Episode 13: 13 Lies Nurses Believe About Stress, Weight Gain, and Burnout (That Are Keeping You Stuck)

In healthcare, we don’t just deal with stress…
 we are conditioned to normalize it.

If you’re a nurse who feels:
 exhausted all the time
 stuck in your weight
 wired but tired
 burned out but still pushing through

this episode is going to hit differently.

Because the truth is…
 you haven’t failed your body.

You’ve been taught to believe things that aren’t true.

In this episode, I break down 13 of the most common lies nurses believe about stress, weight gain, metabolism, and burnout — and how these beliefs keep you stuck in a cycle of exhaustion, inflammation, and frustration.

We’re talking about:
 why being tired all the time is NOT normal
 how chronic stress is disrupting your metabolism
 why weight gain is not a lack of willpower
 what “normal labs” are missing
 how sleep, cortisol, and insulin resistance are actually driving your symptoms

This is not surface-level advice.

This is a deeper look at what’s really happening in your body — through the lens of being a nurse working in a system that was never designed for your biology.

If you’ve ever felt like:
 “something is wrong with me”
 “I just can’t figure this out”
 “why does my body feel so out of control”

this episode will help you start asking the right questions.

And that’s where everything changes.

-------

 nurse burnout
 weight gain in nurses
 stress and weight gain
 insulin resistance symptoms
 cortisol and weight gain
 nurse fatigue
 shift work health effects
 metabolic dysfunction
 hormone imbalance weight gain
 why am I always tired nurse
 functional medicine weight loss
 nervous system dysregulation 

Intro

outro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Welcome back, my beautiful nurses. Welcome back to Proactive Wellness for Nurses. Before we start, I want you to pause for a second. Like, actually just pause wherever you are and ask yourself this very honestly. When was the last time you actually felt good in your body? Right? Not just, I got through my shift or I'm off today, so I'm slightly less miserable. But like clear, calm, engaged, like regulated. Because if you're anything like most nurses, it's been a while. And what's scary about that is that at some point you stopped questioning it. You just accepted. This is my life now. This is what being a nurse feels like. You just accepted it. Oh, guess this is just adulthood. And that right there, that's what this episode is about because this is episode 13. And people love to say that 13 is unlucky or cursed. They think bad things are about to happen. But I don't think 13 is the problem. Okay, I think what's actually dangerous are the beliefs that you've been handed in healthcare, that you never stopped to question. You know, these beliefs that we have accepted as norms because they have handed them to us as norms. So we just we just accepted them. Because somewhere along the way, you were taught that being exhausted all the time? Yeah, that's normal. Gaining weight you can't lose. Normal. Feeling anxious before your shift? Normal. Running on caffeine and barely eating all day. Yeah, that's normal too. Waking up at 3 a.m. with your heart racing, it's normal. No big deal. But listen, I need you to hear me when I say this seriously. Those things are not frickin' normal. They are common, they are not normal. Common and normal are not the same thing. So instead of giving you some clean little list, I'm gonna talk to you the way I talk to my patients. The way that I wish someone had talked to me. Because I believed those things too. I really did all of them. I believed all of those things and I lived them. So we're gonna talk about the 13 lies that healthcare tells you about yourself. Lie number one, it is normal to be exhausted all the time. Let's start here because this one is so normalized that it's invisible. Really? You're tired all the time. You wake up tired, you go to work tired, come home, you're completely drained. And someone says, Well, yeah, you're a nurse. And that just ends the conversation, right? But I want you to really think about this. Your body was not designed to live in a constant state of exhaustion. That is not a neutral baseline. That is a stress response. What's actually happening is your nervous system is completely dysregulated, your cortisol rhythm is off, your sleep is broken, right? Your blood sugar is unstable, your body, it's basically just surviving instead of functioning. But instead, instead of somebody explaining that to you, you have been told repeatedly that yeah, that's just how it is. And when you believe that, you stop asking questions. Let's talk about lie number two. Weight gain is just part of the job, right? And then this happens, you start gaining weight. It may be slowly at first, then all at once you may spike up, and the story becomes, well, I work nights and well, I don't have time, and well, this just happens. I'm getting older, I'm a nurse now. But I want to be very clear here. Weight gain is not random. It is your body responding to chronic cortisol elevation as well as insulin resistance and sleep disruption, generalized inflammation, and your body is it's not betraying you, okay? It's not it's not actually betraying you. It is adapting to the environment that it has been placed in. But if you believe that this is just what happens, you stop looking deeper, right? Let's talk about lie number three. I just need more willpower. That's a common one. So what do you do? What do you do if you've been told you need more willpower? Well, you try harder. You tell yourself, I just need to be more disciplined. I just need to get it together, right? Meanwhile, your physiology is completely working against you. If your blood sugar is unstable, your brain will drive you towards quick energy. It's not a willpower issue. If your cortisol is elevated, you will crave high calorie, high reward foods. Again, it is not a willpower issue. If you are sleep deprived, your hunger hormones are guaranteed to be dysregulated. This none of these things are a lack of discipline. That's biology, right? And the more you fight your body instead of understanding it, the more stuck you feel, really. Let's talk about lie number four. Stress is just part of the job. Let's talk about stress, because yes, stress exists in nursing, but when you're experiencing this level of dysfunction, it is not just stress. It is chronic unregulated stress. And your body doesn't know the difference between a true emergency and a 12-hour shift, constant stimulation, alarms, pressure, and responsibility. Your body stays in fight or flight all day, and then it doesn't turn off, right? So you go home and you are exhausted, you may still feel kind of wired. And over time, what that adds up to is an output side effect of weight gain, anxiety, sleep disruption, and hormonal imbalance. Let's talk about lie number five. If my labs are normal, uh, I'm fine. That's line number five. And this is a huge one. Because you go to the doctor and you get labs and they say, everything looks normal. Meanwhile, you feel like garbage. And what you need to understand is that you can have metabolic dysfunction for years before anything shows up on standard blood tests. Insulin resistance? Yeah, it can be developing for long, long, long before a diagnosis or before your hemoglobin A1C is manipulated in your lab works. So no, normal labs do not equal optimal health. They do not. Lie number six. I don't have time. Now, this lie of I don't have time, this one feels really well will really real. And I get it, you're busy, you're overwhelmed, you are stretched thin. But here's what happens. When you don't make enough time, your body eventually forces you to. Haven't you heard people say, invest in your health now so you don't have to invest in your sickness later. If you don't give time to regulate your body and take care of yourself and recover, your body eventually forces you to, and it does it through burnout, through recurrent or worsening symptoms, through breakdown, and then suddenly you don't have a chance, you don't have a choice anymore, right? You just you have to deal with it. Let's try to get ahead of the game. Talk about lie number seven. I'm just bad at losing weight. I hear this all the time. I've tried everything, I just can't lose weight. No, that's not the problem. You have been given strategies that don't match your physiology. You have been told time and time again to eat less and move more while your body is inflamed and sleep-deprived and hormone dysregulated. This is not failure. You not succeeding in this landscape is not failure. It's a mismatch, right? It's a mismatch of what you have been told to do and what your body actually needs. What is the actual root cause of the problem here for you? It's not because you're weak or lazy. It's not because you haven't tried hard enough. It's not a lack of willpower. It's because you have dysregulation in your physiology and you've been told to just grind through it. Let's talk about line number eight. Sleep doesn't matter that much. Well, you've learned to function without much sleep, many of us. But your body keeps the score. Because poor sleep, it adds up and it impacts blood sugar. It impacts cortisol and hunger hormones and fat storage. So when you're waking up at 3 a.m., that is not random. That is physiology. Let's talk about lie number nine. Oh, caffeine, caffeine is helping me. Let's let's be honest. Caffeine is survival, but it's also masking things that we need to be in tune with. It's masking fatigue, adrenal dysfunction, poor sleep quality. These are the things we need to work on fixing. And over time, continuing to consume caffeine can worsen the exact problems that you are trying to fix. Lie number ten. I just need the right diet. No, no, no. There is no perfect diet. If your metabolism is dysregulated, no diet will stick. Because this isn't just about food. I've said it time and time again, if you've been listening along, it's about hormones, stress, sleep, and your nervous system. So lie number 11 leads into this, right? Burnout is normal. No, somehow, burnout became expected for nurses. Like if you're not exhausted, you're not doing enough. And that's conditioning. They have conditioned us to feel like if you don't spread yourself thin, if you aren't a picture of dedication, then you're just not nursing hard enough. No, that's conditioning. You're conditioning me to work in a machine that's abusing me. You're not telling me the truth. Leads into line number 12. This is just how my body is now. It's just my body now. No. This is where people start giving up, right? This is just how I am now, is a thought that other nurses may try to force upon you because they have found something inside themselves that has allowed them to say, I'm just gonna let it go. I'm gonna give up, I'm gonna stop fighting. Because they have, they have learned to believe that this is their body now, this is their life now, this is what it's like to be a nurse. No, this is just how I am now, is bullshit. Throw it out the window. Because your body is adaptable, it can heal and it can rebalance, but not if you've decided already that it can't. Talk about lie number 13. This is a big one. It's my fault. This this is one that hurts the most, okay? You're thinking, ugh, I did this, I lack discipline, I just can't stick to anything, I let myself go, I'm out of control. But the truth is, again, I'm gonna say it again, you were placed into an environment that jacked you up, an environment that disrupted your circadian rhythm and elevated your stress hormones, an environment that dysregulated your metabolism and normalized self-neglect. And then you were told that to fix it you need willpower. No, dog, that is not failure. This is a broken system all around. So here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Not guilt, not overwhelm. I just want you to take away some awareness. Because once you see these lies that you're told that were shoved down and forced to believe are norms or conditioned to believe are just normal things, you start asking different questions, okay? Instead of what's wrong with me, you ask, what have I been taught that isn't true? And that is that is where everything starts to change, right? This is exactly why I do what I do. Because nurses don't need more surface level advice, they don't need more here's a 30-day plan, and you're gonna skip everything that's good and then lose weight and feel amazing, and by the end of it, you're gonna try to integrate yourself back into your life as a nurse, and guess what? But you're gonna gain all that weight back. That's not what you need. You don't need some gimmicky plan. What you need, you need real physiology, real strategy, you need real support that is actually built for your life. So, no, no, 13 isn't unlucky, but believing in these 13 lies definitely, definitely is. And now, if you shift yourself into this place that we have been discussing, where you turn and you look at yourself and you start to analyze, have you been told these lies? Have you been accepting these lies? Have you told yourself these lies? Have you normalized being all burnt out, run ragged, not sleeping? Have you normalized it for yourself? Has being around other dysregulated nurses created sort of a rat race towards dysregulation? Oh, I only slept two hours last night, blah, blah, blah. Clout, that is not something to brag about. If you're anxious headed up to your shift, and you just anxious the day of, and you're in the parking lot in the car, like, fuck, what did I get myself into? There are other jobs out there, okay? You there are other nursing jobs that are less emotionally draining, less physically draining, that lead to less physiologic disruption. There are other ways out of this. And I just want to clearly communicate to you that you aren't the problem, right? It's not because of how lazy you are, or because you don't have enough time to do what's right for you. It's you aren't being able to recover ever. You have got to be more tender with yourself. And frankly, the truth is you are a nurse working in a busy hospital, working 12-hour shifts. You are gonna sacrifice a lot. You will likely sacrifice weekends and holidays, evenings. You may miss your kids or your nieces and nephews or your friends' kids, games and recitals, and you know, a lot of these things happen around five, six o'clock, and you're still at the damn hospital. You may experience a lot of things that lead to dysregulation that you can't deal with long term. So this episode isn't to convince you that you need to quit your job, but it is, it is my purpose is I want to highlight to you that there are things that you can shift that can lead you towards health and healing. So, Proactive Wellness for Nurses, my big push here, my big goal is to build a community and help people that are dealing with this get through it and get to the other side of it. Because if you can't change your job or you don't want to change your job, you have to create a situation in your life where you are able to recover and heal. You have to make space for yourself. No one else is going to. I can tell you through personal experience, even my wonderful husband attempted and has attempted repeatedly to help me regulate. What can I do to help you? And if there is something they can take off your plate, allow them to. Please put the pride on the back burner. If there's some way that you can decrease the amount that you are spreading yourself thin and find yourself a situation where you can take a slice of time somewhere to heal, pour back into yourself and heal. The first step is really to understand what's going on. What is going on with your body? Why is it jacked up? Because it's not just that you're a freaking nurse and this is how it is. It's not cool, it's not respectable, and it's going to lead you to long-term chronic diseases. You'll see it in these older nurses that never learned how to regulate, that have always put themselves last. The martyrs, you'll see it. And if you don't want to get there, don't get there, okay? Again, 13 isn't unlucky. The number 13 isn't unlucky, but these 13 lies that we've reviewed today, just believing these 13 lies, that is unlucky. But now, you don't have to anymore. Come join us in the programs. Come work with me. We'll get you there.