Podcast: The Weight Loss Trap: How Scale-Watching Sabotages Your Success

Introduction

Ready to break free from the scale and finally create lasting change?

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Orlena shares a powerful story about her 90-year-old neighbor that completely changed how she thinks about weight loss—and why you should stop focusing on the number on the scale if you want real, sustainable results.

You'll discover the three core insights that will revolutionize your approach to health:

Why your scale obsession is sabotaging your success: Learn how weight-focused thinking creates a destructive success-failure loop in your brain that keeps you stuck in cycles of guilt, shame, and yo-yo dieting. Dr. Orlena reveals why this mindset is your biggest obstacle to lasting change.

The dangerous lies your scale tells you: Discover why that daily weigh-in is leading you to make harmful decisions (like skipping dinner and drinking wine because it shows a temporary loss). You'll understand the many factors that affect weight beyond fat loss and why the scale is a poor measure of your actual progress.

What really matters for lifelong health and independence: Through the powerful story of her neighbor's fall, Dr. Orlena explains why muscle strength and preservation should be your real focus. This isn't just about looking good—it's about maintaining your independence, mobility, and quality of life for decades to come.

If you're tired of the scale controlling your mood, your choices, and your self-worth, this episode will give you the framework to shift from weight loss to wellness—and finally see the lasting results you've been searching for.

Plus: Dr. Orlena announces exciting upcoming content including an interview with Dr. Stacey Sims and details about her free "Stop Dieting and Start Thriving" system that's helped countless people transform their relationship with food and their bodies.

Ready to stop dieting and start thriving? This episode will show you exactly how.

Transcription:

 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing today. Okay. First of all, big apologies that I didn't do a podcast last week. My voice just disappeared. Very frustratingly. I had a bit of a virus and basically I couldn't talk, which makes recording a podcast kind of difficult.

In fact, talking to people last week was difficult. So I'm here with on, and before we get started. A couple of exciting announcements. Number one, Dr. Stacey Sims has agreed to come on my podcast. I'm super exciting. We will be recording at the end of November, so that is super exciting. Number two, we have a free event, a big five day, is it four or five days?

I can't remember. Event happening in September. [00:01:00] So I will start getting that ready to sign up for next week or the week after. I can't remember. But keep an eye out for that because it's going to be super exciting. And lastly, this week. The week of Monday, the 25th of August, I have spaces to chat with people, and I also have two one-on-one coaching spaces left.

Now, these are really for people. They don't have to be for people who've known me for a bit of time, but I do recommend that if you know me, it makes it easier to understand like what I teach, what I do, and for it to be an easier step. Like when you don't know somebody on the internet and you're like, Hey, let's do coaching.

It's a bit like. Okay. I don't really know who you are. So for those of you who have been around for a while and you're thinking, yep, I get all of this, Dr. Alina. I had love to go deeper. I'm ready. I'm excited. I want to talk about the one-on-one coaching. You can talk about the group coaching as well if you want to.

But book a call. Book a call this week. Next [00:02:00] week I suspect I will be busy again. So book a call this week and let's chat. No obligation. Just find out what it would look like. Okay. Anyhow, I'll leave the link or message me if you want the link. Today I want to talk about. Why do I think it is really important to stop focusing on weight loss?

I know this might sound totally counterintuitive, like Dr. Orlena, you teach people how to lose weight. Why are you telling people not to focus on weight loss? Before we talk about that, let me tell you a story. A couple of weeks ago, let me set the scene. I live in Spain. I work in my little office, which is like.

In our back garden and our neighbor has a little garden. The houses used to be owned by two sisters and she's the second sister. And so she's got like a little courtyard that's within our garden and they used to connect. Now they're separate and we can't access her garden because we are not sisters.

[00:03:00] Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, my husband was outside and I was in my office working. We have lots of cats around here. And there was this little sound, which like was a little newing sound like me. And I just thought it was a cat. My husband was walking around, like trying to peer over the neighbor's fence, and I'm like, what are you doing?

And he's I can hear a sound. And I'm like, isn't that just a cat? And he's no, it's not a cat. And he peered over and he could see that the lady, our next door neighbor, she's in her nineties, had fallen over. And so we're like, oh my goodness, we need to get some help. We need to get some help. What do we do?

So we rush out. I've got my phone in my hand. We are like ringing on the doorbell. There's no reply. We get one of our other neighbors, we are like, Orel, do you have a key to their house? Can we get in? So I'm busy calling the fire brigade, going, this lady, she's fallen over and we dunno how she is and we can't get into the house.

Anyhow. Long story short, she was absolutely fine. Our neighbor just went and tried the door and it turns out that it was open and [00:04:00] we didn't need the fire brigade. So I had to anyhow, they appeared within three minutes. We have fabulous service here. And she was absolutely fine. Why am I telling you this story?

Because she basically fell out of her chair and she couldn't get up. Not only that, her voice isn't very strong, so she also couldn't call her daughter was just having a nap in the front room. And she's not supposed to go outside by herself, but she did. And essentially she couldn't get up because she didn't have the muscle strength to get up.

Now, here's a question for you. When do we get old? We get old when we get frail. We get frail when our muscles are not strong enough for us to do the things that we want to do every single day. And as we get older and we don't maintain that, it can look like I can't actually get up off the floor. If I fall over, I need somebody to help me do this.

Now, [00:05:00] I personally don't want that. I want to be independent. Later on in life, I want to be looking after myself, and I want to be able to do things like get up if I fall over. Ideally, we don't want to fall over, but we want to maintain some mobility. And that starts now. It really starts now. However old you are, it starts now.

Ideally it started like 20 years ago, but. If that didn't happen, then it starts now. So that's one of the main reasons when I think about weight loss, and I think there are so many reasons for wanting to lose weight, and some of them are very personal for me, as somebody who used to work in hospitals as a physician, then I think.

It's really about health and wellness. When I was working, when I first started working, I was working in adult medicine and I used to look around these wards [00:06:00] and think, oh my goodness, so much of this, these problems are related to lifestyle and if I could just take people back 20 years and teach them how to be healthy and all of these things, a lot of those people wouldn't be there.

Now, some of them were obviously older, some of them were younger and had lifestyle illnesses as well. But when I think about why do I want to teach people to lose weight? Number one, obviously I do want people to feel great and confident and all of those things, but actually when I'm thinking about weight, I'm thinking that it's actually a symptom that something else is going on, that you aren't really leading your most healthy life because somehow you've got this extra weight.

So for me, it's a symptom that. You aren't maximizing healthy living. So that's my sort of like, why? Why do I do the things that I do? Why do I do coaching? Why [00:07:00] do I help people on this journey? But let me explain a few other things about why I think it's really important to step away from the dialogue inside your brain of weight loss when you are using weight as your.

Feedback mechanism. Basically what you are doing in your brain is setting up this success, fail success, fail loop, and it comes across like this. I lost weight. I am a successor. It was successful. I didn't lose weight. When I put weight back on, I am a failure. Not just okay, I haven't managed to lose weight, but I am a failure.

It becomes in your brain and that is not helpful. Really isn't helpful. Now, also, it actually leads you when you are focusing on weight to make what I call incorrect decisions. For example, I was speaking to somebody a few weeks ago and they were struggling to lose weight, and they said to me, do you know what?

I skipped [00:08:00] supper and I had a couple of glasses of wine. The next day I had lost four pounds. Okay, let's have a think about that, shall we? So what you are basically saying is. That a good thing to do would be to skip dinner and drink wine every single night because then you're gonna be four pounds lighter.

Now I know that it's, controversial I have there on Instagram and all the other social media places, but I don't see anybody, not one single health coach going, Hey, let's follow the Red Wine Diet because that's gonna make us healthy and thin. Nobody is saying that. Here's what happens. Yes, you have lost weight after you've drunk wine because you are dehydrated, you have lost water, you haven't lost any fat, but in your brain it's going, I've lost weight.

Because in your brain, weight equates to fat, and that's not necessarily the case. You can lose fat or gain, sorry. You can lose weight or gain weight for so many different reasons. And when people go away for [00:09:00] a weekend and they say, oh my goodness, I ate so badly, and I've put on. I don't know, five pounds.

It's yeah, but you haven't put on five pounds of pat fat equally. It's unlikely that you've lost five pounds of fat in two days. It just doesn't happen like that. It takes a little bit more time. So that's one example. Another example is intermittent fasting. Now, if you do intermittent fasting, you may very well lose weight.

But there's a big, but particularly for females, you are losing weight at the expense of your muscle. Remember the story about the lady who fell over. What is it that keeps her strong muscle? We really want to maintain our muscle, not just for strength, but also muscle is a really good aid in helping us lose weight.

If you want to change your body composition, having more muscle is fabulous. It's gonna help you burn fat. It's not just about strength, but strength is obviously really important. So you [00:10:00] could do intermittent fasting if weight loss is your goal and go, yep, I'm losing weight. But what you are not seeing is losing that muscle as well.

And we really want to maintain that muscle. So when we stop thinking about weight and start focusing on health and long-term wellness. Then it's just success. It's a bit like this. If you are teaching a child to ride a bike, and you can do this in two ways, you can say, okay, you are hopeless.

You're doing it all wrong. Like you are never gonna do this. That's you when you are telling yourself you're a failure. Yeah. How is that going? Or if we're teaching the child to ride a bike, we're like, yes, you're doing it really well and fabulous. Put your bottom on the seat pedal. You can do it. You can do it.

I know you've got this encouragement. Which of those two do you think is going to be more successful? And that's what's going on [00:11:00] inside your brain. When you are focused on weight, you are setting up this voice in your head, which is like basically blaming you all the time for the things that you have done wrong.

Then you feel guilty about these things and then you've got this spiral as opposed to health and wellness and eating some food. It really isn't important if you eat a little bit of cake or some chocolate or some ice cream from time to time, particularly when you have this chip in your brain, which is, I am observing this.

I'm curious about this. Is it that I'm eating too many donuts or is it that I'm eating too much of this? Or is it that I'm not doing enough exercise? Or is it that I'm overly stressed and you're coming from a place of curiosity and figuring out what you need to do, what your body needs to do to release that fat, as opposed to, oh my goodness, you're doing it wrong.

Now, which of those two in the long run is going to get there? Because the other problem with thinking [00:12:00] about weight is. Oh my goodness. Let's do this quickly. 12 pounds in 12 weeks. Fabulous. Great. That's success, right? Except in a year's time you've put it back on, you've actually now put on more fat and lost some muscle.

You are in a worse situation. Or doing it slowly and getting there and yeah. Okay. You got to the 12 week mark and you hadn't lost 12 pounds. In fact. Part of your brain was going, is this working? Is this working? Another part of your brain is yep, I know. I just need to keep going. I need to keep going.

I need to keep going. In a year's time, you're like, oh my goodness. I look back and I've lost weight and I've got so much more strength, and I've got so much more energy, and I feel like this is just normal life and I'm enjoying doing it, and oh my goodness, I could carry on doing this. All the rest of my life, and I'm going to be someone who's healthy and strong into my eighties and nineties, even hundreds.

Isn't that really what we all want? As opposed to quick [00:13:00] fix and it all unravel. So that is one of a this is why I really work with my clients to change this mindset about counting calories about. Really focusing on the weight and focus on long-term health and wellness. And when you do that, when you are focused on long-term health and wellness.

The weight normally just follows. Now, I'm not saying you mustn't ever think about weight, like you do something for a bit and then you reassess and you can reevaluate and go, do you know what this, I'm feeling stronger. Is this changing my weight? I don't know. Perhaps I need to leave it a bit longer, or actually I need to make some changes.

But that's a place of curiosity and making changes as opposed to. Beating yourself up and going over it time and time again like every single day. So in a nutshell, focus on health and wellness and the weight loss will follow, and if you focus on health and wellness in a way that you enjoy, it makes [00:14:00] it so much easier to keep going and to keep going.

So I hope this was useful. As I say, if you are interested in doing one-on-one coaching or if you are interested in the group program as well, then book a call and I will tell you what that looks like. Have a fabulous day. Oh, and for people who haven't watched my video, stop dieting and start thriving.

It's totally free. You need to sign up and put your email address in it, but it really is like everything. It's the system that you need. And so you can watch that video and you can do it all by yourself, or you can think, yep, Dr. Orlena, I want some help from you. It's gonna be so much easier with support.

And then you can book a call and chat to me. So if you haven't already watched the video, stop dieting and start thriving. I 100% recommend it, and I know so many people who have watched it and implemented what I've said, and they have lost weight and they feel amazing. They have gained energy. Not everybody needs support.

Some people don't. The support is great as well. It's fun and enjoyable. Have a lovely day and I will [00:15:00] see you again in two weeks. Bye-bye.