Podcast: How to Not Turn to Food for Comfort
Resources Mentioned in the Podcast
Book a 30 min "Get Unstuck call" https://www.drorlena.com/breakthrough
Grab Oct Healthy Recipes: https://www.drorlena.com/recipes
Join the "Get Unstuck" workshops: https://www.drorlena.com/stuck
Transcription of Podcast
Please note this transcription is generated by software. There may be some errors. I hope you find it useful.
Hello. Hello, hello, Hello. Wonderful people. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Kerek. Today I want to tell you a personal story about my emotional turmoil. Now, before I get to my emotional story, number one, I'm gonna explain to you why I'm telling it to you, and number two, I want to tell you about my garden.
Healthy Habits are Like Planting a Garden of Seeds
As probably most places in the world right now. I am noticing that food prices are going up here in Spain. Now I have to confess here in Spain, we are super lucky. We are what is called the bread basket of Europe. So normally we have amazing produce pretty much all through the year. And now I'm noticing that things are less available and more expensive and I have Earth in my garden and seeds.
To plant. So over the summer my seeds mostly died. The one success I had was I planted a courgette or zucchini, and it is the gift that keeps giving. It is amazing. And well, we have about one a week, so for me, non gardener, that is success. So anyhow, I decided I was going to plant some seeds because we can grow things in winter here, and I want.
At First You Don’t See Any Results and Suddenly You Have a Thriving Garden
First of all, be less reliant on fluctuations in marketplace. And secondly, I just love the idea of being able to go into my garden and pick things. But anyhow, you know how it goes. You plant seeds, you take action. You turn up the next day, No seeds, no sprouts. The next day, no sprouts. The next day, no sprouts.
Hey, what is happening to my seeds? I'm watching them. I'm looking at them. Looking at them with love and contentment and joy, and thinking, where are those sprouts? In fact, I even got to the stage where I was like, Do you know what? These sprouts have not s sprouted. I'm gonna sprout some of them indoors because I need some sprouts.
Anyhow, you can see where this is going, right? So now I'm looking at my garden and oh my goodness, I have some sprouts. I have fondly got to the stage where some of my plants, not all of them, but some of them have started shooting up and I can see I'm gonna have some peas. So exciting, and I'm gonna have some chard, which is amazing because it grows a bit like weed here.
You May Feel Demoralised when You Start Taking Action
So I'll be able to go and pick it when it's fully sprouted. Why am I telling you about my garden? Can you. Yes, of course. When we start taking action, we want instant results, and it's really easy to get stuck in that little bit of, Hey, nothing's happening, nothing's happening. I'm gonna stop taking action.
Still, nothing is happening until you start seeing results and those results really feed into your brain and. . Hey, it's worth it. It's worth doing these things. But the difficult bit is when you are taking action and nothing is happening. It's so easy to feel derailed. It's so easy to feel stuck. It's so easy to feel like nothing works because you can't see any results and sometimes, You just can't see the results right at the beginning.
Like those little tiny seeds that are busy doing whatever their thing is that they're doing under the ground. And I can't see anything until I can see a little tiny sprout. So in case you haven't heard, in case you're sitting there thinking, Yeah, I totally get this. I just feel stuck and I don't know what to do.
Nothing seems to work. And Dr. Orlena, I hear you. I want to lead my healthy, amazing life. I listen to that video or podcast that Lia did. Lia is in my Healthy You Healthy Family Group program and it sounds amazing, and I'm interested in taking action. I get what you're saying. I can see the transformation, but what do I do?
Get Unstuck October with Dr Orlena
Then? You may have heard that I have declared October, Get Unstuck October, because October is an amazing time to start to take action. Let's face it, November and December, a bit of a write off to start taking action because they're just. full of holiday stuff. There's so much stuff going on in November and December that we don't have time to take on a new project.
But if you start now by January, you will be in a much better place than if you don't start now. If you wait till January, you've got more work to do. So with that being said, I have. A workshop coming up next week, the Get Unstuck Workshop, Get from Unstuck to Fit and fabulous, and we're gonna be having a workshop on Monday and a workshop on Wednesday, and I will leave the link in the show notes, dr.com/stuck.
Come and sign up for that. What else have I got going on? October, Oh, I remember. Might get unstuck chats, of course. Come and chat me. I'm offering free chats to people who want to get unstuck, who are thinking, Yeah, do you know what? I wanna know more about this. I want to really see what's involved for me and see whether.
I can lead this healthy life and love this healthy life. So book one of those get Unstuck chats to get clarity on why you are stuck and why you aren't moving forwards. And if on that call you are interested in finding out about my program, fabulous. I'll tell you all about it. We'll probably book another call because there won't be enough time because we're gonna be busy talking about what's going on for.
So book one of those calls. And you know what? I really urge you to book that call. It's 30 minutes of your time. It's totally free, and I urge you to take advantage of all the free resources that I have. If you want to work with me, it's a really good way of seeing what it's like to work with me. And if you don't want to work with me, then that's fine too.
It's totally free. Just come and take advantage of it. And also, I have got a scholarship on my Healthy You Healthy Family program this month. Now, I'm not saying that my program is free. The scholarship is for people who really want to join, but really and truly have a budget issue. And so if you want to know more about the scholarship program, you need to book a call and I will explain how it.
How Dr Orlena Had a Wobbly Day and Managed Her Emotional Wobble
Okay, let's move on to my emotional trauma. Why it wasn't really a trauma, it was a, what should we call it? A wobbly day. I had a wobbly day yesterday, and I want to talk to you about it. Why do I want to talk to you about my wobbly day? Because. At the bottom of all transformation of healthy living, whether it is about food or exercise or sleep or any of that lies emotions.
Emotions Drive Our Actions
We are human beings. All human beings are led by emotions, clearly. Some people more than others, but this is what I call the foundation layer of essentially the work that I do with people. So when you have a wobbly day, whether it is stress or overwhelm, or feeling, Left out or any other kind of feeling.
If you are not aware of what is going on, you are going to see negative behavior. turning up. If you do not have the tools to manage how you think and your emotions, you are going to end up turning to food for comfort. You will end up going to end up sabotaging yourself. You're gonna end up doing all of the things that you don't want to do.
So normally when I talk to people and we do a get un stock chat or any other kind of, people are saying to me right now, this is where I am. I feel stress. I feel overwhelmed. I feel as if nothing works for me, and here is where I want to get to. And the words may be slightly different and the emotions may be slightly different, but you get the point that I'm saying I want to get to bouncy.
I want to get to peace and harmony and contentment. I want to get to happiness. And when you get there, You will find that it is so much easier to lead a healthy life because it just happens naturally. If you're not constantly prodding yourself and poking yourself with unhealthy foods and the reason to eat unhealthy foods, suddenly it becomes much easier to eat healthy food when you're really, really enjoying it.
So that is why I'm gonna tell you about this story. So yesterday, well, let me backtrack a little bit. Number one, if you have not met me, I am a keen swimmer and I swim in the Mediterranean, and I have a group of friends who I swim with. Now, some of them are male and they're great swimmers, but they swim super, super fast, and some of them are female.
And obviously we're fabulous swimmers, but we don't swim quite as fast as the men. Now, there is a big sporting event coming up. And I'm not doing the swimming. I am going to be doing the kayaking to help with that because, well, various reasons, but I'm just not doing it. Now on Sunday, there are some relays and these relays are just swimming 800 meters.
Now, 800 meters is not very much. We normally swim two and a half meters, sorry, kilometers. We normally swim two and a half kilometers every single day. So yesterday morning I opened my WhatsApp and I had a. and in it was a, a conversation and it basically went like this. There was somebody who was looking for some female swimmers to join a male group.
Now I looked at that and thought, Oh, I'm far too scared to do that. Now the next one was, Hey, I've got this group of females who are all of my friends who we normally go swimming with, minus two of us, and we are doing this swimming group on Sunday, and are you gonna come and support us? Now at that moment, I'm.
Part of My Brain Felt Left Out!
Oh, these are my friends. I go swimming with these people every single day. And to just explain a little bit, one of my swimmers, swimming friends or my swimming partner, she's really the person I go with mostly. She has two sister-in-laws who don't live around here, but they do also swim. And so it was with these two sister-in-laws, so I could see totally that she'd made this group with her sister-in-laws, and now the group is full.
and she hadn't had a chance to ask me if I wanted to join. Now, what's the emotion I'm feeling? I'm feeling hugely left out. I'm feeling hugely upset about the fact that I have not been invited into this, into this team, basically, and part of my brain is going, Hey, it's okay. It's not a big deal. Part of me is that little child that is coming forwards and saying, I feel left out and I feel sad.
And there's this dichotomy between part of my brain wanting to feel one thing and part of my brain wanting to feel another thing. Now it's at this point that you can either, what I call, go down the negative plug hole where you know what this looks like. Here I'm going to turn to food. I'm feeling bad, I'm gonna turn to food.
Do Your Emotions Spiral Up or Down?
Or you can go up the positive spiral and manage this emotion. So what does that look like? Now it looks like different for different people, but the first thing is being aware of what is going on, saying, Hey brain, I see what is going on. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can control this 100. . So for example, if you've got other staff going on, it's gonna make it far more difficult for you.
Normally Lots of Things Contribute to Our Emotions
If it's just this one thing in isolation, it's much more easy to manage. So I will tell you that I did have other things going on recently. My mom said to me, Hey, I can't come and see you next week. And also, I'm not coming at Christmas time. So I'm feeling disappointed because I want to see my. , and yes, she's going to go and see my sister.
So I'm also feeling a little bit like, Hey, I'm feeling a little bit left out. So you can see that it's not just this swimming group that I'm feeling left out. It's the swimming group on top of the same emotion, which had happened the day before. Now there's always stress in my life with kids and shouting and all of that stuff going on.
I have four kids and oh my goodness, teenage brain. It's so exciting for any of you who's got teenage brain happening. Wow. Just write it all off as teenage brain. So you know, there's always other stuff going on. It's never one thing that happens in isolation, but I'm telling you about this thing because it just shows you how to do it.
When We Feel Emotions, there are Lots of Thoughts Going on In Our Brain
So here I am. I'm thinking, okay, I can just choose to let go of all of. Or I can choose to really buy into this. And as much as I want to let go a little bit is just going, no. And I can see my thoughts going round and round and round. I can see my thoughts thinking all of these negative things, like, oh my goodness.
Perhaps I don't wanna swim with them today. Oh my goodness. I feel totally left out and all those other negative things that are coming up and I can counterbalance those with, Hey, of course go swimming. Your friends still like you. It's just this opportunity that's happened for them. It's not a big deal.
You can go and enjoy these things. What else could I think that her sister-in-laws really just come. from time to time and you know, it's, it's all fine. So thinking more positive things to counterbalance the negative things, but then I'm still feeling this emotion now at that moment. You've got different options.
You can either use tools to change your emotion, you can just sit with your emotion. Sometimes it's perfectly fine just to sit with your emotion and say, Do you know what? I can see this emotion. And I can see that it's driving me to want to do this thing, to have a bit of a tantrum, like my 10 year old daughter.
How Do You Get Out of Emotional Swirliness?
But I'm not going to have that tantrum. I'm not gonna stamp my foot and make a big thing of it. I'm just gonna sit with this emotion and yeah, I don't feel a hundred percent all day, but that's okay. So all of this sort of like swirliness, I would say, going on now. Eventually I went swimming in the afternoon with my friends and we didn't really talk about it then I had made a comment to the other girl who hadn't been invited, like, Hey, we could go and do the kayaking and we can dong them all on their heads, to remind them to invite us next time.
It was all a Mistake and I Felt All Those Emotions for Nothing!
Anyhow, we went swimming and we came back and we started talking about it, and for some reason the relays came up. And do you know what? It turned out that it was all a misunderstanding? Yes, all a misunderstanding. Because really what had happened was one of the gentlemen had said this thing like, Oh, we've got this team of people and listed the names.
And it wasn't true. It was just a, a strange way of trying to get everybody to want to join the team as opposed to. Inviting from, which would I think have been much simpler. So it led to this huge, great misunderstanding. So yes, I felt much better at that time and thinking, okay, it's not that my friends leave me out.
It's all fine, but that emotion still lingers a little bit. It still doesn't just lift off a hundred percent. Now I have other tools that I use to help me manage that emotion, and by the time I went to bed, Yes, I'm feeling great. I'm feeling fabulous. Back on track next day. Hey, here I am, 110% feeling amazing and so over that story that I can now tell you.
Now, why am I telling you this story? Because I just want to give you a little bit of. Taking back the curtain to show you what emotional wellness is like. It does not mean that life doesn't happen. It doesn't mean that these things don't happen. It doesn't mean that you ever get to, Hey, I feel a little bit upset about that.
When You Have the Right Tools You Can Navigate Your Emotions
What it does mean is that you have the tools and the insight to be able to manage it. And yes, you know what? There's a step up from where I am, which could be, Hey, you know what? I'm so confident in my relationship with my friends that. I don't even mind that they have made this group, but this is where I am right now.
And feeling emotions isn't a bad thing. It's not that feeling the emotion is bad. It's well, number one. You know what? I actually don't quite like feeling like that. I much prefer to feel happy and joyous and have those as my default blanket and you know, I think it's really important to remember as well.
The Human Brain is Negatively Wired
As humans, we are negatively wired. That is how our brains work. We are wired to think negatively. What is it? I'm rereading? Hardwiring Happiness, which I really recommend by Rick Hanson, and he says that. . We have a negativity bias that makes it like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones, and that we really have to concentrate on feeling those good ones.
So yes, I could get to a stage where I've got even more tools, even more in a strength, even more confidence. But hey, this is where I am right now and I'm totally loving my life. So all is good for me. My aim isn't never to feel negative emotions. My aim is to recognize those negative emotions and not allow them to spiral out of control because it's that spiraling out of control that leads to what I call negative behavior.
Behavior that you don't want to exhibit. So it could be emotional eating, it could be something else, but you can see that if you can manage all of this, And you can manage it without turning to food. That is an amazing place to be. And suddenly, if you can do that, it makes the whole four pillars their loving, healthy eating, the exercise that lights me up, the sleep and the emotional wellness.
It makes it all easier. You're building your spiraling upwards. So if you want to get to leading a healthy life and loving it, and that can include weight loss. If weight is an issue, then. . This is why emotional wellness is really part of the fundamentals of those four pillars. Did I say that in a way that makes sense?
You know what I mean? This is really, really important work to do. If we don't look at this work. If you do what my daughter does, when I said to her this morning, Hey, how come you forgot to shower this morning? And she puts her head, her hands over her ears and she's like, Mom, I'm not listening. Like an emu who's burying his head in the sand.
So, you know, if you're trying to make healthy changes and you're not looking at your emotions, you're a bit like my daughter who's putting her hands over her ears and going, I'm not gonna think about this stuff. It's just. Not where I want to be. And I understand that some people find it really, really uncomfortable.
My husband hates talking about emotions. I love talking about emotions. I think emotions and why we are driven to do things are amazing because we can change them. And I think it's just so fascinating how our behavior is driven by these emotions that quite often don't even make sense, but we just grab hold of one emotion and go, Hey, I'm gonna stick with this.
So I hope that gave you a little bit of insight. Please, please, please sign up to the workshop. I would love to chat to you. It's lovely to get to know you and really see how I can help you, whether that is in my Facebook group. If you're not in the Facebook group, come and join the Facebook group or showing you what, where my free resources are, or if you are ready to make this part of your life and really join in and really make this a priority so that you can get to healthy.
And if you haven't listened to the podcast that I did with Leah a couple of weeks ago, go back and listen to it because it's an honest opinion of what it's like to do this work and how it is amazing because your life suddenly becomes. Fabulous. You love your life because you start to do things that you really, really enjoy.
Okay, my friends have fun and I will see you soon. Bye bye.
Resources Mentioned in the Podcast
Book a 30 min "Get Unstuck call" https://www.drorlena.com/breakthrough
Grab Oct Healthy Recipes: https://www.drorlena.com/recipes
Join the "Get Unstuck" workshops: https://www.drorlena.com/stuck
