Category Archives: Help Getting It Done

NOCOMMENTS

Weight Loss In Difficult Situations

Sometimes, losing weight seems like an impossible task. Life is busy, and we have tons to do! There are groceries to buy, meals to cook, kids to chauffeur, relationships to maintain. Oh yeah, and many of us also work outside the home too, so there’s that! Seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done as it is, so how in the world are we supposed to make time to focus on a weight loss plan? I know, taking time to care for you seems like a luxury that you can’t afford.

Let’s come back to that.

First, I want to encourage you with a story of a client who lost weight despite a super challenging situation. If he can do it, so can you! Yes, I said, “he”. As an OBGYN doc and coach, I almost exclusively care for women. But this was an exception! Let me tell you all about it…

This client found me through my YouTube videos. He’s a young man in his 30’s and had recently been seen by his doctor for a check-up. He was told that if he didn’t get some weight off, he was going to need to be on multiple medications. He really didn’t want that, so he decided that he was going to get serious about losing weight.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting.

This gentleman is an over-the-road trucker. He drives one of those big 18-wheeler trucks and moves freight. He travels most of the time and eats almost all his meals on the road. If you’ve ever eaten at a truck stop, you know that most of the food served falls into the “comfort food” category – greasy, cheesy, starchy, and very tempting! He decided that the way he was going to lose weight was by juicing. He bought a juicer and put it in the truck and started his program.

Then he found my videos. One of the nurses in my office shared them with him and he started watching my series on Weight Loss Basics. I knew he was watching because he started commenting on the videos as he watched them. What I didn’t expect was the email he sent me after he lost more than 60 pounds.

He said, “I decided that enough is enough and that I have to change my eating habits but I did not know how to deal with dieting and hunger. This was where you and your amazing youtube channel came in!!! I purchased a cold press juicer and juiced greens and fruits and lived off of that for 50 days! I lost a total of 63 pounds in the 50 days. If I didn’t religiously watch and study your hunger series on YouTube every day, I would’ve never made it through my journey!!! Sometimes I felt like your videos were too short because I didn’t want it to end!”

This kind of story reveals the power of coaching! I didn’t prescribe his plan, but I helped him stay true to what he decided he wanted to create. He was able to stick to his plan and reach his goal by working on his thinking, which is what coaching is all about. Long-term weight loss success comes from changing how we live, which only works if we change how we care for ourselves from the inside out. That starts in the mind!

That brings me back to where we started. You might think that you have too much on your plate to commit to a weight loss plan for yourself. You may feel like meal planning and food prepping are impossible with your schedule, so you just won’t have time to do the things you need to do to lose weight. But – what if the process of weight loss could be easy? What if you could lose weight and spend less time than you are now worrying about how to get it done? Both are available to you. I had another client recently tell me that she is amazed at how easy losing the weight has been since she started coaching with me. It can be the same for you!

Now, you can absolutely do what this gentleman in my story above did. You can lose weight by following my guidance in my YouTube videos and reading these posts! But some of you want more support. Maybe you don’t know where to start or how to craft a customized plan for yourself. That’s why I’m here! If you know you’re ready to start your successful weight loss story, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com, and let’s set up a consultation. It’ll be the beginning of you losing weight for the last time!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done

Weight Loss on Wings and Pizza

Hey! So glad you’re here! It’s our first week in our series on Weight Loss Stories, and I thought it fitting to start with wings and pizza. Yep, this week’s story is about successful weight loss on ordinary food. Seems impossible? I promise it’s not. Let me show you…

Last week I told you some of my own weight loss story. I lost 60 pounds in 6 months while my first baby was a year old and while I was working full time as a physician. It certainly seemed like an impossible task at the time! But I was determined. I’d finally found some keys to weight loss that I was committed to following in the midst of my busy life, and they worked! How did I do it? Keep reading…

When I got serious about losing weight, there were a few things I was very clear about, and one was that I wasn’t going to follow a diet. Diets are temporary, and I wanted to be done with the weight struggle for good. I also knew that I wouldn’t stay on some super-restrictive, bland, depriving diet that wouldn’t allow me the room to eat good food. So a “normal” diet was out.

It had to be simple. I was learning to mother a toddler, I needed to split my time between running my home, cooking, shopping, growing up a small human, trying to be close to my husband, and going to see patients at the office, doing surgery, and being on call at the hospital. Any plan that required fancy meal prep or hours in the kitchen or a bunch of rules (that I’d forget) was out.

Simple was the plan. I’d been studying a program that taught about relearning to respect the body’s innate wisdom and follow the signals for hunger and fullness. When I thought about it, I hadn’t been eating because I was really hungry for a long time. There were lots of reasons I chose to eat, but true hunger was rarely one of them! And if I was honest, I regularly ate until I was uncomfortably full. It made sense to me that God designed us as humans with signals of when to eat and when to stop, just like my little one did when I fed her. Most animals in nature didn’t seem to have a weight problem – they didn’t eat on a schedule or have some complicated diet.

I decided to focus on hunger and fullness. I’d eat anything – no food would be off-limits, as long as I ate it when I was truly hungry. I could have anything I wanted! Suddenly, I was free – no more food rules, no “bad” foods, no restrictions. When I considered what I really wanted to eat, the first thing that came to mind was pizza. Made sense to me – pizza has always been my favorite food! But in the past, if I was trying to lose weight, pizza was off the list because it was “bad” for weight loss – all that cheese and bread! But this was my plan, and I was going to be free of the food rules. So that’s how I ate pizza and wings and chocolate and still lost weight. I ate all the foods I wanted, but I only ate them when I was hungry and I stopped when I was full. Sounds too easy right? It wasn’t.

I didn’t really want to wait for hunger all the time…

I’ll never forget one day I’d waited to get hungry. It was a struggle because I really wanted to eat, and it seemed like hunger was taking a long time to come around. But I was committed to the plan, so I kept waiting. When I finally got hungry, I was ready. I had some barbequed wings in the frig and I warmed a couple in the oven. I got out a small plate, got those wings and fries, and sat down, ready to enjoy my food. A few bites in, I started getting this very quiet suggestion that I was full. But I wasn’t done with my wings and I only had two! I was heated – I’d waited like I was supposed to, right? And now I wasn’t even going to finish these two measly wings on my plate? I argued and railed and fussed, but it was clear – either I was going to stop eating or I was going to overeat. I would pay the price on the scale if I chose to overeat.

I dumped the rest of the food in the trash.

For me, it was a hard choice. I was taught not to waste food. I was a committed member of the Clean Plate Club, so scraping food into the trash felt wrong. But what was my option? Eat more than I needed and store that food on my body, or let it go?

It wasn’t worth overeating to clean my plate. I had some serious deprogramming to do. But I kept at it – each day waiting for hunger, paying attention to my body, eating slowly, and stopping when that quietly-full feeling appeared. I learned to put less on my plate. I learned to welcome hunger instead of feeling panicky when it appeared and snacking to make it go away. I learned.

This is how I know a diet isn’t the answer. I’ve gained weight eating “clean”. I went plant-based (for environmental reasons) and didn’t lose a pound. When I was in my holistic nutrition training, as suggested I trialed the macrobiotic diet, the keto diet, all the diets, and if I didn’t observe hunger and fullness I gained weight. You can lose weight on any style of eating that you want to practice, but if you override the hunger and fullness wisdom of your body, weight loss isn’t possible. Sure, there are nuances with hormones and over-hunger from processed foods, but there is no hack to permanent weight loss. If there was I’d have found it!

If you’ve been on the roller coaster of new diets, trying to find the right combination of foods or a schedule of eating that will unlock weight loss for your body, I get it. You want to believe that if you just find the right plan the weight will just fall off and you’ll finally be thin. It just doesn’t work that way. Weight loss happens in the mind. The body follows.

If you’ve decided that you’re done with the roller coaster and you want help getting your mind and body on the permanent weight loss track, I’m here to help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we’ll set up a consultation. You don’t have to figure it out alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Weight Loss Stories From A Coach

I want to apologize…

It’s taken me a minute to realize that I haven’t let you in on what I’m doing. Some of you are new to the blog, but many of you have been around for years, reading these posts, seeing my recipes, watching me help my family go plant-based, and now I’m talking about weight loss and coaching and I never explained why!

You know how sometimes you’re too close to a situation to see clearly and it all makes sense and seems obvious to you until you talk to someone else about it and they’re completely confused? That’s what happened to me. I’m all gung-ho about my weight loss coaching, telling people that I’m a certified coach, offering to help, and when we talk I realize they don’t know what I’m talking about. Not really.

It’s easy to get it when I say, “I’m a doctor.” You know that means I went to medical school and residency and I take care of patients. But a coach? Coach of what? How do I help?

I’m going to be more clear. So I’ve decided that the best way to explain what I’m doing as a coach is to tell you stories. Fun, right? For the next several weeks I’m going to tell stories about people I’ve helped in their weight loss journey so you can see the lasting impact that coaching can have on weight loss.

Let’s start with my story…

After my first baby…

Ever since I can remember and probably at least since puberty, I was overweight. I don’t recall any time in my adult life when I was at a normal, healthy weight. All through high school and college I struggled with weight, negative body issues, shame, and self-hatred. It was tough. I tried crazy metabolic diets, Weight Watchers, whatever I thought would help.

I was a dancer in both high school and college. I was always the biggest girl on the stage. Moving and performing were pure joy, but putting on the tight-fitting costumes wasn’t a fun experience.

Things didn’t improve when I got into medical school. I lived alone and studied my days away. Snacks were an easy way to break up the monotony and keep from falling asleep on the books. Medical training also taught me to eat whenever I had a chance even if I wasn’t hungry because I wouldn’t know when the next chance to eat would be. Residency was even worse. The constant snacking and “I deserve it” eating became an ingrained pattern.

After training was over and I had my first baby, I was almost 200 pounds. I was exactly the same weight I was when I started the pregnancy. Trying to breastfeed and stay covered was hard because I was pretty big up top. I wanted to be one of those pretty young moms pushing a stroller, looking fit and energetic, but in reality, I was exhausted, heavy, and uncomfortable in my own body. When I started avoiding being in any pictures with my daughter because I hated how I looked, I knew something had to change.

I lost 60 pounds in 6 months. After a lifetime of living in a body that didn’t feel comfortable, I finally felt full of lightness and energy! It was exhilarating! I wanted everyone I knew that struggled with their weight to have the same success and feeling I had – but when people asked me how I lost the weight, I didn’t know how to explain. No, I didn’t do a diet. No, I wasn’t starving myself or exercising to exhaustion. No, I wasn’t taking pills or shots. People looked at me sideways when I said I was only eating when I was hungry and stopping when I was full. Yes, but how? And what else?

After four babies…

I didn’t know how to say it then, but what had changed was my mind. I was thinking about food, my body, what I would and wouldn’t do around food in a completely different way than I had my whole life. For the past more than 14 years that I’ve kept off this weight, I knew my mind had changed, but I didn’t know how to give that transformation to someone else.

So I became a certified life and weight loss coach.

Now I’m able to help other women make decisions about their life and weight that get them unstuck. I help my clients see how their thinking is creating the life they have now. Coaching allows me to help my clients create the results they want in their life and reach their goals. I get to use all of my physician’s brain and my coach training to help people to find the health and wellness that they want. It’s a wonderful place to be!

If you know that what you need to get to your weight loss goal is a transformation in your thinking, I can help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a consultation. I can help you get a jump start toward your goal in one hour and we can work together to reach that goal!

Come back next week to learn about successful weight loss on chicken wings and pizza…

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Self Care: ” I Feel Selfish!”

Welcome to week 4 of the Self Care series! I’m glad you’re here because this thought about self-care is so common! Thinking that self-care is selfish is one of those sneaky background thoughts that we don’t really say out loud. We know self-care is supposed to be important and we kind of accept that it should be part of our lives, while in real life we can’t seem to get it in. There are so many other people in our lives who need things too! Now we feel guilty we’re not doing it AND selfish for trying to do it at all.

This sneaky thought needs reevaluation…

When I realize I have thoughts that cause inner conflict, my first step in evaluation is to question the thought. Is it true? So what about self-care is selfish? We think that if we take time for ourselves that we will be taking away time from someone else who needs us. We think our spouse or husband will have to go without because we did something for us. So we figure that if someone has to go without something they need, then it should be us, not them.

Sometimes this is the best decision. Some needs are that important! The problem comes when this is our default answer to balancing the needs and requests of the people in our lives. I’m convinced that the self-care movement comes from a push-back against this default thinking that we women have adopted.

Yes, I mean women.

As a society, we are very comfortable with the role of the woman as the caretaker. We play that role at work, at home, and in relationships. We don’t have that same cultural expectation of men, so they don’t play it out. When’s the last time that you heard a man say, “I can’t go out/play ball/go to the gym”? They don’t. They know what they want and need to be the person they are and they plan for it, usually with other people helping make it possible. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We as women might want to do the same!

So is it true that self-care is selfish? If we allow for it for men, plan for downtime for the kids, and hesitate to load responsibilities on others, then we recognize that taking care of human needs does matter. So caring for yourself isn’t selfish. That’s just a thought we have chosen.

Here’s the main reason I have a problem with the thought that self-care is selfish: It means that while everyone else can have normal human needs, the main caretaker can’t. To me, that lessens the humanity of the caretaker – the mom, grandma, wife, sister, daughter. That’s a whole lot of humans that are expected not to take care of themselves for the sake of others! That seems more like a man-made cultural construct than a godly love of humanity.

We have value. Each of us has wants and needs and lives and relationships and dreams. To live the full expression of our human life we need to see the value in that life. We see it for other people. We make space and time and provide for others. Why is it so hard to see the value of ourselves?

Besides, who is supposed to take care of you? You raise your kids to become independent and take care of themselves, right? When your daughters are grown up, how do you want them to live? You’re really the only one who is assigned the role of caring for you as an adult. I’m not saying don’t accept help – absolutely accept any help you can get! But who else knows what will best fuel your body, what kind of exercise feels good to you, how much sleep you need, and what is fun for you? We spend so much time taking care of other people and studying and anticipating their needs that sometimes we forget what we even like to do!

You have lots of responsibilities and people to care for. So do I. I’m grateful I have them because otherwise, I’d be alone (and most days I’d rather have them!). But it’s also your responsibility to take care of yourself. You have to be your own advocate. When you care for yourself, you have more to offer – to yourself, to others, and to the world. When you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t give as much as you have to give. And that’s a loss for us all.

Sometimes it’s hard to get the old thinking out and the new thinking in. What do you want? What do you need? Why haven’t you created it for yourself already? Maybe you need to let some things go so you can get more sleep. Or you might want to change your schedule so you have time to exercise. You might want to learn to meditate to manage your mind and stress. You may want to finally drop 20 pounds and feel better in your body. It might be that you want all of it and have no idea how to make it happen in your super-busy life!

I might be a little biased, but the way to get your life to become what you want it to be is with a coach. Changing your thinking alone is hard, but a coach can help you cut through the noise and find a path to where you want to be. I think having a coach is the ultimate form of self-care because fixing your thinking is the origin of any change you ever have or will ever make! Managing my mind is absolutely how I am able to move my life forward out of confusion and in the direction of my dreams. I want that for you too!

I want to help you get where you want to go! If you want a coach to help you finally get off the weight for good or cut through all the noise in your life to get to your goals, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com, and let’s set up a consultation. You can get to the life you want!

If you have questions or want to talk more about how to change thinking so it works for you instead of against you, comment below and we’ll talk…

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Self Care: “I Don’t Have Enough Time!”

As a coach, this is one of my favorite things to talk about. At some point, we’ve all told ourselves that the solution to all our problems would be if we had more time. We know deep in our hearts that if we didn’t need to sleep or if we could have 30 hours in a day that we could get everything done, life would be much more peaceful, and we could accomplish all our goals and dreams. It feels so true! But it’s a lie. So let’s get to it!

Ever watch someone else’s life and think, “How does she do it all?” Other people are working their full-time job, cooking full meals for their family, and publishing their latest book. Or they’re traveling and they meditate daily and they homeschool their kids and their house looks like it came out of a magazine. How is it that other people do all these things and you feel like you’re running and top speed, hair on fire, and you have a never-ending to-do list that seems to get longer the harder you work?

They must have paid help.

They don’t sleep.

Their husband must do more than yours around the house.

Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. The truth is that no matter what their situation, they have exactly the same amount of time that you do. We all have the same amount of time! Not convinced? Let me show you…

I like to think of time as the great equalizer. It’s our most precious nonrenewable resource! Time is a construct we as humans have defined and structured and whether we like it or not, we live within time. Every day has 24 hours, and we all get the exact same amount.

This is great news!

If time is a neutral construct and we all have the same amount, then we start on equal footing with the time we have. The only difference is how we spend it. This is where we have all our power – we choose how we spend our allotment of time.

Did you catch that?

We get to choose how we spend our time. Contrary to what we tell ourselves, no one has extra time waiting to be used up. We generally fill up all our time with something. When it’s all spent and we don’t like how we spent it, we think the solution is that we need more. The solution is to decide how we want to spend the time and then just do that.

We don’t do it that way.

We use our time with things that don’t matter (ever fall into a Facebook hole and lose an hour? I have). We binge-watch TV and then wonder why we don’t have time to create that thing we really want. We complain that we don’t have enough time, but the result of that is feeling powerless and subject to time. When we feel that way, we let time go by while we do things we haven’t thought through and we spend time mindlessly, like swiping a credit card and not thinking about how we have to pay for that later. It’s a completely powerless place to be.

But how we spend time is a choice. Are your kids in four activities and you’re running every day to take them to this or that? Why? Do you like your reasons? If you do, then that’s a good choice and carry on, sister! If not, then why are you spending your time that way? Do you like that you end the day with two hours of TV and go to bed later than you want and wake up hating your alarm every morning? Then why are you choosing to do that?

You get to choose how you spend your time and you have as much as anyone else. You want to eat real food for dinner instead of take-out? Figure out how to spend your time to make that happen. Do you feel best when you get a daily walk? Schedule your day (and the night before!) to be sure you block time for your walk. Whatever it is, you have time for it. You decide, you spend, you have the power over how you use your time. You’ll have to say no to some things – that is a good thing! Be in power and choose how you spend your time. No one else can decide for you, so you get to be in charge!

I know it can be tricky – thinking we are at the mercy of time is an easy pattern to fall into and a hard one to get out of if you’re not trained to think differently. But that’s what coaching is for! If you want help stepping into your power and getting control of your time, your eating, your life, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s make time to work together. You’ve got an hour to invest in yourself – let’s go!

Here’s your video help this week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Self Care: Why It Matters

Welcome back for week 2 of the Self Care series. Last week we talked about what self-care is and we expanded our thinking about what can be included in self-care. This week, we are going to take our view of self-care a little deeper…

Why does it matter?

I mean, we all like the concept of self-care. Whether we’re talking about spa days, retreats, getting enough sleep, or feeding our bodies in a nourishing way, it seems like a decent enough idea. Sure, doing any or all of these things is at least nourishing and could be deeply loving and caring for us. But if we’re super busy (we are) and we’ve got tons of other compelling things to do (we do) and we don’t have time for self-care, then does it make a difference if we don’t get around to it? Does it matter if we don’t take time for self-care?

The reason why we ask that question comes from the value we assign to self-care. We think somewhere deep inside that self-care is a luxury, that it’s an indulgence, like staying up all night binging on a Netflix show (if this is what fills your sails, then do you. I mean no harm :). It feels like self-care is a guilty pleasure, one that we really can’t afford. Or we think that if we make time for self-care then we sacrifice something else equally worthy. We believe that because we forget the point of self-care altogether.

Self-care is to take care of you. Self-care matters because you matter.

We assign value to all the roles and responsibilities in our lives. Our jobs as wife, mom, daughter, worker, member of whatever all are roles we take seriously. And they’re important. But how well do you fill those roles if you’re exhausted, caffeinated, and dragging yourself through the day, looking forward to the moment you can fall into bed only to get up and do it again? What if you had carved out half an hour of time to walk outside or go to sleep a little earlier than usual? We think that something won’t get done if we include ourselves in our to-do list.

But what if taking care of yourself made you better for the other things you do?

Think about it. If you weren’t so tired, maybe you’d get even more done in less time. Maybe you’d have a moment to give hugs to your littlest when she asks instead of rushing to get the next thing done. Maybe you’d call a friend on your commute instead of worrying about what you need to do when you get back home. You might wake up with inspiration and ideas instead of dread for the day coming. You might plan meals that fuel your body and keep you on your weight loss plan.

If you mattered to you, if you were important on your list, what might change? You might say no to things that were less important (and you might be glad you did!) You might feel better and do more than you thought you could. You just might enjoy your life instead of putting on your big girl panties and just dealing most of the time.

You matter. The only reason you don’t keep yourself on your list is because you forget that you matter. You don’t know that taking care of yourself takes care of others too. You’re better when you have fuel in the tank instead of running on fumes. You’re more patient, peaceful, creative, loving. I know it’s true because I have been both stressed-out running-on-fumes mama and mama-who-has-time-for-hugs. I like me as the second mama better! When I take care of myself I have more to give to my husband, my kids, my work, and my life. I do miss a lot of TV shows and movies, but I’ve decided that it’s a sacrifice I can live with. I’ve said no to other things that I can live without. You can choose to do the same if it gets you back on your list!

Easier said than done sometimes, I know. If you can’t get your weight off because you can’t plan/meal prep/get it together because life is so out of balance, I can help! Email me a drandreachristainparks@gmail.com and we’ll set up a consultation to start getting your life back in balance!

Here’s your video help this week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Self Care: What It Really Is

It’s tough to write about a topic like self-care, a term that’s so popular that it’s become a buzzword. Self-care seems like a great idea and a tool to empower us to carve out time to do nice things for ourselves until it becomes a weapon to blame us when we aren’t doing enough of it (whatever enough is). But we are going to talk about it. Even if it’s not easy to figure out how to get self-care in our lives, I think we need it. So let’s figure out what it really is so we can decide whether it’s just some fad of the day or a tool we can use. Let’s go!

Sometimes I’ve felt like the process of figuring out how self-care fits in my life is like going shopping for jeans. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, most of the jeans go back on the rack, and it’s frustrating when many don’t fit my body. But when I find the one pair that fits, it’s like a small bit of magic just happened – it feels good! Every top I put together with those jeans looks fantastic, I walk a little taller, and there’s a little more swag in my walk. Those are the jeans we never want to wear out!

Self-care is the same way. When we get it in our lives in a way that works, it feels so good that other things get better too. We feel more patient and calm, it’s easier to give to others, and there’s more energy for the challenges we face. But it can seem like there’s just no time for it, as if self-care belongs to those who can hire help and don’t have as much on their plate as we do.

But that’s not it.

The problem is what we think self-care is instead of what it really is.

We think self-care is a spa day or getting our pedicure done, or having enough money to buy a new designer bag or go shopping for a new spring wardrobe even if we don’t need the clothes. We think self-care is being able to have someone else take care of our home and family while we put our feet up and get a massage.

It can be all of this. Or none of it.

Self-care comes from the understanding that you are a human with needs, and those needs are to be met. As a woman, you are highly likely to be taking care of many other people – a spouse, children, parents or other family members, employees at work, and so on. It’s not hard for us to see what other people need and step in to help them get taken care of – it’s how we’ve been trained. I won’t get on my soapbox about the patriarchy and societal norms or race, class, and culture, but suffice it to say that as a woman you have been taught to take care of others. That’s just how it is.

And while there’s nothing wrong with taking care of others, there is something off about not recognizing your own basic need for care. As a human being, you have needs too. And let’s face it, as a grown woman, it’s a lot less likely that someone else is going to meet those needs for you. Self-care is very simply you taking care of yourself.

Self-care isn’t as hard as you think. It can be as simple as choosing to go to bed in time to get enough sleep for your body. Self-care is as simple as basic hygiene and can be as complex and lofty as self-actualization. It’s making time and space for you to eat well, moisturize your skin, and dream about your future. It’s deciding that you need to drop 50 pounds and you will commit to making space in your life to get to your goal. It can mean making time to see a therapist or hire a coach to help you on your way.

It can take a lot of time if you make the time, like going away for a solo retreat to rest and meditate and create. Or it can take 30 seconds to practice your deep breathing. Self-care isn’t one thing, because you aren’t one thing. Maybe a spa day isn’t your jam anyway. But a walk in the woods or around your neighborhood fills your soul. Journaling for 10 minutes makes you feel you lost 10 pounds. Why wouldn’t you make space in your life for that?

We’ll talk about why we don’t over the next few weeks. But for now, look for small ways you can take care of yourself. Talk to me: What are you going to do to take care of you, big or small? Let me know in the comments! I know we can all use suggestions!

And if you feel stuck, like you want to make a change but just don’t know how to get started, I can help. Changing your pattern of living by yourself can feel like trying to push a boulder uphill – but you don’t have to do it alone. That’s what a coach is for! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a free session to get you started on changing your life for the better!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #3: I Can’t Lose Weight Because…

By the time I finally lost my weight, I’d been overweight for more than 20 years. For more than two decades, I’d been living in a body that was uncomfortable to me, that felt out of my control, that I didn’t enjoy living in. I’d lived for all of my adult life believing that this was the body I inherited and that there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Did you notice I said, “believe”?

What’s she thinking?

That’s the biggest difficulty we face when we try to lose weight – what we believe. I had so many reasons I couldn’t lose weight and I’d thought them for so long that I believed them. Fortunately, I was wrong. This is the number one reason why I teach that your diet isn’t the solution and that exercise isn’t the answer, because your biggest obstacle is what you believe about your weight. If you’ve decided that weight loss isn’t possible for you for whatever reason, then you will prove yourself right again and again. And if you have some temporary success at weight loss, you’ll sabotage yourself and gain the weight back. True long-term weight loss is actually in your mind.

It’s so interesting how our brains work. When we have a situation we want to change (like weight), we think that the weight happened to us. That’s what we say. “I started gaining all this weight after college” or “When I stopped being able to go to the gym the weight just came on”. We tell ourselves all kinds of reasons why the situation is what it is and we repeat them to ourselves until they become thoughts we agree with. That’s called a belief. Once you’ve created a belief in your mind, it’s much easier for the brain to keep believing it than to change it. Even if a new belief would be much more helpful than the current one.

For example, we often think that we inherited being overweight from our family. I thought this because most of the folks in my family were overweight. When my aunt lost weight and kept it off, I wondered what kind of magic she was doing so I could learn to do it too. I have patients tell me they can’t lose weight because they’re in menopause or because they can’t exercise due to their knee/hip/back injury or because of the pandemic or because the pool is closed. My thoughts about my aunt’s weight loss and my patient’s beliefs about their weight are just that – thoughts. As long as they think those thoughts are true, their mind will keep finding evidence to confirm their thought. We love to be right, and our brain is no exception!

Someone thinks they’re in charge…

But the truth is that you will create what you believe. You see people who’ve decided to lose weight in menopause or from a wheelchair or drop weight in a pandemic instead of gain. It’s not that these people are some magical unicorn beings. It’s that they’ve decided to believe differently and that causes them to act differently. That difference in thinking is the source of their success.

So don’t let your brain convince you that what you want is impossible. Just because you have been overweight for years, or because you haven’t ever been successful at losing weight and keeping it off in the past doesn’t mean that you can’t do it this time. The only difference between now and then is that you get to choose different thoughts than you did in the past. And when you turn those new thoughts into a belief, you’ll live in a way that confirms your belief and you will lose that weight!

I make it sound easy: Change your thoughts and you’ll change your results! It’s not easy. It’s simple, but it requires focus and practice. You can do it! If you’re finding that you’re having trouble finding the thoughts that serve you, or that you keep getting caught in your old thoughts, then you’re normal. Nothing has gone wrong – you’re human! Keep working at it and with practice, you will see change. But if the process is too slow, if you’re having trouble changing your thinking, or you want help to get your brain on track to lose weight, that’s where weight loss coaching can help. I’m here if you need me. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can explore how working together can get you to your goal faster. You don’t have to figure it out alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Weight Loss Myth #2: Exercise Is Required

Someone is gonna hunt me down on this one…

I know – you’ve been told forever that diet and exercise are the way to weight loss. That if you can just find the perfect diet and manage to get yourself in the gym 4 times a week, that the weight will fly off and you’ll look like one of those beautiful people on the cover of TIME magazine.

But I lost 60 pounds and I didn’t exercise. Not at all.

Me before I lost weight…

Me after…

This is a tough myth to deconstruct because there’s so much truth and almost truth mixed up together. As a doctor, it seems like I should never tell anyone not to exercise. I mean, look at all the benefits of exercise! Why would I ever tell anyone not to exercise?

Let’s look at those benefits. First, exercise is wonderful for your mental health and well-being. It’s important to move to get your heart working and staying strong. Exercising is good for your joints, your flexibility, your bone density, and maintaining or growing your muscle mass. It keeps you young and keeps you healthy. Exercise is for moving and enjoying the feeling of movement in your body. It should be used as an act of self-love, not a punishment or weapon against yourself for being overweight.

There are some people who swear that becoming a gym rat or a runner changed their whole life and that’s how they got the weight off. I’m sure that this post is completely contrary to what they believe is true from their experience. But I’m talking to you here. You’re like the rest of us who have tried to get the exercise and diet balance right and have watched not one pound come off and stay off. I was overweight from adolescence through having my first child after residency, so I tried that too. Actually, I was a dancer throughout high school and college and worked out and danced hard for at least 4 days a week, and didn’t lose a pound.

Why doesn’t exercise make a difference in weight loss and why are some people exceptions to this rule? If you really talk to people who swear that their exercise routine is what changed everything, they’ll admit that they also changed their eating while they made their workout a focus of their life. For some people, it feels wrong to eat junk food after they’ve sweated it out in their workout. They feel motivated to eat differently and as they see changes in their bodies they keep adjusting their eating to support their weight loss.

But even more of us find that working out makes us hungry, so we eat more. We also listen to that tiny voice that says we deserve to have a treat, even a “healthy” one like a smoothie or a bar because we worked out, not realizing that we just ate every calorie and more than we burned in the gym. When the scale doesn’t change despite our workout, we get discouraged and stop exercising.

When exercise is the focus of our weight loss efforts, we teach ourselves that we can’t lose weight without exercise. We know this isn’t true when there are people who are wheelchair-bound who lose weight, or when people who can’t exercise have weight loss surgery and they lose weight without exercise. I think we doctors have unwittingly taught our patients to focus on the end goal instead of starting where change happens – at the beginning. It will be wonderful if you lose weight and incorporate exercise in your life as part of your healthy lifestyle, but if you can’t get moving because of the weight you’re carrying, you won’t have a lighter body or one that moves. Now, you can definitely exercise while you’re overweight! It’s just that if you have to focus on the strongest tool to lose weight, it won’t be exercise alone.

When we believe the myth that weight loss requires exercise, we also set ourselves up to dilute our efforts. This is the most important reason why people fail when they start a diet and exercise plan. Most of us need to change things little by little over time so that our changes last. If we try to change everything at once, we often do well for a while, but then something happens in our lives and we get overwhelmed and off track and we go back to our default options for eating and our exercise routine is the first thing to fall off our schedule. It’s too much, too fast. We can’t sustain sudden change for long without a compelling reason, and for most people that has to be on the level of a life-threatening diagnosis for themselves or their child. Seems dramatic, but I’ve seen it again and again.

Small, focused, sustained changes make a difference. When you make them normal over time, you don’t backslide and the weight doesn’t come back. We didn’t gain the weight all at once either. We did small things over and over that caused the weight to come on our bodies. We can undo it the same way! With focus, it can come off faster than it came on. But trying to make those eating changes and the mind drama that comes with it plus an exercise regimen requirement is too much for your mind to juggle at once for long.

Your brain can be rewired to do things differently. It takes sustained training to do it, but it can be done! That’s the good news. The bad news is that your brain prefers to conserve energy at all costs and will resist efforts to change because change requires energy. The old way of doing things is easier and more energy-efficient. So if you overwhelm the brain with lots of changes at once, you’re setting yourself up to fail. The practice of change takes time and your brain can’t focus on multiple changes at once. The default setting is easier. Your work is to change the default, and this happens one change at a time. This is the reason I recommend focusing on your eating plan and not exercise – you’ll see results faster and you’ll be motivated to keep going. The persistence is what makes the changes become your default!

It’s totally possible to lose weight without exercise! You can add exercise to your life once you’ve got your eating plan working for you if you want to do it. But you don’t have to in order to lose your weight. Focus is what you need to get those changes locked in. But remember what I said about making changes and mind-drama? That’s real, and it can be tough to find your way out of the drama on your own. I can help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a free mini-session to help you decide if weight loss coaching is what you need to finally be successful at long-term weight loss. You don’t have to do it alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

How To Stop Hijacking Yourself

You know, this week the couch and Netflix look really good to me. It’s calling…

There’s a lot going on right now. Isn’t there always? I’m still doctoring, I’m life/weight loss coaching in my business, the kids need a new homeschool plan for the fall, it’s time to record a new YouTube series, my online course needs the video classes to be recorded, and my professional website isn’t ready and I want it done yesterday. And oh yeah, I’m facilitating a virtual class on prayer for the women at church that I’m pretty sure is really a class for me in disguise. The syllabus needs to be done too.

It feels like everything needs to be done right now and I can’t figure out where the hours in the day are to do it all. With a teenager and two preteens in the house, the hormones and attitudes are flying. Add a homeschool teacher who needs guidance and a husband with a huge work project this week, and I’m feeling both overwhelmed with all the needs and alone on the island at the same time.

Lord, help!

So yes, a Netflix binge looks really appealing right now. I’ve never done a full-on TV binge (I’m just not a big TV person), but I can understand the attraction. Seems to me that drowning my worry and overwhelm in a few hours of TV would make it all go away for a while. And, I work really hard, so don’t I deserve a break? Balance is important in life, and I ought to practice what I preach, so a TV night might be a nice mini-escape for me. Right?

No. Absolutely not.

Now, I’m not saying never watch TV or even spend a night on a TV binge if you want to. The problem isn’t with the activity – it’s how I’m using it. Go back and watch my thought progression – my brain is quietly suggesting in a very well thought-out and reasonable fashion why I should escape from what I know needs to be done. It doesn’t like that I’m uncomfortable and it wants to offer me a way out of the discomfort. Here’s what will happen if I follow my brain down that path:

I burn a night that I could have made some progress on the things I need to do.

I stay up later than I plan in from of the TV.

I’m tired the next morning, and I don’t get up on time.

I rush through the next day trying to catch up.

I feel more behind than I did before the TV “rest”.

My overwhelm gets deeper and I start considering eliminating some of my goals.

TV isn’t the problem. I can make space for TV if I want to watch for fun. But as an escape? Very effective and incredibly sabotaging. So as attractive as that big screen is, I’m going to have to say no for now.

Instead, I went to bed early the other night. What I needed most was a little extra sleep. I woke up the next day shortly before my alarm and got up to write. Since the morning felt less rushed, I could take a minute to plan where I could fit in some of my to-dos. with my mind more clear, I can see how my brain has been sneaking in these thoughts that have been tempting me to lose my heart and my focus on what I’m here to do. So instead of my brain running amuck, I can move back to being in charge of my brain.

So yes, rest and recreation is important. But self-sabotage is not the way I want to get that in! The way to get the never-ending list of to-dos done is to plan and execute. Take a step back with a clear head and see what makes the most sense. I get tripped up by being in a rush to get everything done immediately, as if when I’m done I can take a break. The problem is that there’s always something to do, so a break never comes. My best plan is to incorporate the break into the plan of the to-do tasks. That way I make progress and I don’t burn myself out in the process.

Do I get this right all the time? Absolutely not – that’s how I ended up staring longingly at the TV as if it was the solution to my overwhelm! But catching my brain in the act of trying to find an escape from my discomfort in a way that works against me in the long-term is crucial to getting to the things I want much more than TV. I appreciate my brain for trying to take care of me. I just choose to use it to help me get where I really want to go instead of finding comfort in the moment. Momentary discomfort is how I grow, so I’ll choose that option!

It takes practice to catch your mind in the act of sabotage – it’s subtle and really good at what it does! But it can be done. It’s a lot easier to learn to retrain your brain with help – that’s what coaching does! If you want help, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a 30 minutes mini-session to get you a taste of how coaching can help you get to where you want to go. You don’t have to do it alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

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