Podcast: Maintaining Healthy Habits Even When Life Is Super Stressful

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling fabulous today. I'm gonna get really v vulnerable with you, and I want to talk to you a little bit about my life and how stressful it is at the moment, and the, I don't normally share hugely personal things with you, but the reason I want to share what's going on in my life at the moment is I want to show you that life can be stressful and you can still manage that stress without turning to food for comfort and still maintaining self-care and looking after yourself and things like that.

And one thing that I would add is I have been doing this, I have been focusing on self-care and healthy living four years and years and years, so, I have lots of amazing tools and I'm going to be sharing you with you my favorite tools at the event that's gonna be taking place on March the 20th.

Mindset Miracles For Emotional Eating and Weight Loss

Sign up here: http://drorlena.com/mindset-miracles 

It's taking place over March the 20th, the 21st and the 23rd, and it's called Mindset Miracles for Emotional Eating and Weight Loss. And I will really be diving into my favorite tool and how it is so amazing and so simple, and how it can really help you maintain a good mindset. Essentially what I want to show you is yes, life is stressful, but.

I'm not turning to food for comfort. And I would also add that yes, I have been doing this for a long time, so you would hope that I have the tools to be able to do this, but my clients as well. We were having a coaching called yesterday and everyone was like, oh my goodness, something awful is happening in my life, but I'm still maintaining healthy eating.

I'm still maintaining, doing some exercise. I'm still maintaining, looking after myself. And the reality is, is that sometimes that slumps down a little bit. I know for. My exercise definitely slumps down a little. It in the winter and when life gets busy, but that doesn't mean that there's no exercise and everything goes out of the window.

So the stressful thing that is happening in my life right now is that my son, who's 12, is really unwell and I don't a hundred percent know what is wrong with him. He's been unwell since. Last year, and I think we are really looking at something like chronic fatigue syndrome, which isn't really called chronic fatigue syndrome anymore, but it's something that everybody knows about.

But from my perspective, it's really difficult to deal with. I don't have answers. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what the future looks like for him. And more importantly, it is heartbreaking to see my son, who a year ago, was an active child. Going to school every day, cycling every day, playing tennis, doing all of these kind of things just in absolute agony all day and really having zero quality of life.

And it is just such a difficult place to be and really, really hard to watch, and really hard to not be able to. To fix it for him. I think as parents, one of the things we really want to do is we've taken on this responsibility to look after our children, and so we have this duty of care and it almost feels like, oh my goodness, I'm not living up to this.

How do I help it? So loads of frustrating things going on and loads of emotions going on. So how is it that I. Deal with this and still maintain a modicum of healthy living and also, you know, looking after my mind. And I think that is the biggest, biggest thing. . So I will tell you my framework that I use with my clients, and essentially there's two aspects to your framework.

There is your routine and how your life looks and how you have built in doing certain things. So built in healthy eating, built in, doing some exercise, and once it really is routine, It's routine and you just do it without thinking about it. So for example, for me and my family, healthy eating is such a normal, natural part of our life that it wouldn't be, it would be out of character for me to, to go and.

To go and start emotionally eating lots of sweet treats and things like that. Now, I'm not saying I don't ever eat those foods. Yes I do, but I'm also very aware of it. So it's partly habit and it's part, part of being aware of it and having the tools to not want to do that. So it's really having those coping mechanisms and being aware.

So number one is routine. . And so, you know, I have an exercise routine. As I say, in the winter, my exercise routine looks very different from the summer. I do a lot of sea swimming and so in the summer my, my exercise routine is really easy. I get up at six in the morning or whatever time the sun is getting up, I cycle to the beach, I swim and I get back and I often get back before my kids are even awake.

They don't even miss me. So the summer is really, really easy for me and I love it and it's amazing. The winter is a little bit more challeng. , partly because the days are shorter, partly because swimming in the sea, it's very, very cold. But I do other things, so I've kind of got plan B, and with my son being unwell, sometimes that plan B doesn't work because I need to go to the hospital with him or go to a doctor's appointment or spend a bit of time with him.

So I also have this routine, but I also have, okay, what's the minimum that I need to be doing? And I'm aware. So routine is really important, and I promise you, you get to a place where routine is just so natural that this is your life and you do it without thinking about it. So many people say to me, I want to lose weight without thinking about it.

And the answer is yes. Of course you can get there. Of course you can get there. There isn't a magic switch to go from where you are now to losing weight without thinking about it. There is what I call the rickety bridge in between, and that rickety bridge is building up the habits and building up the routine.

until you get to that routine. Now, obviously, I'm very much in that routine, so I said there was two parts to, you know, I think the tools that really help me to stay on top of my mind and my body, and my mental health and my physical health. And I think the second part really is. Self-awareness and self-awareness is also the key to making changes.

It always starts with self-awareness. If you are not aware that you are doing something, it's very difficult to change it. So for example it might be that you eat when you are stressed or you eat when you're bored, but if you are not aware that it's stress that's the trigger or boredom that is the trigger, then it's very difficult for you to change it.

So the first step is self-awareness. Now, fast forward, what happens when you've done all of this and you get to the stage where, yep, okay, I can see. My mind. So what happens to me is I can see my mind beginning to spiral down that negative plughole of I call myself an overqualified hypochondriac. It's very, very easy to think of the worst case scenario and think, what if this, what if that?

What if this, and those thoughts are not helpful, obviously, you know, I want to have a grip. The situation. I want to advocate for my child. I want to be saying, yes, I think we need to have this medication. Or how about this? And how about that? But spiraling down this worst case scenario is not helpful. All it does is increase stress levels and make you feel awful.

And keep you awake at night. So the first thing is really being aware when your brain is in that negative space, when your brain is going down that negative vortex. Because if you're not aware of it, there's nothing you can do about it. So I have built up my self-awareness over years and years and years.

This is work that I have been doing for years. So I have, I'm aware when those things happen and I have tools. to switch it, and when I see it happening, I see it instantly happening and I switch immediately. As opposed to if you're not using these tools and you're not used to that, you know that thought might go on.

Well, it may go on for a period of time, it may go on for minutes, it may go on for half an hour. It may be something that you are not addressing at all. So it's constantly going round and round and round in. . Now we will dive more into this In the Mindset Miracle, the free event, we are going to be looking at the negative brain and the positive brain, and I will be explaining what tool I am using at the moment.

It's the best tool that I have, which really helps me switch from negative brain to positive brain. And I think in a nutshell, that's really what has kept me going. It's being aware of my negative thoughts, and that doesn't mean I don't. Feel the stress. You can't get stress. You can't get rid of stress, you can't get rid of negative emotions all the time.

So yes, I feel sad, I feel upset. I feel all of those things, but I don't allow them to go down into that negative, negative vortex. I manage them so that I can then flip into positive brain and think. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna help my son? How can I show up for my son? Like my son doesn't want me showing up in a frustrated, angry, upset kind of way.

I need to be strong for my son to help him keep going forwards and to help him really move forwards in terms of getting better. And dealing with his life at the moment was a lot of big adjustments for him. So those are the two main things, and I just wanted to share that with you, not because I want you all to say, oh my goodness, your poor son.

Yes, my poor son, but that isn't what I want you to. Really talk about, what I, I really want you to think about is, yes, life can happen, life always happens, there's always something complicated. But do you have the tools to get through that period of time without really being pushed into negative space and doing all of those negative things that you know aren't serving?

So it serving yourself. So it might. Stress eating, boredom eating. It might be feeling too tired to do any exercise, you know, what those things are and we'll talk more about them the week after next. Okay. So I hope that was useful for you and I would love to know what your stress is and you know, what, what happens to you when you feel overwhelmed?

Oh. And so excitingly, you may have. That I am opening up my one-on-one coaching and one-on-one coaching is amazing to really personalize the experience that you get from coaching and really help you move forwards. Now, I have got an amazing new package. I've really been thinking about this because I realized that I had so many packages that it was all a little bit all over the place.

So I have got an amazing, amazing package, which is called the Best of both worlds. It is part One-on-One and part group program. Absolutely fabulous. And so for the next three people who sign up, that that program has a special offer on it. So if you are interested in finding out about either one-on-one or group or the best of both worlds, then book a call and I will leave a link in the show notes.

So it's one thing for me to say, yep, I know how to keep on track when life gets busy. But what about other people? What about people in my group? . Now. I chatted to Meg in the Facebook group a few weeks ago. She's one of the ladies who's in the group program and she explains in this short little interview how, how, first of all, she's lost weight and that it was easy and surprisingly easier.

She says, but I also want you to listen to how she says, yes, I do stray off and I do. Life does happen, but I get back on track and I think that is one of the big keys to life being stressful is yes, we have these periods of time when life is stressful and we don't do everything perfectly, but then we get back on track.

So here are just a few thoughts from Meg. Meg, thank you so much for having this little chat. Do you wanna just start off by introducing yourself? Sure. So I am 56 and I have two grown children and a husband and I have been struggling with my weight since before my kids were born. So anyway, I live in the United States in New Hampshire.

Good. A long time. And you've been in the group now for just over three months cuz you've just graduated from the 12 week Program to Lifetime program. So congratulations and we're super excited to have you. Do you wanna just step back and think about just over three months ago when we first met? Like what was life like for you then and what were you struggling with?

Sure. So I would say that food was, Just constantly on my mind, whether it was what's, when's my next sweet or what, what's, what's for, what's coming up? It just food just like almost too central and too much, much driving my life in a way that I didn't like. I ate a lot of healthy food, but I definitely know that I was addicted to sugar and, and emotional eating.

So just knowing that I didn't, I just didn't know how to, Perfect. And being in the group, how has that been for you? How, what results have you seen and what's changed in your life? I would say that, first of all, I really, really like the group. I, I, it's a nice size. I get a lot out of talking with you, but also hearing about the experiences of others.

And I, and I learn something every time and I really like having that touchpoint every week to just reconnect and re, you know, get sort of back on track if I've, if I've strayed with what I'm doing or just reminders about good habits. I would say that I, I'm, I am doing the reboot. I would say, you know, I had done the two week reboot at the beginning, and I think that really helped me get off the sugar, the sugar addiction train for a while.

And it's not that I don't ever eat sugar, but I, it was, it was, it, I noticed that it was kind of like no longer driving me in the way that it was before we started and, and. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. That was gonna be my question. Was it easy and fun? Like I always promise it, but it's gonna be easy and fun.

Was it ? Yeah. Yeah. It is like surprisingly easy. And I, you know, life happens and I, you know, I'm, I'm, there's times where I, you know, sort of stray in a way that I, I, I don't want to, you know, like around the holidays with the suites and things, but, but I feel like, okay, big deal. I'm back on track. Perfect.

Perfect. Congratulations, because we did talk about how much weight you had lost. We weren't a hundred percent sure between 10 and 14 pounds. Does that sound about right? Yes. Mm-hmm. , congratulations. Yeah, I'm happy about that and I have more to do. Perfect. Yeah, and we look forward to seeing that happen. Any last thoughts for people?

I guess just the, the, the, you know, I kind of already said it, but that the, the coaching component is super important. I think it makes it fun. It's, I, I get inspiration and ideas from participating in it, both from you and from the other people that participate. And it's just what I needed, I, and what I need still going forward.

Perfect. Thank you so much.