Ep #310: Blazing New Neural Pathways

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. Welcome to the podcast today. I'm so glad that you're here with me. I am excited to tell you more about today's topic because this is something that I think so many of us deal with, and it also involves quite a story. And who doesn't love a story? I always love a story. So I'm so glad that you're here with me today. Today, we're going to talk about blazing new neural pathways alone or with help. And so we're going to talk about it through the lens of weight loss. But I'm going to tell you an unrelated to weight loss story that will help you to see the metaphor there, the equivalence and how it's really the same thing, because, I mean, it's no surprise to anybody that when you decide to change your habits, whether it's with the way that you're eating or maybe with drinking alcohol or maybe the way you're moving your body or maybe even just your habits with how you finish your charts or how you approach sleep.

I know back when I would take all, I totally knew that it made sense to go to bed early, but I would end up staying up late thinking, Well, I don't want to sleep for just a little bit and then get that kind of, you know, ten 1030 11 p.m. page from a patient because they're thinking, Oh, let me call the doctor before she goes to sleep. Then I basically just had a nap and now I can't fall back asleep again, so I might as well just stay up. Well, sometimes that worked out and sometimes I was glad I hadn't gone to sleep. But so many times I should have just gone to sleep because then I was woken up however many more times later in the night. Or I could have had a really nice long night of rest and I missed out on it because I stayed up late. Right? So whatever kinds of habits we're trying to change when it comes down to losing weight and losing weight, permanently changing our relationship with food, changing our relationship with ourselves, changing our relationship with our bodies, there's just new things that need to happen, right? The old ways of thinking that led to the old feelings that we regularly and familiarly that a word that we feel, and then the actions that we take are giving us a result that we do not want, right? We don't like feeling like we think about food so much or we think about our body so much, or just the way we think about ourselves is mean.

We are feeling bad about ourselves most of the time, or we just feel like we're out of control around food. We go in with the best of intentions and a plan and then push comes to shove and we've eaten all the food and we don't know what happened, right? Like we come home exhausted every day. We don't know what else to do besides eating and drinking something, right? Like new thoughts and feelings and actions have to be put into place. And that's going to take time. Now, we understand, if you understand the concept of neuroplasticity, we understand that the neurons in our brains have synaptic connections, right? There's these connections between them. And the more often we fire those connections, meaning like the more often we think those same thoughts, It's kind of like it bulks up that neural connection, like it gets thicker. It's like when you're working out and your muscles grow. When you work out that way of thinking in it and you really repeat it and practice it a lot, it becomes something that is really automatic, really easy for us to think. And so those old thoughts, feelings and actions that give us those results that we don't want become very, very easy.

So when we want to do something different, that initial neural connection is very thin. It's not well worn yet. It's not all built up in bulked up yet, and the old way is still alive and well and present. And so it takes some work, right, to be able to form those new synaptic connections to really literally change our brains, which is what neuroplasticity is going. You know what? I don't want to make those neural connections anymore. I don't want to be thinking those thoughts the same way I have been. And I want to be thinking new ways, and I want that to become the new automatic, totally available to us. So conceptually we're like, Yeah, okay, totally make sounds. Yes, I'd like to do that. And then we embark on that journey and it's not always smooth sailing. Sometimes it's a really big challenge. And so I want to talk to you today about just something that happened to my family. So last year, in 2021, my family decided to travel between Christmas and New Year. So this is something that we had historically not done for lots of reasons. First of all, everybody knows, even like pre-COVID, that, you know, it's just like a crazy travel time. For several years there, my oldest son was doing ski race team and that week in between the holidays was a big time where they call it Christmas camp, where the kids were going to have to be on the snow with something like seven, 730 in the morning.

I can report back soon because my other two are going to start doing that this year. So I'm going to be up with them getting them there. But, you know, we are busy doing that kind of stuff. My husband is a surgeon and so everybody. Always wanted to get their surgeries taken care of, especially their elective things, before their deductible re ups, which of course in the US is totally like a thing with our health care system. If you're not in the US, you might be like, Yes, I've heard of this. It sounds very strange to me and it's strange to us too, but it is just the system and how it works. So what can we do? But so anyway, he always wanted to work because it was a time to really be able to take care of a lot of patients before that year ended. And they really wanted to do that. Here's what changed. So what happened was my oldest child went off to high school, and the school that my younger children go to goes all the way up through eighth grade. So for a while there they were all in the same school. They had all the same vacations, which meant that they had a week off in February. And because we do like to ski and it's like for us because I mean, I learned to ski when I was three.

My husband learned when he was in college. But it's something that he's really developed a love for. It's really just a great family thing to do together. I grew up doing it for my family. I always loved it and it's something that provided your body can cooperate with you. It's really a sport that you can partake in for your whole life or most of your life, and you get to be out in nature. And, you know, it's just it's a good time for us. We really enjoy doing it. So we would take a ski trip out west that week of February, and we had been doing that for a long time. We have dear friends that live in the Denver area, so we would wrap up a visit with them into the whole mix and it was something we did for a long time. And then this past year, in 2021, our oldest son was in a school where they don't have that week off and of course the year before that as well. When he was a freshman, it was COVID year, so nobody did anything. So it's the last year we were really like missing our ski trip. We thought, you know, we really want to do this, really want to do the ski trip. How can we make this happen when one of our kids doesn't have that week off? Now, you might be thinking, okay, well, you know, he could just take that week off.

We could just excuse him. But the high school he goes to is actually quite strict with time off and stuff and they do not mess around and you're really not supposed to take kids out. So when I first saw that when he was a freshman, I'm like, Oh, okay, well, like, I know you're not supposed to, but like, how big of a deal is this really? You know? And you can tell I'm not a firstborn. I'm always like, Well, I understand the rules, but do they really apply to me? I don't know. I'm going to find out. So anyway, as I looked into it further, it really is like, you're really not supposed to take kids out. But even besides that, as you might imagine, and I know so many of you who have children around the same age or had children on the same age know like, I don't know, somehow we birth these kids who are just really high achievers. I am telling you, just like it was internal to me, my parents didn't have to tell me to go get good grades. Like I just wanted to excel and succeed. It's the same for him as well. And so with his course load and the difficulty level of his classes, he was like, There's just literally no way I could miss a week of school.

Like, it's just this is not going to work. So we were like, okay, we can't take a trip. And he loves skiing probably more than the other four of us put together. So we thought, Well, how can we do a family ski trip? We really want to do this as a family. And so I looked at everybody and said, You guys, I think we have to take a trip between Christmas and New Year's. Like, I know it's going to be busy time, but, you know, maybe with COVID, like still a lot of people weren't traveling. We're just going to have to deal with the lines and whatever, and we're just going to have to do it. So we all agreed. Okay, yeah, I think that's what we're going to do. So then the question was, where are we going to go? And so we decided to go to the ski resort called Heavenly, which is on Lake Tahoe. And it kind of borders. It's literally like the actual scheme. The mountain is actually like straddling the Nevada and California border. So half of the ski resort is in California and half is in Nevada. So it's right in that area. Now, I live in Wisconsin. That is not close, like not even remotely close, but the summer before that. So the summer of 2021, we actually had gone out to Lake Tahoe for the first time and had loved it like super duper loved it.

It's so beautiful there. We went hiking and spent time on the lake and just really enjoyed it. And we thought, you know what? Like we could see the heavenly ski resort. We thought, you know what? We should come back here and ski here because how beautiful would it be to be like on the mountain and then have the view of the lake with the snow like so, so pretty. And I thought, this is what we're going to do. We had gotten a direct flight from Milwaukee where I live, to Reno, which is where you fly into to go there. I thought, this is brilliant, no problem at all. So I booked us this Airbnb. We don't really know like that much about the area, but I book us in and that's that. Okay, so I'm going to pause here for a second and just rewind to several years prior. I mean, I'm thinking how many years prior? Seven, eight, nine. Something along those lines I mentioned. We used to go to Colorado all the time for that week in February, and we would visit our friends and we would go skiing up in the mountains and stuff and. So where we usually ended up skiing, we had tried a couple different places, like we had tried Breckenridge and we liked it enough, but it was like extremely windy and cold.

Like somehow, just like it wasn't really our favorite. And we tried a couple of other places and then those friends of ours who we've known for ever since residency, they were telling us that they loved skiing at Vail and that they had a connection for us to be able to stay in a condo in Vail like East Vail is where they were. They had it's like kind of like family member has it, and they don't really put it up for rent for regular people. But through friends and family, you could rent it. And it's not like the fanciest or like the most updated, but it works. You know, it does the trick. The amount they charged us was like, stupid, cheap, like, you literally could not say no to this where you're just like, are you even kidding me right out? So even early on, because a ski trip is a very expensive trip, it was like, wow, it really helps to offset the cost of this trip when we can stay for so little in this condo. So the first year we were there and, you know, you're kind of like trying to figure things out, like where's the ski school? But our friends had given us a lot of tips and we had actually even been up there as well with them where they were kind of like, okay, definitely like set up ski school here and then you're going to stay here.

And then like, here's the situation with the bus system and like if you want to drive in park, then park over here. So they gave us like a whole tutorial on the best ways to kind of take advantage of what was on offer there. And then over the course of the subsequent years, we kept going back, first of all, because the skiing in Vail is really, really, really good if you're an advanced skier. So my oldest son, because of his ski racing, even though I think it's literally where we ski here in Milwaukee, we have 180 vertical might be yards. I don't know, whatever it is, it's a very I mean, it's a hill. It's a hill. Okay? There's no mountain here at all. Even on that. They can really teach kids to be excellent, excellent skiers. And so with like three years on race team, my oldest son was like literally 12 years old and skiing all of the terrain in all of Vail, like no problem whatsoever. And my husband loved going with him, too. So they super duper loved skiing of Val. It wasn't totally my favorite because I'm more someone who likes more of like the groomed blue runs. But I figured out all the places that I like to ski and we would kind of like split up and then meet up for lunch on the mountain.

And we had our way of kind of doing things. And so year after year after year, we got better and better at making this an amazing trip. Like we had it all figured out. Like, exactly, You know, we would go and then I'd get help dropping the little kids off her ski school and there's like special parking there. Then I drive over to where my oldest son and my husband wanted to be dropped off, so I drop them there. Then I would drive to a different part of the mountain where they had a better parking situation and better access to the ones that I like to ski on. And I would park there and the deal that I have with myself, because after too many years of being like this ticket was expensive and I need to ski until I'm half dead, I finally just realized, you know what? I'm only going to ski until I'm done. And if that's an hour, then I got my money's worth. Like, I'm not going to keep forcing myself to ski after my legs are tired because that's, of course, how you get hurt or if the weather isn't good or I'm just not having fun. Like, guess what? I'm a grown up and I get to do what I want. And I knew that I never would want to ski as long as the boys would want to.

So I had the car then available in the car keys. So I would like ski, have fun, have lunch, maybe do another run or two, then go get the car. Maybe I'd go like hit the hot tub by myself before it got busy. Then go pick up the little kids when they're done from ski school and then go round up, you know, my husband and the oldest. And then what we actually figured out was, you know, what's so much easier is if you just plan on eating really early. Because what we found is if we went back to the condo and did the hot tub and the whole thing, then like nobody had the energy to get dressed again and go out to eat and I could cook. And I had years where I did do all the cooking. And it was just such an exhausting trip for me to do all the cooking and skiing and everything. It was just it was too much. So we figured out we're like, You know what we do? We pick everybody up, we go straight. We like would eat dinner at like 430, like walk around the village a little bit, eat a really early dinner, go back, hot tub, relax a little bit. Everyone's exhausted. Anyway, go to bed, start again the next day. So over the course of time, you know, we got help from our friends to, like, you know, get that initial learning curve up and going.

And then every year was like we were iterating, iterating, iterating, making it even better, even easier. It was just really like, not hard. It was like sometimes, you know, one year, I think the last year we went, we decided, you know what, we want to actually stay in a nicer place. So we stayed in a place that was a little bit different, but it was still like enough was the same. It was just like a slight change, you know? So the main reason that we decided not to go back to Vail in 2021 was because historically somebody in our family, at least one person, ended up having a lot of trouble with the altitude. So Vail Village is at 8000 feet and so it's high. And, you know, every time you go, as I'm sure you know, every time you go into altitude, you can have different experiences and stuff. And we even took medication and we put the little kids on medication. And I'm telling you, it was like without fail, someone was puking in their bed from altitude. And then it's like, if they've been sick, they can't go to ski school. And then it just was like such a thing and just like not sleeping well and not feeling well even with medication. And I just had been pushing for a couple of years.

You guys like, could we maybe just go somewhere that isn't so high and maybe we could all enjoy it a little bit more? So that's when I was really like, You guys, look how beautiful this would be. We'll go to Heavenly. We'll be able to see the view of the lake and try something different and it'll be so nice. So that was the whole idea. So that was our experience leading up to things I'm not even going to get into for, in the interest of time the hassle that it was to get there. It took us literally three days to get there, partly because we had gotten a direct flight to Reno in the summer, but they weren't offering drug flights anymore. By the time we were booking into, you know, the end of the year. So we had to connect. And if you remember at all last year in the wintertime, like just travel was super hard. There were tons of delays. It was very challenging, let me just say. So we started off the trip with things that there's just no way we could control it. It was just a bunch of weather stuff, you know, there were some airline issues. It was just really like, you name it, the problem existed pretty much. So let's just skip over that part. We finally we get into our Airbnb and we got ourselves settled and we're like, okay, we're going to go skiing.

And so we done a little bit of research online and we realized like where our condo was that we hadn't chosen based on location. We chosen it based on like how many bedrooms it had and like, you know, just kind of, you know, amenities and stuff. And so we realized, okay, our condo is closer to the California side, so let's just ski from the California side. We'll set up ski school from the California side. Like, we'll just do that. Well, what ends up happening is we're brand new to literally everything. Plus, they had also had this huge snowstorm. So there was just like a ton of snow everywhere. And so I think that kind of slowed things down as well. But we didn't know like the best way to get to the parking lot and really how early you needed to get there or there wouldn't be any parking left. And so it ended up being just like one challenge after the next challenge after the next challenge. We got there a little too slow and little too late, and we didn't understand like the way they did ski school. There was just like very different than anything I'd ever experienced before. And so I had to go and figure out like just the whole thing. It was very, very challenging and confusing. Then I and my husband goes to park the car, so we decided to split up.

There was no parking at all. He had to go down this like side road, like way far down and park on the side of the road and then like hike up with his stuff because we hadn't realized, like he had like skis and stuff. We had realized like, how far away he was going to have to be. So we got that all settled. And then we're like trying to figure out all like the whole mountain. The mountain is just different and how does this all work and where should we go? And I think, yeah, they didn't have any actual paper maps of the trails, like they were all just on your phone. Except that when it's really cold, your phone doesn't always work very well. So we realized like, Oh no, you know, what we need to do is we need to know where there's actually maps, like actual physical maps, like on the trails, and then realizing that like sometimes on the ski lift there's actually a map and we should really utilize that. And then because of COVID, they wouldn't let you just go and eat at lunch time, like on the mountain. You couldn't just like go to the lodge and eat. You needed a reservation. So luckily my husband had actually figured that out, that we needed a reservation, just kind of randomly chose a time or like, I guess this is when we're eating.

Okay, fine. So we get there and there's the longest, longest line. We're like, Oh my God, we still have to wait in this huge line waiting there for a while until we realize, Oh, wait, this is for people who didn't make the reservation. So we walked down there, realized, Oh, no, we do have a reservation. Okay, Now we can wait in a shorter line to be able to get a table. And you know, it was all like assigned and stuff. And so then we're sitting there, we're eating our lunch, and then they come overhead and the announcement, they're like, We're closing the gondola due to high winds. If you are a beginner skier, you need to exit the mountain now. And like we were like, what is going on? Like, is this okay? I mean, we're not we don't consider ourselves beginner skiers, but like, what's going on? And it's like finally someone who worked there and walked around, they're like, Oh. Yeah, this happens actually here all the time. It's actually pretty common than the afternoon. The winds get really, you know, pretty bad. But, you know, you can go over here and go over there. It shouldn't be as bad. Okay. Good to know. Also, is extra extra busy because it was the time of year, you know, a lot of people had off of work and stuff and because they'd had so much snow, So a bunch of people had taken off work who probably wouldn't have ordinarily or maybe wouldn't have driven in like local people because they wanted to take advantage of all this snow.

So it was just packed. The lines for the lifts were so long, like everything that we had told ourselves, like we're just going to have to be patient and deal with it. Like we were just dealing with all of it, just all of it. So then the trip home was super difficult to in terms of just travel, missing flights. It was just a disaster. If you were in the Denver airport around New Year's last year, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I've never seen anything like it. It was incredible. It just absolute incredible. So the point is this, right? What was different about Vail versus this trip to Heavenly, particularly like our first time that we went, the very first time we went, we had our friends there who had already been several times like lots and lots of times, and actually they ended up purchasing a place in that area. So they just knew it like the back of their hands. And so they were able to really be a local guide for us. They told us good restaurants to go to and they were like giving us like letting us borrow some of their kitchen equipment so that we could like make some easy meals and stuff.

They just were guiding us through the whole process of getting acclimated to a new vacation spot, you know? And this gave me such appreciation for people who go back to the same place again and again and again on vacation. You know, there's just something to the familiarity. It really is a lot easier, even if there's things that you don't super love. Like a veil is just it's not my favorite place to ski. It really isn't. But there's something to be said about familiarity, you know? I know the different runs and I know the different places that I like to go. And and so not having a guide, like had we gone to Heavenly and had someone local there or someone who had been there a bunch of times to be like, okay, look, really the Nevada side is the side you want to go on and you know, or whatever it was like, just here are the tips and tricks are like, do not think that you're going to show up there at nine and get a parking spot Like you have to get there before then. Like, you just have to get up. Like, okay, that would have been great to know. Like so many things like that. We learn the hard way if we just keep experimenting. But a guide can make it so much faster, right? And then our brains have adjusted, right? Like we've got the new neural pathway and we know how we do this.

It's familiar, it's easy. We've got this sorted and weight loss can be so much the same in the sense that, you know, there's so much we can figure out on our own. I mean, you can read my book, How to Lose Weight for the last Time and start applying the stuff yourself for sure. Right. But what if you had a guide who's taken literally well over 1000 female physicians through this process? You know, who can just help you to know, Hey, listen, here's an area where you might get stuck. This is the way to get through it. Or you know what? I understand that that didn't work. Well, here. I have some other ideas for you or you're struggling in this area and someone's like, you know what? I've taken people through that before. I know exactly how to help you. You don't have to bumble around by yourself and experiment with 100 million things that aren't going to work. Like, here's the thing that's going to be the best thing. That's what the weight loss four doctors only program offers to you. That's what coaching in my program does. We have done this with so many people. Whenever I coach, I never worry that someone's going to bring me something that I don't know how to approach.

I'm like, Yeah, we've got so much experience. We've been doing this for so long and my whole team is so excellent at being able to meet you where you're at and effectively, efficiently and quickly guide you to where you need to be, right? Because not everybody is showing up at the same place. Some people are coming in. They're like, You know, my friend told me I needed to do this. And I listen to a couple of podcasts and it sounded pretty good. So here I am. And other people are like, I've been listening to your podcast for four years and I'm already lost a bunch of weight myself, and now I need help in this area, right? We will meet you where you're at with what you need and help you to get that help that you need so that it's faster so it's smoother. And so that neuroplasticity changing your brain so that you are starting to think, feel and act in the ways that give you the results you do want. So that comes so much faster and so much more quickly and so much more efficiently. Because when you're bumbling around and it's taking forever, you're so much less likely to go like, are we going on a ski trip this year? No, we are not. And heck no, Are we going to heavenly? I'm not sure I'll ever go back unless someone can go and really help us to figure it out, because it was such a difficult experience and we have had that so many times with weight loss.

You know, we tried some sort of plan or did this thing that someone said or we tried to do and it didn't work. And then we keep thinking that it's our fault or something's wrong with us. It was my fault that I didn't have a great experience. That heavenly. No, I'm sure heavenly. It's amazing. I just didn't have the help that I needed to really get me off on the right foot to be able to make it an enjoyable experience. You know, weight loss can actually be enjoyable, believe it or not. You know, I like yeah, I don't really believe it, but guess what? It really can be. I remember myself thinking like, Oh my gosh, like I can do this. This is not a hardship. Like, I literally can do this. And I know so many of the women physicians that I've worked with have felt the same way, too, where they're just like, Oh, this is different. This is really, really different. And so why wouldn't you give yourself that leg up? Why don't you give yourself that boost to help you to move along that much faster, to learn it more quickly and just speed up the whole process? Right. That's what we offer in weight loss for doctors only.

So if you're traveling this year over the holidays, I wish you the very best. I really hope that you have a better experience than we did. So much of what happened to us was just it was just happenstance, just things that happened, weather and whatever. And there's no way you can plan for that, but you definitely can plan for getting help with the parts that you know, you can predict. Or once unusual things do happen knowing how to work through that. And that's exactly what we can help you with. And weight loss for doctors only. If you're interested in learning more about the program, go to Katrina. Hubble IMDB.com for info info gets a lot more information about the program and how we might be able to help you, how we might be able to work together to help you create peace and freedom around food. And with that, I will say goodbye. If you are someone who celebrates Christmas, then Merry Christmas. If you celebrate other holidays. I wish you the best in those celebrations. And we're winding up this year. So crazy. Please know that me and my team were here for you and we'd love to help you in whatever way we can. Have a great rest of your day and your week, and I'll talk to you next time. Take care of a baby. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.