One Simple Tip to Make Healthy Living Easy Podcast Episode 145

Do you plan your "healthy life"? Think about how you'd like your life to be in a year? Or 5? Or 10?

Planning your life is a simple but effective tool.

Once you've decided what you'd like to achieve, you're far more likely to reach your goal.

Dr Orlena shares wins from her plans from a year ago.

As well as looking forward.

Lia and Wendy share their healthy living goals for the next year and how they're excited that it's going to be easy and fun!

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Stop feeling tired, drained and unhappy by making healthier choices

Dr Orlena: Lia, thank you so much for chatting to me to­day. Con­grat­u­la­tions on join­ing the group. Do you want to quick­ly tell peo­ple a lit­tle bit about you?

Lia: I am in my late 40s and I came to this feel­ing very tired, very drained, very much un­hap­py with just how I felt day to ­day and want­i­ng to make a change.

One night I was just in bed in­ves­ti­gat­ing pod­casts and I came across yours. I have a dozen in my sub­scrip­tions but yours was the one I just kept play­ing over and over and then you start­ed men­tion­ing that you did the coach­ing. The more I lis­tened, the more I was convinced that I had to do this, I tried on my own. I just feel defeat­ed and every­thing you said and just your en­er­gy re­al­ly res­onat­ed with me. I thought this might be my an­swer and I'm so glad that I set up that call.

I went to the form sev­er­al times be­fore I took the plunge.

Make changes now for a healthier you in ten years’ time

Dr Orlena: Fab­u­lous! When we did our chat and I of­ten do this, I talk about what life looks like if you don't make changes and what life looks like when you do make changes.

So can you just paint a lit­tle bit of that? Where you want to get to.

Lia: I re­al­ly felt con­nect­ed to the way you de­liv­er your mes­sage, but you know when it's time to take the plunge, I was thinking “Is this gonna be an­oth­er dead end for me?”

Then you said to picture how does life look in 10 years? And when I think of how life looks 10 years ago and how it looks to­day. I just said it can't get worse. It has to get bet­ter. I don't want to be 10 pounds heav­ier in 10 years and feel­ing dull and lack­lus­ter and having no en­er­gy and de­feat­ed be­cause I do feel de­feat­ed every day that I don't make a pos­i­tive change. I thought I can either pre­tend that some­body's gonna mag­i­cal­ly change on its own or I can take this plunge

Fit into your old clothes again by making healthy lifestyle changes

Dr Orlena: I'm so glad you did. We're go­ing to work to­geth­er for a year. What are some of the con­crete things that you would like to achieve in a year's time?

Lia: I can't even lie. It is a lot of is van­i­ty based. I have a clos­et full of beau­ti­ful clothes that I can't fit in, but I re­al­ly want to wear again. I'm ac­tu­al­ly wear­ing a pair of pants to­day that are from about 10 pounds ago and they fit really well.

You will carry your healthy habits to old age

Lia: I was thrilled that I could get into them. I do want to look bet­ter, but I want to feel bet­ter too. I want to have the en­er­gy that my 70-year-old mom has. Who,10 years ago, made a whole se­ries of life­style changes and is as vi­brant as any 40-year-old I know, maybe even more so. I want that to be me. I want to feel en­er­gy. I want to be pre­pared to en­joy the sec­ond half of my life and in good health and in good spir­its and in con­trol.

I’m a food lover, I felt like “How can I ever over­come that?” It's such a crazy thing. I have to eat three times a day every day. How can I over­come the fact that I just love food and your tips just, I don't know why they just clicked.

Now I love food. I love feel­ing good, even bet­ter. I love sleep­ing well. I love feel­ing like I'm not owned by the restau­rant menu that I'm in charge and in con­trol and I'm mak­ing good choic­es.

Having internal limits will help prevent yourself from going back to your unhealthy habits

Dr Orlena: Fa­bu­lous. And you re­cent­ly went to Bos­ton as well? How was that ex­pe­ri­ence? Be­cause you went to Bos­ton and you didn't just ig­nore it all and go back to your old habits.

Lia: Yes and I was worried be­cause I tend to have a mind­set like, “Oh, you don't go away every weekend. So it doesn't mat­ter if you have an ex­tra glass of wine or have dessert or whatev­er.”

It was so good that we had that meet­ing on Wednes­day where we talked about in­ter­nal lim­its be­cause I had set in­ter­nal lim­its for my­self and I said you're go­ing to go on this trip and you're gonna re­spect those lim­its be­cause you said them, you made an agree­ment with your­self that these are the lim­its.

My lim­its were: I eat most­ly veg­eta­bles. I don't drink. I de­cid­ed I'm not go­ing to drink. I'm only gonna drink at lunch. I ap­proached it with re­spect the lim­its that you set for your­self. And I was mak­ing re­al­ly good choic­es and it felt good.

We went into the most adorable coffee shop and they had this just Al­ban dan­za of un­be­liev­able ar­ti­sanal donuts and pas­tries and crois­sant and any­thing you can imag­ine just looked won­der­ful and I said that's not an op­tion. That doesn't make me strong. I will not feel good after I eat that. I will not be sat­is­fied. I will not have the en­er­gy to walk 15,000 steps to­day. I or­dered a beau­ti­ful new sleigh with fruits and I was so satisfied. It was de­li­cious. I think be­cause I hadn't had sug­ar in a while, the fruit tast­ed won­der­ful, I felt sat­is­fied. I didn't feel de­prived at all. It was a choice I nev­er would have made be­fore I start­ed work­ing with you. I just wouldn't have cho­sen that and I felt good about it.

But not only did I feel good about it, I felt great walk­ing all over Bos­ton. I didn't get hun­gry, I wasn't crav­ing for some­thing else. I was just nour­ished and sat­is­fied. Make a good choice and feel good and then I also didn't have to beat my­self up over. I just car­ried through the trip, I had one glass of wine at the week­end on lunch the last day, I save it and it tast­ed won­der­ful and it was enough. It was a suc­cess­ful trip.

If you are making a choice, enjoy it 100%

Dr Orlena: I love that. I to­tal­ly love that. And one thing I re­al­ly love about that is when we do make the de­ci­sion to have some­thing, make sure that you’re all in and you re­al­ly love it.

I think it's so much bet­ter to say, “I'm go­ing to have one glass of wine on my trip and I'm go­ing to ab­so­lute­ly love it than have four or five class­es and feel guilty and not re­al­ly en­joy them.” It is much bet­ter to be all in.

Thank you so much for shar­ing any­thing else you want to say.

Take the plunge and start your journey towards a healthy life NOW

Lia: I just wan­na en­cour­age any­body who's hes­i­tat­ing to take the plunge be­cause there's re­al­ly no bet­ter feel­ing than feel­ing like “I can do this. I'm in con­trol. I'm chang­ing my life for the bet­ter and I have great sup­port be­hind me while I do it.”

I'm so ex­cit­ed to look back on this time in a year and see how far I've come.

Choose to develop healthy habits over following the latest diet trend

Dr Orlena: Wendy, first of all, thank you so much for tak­ing the time to just chat to us a lit­tle bit and wel­come to the Healthy You Healthy Fam­i­ly Group. I'm su­per ex­cit­ed to see your trans­for­ma­tion. My first ques­tion is why did you de­cide to join the group?

Wendy: I have been on a diet tread­mill try­ing to lose weight for a re­al­ly long time. I'm in my mid-40s and re­cent­ly, about two months ago, I got off the tread­mill and was done with it. I start­ed to work on just habits and the mind­set of de­vel­op­ing and hard-wiring habits.

What­ev­er my body strength and weight do, it's go­ing to be a prod­uct of the habits.

Hard-wiring healthy habits = long-term health

Wendy: I found you sim­ply by search­ing the word fab­u­lous in pod­casts and I lis­tened to the first pod­cast and it was ex­act­ly in align­ment with what my goals are in terms of get­ting off that tread­mill. I also re­al­ly wanted to join the group from a stand­point of hav­ing a full year to con­tin­ue to devel­op, hit my pain points and work through those. I've been in oth­er groups that for dif­fer­ent train­ings that were that long and they were very ef­fec­tive for me.

My goal is to con­tin­ue to get off of that tread­mill, stay off of that tread­mill and re­al­ly fo­cused on hard wiring habits so that I have long term health and not this men­tal noise of di­et­ing. That's ul­ti­mate­ly why I de­cid­ed to join.

There's one oth­er rea­son and that is be­cause it is with a health­care back­ground and it's pro­found­ly im­por­tant for me that I'm work­ing with a physi­cian and not someone with a PhD. I wanted to work with an ac­tu­al physi­cian who takes care of pa­tients and un­der­stands our unique sys­tems.

Once you have healthy habits, you don’t have to think about them

Dr Orlena: Per­fect, I love it. I just love the habit piece be­cause I think peo­ple get so ob­sessed with weight loss and I have to get to this weight and you can't re­al­ly con­trol that. What you can con­trol are habits. Not only does it make it easy once you've got those habits, but it's ef­fi­cient as well and you don't have to think about it, it's just how life hap­pens.

You can achieve health, vibrancy, and a calm mind through a healthy lifestyle

Dr Orlena: My last ques­tion is in a year's time how would you like things to be?

Wendy: In a year's time I want to get back to vi­brant and fit.

I was vi­brant and fit be­fore COVID and things sort of fell apart with every­thing shut­ting down, not hav­ing equipment and what­not here at my house. But more im­por­tant to vibran­cy and fit­ness is a healthy, calm mind and feel­ing re­al­ly, re­al­ly good about my healthy choic­es. To have no guilt if I choose to eat some­thing or do some­thing out­side of what those habits are, but not to al­low those choic­es to become the norm for me.

Additionally, I hope to build a sus­tain­able plat­form for growth and then also get­ting rid of that diet noise of “Good choice, bad choice. This is the way you need to do it. You should do it this way. No, it's this way that has to stop.” I don't want to live the rest of my life in that men­tal­i­ty at all. It was very in­grained in me start­ing in my twen­ties.

Dr Orlena: Hooray fab­u­lous! I to­tal­ly love it. And thank you so much for shar­ing with every­body.