Do you feel drained and fed up with the constant effort it takes to prioritize your health? Every few weeks, it seems like I hit a wall where the thought of sticking to my health routine feels like a monumental task. I get sick of the protein goals, getting the movement in, and everything else that comes with it.
The good news is, the exhaustion and frustration are not signs of failure, but indicators of growth. When we reach a point of feeling drained and fed up, it's a clear sign that we're pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones and challenging our old habits. But how do we move past this feeling of being stuck? Tune in to discover three powerful strategies to break free from the cycle and reignite your journey towards better health and well-being!
00:30 - Dr. Rentea explains how growth and comfort don't coexist, so we should expect periods of fatigue on our health journey.
04:40 - Dr. Rentea normalizes the fact that creating growth isn’t always going to feel easy when you're someone that has always struggled with your weight.
13:50 - To break free from moments of fatigue, Dr. Rentea encourages us to create a new identity away from health-related topics.
16:19 - Dr. Rentea summarizes what to do if you’re feeling exhausted by the process and how to shake out of a struggle period and regain perspective.
Quotes
“When you're someone that has struggled with this in the past, you are working on creating a new life for yourself, creating this growth, creating this new life, it is not easy.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“It is energetically expensive to go through this process, the path you are walking, to work on your health.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“Growth and comfort don't coexist.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“Trust the process. None of this is a quick fix.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“We're never going to be perfect and this gray middle zone, it's uncomfortable. Remember, our brain wants certainty.” - Matthea Rentea MD
All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.
If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com
Do you feel drained and fed up with the constant effort it takes to prioritize your health? Every few weeks, it seems like I hit a wall where the thought of sticking to my health routine feels like a monumental task. I get sick of the protein goals, getting the movement in, and everything else that comes with it.
The good news is, the exhaustion and frustration are not signs of failure, but indicators of growth. When we reach a point of feeling drained and fed up, it's a clear sign that we're pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones and challenging our old habits. But how do we move past this feeling of being stuck? Tune in to discover three powerful strategies to break free from the cycle and reignite your journey towards better health and well-being!
00:30 - Dr. Rentea explains how growth and comfort don't coexist, so we should expect periods of fatigue on our health journey.
04:40 - Dr. Rentea normalizes the fact that creating growth isn’t always going to feel easy when you're someone that has always struggled with your weight.
13:50 - To break free from moments of fatigue, Dr. Rentea encourages us to create a new identity away from health-related topics.
16:19 - Dr. Rentea summarizes what to do if you’re feeling exhausted by the process and how to shake out of a struggle period and regain perspective.
Quotes
“When you're someone that has struggled with this in the past, you are working on creating a new life for yourself, creating this growth, creating this new life, it is not easy.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“It is energetically expensive to go through this process, the path you are walking, to work on your health.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“Growth and comfort don't coexist.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“Trust the process. None of this is a quick fix.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“We're never going to be perfect and this gray middle zone, it's uncomfortable. Remember, our brain wants certainty.” - Matthea Rentea MD
All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.
If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I don't know about all of you, but I go through periods every few weeks where I just feel fatigued. With the process of taking care of myself, I get sick of how much work I feel I need to put in. I don't feel enthused about the things I need to do. And I'm able to snap out of this after two, three days. But I definitely throw myself a little pity party. I definitely have those days and I have gone through that the past few days, and now I'm out of that again. But it really made me think this is a perfect episode because the things that get me out of it are listening to what other people do and. Shifting my focus away from this for a period, but again, not abandoning health habits, but I'll explain what that means and I thought this is a good. Episode because if you are someone that has to deal with a chronic medical condition like obesity, it's every day requiring something of you. And yes, we can build out habits and yes, we can use tools to make it easier, but at the end of the day, there is a lot that you're just gonna have to constantly give to this if you want to maintain this and. That can be exhausting. So let's just have a conversation today. Number one, to normalize that nothing has gone wrong. If you are just so sick and tired of having to care about the protein that you're eating and making sure you're getting the movement and and doing all those things, and it doesn't mean that you don't actually like that. You feel better when you're doing these things and you actually like doing the walk and maybe you're like me and you listen to. I listen to a lot of Audible or Spotify, right? I listen to different podcasts, different books. At this point, I've got all these things down. It doesn't mean though, that by the end of the week, today is Friday when I'm recording it, I. Just energy is low. I don't feel like doing all these things. Sometimes I think, gosh, why do I keep working at this? Right. You have these moments and I was in that state and then of course I find myself on TikTok and I was listening to a video. I should, let me see if I probably gonna not be able to find it again after this, but. It was the former CEO of IBM and she was talking about a scenario where she got offered a promotion and instead of just immediately saying yes, she kind of doubted if she would be the right person or sort of strong enough or capable enough, and she said, let me talk to my husband. And she goes home to talk to her husband and the husband says, look, do you think a guy would've ever answered that way? And she said, no. He's like, you know, I know you. You're gonna, within six months, you're gonna say, I know everything. I feel like I need the next challenge. And the point is this, she said a statement, and this is where we're gonna start today. She said, growth and comfort don't coexist. And that really snapped me out of the mood I've been in the past few days. And what it helped me to realize is. I'm not requiring status quo of myself when I'm sitting here trying to build muscle, trying to still intentionally lose fat, trying to intentionally increase movement, trying to intentionally change my eating patterns to question Experimentation wise, do I feel better when I do these things? Do I maybe have more energy at the end of the week if I do XYZ Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? That is massive growth and it's not comfortable. And oftentimes when I acknowledge that, when I say yes, listen, I'm actually asking a lot of myself. I'm able to realize, oh, of course it's not comfortable all the time. Got it. Right. And so if this is helpful to you, growth and comfort don't coexist. What this can help you to realize is that. It's super uncomfortable when we're going through these things. I always, I used to give the analogy a lot, but I don't think I've talked about it recently. The example with a rubber band. I want you to imagine that you have a rubber band between your two thumbs and you're stretching it apart. There's massive tension there before you have new change and a new shape, and so that you're walking through. It is energetically expensive to go through this process, the path you are walking, to work on your health to change these things. Now, remember this podcast who I'm specifically talking to, it's never the person who's always naturally been. In a slender body and, and never has to work on it. They don't have to do these mental gymnastics. They don't need to think about these things. They don't need to prioritize these things. And, and I'm not saying that they don't think about when they're gonna work out and stuff like that, but it's not this constant struggle that I see them having to go through. Little sidebar moment of levity here. My husband went the other day to get my, from the pharmacy and. I guess the pharmacist was on and she said, oh, this isn't for you, is it? And I'm just laughing because he is this thin runner army person that of course he's not, you know, like he's not fitting the mold of who's on this. And I was just laughing and it's like, no, it's not for him. So, okay. But anyway, coming back to the point at hand. When you're someone that has struggled with this in the past, you are working on creating a new life for yourself, creating this growth, creating this new life, creating these things, it is not easy potentially. So I want to normalize. It doesn't mean that you don't get pockets of peace where it is, where it does feel like it's working and you're like, oh, I love that protein drink and I love eating in this way. And I'll tell you, I'll have like. Usually two and a half weeks is the longest period of time where I feel it's easy. And when I'm in those periods, I'm just like, this is so we can all do this. This is great. And then I go through those days of struggle and, and then I. I know I'm gonna make it through and I know the pattern at this point. Like I just know what it looks like. It doesn't mean that it still doesn't require energy. So a few things that I've come to that help me during this periods to sort of snap out of that. I'm not saying I'm not gonna still feel those things, but to not stay in it. I'll give you an example. Years ago. Five years ago when I first started doing all this work, it would be like three months in that energy, three months of overeating, three months of feeling like, I can't do this. I'm a failure, right? And now it'll be one day, two day, three day, but I'm out of it and I feel like, and I might even still be taking good care of myself during that time, but it feels hard, right? So number one, trusting the process. Trust the process. None of this is a quick fix. None of this is gonna be, I do this real quick for a month or two. I get all the results. I'm done. I move on with my life. Unfortunately, I see as a clinician and dealing with this myself that this is a chronic medical condition, meaning. You are in this for the long haul. I want you to consider that you are your own child, right? You're not, you're not able to abandon that child. You're not able to be like, bye, right? You've got yourself for life, you're gonna be taking care of yourself. So trusting the process, trusting that. I know when I set this goal that it sounded good. There are parts of this that really work for me. I'm gonna figure out the parts that don't, but I'm gonna trust the process that I can figure this out. I'm gonna trust that it's okay, that every so often I'm gonna have some days where I don't. Totally have disciplined eating. I don't totally stick to the protein goal that maybe it won't matter in the end. Maybe those days will actually help me even more get to my goal. You know, I've come to realize that sometimes when I think. That I'm sort of off-plan. I actually end up having even better results in the days to come. And I wonder maybe my muscle actually needed that nutrition. Maybe leptin resistance went down because I gave myself some more fat those days. Who knows? I feel like we just, it's such a complex process. We don't know all of the things, and so trusting the process that I'm gonna trust that if my body is screaming out that it wants more carbs or more fat or more food, I'm gonna listen to that. I'm gonna trust that. I'm gonna give myself all that protein for a few weeks on end and see does it make a difference? I'm gonna trust that it doesn't need to go faster because I don't know all the other things that are shifting. I've talked a lot about on here that. I use for myself and patients, a lot of the body composition testing, the in-body scale. And I'm always shocked. I'm sitting here thinking nothing's working and you know, I just, I'm in it. And then I will get on that in a month and there's all these changes and I didn't know, and it's not 10 pounds lost. But, but just having that perspective, like I'm gonna trust this process. Okay. The second thing I have here is really zooming out a little bit more. So I think whenever we get into a place, I see this with patients when they're, when they're distressed with something, they're very heat-missled in on one particular thing, and they don't have global awareness. So I want you to kind of zoom out a little bit. So I'm gonna give you an example like the other day. My husband thought he was doing a nice thing by, I really like German cookies, so I grew up in a family. Half my family is German, half my family's Romanian, and we would make a lot of German cookies and things like that. And for some reason, if you are military or you shop at the commissary, which is like a food store for military families, they have a lot of German products. And so in the seasonal area, he brought me home the other day, these cookies, and they're, they're extremely great. So. Normally, like I'm someone, I actually integrate that stuff within my diet because I, within my nutrition plan, let me say that because I know that if I don't, I will get into that binge restrict cycle and that's not a good space for me to be in. And so I knew, okay, I'm gonna have one. Well, I ended up having a few I. And I just didn't feel good with that. I end up feeling really tired when I have a bunch of sugar and flour like that. I just know my body at this at this point and I noticed myself like really zone in on that, like that defined the day I. And you've got to zoom out in those moments. So I reminded myself, wait a minute. You got up this morning, you did your protein drink with your decaf. You had your, the rest of your protein breakfast. You then had a lunch that really served you, you've gotten in a bunch of salad and all these other things. And I had to remind myself of that because all my brain wanted to do was go into this, go into this one scenario, and that was not the full truth. So. When you find yourself that you are despairing, nothing, you know, how am I gonna keep doing this? This is so hard. All of those things. Have you zoomed out recently? Have you really looked at the full truth? Have you really looked at the data? Have you really looked at month to month? What's going on? Are you even tracking the data? Because if you're not, that's another thing too. Remember our brain? Is not good at retaining information. So our brain is having 40 to 60,000 thoughts a day. It's all over the place. You have a thought about every single thing. If you are not in some capacity, helping yourself out with some movement, some meditation, some journaling, something to kind of sweep out the cobwebs in your brain. If you are not refocusing, if you are not doing those things, if you are not having the zoom out moments, look at all these things I'm doing for myself. I'm a really big fan of doing this with patients. I often, patients are coaching clients. I will have them inventory. I want you to write down all the things that you do each day for yourself. They are blown away. They will say, oh my gosh, I take a multivitamin in the morning and then I make sure to get up a little bit earlier to get a walk-in. And then I, I made sure on Sunday to prep the breakfasts and suddenly, I had new, all these new products in the house. I just had a patient say to me that they were. So incredibly grateful. They're getting over a hundred grams of protein daily now, literally, because they like that devotions protein that I keep talking about. I'm not sponsored. I get no money when you purchase it, but. It's just a really amazing taste to the protein brand. Right? And we'll put the link down below, just if you wanna see, they have sample packs so you can kind of see which flavor you like. And, they have a version that can be used more with salty things, which is called buttery blend. And then they have more things like brownie batter, stuff like that. But the point is they brought that stuff into the house, they're making that happen. Right. So you, you have to remember in these moments when you feel like you're in the pits and you're fatigued and you're worn out from having to take care of this thing, that's just always there. But look at all these things that you've done. That's the zoom out moment, and it's gonna feel hard at first. It's gonna feel different because we're not used to doing this. This feels weird. You're like, no, I wanna stay in the negative. Remember the brain? Our brain has a negative bias. Meaning it's gonna really exaggerate those negative things and all the positive things get demoted. They don't, they're not as prominent. So I think, if I remember from positive psychology correctly, you need about three positives to outweigh one negative. And this is why you basically have to intentionally keep finding ways that you're taking care of yourself and what you're doing. Because you've got to learn to build that out so much more than beating yourself up for the things that you think are not perfect. First of all, we're never gonna be perfect, right? And this gray middle zone, it's uncomfortable. Remember, our brain wants certainty. It wants to be we're, we're all in or we're all out. And so it takes time to realize like, okay, yeah, it was a few cookies moving right along. Did not at all affect today for me. You know, I'm right, I'm right, I'm right on my game, right? I'm moving forward and, and not dwelling in that, and then letting that sabotage you for days to come. Okay. And then the last thing that I have on here to just provide, to kind of like shake ourselves outta these moments, it's to take a break, not from the things you're doing. You're still gonna walk, you're still gonna get your protein, you're still gonna do your water, you're still gonna do all those things, but mentally we've gotta get you into other things. So let me give you an example. I. Find myself sometimes when I'm struggling, it's because all I'm ever doing is focusing on this health, nutrition, wellness. I'm in that zone. I'm listening to podcasts on that, and I realize. I need something else in my brain. This is abnormal for me to, and granted, this is the area of medicine that I'm in, right? So mind you, I'm with patients all day long, sometimes eight to 10 hours, right? I'm doing that. Then in the morning, I've been listening to something at night, I'm on a coaching call for a group, wellness program that I'm in. And when I say this, like listen to something else right now, I'm loving the book. 10 x is easier than two X. It is technically a business book, but those of you that have followed me for a long time, you remember how much I love the book, the Gap in the Gain. This is from the same authors. It's Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, and it's just a really easy way of looking about, anyway, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that book another time. But the point is. I'm listening to something different. I listen to sometimes books that are entirely nothing to do with, with health and fitness, just because I need to kind of get into a different place. I used to love listening to the podcast. Well, I still do, but they just, they have a lot of like, we're gonna take breaks between the seasons. The podcast, the pitch, I love hearing how startups are. You know, pitching a venture to, to venture capitalists and trying to get money to grow their business, and what have they tried and how have they pivoted and what are the follow-ups like afterward? I just love this stuff and so I've gotten to this place. Oh, I love the, podcast scam influencers, right? I. And it's just, oh my gosh, what? What have people done in the world? And whoa, how did people believe that? And it's just so fascinating. And so, you know what? I'm gonna link to a lot of this stuff underneath because if you're someone right, that you need ideas how to get out of making this your identity, you've gotta build out another life. I want you to see what, what are you passionate about? It could be doing crafts, it could be listening to things. It could be walking, it could be going out to lunch with friends. Like how can we get you out of this being your whole identity and everything that matters? I. So just to kind of recap here, first of all, if you go through these struggle periods, you are not alone. Bookmark this episode and keep it for yourself when you are in the pits, when you're just, when you're down and you need to kind of shake out of it and revitalize and re get the perspective again. I want you to remember that this growth that you're going for, it is not comfortable. So know that. Actually, this is great. My coach, Dr. Ali. Nowitzki, she said. She said, you know, when you go back to an old habit, that means it's working. So she was talking about how this really means you're probably gonna kind of break through a new level. It's like you're requiring something of yourself where you wanna go back to comfort. Now I'm kind of interpreting my own thing based on what she said, but I thought to myself, oh my gosh, if I thought every time I did something like that, it's working. This shows it's working. That's a whole different feeling compared to me feeling defeated down and out, right? So you're gonna trust the process. You're gonna trust that you are a smart cookie, that you know what you're doing, that you are gonna figure this out. You're gonna zoom out a little bit. I need more perspective. You would never talk to other people. The way in which you talk to yourself, you would have much more of a global perspective on things. This is why I love seeing patients, because to me it's always so obvious how amazing everyone's doing. But everyone, and that's the same how I feel at times feels I'm not doing enough and it's this and it's that. And then we have these perspective moments because I'm asking about all these different areas in the visit, and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, this is tremendous. Remember, growth takes energy. Growth takes a lot of resources. So even for you to have maintained, even for you to have figured out how to get 20 more grams of protein, these are big things. Don't discount it anymore. So you're gonna zoom out and then you're gonna figure out how to, how to create some, I don't even know if taking a break is the right term there so much as create a new identity. Where this is not the only thing you do. This is something you figured out. You've got some focus around it and it's gonna run itself, but you're gonna be able to go do other things. I hope this episode was helpful today. We're gonna make sure to link a bunch of the stuff down below. I know I kind of mentioned different stuff. Just a quick reminder, if you're someone that wants to see where those links are,'cause I realize they're not showing up when you're within, let's say. That you're on Apple Podcast, you're listening. If you look at, if you swipe right or left and you see our show notes there, the links do not hyperlink, meaning you can't click on it. So if you ever wanna see a long written out the, the description of these episodes and the different teaching points and links to things, everything like that, make sure that you go to renteeaclinic.com forward slash blog and we have each episode you can click into and you can. Read about things and you can kind of go much more in detail. The other thing too, if you're their rente clinic, R-E-N-T-E-A, CLINIC.COM forward slash blog, right on the right hand side, you can subscribe to our newsletter. We don't send out a lot. It's every Monday we'll tell you, Hey, this episode was out. I'll give you a few thoughts from the podcast, a quote, there'll be some reflections. So we email you once a week. And you can kind of stay on top of what's going on. And that's an easy way too. You know, one of the things that I really love to do, I love to make topics that, that you guys wanna hear about. So one of the things I would say is if you're on that email list and you get an email on Monday and you think, you know what, I would really like to hear about XYZ. You can just hit reply to that email and it will come directly to me and you can say whatever, whatever concept you'd like or kind of what's going on for you. And I think coming up, we're gonna do another question and answer episode. Those are, those are really good ones. Someone sent me a message on social and said, Hey, can you make an episode about ADHD? And kind of how that relates to. Food and things like that. And I think I've shared before half my patients have a DD or ADHD, and it definitely has a lot of Manifestations as far as tools and strategies we can use that are specific for that. So I wouldn't, I mean I, there's a lot of topics I would do, but I was like, oh, that's so good. We haven't talked about that in over a year. That's an amazing topic. A lot of people will benefit from that. So again, if you go to that website, you get on my email list, that's an easy way to be able to keep in contact with me and. Know everything that's going on. Alright. I hope you have an amazing rest of the week. You can do this. You are doing great things and you just need to remind yourself of that. Alright, we'll talk soon.