Katrina Ubell:      You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 150.

Welcome to 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 so you can feel better and have the life you want. If you're looking to overcome your stress eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place.

Well, hey there, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. How are you? If you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. So glad to have you here.

I have a few things I want to talk to you about. First of all, did you know that I am on Instagram? I am. You should follow me for sure. So just go to CoachKatrinaUbellMD, and you're going to be able to find me.

And you should subscribe because there's some good info on there and some good reminders of what you're working on here, what I'm teaching you here, and lots of good stuff. So make sure you come find me over there. Super fun. And then you know when I ask a question on there, then go ahead and answer me, okay? I'd love to hear from you guys. That's a great way to get in touch by answering the questions, putting it in the comment section rather than sending a direct message. That would be perfect.

Okay. Listen, I just recently had the most amazing time at our most recent Masters event. Masters is the continuation program to the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program that I offer, and it's just ridiculous. It gets better and better every time. We have the best time. We did such great coaching. Just everybody shows up in this great way. I mean, I legit cannot even describe to you how much my heart just wants to explode and start singing at the same time about how happy it makes me to see these women physicians doing this work, actually creating meaningful relationships with one another. Not talking about Facebook groups where everyone's liking things and a little quick comment of support and things like that, actually meaningful connections. I can't even. I just can't even.

And we had a speaker come to teach us about how to negotiate better specifically around financial stuff and promotions and money. But really, it's something that you can apply to anything in your life that you might need to negotiate, or I mean, if you ever listen, what you should be doing a lot more of we learned then it would've been great information for you as well. And I just really, really hope that those of you who are not in Masters yet will join the Weight Loss for Doctors Only program because it is just, it's so great. And then you have the opportunity to join Masters.

All right. What else do I want to tell you? Okay, so I am on the final day of a personal writing retreat. So what happened was that a number of months ago, I had signed up to go to a conference in Miami, and about a month ago, I decided that I didn't really want to go to it anymore. But I still had the plane ticket, and after going to Wyoming on the writing retreat that I told you guys about, I realized that having a whole day carved out to yourself, just literally nothing to do but to work on your book, might be magic in a bottle for writing a book. At least for me, I think that that is something that works really well.

So what I decided to do was still fly to Miami and put myself up in an amazing hotel that was just absolutely beautiful because I was going to spend a lot of time in the room, and I wanted it to be very comfortable for me. And I put myself up to writing my book. So I have my proposal done, and that's going to be ready to be sent off. So if you know anybody who's a book agent or has any connections with nonfiction publishers, feel free to reach out. I've got a couple of connections myself, but I will be looking for all options. So if you know anybody, let me know. And so today's the final day. I've had this idea for this podcast. I'd brought my microphone along just in case I thought, “You know what? I think there's a chance I might want to record a podcast.” And turns out, I do.

So I am sitting here, just want to paint the picture for you, facing a wall of windows over the Atlantic Ocean, and it is absolutely gorgeous. There's kite surfers going up and down. People are on the beach. It is sunny. It is Miami at its finest because it's actually not really even that hot out. It's actually very, very comfortable. So in a little while, I think I'm going to take a nice walk. Later tonight, I'm going to be meeting up with a friend for dinner, and then I'm heading back home tomorrow, back to the freezing cold and snow. But that's okay too.

Okay. So I have to tell you something else. So I really got a lot of work done while I've been here, so I decided to treat myself to a massage this morning at the spa. I went to do this massage. So here's the deal with me and massages. So I've had some great massages in my life, but like you I'm sure, I've had some that were really just okay and just weird and, “I don't know about that.” I've gotten into a habit of just not really wanting to do massages that much because you just never really know what you're going to get.

But I'm at a very nice hotel, and I thought, “You know what? They probably have something good or maybe I'll get a facial or something.” Well, what they ended up doing was putting something in the room that talked about this special percussion therapeutic massage. And I thought, “Well, that sounds amazing and totally different.” I love trying things that are just different that I wouldn't be able to find at home when I'm out and traveling. So I decided to do it and it was a really good experience. I want to tell you about it so that you can look into it if you think it might be something you're interested in.

So it basically is using this machine called a Hypervolt. And I don't even know how to describe it except that it looks like a hand drill except on the end is this little attachment, I think there's just different attachments they can put on, that basically hammers the attachment in and out at various velocities, various speeds, and it vibrates/beats on you. You're probably like, “That sounds amazing, Katrina. Nice description.” But there was a regular massage too, and then he used that thing on me.

And here's the deal, just with me personally, I have always got trigger points. It doesn't matter how much dry needling or injections or massage or whatever I get, my muscles, especially my back, are always just like ropes, and there's just nothing that can be done about it it seems like. So I've, in recent years, been trying to just much more accept that that's just the way my body is. And that doesn't mean that anything is wrong or has to be fixed. It's just how it is, and that's okay. But I'm telling you this thing beating on me, it made those tight muscles melt and relax. What he told me is that it increases blood flow and then also promotes lymphatic movement, so it flushes your muscles out. And I also had worked out this morning, so I'm sure it felt even better because of that. But it was absolutely amazing. And so if you can find a massage where they use one of those things, I highly recommend it.

And then their big claim to fame is that they have a hammam. I did not know what hammam was, but it is basically like a Turkish bath. And what that means is that it's this beautiful pretty large white marble room, and you go in, and it's basically like a steam room lite. It's a steam room but not as intense as a regular steam room. I think a lot of people will use it. And they have some treatments there where you sit in there for a while, and then they exfoliate you down. So it's for skin and improving your skin health and stuff too, but also just warming your body and all the benefits you get from that kind of heat. So I did that afterward. And then while I was sitting there relaxing, I got to write down ideas for this podcast. And so here I am recording it. So we're just going to thank the spa for getting me going because I'm so excited to share this idea with you.

So I'm not even sure where I got this idea that I should talk to you about Cinderella. Maybe it was because of someone that I know wanting to take my kids to see Maleficent or something like that. That's not even Cinderella though. I don't know. Maybe I just had fairytales on the brain. But I was thinking about the idea of the Cinderella story and just Cinderella itself. And then also the term Cinderella Story, which I was thinking about that, that's often used in terms of sports. And so I actually looked it up. I was like, “What's the definition of a Cinderella story?” It was actually in dictionary.com. It says, “Used in reference to a situation in which a person, team, et cetera, of low status or importance unexpectedly achieves great success or public recognition.”

But I was thinking about the story itself too and how Cinderella, as you know, is living a very hard life with the evil stepmother and her stepsisters who treat her terribly, and she's forced to do all the menial tasks and hard labor. And then the Prince is having his party because he wants to get married. He's going to have the ball, and they won't let Cinderella go, and she wants so badly to go. And so then her fairy godmother arrives. And so many of us, if we had our druthers, right, if we really had our wishes and dreams come true with our weight loss, we would have a fairy godmother arrive as well, right? There's so many parallels to weight loss and the Cinderella story, right?

Because first of all, the first thing you need to know is that really when you think about a Cinderella story, right, think about some basketball team or something. They're the Cinderella story. They're always referred to as the underdog, right? They came from behind. No one expected it. It almost seems like they didn't deserve it or something like that. But here's the deal, with weight loss, we're all underdogs. Legit, every single one of us is coming from behind because the absolute vast majority of people who try to lose weight will not be able to achieve permanent weight loss. We're all coming from a place of low importance and low status, right? We're all coming from that place of we're probably not going to be able to do it. If we're looking at the odds, it's probably not going to happen, right? So interesting.

And we often think of a Cinderella story is a team that you can attribute their success to luck or good fortune or something like that, something a little bit outside their control. But here's what's also interesting. When you really look at a team, just as an example, that does have that kind of success, it's not like they didn't put effort in, and all of a sudden, they just got really lucky a whole bunch of times. What happens is, is their great success was preceded by a lot of hard work.

A lot of people who are successful authors or artists of some other kind or actors or things like that, they'll say, “Oh, you're such a overnight success.” I remember Cheryl Strayed commenting on that when her first book was a super bestseller. Actually, I don't even think it was her first book, but they were talking about, “This overnight success, Cheryl Strayed.” She's like, “I've been writing for years. What are you talking about overnight success? No. I've been working to create this for a really, really, really long time,” right? There's a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes that you don't see. What we like to celebrate in a Cinderella story is the success at the very, very end, so it's important to make sense of that and understand that.

So let's go to the actual story of Cinderella. So we've got Cinderella, and she is a sweet girl. And she's unfortunately being forced to live with her evil stepmother and her evil stepsisters, and they're just awful to her, just really, really, really awful to her. And she has to scrub the floors and doesn't get enough food. And depending on which version of the story you read or watch, it might be slightly different on how that goes. But she is living a life of suffering, right? She is not really able to create much for herself in her life. It's a pretty disempowered life. She is not able to really envision a future where things might be any better or different for her. She definitely feels stuck.

So does that sound like you with your weight loss or your overweight body right now where you're feeling like you're at the mercy of someone else or some other situation? So often, we think that we're stuck, right? There's nothing we can do. We're at the mercy of our work. We're at the mercy of our schedule. We're at the mercy of our family. All those things need to change, right? Cinderella needs to get away from the evil stepmother and stepsisters in order to live a better life.

And here's what's interesting though ultimately, Cinderella is you, okay? But the evil stepmother and stepsisters are also you, okay? They're the part of your brain that likes to tell you how you're an awful person, and you can't produce anything good, and you're not valuable. You're not lovable. You'll never be good enough. You're not worthwhile. All of those things, that's your unmanaged brain. So all of us have that unmanaged brain at times, and we all have the evil stepmother and stepsisters living inside of us. But who we really are deep at our core is Cinderella. And you think of Cinderella, she is whole. She is good, she is pure. She is in a difficult situation. But all in all, she is good, and that is the core of who you are. That's who you actually are. The other parts, the evil stepsister and stepmother parts, are just your brain with the thoughts that it has. This is not actually who you are.

So what ends up happening, as you recall, is that the Prince decides he wants to get married, and so he's going to put on a big ball party and invite all the girls and women from the town that are available so that he can pick which one he wants to marry. And so of course, the evil stepsisters are over the Moon excited. The evil stepmother is so excited because her daughters might become a princess. And so they do all these fancy things to get the stepsisters ready to go.

And of course, they will not let Cinderella go at all, and she's so devastated and disappointed because this seems to her like it would be a great option, a great way to get away from what she's just seeing as the end of her life having to toil away. And she really wants to go, but they won't let her. And in some versions of the story, she even has a nice dress, but they cut it up, and they ruin it. And they make sure that she can't go. She has no way of getting there. And so the stepsisters leave, and she's stuck at home. She's not going to get to have her chance.

And then what happens is her fairy godmother shows up, and her fairy godmother creates an opportunity for her. Her fairy godmother gives her the dress, gives her the glass slippers, changes the pumpkin into a carriage that can take her all the way to the princess palace so that she can go to the ball, right? So that's what ends up happening. She goes. Then she has to put herself out there, dance with the Prince, and as she sees the opportunity is going to come to an end, right, the fairy godmother didn't say, “You can have this great life for the rest of your life. It's going to be super easy, and you have everything you want for the rest of your life.” No. What she said was, “You have until the stroke of midnight, and then all of this will go away.” So what the fairy godmother did was she created an opportunity for Cinderella.

And Cinderella, she showed up. She went in there, and she danced. And she met the Prince, and then she realized what time it was. And even though she made a connection with him, she had to go because otherwise, she knew he would see her in her tattered threads and barefoot, the horror in a fairy tale, right? So she goes back home again. As she's running down the steps, she loses one of her shoes, her glass slippers. And so she gets back home again, and the Prince decides he wants to marry the girl who had that shoe on. And he goes around, asks all the girls to try it on to see which one is the one whose foot fits, and then he knows that it's that person.

But so here's the thing, we often are thinking when it comes to weight loss, that if only we just had a fairy godmother, right, if we just could have some wishes, someone to just come and handle things and just sweep us off her feet and save us, rescue us from this toiling that we have been experiencing, that we don't see any end in sight for. But that is not really what the fairy godmother did, right? All she did was come and create an opportunity.

Now in this scenario, you are Cinderella. That's who you really are. Your unmanaged brain is the evil stepmother and stepsisters, okay? And then you are also the fairy godmother as well, okay? You don't need to disempower yourself by thinking that somebody else needs to come in and handle this for you. I see that a lot when people who want to lose weight are saying, “Well, I just need accountability. I just need someone to come in and handle this for me.” I hear this all the time, “If I could just have a personal chef and a trainer who'd come to my house and someone to clean my house every day, then I could finally lose weight.”

Here's the deal, I promise you that would be nice for a little while, and then you would still not lose the weight 100% because it's not actions that are going to change what you're doing, right? They're not going to change long-term your overeating. I know that sounds weird, right? You're like, “No. If I stop taking the action of overeating, then it'll get better. If I take the action of exercise, then I'll be healthier.” But actions are not where you need to focus. Because what creates your actions? Your feelings. And what creates your feelings? Your thoughts, okay? So having the chef and the personal trainer and the housekeeper and all of that does not create your thoughts.

At first, it'll be easier to think thoughts about how great your life is, and then you'll realize, “You know what? The trainer can't make me work out hard. I have to actually do it. The chef can't make me not overeat. I can still go into the fridge or into the pantry anytime I want. I'm not home all the time. I'm not like a child in a high chair where someone's feeding me, and that's all I get to have,” right? That's not at all how it really goes. So we're waiting around to be rescued. We're wanting someone to rescue us, but instead, we need a rescue ourselves.

And let me just tell you, you're already doing that. You're already acting as your fairy godmother just by listening to this podcast, okay? What you're doing is you're creating an opportunity for yourself. You're creating an opportunity for you to learn more about what it takes to lose weight. You want to potentially take advantage of what I teach you and apply it to your life. And some of you are going to take the opportunity to work in my program Weight Loss for Doctors Only and actually lose the weight, right? You're going to actually take the opportunity that's available to you. You're not going to say no to it. You're not going to turn it down. You're going to say, “Yeah, I'm going to show up and do it.”

But here's the thing, right? Fairy godmother doesn't create the results. She doesn't say, “Okay, Cinderella, you and the Prince get together.” What she did was she was literally and metaphorically creating the vehicle for Cinderella to be able to meet the Prince, and then Cinderella took over from there. And so this is the same thing with my weight loss program, right? I create the opportunity for you. It's here, right? You create the opportunity by signing up, but then you have to actually show up and do the stuff, right? You have to be the one who goes, “Yeah, I really do want to do this. I'm going to ask for help. I'm going to be the one who takes advantage of what's available to me and create those results that I want,” okay?

So even after she meets the Prince and she runs away, right, the story's not over because he didn't get her name. He doesn't know where to find her. And then of course, the stepsisters don't want Cinderella to try the glass slipper on because they want to be the ones to shove their feet into it, right? But she had to make sure that she got in there and put that shoe on, that she advocated for herself, even despite the obstacles that her stepsisters created for her. Even despite the obstacles that your brain will create for you, you keep persevering to create that result that you want.

And so what I want you to know is that you are completely capable of creating your own Cinderella story when it comes to your weight loss. You can be one of that one to 2% of people who lose weight and keep it off forever. And I can show you how to do that in my Weight Loss for Doctors Only program. Going keto, doing all the whatever, focusing on all the different low carb things or some new exercise program, it's just not going to give you the long-term results that you want. It just isn't. It's very, very unlikely. You have to spend time on your brain and learning this and learning how to keep persevering even when it gets hard and truly learning how to show up as your own fairy godmother.

And that's exactly what I can teach you how to do. So I am taking deposits for my upcoming group that I'm opening up that starts in January. At this point, I will not be opening it up like doing a webinar launch, that kind of thing I've done in the past. I will just be taking deposits only. And so if that is something that you're thinking you want to do, you're going to definitely want to sign up soon because as I'm recording this, we're almost half full already. So you are definitely not going to want to miss out. And just taking that step to put your deposit down, it means that you are just committing to doing this and knowing that even when your brain tells you it's a terrible idea, that you're going to still show up and you're going to do this.

So to get more information about that program, see if it's the right fit for you, go to katrinaubellmd.com/info, I-N-F-O. Again, katrinaubellmd.com/info, and then you can get all the information about that. I do want to let you know that next week, I'll be telling you a little bit more about how to be able to ask for membership in the program as a gift. So just since Black Friday is about to arrive, if you're thinking, “You know what? I think I want that, except I typically wouldn't be spending that on myself. What if I ask for it for one of the winter holidays,” then that's going to be an option for you as well. So be sure to tune into next week's podcast episode, and I'll tell you all about how you can do that.

Have a wonderful, wonderful week. I'm going to get back to writing this amazing book for you guys. I can't wait for you to read it. I think about you all the time as I'm writing it, all the amazing things that I can't wait for you to learn. But here's the thing, if you're sitting there thinking, “Well, I'll just buy her book when it comes out,” it's probably going to be a couple years. That's how this process goes. So I don't want you waiting that long to create the life of your dreams and the freedom around food that you can truly only dream of right now. All right. I love you so much. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day and your week, and I'll talk to you next time. Take care. Bye-bye. Did you know that you can find a lot more help from me on my website? Go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.