Category Archives: Mind Management

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Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Remix Weight Loss Myth: ” I Need More Willpower To Lose The Weight!”

Weight loss can be hard. We put in a lot of effort to eat the “right” foods and craft the perfect plan, but inevitably we make mistakes. And when we do, we think that if we just had more willpower, we could stay on the plan and get to our goal.

But willpower isn’t what we need. Let me show you how to use your brain to help you lose weight without any more willpower than you already have…

Most of us know the weight loss journey’s ups and downs. Feels like being trapped on an elevator – we want to get off on the ground floor, but we can’t seem to get off before the doors close and we go back up again!

I battled during the years before I lost my weight. It was a constant slog of trying to find the “right” diet, struggling to not want to eat “junk” food”, watching the scale with dread, and hating myself when I actually got on it. There were the doughnuts I couldn’t say no to and the pizza I’d never leave in the box. I figured I was just weak around food and the key was to stay out of the breakroom or kitchen, to put all the food out of sight where it couldn’t trigger me to start eating.

Even when I avoided the food, it would still call me from the pantry or kitchen or breakroom. My mind was on the food, and it didn’t really matter that it wasn’t in front of me. I needed more willpower – I needed to be strong to resist the temptation of the food!

What I wish I had known back then was this: Willpower is like a muscle and it fatigues. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so worthless every time I gave in to a cookie after trying so hard not to eat it. You can grow your willpower muscle, but even at its strongest, you can still wear it out. Every time you think even the simplest thought about food when you’re not hungry and use willpower to resist it, you chip away at your willpower reserves. Little innocent thoughts like, “That looks delicious!” will start to deplete your willpower. After dozens (or hundreds!) of thoughts like this, resisting the temptation just wears your willpower out completely.

So how do you resist temptation?

By eliminating it in your mind.

Here’s the key: Your mind makes every feeling you have. So if you feel tempted to eat something off your plan, or to eat when you’re not hungry, you are creating that feeling of temptation with your thinking. If you think “I want that cookie” twenty times, you feel tempted to eat the cookie. But if you realize that your brain is creating your desire with its thoughts, you can choose other thoughts. You can go ninja on your brain and catch the thought creating your feeling of temptation. Then you can remember that the thought “I want that cookie” is easy, your brain is offering you the practiced thought, and you can choose a different thought instead. Your true desire is to lose the weight, right? You really want to see the scale go down more than that cookie. Besides, that cookie is from a supermarket and won’t taste that good. It’s not like it’s homemade and even if it was, would it be worth feeling like trash after you eat it, knowing you could have left it on the plate instead?

You get to choose a different thought. You get to practice the new thought. You can generate whatever emotion you need to feel great about leaving the cookie behind and you don’t need willpower to do it.

You just need a new thought and practice.

You don’t have to resist a feeling of commitment to your plan. If you feel committed instead of tempted, willpower doesn’t come into play. Commitment comes from practicing a thought like “I choose to eat to fuel my body”, or “I only eat when I’m physically hungry”, or “I stick to my plan from a love for myself”. Whatever thought you choose that generated that feeling of commitment, that’s the one you practice when you see the cookie. If you don’t feel tempted, you won’t eat it.

No willpower needed!

Yep, it’s simple. But I know it’s not easy. But we get to choose our hard, and whether it’s doing the work to lose the weight or continuing to stay overweight, both are hard. Hard is ok – we can do hard things! But sometimes having help to get through the hard is really useful. If you want help, I’m here for you. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a mini-coaching session. I’ll get you started on your weight loss transformation and we can make plans to work together to go the rest of the way!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Remix Weight Loss Myths: Exercise Matters

Every time someone tells me they’re starting a new exercise regimen to lose weight, I cringe. I mean, how often does that truly work? I want to help, and it kills me not to say something. But who am I to crush their optimistic outlook? Besides, this might be the time that it works!

But most of the time it doesn’t. And I know why. I want to tell you the reasons why exercise isn’t the way to drop unwanted weight and how you CAN be successful at getting to your weight loss goal without a punishing exercise regimen. Keep reading…

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. Persistence is what makes the changes become your default action!

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!

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Blog, Inspirations, Mind Management

Remix Weight Loss Myth #1: Diet Matters

If you want to lose weight, you have to eat rabbit food, or starve yourself, stop eating out and at least give up all your favorite foods, right? And once you find the right diet for your body, the weight will just melt off and stay off. No, no, NO. None of this is true! Actually, this thinking is exactly why we roller coaster on and off all the diets and STAY frustrated when the scale doesn’t go or stay down. So, let’s get to what actually works…

Last week I was doing a day of procedures. It was a great day, taking care of problems for a bunch of my patients and enjoying the day with a fantastic team of nurses and the anesthesia team. We were wrapping up a successful day and I was finishing my notes at the nurse’s station. I closed the last one and stood up to take off my scrubs. Now, this was fine because I had another outfit on under my scrubs. Since COVID, I never wear scrubs to and from the house. You’re not supposed to anyway when it comes to going to the OR, but I definitely don’t now, no matter what part of the hospital I’m in. I show up dressed in leggings and a top, put on fresh scrubs over that base layer, take off the scrubs and leave them and any germs in the hamper at the end of the day. Then I throw a coat or sweater over my workout-style outfit and head out.

So I’m “undressing” at the nurse’s station and one of them mentions that I’ve lost weight (I haven’t, but they’ve not seen me in anything but loose scrubs). That brought us to talking about my weight loss story and a couple of the nurses mentioned that they needed help with getting their weight off. I wrote down the URL for the blog and explained how to find me on YouTube and put on my coat. As I picked up my bag and got headed for the door, one of the nurses said that she guessed she’d have to start eating a lot better if she was going to lose weight.

I turned back around.

(I had to say something!)

Presto! Doctor to coach…

You know, it’s commonly taught that in order to lose weight we have to “eat right” and exercise. Your doctor tells you that, everywhere you look there’s a diet to teach you the”right” way to eat to lose weight, and heaven help you if you’re not a gym rat or marathoner because you can’t possibly lose weight if you don’t exercise. This thinking is so common that every time I talk to one of my patients about weight the first thing they say is that they need to eat “better”.

But when we tell people to “eat right”, we don’t explain what that means. One big problem is that there’s not even agreement about what that means, and most doctors don’t have a lot of training in nutrition at all, much less in weight loss nutrition. So we believe this vague thought, that we have to eat “better” and we have no idea of what that means.

If you have no target, you’ll never hit it.

So the first step is to define what you mean when you say “eat right”. And that’s where it gets sticky. We’ve thought for so long that there’s a magical perfect diet out there that we actually believe it. If we could just find the one right diet for us, the weight will melt away and we will be thin and daisies will sprout at our feet and rainbows burst from our hearts like a Care Bear (ok, I’m dating myself).

That’s myth number one: Diet matters. There is no one perfect diet for you that will solve your weight battle. Any eating style or diet you choose will work as long as you stay with it. And that’s where the problem lies: Most of us choose diets that we won’t stick with for the long term. We want a quick fix, get the weight off, and we’ll figure out how we keep it off later.

But that doesn’t work.

We lose some, get sick of the diet, go off the plan and gain back the weight we lost and gather a few extra pounds along the way back up the scale. Then we say that the diet didn’t work. What happened was that you stopped doing the diet. This is why I don’t prescribe diets. When I work with a client on an eating plan, we build one that she can live with. It has to be something that you will do for the long term. You can tweak it over time and you’re always free to change your mind or plan a time off the plan (birthday cake, anyone?). But no diets!

You know how you know that the diet doesn’t matter? Because when you look at all the options out there (keto, plant-based, macrobiotic, vegetarian, juicing, intermittent fasting), there’s someone who has been successful in losing weight on it. There’s also someone who did it and gained the weight right back or says it didn’t work for them. It’s not the diet. It’s whether you are willing to stick to your plan when you’d rather eat a bag of cookies or drown yourself in a bowl of ice cream. It’s whether you’re going to eat the meal you planned or chuck it in favor of the drive-through because you’re too tired to cook. It’s whether you’re going to drink a few glasses of wine instead of the one glass on your plan because your day at work was chaos and the kids are on your one last remaining nerve. It’s whether you know how to feel your feelings or whether you choose to eat your feelings. It’s not the diet.

The first myth of weight loss is that the diet matters. Are there some ways of eating that may make weight loss easier for you? Sure. But the eating plan you develop and stick to is the one that is going to work. I help my clients design a plan that they can love and we adjust it as needed. I have a client who lost weight eating fast food several times a week. You start where you are and make adjustments until you get where you want to go. That works!

You might be saying, “You make it sound easy, but I still don’t know what to do to get this weight off!” I know it’s not easy. It’s simple, but making it work after years of dieting isn’t natural or easy. Having a coach to walk with you helps! I can help you get started. Set up a mini-session with me by emailing drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let me show you how weight loss coaching can help you get to permanent weight loss. You can do it!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Remix: Weight Loss Stories – Fasting!

Does fasting help or hurt weight loss? What’s the right way to fast? What if I don’t even want to fast because it’s so uncomfortable? Let’s answer all these and more in this week’s post…

Fasting. It’s the “new” thing and it seems like everyone has an opinion about it. It used to be that the common advice was to eat every few hours to stimulate the metabolism, and if you went too long between eating occasions that your metabolism would grind to a halt and you’d be doomed to gain weight forever. Ok, I’m being dramatic. But isn’t it interesting how the philosophies behind weight loss can totally contradict each other and still be so popular?

Fasting is in now. And folks either love it or hate it. Some swear that it’s the thing that made weight loss work for them, while others say it made no difference. There’s another group who refuses to try it at all – waiting an extended period of time to eat is too hard, too intimidating, too painful to try. Hangry, anyone?

Whether you love it or hate it, fasting isn’t new. As a spiritual practice, fasting has been around forever. Even as a normal eating pattern, in the 1950s most people didn’t eat after 6 pm dinner to 7 am breakfast (a 13 hour fast). That’s even where the word “breakfast” comes from.

I used to be terrified of fasting. Every time there was a mention of fasting – in the bible, at church, in popular media for weight loss, I resisted the idea. That resistance came from my fear of hunger. I spent most of my life trying to avoid hunger, so much so that when I started looking for hunger to lose weight the sensation was unfamiliar. Still, my mind thought it was something to stay away from. So when I finally allowed hunger to be the reason to eat and I started losing weight, it was a complete overhaul of my thinking around food and all the other reasons I’d learned to eat.

Fasting is a direct challenge to those thoughts. If you want to know what your brain thinks about food, stop eating and tune in. You’ll be able to watch your brain do gymnastics to try to get you to eat! Even more than 14 years after losing my weight, I can still see some of the old patterns of thinking around food come up when I fast. Let me tell you a story…

Recently I got an email that the church was going to fast on a particular day. Now, I read the email and decided that it was something I wanted to participate in, so I planned to join the fast. It was only one day and the fast from dinner the night before to dinner the day of the fast. I was in the office seeing patients that day, so I packed my water bottle and headed in.

Now, in my office, I have snacks for “emergencies” in my desk drawer. I have Kind bars and small squares of caffeinated chocolates and a container of organic roasted cashews that my nurse gave me for Doctor’s Day. Since I rarely have a food “emergency” the snacks usually just sit there and I give them away if one of my nurses or colleagues is hungry.

It was a busy day as usual. You’d think that I wouldn’t have much time to worry about the fast – but my brain was very busy thinking about the food I’d already decided not to eat. Every time I came back from seeing a few patients to sit at my desk and chart, my brain would suggest that I eat something. A couple of cashews, a square of chocolate, something. But here’s the kicker: I wasn’t actually hungry. The vast majority of the time that my brain offered me a snack as a solution, it wasn’t for hunger. It was to solve irritation, or boredom, or as a reward or a break. I could be sitting down for two minutes to close a chart and my brain would suggest a snack. Once I realized that my mouth was dry because of the mask and what I needed was water – but my brain suggested a snack for that too. It was fascinating to watch how many times my brain would offer food as an option to solve problems that weren’t hunger. Of course, as the day went on, I had more episodes of actual hunger, but most of the time I thought of eating wasn’t related to being hungry. Fasting was a great tool to see my mind!

If you want to see what you really think about food, try fasting. You’ll see all the reasons your mind wants to give you to eat because you say no! The mind will keep trying because of the no. If you pay attention, you can see the mind work even when you’re not fasting, but the fast is a powerful tool to take the distraction of eating food away.

Learning to see the mind at work is a practice, especially if you’ve been eating for reasons other than hunger as most of us have learned to do over the years. Untangling all the reasons why we eat and changing the thinking around them takes work, but it can be done! But if you’ve been trying and struggling, you don’t have to do it alone. I’m here to help! If you want me to coach you to master your mind and successfully lose your weight, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and request a consultation with me. We can conquer your weight battle together!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Remix: Weight Loss On Fast Food

Welcome back! This week we’re going to talk about the true story of a client of mine who lost weight while eating fast food. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the reason we can’t lose weight is that we’re eating the wrong foods and if we’d just find (AND stick to!) the right diet, the weight would just fall off. But what if it’s actually more simple than that? I can tell you for sure that it’s not the diet or the food plan that really makes the difference. Here, let me show you…

What the what? Yes, I said it – weight loss on fast food! I know you’ve been taught that losing weight means giving up all the foods you love and never eating fast food, junk food, or comfort food again. But what if that’s not true?

This week I want to tell you a new story about a client of mine who lost weight on fast food. When this client came to me, she was crystal clear: She did not want to give up all her favorite foods and live a life of deprivation. She didn’t like to plan, cook, or meal prep and she wasn’t interested in doing any of that to lose her weight. She ate out regularly, and Chick-Fil-a was a normal part of her routine. She wasn’t sure what I’d say or how I was going to help her, but she wanted to be clear where her boundaries were.

No problem.

Seriously, I had no problem with anything she said. Actually, I was glad to find out that she was clear on what she wanted to create for herself. Knowing where to start and where my clients actually are is a crucial part of being able to coach successfully. We spent the first session assessing where she was starting and helping her set up some guidelines she felt were going to be useful to her around her eating. No plans were made to change her actual diet.

She lost 6 pounds before our next session.

This is the power of coaching. When you become aware of what you’re creating in your life, you get to make decisions. Most of us are unaware of how our thinking is creating the results we have in our lives – we just don’t like those results. We don’t like that our jeans don’t fit, or that the mirror is telling a story we don’t like, or that the number on the scale is higher than it’s ever been. We don’t make the connection between our thinking and our results.

Awareness is the first step.

Over the course of time, my client continued to lose weight. I never did prescribe her a diet. That’s what weight loss coaching is not. Now, I can create an eating plan for anyone – that’s why I studied holistic nutrition and lifestyle medicine! I troubleshoot for my clients when they run into obstacles around their eating style all the time. What I don’t do is tell people what to eat. Why not?

Because it doesn’t work. No one likes a bunch of rules. You know I’m right – your teen rebels against rules and so do you. You don’t like to be micromanaged at work, right? Why? Because you want to make your own decisions. And with eating, you absolutely must make your own decisions. If you choose to follow a diet, you’ll probably be successful as long as you follow the diet to the letter. But eventually, you will “fall off the wagon”, make exceptions, cheat the diet, or whatever you want to call it. And when you stop following the diet, whatever you used to do creeps back in. A diet doesn’t change your thinking about food – it just changes your actions around food. If you haven’t changed your thinking as you lose weight, your default thinking creeps back in as soon as you stop the diet. What do you get if you do what you’ve always done? You get the same result you’ve always gotten. And that is why most people regain weight after they stop a diet.

You have a unique life and you have to be able to own your choices. Giving the responsibility of your weight loss over to a diet takes away your power, but owning each choice you make around food is how you take your power back.

Having a coach helps you do exactly that.

You can do this! And if you know you’re ready to take charge of your thinking and you want me to coach you, email me at drandreachristanparks@gmail.com. We’ll set up a free consultation and get you started. You don’t have to do this alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

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Blog, Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Remix: Losing Weight On Wings and Pizza

When we struggle with weight, there’s so much information out there that says that we have to trust a special program or diet or supplement to be successful. That’s how those items make sales! But it’s not true. Sure, there are ways to eat that can help and science supports that. But permanent weight loss can be achieved with eating regular food – I promise! I’m going to share some stories from my life and the lives of my clients to inspire you and show you that weight loss doesn’t have to be complicated and painful. Let’s go!

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 part 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

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Remix: Stories From A Weight Loss Coach

It’s time to get back on track!

We’re in that season of wrapping up the school year, getting ready for camps, and hoping to take a breath as the long, hot days of summer approach. And in the back of your mind, you’re wondering how the results from your New Year’s weight-loss resolution got away from you. It’s swimsuit season and you wanted to be excited instead of dreading shopping for a new suit. Sometimes weight loss can just feel hopeless…

But it’s NOT – and I want to inspire you by bringing back some stories from my work as a weight loss coach! You can look at my clients and see that even with tough situations, busy lives, and no personal chef or trainer, success with permanent weight loss IS possible. So join me and visit these stories as you get recommitted to your weight loss plan!

Here we go!

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 I share 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 15 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

Help Getting It Done, Inspirations, Mind Management

Self Care Remix #5: What Happens If You Don’t Do It?

Yes, yes, yes! I just reread this post and I needed this reminder, especially on the heels of my third eye surgery and an ugly night on call. I’m so tempted to get into hustle mode instead of really getting the rest I need. But instead of pushing through the pain in my eye and my fatigue to get THE LIST done, I’m making space for the sleep I need and some nurturing after taking care of my patients through the night.

What do you need today?

It’s the last week of our Self Care series! I’m glad you’re here. Whether you’re joining in just now or have been following along the whole time, you’re here because self-care means something to you. We’ve talked about the reasons for self-care, the benefits of self-care, and why we think we can’t have more self-care in our lives.

This week I want to consider what happens if we don’t make space for self-care.

Here’s the deal: I’m the most guilty of all when it comes to packing my schedule with to-dos and filling up all my time with what needs to be done next. I’m not here as the self-care guru sitting on high, teaching everyone else from a place of full self-actualization and nirvana.

I’m not that girl.

I’m the one running around, hair-on-fire, caffeinating when needed, and hating on the alarm when it goes off in the mornings. I’m the one crying silent tears when I look at my to-do list and then telling myself to put on my big girl panties and deal. I’m hustling, running, working/parenting/cooking/cleaning, trying desperately to get to the end so I can rest.

It’s a trap.

Here’s the truth: There is no end to the to-do list.

If you plan to rest when you get all the work done, if you think you’ll take care of yourself when everyone and everything is taken care of, you’ll never get there. Your rest can’t wait until everything is done. You will never get everything done. The only way you will have the stamina to get through all your work is to fuel yourself. Everyone needs whole foods, clean water, rest, friendship, and recreation. You are not an exception.

Besides, who really wants a life where you race through on fumes and arrive at the end, not having enjoyed the journey? What’s the point of working the whole of your adult life, hoping to have a life you enjoy later? I used to think that that was how life was supposed to be lived – work really hard, save money, enjoy life in retirement if you’ve planned/saved/worked hard enough. I’m reevaluating my whole outlook on that. I’m not advocating for being irresponsible with your time and money, but putting off enjoying your life in a hustle to enjoy it later is a losing proposition.

First, what about all the time you’re spending in your life right now? If I can’t enjoy the work I do every day, then why am I doing it? There are other ways to make money. I can choose to enjoy my work, my family, my friends, and my home as it is now. I don’t have to wait until everything is done and perfect before I enjoy it. Why would I sign up for forty years of burnout, fatigue, and stagnation when I can incorporate good and nourishing things in my life every day? I have time to breathe mindfully every day. I can go for long walks sometimes. Bubble baths are lovely. I can buy flowers with my groceries. Yoga helps me feel good in my body and my mind. Daily prayer keeps me connected and faithful. I can go on my solo retreats. I can have a spa day (when COVID ends!). There’s more – and I don’t have to wait for any of it.

Second, hustling your buns off now to enjoy life later can backfire. I’ve seen people arrive at their planned retirement after years of work they didn’t enjoy to enter those years with a diagnosis that prevented them from doing the traveling and fun that they anticipated. Their spouse gets sick and retirement becomes a time of doctor visits and medication regimens. The bottom falls out of the market and there’s not enough money for the retirement they planned.

It’s not that I’ve lost my belief in planning for the future. But certainty in the future is a myth. None of us know for sure what’s coming tomorrow, much less in 20 years. What I have is today. I have now. It’s possible to plan and enjoy life now too!

What do you want to do with today?

It’s simple to decide to get off the hamster wheel, but it’s not easy. If you feel stuck in the way you’ve been living your life, or you just can’t get out of your own way to get the weight off, I’m here to help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a consultation. We can get you moving again!

Here’s your video help for the week!

NOCOMMENTS

Blog, Help Getting It Done, Mind Management

Self-Care Remix #4: But I Feel Selfish!

We don’t like to admit it because we think we should know better, but sometimes we do make self-care=selfish. So how do we dismantle this belief? Let’s get to it…

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 to 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 in 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 Remix #3: But I Don’t Have Enough Time!

Y’all. I love this post! As someone who struggles with time scarcity, writing and rereading this post has helped me to reset my mind around how much time I have and how I choose to use it. I hope this post does the same for you in getting in your self-care!

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, your weight, 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!

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