Podcast: Invisible Forces: How Habits Shape Our Health

Transcript of Podcast

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling fabulous, fabulous today. Today, I want to wax lyrical about habits and how to lead a healthy life without thinking about it. So many people say to me, you know what, I want to lose weight, I want to get healthy, I want more energy, and I want to do it all without thinking about it.

It feels like a little bit. of an impossible thing because that without thinking about it bit It seems almost like you can't get there. Now, I promise you, you absolutely can get there. The without thinking about it bit is just a habit. Just a habit. The thing about habits is when you have the habit, you're doing that behavior without thinking about it.

It's almost the definition of a habit. Let me give you a few examples. I was talking to my sister yesterday. One of my sisters phoned me and she said to me, Oh my goodness, I just, my energy levels feel so low and I don't know what to do. Now, she walks her dog every single day, and after chatting to her for a little bit, I said to her, I think you should do some more cardiovascular exercise, how about swimming?

She gets to use the swimming pool for free, it's part of her work, and so swimming seems like a really good thing. And she said to me, yeah, but you know what? It's just outside of my comfort zone, I'm just not used to that kind of environment. And I'm like, hey, you know what? Go a couple of times a week for the next two months, and within a short period of time, you will be in your comfort zone.

Not only will you be in your comfort zone, you'll build up that habit. And one of the things I would say about habits is, if you want to build up a habit, you really want to put it in part of your routine, so it's a really easy time, so you just don't have to think about it. Then you'll just have a habit, and then you'll be swimming without thinking about it.

Now, habits come in all shapes and sizes. Not only do we have habits in our actions, we have habits in how we think about things, and our emotions as well, which is surprising to a lot of people. But habits aren't necessarily something that we do every single day. Now, here, I live in Spain, and normally my children walk to school, and I love walking to school.

In fact, actually, they've got to the stage where they walk to school a lot of times by themselves. Sometimes, I walk with them. Now today it is raining, only raining a little bit, but hooray for some rain because we've had a drought. We still have a drought. We need a lot of rain to get over our drought.

Now my habit is I like to walk places when I can. I really dislike having to take the car. If I can walk somewhere that is a habit in how I think about things and I don't know how this habit came around probably just Years and years and years of living in cities and walking rather than driving But my children being children Wanting to conserve energy.

There's a human instinct which is conserve energy. They don't like walking. They like to go in the car This is normal child behavior. And so when it rains they say to me Hey, can we go in the car and if it's raining enough? I'm like, okay You Let's go in the car. Today, we did go in the car but I noticed that it really goes against my brain.

My body is like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I want to be walking. I feel like I haven't had any exercise this morning despite the fact that I have done a little bit of exercise. I did a little workout this morning. Here's another habit that I think a lot of people could rewrite and that is we're so busy we're so so busy whenever we go to the supermarket we try and find the closest place to park and it is kind of a habit I even noticed there's a place that quite often when my supermarket is quiet that I can you know get the closest place to park.

Bit to the supermarket, but actually, you know what from in terms of point walking and you know using some exercise which is what most people need to do taking the Parking lot that is furthest away from the supermarket gives you a little bit more exercise You get in some more steps and you have to push your trolley or your basket that little bit further But our brains are wired.

We have this habit of going to the closest parking spot Here's another one as well. Not meal planning. Now this is a habit or you could say my habit of meal planning and meal planning is a big topic in itself and what I would say to you is find something that works for you. Find a way that works for you.

There's so many different ways of meal planning. You want one that's working for you. Even if it is just having a vague idea of what you're going to cook for dinner tonight. For dinner tonight, I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to cook, but I do know it's going to involve cabbage because I have two big cabbages that need eating up.

So cabbage is going to feature. But if you think about the habit of not meal planning, what happens when you don't meal plan, you get home late, you have no idea of what to cook, oh my goodness, busy, busy, busy, perhaps kids, perhaps stuck in traffic. And then what happens? You're reaching for stuff that is quick and easy to cook or reaching for takeout depending on where you live and what your habits are.

Those are all habits as opposed to having a habit of. Meal planning and knowing what you're going to cook and it's much easier once you know what to cook. If you've got the ingredients, you're ready, you can just walk in the door and start cooking or better still, it's in the slow cooker and all you have to do is, you know, cook some extra vegetables or something like that.

Now these are all habits. I invite you to have a look at your habits and think about, okay, where, where are my habits letting me down? Now, remember habits are things that we do. without thinking about them. You almost need to observe your life from, you know, pretend you're an alien or something like that.

Observing yourself and thinking, oh, that's really interesting. She does this at this particular time. Oh my goodness, that's a habit that I hadn't really noticed. We have habits in how we respond to people. It might be, lifelong relationships we've had, our parents, our siblings, it might be our own kids.

We have habits in how we turn up for them. All of this is habits. I invite you this week to have a look at your habits. Your habits in how you think, your habits in your emotions, your habits in your actions. And think about them. You know, are they serving me in terms of health and wellness? Or are they actually not so great?

Now, you don't have to do this from a place of judgment. It's not about beating yourself up. The first step is to be curious about it. And think, okay, I'm just going to be curious about this. And then I'm going to get a, like, I'm an idea of all of these habits that I do and then your next step is really to think about, okay, I'm going to change some of these habits.

Now, I have exciting news for you. I haven't quite set a date, but I have got a new program, a new short program. It's a four week program that is called Revitalite and, oh my goodness, I can't remember the name. I had a really great name and now I can't remember it. But it's all about, it's a four week program and it's all about stepping into creating some healthier habits in time for summer.

We're going to be focusing on nutrition and a bit of exercise but it's going to be really easy. Every single week for four weeks you're going to get a small habit to just work into. Now I will tell you more details of this program closer to the time but I am just letting you know it's going to be happening sometime in May, exciting, exciting.

This is going to be a paid program. It's going to be 199. It's going to be absolutely amazing. Okay, but before we get to that, before we talk about that, this week, what I would like you to do is just spend some time just observing yourself and having a look at your habits. Now, if you're in the Facebook group, I invite you to come and, underneath this video, let me know what your habits are.

You might need to come back to this in a week's time and say, yep, these are my habits and these are the habits that are serving me and these are the habits are not serving me and I'm going to work on this one habit and I'm going to change. Just one habit. Now if you're not in the Facebook group, well come and join the Facebook group It's amazing and it's a really lovely place where we just connect and we chat and we talk Now another exciting piece of news I am going to be creating a community that isn't in Facebook because I know that Facebook is so so distracting and I totally understand why people try and not go on Facebook because it's like That dark rabbit hole.

Okay my friends, have a lovely week and I look forward to finding out what your habits are and what habits you would like to change.