Say Goodbye to Overwhelm and Hello to Healthy You Podcast Episode 177

 Transcript of Podcast

Hey, Hey, Hey, Dr. Orlena here. I hope you are feeling fabulous today. Okay. It is Friday and this week I have made an amazing, amazing discovery. Somebody showed me this thing called chartable and I looked at my podcast and Hey, do you know what I have? 22 5 gold stars. Thank you everybody who has left gold.

Wonderful Reviews of the Fit and Fabulous Podcast

And some amazing, amazing reviews that have been there for months, months, months. And I just didn't know about them. I think what chartable does is it gets all the reviews from all over the places like on iTunes and Spotify and wherever else you may be listening and it puts them all in one place. So thank you.

If you have left me a review. And if you haven't please go and leave me a review because it will really, really help me get seen by other people. But I just want to read a couple out and here is one that I absolutely love. Now, I don't know who wrote these reviews because they don't leave their names. It just says.

Someone, I don't know, anyhow, but it says:

“Actually helped me lose weight. Dr. Orlena knows her stuff. Not only have I lost 50 pounds since January,”

(this was written in last August)

“but I've started to really have loads of fun with my workouts, meals and routines, ice cream, no longer calls my name every night at midnight.

And I can easily order food. I enjoy at restaurants was knowing how to truly live life as a healthy 30 year old. Thank you for the inspiration Dr. Orlena.”

Well amazing just by me showing up and chatting. I'm so, so excited. Here's another one.

“Dr. Orlena is a great guide helping with overall health and wellness, along with focusing on habits that will help you feel better in all aspects of life.”

Please Leave a Review for Me!

Thank you so much people who have left reviews. And as I say, if you haven't, please, please take a few minutes to leave reviews. I know it's not always easy to leave reviews. I know on apple iTunes, it's kind of like, you have to jump over these hoops and things like that, but if you could, I would be so, so, so grateful.

What is Overwhelm?

Okay today, what do I want to talk to you about? I want to talk to you about overwhelm. What is overwhelm? Overwhelm is an emotion. We love emotions here. Don't we? And what is this? Emotion of overwhelmed. Well, here's another question, hands up. If you have ever felt overwhelmed. And I know by talking to my clients and other people that so many people do feel overwhelmed.

We Feel Overwhelm when Too Much is Going on

I know I feel overwhelmed when all four of my children are trying to talk to me at the same time and I am trying to listen to one of them. And yet the others are talking. That is when I feel overwhelmed. Now for you, you might feel overwhelmed when you think about, I want to lose weight and it feels like there is so much to do so many things to, to take care of.

Overwhelm Makes us Feel Paralysed to do Anything

I know I need to do this. I need to fix my healthy eating, and I need to do this, and I need to do better meal times and I need to do so many things. I need to do exercise. I need to get to sleep. I need to do this. I need to do that. So when do we feel overwhelmed? We feel overwhelmed when we feel like we have got too much on our plate and it puts us in this place of feeling paralyzed as if we can't do anything.

It's like when I go back and think about my children, it's like, hang on a minute. If you all stop talking and we talk one at a time, then I can address one of your problems and then I can move on to the next one. And the next one now, so easy to say, but yes, all my kids want to be heard. And at the same time now, overwhelm is.

What's the word I'm looking for paralyzing. It really paralyzes you because it makes you feel like you can't do anything. You might make one little change and there's still a big, big, big heap of little changes to make. So what I would say to you is, well, what is the cure for. And I think the cure is to take a step back and have a look at everything.

It Feels Like there is No Simple Solution to Our Problems.

One of the things that I really think as I talked to my clients, is that everything is connected and I have broken the system down so that it is really easy. So for example, it might be that you're not eating healthily at a particular type of. So quite often, I see that this is that afternoon lull people get, you know, morning time is okay, work.

And then by 3.30, people are beginning to feel tired, stressed, and this is sort of a change of energy at that time. Now what is going on at that? It might be that various things are accumulating. So stress levels are going up because Hey, you have to go and collect your kids or something like that. Or, Hey, I now have to cook dinner and this is causing me to be stressed.

So when I chat to people and say, okay, we're going to go through everything that you're eating. Oh my goodness. 3.30 is often, often the crux time. And when we really delve into it, it's not as easy as, Hey, just swap this chocolate for a piece of fruit. It's there are other things going on and impacting these things and it's almost like you have to unravel all of these things.

Hey, you're feeling stressed. How are we going to address your stress? Hey, you're feeling. Tired. What are we going to do about, about feeling tired? So often there is earth knock-on effect. It's not just one thing. So the feeling of overwhelm is because, you know, there is more than one thing to do that there isn't just one reason for your overwhelm, but the solution.

Is easy. The solution is to take one step at a time. I'm going to say that again, one step at a time, and that means making one change, another change, another change and keep going. So what does that look like in, in real life? Well, it looks like, Hey, let's have a think about what's going on at three 30 and think about how I can do things different.

Okay. I'm going to make a plan to make things different. And then I'm going to assess my plan. See how it goes. It might be a total disaster. It might be, Hey, I've got the solution first time. And now things have really, really changed. When we break things down into bite sized pieces. It feels. Much much, much more manageable.

How to We Move Forward when We Feel Overwhelmed?

So instead of going, oh my goodness, I have to change everything all at once. If I just have a plan of action to keep me going forward. And one that I know that is suitable for my life, then I know that I can take action. So if you're wondering about. How to take action? Well, number one, if you haven't already got my book, go and buy my book and it will walk you through the systems that you need to create the habits, the systems, and the routines, and it is available.

Use the Framework in my Book Building Simple Habits to a Healthy Me

Sadly. I don't think it's available in the UK at the moment as paperback. I don't know something's going on with Amazon UK, and it just says. No longer in stock, which I think is just a distribution problem to be perfectly honest, but in other places you can order it building simple habits to a healthy meat.

And it is the framework that I use with my clients to help them with this exact problem of feeling overwhelmed and how to take action. And how to keep taking action. And it's all about, Hey, guess what? Building up habits. So that simple habits so that you can get to this place where you are leading a healthy life and you're watching weight fall off and you're feeling energized and feeling, Hey, I love my life and you know what, I'm really going to emphasize this.

Take One Step at a Time

Hey, I love my life. Because another thing that I see is people may say to me, yeah, I've got this busy, busy life actually. I don't really like my job and all of these things, man, on top, they get to this big, big pile of everything and you feel paralyzed. I can't change these things because I need to change my job and I need to change this and I need to change that.

Okay. We're not going to sort out your job situation in half an hour, but once you've started making changes in other areas in your life, you can get to the stage where you think, okay. I do want to change my job or do you know what actually I'm enjoying my job now because I have more energy to give to my job and all of a sudden aspects of my job that I like and certain aspects that I don't like, but I'm going to choose to stay here or I'm going to choose to change it.

But when you have all, all the things going on, it just feels like this drain of, oh my goodness. Really can't deal with this right now. And I feel trapped and I feel like I can't make any steps going forward. So if you're feeling like, oh my goodness, Dr. Lena, you're talking my language. I want to make all of these changes and I need some support.

Building Healthy Habits is a Bit Like Gardening

Then feel free to message me because I still have two places in my healthy, you healthy family program. So in June I'm going to offer two places. And perhaps one of them is for you have. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about today was habits and this idea of habits and building habits. And I it's spring hair.

I've got my lovely new garden, which my, we had it. Like, if you don't know, we just did up our house. And so my garden was basically a patch of scrub land and now we've had a garden put in, so it's got lots of lovely new plants, but I live in Spain and. The garden is here in Spain, like to do sort of gravel and keep things not so planted.

So there's lots of gravel and Hey, guess what? There's weeds coming through the gravel. And I keep going around and picking out these weeds and thinking these weeds they're growing so so quickly. And my other plants, well, some of them are growing, but some of them not so quickly. And obviously because it's hot here, we've had to put in water system so that the plant.

Grow. And I noticed that a long way the water system is, Hey, that's where the weeds want to grow. Now, why am I telling you about weeds and gardening? Because essentially they are an analogy for habits. So those weeds are habits that I don't want. So I'm intentionally going to go and pick those weeds out.

And I am going to plant the plants that I want. I'm going to plant different plants, where those weeds. Now to begin with now, obviously you have to continually pick out the weeds, but as I, the more I weed, the less, I need to do it because I'm going to replace them with bigger plants. And so those big plants are going to take over and yes, I still have to come and pick out the weeds from time to time, but not so much because the bigger plants will get stronger.

I hope I'm making sense. I hope you enjoy gardening. I totally love it. Well, my gardening is literally five minutes of picking out the weeds, but you can see I'm picking out the bad habits and I am focusing on leaving in the nice plants I'm putting in more light, lovely plants. In fact, I'm going to go and buy some lovely plants this weekend and put them in my garden.

My garden has said, there's enough plants. You don't need any plants. And I'm like, do you know what? I think the space for more so. Habits alike, gardening. You need to be constantly picking out the bad habits and focusing on the good habits and you get to a stage where the good habits are, just what you do.

Enjoy Creating Healthy Habits

Because you love doing them because you've been intentional in creating them. So in a year's time, I'm going to look at my garden and it's going to be full of flowers. And I will think, wow, isn't this garden amazing a garden that is full of flowers and not full of weeds because I have been intentional in looking after my.

Okay, lovely people. I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast. I hope you are feeling less overwhelmed and inspired three things for you to do. Leave a review on my podcast. Number two, go and buy my book, building simple habits to a healthy me. And number three, if you are standing there ready going. Hey, Dr. Orlena , I'm really interested in working with you and having your support then message me. And we will have a chat, have a fabulous week and I will be back next week.

More Podcast Episodes You’ll Love

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Episode 98: How Alexis Transformed her Life to Fit and Fabulous

Episode 134: How to Make Weight Loss Easy After Menopause

Written By Dr Orlena

Dr Orlena Kerek (MBChB from the University of Bristol, UK) trained as a pediatric doctor. She is now a family health coach. She helps busy mums who want to feel amazing by eating healthy food, enjoy a healthy life, get back into their honeymoon shorts and teach their kids healthy habits all without thinking about it.

Want support and help in your weight loss journey?

Book a chat with Dr Orlena: https://bookme.name/drorlena/emotional-eating