Podcast: Positively Healthy Weight Loss Workshop

Transcription of Podcast

Please note this transcript is computer generated. There may be some mistakes. I hope you find it useful.

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. Today we are doing something different. So last week I did a workshop called Positively Healthy Weight Loss with ease and flow, and it's all about your brain and your mind and how your mind can make it more difficult or make it easy for yourself, and how to change between the two of them.

And it's an amazing workshop. It had fabulous feedback, and so I want to share it with you. So today's episode is a little bit longer than normal. It's about 45 minutes. I'm giving you the recording of the workshop. Now, obviously this was a presentation so you can't see the slides. If you want to see the slides, it's still in the Facebook group, or you can sign up and get the replay.

But here we go. Here is the workshop today. Positively healthy weight loss with ease and flow. I'm super excited about this. What are we talking about? We are talking about letting go of stress. Hands up if stress is a big issue and helps you, helps you emotionally eat. So really letting go of that stress and stepping into a place of ease and flow.

And one thing that I would like to say before we get started is you can change your mind and you can change your brain. And I'm going to explain to you how to do this. I'm gonna lay it all out for you today.

 

So just a little quick introduction to me. So hello old friends and hello new friends. I'm Dr Orlena. I trained as a pediatric doctor in the uk. I have four children. You can see them in the background including picky eaters, written a few books, podcast. What I'm really about is easy and fun and routines and habits, and I'll explain a little bit more about this as we go. This is the book that I wrote last year, building Simple Habits to a Healthy Me.

Now what I would really love you to do, the blue slides are action taking steps for you, and I would love you to write in the comments or if you are in the Facebook replay as well, hashtag replay and put these in the comments. But I'd love to know your name, your role, and something that we don't know about you.

Here's the problem. This is where you are right now. You are on that side where the big red arrow that is you, and this is where you are. You turn to food for comfort. You know it doesn't help, but you can't break the cycle. You want to make healthy choices and exercise, but it just feels like a chore or difficult right now.

You want a healthy lifestyle to be normal, but you feel too busy to figure it out. So that is what's happening right now, or some combination of that, some. Something that your brain is telling you, we'll dive into that as well. So the question for you, another blue slide. What are your struggles? What do you feel is going on such that you can't make these changes?

And I think it boils down to struggle, overwhelm, frustration, some negative emotion. This is where you want to get to the other side of the canyon. At the other side of the canyon, you have a good relationship with food and you watch your weight till your gut go down. You know how to deal with your emotions so that you are not turning to food for comfort.

Healthy choices and exercise feel like something natural. You just do them without thinking about it. It's just normal life. You enjoy your healthy lifestyle and you watch your energy levels go up and you're confident knowing that you're doing everything that you can to lead a long and healthy and vibrant life.

So hands up if that sounds like what you want. Easy, automatic fun. Now the issue is getting from A to B. Like it sounds really easy when I say it. Hey, let's just do all these, build up these habits. But the reality is a little bit difficult. So the big question that we're asking today is how do you get across?

How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? And this is the bit that I call the rickety bridge. There's a rickety bridge going over that huge great canyon. And the problem with the rickety bridge is it's scary, it's difficult. It relies on willpower, and it's easy to fall off. And when I say easy to fall off, what I mean in reality is life happens.

Life is always busy. Life ain't, and then you go back to those old. Habits, the way of thinking, the way of being, the way of eating. All of those things just pinging back and it feels so demoralizing and like nothing is going to work. So before we dive in to understanding how your mind works, please turn off distractions, be present in listening.

This is, this is really amazing. This is really gonna change your life and it's a really important operating system that I have found. I'll tell you more about it, but that I have found in the last few months and it really just fell into everything that I teach, taught, and was such an easy operating system that I'm excited to share it with you.

So here's a little bit about my personal story. I went from stress doctor, working ridiculous number of hours. Exercise phobic to loving exercise. I love exercise. I always talk about exercise that likes you up from feeling tired and grumpy and overwhelmed, and all of those negative emotions to feeling amazing.

Now, I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm a human. It's not like my life is perfect and everything always happens to plan. No, of course not. But I have the tools to deal with life and the things that life throws at me. And I think really what I call my golden moment. My golden opportunity was a few years ago, several years ago, I went to the, the gp, the family doctor.

I can't, to be honest, I can't even remember why I went, but I had a high, and they did some random blood tests for like, I. That weren't really indicated and they did the high, the hba one C is your glyco, my goodness, I can't speak Glycosylated hemoglobin. And it shows how much sugar is in your blood basically.

And mine was high. And I was just like, oh my goodness, you're kidding. Like I lead a healthy life. I exercise what is going on? And it was really a bit of a wake up call for me. As I say, that was several years ago. And this is what I call my life of luxury. This is the life that I lead. Now. I swim well, I live near the Mediterranean Sea.

I swim in the summer every single day. This is actually taken in the autumn. I go cycling with my friends. This is the kind of life that now you don't have to do these things. It's not about like doing what I say. If you don't like swimming, don't worry. If you don't like cycling, don't worry. But the point is, it's built into my life and I love these things and I enjoy these things.

It's not like, oh my goodness, I push myself to. To do these things, I just do them because these are the highlights of my day, so, Oh my goodness. I can't see. I can't see the slide. Okay. What it says is you are invited to send me a friend request and message me so that if you are on Facebook, we can keep in contact.

Facebook makes it really difficult for people to contact each other unless they're friends. So this will really help you stay in contact and listen to all the things that I, I have to offer you to help you change your life. So the big question that we're addressing here today is how do you get from here?

To there. How do you get from where you are right now to leading this healthy life? The weight falls off thinking about your mindset and emotions, and it's all just easy. So today you are going to understand how your mind works. You'll go and understand how your negative brain makes it basically impossible for you to make consistent changes, changes that stick, how your positive brain makes it fun, and how to turn off your negative and turn on your positive brain.

My gift to you, I will tell you at the end of the of the workshop. So step number one, and this step is really, really important. This is your motivation. Without motivation, you are not going to do anything. So step number one is really creating your health and wellness vision. And it's not just thinking about, yeah, I want to avoid this illness and I want this.

It's really bringing it to. Your vision needs to catch fire because as I say, this is your motivation. If I say to you, Hey, I'm gonna transform your life and we're gonna do all of this stuff, and you're just like why? Why do I wanna do this? Then you are not gonna make the changes. So really getting clear on what is possible for you and why you should make changes is your first step.

So I would like you to have a think about this now and have a think about what do you look like. What do you feel like having lots of energy and waking up and thinking, yeah, I've got energy. Now I'm not saying that you wake up and you jump outta bed and you've got 12 outta 10 energy all the time.

Obviously, in your day there are fluctuations. But thinking about what are your energy levels like normally, what can you do? What do you want to do? What are you thinking and feeling? And so really helping this come to life. Is gonna help you take the next steps. So have a think about that, put that in the comments.

And if you are watching the Facebook replay or on Facebook Live, do the same thing. So here are some amazing, positive emotions, confident. You don't have to have all of these, but pick some of the ones that really resonate for you. Confident, proud, full of energy, avoiding illness activities that you can do.

Happiness, calm. Balance, joyful, free. I can't read the next two chats in the way. Content. Not content. Content. Excited, focused. So have a think about some of these and think what is it that I want in my life? And then think. How is your life better? How is your life better? That you've got all of these things?

What knock on effects does it have as the more clarity you can get on creating this vision, the more you are gonna feel motivated to make change. Another question, how does this affect other people in your life? So perhaps you are a parent and you know you demonstrating healthy living is gonna have a knock on effect for your kids because they're gonna grow up healthy.

Having healthy habits, perhaps you're caring for somebody in your life. And how does that help them? Well, if you have more energy and more excitement, more patience, then you are gonna turn up to them in a better and more helpful way, or perhaps your work. It's gonna have a knock on effect for people in your work influence.

So step number two is to have a system that works for you. It has to work for you, otherwise it doesn't matter. So I'm just gonna quickly tell you my four pillars. I'm not gonna go into my four pillars in this talk. If anybody wants any extra information about any of these pillars, please feel free to reach out.

I've got so much resources, but this isn't, I don't wanna go through all of these pillars today. So pillar number one is healthy eating, healthy, healthy eating that you enjoy. Pillar number two is exercise that lights you up. Pillar number three is delicious, healthy sleep. Pillar number four is emotional wellness, and that includes stress, that includes emotional eating and mindset.

And that's the bit that we are going to be we are going to be focusing on today. Now, I would say all four pillars are important and that you want to be creating strong habits and systems and routines in all four pillars so that when life happens and life always happens, Fat, those pillars say strong.

So for example, healthy eating, hands up, who has such a strong pillar or doesn't have such a strong pillar so that when life happens, emotional eating or not eating. So healthily is the first thing that falls apart and I notice there's so much with people, life happens. And then the old habits flip back.

I'm just going to mute someone or can I just ask you all to mute yourselves? Because there's a little bit of feedback coming in. So where you want to be is that the healthy eating is so natural to you that whatever happens in your life, you carry on healthy eating. Not like life happens. I get stressed about this big family events, people being unwell, whatever it is.

Okay? That happens. I get stressed. I stop healthy eating. I start turning to food for comfort. That's where you don't want to be. So hurray. Hurray. It's so easy. I've just laid it out for you. This is just what you need to do. You just need to carry on doing this so easy. I know it sounds easy, but life is busy lifeing, and this is the problem.

It's like where I love this image. It's amazing, isn't it? It's like we've got all these spinning plates and it's all fine. When you are spinning the plates, you are balancing, but then, oh my goodness, one of the plates dropped and they all just come tumbling down. And I know that that's how it feels. It feels like this ridiculous balancing act, and we don't want it to feel like a ridiculous balancing act.

Your brain is busy saying, it's not gonna work. I haven't got time for this. It's too hard. I've tried it before. Now everybody has a slightly different. Thing that they want to say, I haven't got time. It's too hard. I've tried it before. I want to eat cake. So the question I want you to have a think about blue sign, what does your brain say to you?

What is it? What is that recurring thing that your brain says to you that is making it more difficult for you to implement these changes? And what we want to talk about today is instead of punishing yourself, instead of depriving yourself, instead of using discipline and making it hard, What I want to show you is that weight loss can, and healthy living can be fun and easy when you know how everything's easy, when you know how.

And as one of my clients, Meg says, it was surprisingly easy. So where you want to get to is asking this question, how can I make this work for me? So today we're gonna understand your negative brain. Your positive brain, how to change between the two, and then think about how you can apply this to healthy amazing you.

So I.

Mindset journey, I would say. So we moved to Spain. I'm from the uk. I moved to Spain in 2011, and when I moved to Spain, I moved to Spain for lifestyle reasons. I thought it would be amazing and we'd live on holiday and all of these things. Some of that was true, but part of it I thought I was just gonna come across and be in Europe and work and it would be really easy.

And actually it wasn't as easy as I thought it was gonna be. And I basically accidentally lost my career. And this was a really big thing for me. It was like losing my identity. And I found myself with four kids under the age of four. And I decided I was gonna try and build a business, but my, I didn't know anything about building a business.

Oh my goodness. But what I could see was my brain just being in this sort of like turmoil and I. Basically got into this negative vortex. I would have days where, oh my goodness, something didn't work. It would just ricochet off. You know? I would waste my entire morning just being in this negative mindset of, it's not working.

It's not working. How do I make this work or not make this work? It's just like frustration and overwhelm. And what was even worse was my husband was working and I would go and basically destroy his morning. 'cause I'd be like, oh, I'm just ranting and raving. And I really realized that. I could see myself parenting my kids in a way that I didn't want to parent my kids, you know, like grumpy and upset and everything.

Just being far too much work. You know, I've made this big statement in life. I'm gonna move to Spain and live my dream life. But actually, I. That was only true on the outside and not true on the inside. And at that stage I really decided, okay, I need to do something about this. And from there I really looked at a lot of self-help books and you know how you can change your mind and really get to grips with, okay, what's going on inside?

And really did a lot of work on myself. I learned to love myself. I learned to look after myself. I remember it was difficult at times. You know, I've got four kids and I decided I was gonna go swimming and that I had to do yoga, and I really had to force myself to do these things. It was almost like I couldn't give myself permission to look after myself.

At that stage, I. And I started enjoying looking after myself as well. And you know, my one yoga session a week really became like this highlight of my week. I give myself permission to neither be a mother or building my business. I'm gonna go and do some yoga. And it was so relaxing and so amazing. And equally with swimming.

I remember when I started swimming I had four young kids and they would be jumping all over me, and I loved that to a certain extent. But also it was this very triggering, like when kids get really close to you, you feel like you're being attacked and being able to swim in a swimming pool and have nobody in my lane was just like, oh my goodness.

45 minutes of bliss and not feeling like someone's gonna jump on me or elbow me or kick me, or something like that. So it was this transformation that I went through. And as I say, it was the, the four pillars. So I so told these. Now what I want to tell you about today is this concept of negative and positive brain.

And this is based by a gentleman called Riz Kain, who's done a lot of research on how the brain works, and he has a book called Positive Intelligence, which is a really interesting book And the negative brain is very much about survival. So it's about keeping yourself safe. It's very, very focused and it's great in an emergency.

And one thing I would say, you know about it being very focused is when I see my kids arguing, my kids argue and when they're upset with each other, and you can see they turn on their negative brain, but they are so focused on each other that they don't see anything else around that. So I might be saying excuse me.

Excuse me. Excuse me. They have, they, they, I'm just not in their brain. They're so fixated on the other person, and this is what your negative brain does. It really narrows down your focus of vision and all you are focused on is that one problem in front of you. Now, I'm sure you've all heard of your negative brain, and everyone talks about, you know, running away from a tiger and thinks like that.

But the thing is, it's obvious to see when it's negative, negative brain. I'm really upset. I'm cross, I'm grumpy, I'm shouting. I'm running away from a tiger. But what we don't see is the more mundane things that are happening on a daily basis. Oh, I'm stuck in traffic. Oh my goodness. The supermarket round of my favorite, whatever it is.

These little things are still negative brain, and it's the same process. It's just not so obvious. Your negative brain is very much about push, push, push, discipline, depriving yourself. Really this going at it. I'm gonna set myself this task, I'm gonna do it, and if not, I'm a failure. So, and it creates this negative vortex that I was talking about when I gave you the example of me.

So it may resolve the problem, it can sometimes resolve the problem, but it doesn't always solve the problem. I look at my kids, they end up arguing with each other. They totally lose track of the problem. Like, I don't know what movie are they gonna watch? For example, they get shouty and they yell at each other and do they solve what movie they're gonna watch?

No, they don't. They just end up shouting and screaming at each other and it creates stress and it makes the problem worse. Now, I'll tell you more about these in a minute, but basically your negative brain is made up of the judge and nines. How do we know this? The gentleman that I told you about, he did a lot of what's called Oh my goodness, my brain is not working.

I want to say data analysis, that's not quite the right word, but they basically did a lot of research and looked at people and it's like when you've got colors, so you know there's about a thousand colors, but when you take kicked down to their root cause there's only three of them. And they did the same thing with saboteurs and found these different patterns and it turns out that there is the judge and nine accomplice, and I'll you more about those in a minute.

Positive brain. Is different and it still gets things done, but it gets them done from a place of excitement and positive energy, and this is a much better place to be. So if we apply positive brain to weight loss, emotional eating, Mel melts away because once you are in that positive brain and the positive brain is really happiness and joy and excitement, contentment.

There is no emotional eating because you're not feeling those negative emotions that are driving that desire to eat for emotional reasons. You create a healthy lifestyle that you love and is easy to maintain because you've used your positive brain to figure out how that healthy lifestyle fits with your, your busy lifestyle.

You stay on track, motivated, inspired, and obstacles become what we call golden learning opportunities or gifts. So really, instead of getting derailed, oh my goodness, I set myself this task to not eat chocolate for two weeks, but on day three, I ate some chocolate instead of like beating yourself up and going, oh my goodness, I'm hopeless, I'm useless.

I can't do anything. Just thinking about it and being curious and going, oh, so well, what was happening there and why? Why did this happen and how can I change that next time? So an example, I swim in the sea every single day. When I'm tired, I have to get up at six 15 to swim in the sea. Every single day when I'm tired, my negative brain says, oh, I don't wanna get up.

But then my negative brain, one of my saboteurs is the hyper achiever, which I'll tell you about in a bit. But it says, oh, you're not allowed to ever take a day off. You have to go every single day. There's no rest for you. Push, push, push, push, push. My positive brain says, I know you're tired, but you know that when you get up and you go swimming, you really love it.

You really enjoy it, and you feel invigorated afterwards. And so that's the difference between negative and positive brain. As I say, they can have the same outcome. It could be that I choose to listen to my negative brain and I go swimming anyhow, and I'll probably let go of my negative brain and enjoy it anyhow.

But if you are always listening to your negative brain, you get that resentment and thinking, oh, I don't wanna do this. As opposed to if you step into positive brain and think, I remember all the good reasons why I'm doing this, you, you enjoy it. So here's a picture of me diving underneath the rock. So let's dive a little bit deeper into the negative grain.

And I want you, as we listen to this, to think about what are your main saboteurs, your main things that aren't helping you, and what can you see that they say to you, and what are the consequences of that? So the first one is the judge. And the judge basically says, I don't like this. And it's not just like, Hmm, okay, I can take it or leave it.

It's the ne there's a negative emotion attached to it. I don't like it, and I can feel a negative emotion. Now we can judge different things. We're very good at judging ourselves, hands up, who has ever judged themselves and found themselves failing. I set myself this goal and I didn't achieve it, or I'm hopeless, or whatever it is.

So we are very, very good at judging ourselves. We also judge other people hands up who's ever been guilty of judging other people. Now the third thing that you can judge is your situation as well, and you, you can judge a situation. So thinking of my own life at the moment, my son is unwell. I don't like that.

I really don't like that my judge says I don't like that situation. But the problem with not liking a situation is it creates stress and puts you in a negative frame of mind, and that isn't a helpful place to be to help somebody. So essentially bottom line is it says, I don't like it. So there are nine saboteurs and I'm gonna rattle through these quickly.

So, and as I say, put your hands up if you notice these in yourself. Victim. A victim blames everybody else. I have some victim mindsets in my family, so, oh, it's mommy's fault. I don't know. I'm not even there. What are you blaming me for? Like, there's some reason that my son gets upset in the morning about putting his shoes on, but it's clearly my fault.

That is the victim mentality. Hypervigilant is, and I think parents have a bit of hypervigilance in them because we're so used to looking around for danger for our kids, and that's okay, but it's when it's too much. So looking for danger. Being worried about danger, but is is not a probability.

Hyper-rational. Hyper-rational is a really interesting one, and it's when you use your hyper-rational brain. So it's useful to have a hyper to have a rational brain, but when you use it to try and apply it to things that aren't rational decisions. So I put my hand up and say, I'm a hyper-rational person, and the way I see this is my children have big emotions.

And I try and solve that from a rational. Place, which doesn't help. They're in big emotions. They need to go through those emotions, and me trying to solve it for them doesn't help. So being hyper-rational in an emotional situation isn't gonna work. Restless. Restless is, you know, when you want to move on and do something else, you do something for a little bit, you get bored.

You want to do something else? A stickler. A stickler is somebody who likes things to be done in a particular way. So my husband is a bit like this when it comes to washing up. He likes washing up to be done in the way that he likes washing up to be done. Does it matter how it gets done just as long as the job gets done?

Well for him, yes it does. Controller. I also put my hand up to controller, particularly when it comes to my kids. So trying to control an a situation. Pleaser somebody who puts other people's needs before themselves because they want to please somebody. So it is good to please people, but not to the extent that you find yourselves doing things that you don't want to do in order to please somebody.

Avoider. Oh my goodness. My daughter avoiding cleaning her bedroom. She hates it. She hates it. She'll do anything to avoid it. So anytime we avoid something, and hyper achiever is somebody who sets themselves really high goals, much higher than they set for other people. And it's almost like there's like a secret goal that only they know about.

I was talking to one of my clients recently and she came to a coaching session and said, Oh, I've only lost one pound this week. And I was like isn't that your goal? And then we laughed about it. But there is this, you know, instead of saying, Hey, I've reached my goal, that's amazing, that's fabulous, which is really gonna spur me on to do some more.

It's like, oh my goodness, I've just reached my goal. There's a secret goal that only she knows about. So, To, to think about your saboteurs, to understand that part of your saboteur is helpful. These are your strengths as well. So, you know, being rational, being a pleaser, all of these worked in your favor, but they go a little bit beyond that and they tip over into the negative, and that's when they become your saboteurs.

So yes, they have strengths associated with them, but they become saboteurs when they're working against you, basically. Now, one thing I would say is they hide. We are so used to them that we don't notice them. They're just like how our brain thing works with, that's just, that's just us, right? So they hide and we don't often notice them, and they do tell the truth.

They do say things that are true. But they generate these negative emotions, which don't help us. Negative. Negative emotions are not helpful. Now, I'm not saying, oh my goodness, we just have to pretend that we don't have negative emotions. But hanging on to negative emotions is not helpful. There's an analogy that a negative emotion is a good thing.

It's an indication. So think of it like putting your hand into a hot flame. You want the negative emotion to say, Hey, you've put your hand in a hot flame. That's great. It's giving you a signal about something, but what you don't want to do is hang onto it. You don't want to keep your hand in the flame 'cause that's clearly going to cause you pain.

So how do you know if you're a negative brain? And the answer is because you are feeling negative emotions. So it's really useful to get curious and start thinking about, okay, I'm seeing these negative emotions, what's going on? I'll give you an example from my life. Recently we had some people who came to stay with us and it's obviously lovely to have people to stay with us.

But this gentleman who stayed, was cooking in our small kitchen, well, our kitchen's not small, but like creating lots of smoke in the kitchen and me thinking, oh, this is really frustrating. I don't like the way he's cooking. I. And then thinking, okay, that isn't a negative emotion. I'm feeling frustrated.

I'm feeling a bit like, Hmm, about this. And really having a look and being able to reframe it and thinking, but we're seeing our friends and this is a small price to pay for having our friends to stay. So really just being aware that is a negative emotion and what's going on underneath it. So the other thing I would say about negative brain quite often when you are in negative brain is you want to stay there.

I see my kids in negative brain and they're like, oh, cross and angry. And I'm like, Hey, do you want some help? You know, you, you are upset. Do you want some help? And the answer is no. I don't want some help. I just want to be in my negative brain. I want to shout and scream. And so that is the first stage. Is that when we are there, we are quite happy, just like kicking off.

Obviously as we strengthen our positive brain, our positive brain takes control and goes, actually, let's get outta this, this negative cycle. Your negative brain also tells you that you can't live without it. Your negative brain will say, it's much better to do this by discipline. Look, look where I've got you.

You need discipline. You need this drive to get me where you've got, look, look, look what I've achieved for you so far. Now, some of that is true, but what it's not telling you is there's a better, easier way to do it. You can still reach your goals, but without the push, the hardness, the, oh my goodness, I have to make this happen.

So let's flip over a little bit and think about your positive brain and your positive brain has five. They did that. It's called factor analysis, brain factor analysis, where they looked at, you know, people in their positive brain and realized that there are basically five powers of your positive brain.

Now, the first one is empathy. To have empathy with yourself, with other people, and really be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes or your own shoes. Think of yourself kindly. Explore. Explore is to get curious to un try and understand what's going on. So when we are thinking about that from a healthy eating point of view, when you eat chocolate and you don't want to eat chocolate, just explore the idea and think, Hey, what's going on?

A client that I had once was coming back from work and she would stop at a garage and eat chocolate. Now she was a dentist and she knew this isn't a great way for me to be losing weight, but it was really understanding what's going on and. How can I change this? And what she decided was, you know, after work I feel tired.

I feel like I need to use a reward. I'm using chocolate as a reward. And so just understanding all of that helps you to make changes. I. Innovate. Innovate is about being creative and using your creative brain and coming up with different ideas and different things that you want to do. Navigate is your sense of who you are, your internal compass of what's important to you, what you value in your life, and action is taking action.

Now. This action is not running around headless chicken action. This is. Shared eye type action like you've looked at this situation, you've decided what is the best thing that you can do and you are actually going to implement and do it from a place of ease and flow, making it easy for yourself. So the analogy really is, you know, thinking about, okay, I'm gonna teach my kids to ride a bicycle.

Am I gonna do it from negative brain? Go, go. You can do this. Oh my goodness, you know, you can do this. That sort of like drive, drive, drive. As opposed to encouraging and, Hey, come on, you can do it. And you can see the difference. Like we don't teach kids to ride a bike by telling them how awful they are.

Why would we teach ourselves to eat healthily by constantly beating ourselves up and telling us how awful we are? It's about stepping into that, encouraging and getting things done state of mind. So just a few other tips about your positive brain. Your positive brain accepts a situation. Now, this is not always easy.

We don't always want to accept a situation. I didn't want to accept that my son was unwell, but if I don't accept it, I waste a lot of energy fighting, fat idea, and using a lot of negative energy to sort of pretend that that's not true, and that isn't a helpful place to be. The other thing your positive brain does is look, looks for gifts in challenges.

And there are different ways of looking for gifts, but really being able to reframe things and think, okay, what positive can come out of this challenging situation? And your positive brain gets the same results or better, but without the stress. So how can you tell which brain it is? Look at your emotions to guide you.

If you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you're in a negative brain. If you're feeling happy, content calm, you are in positive brain. Now, interestingly, there is a tipping point. What I say is our default setting is negative brain, and there's lots of reasons for this. It's basically a survival instinct that it was much more important to take in danger than to think everything is fine.

And so, There is a tipping point that you want to be in your positive brain 75% of the time, and if you are in your breath, positive brain, 75% of your time, you are in that sturdy place as opposed to that place where you can get knocked off. So an example I used to wake up in the morning feeling, oh my goodness, what a lovely day.

This is exciting. Great day. By seven o'clock, I'd had four kids who had jumped on my head. I'm frustrated with one of them. They're frustrated with each other. Oh my goodness. And by seven 15 I'm like, oh my goodness, what a, what a day. And the reason that happens is because my positive brain was not strong enough to be able to withstand the, the connection with other people who are also in their positive brain.

So it's not like, So once you get to that 75%, you are strong enough to maintain it, and things don't tip you off. You just take them in your stride. You don't feel, oh my goodness, I come into contact with somebody and that person derails me, or life derails me because your brain is so strong in that 75%.

So now the question is how do you switch? How do you be in this negative place? You want to in get to positive place, number one, you dial down your negatives. So you need to become aware of all those sabotaging voices and what's going on for you on a daily basis. You dial that down, you dial up your positive sage, powers, the empathy, the navigate, all of those things that I talked about.

And there's a switch, a self command switch. I'll explain the switch in a minute, but it allows you to turn off that negative so that you can step into positive. So my question to you, what could you achieve if you could turn down your negative brain and start to use your positive brain? So going back to those questions at the beginning, what is your brain saying that is making it so difficult to implement healthy eating and healthy living?

If you could turn off that negative chatter, what's possible for you, and I'd like you to have a think about this and put in the comments. So healthy, amazing, you. This is where you want to get to. What are you doing? What does your body feel like? What are you thinking? So this has helped my health amazingly.

Different photos of me swimming, different photos. This is me running. I'm not a natural runner, but I do it and I enjoy it. Not all the time, sometimes. Cycling again. Okay, so let's dive down into how to easily switch to positive. So how do you train your brain to become more positive? And this is, this is about as science as I get, so don't worry.

This is a neuron and I'm sure that you've heard the phrase neurons that fire together, wire together. And this is exactly what is happening in your brain. You, your brain is on this like automatic, something happens, I'm triggered. So that neuron in the middle, something triggers and it can either go to the left.

Negative response or it can go to the positive, positive response. Now, because our brains are so negatively wired, that negative pathway is much, much stronger and it's just automatic, negative, negative, negative. That's how it's going round and round, and what we can do is pause it and allow it to go in the positive.

So building self command and we use something called PQ reps. I'll teach you how to do PQ reps. PQ reps are like going to the gym. They're very, very easy to do. They're much easier than going to the gym. But if I say to you, so you know you want to go and lift up 20 kilograms, how am I gonna get there?

Well, information, you're gonna go to the gym and, and do this, but you have to build it up and build it up. So a PQ rep is intentionally focusing your brain on something that isn't the negative pathway. So you're basically just distracting your brain from something you're choosing to focus on something else.

Now, examples, you can focus on touch, you can focus on sight. You can focus on a sound, but you can focus on something visual. But what you're doing is pausing that pathway, focusing on something else. It's almost like a mini meditation. They're quick, they're easy to do, and they build up. And then you can stop yourself and intentionally of going down that negative pathway and go down the positive pathway.

So let's just spend a few minutes doing a PQ reps just to show you how amazingly easy they are. So the first one we're gonna do is take our fingers and just rub them together. So really focus on your fingers and those little lines on your fingers and focus on. Rubbing them to such a degree that you can feel the different, you can feel those little ridges.

And here's another one. Take your hands and just rub your fingertips together. So you take your fingertips and you rub them down until they come onto the palm of your hand. And just be really aware of fat sensation between your two fingers. This is such an easy thing to do.

Here's another one. I presume that you're sitting down, become aware of the weight, where your body is touching the chair. Just really focus on that weight right now.

And another one, focus on the soles of your feet. See if you can check out every single toe that you have.

Toes are so funny, aren't they? When do we pay attention to our toes? And here's the last one. Put your hands on your chest and just focus on your breathing.

Done. So easy. PQ reps are so easy. So we've done just done five PQ reps there, and you can see that they're so amazingly easy and they're really powerful tool to be able to just go stop, turn off the negative brain. Help me step into positive brain. So thinking about you moving forwards right now and thinking, what can you take from this workshop right now?

You can start to build up the habits of doing PQ reps. When should you do them? Before you eat, if you can p qre, before you eat anything, you can put yourself into positive brain and you can eat to nourish your body as opposed to whatever negative emotion is driving your eating. Now on that, as a side note, combine the PQ reps with mindful eating.

And mindful eating really is slowing down, paying attention to how you are eating. And as I say, PQ rep before and during eating. So you're slowing down and really being mindful of what you are eating. Now your brain might be saying things like, I don't have time and I'm too stressed and I'll do it later.

And I say, which brain do you think that is? Like our brain is constant. We're using our brain to change our brain and your brain, your negative brain is going to start complaining and going I'm really useful. You need to pay attention to me. And I'm saying, no, pay attention to your positive brain. Now I do would just like to point out, I did mention this before and this is a graphic from the Positive Intelligence Program, but this is how lasting positive change.

It happens, it is 20% insight. So today you've had that 20% insight. Unless you've come across positive intelligence before this is probably new to you, but I hope it's opened up a few like aha moments of like, oh my goodness, I can see what's happening now. And 80% of it is mental muscles. So you need to keep going.

You need to keep doing it. It's no good just listening to the workshop and not implementing it. It's a bit like buying a recipe book and not making any of the recipes from it. So how do you apply this to Healthy Living and weight loss? Number one, you use it to create a lifestyle that you enjoy. You create habits and systems and routines so that you don't have to think about it, and you use your mindset key of what are my golden learning opportunities, as opposed to beating yourself up when things don't go perfectly.

So I hope I have inspired you and I hope that you can see that healthy eating can be easy and fun and healthy living can be eating and fun. And it is the key to a long and healthy life and to weight loss in a natural way. This is really the foundational piece. I can tell you how to eat, but until you really sort out this foundational mindset piece, doesn't really make any difference.

Have more energy levels. So my question is, are you ready to transform your life? Now? I said to you at the beginning of the program, the beginning of the workshop, that I had a gift for you. And this is my exciting gift to you. Ooh, look, a nice picture. I'm inviting you to join the pos to have a positively healthy weight loss chat.

Now, I've opened up my calendar and I'll put the link in the let me see if I can do this. Oh, Okay, there's the link. I can't, I I'll do it in a little bit. I'll tell you what, I'll send it out after the after the workshop. But so what's gonna happen is you book, you go to my calendar, you book a a call, and I will send you something called a saboteur assessment.

And it's quite fun. It's one of those fun quizzes and it will tell you what your top three saboteurs are, and we'll look at the results together and you can have a look and see how that is really impacting your life and how it's not helping you get to your goals. And this is totally free and I totally recommend that you take me up on this offer.

So, The link. Now, if you do book a call, I would say please commit to showing up. I'm a real person with real time. If you can't make it, just let me know. And you might be wondering, why do I offer free coaching sessions? And the answer is, I enjoy it. I love seeing people walk away with a different mindset.

It's really a rewarding thing. And I also know that some of those people, not all of them, but some of those people will want to know more about having continued support with me. But you don't have to want to know about continued support for me to be able to book this call. You are more than welcome just to book a call.

So just so that you are thinking, okay, like what do I teach? Here's what continued support looks like. It's about transforming your life from caterpillar to butterfly. You're the same person, you're the same thing, but you've transformed from I can't do it to I can do it, and healthy living and all of those things.

Weight coming off just happens. Without having to think about it, getting to the other side of the chasm. And there are essentially three keys to that. Loving, healthy eating, emotional eating and cravings, or any overeating and mindset and habits. So just a bit about healthy eating it. Really healthy eating goes hand in hand with cravings and emotional eatings.

You need to look at both of them together. And what I teach is plant-based med style diet, anti-inflammatory, good for your biome. Plant-based doesn't mean that you can't eat meat. It means. Plant forwards and essentially it is the healthiest way to eat and lose weight. Talked about that. And so mindset, mindset is this big thing.

And it's really big component of what I talk, how to strengthen your positive brain so that it's your default brain as opposed to the negative brain. And just a little quote from one of my clients who says that she, since joining, she's been able to stay on track towards her goals, which she wouldn't have been able to do if she was doing these things on her own.

So if you're ready to make changes and you want to get to Healthy, amazing, you give me a heck yes. And book a positively healthy weight loss call. Does that show up in the link?

I will.