Podcast: Building Gratitude for Your Body: A Journey to Self-Love, Wellness and Weight Loss

Transcription of Podcast

Please note this transcription is generated by software. There may be some errors. I hope you find it useful.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling fabulous and amazing today. Okay. Today I want to talk to you about body image and how you. Relate to what your body, what you feel about your body, right, right now, so yesterday I was doing coaching session with two wonderful people.

Congratulations on Losing Weight!

Both of them have lost weight. Congratulations. You know, you are who you are. Big, big congratulations. And what came up in the conversation was, oh my goodness, I don't really like taking photographs of myself right now because, I don't like how I feel. I, I'm looking forward to when I feel amazing and I've lost all my weight and I feel like my body is the body that I want, and that's all great, but right now I'm just not feeling the love for taking photographs.

So, number one, I totally get where you are coming from. However, there's a big, however, is this positive brain or negative brain that is talking to you. And one of the things that we had done just before we had this conversation was really having a look and thinking about what does life feel like? When you get to where you want to get to.

So whatever your goal is, we are looking at your long-term goal. So whatever your long-term goal is in terms of weight, in terms of how your body feels. So you might be thinking about toned fitness, being able to do the things that you want to do, hiking, dancing, all those amazing things, feeling confident.

So really thinking about. Where you want to get to, and I really urge you to do this thought experiment and just sit with it for a few minutes and really think about those positive emotions that are gonna come up and how amazing it feels. Now, why is it important to do this? Why is it important to tap into this long-term vision?

Tap into Your Long Term Health and Weight Loss Goal for Daily Motivation

And the answer is, it's your motivation. Tapping into that long-term vision really keeps your motivation. Alive, particularly when you know stuff is happening. When you are faced with things like donuts and stuff like that, and you're thinking, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? If you can tap into your long-term vision, then you can remind yourself while you're doing this and make the desire for that vision more strong than the desire for whatever obstacle you're faced with.

So eating the donut, for example. So going back to this idea of not. Wanting your photograph taken. When you are coming from this, I don't want my photograph taken. What you're really saying is, Hey, do you know what? I am not keen on my body right now. I don't really like this body that I've got right now.

Understanding the Power of Gratitude for Your Body

I've got negative feelings, negative voices going on about my body right now. And the problem with that is, well, number one, it's negative brain. You're thinking about all the negative things and really where you want to get to is getting to, I love my body so much. I really appreciate, appreciate my body.

It's the only one I've got so much that I want to get to this vision of health and wellness. And I'm doing it because I love it from a place of love and positive brain rather than, hmm, I reject my, my body. I reject the things about my body. My body isn't perfect. Now, I want to use the analogy of my house because I think it will help it be less emotive because obviously this is tied up with emotions.

You Can Love and Appreciate Your Body and Still Want to Improve it

So a few years ago we bought what's called a doer upper house. You know, like it really wasn't a house to live in. And we bought it thinking, okay, we're gonna do it up now with one thing and another. What actually happened was it took us a couple of years to be able to start that, that process. The, the works on it.

Now this house only had heating in half the house. This was not great. It gets cold here in winter, and so we didn't have heating in half the house for a couple of years, as I say, longer than we had really anticipated. And we had, I had a bedroom and we had doors that opened out onto a patio. Which was great, except the doors didn't really close very well.

I remember one cold wintery night when my husband was away and it was really windy, wintery, and really stormy, and the, the doors just kept flying open all night. In the end, I had to, I can't remember what I did, find some boxes or something, something really heavy and put behind the doors to stop them from blowing open.

What else can I tell you about this house? We had a bathroom in it that, It was called the punky bathroom. It was really, I dunno, decorated in the sixties and there was a drainage problem. It really smelt. There was a skylight in it, which I couldn't get to, and the skylight was full of dead bugs and things.

So most people avoided going in that bathroom as much as they could. Luckily we had two small shower rooms that were not perfect, but acceptable from a sort of hygiene point of view. We had a dining room. Now, mostly in the summer, for example, we would be eating outside as much as we possibly can, but that obviously isn't possible all year round.

And we had a dining room, which we called the seance room because it had no natural light. It had a tiny, tiny little vent, but basically it have no windows in it. So it was this really dark room. So you can see that this house is not my dream house, right? But this house, I, I look back and I have fond memories of that house.

It's much easier to have fond memories when I'm not living in that house. It's much easier now that I live, I've got my beautiful house, which isn't without its problems. I will say there are still problems with my beautiful house, not least of all, keeping it clean. So I look back now and I look back on that house with fondness and affection and think even when I was in that house, there were still things that I appreciated about it.

So, On one level, I would walk down in the morning to my kitchen, which was a little bit dark, gloomy kitchen, and I, in my dream house, wanted a bright and beautiful kitchen, which is what I've got now. Basically, we moved the kitchen so we'd actually get some light to it, but when I walked downstairs for two years, in my mind I would really be in that bright, beautiful kitchen.

But not to say I didn't appreciate that kitchen. The kitchen wasn't too bad. It had some nice wooden furniture in it, which we painted. So it had a, a nice rustic feel kitchen. I also appreciated the fact that the house protected us. You know, we had a place to sleep for two years. Yeah. We weren't on the street.

It had all the amenities that we wanted, so it did have bathrooms that we could use. It didn't have any storage, but it had space and we were there for the whole of Covid. And in Spain we had a really, like, we were locked down for six or seven weeks when the kids were not allowed out of the house at all.

And at that time, a lot of people in Spain, many people in Spain live in flats and their children were stuck in these tiny, tiny flats. And we had this big house, albeit. Not the perfect house, but we had a garden. I use garden in square coats, scare coats because it was really just a patch of grass, which was more like a patch of dust with a bit of grass growing on it.

Not unlike my garden or the bit of my garden right now that likes to call itself lawn, but we've got a drought on it so I can't water it. But we had space to move around so the kids were allowed in the garden. And so. We were really lucky compared to other people, other people who were not allowed outside at all for six or seven weeks.

We had that little patch of garden, and I remember walking around flat garden like 30 times to do a thousand steps going, oh my goodness. If I walk around this, we would just do loops and loops and loops around the garden. So I have a lot of gratitude for that house. Was it my dream house? No, it definitely wasn't my dream house.

Self-Love as the Foundation for Wellness and Weight Loss

I love my house that I have now. It's amazing. We've got beautiful bathrooms. We've got everything that was on my list, as I say, not without its problems, not least of all, keeping it clean and tidy. So I hope you can see the analogy between your body now and your body that you want in the future. You can't get to the body that you want in the future by.

Not loving your body that you have now, not appreciating the body you have now, because that is negative brain, and that is push, push, push, pushing against it. You know, really this idea of using your willpower and making yourself get there. There's a much easier journey and that easier journey is to learn how to appreciate your body and really think of those things that your body gives you right now.

Embracing Your Body at Every Stage of Your Wellness Journey

Now if you're struggling, I will give you some clues. Your body can do walking, it can do seeing, it can do eating. It can do writing. It can do so many things. Think of the things that your body allows you to do. Don't focus on the negative bits that you don't like. Focus on the positive bits that really your body allows you to do.

All the stuff that you can do in your life, you can do thank you to having a body. So really try and build up gratitude. For the body you have now. Now building up gratitude for what you have now does not mean that you cannot change it. It's okay to accept what you have now, to be grateful for what you have now to learn to love what you have now and still want to change it because you love your body so much.

You go, okay. I love my body so much. I realize that carrying this extra weight is not healthy for my body. It means that. My energy levels are low. It means that I'm at risk of various illnesses. It means that I'm carrying around this weight, which is hard work. Every single day. It means that that makes it harder for me to exercise and enjoy exercising and moving my body, and so I really do want to get to this place of health and wellness, but from a place of love for my body and really appreciating my body and thinking how do I look after my body?

Building Sustainable Habits for Long-Term Weight Loss

I do it. I do all of these amazing things because I want all these benefits. I want increased energy. I want to enjoy moving my body. I want to enjoy hiking and dancing or whatever the things that you want to do. You. So I hope that gives you a little insight into some of the emotional work that we do in my, with my clients.

Now, another tip for you, when we are looking at photographs, one of the comments that came up about the photographs was what I do take photographs. I don't particularly like them, but I do take photographs. So here's a really quick tip for you. If you're taking a photograph of your face, try and look up into the camera so the camera is above you.

It's a much more flattering position than it is if you're looking down. And this is one of the things that I learned when I started doing videos that if you're looking down into a video, it's like you don't see your full face. And even if you don't have a sort of like folds around your chin, you create folds around your chin.

So looking up is a much more flattering and I always make sure that I've got my computer on. Just a little bit. It's on a, on a box, basically a nice IKEA box, and that gives me an ability to be able to look into the camera with my face looking up slightly. And the same is true of photographs, so try and look up a little bit.

Positively Healthy Weight Loss Week Starting June 6th

Details here: https://www.drorlena.com/positively-healthy-weight-loss-with-dr-orlena-podcast 

Okay. Wonderful people. I would love to hear what you appreciate about your body and what gratitudes you have about your body. And remember, starting next week, a week on Tuesday. So June the. Six. We are doing the positively healthy weight loss week, and it's gonna be amazing. Whether your goal is weight loss or healthy living in general, it doesn't matter either of them work together.

And we are gonna be going through exactly what is involved to lose weight, so the nitty gritty of what you need to eat and things like that. So that's the system. But we're really also going to be diving into mindset because mindset is a really big part of the puzzle. I always say weight loss is 80% healthy, eating 20% exercise, and a hundred percent.

Mindset. Without your mindset, it's not going to work because stuff is always going to happen. And when stuff happens and you fall off the rails, then you've given up. Whereas when you fix your mindset, when you work on your mindset, stuff still happens. Of course, it still happens. There's always going to be obstacles.

Life is always going to carry on Lifeing except you fall off less badly. And then you get back up more quickly so you keep going on the journey. And so what we're really gonna be looking at really, really gonna be diving into emotional eating and how to stop yourself turning to food for comfort. And then we're also gonna be really diving into positive brain and negative brain.

And I've told you a little bit about positive brain and negative brain, but it is such an amazingly powerful way of looking at the world. So we will be doing, th those are the three sessions. So if you haven't signed up, come and sign up. If you want to get to Healthy Amazing you and you are struggling in any way whatsoever, then you need to come to this free event.

It is gonna be absolutely amazing. And obviously you'll have opportunities to To chat, to ask questions, all of that stuff. So turn up live to the sessions if you can. They will obviously be recorded. Okay? Have a fabulous day. I look forward to connecting with you the first week of June. Bye-bye.