Podcast: Empowering Weight Loss: Strategies for Lasting Change with Carl from Weight Loss Warrior

Transcript of Podcast

Carl: Hello everybody and welcome to a brand new episode of a weight loss warrior podcast. I am your host, Carl. I hope you're having a great day wherever you are and thank you for joining me today. I have a special guest who is actually just up a road from me and Catalonia and originally from England as well from the other side of the country, very from Devon and Bristol area.

Carl: Dr. Orlena Kerek. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you today? Thank you for having

Dr Orlena: me. I'm super awesome today.

Carl: I'm very glad to hear it. Now, I suppose we should probably tell my listeners, first of all, that this isn't a normal weight loss story. In fact, it isn't really a weight loss journey and the traditional way that we share episodes, but instead you're, you're a qualified.

Carl: Doctor and have your own way of helping people with weight loss and emotional eating. And so today you've come to the show to talk a bit more about that and tell us a bit more about more about what you're learning and what you do with people and perhaps share some of the insight and advice that you have with our listeners who might be on a journey of discovery or transformation themselves.

Dr Orlena: Definitely, definitely. So I don't have my own personal weight loss journey, but I do have four kids, including twins, so at some stage, I must have lost some weight. And what I would say is my focus really is very much on healthy living as opposed to, oh, you know, counting calories and weighing yourself the whole time.

Dr Orlena: I really think that It's important to focus on what you can control, and the honest truth is, you have no control over your weight. What you can control is the things that you do, so what you eat, and how much exercise, and your mindset, and your emotions, and how you think about things. So those are all of the lovely juicy things that I love to talk about.

Dr Orlena: That's

Carl: fantastic, and I think it's It, it, it very much relates to a, an expression, but I like to use it. You know, the weight loss is really a by product of the way that you live. And so, so many people start a weight loss journey focused on reducing the amount of weight that they have or getting to a certain number on the scales.

Carl: But often don't really focus on everything else that's happening in their life. Like you said, their lifestyle, their environment, the things that they do, that could actually lead to them being happier and reaching a weight that is healthier for them. So. What about in the work that you do when you're looking at all of those lovely things that you like to work with and people you like to work with, what do you kind of focus on first with somebody who comes to you and is looking for help?

Dr Orlena: That's a really good question. What I would say is there's two threads to what I do. So the first thread really is like the physical thread. So what you eat, exercise. So I have four pillars. I'll backtrack and tell you my four pillars and you how I work on them. So the four pillars, and you may be surprised that these four pillars are very similar to most other people's pillars.

Dr Orlena: And the reason that is the case is because They're based in science and research. And so actually if people have got the same pillars, it's because everyone's singing the same song book as opposed to just making it up. So pillar number one is healthy eating that you enjoy. And what I actually teach is the MedStyle diet.

Dr Orlena: I'm happy to go into more details of any of these things. Pillar number two is movement or exercise that lights you up. And it really does have to light you up. So that you stick to it so that you enjoy it. My favorite thing is swimming in the sea. It's a bit cold at the moment, but I still perceive it.

Dr Orlena: I've got a really good wetsuit now. Good for you. I do swim in the pool as well. So in the winter, I swim in the pool, but at the weekend in the sea, it's like 12 degrees or something, 12 or 13 degrees. It's too cold for me at the moment. I tell you. You do have to work up for it. Pillar number three is sleep.

Dr Orlena: And this may surprise you, but sleep is actually really, really important for weight loss. And it's one of those things that's really, really overlooked. If you don't sleep well, And lots of people kind of go, yeah, yeah, I know this and I'm going to ignore all the advice on sleep. But if you don't sleep well, your stress levels go up.

Dr Orlena: I don't know, like when I'm really, really tired, I'm super grumpy and you want to eat more. And so it's just like making it more difficult for yourself. So sleep is really, really important. And on top of that as well, once you start sleeping better, your energy levels go up, you feel better in yourself.

Dr Orlena: And as you said, it's, it's not just about weight. It's about how you feel. It's about happiness as well. And then the last pillar is emotional wellness. And I love talking about emotional wellness. And what it includes is how you think your emotions, which we actually have control over and which we can train ourselves to be happy and to have more positive thoughts and have more positive emotions.

Dr Orlena: It includes your stress levels and it's really the foundational piece of any change that you want to make because if you don't have that foundational piece, I can say to you, Hey, go and eat the Mediterranean style diet. It's going to be great. And you'll do it for a little bit. And then life happens. You know what I'm talking about?

Dr Orlena: Life always happens in one way or another. And if you haven't sorted out that foundational thinking about things, that emotional piece, then you just give it all up and go, Oh, I can't bother to do this. It's too difficult. Whereas if you've really strengthened what I call your positive brain, you see everything, every challenge is.

Dr Orlena: You either accept it or you learn from it. And if you can be in that positive, I'm learning about things the whole time, you just brush yourself off and keep going and keep going. And that's basically the secret. There is like, weight loss isn't hugely complicated. The biggest thing is that people do it for a bit, do whatever they're doing for a bit, and then they stop.

Dr Orlena: And that's the disaster is stopping doing it where you just need to keep going and keep going. But it's very much easier to say keep going than to actually keep going.

Carl: Of course, but I think, and thank you for that, and the Mediterranean diet is something that I've come to love and enjoy since moving to Spain myself.

Carl: And I think that, I'm sure there are probably, the med diet itself probably has more strict, you know, than me just turning up in Spain and eating a Mediterranean, you know, more fish, more natural foods, more olive oil, more vegetables, but I do and have noticed since living here compared to the UK, for example, that my diet completely changed.

Carl: I think marrying into a Spanish family kind of helped that because I'd be going around and instead of, you know, having takeaways, we'd have a paella we'd be enjoying more natural and fresh ingredients and often quite more, more simple as well. If I'm honest with you, the food I eat now is more simple than it was before, but it's fresh, which I think makes a big difference.

Carl: But going back to your point there about your four pillars, and I refer to this as the basics done well. Because a close friend of mine, he has a military background and this is, you know, how it's taught to them. You have to get the basics done well. And that includes. These pillars that you've mentioned, and I think that it's key, like you say, that the process of losing weight itself, if you have a process, be it a specific diet, that in itself is one side of it, but it will only work for so long if you don't have everything else in place, or you're not working on it at least, and something interesting that you said there, actually, that I'd really like to look into is that the positive brain and Thanks.

Carl: A model that I learned as part of becoming a coach and work on is the fact that circumstances don't create emotions. It's the thoughts that you have that create the emotions. So you can actually change your feelings regardless of the circumstance, but based on your thoughts, as opposed to the circumstance, creating the way you feel.

Carl: What do you think about that? And do you have a similar way of working with clients in a similar trailer for yourself?

Dr Orlena: Yeah, totally, totally. And so, yes, I do agree. And I think it depends who you listen to. So some people say thoughts create emotions. And I think that is true. Some people say no, like it's the other way around.

Dr Orlena: I think we don't really need to sort of discover exactly which it is. I think we can just leave it at two of them are very closely related. I do think though that you can tap into emotions without that thought, without a sort of coherent thought process, for example. So for example, when you put on music and.

Dr Orlena: That music might be like a sad, melancholy kind of music that's going to put you in that sad, melancholy kind of place without you having a direct thought of like, Oh, I'm sad. I mean, I guess it's kind of tied up into, into the music. We think of that music as sad, but equally, you know, you can put on jolly music and go, I'm going to dance so we can disconnect them a little bit.

Dr Orlena: You're right, the way I teach it is thinking about things as negative brain and positive brain and really negative brain, the human brain is hugely wired towards negativity, which is basically a survival trait. And the way I teach this, I use a program called positive intelligence. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's really interesting actually.

Dr Orlena: They've done lots of, they've done what's called data analysis on the. Negative brain. So your negative brain may say, for example, I can't do it. It's not going to work or poor me. And it turns out that actually there are 10 different patterns of negative brain that humans subscribe to. So in the same way that if you were to break down the thousands of different colors, there are basically three primary colors, but it's the same with the human brain and negative brain, and they are the judge.

Dr Orlena: The judge, first of all, goes, I don't like that. And we're very good at saying, I don't like that. And then the judge has nine different helpers, which, you know, chime in with, I don't like it because this, and I don't like it because of that. And so getting to understand those different patterns, we call them saboteurs.

Dr Orlena: Things like the victim pattern the hyper achiever, the hyper-rational, you might notice some of these patterns coming out. And we all have all of them. Accept that some of them are much stronger, you know, you'll have two or three, which is super strong, even though we have all of them. And then the positive brain is really that place of, you know, happiness and joy.

Dr Orlena: And it also has different aspects. Empathy is a really positive brain. Have, you know, being able to have empathy for somebody who. Has upset you and really see something from their point of view. It's going to help you step into that positive brain and there's different aspects of it, but basically the bottom line is action.

Dr Orlena: I'm taking action. I'm going to take action from a place of, you know, Jedi master action, as opposed to running around like a headless chicken. deciding what I'm going to do. And then actually doing it. And really interestingly, what I teach is, or the program that I use to help people teach mindset uses this thing called PQ reps, and it's a really easy way of being able to train your mind from negative brain to positive brain.

Dr Orlena: If you look at what happens on a neuronal level, you know, you've, I'm sure you've heard the phrase of neurons that fire together, wire together. Well, in your brain, what's going on in that negative pathway is you're in that negative pathway and it's a bit like a motorway. And your brain really focuses, you know, when something is wrong, your brain just hones in on this like nothing else matters.

Dr Orlena: It's really interesting. I have four kids who are aged between 11 and 15. They're all really close together. And when they start arguing with each other, You can just see them. Oh my goodness. I'll be saying to them, Hey boys, can we stop talking now, please? Just stop talking. They can't even hear me.

Dr Orlena: They don't even acknowledge me. Why? Because they are so, their brain is so hijacked by whatever minor thing the other person has said. So what you want to do is give your brain a little pause, that little neuron, you want a little pause. And you can do that just by refocusing your brain. It's almost like a mini meditation, but just like doing a tactile thing, rubbing your fingers together like this, and really becoming aware of the ridges on your fingers and that 10, 20 seconds.

Dr Orlena: You do have to train yourself to do it, but that is enough to give yourself enough space to step into positive brain and go, Oh. Okay. Now I can see this from a different point of view. It's all about self awareness, basically.

Carl: Yeah. I mean, I think it's fantastic. I don't know if there's different techniques and ways of doing that, but this pattern interrupt that you can kind of create for yourself is very helpful and something that I've been doing with some of my clients and was introduced to me is, is even creating that other persona about person who holds that space of negative thoughts, because rather than trying to ignore it rather than trying to push it down or avoid it.

Carl: You kind of give that space to that person to, okay, you can say, okay, that's okay. I hear that. And that's the negative brain speaking. And mine's called Clive, by the way. And so Clive will take care of that. Clive will be the negative thoughts, but I can't do it. It's for, this is too difficult. You're going to mess it up.

Carl: You're going to fail. And what I've learned to do is kind of say, okay, thanks, Clive. I hear you, but now I'm going to go on and do my own thing anyway. And having that mindfulness about it is first of all, like you said, bringing awareness to the fact it's happening. But then making changes. And so with the people that you work with Alina, what kind of impact do you see that this has by bringing awareness to people who are on a journey to lose weight or self improvement or transformation?

Dr Orlena: Yeah. It's amazing. It's like total, totally life transforming for them. You know, when they come with me, come to me, they're like, I think about one lady. And I've, you know, she has given me permission to talk about her story, but you know, she was overweight sort of, you know, when she first talks about it, she was tired, just exhausted.

Dr Orlena: Like there was something wrong with her, but there wasn't anything. You know, it's not like she had an infection or something like that. And we worked on emotional eating, so that emotional eating is no longer a problem. And she's reversed her glaucoma, which is just, like, amazing. But more than that, I think it's quality of life.

Dr Orlena: It's like,, you've got energy to do the stuff that you want to do. And you've also got that, those knock on effects of, when you can increase your positive brain, you become happier, you become Like, life can, life doesn't stop happening. Life is always lifing, but you have the tools to manage it in a way that you can be your best self.

Dr Orlena: And that is just amazing and life transforming, basically. I feel very privileged to be able to help people to do that. .

Carl: It's a very noble profession, first of all, the fact that you dedicate so much time to helping others. But seeing the results, seeing people transform in front of you and, and knowing that you're not necessarily the.

Carl: The reason, cause ultimately it has to come from that person themselves. And they are the reason that they're changing, but helping to facilitate it and being part of that journey, I think is very special. And one of the reasons I myself have got into coaching, because from listening to people's stories on the podcast, hearing people who have transformed their lives and then people who are listening to the podcast and wanting to do the same, it's just very inspiring.

Carl: I've got to a stage where I was like, okay, how do I help people more? And coaching has been that, and I'm still at the very, very beginning of my coaching journey, and I, I don't. I don't profess to be an expert in anything in particular, but I do think that having a certain level of emotional intelligence and listening to people's problems and being able to suggest things is the first step and that's what I seem to be enjoying and fairly effective with.

Carl: But I'd love to ask you, like, what kind of advice would you give to somebody like myself, who's just starting out coaching in terms of becoming better at the craft of coaching and helping people in, in a deeper context. Cool. That

Dr Orlena: is an interesting question.

Carl: Yeah. And to be honest with you, I wasn't even planning to ask that at all, Alina, it is, I'm probably being selfish now, aren't I?

Carl: Rather than doing something for the listeners on the podcast, I'm, I'm asking for myself how I can be a better coach.

Dr Orlena: So I, so when I was talking about the positive brain and I was saying there's like different aspects of your positive brain, you've got empathy, you've got curiosity, which is, you know, understanding what's behind.

Dr Orlena: A situation and another thing you've got is something called navigate, which is your own sort of internal compass. So number one, I would say walk the walk, talk the talk. So, you know, I, I've been through the PQ program that I talk about, and I lead a lovely, healthy life that I really enjoy. So, you know, I'm teaching people things that have really benefited me, but also it's.

Dr Orlena: There's so many different flavors of coaching. You can coach so many different people, but it's about listening to your internal compass and thinking, how do I want to change the world? What impact do I want to have on the world? And so I would say, you know, really hone into that and think, okay, what, you know, what difference do I want to make in the world?

Carl: That's really helpful, thank you, because I think it comes from that, and having lost weight myself, and this all really began because of my own weight loss journey, and

Dr Orlena: Well, congratulations, because it's not an easy thing to lose weight. If we look at the statistics, so many people can't lose weight. So many people find it difficult to lose weight.

Dr Orlena: And then on top of that, so many people lose weight for about a year and then they put it back on again. Weight loss is not an easy thing to do. It is on one level. It is easy, particularly when you have somebody helping you, but it's not an insignificant thing to do. It is a really amazing achievement to be able to say, do you know what?

Dr Orlena: I've lost weight and I've kept it off. So congratulations.

Carl: Thank you. And I wouldn't say that I'm completely out of the woods yet. And the part of the reason I'm working on myself, and I think one of the reasons, you know, having accountability with podcast and hearing so many other people, it keeps me inspired.

Carl: It keeps me wanting to do better for myself, but just the fact that I've, this is now, I got a little email the other day from the gym saying, okay, congratulations, you know, you've had a membership for two years and it's not the first time I've had a membership for two years, but it's the first time I've actually used it.

Carl: You know, I've been member most of my life, but the fact that I've actually now been going to the gym for two years, I was like, wow, this is, it's actually sticking in some aspects. And that's one of the reasons I love interviewing people and talking to people on the podcast who have found that reason. We often talk about this thing that clicks and nobody seems to know where it comes from or why, but so many people talk about something.

Carl: Changing. It's habits.

Dr Orlena: Let's talk about habits. It's all habits. Yeah, I love talking about habits. So habits are, if you think about why we have habits, habits are your subconscious brain. It's basically like a little program that you've put into your brain that says, do this. It's super efficient. So think about brushing your teeth.

Dr Orlena: Do you have to think about brushing your teeth? Do you have to go and Google, how do I brush my teeth every day? And you look at your toothbrush and you look at your toothpaste and think, what am I doing here? No, you've just got this really easy program, which goes brush teeth, brush teeth, brush teeth. And so you do it and it's really, really efficient.

Dr Orlena: So if you want to be super efficient in your life, build it into a habit. The problem with habits is that they are a double edged sword. And your brain does not care whether it's a healthy habit or an unhealthy habit. Your brain just does the habit. So you have to be really intentional about what habit you are doing, which is why I say you want to do movement that lights you up, because you don't want to get into a habit of doing something that you hate doing, because you will do it, but it will be more of a struggle.

Dr Orlena: But yeah, how do you build up a habit? You just keep doing it. You just keep doing it. You just keep doing it. And then in that time when you're building up a habit, I always say to people, what people do is they mistake what I call an acorn habit for an oak tree habit. So, you know, that time after New Year's, everyone goes, Oh, I'm going to walk around the block.

Dr Orlena: I'm going to exercise every single day. And then by mid February, they've entirely forgotten. And then they think, Oh, I'm broken. It doesn't work. I had this habit. And it, it, I stopped doing it. Like I'm broken. And the answer is no, you didn't have a habit. You had an acorn habit. It was not a habit. A true habit is the thing that you do when life is busy lifing.

Dr Orlena: Look back at how you were living when COVID hit and how were you eating then? So, you know, for example, when We had COVID. I carried on eating healthily. Why? Not because I'm superwoman and I'm so amazing. Just because I've done it for so long that why would I suddenly start eating in a different way?

Dr Orlena: It doesn't make sense to me. And that was just, you know, I go to my lovely market here and buy fruit and vegetables. That's the way I live because it's such an ingrained habit.

Carl: I Guess one question that that's, it's great for people who want to improve in terms of introducing healthier habits and you know, the whole creation of our new habit loop is one thing, but I would imagine a lot of people listening to the podcast can identify habits that either don't serve them or they would like to change.

Carl: Is it as simple as creating? A pattern override in terms of a, a new habit that replaces that, or do they have to kind of disengage from that original habit first?

Dr Orlena: Well, it kind of depends. It depends what the habit is. And I think it's a really interesting, so you asked me right at the beginning, what is my process of helping people?

Dr Orlena: And my answer is, I work on healthy eating first and foremost, normally. It does depend on some of my clients, but normally that's the thing that I go with. And I do the mindset piece right at the same time. Why do I do that? Because actually, some people say, you know, make a little change here and a little change there.

Dr Orlena: And you can do that, but A, it takes a really, really long time. But the other thing is, actually, when we break habits and sort of like go, okay, I'm doing something totally new. That sort of like disrupt, like perhaps when you moved to Spain, you started doing things totally differently than you did at home, you couldn't apply the same thing.

Dr Orlena: So the short answer to your question is how do you. Build up new habits. And the answer is you make it easy for yourself to do them. So you almost have to think of like, I like use the analogy of a kid's train track, you know, those little wooden things that you put down and you put your train track down and then you sort of like drive your train around it.

Dr Orlena: That driving the train around it is you doing your daily routine. So I'll give you an example. You know that kids here in Spain, they go to school in the morning and then they go to school in the afternoon. So it's a really inefficient way of going to school. And then

Carl: have three months off in summer.

Dr Orlena: Particularly if you live like a 20 minute walk from school, as we do. So we have to walk backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. And so I used to go swimming in the swimming pool. We used to have swimming training at 3. 30 in the afternoon. Now this was great for me because it was really easy for me to start building up this habit of swimming.

Dr Orlena: Because, essentially, my habit It doesn't start when I'm in the swimming pool. My habit started at 2. 30 when I'm walking my kids to school with obviously my swimming stuff on. Am I going to say to my kids, they can't go to school? Of course not. Like that's written in stone, isn't it? So I've piggybacked it onto this habit of that's written in stone and that makes it really difficult for me to do something else because.

Dr Orlena: Well, a little bit of self awareness. I've paid to go swimming, so I'm gonna go swimming as often as I can. But also, it's a short period of time. I don't really have much else that I can do in that time. So all of that just combines to, this little train is going swimming, when it was Tuesday and Thursday back then.

Dr Orlena: Basically without missing a session because it was easier to go swimming than to not go swimming. Even though at times my brain would be going, I don't really want to go swimming today. I've now totally got over that and I love swimming. Now I'm like, when's my next swimming session? But when you're building things up, it doesn't necessarily work like that.

Dr Orlena: So it's a little bit of mindset and a little bit of just doing it, doing it, doing it. The discipline.

Carl: Know that it comes with it and

Dr Orlena: Well, you have to be careful of discipline because the problem with discipline is Discipline is like basically putting yourself in a situation and expecting yourself to make a good decision.

Dr Orlena: And that is an exhaustible resource that the human brain has. So the example I give for this is, you know, say for example, you're thinking about healthy eating. And I say at breakfast time, you can choose broccoli or cake. Broccoli, obviously representing healthy something and cake, obviously representing the Spanish breakfast of biscuits and not so healthy.

Dr Orlena: Now, when I first say that to you, you're super keen, you've just joined my program, and you're like, or your program, and you're like, yep, yep, I'm obviously, I'm gonna have broccoli, I'm really, I want to get healthy. Okay, lunchtime, the same choices, broccoli and biscuits, or cake, yep, I'm still, I can still remember, I've got either Carl or Dr.

Dr Orlena: Rena in my brain going, eat healthily, eat healthily, I'm gonna choose broccoli. Now it's dinner time and you are exhausted, you've had a really stressful day at work, you've got stuck in that hideous Barcelona traffic, you walk in the door and broccoli or cake, just don't talk to me, just give me the cake.

Dr Orlena: I don't care. That's, that's an example of discipline. But if you make it easy for yourself and you give yourself a choice between, say, Broccoli and cauliflower, both being healthy choices. You can see how this is going to play out. You get to dinner and you're like, give me the broccoli or the cauliflower, it doesn't make any difference.

Dr Orlena: There's no choice of chocolate cake. That's like taking away that decision from yourself. So discipline. But they've done studies on this, and the studies that they did, people who thought that they were disciplined, actually it turns out they're not disciplined, they're just making less of those difficult decisions every day.

Dr Orlena: So if you're making yourself have those decisions every five minutes, then every day you're going to fall in a heap and choose chocolate cake. But if you're not making yourself have those decisions You can go for months without choosing the chocolate cake essentially. Because you're not

Carl: compromised, I guess you're not faced with a difficult choice.

Dr Orlena: Exactly, exactly. And that's what discipline is. So discipline, discipline is a short term thing that you can use right at the beginning when you're making changes. So when people first join and they say, right, I'm going to do things totally differently. I'm going to, I teach people a two week reboot. I'm going to do Dr.

Dr Orlena: Alina's reboot. Yes, that is going to take a little bit of discipline because you're doing things so differently. But ultimately you don't want to be using discipline if you can avoid it. Fair

Carl: enough. Okay. And I think the reason I mentioned discipline was because there's a lot in social media especially talks about, you know, discipline is the days where motivation is, is, you know, few and far between when you don't feel motivated, you discipline to take you through.

Carl: And I think. Some of the things you said there, I was smiling to myself because I recognize it in my own journey with the gym, for example, and the habits stacking and making it almost not impossible not to do it, but a lot easier of choice. Like if you're already out and about and you're very, you know, if I'm right, if I take the children and drive a certain way, I have to go past the gym.

Carl: So I make sure I do that and I'm more likely to turn in than if I drive and pretend I haven't seen the gym and I do it a different way. So it is about creating those things for you and it does help a lot. And there are some days where I just think I'll just drive the other way and not go, but it's about repetition and over time.

Carl: Dr. Alina, I'd love to ask as well, the types of people that you work with, because I'm sure some of my listeners are probably listening to this and very interested about the work that you do and would like to know more. So who do you work with? Who do you help?

Dr Orlena: Well, thank you for asking. So I work with women who are over 40.

Dr Orlena: So that sort of menopausal age, well, pre, slightly pre menopausal upwards, I would say. My oldest client is 70 and she's amazing. She goes surfing and she's just, I'm like, oh my goodness, if I could be like her when I'm 70, I'm totally happy. So she goes surfing and SUP boarding and all of those kind of things.

Dr Orlena: Wow. And I would say I work with lots of different women, really. They're mostly professional, you know, they mostly have jobs, but what, what I would say unites them is that they've got to the stage in life where they are prepared to do things differently, they. No, that they have slipped up and falling back and slipped up and falling back.

Dr Orlena: And they want a solution that is going to hold them through this. So my program is lifetime essentially, and that they want, you know, they're serious about solving this and that health is really important to them. So essentially what I'm teaching people is healthy living with my doctor hat on. What they're getting is weight loss.

Dr Orlena: The two of them are obviously basically the same at the back, but the reason I think it's so important is. I think people want to live a healthy life, like why wouldn't you want to live a long and healthy life with more energy and know that you can essentially live an extra ten years if you live a healthy lifestyle.

Dr Orlena: Who doesn't want

Carl: that? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think we're becoming more and more aware of it. And I don't know if it's the same for you, but when I moved to Spain, I very quickly noticed a big difference in lifestyle between, at least from Essex, where I was from, between during the week, for example.

Carl: My life in England was Monday to Friday. Go home from work, put the TV on, have dinner, go to bed and that was pretty much it. I might go out if Champions League was on and meet my friends in the pub for a few beers and watch football. But that was it during the week. Whereas in Spain people live a life, and the weather helps, but more outside, more active.

Carl: Not only that, until later in the day, like the shops are open till 8pm and people do more things and rather than just going home and being in their house, are more outside. In essence, a healthier way of living than what I saw in the UK, at least again, from my experience, I'm sure there are people in the UK who live healthier, but what it taught me was that there is an alternative and there is probably a happier life at the end of being more healthy than just cocooning yourself in that same routine day in, day out.

Carl: Having that opportunity to explore different ways of living, being healthier. For some people it can be quite overwhelming, especially if you've lived in a certain way for many years and do have a lot of weight to lose or don't believe you can make the change or have tried so many times and failed, but you just don't think you can do it.

Carl: Can I ask what advice would you give to somebody who is perhaps struggling or has struggled for a number of years? It doesn't want to give up, but they feel like, you know, they don't know how, but they haven't given up. They do want a healthier life.

Dr Orlena: Yeah, no, I totally resonate with that. And I'm kind of smiling because I think of all my clients and I think about so many of my clients who basically say, you know, I didn't believe you.

Dr Orlena: I didn't believe that you said, you know, you said do this. And I just didn't believe it was going to work. And actually I did it. And it was relatively easy and I think part of it is fear. So, you know, one thing I say to people is, Hey, do you know what? You're actually not going to eat any sugar for two weeks.

Dr Orlena: And I think. Sugar has a huge, great hold over people for various reasons. But I think when you're standing there right at the beginning, it's like, Oh my goodness, what does life look like without sugar? Like, is it going to be worth living? Am I going to enjoy life? Like, I'm giving up all the best things of my life.

Dr Orlena: This is surely going to be a disaster. And as you go through that journey, or even two weeks, you start to retrain your mind, you start to retrain your body, and you get to this stage where you're like, Oh, actually, sugar's not that great. Like, yeah, okay, I get a sugar rush, it gives me a bit of endorphin, dopamine.

Dr Orlena: Do you know what I mean? Like, and I think they come out the other side, and just have learnt to enjoy, you know, healthy living, as you say. And so, it is like a process. You do have to, I think, essentially what I would say is get help from somebody, obviously me, or you, but in all seriousness, you do, I think having support really does help, and what you need to think about is your trust in yourself, that you can do something, and most people don't have that trust in themselves, which is why having support will really help them, you also have to find a coach that you do trust, that you do resonate with, that you think, Yeah, okay.

Dr Orlena: This coach really is gonna help me. And you also have to look at the system that the coach is using as well. So, you know, we talked about ketogenesis. I don't teach ketogenesis. So if you wanted to do ketogenesis, you need to find a coach who does ketogenesis. So those are the three aspects that you need to look at.

Dr Orlena: You know, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your coach, and your trust in whatever the system is that the coach is doing. So I would say at some stage you just have to make the leap basically. Go forwards, even if like most of my clients, you don't believe it's going to work because if you don't make changes, what does that look like?

Dr Orlena: Where does life lead then? And the answer is, well, the same or potentially worse.

Carl: Absolutely. And I think that's something that you hear so much of it, you know, but you do have to make a change in part of, I think the, the reason it's good to have a coach is to allow someone else to hold that space for you where you don't believe you can do it yourself.

Carl: Allow them to guide you. Until you are ready to either see the differences or start to see the change in yourself where you're able to recognize it's possible and have that hope and see it. But just by, I think going around that same path again and again, again in the cycle of saying, okay, I've drawn a line under it.

Carl: I'm going to go back on the same diet, but I lost a few pounds last time until I gave up and then doing it again and again and again. And I think this is where people get to a stage where I just think I can't do it. It's impossible. So sometimes it's important to get help from the outside. I, like you said, there are many different styles of coaching depending on what your focus is, what you'd like to achieve, but for sure, Dr Alina, I will be adding your contact details and letting people find you and also your podcast because you release an episode every week talking about all of this and more, don't you?

Carl: So I think it'd be great for people and my listeners. I think there's enough space for us all to exist together in

Dr Orlena: this. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And, you know, I don't think I don't see other coaches as like direct competition. I think it's, it's having the conversation and putting it in front of people's.

Dr Orlena: Brain and my podcast really obviously it allows people to get to know me a little bit more before Some of them decide to coach with me. But really what I see it as is a little Inspiration every Tuesday going remember remember remember you're trying to be healthy Remember you're trying to be healthy because people forget and it's just that Keeping you on track keeping you on track reminding you to keep going reminding you to keep going And this is

Carl: great because I release my episodes on a Monday And the reason I do it on a Monday is to start people off with a week in a positive way to give them some motivation and support, hearing something inspiring.

Carl: So listen to my podcast on the Mondays and Tuesdays, you've got a new episode from Dr. Alina to listen to as well. And you know, bit by bit, maybe throughout the year I can give all of the listeners something for every single day of the week to get them through. But like you said, there is space and I don't see it competitive, which is, and completely honest with you, even with some of the questions I've asked and you've shared with me today.

Carl: I'm learning to become a better coach by sharing these experiences with people like myself. So thank you so much for taking time out of your data to be part of this and for joining me on the podcast today. It's been a pleasure to have you here. And I just ask, is there anything that you'd like to end the episode on?

Carl: I'll hand it to you. No,

Dr Orlena: not really, but thank you very much for having me. You're very

Carl: welcome. Thanks a lot.