Podcast: Conquering Emotional Eating: The Key Role of Mindset

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. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing and fabulous today. Today I want to talk a little bit about mindset. Hey, that makes a change, doesn't it? What I want to talk about is why my is the foundation of making changes. And I know that I go on and on and on about mindset, but the reason is, is because it's really important.

Mindset is the Foundation of Making Lasting Healthy Changes

And if you don't change your mindset about things, essentially, I. You aren't going to make progress. So for example, it might be that your mindset is saying things like, okay, I can't do this. This is too tough, it's too difficult, it's not gonna work for me. And then along I come and I say to you, Hey, you need to eat slightly differently.

You need to eat in this way. You need to eat me style, diet, which of course is what I'm gonna tell you to eat. And you do that. You start doing that and your voice is saying, okay, it's not gonna work for me. I don't believe this is working. It's hard. I'm depriving myself. Well, if you are saying that, how long is it going to last before you stop doing the MedStar diet and you do something else in instead, or you give up and you get to despondency and overwhelm and all of those things.

On the other hand, if you work on your mindset and you make those changes from, it's not gonna work, I'm depriving myself, or whatever that voice is saying to you and you get to, Hey, I can do this. It's easy, it's fun, or it doesn't even necessarily have to be easy and fun, but I can do hard things. Whatever your mindset is saying to you, Then you can keep going, you can keep going, you can keep going.

There are always going to be obstacles. I was just talking to my son right now, my son, my 13 year old son, he's unwell. He's having problems in life and things that he found easy before walking around de you know, daily living, making breakfast and things like that. He now finds difficult and I say to him, you know what, you need to start getting yourself a glass of water.

Your Mind Creates Obstacles that are Difficult to Overcome

I know it's difficult for you. But you can do hard things and we were talking about the analogy of a baby learning to walk, and so when a baby learns to walk, they get up and they fall down. I don't know how many times we had a debate about how many times, but lots of times, let's just go with lots of times.

Let's go with a thousand times when a baby is learning to walk, they get up, they fall down, they get up, they fall down, they get up, they fall down. But the difference between a baby and somebody else is that baby isn't busy thinking, oh my goodness, I've failed. It's not gonna work. I've fallen down to the baby.

It's just part of life. You get up, you fall down, you get up, you fall down. That's just what happens. And along the way, they learn to walk. It's not like they have this goal and they think, right, I'm gonna learn to walk and this is how I'm gonna do it. No, it's just natural for them. I stand up a little bit.

I fall down, I stand up, I take a step, I fall down. And so it's easy. Without that, those thoughts that are going on, that are going on, that are going on. Here's another analogy for you, gardening. Now, I love gardening for all you gardeners out there, I'm not a great gardener. I, for the first time in my life, I really find myself with a garden that is a reasonable sized garden.

We Judge Ourselves When It Comes to Self Care. What if We Were Talking about How You Look After a Garden?

I've had a postage stamp sized garden previously, and this one is a nice garden. Actually. It was like a plot of. Land a year or so ago, and we paid a gardener to put the garden in, and so it's super fun being able to look after this garden. However, it is really hot here in Spain at the moment and so it's actually quite difficult to find time to look after the garden.

And we've had a few issues. So for example, we have a tiny patch of lawn and it died last year. It turned out that some caterpillars ate it all and then there was no lawn and so I tried re-seeding it. That didn't work very well. And now we have a drought and we're not allowed to water our garden. So we have this big patch of sort of weeds in the middle of my garden and I look around my garden and I think, okay.

I'm trying to take care of this garden, but it's not right happening right now. I do a little bit here and there but I know that I'm gonna do more in, in the autumn when it's a little bit cooler now. I am looking after the garden in the same way that I am looking after my body, or you are looking after your body.

Now the difference is, is when I look at my garden and I think, okay, I need to do more things. I need to do a lot of weeding. Like the weeds just spring up here. It's ridiculous. A tiny splotch of water, and suddenly the whole place is covered in weeds, and I think I weeded that a few weeks ago. Nope. The weeds just come back.

Now, do I beat myself up for not weeding my garden at the moment? No, I don't. I think okay. It would be great if I had time to do it. Right now I've got other things on my plate. I've got a son who's unwell, who's taking up a lot of my time and needs my attention to help him get better. I've got other things going on.

So do I beat myself up and think, oh my goodness, I am a failure because I haven't looked after my garden. Now, the difference is when you are looking after yourself and you think, I don't do this and I don't do that. What's going on in your brain is I'm a failure. I'm not looking after myself. All of those harsh words that are making it more difficult, it becomes very, very emotive.

Whereas if you use the analogy of the gardener and think, okay, I can see. The same thing. I'm looking after my garden. Am I managing to water my plants every single day? Yes. That's great. They're gonna live and be more healthy or no, they're at some stage they're gonna, they're gonna curl up and die cause they haven't got enough water.

But do I think, okay, have I given my plants enough water? Yes, I'm amazing. It's great. Amazing, fabulous. That makes me a worthwhile person. Or no, I'm not watering my plants enough, therefore I am worthless. Do you see the difference? Do you see how your thinking really impacts what you're doing when you're busy beating yourself up and thinking, I can't do it.

It's hard. It's difficult. Guess what? It is hard and difficult and you're just making it more and more difficult for yourself. So mindset is key. Mindset is everything. So to remind you of my four pillars, Healthy eating. I teach the med style diet. I'm happy to tell anybody who wants to listen about what I think about nutrition and how we should eat healthily, but the reality is there's lots of different ways to lose weight.

You can lose weight, you can get healthy with the ketogenic diet if that's what you want to do. It's just not what I teach. I personally don't think it's the healthiest way to do these things. But as I say, we can discuss nutrition for hours and hours on end. Nutrition is a slightly controversial area. In my mind, there are certain things that really stick out as things that are really, really going to help you lose weight and things that are also going to help you be more healthy.

So it's not just about health. Sorry, weight. It's also about health. And plant-based diet, in my opinion, is the way forward. That doesn't mean you don't ever have to eat meat. It means you eat less meat and more plants and more fruits and more vegetables. So pillar number one is healthy eating. Pillar number two is not gonna come as any surprise to anybody.

It's movement and moving your body. Your body needs to be moved every single day, and movement will help you lose weight. It's not really about weight loss. It will help a little bit. It's more about keeping yourself fit and giving yourself energy. Pillar number three is sleep. Sleep is really, really important for both health and weight loss.

I dunno about you, but if I haven't had enough sleep, I'm like an angry bear. Not only am I, I excuse me. Not only am I like an angry bear, but also I notice that I get more hungry and just sort of sit there and eat from that place of, oh my goodness, I. The world is, is not the great place that I want it to be.

And then pillar number four is the emotional wellness. And this is essentially mindset. This is everything that we do to look after our emotions and our mindset. And this is the piece that is the foundational piece, which you really need to work on first. Well, you can work on it together. Healthy eating and mindset together.

If Emotional Eating is An Issue for You, You Need to Look at What’s Driving Your Emotions

But it is super, super, super important. If emotional eating is a problem for you and you don't look at your emotions, nothing is gonna change. You can change the foods that you eat, but you might change chocolate for cookies, or you might change chocolate for cake or chocolate for pretzels. It doesn't matter if emotional eating is there and you don't unravel it and you don't help yourself make steps forwards.

Free Coaching In July

It's just gonna come back. So mindset and looking at your emotions are really the foundational piece. So I hope that was helpful. How can you reframe some of your thoughts to from, I can't do it, to how do I make this easy and fun? And just to remind you that in the month of July, I am offering free coaching sessions on Monday.

I really, really recommend that you sign up and get one of these free coaching sessions. Not only are they super fun, amazing, what I will do is I will send you a link to a test that you can do that really looks at some of those voices in your head, and then when we've got the results of that, we can have a look at it.

Together and really help you make some shifts. So this free coaching session is amazing. The aim of this free coaching session is to help you make some shifts and see what is possible for you and give you some pointers moving forwards. And obviously if you want to talk to me about my services, you're more than welcome to.

But this isn't about me. Telling you about my program, it's really about you getting a breakthrough, an aha moment, and taking another step forward. So I really urge you if emotional eating is something that you know is an issue for you, sign up for one of the free coaching sessions. Okay? Have a fabulous week and I look forward to chatting to you next week.

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.