Writing a new story

It’s that time of year when most of us evaluate what we want to manifest in the new year. It’s a magical time of year! 

Let’s use that energy to write a new story about how you take care of yourself. A new story about how you manage your weight and live the life you actually want.

To find out more please go to www.TheWLCC.com/95

Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It's Coach Dr. Matthea with you today. How is everybody doing? I'm really excited about today's episode because it's gonna be a little bit more conversational. We are in a new year. Can you believe it? It has already happened. I feel like time just flies nowadays. I really wanna talk today about creating a new story for yourself, whether that's a new weight loss story that this is possible for you. Whether it's a new part of maybe your health identity that you want to create, and this is not gonna be a very like how-to episode. We do more of that sort of how-to guide within our program. But this is really just some reflections on this time of year when people think New Year, new me. We're gonna kind of talk about all that, but just real quick, kind of what's been happening in all of your lives these past few weeks. So just to kind of tell you some random things in my life, I found a really cool thing. They have this last week of the year for four days. There was a local business she did what's called an anime bootcamp. So it's really cool. She owns a teaching kitchen and it was a week where kind of tweens, teens, kinda that younger age group, they learned a little bit of Japanese culture and some cooking and it's been amazing. And because enrollment was down a little bit that week cuz it's, you know, it's sort of a funky week to participate in a camp. But my stepdaughter loves anime, so we did it and I've. Participating in certain parts. I've had a little bit of work here and there, so I couldn't do all of it, but I know now how to make a curry, how to make sushi. What else do we make? Ramen like actual ramen. Not just the kind that you get at Walmart, but I've been having a really fun time doing that. So that was like a very unexpected, that sort of popped out of nowhere. I actually saw Facebook ad for it. So listen, advertising works I'm really glad that we made that connection. That's been really fun. and then I've been enjoying family time. But you know, I always think about during this time of year, my good friend Chris has the podcast, joyful Weight Loss. She always talks about, you know, expect the good, expect the bad. And I just find, you know, I love spending time around family and you know, all these different things that come this time of year. However, there's a lot of stress that comes with it as well, and sort of being out of routine, things like that. A lot of good during this time. A lot of stress during this time. So to be honest, I'm recording this, a few days before the new year here. I'm excited that we get this time of year where we can kind of turn the page. I'm ready for it. The other big thing, I always, this time of year, and even though you're gonna hear this, this comes out on Tuesday, January 2nd or January the third, I always, during this time of year, always reflect on what the previous year brought. So I look through every single month and I see what was big that happened that month. And so I thought through, this was the year when me and Keri transitioned our program. We changed the name of it. We changed the content entirely. we really reimagined what we wanted it to look like. This was the year when, I got my obesity medicine board certification. It was the year when I decided I'm gonna start a clinic in 2023, and that's happening. The Rentea metabolic clinic is actually now happening, and that's really something that. One of the things I wanna stress during this episode is that you don't just pop out having lost weight and pop out, starting a new company and doing things like that. There is so much behind the scenes work, and I wanna impart some of that today, some of these guiding principles that we could maybe take into the new year so that you can create the things you wanna create. And so it almost brings me to tears being able to actually start this clinic. It's a, it's a telehealth clinic for residents of Indiana and illinois. And it's created in a way that I have always wanted to help patients. I just realized that, these one-off visits where you see someone and then you don't see the doctor again for half a year, you just don't have a fighting chance at weight loss. And so I really sat down and I thought about what are all the ways I would wanna support someone? And then I decided I'm gonna give this a go and I'm gonna see if I can help people in this way. So that's been, it's been just a year of insanity. I could say many more things that have happened. The reality is a lot happens when we stay focused, and that is gonna be a big theme about what we talk about today. The other really big thing, and I'm, I'm gonna say this is a win, you know, and, and if you're part of our program, you know, we talk about wins a lot cuz we really know that our mind is rather negative and we need to start, we need to keep pulling out positives intentionally. I came back from my vacation time having been in Chicago with family. And my weight was the same and this is something I just could have never anticipated in the years before. This is never something, the holidays was always just like a guaranteed five pound weight gain, and it was just always something where, oh, all of January and February I had to clean it up. And so my. Lord was that nice to just come home. Weight is the same, and we had an amazing client write an email to us. I just wanna read exactly what she wrote because this is why me and Keri do the work that we do. She said Planner was received and ready to go. What I have learned carried me through Christmas and with a weight loss. Never managed that before. Looking forward to working with you in 2023. I just wanna say that it's possible to have different results, but we're gonna have to go about it in a different way. So right now I wanna talk about, not really, again, not really a how to guide, but more cuz we do that in our program, but more reflecting on this cultural expectation of New Year, new you, that type of mentality. And I want us to decide here. what parts of that mentality really work and what parts don't serve us? And just realizing how to get intentional. So let's take the good parts and drop the rest. You hear me say that 24 7. So number one, I wanna talk about this. When we're talking about writing a new story, sort of starting a new chapter, if you would, intention matters. I really want you to look at what has been working for you and what has not, because when you start to put intention into things, intention might be goals or aspirations, dreams, whatever you want, word you wanna use. I love the word intention. It turns into more attention being put into it. You're giving it more time and energy and space and thought that is action. And when you take action, you tend to get results that are aligned with that. So your thoughts really matter here. So the intention that, for example, it's usually, it's never just about losing weight. I was just working with a client this past week and she has a goal for what she'd like to do next year and half of that weight loss goal. So by June, if she would be able to achieve that, she would be able to do water skiing. With her family. And this is something that every year she misses out on. She really wants to be able to do it. It's like this would be the next amazing thing if we could achieve that by, by the summer coming up here of 2023. And so it's never about the wait. It's really about who you get to be at that point. That's where really where this big I am statements come into place. So it's never about just fruits, veggies, and protein, but what do you get to be? So I am a mom who is active with her child. I love and support my body with nutritious food, right? I honor my body with its hunger signals. I figure out ways to process emotions that don't hurt me. That's a really big one. When you start to get into this space and you start to realize, I don't wanna be someone that. Needs food to relax. I want to be able to relax in other ways. I am the kind of person that loves myself and shows myself even more compassion. When I'm struggling. I don't ignore myself. That's not what I do anymore, right? I lean into the discomfort. I figure out a different way. I'm willing to do this differently. That's the intention. It's not just I'm gonna lose weight, but I'm gonna listen to myself lose the weight, which I've never done before. I've normally picked up some, you know, BS diet book and like tried to follow every single rule. That's not what I'm doing anymore. I help myself to break the stress cycle. I'm able to make hard decisions that support myself and not just people please. If your why is not big enough, you will never stick with it. When I think about, you know, again, years ago, and you, you probably hear me say a lot of the same stuff on here all the time, the option of giving up just no longer was a choice anymore. I stopped looking at that as like, okay, well we just throw everything away and we just go back to what we used to do where we felt miserable all the time. It's like, A meal a day, things like that might not have gone how I want, but the option is not to feel crummy all the time anymore. It's literally not on the menu anymore. So when you start to go into this new year, it does matter what your intentions are. And so I want you to take a moment right now, pause this episode if you need to, and what is your intention for 2023? What is it that you would've loved to accomplish by December of 2023? Believe it or not, I have a whole list right now. Three being the main things at the top and they encompass different areas of my life, both personally with my body, my physical abilities, my relationship to food. There's that category. Another category that really matters to me is as far as what I'm doing with my business and how I'm serving patients and sort of that category, and then I have some other areas. So what is it? that you want to have achieved by the end of the year. If you do not know where you're going, it's impossible to get there, period. It might not be a straight line to get there. When you set the gps, have any of you ever had this? You're driving down the road. We had this last summer. There was one road that got to where the lake was and literally there was a, a horrific accident. Everyone had to go on these little side roads. We had no idea how to get on. We set the gps, it brought us around that. But the point is, if we didn't know where we were going, How would we have known how to get back on track when we went on those little side roads? How would we have known how to find our way back? We need an anchoring point. It doesn't mean it's gonna be a straight line getting there, but we need that. And setting that intention gets our attention on the things that actually matter. And then our actions get us what we want and part of those actions are what thoughts are driving this? Because again, if you're sitting there thinking like, this is the reason why these conventional diets don't work, where it's just a book that tells you these rules. Because if your thoughts are, this is so hard, how am I ever gonna continue to do this? That's what's running the show. You could still be sitting there eating the carrots and doing all the things that you think are healthy, but when the story that you're telling yourself about it, it's not aligned. we always give the analogy of being in a car where you either have a busted tire or the rotation's off a little bit. You are not going fast on the highway, getting where you wanna go. It is a scary experience. So right now, if you've not already done it, I really want you to think about what would I have loved to achieve by the end of 2023? And here's a little distinction I wanna make. I want you to set a goal that feels that it would be amazing if it happens. You're almost a little bit like, I don't even know if I can do it. Like you're a little bit excited. It feels almost a little bit out of reach, but not so safe where you're like, oh yeah, a hundred percent I could do it. You're not even motivated that you really have to like figure things out to get there. So there's this fine line. I often say within our coaching program, there's, where you are right now is the comfort zone. A little bit outside of that is the challenge zone. That's where we wanna get to. It's like you're testing yourself a little bit, you're growing, you're changing. And then when you go far beyond that, that's the panic zone. It shuts you down. Your body's like, I can't do this. You right away. You kind of zone out. You go binge, you go back to old behavior that you entered the panic zone. It was too much. So we have techniques within our program of kind of how to check in that. Right now, I just want you to say like, have you even sat down and thought about this? It's okay that this is a time of year when people sort of reevaluate things. We don't need to say, oh, if you look at the statistics, people don't achieve their New Year's resolutions, their goals. That's not the point of this. It's literally to set the compass. Okay. The other thing I really wanna focus on here, number two, is being future focused. When you're future focused, you're really looking at. What are all the ways that I can help myself? How can I do this differently? How can I make it easy? You're really looking at what lays ahead of me, what roadblocks are here, and it's really a skill to be able to redirect yourself to the present moment and looking forward. when you're past focused, which is 99% of chronic dieters are past focused. It's a very hard road. You're always looking for all the evidence of how things have not worked in the past. So past focus is, this is always really hard. Past focus is, I don't really know if I can do this cuz every single time I do this, I can't lose weight. Or there's this or there's that. And you find all this negative evidence. And the problem with that is, You're not getting creative answers, you're not doing anything differently when you're looking in the past, it's all happened. It's all rear view. So when you're future focused, you might think, how can I do this in a way that I've never done it before? I mean, I, I want you to get creative. I mean, obviously I'm a big advocate of using, you know, a medical professional because maybe there's a thought that you haven't had before. Maybe there's, you know, a lab that hasn't been checked, or maybe you are someone that's gonna need a medication. I don't know what the answer is. But we need to ask different questions. We need to think differently. Maybe we start to open our mind with time to different options that we didn't look at before. You know, maybe you're someone that, it's the time to go work with a nutritionist. I don't know what your answer is. but when you're looking at the past, you're not finding the new answer. I can tell you every few months it changes what works and what doesn't for me, and the only reason I keep going is because I no longer think that there's one way I'm gonna get this done or one way that I'm gonna help support myself in life. Literally remember a few episodes back, I'm like, we're getting factor meals all the time, and I love those meals. They're fresh, prepared meals that. Right now I'm going through a phase of maybe once a month getting them, and then I'm pausing them in between because I, maybe I'm trying different recipes and things. If you listen back to our podcast two years ago, I hated cooking It was just a no. For me, it was like as minimal as I could be. Well, guess what? I've developed some other skills over time because I'm always future looking. I'm always thinking, man, I would love this and that, but I can't get it there, so how am I gonna do it this way? I'm always pivoting because I'm looking at the future. I'm not looking anymore at. Well, look, you always go back to the same thing. I'm not focused on that anymore. So different options are presenting themselves to me. So really being future focused. This was an episode back here when I talked about three steps to kind of moving past and overeat. That was a really big part of it, is just saying, Hey, doesn't matter what happened, the meal before, the day before, the months before right now, I'm gonna just let that go and move right on past. And that skill of pivoting and continuing to redirect the brain all the time, that's gonna be so incredibly helpful. All right, number three. It's allowing a fresh start. There's a name for this, the Fresh start effect. People feel this on Mondays. They feel this on New Years Um, you know, maybe when kids are on summer break or when they go back in the fall, like there's all these times where we feel like, oh, it's like a, you know, a fork in the road. It's that new time and. I just wanna suggest to you that you can literally have this every single day. So this is the time of year when we tend to think about it a lot, but I want you to know you can have that fresh start effect every single day for the rest of your life. So today is a day I will take care of myself with X, Y, Z. This is literally something that I do every single day, I think about how today am I gonna support myself? Is it gonna be taking a wa a walk? Is it gonna be drinking some water? Is it gonna be learning a new recipe? Is it gonna be asking my husband to watch our toddler son? There are ways that I've had to learn, like when I ask for these things, my days tend to go better. And so really the fresh start effect is like every day is its own day that has to be conquered. So just today, what can I do. And when we use that phrasing, sometimes just today, we take ourselves out of past focus and we take ourselves out of having to prognosticate too far about the future. And when we say just today, a lot of us can handle that. You know, it sort of like gives me vibes of like addiction, right? Like when we're like, Hey, like just today, can I, you know, whatever it might be. But what's really beautiful about it is it makes us more mindful. It's like, Hey, just today, can I not eat very processed. Cause I know I'm really tired when I do that. And I know I don't actually feel good. I know if I really take a second to ask myself if I take a pause, I actually really don't want it. I'm just frustrated. I'm tired. I'm used to it. It's a habit. I think it's gonna taste good, but the can I just, or just today, it sort of gets us much more into the moment. So just today. How am I gonna get past those hard bits? We all usually can look at our day. I know, oh, this is gonna be a tough scenario. I'm traveling when I would normally be home for a meal. What can I do today to support myself better? Allowing every day for there to be a fresh start. You can break this phenomenon down even more. This is a, a technique I've really used over this past year is really saying more and more and more, every meal is its own, is its own. I don't really care actually what happened, the meal before. I don't care what happens to the meal after, but like right now, am I hungry right now? How is my body feeling? And these things happen much more automatically the more we practice. Allowing a fresh start every single day, allowing this to maybe be the fresh start of the new, whoever you want to be. And we're gonna practice that. All right, the last one is just making 2023 different for you. So you can literally be whoever you want to be and you might not even know. and that's really not your concern right now, but the way will reveal itself as you're going there. You will not even be able to predict what it will have looked like. And the only thing that needs to happen right now is that you start to question what you would like to bring into this world as happening for you. So let me give you an example. Sometimes people like to sit there and think, okay, I would like to be down. I don't know, 20 pounds in the next half year, and start with wherever your brain naturally goes, and then ask why a few times, because there's a reason for that. Maybe you wanna be the person that is really moving your body more consistently because you just feel good when you do. That is great. And you know what? If you're someone that's not moving right now, you don't need to worry about how it's gonna happen. All that we're asking ourselves to do right now is just to think of what we would actually like to achieve. Then you get to work your way backward. And again, we're gonna be doing this right actually on January 1st within our membership. It's a big goal setting workshop, and it's all about how do you do this? And here's a little spoiler alert, and again, it's not as in detail as we go, but you really start with the end in. what you would like to achieve, and then you work your way backwards. We as humans are notorious for overestimating what we can get done in a little amount of time, and underestimating what we can get done in the long run, like a year. And some of you, you might not even believe it's possible to achieve these things, and I just want to sometimes ask yourself, why not? Why not you? Why not you? Then who then who gets to experience those things? Why does everybody else get that? And you don't get that. Why can't you figure it out? Yeah. You're not gonna, you're not gonna get it in a straight line. You're gonna have tons of times where you're gonna fall over and you're gonna learn lessons you didn't know you needed to learn. And it's gonna look way different. It's not gonna all be calm and serene and peaceful and perfect, but you can a hundred percent figure this out cuz why not? What is so special about someone else compared to. So this is what, you know, what, what that ends up being is building up your identity, building up your belief. I want you to sit here and again, it's like everything we've been doing today is just all about what you want to achieve and why you wanna achieve it. You could a hundred percent do this. Take this time to think through a little bit of this. Just real quickly, kind of just to summarize here, what's your intention, right? What matters to you? What do you wanna actually get done? Number two, how do you wanna stay future focused? How do you wanna continue to keep your eye on what you're trying to achieve, what you're willing to do, what today brings? Number three, that allowing the fresh. What are you gonna do today that's gonna be different? What are you gonna do today that maybe solidifies a habit? How are you gonna keep it small enough for yourself? This is a really big thing. I think, you know, people will set these goals and. I mean, I've been coaching people now for a few years, so I feel like I can hear them and say, yeah, that's like I, this past week when I was working with a client and I was saying, yeah, that's a hundred percent achievable what they were saying. And then other times people will say things to me and I'm like, eh, let's like scale that back a little bit cuz I, I want you to actually be able to achieve this. And I, I want it to be a reach goal, but I don't want it to be so far out where you're just discouraged and then you kinda just like give up on everything. So this is. Where you get to make sure, is this reasonable enough for me? Like, can I actually do this? Am I a 10 outta 10? I can get it done. That matters. And then the last one, making 2023 different for you. Why can this year not be totally different? and it doesn't have to be like unicorn, like every single area of your life changes, but sometimes I think it's fun and if you're discouraged by this, don't do it. But do the five year plan and I want you to write out like it's quite amazing if you think like, okay, maybe like for the next year I spend 2023 just working on my mindset working on healing my relationship with food, and I actually listen to hunger and I stop it enough. But your goal is not weight loss, so you're doing actually intuitive eating. And then year two, you work on, I move a lot more. And then year three, you work on, okay, this is actually the, the weight loss here. No one's ever thinking like this. Everyone wants to have everything all at once. But if you, in five years from now, you had a scenario where you know how to move your body, you know when life stressors pop up, how to handle it, because you've worked through in so many different scenarios, in so many different capacities. You've layered it on. If any of you have ever seen, painting, certain types of painting, they layer paint like one layer after another water. It's not that in one go they can get it done. They literally need to let one layer dry and then they come with the next layer. It's, it's great. I learned it in school and it's something that lemme tell. You have to have a lot of patience, right? So if you approached your life in such a capacity, like this month I'm working on this, then next month I'm gonna layer in the next thing. You allow yourself to meet yourself where you're. All right, I'm gonna leave it here. I feel like we could talk about this for, for so long. We would love to hear from you. So if you're someone that has been, you're listening to this podcast, you're getting a lot out of it, please leave us a review. Wherever you're listening, we love to hear kind of what it is that you're loving about this podcast or how it's helping you, and it really helps us to reach out to other women. All right, everybody, have a happy New Year and we will talk soon.