Podcast: Cultivating Confidence Beyond the Scale

Transcription

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing, amazing today. It is mid March and spring is in the air. It's a little bit chilly here in Spain, but I can just feel that beginning of spring. You know, I look at my garden and there's little buds coming and little leaves I'm excited, excited.

I love spring. It's one of my favouritest times. Everything here in Spain is green. I love the summer as well, but everything in summer is brown and dry here in Spain. I hope wherever you are, you have wonderful, wonderful weather and a wonderful day. Today I want to talk about self confidence and specifically self confidence connected to weight loss and body image.

This is more of a posing questions podcast as opposed to, hey, I've got some answers and some tips for you. But one of the things I noticed working with my clients and chatting to people. On a daily basis is so many people say to me, you know what when I get to healthy amazing you You know what healthy amazing you is it is that place where?

You are leading a healthy life, a healthy, sustainable lifestyle that you enjoy. So you're eating healthily, you're moving, you're confident that you're doing everything to look after your body, and your body reflects that. So your body is the weight that you want your body to be. It is strong, it is toned, as opposed to having extra wobble of it, on it.

When I ask people, okay, so like, why is that important for you? What difference is it gonna make in your life? A vast majority of people say, well, when I get there, I will have more confidence, more self confidence. Another thing that I notice, similar to this, is talking to people, some of them are my clients, who are doing really well in terms of losing weight and getting more healthy.

Other people who haven't, you know, started working with me yet. But other things, like, for example, I don't like having my photograph taken. I avoid having my photograph taken because I don't like the way my body looks. Or it might be, you know what, I'm not comfortable wearing a bikini at the beach.

I just, like, that is not something that I would do. Another thing that I hear people saying quite often is, you know, I want to be able to put on some nice clothes and feel great in my nice clothes. That is a little bit of some of the stuff that I want to explore today and really just ask some questions of you and really just get you thinking about this, this concept.

So thinking about bikinis and beaches, I live in Spain and in the summer. Tourist season here. I live near the beach, it's a 15 minute cycle ride to the beach. It's a big, big tourist area here. The whole of Europe likes to come and invade my tiny little beach in, in August, and I have to put up with that.

We get people from all over Europe who come here and sit on the beach. It's not like, you know, a Brazilian beach. I have to confess, I've never been to Brazil and I would really love to, but I hear there, you know, you have to be very body beautiful to go on the beach and really, you know, look like you're on a catwalk or something like that.

It's not like that here in Catalonia. In Catalonia, all shapes and bodies are allowed. We have People who are retired and they go in bikinis if they want to. Now some of them wear swimsuits, some of them wear bikinis. A lot of people here in Spain actually go topless. The reason for this is, well here's a little history lesson for you.

That in Spain, , after the Second World War, or more specifically, after the Civil War in Spain, they had a dictator here called Franco. And Franco, I know some of you will know this, but Franco was not a very nice person, and he actually died in 1975. But what he said was that people, the locals, were not allowed to use the beaches for recreational purposes.

In the 60s, he basically opened up Spain to tourism, and so at that sort of time, they would have lots of tourists who would come. And sit on the beaches, you know, doing as you do, sitting on the beaches, enjoying the beautiful sea, etc, etc. But the locals were not allowed to do that. And in protest, they went, We are going on this beach, and also we're going to go topless on this beach, because it was totally prohibited.

, there is just this culture in Spain that a lot of people just go topless on the beach, and it's not a big thing. I know in different cultures, people will be like, Oh my goodness, that feels totally against our cultures. We actually have quite a lot of Muslim people here too, and obviously they don't go.

Topless, they, the women cover themselves normally. Obviously, that's their choice. They get to choose what they want to do. But there is no rule on the beach of who can do this and who can do that. You have to be this body shape to do this. You have to be that body shape to do that. And nobody is judging anybody else.

Now people do notice. I know this because when I was pregnant with twins, with my bikini on, looking like an absolute whale. I was so huge. They were two big size children and somebody came and said to me, There was a group of young people and they said to me, Oh, is your baby a boy or a girl? And I said, well actually it's one of both.

There was this little cheer and clearly they had looked and gone, I bet she's having twins because she's amazingly enormous. And that was their polite way of asking. , when you go to the beach and you wear a bikini, who is judging who? The answer, my friend, is you are judging yourself. Thank you.

Now, let's have a little think about cars. Do you ever walk down a street? I suspect the answer is yes. What's this got to do with people on beaches? Now, when you walk down the street, there are lots of cars. Do you notice any of them? The answer is this. You may notice some. You may notice those really, really flash ones.

, you may notice the really expensive Porsches, or you may notice something, you know, a really classic old guitar an old guitar, an old car, something like that. Or you may notice one that is so old and run down that actually it stands out. Well, to be honest, actually, if you're in Spain, all cars have big scratches on them.

Even the brand new ones have scratches on them. . , those kind of cars just blend in. And my point I'm trying to make is we don't notice the cars. We really don't notice the cars. Obviously we notice our car because we want to be able to pick out our car when it's parked and go, ah, there's my car.

We know our car intimately because, you know, we've left it in our case with sticks and stones and sand and all of that stuff in it and all my kids clobber that they leave in it. We know our car intimately and we see other cars, but do we take notice of the cars? The answer is pretty much. No, we don't really take notice of other cars.

We might actually sometimes see a car and go, Oh, I like that car. I would like a car like that. So, here's an analogy for bodies. And most people are not looking at you, despite the fact that you think, Oh my goodness, everybody is looking at me and judging me. Most people aren't. They are so busy, involved in their own life, that they don't notice you.

They really don't notice you. What I would say is really confidence, yes I get that confidence, the more you lose weight, actually you do build up confidence and it's this sort of vicious circle, but a lot of it is actually mindset. And thinking, okay, who is it who is judging me here? And most of it is me judging me.

Me saying, I don't like the way that I look. I want to look a different way. That, my friend, is very negative brain. Now I'm sure that if you have been listening to the podcast for a while, you've heard me go on and on and on about negative brain and positive brain. So if you have, here's a little recap.

If you haven't, it's a really interesting concept. Well, it is more than a concept, it's how our brain works. And the human brain is hugely negatively wired. And we say things like, I don't like it. , it's not going to work for me, and I'm different, this isn't going to work for me. So many different things which are actually stopping you from making progress.

And judging ourselves, we might judge ourselves, I don't like the way I look, we might judge other people. We might judge a situation. Our negative brain starts by judging something. Now why is this important? Because it holds you up, you get stuck in this negative energy, it's almost like tunnel vision.

All you can see are the problems. As opposed to, when you accept a situation and step into positive brain, you free yourself up to be able to go, Hey, you know what? Actually, this is the situation. I would like to change it. What does that look like? In positive brain, it looks like, I accept. This is the situation.

This is my body. My body is amazing. My body is absolutely fabulous. I've got arms and legs and all these organs that do stuff without me really having to know about it. And yes. I do have a little bit of extra weight that isn't healthy for me and I would like to get rid of that. But that's okay. I'm doing something about it.

That's you accepting the situation. Just going, yeah, this is the situation. I'm not fighting reality. I'm accepting the situation, but I'm not putting that negative emotion on it. I'm not saying, yeah, I really dislike this. It's like, no, this is it. This is the situation I have. How can I make progress getting to where I want to get to and being clear on why I want to get there.

I want to get there because it's going to be healthier for me. Yes. And you might get some more confidence as well. But do you see the difference when you step into positive brain and go, okay, How do I make this happen? More importantly, how can I make it easy and fun? When I see other people, on the beach or wherever, and they look amazing, instead of thinking, Oh, they're so lucky!

How is it that they are so lucky and I'm not? Be inspired and think, Do you know what? Actually, I can change my body and I can make my body like that. But yes, I have to do some things differently. If what I've been doing up until now is giving me these results, I have to step into doing something differently.

Now the first place to step into is changing your mindset about things. So, my friends, I would love you to spend five to ten minutes just writing down everything that's amazing about your body. You have so many amazing things about your body. Yes, there may be some things that you dislike about your body.

That's okay. I have things that I would, you know, like to change about my body. I have, like, wrinkles here. I have, like, little eye things. If you're watching on Facebook, then you can see these wrinkles here. If you're listening to the podcast, they're little wrinkles above my eyes. , you know, I'd like my skin to be softer and more youthful.

I would like my hips not to hurt quite so much. But you know what? That's my body. That is my body. I'm getting older. I'm 49 now, and I'm beginning to show signs of wear and tear, signs of a life well lived. But, I'm also really appreciative of my body. My body allows me to do so much stuff. I can swim, I can run, I can walk.

Okay, I'm not so great at the running, but I love swimming. I can do all of these amazing things. I can use my hands, I can do cooking, I can help other people. Like, think of all the amazing things that your body can do, an avalanche of gratitude is what we call it. So go to your journal, or if you haven't got a pen and paper, write it record it on your phone, and list as many things as you can.

Aim for ten a day for the next seven days, so that you really fall in love with your body and think, do you know what, actually, my body is amazing, and if other people don't see that, that's not important. What's important is what I think of my body. So, my friends, I hope that it's just helped you open up some questions about self confidence and self esteem, and really just start you to re think a little bit about you and your body and how amazing you are and how amazing your body is.

If of course you think, okay, Dr. Orlena, I really want to get to healthy, amazing you, and I know I can't do it by myself, and I'd love some support. If that is you, then please book a call and we will chat. And I'd love to chat to you about my program, Positively Healthy Weight Loss, and show you how you really can make these changes.

Have a fabulous day and I look forward to chatting to you again next week. Bye bye.