. In fact, I think I did a Facebook Live on this a couple of days ago. I've lost track, but really thinking about stress and how you can change it.
I did. I did it on Friday. So if you haven't listened to that, go and listen to that Facebook Live on stress and how stress can really impact your life and how you can change it. And obviously, , you can figure out your stress on yourself. What I do find with people like the, the problem with stress is it's one of those things that you are in a bubble and it's really difficult to see your way out for.
and when you have somebody else to talk to you and they help you figure it out and help give you tools, it becomes much, much easier. And so stress is something that we work on in the Healthy You Healthy Family Program. And I have different tools to help people manage their stress. And the knock on effect normally is that if you're stressed quite often you, you're emotionally eating and once you manage your stress, it becomes much easier to stop emotionally.
Okay, so that was number six. So number seven is finding yourself eating sugar without thinking about it and then beating yourself up for it. So this is kind of similar to number six, but this bit really is about emotional eating and the beating yourself up about it. So it is really easy to find yourself through halfway through a piece of cake or a packet of cookies and think, oh my goodness, how did I get.
Now my friends, that is just habit. And you know what normally happens is something stressful happens. You don't like feeling stressed, you distract yourself by going to eat something, and your subconscious brain just does that whole bit without thinking about it. So you're not paying attention when that happens and you find yourself eating something.
But then what happens is your brain starts kick in and it starts to be really judgemental. And it says things like, oh my goodness. So weak-willed, no discipline. How are you ever going to. Really judgmental and then you start feeling not worthy because you started beating yourself up about this. This is not helping the situation.
There is a much easier way to do this, which is just to be curious and say, Hey, you know what? I am a human. I have a human body. I have a human brain. This is how it works. And once you step outside of. A thing that's going on and go, oh, okay, I've just found myself eating a piece of cake. How curious, what is going on there?
Oh, yes. I can see I was triggered by that telephone call that made me feel really stressed. It made me feel really helpless. It made me feel all of these things that I didn't like. And then you can start what I say, putting on your thinking cap and start to figure out how you can change that thing. And that is a much more constructive way to figure things out than to beat yourself up and repeatedly beat yourself up.
And these are what I call in my Healthy You Healthy Family program, golden learning opportunities. And the reason I call them golden learning opportunities because if you have a habit that you are trying to. , that behavior is going to repeatedly come up. So if you miss it one time, it's not a big deal. If it's just a one off event that you once ate cake and it was stress eating cake and it never happens again, well it's not a big deal.
So the golden learning opportunity is it's gonna happen again, and the more frequently the habit that it happens, the stronger that habit is that you have all, you know, the habit of being stressed or you're more triggered. So the more frequently it happens, , the more opportunities you have to figure out what is going on.
And I would also say to you, at this period of time, what happens is you make a plan and you think, yep, okay, I've got this. I can see if I put in this thing or this thing, I can change how this happens. And then you think, okay, I've sorted it out. It's amazing. This is never gonna happen. , except until next week it happens again.
And then you start beating yourself up again. And then you have to go through the whole process all over again. And really what happens is if you take, say for example, , you'll stress eating every single day. That's 30 days, 31 days out of a month, and you learn not to do it once. That is amazing. That's a win.
But it doesn't feel like a win because you're still emotionally eating 29 days out of the month, and then you get it down to 28 and then 27. Now I'm making these numbers up. Of course I am. But you can see that the change. Doesn't happen instantly. It's not like you go from, okay, I stressy every single day to zero and it never happens again.
But that's what people expect and then they get upset when it happens. Well, no, of course it's gonna happen and it will get less frequent and less frequent and less frequent the more you practice doing something else until it is no longer a. How long is that period of time? Well, it does depend. It depends on how strong the habit is and it depends on a lot of things.
But there is a period of time, a learning period of time so that you are rewriting your habits. So I think understanding that is really, really important. And obviously in my Healthy You Healthy Family Program, it's something that we are constantly coming back to these golden learning opportunities and really figuring out what's going on for you.
Okay. Two more. Two more big, big mistakes. Number eight is life happening, and life always happens. I always say life is busy lifeing. Now life happening might be the Christmas holidays, the new year. It might be Easter, it might be Wednesday, it might be the summer. It might be somebody's wedding, so it might be good positive things happening.
I'm going to a party and I'm celebrating. But equally it might. Unforeseen events happening. Somebody's in hospital or I had an accident, or things aren't going very well, and that is life. Life never seems to give us this period of time where nothing happens. There's always something happening. And life carries on Life Inc.
Now, really what is happening here is you are trying to build new habits and you are focusing on building these habits. Now remember, habits are something that we do subconsciously. We do them without thinking, but to begin with, we are thinking about them. So we're thinking about them, we're thinking about them, we're thinking about them.
Then when life happens, we stop thinking about them cuz we're busy thinking about something else. And at that moment in time, what I call our oak tree. Come back. So those things that we've always done before, those things that we're trying to change, they come back and that's perfectly normal. The problem is we then beat ourselves up about them instead of just going, oh yeah, I took my eye off the ball.
And that's what happens. And so life happening really just knocks people sideways. They do like totally get totally derailed, and then they don't get back on track. Life always happens. And really it's not about life never happening, it's about learning how to deal with life and getting on back, back on track as soon as possible.
Cuz back on track becomes your default position. So for example, I remember taking my kids to go and see my mom in France a few Christmases ago and coming back and just basically being itching to cook loads of vegetables cuz we had obviously been having lots of rich. Delicious treat food for Christmas and now my default is get back on track.
I want to start eating vegetables. And my kids as well are saying, we want, we want vegetables. We want vegetables. And that's just the normal place to be. So it's not like life doesn't happen. Yes, it does. But then your default becomes, as you go along that road, your default becomes, okay, I just do the healthy.
but the bit in between is what I call the rickety bridge. So where you are now to it all happening without thinking about it, there is a bridge between and it's rickety because it's very easy to fall off. Now, obviously in my Healthy You Healthy Family Program, this is something that we really, really work on, and my Healthy You Healthy Family Program has a lifetime component to it because I know that life keeps happen.
In fact, the reason I made my program lifetime was because I had one client who did so amazingly well for three months. She did. She lost 19 pounds in two months, but she'd only bought a three month program and then she stopped having coaching and then life happened to her big time. And you know, lots of life changes happened to her at that.
and she got derailed and she didn't get back on track. Now happily, she is back on track and she is making progress. But at that time I really thought about it and thought, do you know what? I really want to be able to support people. Always, because yes, I can give them the tools in three months, but I know that they have what I call acorn habits that are growing.
And until people have solid oak tree habits that their new habits are things that they do without thinking about them even when life happens, I know that it is easy to get knock sideways when you do not have the support. And so that's why I made my program. Lifetime. Yes, lifetime. Okay. Big fat mistake.
Not prioritizing yourself. So giving up and not prioritizing yourself. And I think this ties in with the habits. So giving up can be, okay, life happens, I give up. But it's really this idea of not seeing that all of this is worth doing and not going, Hey, do you know what my health is worth Prioritizing all of these changes, they are worth the time, the effort, the.
They really are worth doing. And I think that is the biggest mistake that I see is essentially saying a lot of people don't start. Yes, they may do little things. They may go, okay, I'm gonna do this thing, I'm gonna do this thing. But. I'm doing it for a bit on the side. I have an interest in healthy eating as opposed to, yeah, I'm all in.
I'm gonna do this. I'm really gonna jump in with two feet and I am going to make help what I call healthy amazing you. So I am gonna create a lifestyle that I love. Now, I understand there are lots of reasons why people don't do this, and lots of what I call excuses, and let's be fair. , there are lots of excuses.
Money, time, effort. And I think one of the big things as well is really like fear of the unknown, not knowing what it looks like and thinking, I don't wanna get up at five o'clock in the morning. What happens if I brainwash myself and I have to get up at five o'clock in the morning and run five K's and then I'm only allowed to eat cabbage or something like that.
Well, yes, I know it's, it's difficult when you think, I don't know what's going on, but what I would say is, You have your own best interests at heart and you need to make those decisions. It's very easy to get stuck in. Yeah, I'm here. I don't wanna make changes. Your brain does not want to make changes.
Your brain is busy going, but you've got different parts of your brain. So there's part of your brain, which is just going keep things the same, keep things the same, keep things the same, and another part of your brain going, but it could be so much better. It could be so much better. It could be so much better.
And that part of your brain as well, which is going, yes, I do want to lose weight and I do want to be healthy. But then you've got that habit brain, which is just going, no, no, keep things the same. We're all good. Keep things the same. And I think you really have to get over that conversation that you are having within yourself to be able to take the next step and go, Hey, you know what?
I am ready to do this. I am really ready to create this healthy life, which I enjoy. I don't have to exclude anything. If I want to carry on eating chocolate or cake, there's room for that in a healthy life. It's just getting that balance right. Okay. I'm going to recap the nine. the nine mistakes. So underestimating the small challenges, which I think also means focusing on the wrong thing.
Number two, not planning so that you don't have the ability to be able to make healthy food. Number three, not making it routine, and I think this is a really big thing, not making it routine, not having the habit systems and routines that support your healthy living. Number four, skipping meals and waiting until you're hungry, and then basically eating unhealthy foods.
Okay. Number five, feeling overwhelmed as if there isn't enough time to do everything, or not taking care of your emotions. So not really thinking about you and your emotions. Number six, feeling stressed and not addressing the stress. Number seven, finding yourself eating sugar without thinking about it and then beating yourself up about it.
Number eight, life happening again. Beating yourself up for it. Life happening. Really getting derailed and not getting back on. and big number nine is giving up or not even prioritizing yourself. So allowing yourself to stay in that rut of, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing. So I hope this has been helpful for you.
I hope that you have been able to identify some of the mistakes, because if you can identify what you are doing, then you are in a position to change how you do things. And obviously if you are interested in joining the Healthy You healthy family. This is what we work on and you get support in deciding what you're going to change.
You get essentially my expertise to tell you, to help you decide where is it worth you making changes, and how are you gonna do it in an easy way. And then we do weekly coaching so that you can keep on track so that you can feel, continue to feel motivated and account. and now is a fabulous time to come and join the program.
If you're interested in joining the program, then book a call to chat with it. It is December as I record this, and there is no better time than December because, hey, join now. , join and start 2023 with your feet running. That doesn't mean you don't have to enjoy Christmas. Of course, I will show you how you can enjoy Christmas, and if you even want to, you can totally overindulge in Christmas knowing that you are going to get back on track in January and make 2023 your most amazing year in terms.
Your health and your weight loss. It's about losing weight in a way that you love and staying there not bouncing back. So if you're interested, book a call with me or reach out and message me if you're on Facebook. Okay, have a lovely day. Bye bye.
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