Say Goodbye to Stress, Fatigue and Overwhelm Podcast Episode 175

Transcription of Podcast

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Hello.Hello. Hello. Welcome to fit and fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Kerek. I hope that you are feeling amazing. Amazing, amazing. If you're new to the podcast, you may not know that I love swimming into the, in the sea, in the Mediterranean. I live near the Mediterranean it's 15 minutes cycle ride from.

Swimming in the Sea Lights Me Up

And if you've been around while you will know that I will start telling you about all the amazing animals that I have seen in the sea. Now, here in Spain, it's spring time. And I have been swimming over the winter and it's been cold and it's been challenging and it's been oh, so fun. But at that time I swim later on in the day in the.

I swim really early in the morning. And I absolutely love swimming really early in the morning because it's beautiful. It's the best part of the day. And also it means I can go, I can come back. Normally I get back so that I can take my kids to school and you know, I've, I've done my amazing exercise. I've cycled off.

And it's amazing. So today was the first day that we went early in the morning and we did a little bit of a trial run in that we didn't go as far as we would normally go, but we just wanted to get back into the routine of early in the morning, make sure our families were okay with not having their mums around.

And here's a really interesting thing. It does mean I have to get up early in the morning and nobody likes getting up early in the morning. Well, that's not entirely true, actually. And so I set my alarm last night thinking, oh my goodness, I'm going to have to get up early. But another part of me is saying, I love swinging the seat.

I love how I feel after I swim in the sea. So that getting up early in the morning. Yeah, it's a kind of barrier, but my brain is so trained to just look at the positive and just know how much I love swimming, that it was really, really easy to do. And in fact, I was there super early, about half an hour.

That's slightly ridiculous, isn't it? But there you go. I love it. I was just sitting on the beach by myself, going this beach is mine and I can see the sea and it's beautiful. And just looking forward to the summer and what did I see today? I saw this really strange thing actually, which I saw a few times last year.

I have no idea what it is. It looks like this long black tentacle. Sort of like a string. And I think it's a bit like a spider's web. Obviously there aren't actual spiders in the sea, but something like that. And I also saw a Moray eel Hey, here's re really interesting fact that you may not want to know, but I went to the optician yesterday and they told me that I am slightly long sighted and have always been slightly long sighted.

And I've never known this all my life until obviously my reading starts getting affected, but my swimming friends were a bit like, how can you be long sighted? Because you're always seeing. The animals. So today I saw a Memorial and everyone else is going, I can't see it other than one other person anyhow, by the bike.

Why Habits are the Key to Freedom and Being Spontaneous

Okay. What do I want to talk to you about today? Today? I want to sing the praises of systems, habits and routines. So if you've been around while you'll know that I'm constantly, constantly going on about systems, habits and routines.

Tired and Frustrated? Healthy Habits will Help You

Here's what I think that if you're standing here. I am feeling frustrated and what I see a lot of people who, before they start making changes, for example, feeling tired, a lack of energy, uncomfortable in your body and knowing that your stress levels are leading you to emotionally eat and thinking, okay, I don't know how to get out of this.

Stressed and Overwhelmed? Healthy Habits Will Help You

This trap of feeling tired and stressed and everything's on top of me, or it might be that you have zero energy and you know that your lifestyle is affecting this, but you've got so little energy that you don't know how to change and start doing these things. So, you know what I would talk about, particularly when we're thinking about emotional.

We Often Don’t Notice How Much Stress we Live With

And we're thinking about stress levels is that stress is a huge factor in our lives. And it's one of these things that we are so used to living with that we don't notice. In fact, actually I would go so far to say that. It took me time to adjust to living with less stress. So when I was working as a doctor, yeah, my life was super, super, super busy, you know, constantly attached to a bleep.

What's the next disaster. The next drama that has happened. The next, you know, big thing, whether it is something that's life-threatening because it can be a, if you're working as a doctor or just a more mundane thing, but just really, really long list of mundane things that needed to get done. I remember answering my bleep and my bleep going off as I'm answering my bleep.

This was obviously a long time ago. I'm sure they have better systems now, but just going, yeah, I can't answer my bleep quick enough because I'm answering my belief in someone else's bleeping to tell me that I haven't answered my bleep and it just got into this ridiculous situation. And then when I moved to Spain and, you know, live sort of ground a bit to a halt and me kind of feeling a bit like, oh my goodness, I'm used to being really, really busy and.

What am I doing? There's nothing to do. Now. Obviously it took me a while to get into my rhythm of finding things that I really enjoyed doing. I had young kids and that was, you know, a slower pace of life. My point being eat took time to really adjust the way I thought and my pace to, Hey, I don't need to live in this high stress environment.

And that's where a lot of people are in high stress, whatever the stress is. Here's another interesting fact about stress is that my stress is not your stress. So it doesn't matter what the stressor is. It's still affects your life. What do I mean by that? So take the example of working in a hospital and, you know, you're sometimes making life and death situations.

You're making those decisions. Often you make them as a team, but you are making big, big decisions. And that on one level can be very stressful. If you think about the implication of that, but actually on another level, there's so many. Automated systems that you don't really need to think about it. You don't need to be deciding that system.

Your Stress isn’t the Same as Someone Else’s Stress

So yeah, that stress, but it may not be a huge stress if that's the environment you're used to. And then I'll take the example of being a mother and kids and you know, it might be, Hey, what am I cooking for dinner? So on one level you think, okay, in the big picture, it doesn't really matter what we're having for dinner.

It's not a life death situation, but the stress that you feel regarding that relatively mundane thing is still the same stress. It still affects your body in the same way. So I might thrive in hospital going. Yep. I love this. High pressure environment. Oh my goodness. Getting my kids ready for school.

Super, super difficult. So much stress, so much anxiety. So one person's stress is not another person's stress and having too much stress constantly your body living in this stress, stress, stress environment is not good. It's equivalent to driving your car in first gear the whole time. If you drive down the motor.

The “autopista” as we call them here in first gear, your car is not going to like that. Now, if you need first gear, because. It helps you get to fifth gear. So we do need stress in our lives. It's not that we want a life devoid of stress. We just need to have a balance of stress. So stress isn't always bad, but coping with stress is really, really important.

High Stress Levels impact Your Health, Your Weight and Your Energy Levels

And if you're constantly living in this environment of stress, stress, stress, it has huge, huge impact on your life. So if you want to lose weight, being super stressed is not going to help you. It's going to give you that stressful. Cortisol. That's not great for losing weight. It's going to affect your sleep.

That's not way great for losing weight. You know, if you're looking at health, the same thing, high levels of stress is going to have an impact on your health and your short-term and your long-term health. So how do we change their situation? How do you start to implement changes? Where you are to where you want to get to, which is feeling amazing, loving your life, knowing that you're doing everything healthy, watching the weight naturally fall off.

Dr O’s 4 Pillars Help You Lead a Healthy Life and Manage Stress

Now you have probably heard of my four pillars. Yes. I'm going to repeat my four pillars in case you haven't in case you're new. If you're new. Welcome, welcome. Pillar number one, healthy eating in a nutshell, vegetables, less packaged foods, excess Pitta. Number two, exercise that lights you up. I want you to come back from your exercise going.

It was amazing. I really loved it. I'm so excited about my exercise. I'm going to tell everyone who's listening to my podcast about my exercise. That's what is being. Lit up. I want you to feel that yes, I had this amazing experience today. I went swimming or whatever it was that you do to exercise that lights you up.

Pillar. Number three, sleep sleep is so important. A number four emotions, emotional wellness, and that includes emotional eating. That includes managing your stress levels. That includes your community and how you relate to people. It includes your social life, whether that's your family or your friends, all of that is included in parent.

Number two. Now when you have habits and systems and routines in all of those pillars, everything happens with out thinking about. Now, how do you get that? Well, the sorts of different tools in the store, lots of different ways of doing that. But here's one thing that I wanted to address today and which I've heard a few times recently, is people going, Hmm.

Healthy Habits Give you More Free Time to do the Things you Want to

You know what, this whole habit system and routine thing, Dr. Orlena, you're not really selling it to me. I kind of see myself as somebody who wants to be spontaneous. I want to do the things that I want to do. And I say yes, but the two of them are. Mutually exclusive. In fact, I would go so far as to say, well, number one, how is that working out for you right now?

If you're busy, busy, busy, and you're saying you haven't got enough time, how is that spontaneous enjoyment? It's normally the stuff that gets left behind. It's normally the thing that you think, okay. I want to be spontaneous with cooking dinner, but actually I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I don't have time. I'm just going to.

Go and get take-out or frozen pizza or cook that thing that I know that isn't great, but I know it's easy and it's something that I can get on the. I would say the way you get to get all of these amazing things in your life is to create habits, systems, and routines. And in fact, when you start implementing the habit systems and routines, what you find is that in that routine, you need to put in time.

The things that you love and you know, if that's being spontaneous in the kitchen, then you create time for that. Yes. I love cycling. So I'm going to make sure I've got time for cycling. Yes, you can do it once you take it. Once you think about it, if you take a step back and think, okay, how is my brain working?

Well, my brain is. Trying to figure out all these different things. It's busy working, it's busy doing all the stuff that it needs to be needs to do. And part of your brain, if you're sitting there thinking, okay, I need to make healthy changes. Your brain is using a lot of energy thinking that. And if you're thinking, okay, I need to figure out what to cook for dinner.

Your brain is using a lot of energy to do that. And it's in that first gear again, it's not just automated. It's not okay. This is just habit. This is just. So once you have created those habits systems and routines, you can allow your brain to move that on opened loop, that loop, which hasn't been finished to.

Yes. I know I'm doing everything that is possible to be healthy, and I know how I'm going to create healthy food and it's just going to be easy. And I don't have to think about it. It doesn't have to be that thing. That's going on the back of my mind all the time. So you can unload. To automation, create a habit out of it.

And then you can allow your brain, your thinking brain, your creative brain, to use that space, to do whatever it is that you want to do. All the exciting things that you want to do, which is obviously different for everybody. So it might be, Hey. Yeah. I want to be spontaneous in the kitchen or I want to make sure I've got time to have fun.

I want to make sure I've got time for. But I I'm asking you to rethink habits, systems and routines. And instead of seeing them as something that is constraining you actually, what you're doing. Offloading the stuff that needs to get done every single day in a way that you don't have to think about it anymore and allows you to free up time and energy to do stuff that you do want to put energy into.

When You Have Healthy Habits, You Don’t Need to Think about How to Be Healthy

I personally don't want to spend my life thinking about what to cook for dinner. My system works like this. I have lots of vegetables and I cook something from them. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but I have a system that works for me, so I don't have to think about dinner every single day.

I just know what I'm going to cook for dinner. And normally not always, but normally I cook it at lunchtime and do most of the preparation. Now, obviously it depends on what's happening every single day, but I've got a plan, not one that I spent hours doing because I've been doing this a long time and it just works.

It's just easy. I don't have to think about. So habits systems and routines are your friends, and they are the key to making sure that you have the time to do the stuff that you want to do, whether that is work, whether that is being with your family, whether that is just going and enjoying life or all of those things.

Here's another quick tip that I think comes into this idea of habits, systems, and rules. And thinking about productivity, actually, once you've got your habit systems and routines, you have space to become much more productive. And I would go so far as to say, once you've built up good habits in all four pillars, you're much more productive if you're sleeping well, you know, when your brain is active and when it can do.

You know, creative things, work things for me, my mornings are, yep. I'm going to do all the work that I needed to do. And then later on, I'll be doing other things towards my business, but it allows me to be super productive because I'm energized from exercising, from getting enough sleep. I'm ready to go.

And another thing that I think is important to mention is people always say, okay, I need to be super productive. I need to make the most of my 24 hours. And yeah, we all have 24 hours in the day, except so many people want to cram 25 hours into the day. And that does not work. One big thing that I see is people, and I'm totally guilty of this as well, but trying to fit a two hour job into one.

Now, there are some things, for example, on Tuesday morning, I put my podcast out and that's one of those jobs that takes the amount of time I have. If I have an entire morning, it normally takes me an entire morning. If I have an hour, it takes me an hour. So there almost some jobs like that, that you just get on with.

Make them more quick, but there are some things that we unrealistically say, yeah, it's going to take half an hour when really it's going to take an hour and that's a problem because then there's that back on effect of, oh my goodness. I'm now running late, I've got the schedule and I'm running late. So another key to thinking about your habits, systems and routines is to be honest about how long it takes.

My swimming trip is a two hour round trip. By the time I have left the door cycled got changed. Swum got changed again and cycled back. That basically takes me two hours. It doesn't always in the summer. It's not as long cause I don't have to put my wetsuit on and that takes a chunk of time. But allowing that time means that I leave enough time.

To get back. I'm only swimming for 45 minutes, but I need two hours to fit in that 45 minutes. If I just say 45 minutes. Oh my goodness. I'm going to be super stressed. Okay. I hope that you are now loving habits, systems and routines, and you're thinking, Hey, Dr. Lena, I totally get it. I need habits, systems and routines in all four pillars so that I can stop feeling frustrated so that I can.

Ready to Make Healthy Changes and Want Support?

Lead my most amazing, healthy life. I can lose weight naturally. I can have bundles of energy and do all the things that I want to lead a long, healthy life and inspire my family and the friends around me to lead a long and healthy life. If that is you come and chat to me. If you're somebody who thinks, yes, I totally get this.

I want some support and I want to create this healthy, healthy life. I have space in my group program, right. I would love to chat to you.

You can email me at [email protected]

Have a fabulous week. Next week, we're talking to a fabulous lady called Netta. We're talking about, she has a podcast called life after sugar, so fabulous conversation to inspire you and light you up.

Take care. Bye-bye.