Category Archives: Inspirations

Hello, beautiful! I’m so glad you’re here!

Welcome to the beginning of our new series, How To Know If You’re Ready To Lose Weight. Now, if you’ve been following me, you may be thinking, what? That’s what we’re doing, right? I’m a weight loss coach and these blogs have been about weight loss mindset and finding permanent weight loss, so of course, that’s what you’re here for! Actually, not always.

Why? I’ve spent a lot of years working with women and helping them solve different problems in their lives. Sometimes we’re in a place where we’ve identified a problem, we want it fixed, we are sure that we want the issue handled, we’re not actually ready to do what it takes to solve it. There is often a space between when we figure out what the problem is and when we’re truly ready to deal with it. Sometimes, the work and commitment that we need to deal with the issue aren’t quite there yet.

When it comes to weight loss it’s the same thing. You may have spent years trying different diets, jumping in and out of gym memberships, bouncing around different areas of your closet depending on what size you are that season. You might even be so frustrated by your weight that you’ve considered drastic measures like surgery.  Even that doesn’t mean you’re ready to work on permanent weight loss.

How do I know? You know too – let me show you. You’ve seen people who’ve gotten fed up and desperate enough to have weight loss surgery (not just talk about it – actually have the surgery done). Many of them initially lose weight and then gain much of it back. Many never get down to their goal weight or even to a weight that puts them near a normal BMI. I’ve had many consultations with women who want desperately to lose weight, but when it comes to making the decision to commit to themselves, they stop short.

What stops them? Sometimes it’s being stuck in diet mentality, thinking that what they really need is to just find the one magical eating plan that will work for them, as if there is a combination or code or series of lottery numbers that will cause the weight to come off once they find them. Sometimes it’s not being ready to prioritize this goal because of all the other important things in their life. This work just isn’t important enough to make the space. Sometimes it’s hesitating to invest in themselves – they’re not ready to bet on their success. That looks like not being ready to invest the time or the money it might take to get what they need to be successful. I’ve had women tell me the most compelling stories of their reasons for weight loss stop short at investing in a coaching program even when they want help and believe coaching will help them.

So no, not everyone is ready to commit to doing whatever it takes to lose their weight! And that’s ok. You don’t have to lose weight. You are worthy and lovable no matter what the number on the scale!

 You might realize you’re not quite there yet. But you want to be! Over the next few weeks, I want to share with you a few of the most powerful reasons I had when I decided to finally lose my weight almost 15 years ago. I hope that showing you what mindset was needed for permanent weight loss will help you find yours!

Now, some of you are already there. You know exactly why you want to lose your weight and you’ve got a list of strong whys to keep you going. But you also know that you need help, accountability, guidance, and maybe more than a little mind reprogramming to make this the last time you need to lose the weight. If you’re ready to invest in a coach to make your weight loss plan successful, I’m here to help! email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a consultation. You don’t have to do this alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

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!

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!

Happy New Year! Welcome to the beginning of 2021 and the start of a whole new year. I don’t know what it is, but whenever a new year starts, it seems like a gift. It’s almost as if we get a “start over” pass. It doesn’t really make sense – as humans, we are the ones who designed the calendar we use, and one day called January 1st is just a construct we designed.  It doesn’t really change things to name one day belonging to 2020 and the next belonging to 2021.

And yet, it feels different to start a new year. 2020 was a lot to manage! Between the 100 year pandemic, the acceleration of the polarization of people around the globe, the elections and the political landscape, and the resurgence of the racial and social justice movements, each day had plenty to occupy the mind. I think I listened regularly to the news more than I ever have. There were moments when it was better to check out of being connected to social media and the news cycle, if only for my own sanity.  This was the year I started to understand on a personal level how the effects of social media increase anxiety. I’m already wound pretty tight (my family lovingly has labeled me forever type A), but too much fuel from arguments on Facebook or podcasts could work me into an impatient, angry, worried mess who couldn’t shut my brain off to sleep.

So I get it. Our environment affected all of us in 2020. So many of us were adjusting to unplanned homeschooling, working from home, learning to become Zoom experts, and collecting masks like it was our job. Being separated from family, friends, and church was isolating (and restful sometimes!). There were so many things changing at once that people everywhere were struggling to cope. I knew early on that we were suffering when I watched how much harder it got for our mental health colleagues to care for people – the capacity just wasn’t there to meet the need for help with the sharp spike in anxiety and depression. I had more women come in to tell me that their hormones were out of whack, when really they were incredibly anxious, not sleeping, and eating away their stress.

“COVID weight” became almost a joke. Except it really wasn’t funny, especially not to the women who’d gained it. I heard people try to blame it on being stuck at home and not being able to get to the gym or being around their kids who ate all day long. But that wasn’t the only option, because I helped people lose weight this year. People had more time to schedule time to walk because they weren’t commuting, and there was more opportunity to cook at home instead of eating out, especially when some restaurants were closed temporarily. We had the chance to control our food and our portions and our minds – and so many of us didn’t.

Why not? It’s easy to beat ourselves up and be upset about the weight gain, to start an uber-restrictive weight loss plan with the intention of whipping ourselves into shape for the new year.  Of course, it’s a new start and we can choose to make this a different year, right? Yes, we can.  We can decide anything we want and act from our beliefs. But here’s the thing: We didn’t eat away our stress and make decisions we didn’t like about our eating because we wanted to. We did it because we didn’t know how to what else to do. So how are we going to be different so we can do differently this year? We’re still in a pandemic, cases are still rising, shutdowns and lockdowns are still happening. It’s still an uncertain world and we have to navigate it, even as we start a new calendar.

Here’s a thought that may help: It’s always been an uncertain world. We think we know what will happen day-to-day and we make plans, but we really don’t know what’s coming. We never have. We can realize that we ignored the uncertainty in the past and acknowledge that it was always there. We are not God, and we never knew what the future held. Nothing has changed from that perspective. We still can’t predict the future, and we can live on anyway. Not knowing the future doesn’t have to drive us to overeat or overdrink or be anxious. We can manage our thoughts, the one thing we actually can control. And we keep on living, we make our plans, we take care of what we can. We can honor our eating plan, and be around the snacks and kids without eating away stress or boredom or worry. We can lose the COVID weight, we can be in better health in mind, body, and spirit during the pandemic than we were before, and we can have joyful and grateful lives no matter what the calendar or news says. That’s the way to start a New Year!

I hope this helped you as you make your plans on how you want to enter 2021. But I know that getting there takes work and isn’t as easy as reading a blog post. The best way to learn to manage your mind and make progress on managing your stress so you can stop eating it away is to get help.  As a physician life and weight loss coach, I can help you learn to manage your mind so you don’t want to eat when you feel stress or anxiety or boredom. I can help you drop the weight and find the balance you need. Don’t try to do it all alone. You can go further with a coach. If you want to get going, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we’ll set up a mini-session so you can get immediate free help!

Here’s your video for the week! Let me help love you into the New Year!