Podcast: Getting to Healthy Amazing You

Transcription of Podcast

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Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope this is working. I'm trying to livestream onto Facebook and who knows? Fingers crossed it is. Okay. Today I want to talk to you about what it looks like to get to Healthy Amazing You, because I know that so many people are where they are feeling stressed and overwhelmed and thinking, okay, this healthy living idea sounds like exactly what I need to do, but how do I implement it?

Why should you bother making healthy changes?

And more importantly, really why should I bother and that, why should I bother? What does life look like After you've done that, that is what I want, want to chat to you about. So first things first.

Catch up on Mindset Miracles Workshop

If you missed the Mindset Miracles workshop, oh my goodness, it was amazing. Absolutely fabulous. So much amazing feedback from people, people really saying, oh my goodness, I can really see how this simple system applies to me and how I'm busy doing PQ reps. They're really helping with emotional eating, with all the things that are holding me back. So if you missed it, you can watch the videos in the Facebook group or you can sign up and they will send them out to you. And this is what we talked about in the first video we talked about.

Your negative brain and what your negative brain looks like and how it lies to you quite frequently and how it isn't helping you make changes. And we talked about your positive brain and what that looks like. And really, when you get into positive brain, that is the place where. Well, you feel much better.

You feel positive. You feel happy. You feel all of these good things, but also you take action from a place of productivity. You take action from a place of, oh my goodness, this can work from inspiration. So really thinking about being in your positive brain is a fabulous place to make changes. Then on the second day we looked at, okay, so how do you make the change from negative brain to positive brain?

And one thing that we talked about was PQ reps. So if you want to know what PQ reps are, they're super easy. They're so amazing. Go and check out that video. Well, I would recommend that you watch all three of the videos cuz they all sit very nicely together. And in the third video we had a look about, look at what, what is healthy?

How can we apply this to healthy? and weight loss, and that's really what I want to go into a little bit more today. So it might be that right now you know that healthy living really is the answer to your problems. Perhaps you want to lose weight or get healthy or have more energy get into those beautiful, amazing clothes and feel your body move.

Your body really, you know, that you need to apply healthy. because it is the long term answer, but there's a lot of buts and negative thoughts in your brain, or just thoughts in your brain, like realistic thoughts. The thing about your negative brain is they talk about the truth, so it is the truth. You latch onto it.

So, for example, you might be, I asked this question in the Facebook group. Let me see if I can find it. No, I can't find it. Okay. But the question I asked was, what's holding you back? What's stopping you from losing weight? And people came up with answers like food, portion sizes, emotional eating stress, me, all of those things.

What is Stopping you from Getting to Healthy Amazing You?

You’re too busy to get healthy
You’re too tired to get healthy
Now isn’t the right time to get healthy
It feels too overwhelming. It’s too hard to get healthy.

And I think really the way I sum up is these are the main problems that your brain tells you number. You're too busy. You don't have time to do extra things or to make changes. Number two, you are tired and you don't have enough energy to make changes. Number three, you think that now isn't the right time, and this is a really, really big one.

And I think this one is really dangerous because the life is always busy, lifeing, there is never a perfect time. And your brain goes, okay, but I've got a personal crisis, or I've got a work crisis, or I've got a money crisis, or I've got some other crisis. There is always some other crisis. There's always some other reason to not prioritize your own health and wellness.

And your brain says, I will do it later on when I've got more. And my brain goes, but isn't that kind of the whole point of doing the, of, you know, learning how to lead a healthy life so that you have more capacity so that you can deal with these things in a positive way instead of allowing them to throw you off track?

And yes, life is always happening. I can't stop life happening. I can tell you about all the stressful things that go on in my life at the moment. In fact, I did a podcast on it a few weeks ago on how my son is unwell. And that's not a great place. You know, I don't want that. But how do I deal with. And the last sort of clump of things that I hear are, it feels too difficult.

It feels too overwhelming, it feels too hard. It feels too much like discipline Now, all of those busy, tired energy, not right now, too difficult, too overwhelm, too overwhelming. What are they? Who is talking there? Is it what my children call poopy maker, poopy brain, I the negative brain? Or is it the positive brain?

Yes, you've got it. It's the negative brain. The negative brain is saying, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. And of course, those reasons are all valid and true, and that is the danger that those reasons are valid and true. So, Flip over into positive brain and suddenly you see how yes you can do it, and the questions start becoming, okay, so how do I apply this to my life?

How can I do this thing in a way that really works for me? How can I achieve this goal? How can I achieve the next goal in a way that feels aligned with my life and what I want to do? That navigation piece, so we talked. On the third video, we talked about the five sage powers, and one of them is navigate.

And that navigate really is your internal compass of what, how you lead your life basically. And so healthy living for you needs to align with your internal compass. So I have lots of videos that you can listen to or watch that are my clients who talk about, okay, this is where I was, I was overwhelmed and.

And now I'm leading a healthy life. I'm watching the weight fall off. I'm enjoying it. So I can le leave a link to those and you can go and listen to them. The reason to listen to them is to understand what is possible for you. And what I would say is they all say to me, you know, I'm standing here going, okay, Dr.

Alina, you are saying it's really easy and enjoyable. I don't really believe you, but I'm just gonna take that plunge and. A few months later on, they will say, oh my goodness. It was so easy. It was so enjoyable. It was so fun. Now, what's the big difference? What's happened there? They have flipped from negative brain.

When they first have that conversation. They're listening to all of those negative voices. They flip into positive brain, and then they are listening to their own positive voice. And yes, of course I'm helping them create the tools to listen to that positive voice, but that is the big differe. and then they start doing things that they enjoy.

Of course, if you do things that you enjoy, you are going to enjoy it by definition. So it's not really rocket science, is it? Okay. So if you want to listen to any of those videos, there are lots of them. There's one that Meg has done, Carra has done, Leah has done. They're all housed in the Facebook group.

And if you want them, if you're not in the Facebook group and you want to listen to them, just reach out and I will send them to you. And listening to their story is amazing because it shows. , what is possible for you, and I think this is where a lot of people get stuck, is that their brain is busy going, okay, it's not possible.

It's not possible. This isn't going to work for me, and I want to show you that it can. So I thought it would be useful if I just talk you through my life. I haven't always been super fitness freak person. I haven't always been really super positive. . So I've made changes and I've learned to make changes and to be honest, I'm constantly growing and making more changes.

There's always a challenge in life, and that's okay. That challenge is a learning experience. We don't ever get there. It's about enjoying the journey because there isn't an end to it. Humans don't work like that. We always have another desire. So we get, okay, this goal, I want this. I reached this goal. Now I want another goal.

I want another goal. I want another goal so that there is no there that you get to. But I would say the big difference between negative brain and positive brain is huge. So this is my life and I'm gonna talk you through my four pillars because. , I always think you have a problem in one of the four pillars.

Basically, one of your four pillars isn't strong enough. You don't have habit system and routines that are strong enough in your four pillars. So when you're busy saying, I'm too tired and I'm too busy and I can't do all of these things, none of those things are really true. So if you say, you know, I'm too busy, I don't have time to make changes, it's the change bit that you don't have time to do.

Dr Orlena Shares Her Healthy Amazing Life to Inspire You

Of course you have enough time to. things like shopping and cooking. Yes, I understand you're working and you're busy and all of those things, but there are ways around doing it. Everybody has 24 hours in the day, and the difference between people who are leading healthy lives and people who are not is just that the people who are leading healthy lives have set up their life in a way that really supports those healthy living things.

Pillar One. Dr Orlena’s Healthy Eating Routine

So my pillar, number one, healthy. I love healthy eating, and I would say I haven't always considered myself to be a healthy eater, a super healthy eater. I grew up in the time of carbohydrates. When I was a kid, I would eat breakfast cereal for breakfast or toast. I would eat sandwich for lunch, and then often we would have pasta in for dinner and we did have fruit and vegetables around.

But really looking back, I realized that we grew up in that era of okay, refined carbohydrate. . That's basically the mainstay of what you are eating. And I didn't, didn't realize that at the time. It wasn't until I went through this stage of, oh my goodness, really? And it shook my world a little bit because I was a bit like, no, but I eat healthily.

I'm okay. Until I really realized, oh yeah, but there's a lot of room for improvement that those refined sugars are really sugar. They aren't, you know, healthy. It's not like savory bread equals healthy because it's savory. No, it's still sugar. It still gets broken down into. So I do all my shopping on Sunday market.

I know that not everybody has market, but this is the, the thing that works for me. So I go and I buy loads and loads of fruit and vegetables, and I am very lucky that I live in Spain. It's, we get lots of fresh fruit and vegetables here. For breakfast, I eat a bowl of porridge, or it could be spelt some whole grain, but really most of it is fruit.

So I'll have a couple of pieces of fruit. Normally a banana, and then something that's in season. So in the summer it will be peaches. Right now it's a pear. And then on top of that I have nuts and seeds, so pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, some dried coconut perhaps some peanuts, some almonds. I'd change it around a little bit, perhaps some lin.

So lots of seeds on that. And I have some porridge and I call it my big giant breakfast. It is a big, giant breakfast. Everyone who comes to stay with us goes, oh my goodness, you eat so much porridge, you eat so many oats. I only want a small piece of that, and I think you don't need to be hungry to lose weight.

This is what sets me up for the day and I have a cup of coffee with that, with so milk. . But I don't have any sugar with it. I don't have any honey, and that is something that I changed several years ago. And when I changed it, that change felt a little bit strange, a little bit like, oh my goodness, where is my, I used to have honey or condensed milk.

Now in the morning I work. And I might have a snack. So I might have another coffee, I might have another drink, which could be cocoa. I drink cocoa just by itself. It's just a hundred percent cocoa with water or an infusion or something like that. And I might have some nuts. I have to say, I have a bit of a nut habit.

We aren't, we don't eat a lot of meat. So nuts is where I get a lot of my protein from. . And so I have nuts, a big box of nuts. I might have some nuts, I might have a piece of fruit. It kind of depends. Sometimes I don't eat anything. It kind of depends what I'm doing on that particular day. And I do recognize that a little bit of that eating at that time is boredom eating because I'm like, oh my goodness, I have to do some work.

I don't want to, I could go and make another drink, but in terms of weight, that's perfectly okay for me because it isn't a problem. And I always say, . Everybody emotionally eats a little bit, but it's really, you know, that boundary of when emotional eating becomes a problem. Okay, so then lunchtime now in Spain, children in primary school go to school in the morning and then they go back in the afternoon.

So my two youngest kids still come home at lunchtime and at lunchtime. My kids often have that. My children might eat a little bit of bread. I'm really not very keen on bread anymore. I used to eat bread, as I say, but I've really just changed my mind about bread. I've changed. I've seen how life without bread is perfectly fine, so I will eat either salads.

I basically eat whatever is in the fridge, so any leftovers. Which might be soup or vegetables. And I have a big bowl of food. I don't feel hungry, but it is mostly fruit and vegetables. There might be some lentils, there might be some nuts. I have olive oil in my salad dressing, but I don't feel hungry.

After lunch, I feel full and I might have some fruit as well. And then I'll have a cup of ginger tea normally, and then I won't eat anything until dinnertime normally, unless I've been for a swim. And dinner's gonna be a little bit late now for dinner. We have dinner at about six o'clock, so dinner might be, again, vegetables or pasta because I have kids and I have to get that balance right of what I want to eat.

If I didn't have children, I would eat in a very different way, but it's getting that balance right of providing healthy foods for my children that my children will actually eat as well. After dinner, I might have another infusion, but I don't eat anything else after dinner. And we don't normally have dessert.

We might have dessert. The kids might have fruit, they might have yogurt in the summer. , we might have something, but very rarely do we have. So that is essentially everything I eat and sometimes I eat cakes and sometimes I eat ice cream, and sometimes we eat pizza and stuff like that. Nothing is forbidden, but I don't eat a lot of it.

Partly because I've trained myself not to want to, I don't feel deprived when I don't eat those things. I eat them and I think, oh, that was okay. It wasn't actually as enjoyable as I thought it was gonna be. Often I think the thinking about how something is gonna be is more exciting. , then the actual eating of it.

So that's what I eat. Mediterranean style diet. Super tasty, super easy. And I have certain things which I do wanna repeat as well. So for example, on Wednesday, which is what I call my squash day, I use my slow cooker, my crock pot, and we do Bean chili, which is super easy. My kids like it. We, I serve it with a little bit of rice.

I will perhaps do some cabbage or some greens on the side for the adults. The kids won't eat those green things, those green things that are vegetables. And then on Friday we often have that as nacho. So I get some nacho chips, have the leftover chili, some cheese on top a tomato, salsa, perhaps some other vegetables as well.

And my kids really like that, and it's a really easy Friday evening. Easy thing to do, sort of relatively healthier treat. It's still a bit of a treat, but it's not like a treat, treat, treat, if that makes sense. At the weekend, we might spend more time doing a little bit more cooking when we've got a little bit more time.

But essentially I have systems and habits and routines that keep my food processing going. It's easy for me to create meals. Yes, sometimes I think, okay, what am I gonna. , but it isn't a big deal. It's just okay, I think for a few minutes and then decide what I'm gonna cook. And yes, I also have to balance my picky children.

If you have picky children, I do have podcasts on how to deal with picky. Picky eaters. Okay, so that is my pillar number one.

Pillar 2 Dr Orlena’s Healthy Movement Routine

Pillar number two is exercise that lights you up. Now I can tell you where I am now, but it has taken me years to get here. So years ago I remember having young kids and really deciding, oh my goodness, I need to prioritize my own health and wellness.

I kind of got to the stage where I've been to the doctor and she sort of said, oh, your hba one c your sugar level. a little bit high, which was really eye-opening for me because as I say, I thought I was eating relatively healthily, and this was when I was eating more carbohydrates and I wasn't really doing very much exercising.

I was walking quite a lot, but I wasn't really doing very much more, and I started going swimming. When my children went to the swimming pool, I took them for classes and I would use that time to do a little bit of swimming, and I also started doing yoga. And for me, that was a really big step of allowing myself that.

for me to do something. And also spending the money. It wasn't a cheap yoga session, but also saying, do you know what? You spend so much on your kids, you can spend the money on yourself. And I really had to train my brain to go, okay, it's okay for you to go and do yoga. And so I started doing, it was a sort of relaxation yoga, a little bit of stretching, but much more relaxation now.

Fast forward several years, and essentially in the summer, I am swimming. Every single day. I cycle to the beach, which is a 15, 20 minute cycle. I cycle there and I cycle back, and I do two and a half kilometers every single day. Now, I might have a few days off. But that is basically because I love swimming in the sea, and it's amazing and it's wonderful.

And I get up in the morning and I come home before my kids have even rolled outta bed in the summer. They don't even notice me, and I think it is the best way to wake up. Now, obviously I also have to deal with winter as well, which is a little bit frustrating because swimming in the sea is nice in winter, but it is much more challenging.

It's much, much colder, and it's not something that you can do every single day. And obviously it's cold, it's dark at seven o'clock in the. . So in the winter I do different things. I wake up, I do a seven minute workout or a little bit of yoga. I also cycle. I go running. So I'm doing different things in the winter and I use my afternoon time really to do things for myself.

So that is my exercise movement that lights me up. And over the winter, I make sure that I'm keeping a minimum, so I don't do as much as I do in the summer. I'm not swimming. two and a half kilometers every single day. But I'll make sure, for example, that I'm doing two or three sessions of, you know, making sure my heart rate goes up a little bit.

Pillar 3 Dr Orlena’s Sleep Routine

Okay. Delicious, healthy sleep. . Now the, I have got podcasts on sleep, so if you're interested on sleep, a lot of it is to do with sleep hygiene. It is just re really having a routine of when you go to bed and when you wake up and creating healthy habits around that. Now, obviously there are times when you have to stay up late for work or for socializing or things like this, but the more you can do it, keeping your system.

Routine the better. And I have now got to the stage where essentially at 10, 10 30, my body just goes, it's time for bed. And I feel like I want to go to bed. I don't want to do anything else. I don't really enjoy socializing at nighttime anymore because I prefer to socialize in the daytime and see my friends in the daytime because I really want to get to bed on time because I know that if I don't, the next day I don't feel so good.

And I want to feel good. I want to have bucket loads of. Okay, that's pillar number three.

Pillar 4 Dr Orlena’s Emotional Wellness Routine

And pillar number four is emotional wellness, and that is stress levels and that is mindset. And this really is the key to it all. If you don't pay attention to your mindset, to your emotions, then everything else tumbles down and falls to pieces.

So really the idea with emotional wellness isn't that you never feel the negative emotions. The idea is that you can deal with the negative. life is happening. I can deal with it. I'm in my positive brain. Being in your positive brain doesn't mean going, oh, hooray. Everything's a disaster. It's going okay.

I accept this situation. I accept the situation that my son is unwell and yet life still goes on and I'm doing everything I can to help him, but I am still looking after myself looking, looking after him. , making sure that my body and mind are getting the things that they need to. And so a lot of pillar number four is really how you think.

And there are lots of tools that you have and different people have different tools. So if I think about all the things that contribute to my pillar, number four, well exercise. My swimming contributes to my pillar. Number four, when I'm feeling stressed, one of the best things for me to do is go swimming.

And for me it's almost like a me. . Meditation is another thing. I really enjoy meditating. Okay. Meditation isn't my strongest tool, but it's one that I'm working on building up, and different people have different tools that they use and obviously PQ repping knowing about your positive and your negative brain, and overall all of that adds up to.

Healthy living is just something that I do naturally. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to make an effort to do it because this is just the way that I am. And you can get there too. You really can get there. It's about working on all the four of the pillars and about building up the habit systems and.

So I hope that has given you a little bit of an insight into, okay, you know what? Wherever you are now, you can make those changes. And if you're thinking, okay, I hear what you're saying, I need some help, then what I really urge you to do is book what is called a positively healthy chat, and we can talk about what it would look like for me to support you.

I have amazing coaching programs. I do one-on-one. A group program, and I have what is now called Best of Both worlds, where you get some one-on-one and then you go into the group program and there are different levels of the group program. But essentially it's lifetime to keep you supported. Why? Because I know life happens, life always happens.

There's always something around the corner. And yes, of course I want you to have those tools so that you can do it by yourself. But sometimes people just need a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of motivation to keep them going, to keep them going. So as I say, there's different levels of my support.

So book one of those calls. Now, if you are interested in having a look at what it would look like to have the support to make it easy and fun for you. And the other thing I will say is that on Wednesday, so Wednesday the 29th of March, I'm doing something called Dr. Alina's Office Hours. That's at 9:00 AM Eastern Time.

which is 2:00 PM UK time, and that is just really a continuation from the three videos that we did last week and really just me being there and seeing if you have any questions. Now, if people turn up and they don't have questions, I always have things that I can ask you about to open up the conversation.

But it's just a little chat, really just, you know, seeing where you are and your opportunity to chat. so you can make healthy changes, you can get to healthy living is easy and fun and just something I do naturally and I really enjoy my life and I do these things because I enjoy them. Not because, oh my goodness, I have to get up and exercise and blah, blah, blah.

Yes, of course those times happen. When I talk to my clients, of course they have times like that that you know, oh my goodness, I don't want to get up in the winter at six o'clock in the morning to go to the gym. And then we have a conversation. Do you want to do that or don't you want to do that? You get to decide, do you wanna do something else instead?

So, Sometimes we feel these things and you need to pay attention and think, okay, I need to change. And sometimes it's just that little voice that just goes, I can't bother to do it now. And then you have to talk yourself out of that. So, but there's always those voices, you just need to train yourself to listen to how to answer to them.

Book a Positively Healthy Chat

Book here: https://bookme.name/drorlena/positively-healthy-chat

So come and book a positively healthy chat. And come and turn up to Dr. Alina's office hours. And if you haven't listened to last week's videos, please, please, please catch up. They are so amazing. They will give you such a mindset shift on your mindset. Okay, have a lovely week. Bye-bye.