How to Make Healthy Living Easy Podcast Episode 133

 

If only healthy living and feeling amazing were easy! Today I'm going to show you that it is.

Today's podcast is a little different from normal.

This podcast first appeared on "Authentic Tea" with Dr Rachel Beanland. She's kindly agreed to allow me to publish it here.

Rachel and Dr Orlena chat about the why, what and how of healthy living.

And how easy it can be to create your amazing healthy life so you live to long and healthy life. And feel amazing every single day.

Transcription of How to Make Living Easy Podcast

Rachel: It's ab­so­lute­ly won­der­ful to be joined by Orlena. She uses her ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise to sup­port women and their fam­i­lies to de­vel­op healthy habits and lifestyles.

Orlena's pod­cast Fit and Fab­u­lous shares in­spi­ra­tional sto­ries and ideas on how to cre­ate and main­tain health and well­be­ing. Orlena offers one-to-one and group coach­ing for busy moms who are feel­ing stressed and over­whelmed to help them find healthy rou­tines, habits, and sys­tems.

And Orlena also hosts the Healthy You, Healthy Habits Chal­lenge for moms to cre­ate fam­i­ly habits that fit into a busy, hec­tic life­style. (Next challenge will be in the Autumn 2021.)

Wel­come Orlena, it’s wonderful to have you to­day.

Orlena: Thank you so much for hav­ing me. It's an abso­lute plea­sure.

Realizing the Importance of Nutrition and Good Habits after Having a Family

Rachel: It's great to re­con­nect with you. We’ve been talk­ing about how we were both at uni­ver­si­ties to­geth­er and now years on, we are fol­low­ing slight­ly dif­fer­ent paths than we were then.

But where was there a point in your own ca­reer or in your own life when you start­ed to rec­og­nize the im­por­tance of good nu­tri­tion and how mak­ing changes to food and the eat­ing pat­terns that we have could im­pact based on in­divid­ual and also fam­i­ly health?

Helping Our Kids Have Healthy Habits

Orlena: That is a re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing ques­tion. When I was work­ing as a pe­di­atric doc­tor, I was aware, ob­vious­ly, that how we eat re­al­ly im­pacts us.

So typ­i­cal­ly as a pe­di­atric doc­tor, you're see­ing a lot of kids with tum­my pain, and a lot of that tum­my pain is con­sti­pa­tion due to not eat­ing veg­eta­bles. And at that time pre-hav­ing kids, I would say to par­ents, “Oh you just need to eat more veg­eta­bles. It's re­al­ly easy.

Now as a par­ent, I re­al­ize that it's not quite as easy to get our kids to eat veg­eta­bles as we want.

But the re­al­iza­tion that I could do bet­ter came when I had kids. I have four chil­dren un­der the age of four and a half which, as you can imag­ine, stress­ful.

Dr Orlena's Four Pillars of Healthy Living Will Bring Positive Changes

I start­ed to see that I wasn't be­ing the moth­er that I want­ed to be. I was feel­ing stressed and this would man­i­fest as snap­ping at the kids, feel­ing tired at the kids and just not be­ing the per­son that I want­ed to be.

I've got these four pil­lars which de­vel­oped over a pe­ri­od of time by look­ing and think­ing hard about what I wanted to change.

A Lot of People are Close to Having 10 out of 10 Energy Everyday

One of the ques­tions I like to ask peo­ple is out of 10, how much en­er­gy do you have every single day to do the things that you want to or have to do? Very rarely do peo­ple say 10 out of 10, but I can gen­uine­ly say I have enough en­er­gy to do every­thing I want to do every sin­gle day.

I think so many peo­ple are so close and they just don't re­al­ize it.

Dips in Your Energy Levels Can Affect How You Take Care of Your Family

Rachel: Do you think now, when you look back, where were your en­er­gy lev­els on that scale and was there a point where you re­al­ly thought, “This is some­thing I need to re­al­ly change.”

Orlena: When I look back now, I would say my av­er­age was around eight, but I would def­i­nite­ly say there were times when it dipped to three.

I can re­mem­ber times when on a Sunday morning, I go to a beau­ti­ful mar­ket and I buy loads and loads of veg­eta­bles and I have to come home and unpack them.

There would be times when, by the evening I just hadn't done it because I would come home, plunk every­thing from the kitchen ta­ble and then the twins would need feed­ing or nap­py chang­ing and all of that stuff. I just wouldn't get it this job un­til the evening and just think­ing, “I just don't have the en­er­gy to do that.”

I re­mem­ber at bed­time and read­ing to my chil­dren and just ly­ing there on the car­pet and think­ing it's so nice just to lie down. And think I'm just go­ing to lie here for a lit­tle bit to re­cu­per­ate my en­er­gy before I start this oth­er job. There were re­al­ly dips in it.

Choosing to Lead a Healthy Lifestyle was a Conscious Thought

How did that trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen to me?

I first rec­og­nized that I was always snap­ping, always crossed and grumpy. It wasn't help­ing the sit­u­a­tion in any way what­so­ev­er. It was just ex­ac­er­bat­ing and mak­ing every­body else cross. 

I realized this isn't how I want it to be. And third­ly, think­ing, this is a symp­tom of a big­ger pic­ture. It's like hav­ing a light on your dash­board say­ing that some­thing else isn't work­ing.

Being Aware of Your Feelings and Emotions is an Important Step Towards Leading A Healthy Life

I teach four pillars which are nu­tri­tion, ex­er­cise, sleep, and mind­set. I started at emo­tions and mind­set.

How you can get stuck in this neg­a­tive way of think­ing. It’s nor­mal for us to be neg­a­tive. We're neg­a­tive­ly wired but with self aware­ness you can over­come that and you can say, ‘Okay, this isn't a way of think­ing that is serv­ing me. I'm go­ing to think in a dif­fer­ent way.’

It's work to do but it's fun work to do.

Exercise Can Help Boost Your Energy Throughout the Day

I think an­oth­er big part for me was ex­er­cise as well. I re­mem­ber I'm now a keen avid swim­mer and dur­ing the sum­mer I will swim two or three kilo­me­ters every day in the sea.

This started for me when my chil­dren were lit­tle and they were go­ing off to the swim­ming pool to have swim­ming class­es. One day my hus­band re­turned with the two old­er chil­dren who were around five or six and I had been look­ing af­ter the twins who are younger.

My hus­band came back and said, ‘Dante, hasn't been swim­ming be­cause he didn't want to go.’

So I said, ‘Don't wor­ry. I will go next week.’

I went with him the next week and got him in the pool. Then, I went up­stairs to watch the class and thought it's ridicu­lous­ly hot there, it's a bit bor­ing and why am I not in the swim­ming pool swimming!

That was re­al­ly the start of it.

Exercise Is a Safe "Space" for Yourself

I rec­og­nized that it re­al­ly just gave me the space I needed.

As I say, I had four young chil­dren and when you have four young chil­dren, they'd like to jump on you, which is love­ly but at a cer­tain point, it starts to trig­ger your feeling of being at­tacked and you feel like you need a lit­tle bit of space.

So to go in that swimming pool and just have no­body touch me for how­ev­er long it was, was just bliss. I start­ed to re­al­ly rel­ish that.

I start­ed do­ing swim­ming train­ing and then swim­ming in the sea. And then last year, be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, when we were all at home and my chil­dren weren't hav­ing to go to school. I start­ed just go­ing every sin­gle morn­ing with my friends.

Mothers Play an Important Role in Teaching Children Healthy Habits

Rachel: That's amaz­ing. Thank you for shar­ing that sto­ry be­cause it's amaz­ing to see how it's evolved.

Do you think some of that also was about re­al­iz­ing that you've been in a role where you were car­ing for a lot of peo­ple, both through your pro­fes­sion­al world, but also as a mum and be­ing in a fam­i­ly where you're giv­ing care all the time?

So, was it that mo­ment also of ‘Ah, I can also care for my­self.’ Do you think that was a bit of a re­al­iza­tion?

Orlena: Yeah, ab­so­lute­ly. I see this so of­ten with my clients and peo­ple that lis­ten to my pod­cast. This is one of the big rea­sons why I want to talk to moth­ers in par­tic­u­lar.

I think moth­ers are in such an amaz­ing sit­u­a­tion to help their chil­dren de­vel­op healthy liv­ing habits. And when you grow up with healthy liv­ing habits, it's just nor­mal. It's just what you do.

Studies Show That Children Carry Healthy Habits Into Adulthood

There are so many stud­ies that say, you know, chil­dren who go to uni­ver­si­ty, they es­sen­tial­ly eat the same way as they do at home. Chil­dren who are used to mov­ing, do the same when they're old­er.

It's all about do­ing stuff with­out think­ing be­cause that's just what you do. Those are what habits are. 

We can huge­ly in­flu­ence our chil­dren's habits. And from a pub­lic health point of view, that's amaz­ing be­cause when peo­ple grow up with healthy habits, then ob­vi­ous­ly they're go­ing to lead longer and health­i­er lives.

Moth­ers are Hope­less at Look­ing Af­ter Themselves.

When you first have a baby and they need your care 24 hours a day, we get into that role of, ‘I am go­ing to care for my baby 24 hours a day.’

You may be lucky and have some help, but nor­mal­ly it's min­imal help. And grad­u­al­ly as that baby grows old­er, they be­come more au­tonomous, more able to do things for them­selves. 

We want to teach them to do those things, but we get stuck in this mind­set. This habit of, ‘I have to put every­body first and I have to put my own needs right at the bottom of the pile.’

Mothers Need Self-Care to Effectively Care for Their Families

The re­al­i­ty is if you can care for your­self, by which I mean eat health­ily, get ex­er­cise, get good sleep, re­plen­ish your bat­ter­ies, then you are in a much, much bet­ter sit­u­a­tion to care for who­ev­er it is you're caring for be­cause you've got the en­er­gy to do that.

Parents Absorb Their Children's Energy

As a par­ent, a lot of the work I have found is emo­tion­al work. Kids have such big emo­tions and it's ex­haust­ing. You know, it's like their emo­tions are like a roller coast­er. Whilst we're con­nect­ing with them, we're tak­ing on some of those emo­tions.

As adults, we're much slow­er to get an­gry, but we're much slow­er to calm down too. Our emo­tions are sort of be­ing dragged along by our chil­dren.

Your Environment Can Influence Your Habits

Rachel: Do you think that some of that for you is also mir­rored when you've moved into a dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment?

Some of the things you've been talk­ing about going to the mar­ket, go­ing swim­ming, be­ing able to go to the sea, you've now lived in Spain for a pe­ri­od of time.

Was your move there also re­lat­ed to want­i­ng to live a slight­ly dif­fer­ent life­style or was that coin­ci­den­tal. Has that been some­thing that's in­flu­enced the way that you've been able to look af­ter your­self and your fam­i­ly?

Orlena: Yes, ab­so­lute­ly. So many amaz­ing ques­tions there.

On a per­son­al lev­el, yes, the rea­son I made that change was be­cause I want­ed a dif­fer­ent life­style for my­self.

As much as I love the UK and loved be­ing in clin­i­cal med­i­cine, it's a stress­ful job. I want­ed a dif­fer­ent life­style for my­self and I hadn't re­al­ly thought it out ex­act­ly. But now, as I look back, I can see that part of the cul­ture in Spain was dif­fer­ent. It's more re­laxed. It's more laid back.

Good Habits and Bad Habits are the Same in our Brain

Now, the prob­lem with habits is they are a dou­ble-edged sword. In that our brain doesn't care, whether we have got good habits or bad habits. To our brain, it's all ex­act­ly the same.

It doesn't mat­ter whether your habit is sit­ting on the sofa, watching tele­vi­sion or get­ting up on Sat­ur­day morn­ing to go for a run. Your brain is just like, this is what we do. It's all on au­topi­lot. But ob­vi­ous­ly there's a big dif­fer­ence for your body.

Healthy Lifestyle is Not Because of Discipline

One of the things that I teach is how we change our habits. Peo­ple think if you're su­per healthy and you've got this healthy life­style, it's be­cause you're re­al­ly dis­ci­plined and that's not true.

It's about how we set up our lives.

One of the key as­pects is en­vi­ronment. There are lots of stud­ies that show how in or­der to main­tain good habits, you have to set your en­vi­ron­ment up.

For ex­am­ple, go­ing to mar­ket. I go to mar­ket on Sun­day where I buy fruit and veg­eta­bles. What's the worst I can buy, some grapes or some highly sug­ared fruit and veg­eta­bles.

I come back with ki­los and ki­los be­cause I know that I need to feed my fam­i­ly for a week and I buy what's avail­able which is ba­si­cal­ly vegetables. So the en­vi­ron­ment does play a huge role.

Different Cultures Interact Differently with Food

Rachel: I can re­al­ly see how that's mir­rored some of my ex­pe­ri­ence from mov­ing to France. Be­cause the mar­ket is a big thing and I think that goes with how some Eu­ropean coun­tries have re­tained that sense of lo­cal food and lo­cal pro­duc­e. Re­al­ly rel­ish­ing the prod­ucts that they can grow and sell locally.

When we first went to the mar­ket after we moved to France, I used to find that peo­ple were touch­ing the food a lot and check­ing out which apple they re­al­ly want­ed to buy.

I was re­al­ly quite shocked be­cause I had nev­er re­al­ly in­ter­act­ed with my food in that way. I would go to a su­per­mar­ket and I would pick up a bag of ap­ples. I wasn't re­al­ly think­ing about where the apple had come from, what the apple looked like, whether it was go­ing to be nu­tri­tious.

The Fit and Fabulous Podcast Aims to Help People Create Healthy Habits

Rachel: Your podcast is called Fit­ness and Fab­u­lous. Can you share a lit­tle bit about why it was im­por­tant for you to share some sto­ries and your thoughts on your pod­cast and where the ti­tle came from?

Orlena: I can sum up healthy liv­ing in two sen­tences, eat more veg­eta­bles and stop eat­ing pack­aged foods and do some move­ment go to bed on time and think pos­i­tive, hap­py thoughts. That's it. In a nut­shell. And it's ac­tu­al­ly easy and sim­ple. But most peo­ple don't do it.

Why don't they do it? It all comes back to habits. We’re not in­ten­tion­al about cre­at­ing habits.

The Goal is to Feel Fit and Fabulous

Why do I call it Fit and Fab­u­lous? Be­cause that's what I want peo­ple to feel.

It’s about healthy eat­ing and healthy liv­ing. I do help peo­ple to lose weight but it's about weight loss for health.

The ul­ti­mate goal is to feel Fit and Fab­u­lous and lead the most amaz­ing life that we can and be re­al­ly in­tention­al about how we lead that life.

You Have to Work to Lead a Healthy Life. But it Can be Easy and Fun!

It’s like mo­ti­va­tion. It's not like sud­den­ly some­body just drops this out of the sky for you.

We have to gen­er­ate these things and we have to work at them and we have to cre­ate habits sur­round­ing them.

Once they're habits, they're re­al­ly easy and you do it with­out think­ing. That's es­sen­tial­ly where I want peo­ple to get to.

Our Subconscious Drives Many of Our Behaviours

Rachel: In yoga, the yo­gis will term as habits are like sam­skaras and they're like threads. So it's like link­ing to that un­con­scious think­ing that you're talking about. The sub­con­scious re­al­ly ac­tu­al­ly drives so many of our be­hav­iors.

If you can learn be­hav­iors at a very ear­ly age, you're go­ing to have those threads and those habits in­grained in you to be able to take for­ward into adulthood and you be­come much health­i­er by do­ing so.

Helping Women Create Healthly Habits in an Easy and Fun Way

Rachel: I know you host programs and run challenges sev­er­al times a year where you're re­al­ly help­ing mums to adopt more health­i­er habits and also for their fam­i­lies. Could you share a lit­tle bit about that? What are the challenges like for the women that come and join you?

Orlena: Thank you so much for ask­ing. We have just fin­ished my first chal­lenge and I've got my next, one's go­ing to be in July. It was su­per ex­cit­ing.

The chal­lenge that I did was aimed at moth­ers. It’s about un­der­stand­ing this thing about habits and about un­der­stand­ing healthy liv­ing.

What I want peo­ple to take from that is it's easy and fun. I al­ways say if it's not easy and fun, it doesn't get done. So you have to cre­ate a sys­tem and habits and rou­tines that work for you.

One Small Change Can Lead to Big Changes Down the Road

In this chal­lenge, it's all about help­ing women just make one small change. The chal­lenge is a week long. So you can't cre­ate a habit in a week, but what you can do is cre­ate the foun­da­tions for habits.

Once you un­der­stand some­thing and see the bigger picture, it shows you that you can do it and that you can take those steps and move for­ward. And then at the end of that chal­lenge, if peo­ple want to car­ry on, they can keep on work­ing with me and im­ple­ment­ those changes. 

Many People Close to Crossing Between Unhealthy and Healthy Lifestyle

Orlena: There's what I call the rick­ety bridge be­tween where you are now and when you want to get to, which is why you've got all of these habits set up.

The problem with the rick­ety bridge is that life hap­pens and then you turn back to your old habits.

Then peo­ple start feel­ing de­flat­ed and like a failure. Many peo­ple say I've tried every­thing and noth­ing works for me, there must be something wrong with me.

It's not that they don't have normal phys­i­ol­o­gy. It's all in their brain. It's that they've started crossing the rickety bridge but they haven't re­al­ly got to the oth­er side. If they're just stuck to it, they would have got to the oth­er side and it would have been habit. 

Achieving Your Health Goals is Easier with a Support System

Rachel: You've men­tioned about the group work and that support system. Do you find that by pro­vid­ing a space where peo­ple feel like they're go­ing through a sim­i­lar process to oth­er peo­ple, gives them some sup­port that maybe they don't have in their day to day life?

Orlena: Ab­so­lute­ly. There is evidence that shows that if you can make changes with oth­er peo­ple, you're far more like­ly to suc­ceed.

Peo­ple build on each oth­er. So they sup­port each oth­er when they're down, but they in­spire each oth­er as well. 

Talking to Someone About Your Health Goals is the an Important Part of Healthy Living

Orlena: I love chat­ting to peo­ple. I'm so blessed that my job is es­sen­tial­ly chat­ting to peo­ple. There is so much val­ue in just be­ing able to take a lit­tle bit of your space.

For a lot of peo­ple, there’s this nag­ging doubt of ‘I want to lose weight or I want to be more healthy, but how do I do it? I nev­er cre­ate the space to ac­tu­al­ly ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion.’

So just hav­ing time to sit and chat and have some­body else who's ob­jec­tive is very helpful. Just that 30 min­utes is like gold dust. Many peo­ple just find that use­ful whether they car­ry on work­ing with me or, or not. Even if they don't, they walk away go­ing ‘I can do this. And it is easy.’

Dr Orlena's Four Pillars of Healthy Living

Rachel: Can you talk more about your four pil­lars and why you de­cid­ed on them?

1. Nutrition - What We Eat Impacts Our Health

Orlena: First is nutrition. There’s so much in­for­ma­tion about nutrition and there's so much ev­i­dence as well, that the way we eat im­pacts our health.

If you're think­ing about weight loss, most people think that they need need to go to the gym to lose weight. But it's not true. It's about 80% what we eat and 20% ex­er­cise.

Even if weight isn't an is­sue. Still what we eat has huge, great im­pli­ca­tions on long-term health. Nu­tri­tion is re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing, but again, really sim­ple. All you need to eat is more fruits and veg­eta­bles.

2. Exercise - Movement is the Key to Having Energy

The second pillar is exercise. It’s the key to hav­ing en­er­gy. Our bod­ies are de­signed to be used.

We need to use our mus­cles every sin­gle day especially after the age of 40, you re­al­ly need to be think­ing about your muscle and your bone strength and how you can main­tain that into lat­er life.

The key is move­ment and it doesn't have to be com­pli­cat­ed. It doesn't have to be go­ing to the gym. It can just be sim­ple things like walk­ing or cycling or swim­ming or sev­en minute work­outs.

Just be aware of how much you move. And I rec­om­mend that every­body have a sports watch as well to monitor your movement.

3. Sleep - Getting Enough Sleep Allows The Body and Mind to be Recharged

The third pillar is sleep. There's been so much research on sleep and what it does to our bodies. I don't know about you, but when I haven't had enough sleep, I'm just un­bear­able. On one lev­el, it's so clear that sleep is important and on another lev­el, the re­search now it sup­ports that.

There are also con­nec­tions to sleep and illnesses lat­er on in life.

4. Mindset - The Right Mindset is Needed to Make Positive Changes

The fourth pillar is mind­set or emo­tion­al well­ness. You can't make positive changes un­less you've got the right mind­set because if your mind­set isn't there, you're not go­ing to do it.

Meditation Can Give You Peace, Calm, and Balance

Med­i­ta­tion is a re­al­ly use­ful tool and I rec­om­mend all my clients re­al­ly do med­i­ta­tion for what I call a main­te­nance tool to just help you every sin­gle day. But also you can use it as an emer­gency tool as well when you're feel­ing over­whelmed and stressed.

When your kids are climb­ing on top of you, you can just say, 'I feel a lit­tle bit over­whelmed and stress, I'm just go­ing to take my­self away for 10 min­utes, calm my­self down, do a lit­tle bit of med­i­ta­tion' That's demon­strat­ing re­al­ly good emo­tion­al con­trol to your chil­dren.

Rachel: It sounds bril­liant. And I could lis­ten to you for a long time, be­cause what I re­al­ly love about the way that you're able to de­scribe these con­cepts is it's re­al­ly clear that you're us­ing your ex­pe­ri­ence as a doc­tor and your ex­pe­ri­ence as a mum.

Changing Careers Unexpectedly Caused an Identity Crisis

Rachel: As you men­tioned, we were at med school to­geth­er, which feels like a whole world away. Maybe you could just re­flect on how your ex­pe­ri­ence since then has got you to where you are now?

Is it some­thing that you ever thought you would be do­ing when you left med school? And how has your ca­reer kind of found its path to do­ing some­thing that you clear­ly get a lot of pas­sion and en­joy­ment from?

Orlena: Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for that love­ly com­pli­ment. When I look back at my time in med school and my time work­ing, I think it's such a busy time, and there's this ca­reer lad­der that I had to climb.

When I fin­ished my house jobs, I went off to Aus­tralia for a lit­tle bit and worked in a hos­pi­tal there, and that was enormously fun. And then I had this im­pa­tience to get on the ca­reer lad­der.

I went back to the UK and I start­ed do­ing pe­di­atrics, which I en­joyed, but I re­mem­ber the con­sul­tants then say­ing, ‘You should be do­ing your ex­ams re­al­ly quick­ly.’

I found my­self on this ca­reer path that suited me and I did en­joy it, but there was no re­laxed time. I wouldn't imag­ine myself do­ing this be­cause the goal was to be­come a con­sul­tant and es­sen­tial­ly to get there as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. It was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult for me to break away from that.

I say I ac­ci­den­tal­ly lost my med­ical ca­reer be­cause when I moved to Spain, I thought I was go­ing to come here and work clin­ical­ly. That didn't hap­pen.

Having a Healthy Lifestyle Needs to be Started Early On

Orlena: I did adult med­i­cine only for a short pe­ri­od of time, only my house jobs, but I remember feel­ing so heart­bro­ken at the time that there were all these peo­ple who wished to turn back time just to live health­ily so they wouldn't be in the po­si­tion they were in. 

I think that was one of the things that in­flu­enced me go­ing into pe­di­atrics be­cause chil­dren bounce back to good health quickly. They are re­al­ly un­well and sud­den­ly they're so much bet­ter.

Where­as adults, it’s just a slow, down­ward de­cline af­ter a cer­tain point. And that's a lit­tle bit heart­breaking, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you can see so many life­style fac­tors that are con­tribut­ing to that down­ward spi­ral.

Teaching People How to Have a Healthy Life so Don't Need to See the Doctors Often

Now, I love what I'm do­ing. I know it's less glam­orous. I'm not sav­ing lives any­more. I'm not re­sus­ci­tat­ing ba­bies. I'm not stop­ping some­one from dy­ing. But what I'm do­ing is teach­ing peo­ple how to have that healthy life so that they don't need to go and see the doc­tors. I wish that the health sys­tem was set up so that we were teach­ing peo­ple this.

Now I can un­der­stand why it's not okay. It just doesn't re­al­ly have the ca­pac­i­ty to do that. But I do hope that in years to come there'll be more em­pha­sis on pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine. I can see it chang­ing, but I think it's a long and slow process.

A lot of Our Health is in Our Hands

A lot of people don’t realize that their health is In their hands. They just think it hap­pened to me. I sud­den­ly got di­a­betes. No, you didn't sud­den­ly get di­a­betes. It start­ed hap­pen­ing 20 years ago. You just nev­er no­ticed

The Lifestyle Movement is Growing and Gaining Importance All Over the World

Rachel: Yes, it’s tak­ing that con­trol and un­der­stand­ing what you can change. I think is quite em­pow­er­ing for peo­ple. And when they start that jour­ney, it can re­al­ly lead to a lot of oth­er changes in peo­ple's lives.

There's a lot more of a life­style med­i­cine movement par­tic­u­lar­ly in the UK and also in Aus­tralia and across in the states. There's def­i­nite­ly a move­ment to­wards it. But look­ing back on how we were trained in med school, it wasn't some­thing that there was a heavy em­pha­sis on.

Hope­ful­ly in time, that can change so that the new­er gen­er­a­tions of doc­tors com­ing through having that as a big part of what they can share with peo­ple.

Like you say, where we're not able to con­tin­ue to have these health sys­tems that are over­bur­dened if we don't think about pre­vent­ing health in the first place.

Hope­ful­ly, as we see things change that will come through. But in the mean­time, it's won­der­ful that there are peo­ple like you shar­ing what you're shar­ing so that peo­ple can start to do their own work and from their in­di­vid­ual as­pects.

Connecting with Dr. Orlena Kerek

Rachel: Where can peo­ple find out more about you and lis­ten to your pod­cast? What's the best way for them to get in con­tact with you?

Orlena: The prop­er name of my podcast is Fit and Fab­u­lous at 40 and Be­yond and my web­site is drorlena.com

Rachel: One of the rea­sons that I absolutely love do­ing this pod­cast is meet­ing oth­er women. It’s just so love­ly to hear peo­ple's sto­ries and to feel a lit­tle bit in­spired by what oth­er peo­ple are doing. I hope that the lis­ten­ers will feel in­spired by your sto­ry to­day.

Bonding with Friends and Family is Important for Mental Health

Rachel: Be­fore we go, my pod­cast is called Authentic Tea and the idea is re­al­ly that we show up and be our au­then­tic selves. So fi­nal ques­tion is, with who and where would you like to have your most au­then­tic cup of tea?

Orlena: That is such a love­ly ques­tion. All these fa­mous peo­ple flit­ted through my mind, but ac­tu­al­ly, it's re­al­ly just my close friends and fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time, hav­ing not seen my mom for a year and not see­ing my good friends. We would go to piz­za nor­mal­ly in Italy and just have a week­end and we haven't done that.

So those are the kinds of peo­ple I would just love to see again. And hope­ful­ly in the next year I will get to see.

Rachel: That's beautiful. I'm sure you will be there. And when you do, there'll be even more spe­cial moments. Thank you for shar­ing it. And thank you for be­ing a guest to­day. It's been re­al­ly won­der­ful to chat to you.

Re­mem­ber to go and check out Rachel's pod­cast, Authentic Tea and her website Reilience Yoga.

Book Your Chat with Dr Orlena

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Dr Orlena Author Bio

Dr Orlena is a health coach. She helps busy mums go from "I can't lose weight" to feeling fit and fabulous. Find out more about her here.