Katrina Ubell:      You are listening to the Weight Loss For Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell MD episode number 51.

Intro:                   This is Weight Loss For Busy Physicians. The podcast where busy doctors like you get the practical solutions and support you need to permanently lose the weight and feel better so that you can have the life you want. This is a resource you've been looking for to guide you on the journey to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion, and move into freedom around food. Here's your host, Dr. Katrina Ubell.

Katrina Ubell:      Hey, Happy New Year my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. So glad to have you back on the second day of 2018. How exciting. We're right back to having to figure out how to write a new year, right? It's going to take us a couple months before we stop writing 2017 and start writing 2018. If you've listened to my early podcast from last year you recall me talking about how we can be patient with ourselves with mistakes on our weight loss journey just like we can be patient with ourselves when you mix up the year and still think it's 2017. What I want to talk to you about today is a really exciting topic. It's how to make this year, 2018, the last year you have weight loss as your New Year's resolution, or on your list of New Year's resolutions. First, before I get into that I want to let you know that I am starting a new coaching group for women physicians in clinical practice it's just going to be starting very shortly, like in less than two weeks. That is January of 2018.

The way I'm going to be enrolling this group is via a webinar. A webinar is something that is just like a video conference call, except I can't see you. You can see me, but I can't see you, and you can't see the other people get on the call. What I'm going to do is tell you all some amazing information; How to lose weight permanently in 2018. I'm also going to tell you all the details about the group. Those who are on the call live will be the first to be able to sign up. It's going to be first come first serve this time, which is different then how I've done it in the past. That means that the first people who are on the call and get that link to sign up are going to be the ones who are going to have that opportunity. I want to highly, highly recommend that you sign up for the webinar. It is tomorrow, January 3rd, which is Wednesday at 7:30 PM Central Time, 5:30 Pacific, 6:30 Mountain, 7:30 Central, 8:30 Eastern.

To sign up for that webinar you need to go to KatrinaUbellMD.com/loseweight. Lose weight is smashed together. Again, KatrinaUbellMD.com/loseweight. L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T. Then the other thing is I'm going to answer all your questions too. If you want to just submit your questions ahead of time then you can send those to Hello@KatrinaUbellMD.com and I will answer all of the questions that are emailed to me at the end of the webinar as well as any questions that are submitted to me on the Q & A, which is a part of that webinar where you can actually type in your questions in realtime and I will answer those. I'm super excited for this group. It's going to be amazing. Every year, every new iteration of this group I make it better and better and more and more streamlined to get you the best results possible. I hope you'll join me on this webinar so that I can tell you more about it and teach you also some really great information on how to lose weight permanently in 2018.

Okay, so let's talk about New Year's resolutions on this second day of January when this is being released. Many of us have our list of New Year's resolutions, things that we want to improve in our lives, things that we want to work on, things that we want to change. I always kind of joke that I feel like for a mom it's back to school time is a mom's New Year's time. I think for all of us the holidays wrap up and we start thinking, “Okay, what do I want this year to be for me? What was 2017 like? Did I get what I wanted? Did I create for myself what I wanted to? Did I get the results that I wanted for myself? What do I want to create for myself in 2018?” Even if you're not a resolution person we can still talk about this. I think it's just a time of reflection. Most of us will spend some time reflecting in that way. Whatever you end up calling it potato, potato it doesn't really matter. We can still talk about that process.

What is a resolution? Dictionary.com says it is the act of resolving, or determining upon an action, course of action, method, procedure, et cetera. Most people will end up looking at their New Year's resolution as a want. I want to make more money. I want to lose weight. I want to improve my relationships. Things like that. You might have somewhat of a plan to get started, but when you think about that definition, determining upon an action, that really is deciding on that plan, really being very clear. In order to be successful you need more than resolve to follow that plan. That's the key thing here, right? The resolution can be what first ignites the idea to get this going, but it's not going to be what carries you through to the end, which is not surprising to us, right? Think about how many people have New Year's resolutions and by the second week in January it's already gone, or for sure by the time February rolls around it's just that resolution is not enough.

In my opinion, rather than resolutions we should spend this time of year revising our goals for ourselves. Some of you, many of you, might be thinking, “I don't write down goals for myself. I don't really have goals for myself.” When you do that, that's really living from a more reactionary place so to speak. Life is just being handed to you. You're handing it. You're dealing with it. You're moving through the paces. You aren't really deliberately and intentionally creating what you want for yourself in your life. Now it could be that you do that in some areas of your life and not in other. Maybe in your job you do, but you don't at home. Maybe you do with relationships, but you don't with your food or something like that. It's good to see are you already doing this in a certain place where you're very goal driven. If so you can just basically take those same skills that you're already applying to that area where you're successful in doing that and then just extrapolate it to a different area of your life. Writing them all out is the next step.

You're thinking I don't have all these goals. It's time to write them all out and make just a long list. What are all the things that you would like to achieve in the next year, 2018. Then I want you to pick on that you want to make great strides in. Strain to just one. This may feel very restrictive to you because everything is going to seem very important and necessary. You're not going to just want to pick one, but in our case, those of us listening to this podcast it could be losing the weight for good, right. Permanently losing that weight in 2018. I want to be clear though, because there will be other goals on that list that are also really good goals. Also, things you want to move forward on. By picking constraining to just one goal that doesn't mean that you don't keep moving forward with other things. Say your house is currently under construction and you really want that to turn out well. That doesn't mean that you can't work on weight loss while you're working on getting your home completed.

Of course you can do both, but I really want you to pick just one thing that is your primary goal. It really is the thing that is your priority. This always gets done, and then with your extra time you get the other things done as well. You probably have some things you want to move forward on at work, some things you want to move forward on personally. Those are all great, but you just know that this primary goal that you've constrained down to is the main thing that you're working on, and you won't chose another goal until you have accomplished this one, no matter how long it takes. Then I want you, next, to make it measurable. What I mean by that is that you really define how you're going to know if you've achieved the goal. It can't be something like, “I want to feel more free around food.” Okay, that sounds great. How are you going to know when you are more free around food?

One example with weight loss, that can be very measurable is, I want to lose 40 pounds in six months. You could say by 11:59 PM, June 30th, 2018 I will weight 150 pounds. Then see what your brain does. Your brain is probably going to tell you that this is unrealistic. Be careful of trying to avoid a goal because you think it's unrealistic. What we really mean when we say we don't want to be unrealistic is that we want to be more comfortable. We want to avoid the discomfort of stretching ourselves and growing. We also want to avoid the possible discomfort that we would experience if we were disappointed because we didn't reach our goal. We'll often say, “I don't want to get my hopes up. I don't want to set myself up for failure. I don't want to set myself up for going off plan. What I want to offer to you is that, that really is failing ahead of time.

Rather than getting your hopes up and thinking, “I can do it. I'm going to do 40 pounds of weight loss in the next six months. I'm going to get this done. It's going to be amazing,” and not achieving, and then being disappointed, you're just disappointing yourself ahead of time right now. You don't even get the pleasure of having your hopes up and looking forward to something and having dreams for yourself, which is such a huge part of being a human. For many of us this is just our default way of operating where we really just want to keep it safe, want to keep it realistic, want to keep it doable and achievable, and that is totally fine, but you will not make the progress that you're wanting to make when that is how you setup your goals for yourself. Guaranteed. There's a person named Mark Manson and he asks this question that I think is one of the most brilliant questions of all time. Forgive the language, if you have children around hit pause right now possibly if this offends you. His question is; What flavor of shit sandwich do you want?

Don't you love that? It's like you have to pick a flavor of shit sandwich. What does that mean? What that means is that there are bad parts to everything. Right now you likely have been just taking whichever sandwich has been handed to you, right? You're just creating this overweight body and that's the shit sandwich that you're eating every day. You might actually prefer a different shit sandwich. How this applies is that right now you experience a considerable amount of discomfort. Probably physically and emotionally from having an overweight body. You overeat, you beat yourself up, and you talk to yourself in a very unkind way when you see your body in the mirror. You feel very uncomfortable physically, possibly in how your body moves, how much pain you may be experience from having extra weight on your body. Also, just feeling really negatively about yourself that you don't like how your clothes fit, you don't like the way you're showing up. Many physicians will feel like such hypocrites for giving advice on how to lose weight to their patients, but not doing the work themselves or not having success themselves.

All of that is a flavor shit sandwich. That's the one you're choosing right now. The one that you could choose instead would be the one that requires you to feel your feelings, feel desire for food and not act on it. Follow your plan even when you really don't want to, manage your emotions instead of just being reactive. That's a lot of discomfort too. It is not a walk in the park often times. We often think we're going to lose the weight and then life will be better. Our thinking will be better, we'll think differently about ourselves, feel different about ourselves. I promise you that is not the way it works. You have to change that way that you think and feel about yourself now so that you can have that when you lose the weight, so, so important. Maybe you've then decided I want the shit sandwich that comes with a side of freedom around food, permanent weight loss and never having to worry about your weight again. Awesome. That's fantastic. You have your measurable goal.

Then what you do next is you make a list of all the things you need to do, all the actions you need to take to create this result. Be really, really detailed. Make a long list. Think of the events you have coming up, any travel you have coming up, anything that can be difficult or challenging for you and write down how you want to approach all of those things. This is going to be your list of massive actions. When you are thinking, “What should I be doing,” you need to go to that list and do those things. It's very clear. Next your brain is going to tell you all the reasons why none of this can ever happen. Thank you brain. It's going to tell you all the reasons it's completely impossible and that you're a total idiot for ever even thinking that this is a good idea. That's our primitive brain. Why are you changing things. This certainly sounds like a terrible idea. It's going to make you very uncomfortable and we should just be hiding in the cave and seeking comfort at all times.

That's what your brain wants for you. Your primitive brain not your prefrontal cortex, which is your rational brain. I want you to write down all of those reasons why can't do it, even the totally ridiculous and irrational ones. Write them all down. Empty every corner of your brain and get them all done. This now is your list of obstacles. You know what you want, you know what you need to do, and now you have your list of obstacles. Then finally what you're going to do is you're going to go through one by one, from obstacle to obstacle that you've listed out and you're going to brainstorm solutions to each one. Don't let your Brian say, “That won't work. That solution won't work.” Just write it all down. You never know how a couple of those solutions might end up weaving together and forming the actual true solution. Just write them all out you're just brainstorming. You're not evaluating them. Then you now have your path to your goal. You have the stepping stones. You think, “I don't know how to do it.”

This is how you do it; You have your list of obstacles and you go from obstacle to solution, obstacle to solution, obstacle to solution all the while taking massive action from that list of actions that you need and want to take. This sounds simple, right? It really is simple, but it's not necessarily easy. This is what I want you to know. It can be easy, but most of us have a lot of thoughts and beliefs that don't make it as easy as it really could be. It's really important that we spend time working through all of these thoughts and beliefs. As you know from studying that pot model the thoughts and beliefs that you have right now are creating the result of your overweight body. I'm going to repeat that. The thoughts and beliefs that you have right now are creating the result of your overweight body. If you're somebody who's lost the weight and you're keeping it off your current thoughts and beliefs are creating that result of your thin body permanently. In order for you to create that permanently thin body as your result, not only will your actions need to change.

That's why can't just go to Weight Watchers and follow their plan. You can't just do Jenny Craig, or can't all your macros. You need to do more than that. You need to change your feelings and your thoughts as well. The way that you do that is by investigating them on a regular basis with daily thought downloads, and doing your models on those thoughts. I want you to go back and review those early podcasts about how to use the model. I want you to practice separating out the circumstance or the neutral fact from the thoughts. Nothing is a problem in your life. You just have thoughts that create problems in your life. It's very important for you to see this. People really struggle with the model when they can't separate those out. You need to work on separating that C from that T. You need to focus on identifying the emotions that your thoughts are creating for you and also taking responsibility for not only all of your actions but all of your feelings as well. That's that emotional adulthood.

Not thinking anybody else is making you feel any way or making you respond or act in any way, especially those of us with kids, right? We think that they are creating that frustration for us, or upset, or whatever it is and recognizing and accepting the fact that we are creating that for ourselves 100% of the time. At anytime we can give that up if we decide we want to and we decide that has an upside for us. As you go along on your weightless journey new obstacles wile come up. You'll have to identify them and problem solve them. Maybe at some point your plan won't be working anymore and you'll have hit a plateau and you're going to need to modify it. This is also not a problem. You can expect that this wile happen. Make sure that you don't choose thoughts that make you think that everything's falling apart or that it's not working, or that this isn't possible for you. Then the first time, and subsequent times, you go off plan, because you can plan for that. Nobody is going to be perfect. Nobody is never going to struggle.

When you struggle and go off plan that's how you start figuring out where you're still struggling, where you still have work to do, and so you get to choose how you want to approach that when you go off plan. You can make it mean you're a failure and that this is just nonsense, or you really can learn from it and move forward on your path to your natural weight permanently. Tony Robbins says, “If you don't put it on your calendar it isn't real.” I really want to emphasize to you that you have to plan your time, to plan your food, journal your food, and do your thought management. This does not mean that you need hours. In fact, once you really constrain your food down and journal in a way that's very, very quick and efficient it shouldn't take you long at all to do that, but it still needs to be done every day. Even your thought management, really eight to ten minutes a day is plenty, but you need to do it every day. Put it on your calendar so that it actually happens and hold yourself accountable to it.

I seriously believe that this is the secret to the universe. Once you can learn to make a plan and stick to it, regardless of whether or not you feel like it when the time comes to do it, you will make more progress in your life then you ever could imagine. It is such an amazing, amazing skill to develop for yourself. You can call this a resolution, or you can call it your goal for 2018. Whatever you decide plan accordingly. Go through this goal setting process. Then when it gets hard don't make it mean that something is going wrong. I like to remind myself that I can be uncomfortable and sit with desire in front of this food that's not in my plan, or I can be uncomfortable every time my muffin top folds over my pants like it used to. Ultimately it's a wash, right? Which flavor of shit sandwich do you want? I'll choose the desire in front of the food because it doesn't last as long as the muffin top. My personal choice.

If you want to download or print out the transcript for this podcast, or even just read it on the internet so you can get all the steps that I just talked about all neatly written out for you then head over to the show notes page for this episode, which you can find over at KatrinaUbellMD.com/51. You can just scroll down a little bit and you'll find it right there. There's a great new little area where you can read and scroll right there, or you can download the actual transcript as well. Now I can't wait to talk to you live tomorrow in the webinar. I have some really great content prepared for you. Then I'm going to tell you about my upcoming coaching group for women physician in clinical practice. That's going to start very soon. I'd love for my program to be a part of your New Year's resolution, or your 2018 goal. Do your absolutely best to come on live, because I'll open up registration for the new group at the end of the webinar. All of the gals who are on live might completely fill up the group that night.

I want to make sure that if this is something that you really want to do that you have that chance to hear more about it and decide if you think it's a good fit for you. There are a limited number of seats meaning there's a limited number of people who can get on the call. You may want to really clear your schedule for even just maybe five, ten minutes ahead of time so that you can be in the line to get on right away so that we can get you that information. Just a reminder it's Wednesday January 3rd at 7:30 PM central time. Just another quick reminder, because time zones confuse people that's 5:30 pacific, 6:30 Mountain, 7:30 Central, 8:30 Eastern. Then any questions you have in advance about the program, about the group please send those to Hello@KatrinaUbellMD.com and I'll be sure to answer them all on the webinar. All right, have a great week. Happy New Year. I can't wait for all the goodness that's to come for all of us in 2018. All right, take care. Bye, bye.

Outro:                 Thanks for joining us on Weight Loss For Busy Physicians. Now take the next step and go to KatrinaUbellMD.com to download just what you need, the busy doctor's quick start guide to effective weight loss. Join us again next week for more support to keep you in control and on the path to freedom around food.