
The Obesity Guide with Matthea Rentea MD
Matthea Rentea MD leads discussions on obesity and chronic weight management. Her guests range from experts in the fields that intersect with obesity and wellness, to individuals successful in their weight journey. She is a Board certified Internal Medicine and Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and founder of the Rentea Metabolic Clinic, a Telehealth clinic for residents of the state of Indiana and Illinois that helps comprehensively with weight management. This podcast is for information and education purposes only. No medical advice is being given. Please talk to your physician for what is right for you.
The Obesity Guide with Matthea Rentea MD
Your Friday Five: The Step Bet Experiment
App mentioned: Step Bet
IG account: jenna_bariatricbestie
Please note, I am not affiliated or represent any of the products or companies mentioned in this episode.
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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Welcome back to another, your Friday five. I just wanted to reflect today how, just a quick thought on how there are so many great apps nowadays that can be motivational or gamify the health process in some capacity, and right now I am. Personally going through my first experience with the app step Bet. I think that's the name of the app. And by the way, I am not affiliated with this app, NN, nothing in any capacity. But the reason I heard about it, there's this influencer that I followed, Jenna Bestie, I think on the podcast. I've talked about her before, but she's lost about 170 pounds. I think two years ago she had a bariatric procedure and. Uh, just to kind of long story short, uh, last year she lost her father, unfortunately, and this year her mother's going through stem cell transplant. And so she made a step BET challenge for caregivers and really anyone could join it, but. You know, if you're a mom, if you're caring for people in any capacity, but again, anyone can join. But I was just really curious how the app worked, because I really like to use these different things and see what resonates and what doesn't. And it's very interesting because when you join, I thought, so how are they gonna do this because am I gonna pick the goal? So basically, before I even get to what the goals are. The whole premise of Step BET is that you pay some type of money in the beginning. So this one's$40 challenge. I, I did a lot more research on it. Challenges that are public, meaning anyone can join, have to be$40 or more. And then I think a certain amount of people have to register, otherwise they cancel it and you get refunded. But this one has thousands that are in it, that are participating. You can do smaller step bed challenges that are private, which I think in the future, if I were ever to run one, for example, like within the 30 30 program or something like that, it would definitely be a private challenge. I don't know that I would run a public one, but I don't know. I can't decide if I like this app or not. But anyway, when, so you pay something and then at the end, whoever makes it to the end and completes the whole challenge. You split that pot and I looked it up. I guess about 70% of people actually complete the challenges but I don't understand actually how it ends up working. You actually ever. Getting anything because the company keeps 15% of the pot from the money of non-members. I guess they also have a membership version where you can be part of things and you can be part of six challenges at a time. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I can't even handle one. How would people be part of six of these things anyway? And I'm so not a gambler that there's this part of me that's just I don't care if I make it, if I don't. What the economics at the end are. I, I just, I'm zero motivated by that. But anyway, long story short, how do they set the goal? So when you sign up I think this is genius, they do a 90 day look back on your device. So for me it was the Apple data that they went through.'cause I have the Apple Watch, they have, I think Fitbit and there was one other one, I dunno. They have a few devices that you can pick from. You have to have 90 days worth of data. So they look back at this and then they determine what your step goals should be. One day is a rest day, but the of the other six days in the week, four days, they say quote unquote, what. You should realistically be able to hit based on your history. For me it was 10,700 that they set as the goal four days a week. And then the other two days a week are I dunno, on those days they have a little lightning bolt and so I don't know if they're like. Turbo blasts days, supercharged days, extra days. I don't know what they're called, but on those it's like close to 14,000 for me, 13,000 something, and I think it's cute. So basically you have some flexibility in the week, but they're kind of a little bit pushing you, but not too much based on your history. I thought that was interesting because I was wondering, how are they gonna do this? Because we all have different activity levels and how do you. How do you level set that throughout a group? I thought that's a really great way of doing it, of looking back at the, 90 day history, I'm seeing how I'm feeling with it. And the reason I did this is that I wanted to see how do I feel? Not being forced, quote unquote daily to do these steps, but to be much more intentional with it although I track my steps, meaning I can see how much I do and I look at the end of the day, I'm not like, oh, I haven't made 10 K, so I have to get up and keep walking. It's more just a thing of curiosity and naturally over time it's increased, but I've not ever had this where it's like, I've gotta get to 13,000 by the end of the day. I've just not had that before. So, so far so good, but I don't ever want to. Take exercise to a place where it's fanatical or where there have to be certain goals. Because to me, I've really liked reclaiming movement to be something that just helps with stress management and intuitively feels good and isn't this external pressure?'cause that was something that, it really brought out a rebellious resistance from me in the past, and it really reminded me of diet culture, like you have to earn. The smoothie that you're gonna have or you have to walk to burn so many calories. I just hate those things and we know the data does not support that. But it just really made me wax poetic on how there are just so many avenues nowadays to try different things, to gamify different things, to be in community in different aspects, and I think it's beautiful. And another patient told me about an app where I guess you, you set sort of whatever your habits are that you wanna do each day and each day you check these things off. And the app, you start out with a little animal and then that animal grows and it gets different things the more days you go along, basically it's like a consistency streak. And I just think that these things are so cute and so different, and I've talked about water lama before. You just have no excuse anymore to not have a fun way to go about this. That is one avenue, the digital app version. I have another patient that, that loves. I think they have a, a journal that tracks their weightlifting moves, but it must be something where it's like the journal daily suggests what you do.'cause it's very sort of follow along and they're loving that. There's such variety that I see in my patients of what they're loving. And I just wanna throw this out there for you. If you wanna keep going long term with your health, most people that are doing it, they have some type of routine, some type of consistency, but then here and there, they make it fun. For me, this challenge, it's fun. Alright, we're seeing if it's possible or not, different people will train for different vacations, like a ski vacation, a boating vacation, where you might be on the. Water skis on the back of it, or a hiking trip. A cruise to Alaska where you know, you might be going and doing different excursions. It's endless what you can set as goals and motivate yourself, but gamifying the process is actually kind of part of it. And you hear me talk a lot about how what got you here won't get you there. Part of that is doing these type of different things. So I just wanted to bring up, have an open mind for. Different things that you could participate in or different things that you could do. And this is funny that this timing is coming up because coming up here we're gonna be releasing season two of the Behind the Curtain podcast. And it's really like a 21 day Health and Momentum challenge. And you can either do it as a standalone or my thought really was that in December, December 1st through 21st a time of the year when people usually just throw their hands up and stop caring that we actually do that consistency challenge during that time. And there's. A podcast episode for each day, and there's a really killer PDF that goes with it. It's really like an accompanying workbook, if you would. And I was thinking through it and I was like, these are all opportunities where you guys can choose or not to participate in different things and keep yourself motivated and keep yourself on task and keep yourself moving forward. These are the opportunities out there. Take advantage of some of them. Again, I'm not endorsing this app or another app. Uh in fact, sometimes I've not downloaded some of these apps because I'm thinking I'm gonna get too obsessive about it, I'll tell you the ones that I'm. For me personally, I know, I don't know if in this lifetime I can do the ones where you're compared to friends, and it's like perpetually, it's ongoing. So it's not like, okay, this week we're gonna do something. But to constantly be on a leaderboard, to constantly be compared to constantly know, okay, here's what she did today, here's what I did. I'm just, eh, my brain can't handle that long term. So I'd like little challenges or. When it's basically me against myself, like I'm sure probably somewhere in the step bed thing there's a leaderboard. I don't wanna know about it. I'm sure it exists. I don't wanna know. But my point is, guys, mix it up a little. Get find yourself some ways to make this fun. Find some ways that you can. Get in there in some capacity because it's worth it. You get energized, you hear ideas of what other people are doing, you get a different perspective. I'm gonna be honest, I've never gotten so much movement so early in the week. I'm in the first week of this challenge. I've never wa walked this much on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, because in my mind I was like, well listen, let me like knock out those. Turbo days because what if over the weekend I wanna be lazy and I don't wanna do as much, I'm like, let's knock it out on a Monday. I don't know about you guys, but I'll sometimes set goals with patients. I'll say, look, two times a week, da, da da. And man, if I were patients I would do that on Monday, Tuesday.'cause I'd wanna just like knock it off the list and if I keep doing more bonus, but otherwise I'm getting it done right. I'm gonna report back, by the way, how I feel at the end of this challenge, I just wanna throw it out there for you, that you need to use tools that gamify it, that keep you fresh, that keep you engaged in some capacity. There is an aspect of, I do the same thing no matter what, and every day I reengage. I mean, the activity stays the same, but what's behind it can change. I went through a period of only podcasts. Now I'm exclusively an audible. I can't remember if I said this on here. I've been listening to the book, outrageous Hospitality. It is so good. He is such a good storyteller. I'll see if we can link all this in the show notes and I've just been loving it. In the beginning of the book, I was bawling my eyes out as I was leaving the walking track and I was sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I hope no one sees me because they're gonna think I have some emotional thing going on and it was just really moving in the first few chapters when he was talking about what happened with his mom, and I'm not gonna give anything else away in case then you wanna listen to it. It's an old one. It's an oldie buddy goodie. So anyway. My point is we've got to judge up the behind the scenes with our consistency. And is it a challenge? Is it different books? What is it? But you've gotta bring some of that spice in there, otherwise it doesn't work long term. Alright, I hope that this episode was helpful today. I wanna make sure that we link everything. Let me know what's going on for you. Have you tried any of these kind of apps? Let me know in the dms alright, I hope you have a great rest of the week here. Have an amazing weekend. And think about if there's any of these type of tools that you might wanna bring in just to, just to make your journey here a little bit more gamified.