Why You're Not Seeing Results (Even When You Think You're Doing Everything)
Introduction
Are you doing "all the right things" but still not seeing the results you want?
This episode is for you if you've watched the healthy eating videos, you're exercising regularly, you're getting decent sleep, but the scale isn't budging and you're feeling frustrated and stuck.
Dr. Orlena delivers some necessary hard love by revealing there are only two possible reasons you're not getting results - and neither one is what you think. She exposes the hidden hormonal saboteurs like cortisol and insulin that can keep you trapped in a vicious cycle, even when you're doing everything "right."
But here's the game-changer: what if weight loss isn't actually your real goal? Dr. Orlena shares the powerful mindset shift that transforms frustration into freedom, helping you break free from the succeed-fail cycle that's keeping you stuck.
You'll discover why your brain might be misdiagnosing your emotions, how unrealistic expectations are sabotaging your progress, and why focusing on health and wellness instead of the scale means you're always winning.
The three core insights that will transform your approach:
- Why consistency might not mean what you think it means
- How to shift from weight-focused to wellness-focused thinking
- Why your mindset is the hidden factor sabotaging your results
If you're ready to stop the cycle of frustration and start thriving, this episode will give you the clarity and framework you need to move forward with confidence.
Transcription
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena I hope that you are feeling amazing today. I am loving Summer. We had a really, really hot end of June, beginning of July, and. It's not cold here, but the temperature has dropped a little bit, so it is so much easier to get things done as opposed to my brain melting with heat.
Now, today I want to talk about. I want to talk to you if you are one of these people who says, I am doing everything right and I am not getting results. Last week, or it could have been two weeks ago, I did a podcast episode live on when you are starting from rock bottom and things feel so overwhelming that you just dunno where to start.
So if that is you, then go and check out that episode. This is the other end of the spectrum. This is for people who have watched my video stop dieting and start thriving, and they're like, yep, I'm [00:01:00] doing all of that stuff and I'm not getting results. So just to recap the four pillars. Healthy nutrition.
Nutrition that you enjoy. It's about fueling your body. It's not about depriving yourself. It's out with calorie, counting out with intermittent fasting. It is about giving your body the nutrients that you want, and that's a big mindset shift. Two exercise that lights you up. Specifically paying attention to hit and weight build.
Resistance, muscle building three, sleep and four. Emotional wellness, which includes stress. Stress is a really big piece of the puzzle. Hello, cortisol. Also mindset. Hello mindset. Should we talk about mindset? Because here's the reality with those people who say, I'm doing everything and I'm not getting results.
And so this is a little bit of hard love. There are two possibilities that are going on here and without talking to you, it is difficult for me to know [00:02:00] which one of these are, but the first possibility is you are not doing the things that you say you are doing. It might be that you aren't doing them consistently, so you know you are going to the gym or you are eating healthily, but you are not doing it 80% of the time.
You're doing it like. 70, 75% of the time there's room for improvement. So that's one possibility is that you aren't really doing what you think you are doing and you have a bit of a blind spot because you can't see this. It's a bit like saying, I don't know what I don't know. Now the other possibility is that you are doing all of these things.
And you have unrealistic expectations. So it might be that actually what is happening is there are some hormonal changes that are happening underneath the surface that you can't see. So for example, and you can't know this without, testing your hormones, but it might be that your cortisol is sky high.
Now [00:03:00] remember, if your cortisol levels are high and you have abdominal fat. Your abdominal fat has four times as many cortisol receptors as subcutaneous fat, and what that means is you get into this vicious cycle and it's almost like you get into this current, this flow of my body wants to put. On fat. So what that looks like is, oh, I've got a little bit of abdominal fat.
I feel stressed. My body is oh, I'm gonna have more abdominal fat. Oh, that means I'm more sensitive to stress, which means, oh, I'm gonna put on more weight. Do you see what I mean? It's like weight, leads to weight. It might be insulin that is high and you can't really tell if your insulin is high unless you do a blood test.
You might have suspicions that your insulin is high, but whilst your insulin is high and you are doing all of those right things. You aren't gonna see results until your insulin comes into normal levels, or if it's cortisol, until your cortisol comes down. So those things really can [00:04:00] have a knock on effect.
And this basically is the mindset piece because you're saying, I'm doing all of these things right, but I'm not getting results. You are getting results. You just can't see those results. So it depends what is going on. And this is really the mindset piece. And one of the things that I think is really helpful is instead of focusing on weight, instead of this.
This idea, I failed. I'm not getting results, therefore I'm going to stop doing it. Or, Hey, hooray, I've lost weight, so therefore I'm gonna treat myself with food. But we set up this kind of internal dialogue about weight, and a lot of it is to do with blame and whether it's your fault and whether you have been doing things correctly.
And there's almost this succeed, fail, succeed, fail mindset, which sets up this loop. Of not feeling great, and I say forget about weight. It is not your primary focus. If you focus on health and [00:05:00] wellness and feeling healthy and strong and doing things that are going to help you be strong and healthy later on into life, and you carry on doing those.
And side note, I would say you want to enjoy it. That's the mindset piece. You want to enjoy it. You want to be creating a lifestyle, a system that I talk about. You want to be creating it in such a way that you enjoy it and this is your goal. It's health and wellness. And when you do that, weight loss naturally follows.
But here's the magic about this. When you do this, you are always winning. There is no failing because something goes wrong. You're like, okay, I've learned from this. There isn't this blame of, oh my goodness, I didn't lose weight. It's all my fault. No. It's okay. This thing happened, what can I learn from it?
And that mindset will really help you move forwards. So going back to these reasons, it might be that something else is going [00:06:00] on, like your hormones need to reestablish themselves and you keep doing that stuff and you will get results. But there's a little bit of a delay in that happening. It might be that you have totally unrealistic expectations.
Like I see some people and they go through this and they're like, oh, I've only lost two pounds in two weeks. And it's wait, like that's what, why is that not a good thing? If you carry on doing that in a way that you enjoy, you are going to get there. Or it might be that you are comparing yourself back to, when I was in my twenties, I used to skip lunch and I would lose three pounds.
Hello, forties, fifties, sixties, hello, lack of estrogen. Hello. All of these hormonal changes. Hello cortisol. It's a different situation now and we need to do things differently, but we still need to enjoy it and we still need to do it in a way that like fits into our life. So for me, one of the big things I do.
I get up early in the morning at six o'clock in the morning. I leave at seven 30. I go swimming [00:07:00] in the sea. I go by myself quite frequently. Sometimes my friends come, mostly they don't. Why do I do it? Because I love it. Because for me it, it represents freedom. It represents being able to do something I really enjoy and setting myself up for being like available to everybody who.
Wants my services, whether that is like free from social media from my podcast, or whether it's my actual clients. I need to be able to give people that energy. And so for me, that is something that I love doing. Yes, it has health and wellness benefits, but that's not really why I am doing it. I'm doing it because I enjoy it.
If it was unhealthy for me, I would choose something else that I enjoyed that was healthy for me. So that's another mindset shift. And I think if you find yourself before I tell you about that, I think the other piece of the puzzle is stress and emotions. And I think people say to me, oh I've got quite a positive [00:08:00] brain.
I've done mindset work before. I'm just gonna work on this mindset by myself. And I think. The thing is about mindset and emotional work, number one. It's so interesting. It's absolutely fascinating. You need to have a framework, you need to have a solid framework and you need to apply it. And one of the things I really see as well is what I call emotional misdiagnosis.
So sometimes we mistake an emotion for a different emotion. We don't understand our emotions so much, we don't pay attention to our emotions. So an example of this is. A few months ago I was with one of my friends and it was a big party. We had stayed up late drinking. I wasn't drinking 'cause drinking, not because I'm so virtuous, but because I know that I feel awful after I've been drinking and I don't want to feel awful anymore.
That was for my twenties and my thirties. I'm 50 now and I just enjoy having energy and I enjoy being at a party. I prefer to go to bed on time, but there are times [00:09:00] when I make an exception, and that was one of them. So the next day, and the reason I mentioned the alcohol is because it can, make your heart rate erratic.
And my friend was saying, I feel really anxious. And I'm like, I don't think it's anxiety that you are feeling. I think it's your erratic heart rate and you associate that with anxiety, but actually when you pay attention, you'll see that they are two separate things. But we are so used to just. Flying past our emotions and not paying attention to them.
And we are so used to being inside our brain and this way that we think about things that mostly people cannot see where their mind is sabotaging them. So for example, I was talking to somebody this week and she said to me, the scale is against me. And she also said, but actually I'm a really positive person.
And I'm like, that isn't. A really positive thought is it that is basically [00:10:00] a victim mentality saying, oh, now it's only a minor victim mentality, but it still is this negative brain, automatic thought that you can't see until you step back and have the framework to be able to look at it. So what do you do if you are one of these people who is feeling stuck?
You're feeling like you're doing everything and you don't know how to shift this? Number one, go and watch my video, stop dieting and start thriving to double check that you are doing all the things. I've mentioned them here, but I clearly give you the framework. And it sends out a handout as well so that they are all there so that you can double check that you are doing all of these things.
And then when you've watched that video, you might realize that you are not doing all of those things and then you can implement them. Some people like to have support implementing them. If that's you, book a call with me and we will chat. If you have [00:11:00] watched that video and you still think you're doing all of the things.
Then book a call and talk to me about coaching, and I think one of the things about coaching is it's really difficult to explain to people the tangible things in coaching. But here's how I think coaching benefits people. I think it's a bit like learning to drive a car and you can read a book on driving a car and it will explain to you what you need to do.
But the easiest way to learn to drive a car is to have an instructor who's going to help you do that. And they can see, Hey, do you know what you are actually like? You could do this in a better way. For example, I have a swimming coach. I'm very good at swimming. I swim very fast. I swim very every day.
I have amazing technique. I still in the winter have a coach. Why? Number one, it helps me do it and I enjoy going to her classes. And number two, she is constantly looking at my technique and saying, you can move that a little bit. You can do that a little bit. [00:12:00] Relax your shoulders. However many times she tells me to relax my shoulders, and however many times I tell myself to relax my shoulders.
I still need that. It's not so built into me that I don't start swimming and go, relax your shoulders. On a side note, swimming is actually a really technical thing and the technique is like lots of different things that you need to implement, coaching can really help you see the things that you don't know.
That you don't know. And a lot of it is about mindset because we are so in our brains, we are so used to using our brains. It really is this piece of, oh my goodness, I can see things in a different way and now I can see how my brain is. Basically a negative brain and going, oh, actually negative brain. And if you're interested in negative brain, check out my podcast.
'cause I have done loads of podcasts on negative brain and positive frame and what the framework is and why it is so interesting. [00:13:00] Okay. So that is my hard love for people who say I'm doing everything right, but I'm not getting results either. You are not doing everything right. You are and you have unrealistic expectations.
But if you keep going, you should see some results. Have a fabulous day and I will see you next week. Goodbye.
