You’ve all heard that patience is a virtue, but this is particularly true when it comes to major transformations like weight loss. Losing weight does not necessarily change who you are if you’re rushing through the process and trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. Weight loss that is sustainable and healthy comes from a place of learning to feel your emotions and manage your mind—that is where the true holistic transformation comes from.

In this episode, I’m diving into how impatience can actually hold you back in your weight loss journey and prevent you from achieving the holistic change needed to maintain your weight loss. This is a message for all of you who are feeling impatient and need a reminder to stay the course and enjoy the journey, because it is so worth it on the other side.


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In Today's Episode, You'll Learn:

  • Why we are so often impatient
  • The root cause of impatience
  • The key element to cultivating patience  
  • Why patience during your weight loss journey is so important

Featured In This Episode

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Read the Transcript Below:

Katrina Ubell:      You are listening to The Weight Loss For Busy Physicians Podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 223.

Welcome to The Weight Loss For Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and weight loss coach, Katrina Ubell, MD. 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. How are you this fine day? Welcome to the podcast, so glad that you are here. I'm recognizing that I'm recording this and my voice is a little husky today. I actually just did a really awesome two hour training call last night. If you were there with me, awesome. And by last night, this is going to be several weeks before this actually airs live. But I think that my voice took a little bit of a hit last night. I don't think I really realized that until now. But it's totally worth it. I love answering all of your questions. Might have to take a few pauses to clear my throat as we go along. Who knows? Maybe it'll just warm up as we go. I should've probably done some vocal exercises or something before starting this.

Listen, before we get into our topic for the day, I want to let you know that I'm opening up enrollment for the May Weight Loss For Doctors Only Coaching Group in a couple of days after this airs. So this is airing on April 20th, Tuesday, and I will be opening things up on Thursday, April 22nd. We're going to kick it off with a free training that evening called How To Know If You're Ready To Lose Weight. This is really important for you to know, especially if you're … I mean, you might know. You're like, “Listen, I am ready. I'm ready to just take care of this, ready to be done.” Or you might really not be sure. And so if you're not sure, I definitely recommend that you come. If you are sure, and you just want more information about the program, you should come too because what I'll do is give you some great help, some great information, and then at the end of the training, I'll tell you more about the program, all the details, all of that information.

Now if you happen to be listening to this, and this free training call has already happened, and you're like, “Wait. Is it still open? What's going on?” April 29th, the evening of Thursday, April 29th is when we're closing up shop for the May 2021 group. So if you are listening to this in between, you're like, “Wait. Where's all the information?” We will be emailing and all of that. But in case you're not on the list, in case you just want more of that information, you can always just email us at hello@katrinaubellmd.com, and we'll get you all the information you need to sign up for that free training call, How To Know If You're Ready To Lose Weight, then just to go katrinaubellmd.com/ready, R-E-A-D-Y. Again, katrinaubellmd.com/ready.

If you come live, that's awesome. You can ask all your questions, have a great time together. If you can't come live for whatever reason, we have lots of people who listen who want to attend who live all over the world, and they're like, “Hey, sleep's a real thing, and I don't want to be up in the middle of the night,” or whatever it is, then make sure you still register because we'll send you the replay, so that's totally available to you. So again, katrinaubellmd.com/ready. That's how you're going to get that information. And we will just talk about what it means to actually be ready. So often, we think we need to be ready, but we don't even really know what that means. A lot of reasons we think we're not ready are not actually good reasons to not go ahead and start. But then sometimes there really are good reasons to not do it right in that moment. So we will clear that all up. You will leave the call knowing is it time to get started now or not, and the information about the program.

I will tell you that this is the last time I'm offering my Weight Loss For Doctors Only program at the current pricing. I've had it at this pricing for several years now, and I've added, I mean, ridiculous amounts of things to this program and not raised the price, so we're super overdue for a price increase, which will be happening in September, for the next September, the fall group. There will be a price increase. So if price is something that's important to you, for something people it is, for some people, it isn't, but if it is important to you, this would be your chance to get in there. There's also going to be some other future benefits to you, if you lock in this current pricing. And I can't actually announce what these things are, but there's going to be some really awesome stuff that other people are going to get, who are paying a higher price, that anybody in this May group is going to get as well.

So I can't announce what it is yet. I will pretty soon, but it's very exciting. I'm like, “Listen to me. You should join this group.” I can't even tell you why, but you'll thank me later. It's going to be really, really good, and I'm just so excited about what we have in the pipeline, and you're going to get all of it. So good, yay. So like I said, come and join me on that free training call, How To Know If You're Ready to Lose Weight. Just to register, go to katrinaubellmd.com/ready. Otherwise, if you're still looking for more information about signing up, you can just email us, hello@katrinaubellmd.com. Or you can just go to my website, katrinaubellmd.com, and there should be some good information about signing up there as well, just so you can get all the details if you are like, “Wait. What is this about? I'm just hearing about this,” you'll get all the information you need in there. We will get you squared away, super, super good.

I have to ask how your spring is going, or we have people listening in the Southern Hemisphere, so they're like, “Listen, winter is coming.” So how's your fall going? It's been a really interesting year. I just wanted just to share something a little bit more personal just briefly. I'm recording this on April 1st actually, so happy April Fool's, I suppose. So for anybody who's listened to this podcast, maybe you just started at the beginning, and now you're kind of catching up with the more recent ones, or maybe you haven't listened to this, I think it was episode 12, I believe, where I actually shared a little bit more about the experience that I had where my daughter was stillborn. That happened actually almost 11 years ago. It happened on April 4th. And 11 years ago, April 4th was on Easter. And this year, it's on Easter again.

And in 11 years, I've spent a lot of time and effort on processing grief and working through all kinds of different angles of that experience. And it's been really interesting to see what it's like to be reliving everything like almost identically. What's also really crazy is that, that year in 2010, we had a really early spring. It was just glorious. The sun was shining, the spring flowers were already out. I live in Wisconsin. Sometimes in May, we're still freezing. So it just was so glorious and I just have always loved spring because my birthday is April 6th, so I was always just love spring, and it was so great. And so we're having literally a replica of that experience right now, so we've got the early spring, great weather, timeline exactly the way it was. And it's been really interesting to see emotionally how that's kind of brought things up for me in ways that I couldn't even really anticipate.

I just didn't really know. I kind of thought, “Well, we'll see how this goes.” And every year, I'm just kind of like, “We'll see.” I've had years where I'm like, “I'm feeling pretty good. I don't know. I'm okay.” We have our things that we do. We have certain things that we do on her birthday that we do every year. And I like doing those, and that's been great. And then this year, it's been really interesting, just kind of noticing a little different element to this time. And you think 11 years goes by, it's been a long time. Right? But then there's some parts that still live within you. So partly, I wanted to bring this up because what I think is so, so, so important, it's something that I work with my clients on a ton, and I plan on actually even bolstering in the Weight Loss For Doctors Only program moving forward, is how to process emotions, how to stay with yourself when things come up, how to not freak out when you're feeling a lot of emotions.

It's really easy to be like, “Wait. I thought I was done with this,” or, “Why is this coming up again? What's the deal here?” And instead, just moving into it going, “Okay, this is the next level of processing that I obviously have to do,” because that was a trauma, obviously, that I went through. And so this is just the next level of that, and being open and willing to feel it, even when it feels super terrible, is really the path forward because what I spent the majority of my life doing, and I bet you have too, is just stuffing that all down, and not wanting to cry, and not wanting to experience that emotion. And often, I would use food to help me to stuff that. And some people use alcohol or do other things as well in order to do that.

And I think that one of the things that we're signing up for when we're no longer using food to feel better is we're signing up for, we're saying yes to the full emotional experience as an adult. Now I will tell you, in the last day or two, I'm doing some journaling. And I'm literally flying out of my pen is like, “I hate this. I don't want to feel this way. Nobody should have to feel this way. If this is what it feels like to be an adult, then I want to opt out.” Literally, I don't want to do this. But part of the process of processing it is allowing that to come out, is allowing that part of you to have the voice so that you can just leave it there, and it's like a catharsis. Right? You get it out and then you're dusting yourself off. Okay, here we go, back into life again, doing my thing.

And so I anyway, I felt called to mention that because it is something that's going on for me right now, but also because I know that this comes up for other people as well. This can be related to other deaths in the family that you've had, or friends who you've lost, or other important people in your life, or it doesn't have to be something kind of as extreme as that, but anything that just kind of keeps living with you, it's important to give it some air time to not be frustrated with yourself, to not put a timeline on the experience. I think early on after my daughter died, I really had this idea of, “Okay, so when is this going to be over?” Or when will I be done with this, or quote, unquote, through it? When will I be through this experience?

I might've shared this before. I don't remember if I did, it was a long time ago. But after my daughter had died, Vivian, a friend of mine, had just come by. And she let me know that she had actually visited with her grandmother, who was in her 90s. And she said that she told her grandmother what had happened to me and Vivian, and her grandmother said, “Oh, that happened to me too.” And my friend didn't know that. And her grandma's like, “Oh, yeah. It was a little boy, and he was between this uncle and this uncle. And he would be 74 or whatever right now.” She completely, he was still very much alive in her heart. And I think she asked her grandmother, “At what point do you get over it?” And she was just like, “No, I'm still not over it.”

And I was like, “Oh, my God. That's so helpful to know.” This will be a healing wound in my heart forever. And can that be okay? At that moment, I was just like, “Oh, good. Well, good to know.” Then maybe I can just stop trying to tell myself that something's going wrong here, and that I need to be getting through this, whatever that even means, that there is no point where I can consistently and reliably say that I won't have any emotion about, it would just be this thing that happened. I think there's a lot of healing that can be done for sure around the trauma of it. But it's normal, it's okay, it's expected to miss anybody that you lose prematurely, or even when it's not premature, for the rest of your life, especially if it was a meaningful experience for you.

So anyway, I feel called to mention that. I could be that somebody listening today really need to hear that. You might hear the emotion in my voice. Woo, it's just been a little intense, so that's what's going on for me. Okay. Took a little moment there to just gather myself. Let's talk about the topic of the day. I wanted to talk today about impatience with weight loss, because I see this and I hear this all the time. My clients all the time are so impatient. What can I do? They're talking about what kind of … Basically, we know you're being impatient with your weight loss when you start reverting back to diet mentality thoughts. The minute you start telling me that you want to start doing more fasting, or the minute calories start being part of the conversation, I'm like, “Hold on a second. What are we even doing here? Why are we even thinking or talking about this?”

And when we're impatient to get to goal weight, or get to even just the first 10 pounds lost, or whatever it is with our goal, we find that the experience of it is not nearly as pleasant. But also, I think the impatience can really hold you back from experiencing what it is that you want. Part of the deal with impatience, why we're even impatient, why do we want it now, why aren't we willing to be patient, is because we really think that it's going to be so much better when we get there, whatever we think is going to be better. We're going to like ourselves more. Maybe a lot of times we're like, “Listen, I just want to stop thinking about losing weight. I would love to just think about maintaining,” as though maintaining is easier. In a lot of ways, it is. It's nice to not have to worry about that anymore or think about that anymore.

But it's a whole other ball of wax. It's basically like, now I've got to figure out how to do this for the rest of my life. I don't get all the little dopamine hits from the scale going down and things like that. But often, I think we really are deep down, rationally we understand this isn't the case, but deep down, we really are kind of hanging onto that hope that we'll really become that magical person that we wish we could be, that doesn't live a human life, that really is perfect all the time, never gets upset with people, always makes the right decisions, is very reliable to herself and others, all of that stuff. And then we are pretty disappointed when we finally lose that weight and we find out. What? I'm still me. What the heck? Why am I still human, even though I weigh this certain weight?

And I know I makes, obviously, logically, we're like, “Of course you're still human.” I mean, you always will be. But when we're the ones living it, there's some disappointment that comes in that. When we get really impatient, we do whatever kind of things we need to do to try to lose that weight. Then we lose the weight, we get there, we realize, wait, I'm still me and I still have all the same problems that I had before. It really can sometimes be so disappointing that we're like, “Well, screw it. I might as well just go back to eating then.” And I can totally understand that line of thinking. I can see how someone would argue for that. But what we have to really recognize is the whole point of doing this. The whole point of losing weight is not to get to a certain size so that we can then no longer live a human life, have any problems, everyone will love us, we'll love ourselves, all these things that we think will happen. That's not the point.

We think that's the point, but it's really not the point. The point of this is to develop a relationship with yourself in the process where you love yourself no matter what, where you get to that goal weight and you're like, “I knew I was going to do it, and I love myself now. I love myself five pounds heavier, 10 pounds heavier, 20 pounds heavier, or even if I lose five more pounds. I love myself regardless. I am all in on the human experience.” Rather than it being this final destination that you've made it, it's more like a checkpoint. It's like you're checking in. You're like, “Yeah. Okay. Here I am,” and then you're continuing on that journey of life, that path toward figuring out how to feel your emotions, how to manage your mind.

Now I was thinking about what impatience means. Why do we get impatient? And really what it comes down to is it's a lack of faith that we can get to where we're going by doing what we're doing. Sometimes we do have to make some changes. Right? It could be that you figure out, you're like, “You know what, I've really been overeating a little bit and I need to change that so that I can lose the final pounds,” or whatever it is, whatever goal you're trying to go for. But what we don't spend enough time thinking about is having the faith that we can achieve what we want to achieve and working on our belief. This is something that's so important to work on. We think that belief just comes to us.

And of course, you'll believe that you can get to your goal weight once you have done it because then you'll have evidence. Right? It's like you need to see it to believe it. But what I want to offer to you is that what's really powerful, what's way more powerful and way more important is believing it before you even see it. So going into your weight loss journey or wherever you are in the process right now, with the idea that this is happening, it's as good as done. You believe it's happening for sure, and using faith to carry that belief. Faith is belief without the evidence. And so many of us are reluctant to do that. So I was thinking about: What is the deal with faith? Why don't we want to faithfully believe that we can get to our goal weight, that we are doing enough, that we are enough, that all we have to do is just keep staying the course, keep managing our mind, doing all the things that we need to do, and that we will get there eventually?

Why do we get so impatient and then start going into diet mentality, start trying to do some crazy stuff? Or all of a sudden, we're throwing away what we actually know works, and trying this two week cleanse that our friend told us about, or something crazy. Or all of a sudden, we're like, “I know what I need to do. I need to count macros.” It's like, “Hold on a second,” which by the way, if you love counting macros, you want to do that the rest of your life, I'm all in. Go for it. That's amazing. Just find that most of my clients are not interested in doing that, which is totally great because there's other ways of doing it. But so why don't we want to have faith? What is our reluctance to have faith in the belief that we can get to where we want to go? What's that all about?

I think really what it comes down to is that we are afraid that we'll have faith that we can create something, then later find out we can't create it, and then we think that we're going to feel kind of stupid, or silly, or people will think negatively about us. Maybe they'll laugh and say, “See, I knew you could never do it.” We're going to think … We think that we're going to feel bad in the future if we have faith now. And I want to just let you know that where most of your beliefs have come from, especially the ones that you hold very strongly that really create your identity, so really on a subconscious level, what you think about yourself and what's possible for you, you've really established most of those by the time you're around seven or eight years old. And so those aren't even, I don't even think of those as being your beliefs.

That's just like you were in some sort of environment with your family of origin, whoever raised you, the major influences in your life, and those messages are what you took in as a child, really without … You just took them as the truth about you and about life and about what's possible. You didn't sit down as a seven year old, or a five year old, and go, “Hm. Do I really want to believe this or not? I have a choice here,” you just took it in. So if you were raised in a family where, particularly the women in the family struggled with their weight, said things about people in our family struggle with our weight, or you just kind of looked around, you just saw that everybody struggled with their weight. If you had a mother who spoke negatively about her body, who pointed out her self perceived physical flaws, many times, they'll be like, “Well, the women in our family, we just really struggle with the size of our thighs,” things like that. People just say things.

And as a child, you just take that in. You're like, “No, these are the limitations to that I have, my body has. This is the limit to what's possible for me.” And so we just think that's the truth. And what we're doing here when we're having faith that we can create something different is we're butting up against those old indoctrinated beliefs. And what we have to do is recognize what we actually believe about ourselves right now, so that we can change those beliefs. And you don't have to have evidence, just like you created the evidence to support the beliefs that you have about your body now. You're like, “Yeah. But if I look back, me and everyone else in my family, we all have trouble with our thighs.” I'm like, “Well, maybe that's because you believe you're going to have trouble with your thighs.” It's the chicken and the egg. Which one came first?

So in this case, what needs to come first is your faith that you can create something new, your faith that you're going to keep going until you figure this out. And there is no downside to having the faith because the faith can continue until you die. And when you die, who cares what size your body is? Right? It doesn't even matter. But there's no downside to having the faith if you refuse to make not having the goal achieved be a problem. Right? If you think, “Well, I have faith that I'm going to get it done by this timeline. And if I don't get it done by this timeline, then I've been stupid this whole time,” and you make it mean something negative about you, then of course, you're going to be reluctant to have that faith, especially if you don't believe that you can really create what it is that you want anyway.

So having faith means practicing on a very regular basis, I would suggest daily or almost daily if possible, literally thinking about what's possible for you, what you believe you're going to create, and then envision yourself having it. Practice being that person who has it. And that can be even just in the way that you're acting, like you treat yourself like somebody who really cares and loves about themselves. You can do that now. You can practice the way that you're going to think when you're there. You can practice feeling the way you're going to feel. You literally embody that person now. And by having faith that that's possible, and you practicing being that person, you actually then allow reality to catch up and you allow yourself to create that thing that you weren't even sure you could create in the first place.

So faith is so important, and what I really want to nail home for you today is that there's no downside to having faith, there really isn't. Faith is what carries you when all the evidence shows that it's not true, that you can't do it, that you're backsliding, that you've gained weight back. And you're like, “Shoot. What am I going to do now?” When you have faith, that's what carries you forward. When you don't have faith, you just settle for what you have right now or what you've created in the past, which is fine. You can totally do that, except if you want to create something new, it's going to be really hard to do it from that mindset. So look at the places where you're impatient.

If you are feeling that impatience when it comes to weight loss, you've got to slow your roll because if we're losing this for the last time, which is the whole point of all of this, we're going to lose the weight permanently, then we don't need to be in such a hurry because you only need to lose it permanently once. Okay? There's an issue in my attic office that we're trying to work on. And I told the contractor, I said, “Hey, listen. I only want to do this a second time once, so we've got to make sure that we're doing this right the second time.” So that's what we really need to work on. Why are we being impatient? We've got to slow ourselves down, understand where the patience is coming from, and work on the belief. If you're impatient, it's because you don't believe that what you're doing right now is enough.

I promise you, you are enough. It's enough. Let it come to you. You don't have to resist the timeline so strongly. And if you knew it was yours, it's like 100% guaranteed that you're going to have it at some point in the future, how would you act today? Would you be starting to do crazy diet mentality stuff? Or would you just chill out, stay the course, get the help that you need, and keep moving forward? So that's what I have for you today, a little bit of a tirade there for you, little hodgepodge of information for you on this podcast today.

I would love, like I said, to invite you to come to my free training call in just a couple of days, on Thursday, April 22nd. Oh, I didn't tell you what time it is. It's at 8:30 PM Eastern, 5:30 PM Pacific. And of course, we record it, so if you can't come at that time, then we'll send you the recording. The sign up link is katrinaubellmd.com/ready, R-E-A-D-Y. You're going to leave the call knowing exactly what it takes to be ready. What are the reasons that it makes sense to hold off on weight loss? What are the reasons that it doesn't make sense to hold off on weight loss? I'm telling you, when I lost my weight for the last time, the time of year that I started was in May. And I actually thought it was awesome because you know what was super cool, is I was finishing up losing all the weight right as the holidays came.

And that was like, “Okay. Now I've done all this work. Now the rubber really meets the road. Here we go.” So it ended up actually being really awesome. So I just want to invite you to come learn about what it takes to be ready to lose weight, and then to hear more about the Weight Loss For Doctors Only program, which is only getting better and better, let me tell you. And like I said, last time to get current pricing. Oh, I didn't mention we also have a payment plan option now that is really awesome, and tons of people are taking us up on that offer as well. So if that makes it more affordable for you, makes it more doable for you, then that is available as well. Awesome.

Okay. Well, I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for listening, for all of your time, effort, and energy that goes into being a part of this podcast. I appreciate you so much. And hopefully, I'll see many of you in a couple days on the free training call. All right, thanks so much, friends. I'll see you later. Bye-bye.

Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals? For lots of free help, go to katrinaubellmd.com and click on free resources.