Podcast: Why Discipline Isn't the Key to Weight Loss

Transcription of Podcast

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Kerek. I hope you are feeling amazing today. Today I want to talk to you about why discipline is not the way to help you lose weight, why discipline and self-control are not the way forwards. I am not saying that you don't ever have to make a difficult decision.

Oh yes. Sometimes you do and you have to train your brain. But what you don't want to be doing is constantly, constantly using discipline and using self-control. Now let me explain a bit. So first of all, If you haven't listened to the podcast that I did two weeks ago, I do recommend you listen to that because that's really setting the scene for this podcast.

And that podcast was called How to Stop Self-Sabotaging with Emotional Eating. And we really dived into looking at your negative brain and looking at your positive brain. Now, what happens when your in negative brain. So many things happen. One thing I think is really important to acknowledge in your negative brain is that when you are in negative brain, let me just recap the, the patterns of saboteurs, they are, so how did they find out like these, these saboteurs, basically they looked at a whole group of people and made patterns.

discovered patterns of how people negatively talk to themselves and the nine that they came up with. Well, the first one that everybody has is judge. Then there's hyper-rational. Now, being hyper-rational isn't necessarily a bad idea when you are looking at data things, but when you're trying to deal with emotions, it's not gonna work.

There's controller, there's pleaser, and again, pleasing. Pleasing people can be good from time to time, but not when it's at the cost of your own health and your own. Avoider, restless, hypervigilant, hyper achiever, victim, and stickler. Now, I went through all of those a couple of weeks ago in a little bit more detail, but here's what happens.

Your those negative things, those negative thoughts are going to tell your brain. Something good. So for example, when you are eating some food, which you kind of think, this isn't gonna help me, part of your brain is telling you, yes, you have to taste this. It's gonna feel so good. You're never gonna taste anything so amazing Again, I have to eat more.

But another part of your brain is recognizing that this isn't good for you, and I think that's a really important distinction. . So this can turn up in lots of different ways. It might be your brain is saying, you deserve this. I deserve this. I've had a really, really bad day. Or, you know, I deserve to feel good.

I deserve to have this. Or, it, it can be different. It can be I'm restless and so I'm, I'm always looking for that perfect bite, that perfect last bite until I make myself realize that I'm overeating and then I feel bad and I punish. Or, you know, I feel sad and I'm turning to this food, and your, your negative brain is telling you a story.

You deserve to feel happy. Now, of course, you deserve to feel happy. I'm not in any way suggesting that you don't deserve to feel happy. But what I'm saying is the way too happiness is not through overeating food. So when you start to get that, parallel to people talking to yourself. You know, part of you saying, Hey, this is really good for you.

Yep, this is gonna be great. But you recognize another part of your brain, which is saying, no, this isn't good. This isn't helping you. When you're using discipline and self-control, it's almost like you are trying to ignore that and just keep going, keep going, keep going. So that voice that's saying yes, oh my goodness, you, you're gonna feel happy.

You have to pay attention to that rather than just bulldoze over it when you're trying to bulldoze over it. That is you trying to use discipline and self-control. So your negative brain is turned on and it's saying, yes, I deserve all of this, but I'm gonna deny it to myself. Yes, I deserve to feel happy, but I'm not gonna give myself.

Yes, I deserve to look after myself, but I'm not going to give it to myself. That is how the negative brain works because you've brought into this story of I deserve to feel happy, and the way to feel happiness is to eat the cake or whatever it is. So why does this not work? Discipline is not something that you can use for a long period of time.

Our brains are. Designed to use discipline time and time again. Now, let me be clear that what I'm, I'm not saying that you can't build up habits in order to help yourself move forwards. Of course you can, but the thing about discipline is you put yourself in a situation. And you are expecting yourself to make a good choice again and again and again.

And that is discipline is, oh my goodness, I'm gonna use my brain to make the correct choice. Whereas really, and they've done studies on this, they're so interesting, but really, people who are disciplined do not put themselves in that position to make the. Because that power of discipline is going to fade over time.

Now, I'm sure you have heard my story before how I've explained this before, that if I say to you at breakfast time, Hey, what do you wanna eat? Chocolate cake or broccoli? You will go, I'm being really healthy. I'm gonna eat broccoli. At lunchtime, I give you the same choice, broccoli or cake, and your brain is going, I'm being really healthy.

I'm gonna eat broccoli, and now at dinner. broccoli or cake, and now that negative voice comes in, you're tired. All of these things happen, and your brain says, you deserve to feel happy. You deserve all of this other stuff. You deserve to eat the cake. The cake is the path to feeling happiness, and your brain is tired.

Now it's just gonna go, yeah, I don't care. Give me the chocolate cake. Now if you change that situ, Now we gotta do lots of work and we're gonna change lots of different things, but we're just gonna change the basics right now. So it goes, okay, breakfast, I'm gonna give you the choice of broccoli and cauliflower.

You can choose whichever you want. It doesn't matter. They're both healthy. So you choose broccoli or cauliflower, lunchtime, you choose broccoli or cauliflower. Dinnertime. You choose broccoli or cauliflower. Now your brain might be saying, yes, okay, but I want to feel happiness. Now, here's what happens. When you flip your brain into positive, you begin to see that happiness isn't dependent on what you are going to eat.

Your brain can then step above this and go, okay, I do deserve to feel happy. I do deserve to feel looked after. I do deserve all of these other things. How can I get that without turning to food? So one of the ways that I work with my clients and and help people is we do this thing called a two week reboot, and we love our two week reboot and it is essentially two weeks of healthy eating and we set it up.

It's different for everybody, but people have, you know, they know what they're going to do. So they've got their plan, okay, I'm going to eat healthily for two weeks. now they come back after a a week or so, and I say to them, well, how did it go? How did your reboot go? And they will list some things that they did well, but, well, actually, I tell you what, they always tell me the the bad things first.

Oh, I didn't manage to do this. I didn't manage to do that. Now what they don't see is all the good things that they have done, they've made 99 changes. What do they do? They tell me about the one thing they didn't do well. So we work on that because we want to celebrate the 99 other. But also that one thing that you didn't do well, it's not about, okay, I failed and I didn't do this.

It's about looking at it with curiosity, and this is the difference between discipline and negative brain and positive inquiring, finding out and going, okay, so what happened when you did this thing? You ate a. And that is really the information that you really need to move forwards when you explore what I call, we call them golden learning opportunities.

Now, some people might call them mistakes, but I call them golden learning opportunities. Why? Because. They are exactly what helps you to take the next step, and particularly if it's beha behavior that is repeated, that you're doing time and time again. So if it's just a one-off thing, you know, oh my goodness.

I ate a packet of crisps cause I was stranded in the middle of nowhere and it was literally the only food. Okay, that doesn't happen very often, but if it is something that is happening time and time again, these golden learning opportunities are gonna keep bubbling up and they are going to poke you and say you need to pay attention to what's happening.

Now, once you start to get curious, you can start to unravel what's going on, and sometimes it can be what I call a logistical thing. It might be that you are turning to certain foods at certain times of the day because you haven't prepared anything else because you're being let down by how you shop and how you'd prepare food and what you've got in your.

In your cupboard. So that's a logistical problem. But it might also be that there's an emotional thing going on. It's three o'clock in the afternoon, you get home from work, you're feeling tired, you're feeling like you are not being looked after. You're feeling like your emotional needs aren't being met.

And when you really unravel that, you can start to see, okay, I am turning to food because. I don't feel happy and I don't feel like I'm being looked after and I don't feel that I have time in the day to to nourish myself. And once you understand that, then the next question is, well, okay, what do you need to put into your day to make that happen so that you do feel happy, that you do feel like you're doing all of these things?

And that is the difference between discipline. and really turning on your positive brain, becoming curious, and helping yourself from a place of positivity and going, okay, this is the fact. I don't need to beat myself up about it. I don't need to judge myself. I just need to understand that I have a human body and a human brain, and this is how my human body and my human brain works.

But right now I'm saying it's time to make changes. I don't want to have this extra weight on me anymore. I want to be. I want to lead a life full of energy and I want to get to this amazing image that I have of me feeling fabulous and really living a long and healthy life so that my friends is the difference between discipline and why discipline is not going to get you.

Discipline and self-control are not going to get you to where you want to get in the long term. Now, is there a place for discipline? Yes, there is. When you do your two week reboot, you are gonna be doing things differently. and you do have to turn on your brain and go, okay, we're gonna do things differently.

We're gonna use a little bit of different discipline, and I'm really gonna keep you focused on that two week reboot. However, you can't do that in the long run. You have to set yourself up so that you enjoy what you're doing so that it's easy for you to do it so that you don't have to make those decisions.

And that idea of setting yourself up for success comes in every single aspect of your. So your emotional wellness, your exercise. I love exercise, but I still have to set myself up for success. Not all the time. In the summer, it's really easy for me to go swimming in the sea. In the winter, swimming in the sea is a little bit cold and I have to think about different things now.

Luckily, I really love exercise, so it's easy for me to go and find that that time whenever I possibly can. But this is the difference between negative self-talk, beating yourself up. and hey, let's make this happen in a way that I can really, really enjoy. And that is essentially the work that I do with my clients.

And you know, if you want to come and talk to me about how I can help you move forwards with this, I would love to have a chat. And in fact, right now I have what I call the get unstuck chat. What is that? That is looking at why you feel stuck, why you aren't moving forwards, why you. Aren't getting the results that you want.

So you may be getting results just not as quickly as you want. Or you may just feel stuck in a rut, like, oh my goodness, I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this. I know it's my negative self-talk. I know it's emotional eating, but I can't make progress. And you know what? If you can't make progress, stop beating yourself up about it because that's your negative.

Getting help is not a sign of weakness. It's not a sign that you are a failure. It's one of those things. In fact, we all learn things from other people. We go to school, we go to university. Whatever job you do, you trained to do that job and somebody taught you how to do it, and you didn't see that as a weakness.

So being trained on how to use your brain and your emotions is not weakness. It is a really good idea and one that I really suggest that. Open up to thinking about, so the get unstuck chat is really looking about where you are and why you're stuck and having a think about, well, what's possible when you get unstuck?

Oh my goodness. Where can you get to? And of course we will chat about how I can support you if you want to do that. . So I invite you to have a get unstuck chat. And I know this is something that is gonna require discipline in that you have to make a decision to do something different and your brain will go, don't make me do something different.

I don't like different. Well, I tell you what the thing about different is. It's only different for a small period of time. It's a bit like friends, you know, I've got some children. Some of my children are really very wary of new people. They don't like new people because they're not friends. And I'm like, well, how do you become friends with somebody?

You start saying hello to them and then you go and, well, if your kids play in the park or something like that, but it starts with doing something slightly different. And then you've said hello to them a few times and then you meet them in a different place and then they're your friends. , and it's the same with different things.

Book Your Get Unstuck Chat here: https://bookme.name/drorlena/get-unstuck-2023 

You do something differently a few times, and then it stops being different. It just starts being normal and your brain is like, Hey, this is normal. Let's just do this. Let's chat to Dr. Orlena. It's great Chatting to Dr. Orlenaa is amazing, so I invite you to do something different to step out of your normal routine and to book a call and come and chat to me about getting unstuck.

Have a lovely week and I look forward to talking to you. Bye-bye.