Your Friday Five: A Walk, a Mug Cake, and a Wake-Up Call

In today’s quick Friday Five, Dr. Matthea shares a powerful quote that’s stuck with her for months: “Sometimes it has to be more painful to stay the same than it is to change.” Whether it’s nighttime snacking, movement motivation, or getting stuck in a rut with meals, this episode explores how discomfort can actually be your biggest catalyst for growth.

You’ll hear:

• Why emotional eating often surfaces in the evening
• Four practical strategies to approach nighttime snacking
• How Dr. Matthea uses discomfort as a signal for change
• A peek into her favorite protein mug cake recipe using Devotion Nutrition (use code DrMatthea at checkout to save on devotionnutrition.com)

Tune in for a mindset shift that could spark your next breakthrough—plus an easy recipe you’ll want to try this weekend!

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

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Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another, your Friday five. Today I wanted to go over a simple quote that was actually brought up a few months ago when Amy Adams was on the podcast. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, and she said something that, I know I've heard this in a lot of different capacities in the past, but I don't know why. It just really struck me and I've. Thought about this for weeks after she came on the podcast. So she said, A lot of times in order to make a change, it has to be more painful to stay the same than it is to change. And I feel like we've all heard this in different capacities, right? Like, you know, if you're boiling water and the frog doesn't notice, right? And this is so common in our life where we just end up somewhere and we think, wait, how did I get here? What happened? And it was happening degree by degree by degree. We just didn't even know it was happening. If we wanna change, there might be some pain involved. Right? Where you're at, that's the only thing maybe that motivates you. That's why a lot of the times I find when people come to work with me, they've gotten to a breaking point. They're having knee pain, they're needing a knee replacement, the weight set point's, holding them back. The surgeon says, I don't wanna do a surgery. Until you're at this place where they are at this moment. It's very painful. They can't stay there literally and figuratively. They really have the motivation to get to a change. There's other people that, they don't even know how they drifted there, but suddenly their sleep is really affected. There's so low energy, they can't keep up with their kids, they just can't do it anymore. There's no more gas in the tank so I think to myself, a lot of the time I think we're not changing'cause there's no tolerance for discomfort. There's no tolerance for allowing something to become painful so that we can change. I wanna give you an example though, what I'm talking about so you can follow here. So if you're doing mindless eating at night, nighttime snacking, one version that you hear me talk about to help solve this is, are you balancing your food throughout the day? Okay. Second version I talk about, can we plan for it and decide what that snacks gonna be? Third version is in the moment, you're caught up in it, you start with protein fiber first, and then you do what it is you're gonna do. All right. Version four though, is that you realize it's emotional eating. I'm not hungry. And you decide I'm not going to eat so that I can allow what needs to come up to surface. For example, there's likely a feeling that you're trying to overcome. You get restless, you get anxious, you get annoyed, and the food really helps to calm you down. Or you want to feel calm, you want to feel, that those great feelings, at the end of the day, you wanna be quote unquote happy, like all that. And food lifts your mood. Food chills you out. Food, is rhythmic with the eating, calms you down all the things. So if we don't use the food and we see what's actually there, you very quickly get uncomfortable and we can solve for it. Oftentimes I like to do this when someone, I can tell they are. They are stable. They're in a spot where they can handle this. I say, let's entirely take away the food at the times you're not hungry and figure out what's there. You will figure out that boredom is a problem you need to solve for. You will figure out that you being irritated and annoyed at the end of the day. It's something we need to solve for in other ways. We need to look at what's happening during the day. For me, you hear me, every single episode talk about this. That morning walk is so important to me because I'm no longer frustrated and annoyed at night because before I would be so worn out, I'd be so tired from the day, and it wasn't just the way in which I was thinking about things. I had no reserve built up to deal with the day. By walking, that was like one tool that I had to build it out slowly. I had absolutely no fitness years ago, but now I realize I start so calm when I start the day. I've emptied that proverbial stress bucket so I can handle what's coming. But to do that, it had to actually be painful where I was at. And that meant taking away the snacks sometimes at night.'cause I had to get annoyed. I had to get irritated. I had to sit there and say, Ugh, why do I feel this way? And that led me to be able to solve for other things. I think about. When you're going through these things, if you're noticing just again and again, things are not happening in the way in which you want, is there a way that you are making it too comfortable for yourself? I. Do we need to involve something else? I wanna give you an example where I, uh, meaningfully put this to practice. So with those walks that you hear me say how much I love them, right? I got to a place where I was slacking on either the treadmill or the walking pad. Like I would get on it, but then I would just be like, oh, I'm hot. I'm this, I'm that like. Absolutely anything could happen and I would stop it. This was like a, a brief period of time. This was toward the end of winter, to be honest, when this happened, and you know what I did? I went and joined a walking track because I realized there's something about other people walking around that track too, where you're just gonna keep going even if the temperature's not perfect or the this or the that. Or one day, I forgot my headphones. It's like, gosh, darn it, you're at that track. You're gonna do it. There's a little bit of discomfort involved when if I would be sitting on the sidelines, and by the way people do it. They walk a lap, they sit down a lap, stuff like that. But there's something about where I'm like, if other people are doing it, that's more of a comfort zone to me than stopping compared to if I'm home stopping is a hundred percent comfort. It doesn't matter. Hopefully these examples land today, but I want you to think about if you're needing some change, is it too comfortable for you? Is there something that you need to change? Do we need to, much as it stinks sometimes, do you need to hire someone to help you with movement, to make you do some things that are maybe outta your comfort zone? Maybe you're ready for the next steps and you haven't been doing that. Or with your nutrition, do we need you to maybe do a few sessions with someone? Just that you can get some different recipe ideas? I get stuck in the same ruts and I was literally looking at my fridge. Uh,'cause I just had a, a, actually a devotion little, protein mug cake thing before this. I'll go over that real quickly here. If you haven't heard of that before from me. I was looking through the freezer. I was thinking through, okay, what am I gonna have for dinner? And there were so many amazing options that I had just forgotten about. I had in the freezer, frozen broccoli at a Mame. What else was I looking at? Oh, there was a cauliflower rice that was left over from literally a few months ago when a friend of mine was in town. We just didn't have time to make it. At our virtual conference. And so I had brought it to my home, to make it another day. Her husband had even told me how to make it so that it doesn't taste horrible'cause I've always just microwaved the bags. And then he kind of said, well, if you fry it with a little bit of olive oil, it'll get back some of that texture. And I even know what to do. I didn't even remember it was there. You get in this rut of like, this is the same thing I'm eating all the time. Then I looked in the pantry and I was like, oh, and I have those protein noodles. Oh, and I have this cottage cheese and rao sauce. And I was, and then I was sitting there, I was like, oh, I could make a reasonable portion of the protein noodles, put broccoli in there with Rao, the marinara sauce, RAOs mix that all together. That's gonna be a divine. And then, put a little bit of cottage cheese next to it just to up the protein. Plus or minus some edamame. We'll see. But it was suddenly this amazing dinner that was out of the rut where I was feeling like I wanted to have raisin brandand cereal every night, you know? And there's nothing wrong with having cereal. I mean, if you use Fairlife milk, you're getting, at least from the milk, you're, if you have a cup, you're getting 13 grams of protein. But, but you know, to get out of these things, we have to not be in the same comfort zone all the time. Other thing I'm just gonna share again, if you're not, super familiar, I really like the devotion protein powder. It's a whey casing base, so it's very it, it bakes really well. So something super easy. I'll take a scoop of that. Or one bag if you buy the individual ones. I'll take one scoop of that and I'll put this into a bowl and mix it up with one egg and a fourth of a cup of unsweetened apple sauce. That's half of one of the little cups. If you buy those little bit of vanilla extract, like a dash, dash of salt, and I'll mix that up, put in the microwave for two minutes. You have the most fluffy, amazing cake. A little tip here if you're making the devotion, things, don't over bake them. So there actually is usually a little patch that almost looks like it's underdone. I mean, you don't want like raw egg in there, but you don't wanna. Over microwave it to the point where it becomes leathery. I've been loving recently, they had been out for a while with brownie batter. And then I'd also gone through a period, anyone else here where you decide you're gonna use up all the protein powders in the house? So for example, I had some of the gingerbread flavor leftover from Christmas and I was like, you're going to eat this. And so I've been going through things, but then recently here I got again the brownie batter flavor and I was like, oh my God, have I been missing you? You're the best in the world. I. Understand why that and their angel food cake are their best sellers because they're just divine. Okay? So anyway, I'm gonna end it here. I hope you have a great weekend. Plan one thing, do one thing to stay on track. You got this, you're gonna start the next week strong. Then weekends you can still be spontaneous and have a great life, but you can still get your water in or your walk or these things that, that do help and support you. So you stay on track. Alright, have a great weekend.