Ep #250: Weight Loss Success Story: Dr. Josephine Braid, MD, FAFRM (RACP)

Katrina Ubell:      You are listening to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast with Katrina Ubell, MD, episode number 250.

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 today? I'm so glad you're here. And if you are new and we've never met before, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. If you're a more seasoned, long-time listener, first-time caller, then I'm so glad that you're back with me again. I got a message a little while ago, it's actually been a little while, I just pulled it up beforehand because every time I say, “Well, hello, my friend,” it reminds me of lovely Angie who sent me a message. I'll leave out some of the information that kind of specifies exactly who she is, because she did not tell me that I could share this publicly, but she said, “I stepped on the scale this morning and it said 201 pounds.”

She's a doctor in Canada, “A small victory for me. My mid BMI weight is 135 pounds. I've managed being overwhelmed with work and home and an unhappy marriage with overeating, over drinking and overspending, mainly in private, but not well kept secrets. When I hear you say, ‘Hello, my friend' at the start of your podcast, I feel like I really am your friend. I want to thank you for the possibilities you've encouraged me to see.” I mean, what? Angie, seriously, I am your friend, I really am here for you. That's so good, and she goes on and says some other really nice things. And I just want you to know that I really am thinking about each person individually, thinking about you, yes you, when I say, “Hello, my friend.” So glad you're here, I really am glad that you're here. And I just love that me showing up every week and having a little one sided conversation is so helpful.

And Angie, I just know that you're just killing it, girl. You are doing the work and that's amazing. And also, I just want everybody else to send a little, whatever you like to do, prayer, little message of strength, send good vibes, whatever it is that you like to do. Send them to Angie because I have a feeling that she could really use that extra boost of support and she'll be feeling all the listeners that we have, just sending some goodness over to Angie. All right. I have a treat for you. But before I get to that, I want to just let you know that this is kind of short notice if you're brand new, but in case you've been listening or if you're just hearing this the day that it comes out live, tomorrow, which is Wednesday, October 27th, I'm hosting a free live training called How to Lose Weight for the Last Time.

And I would love for you to join me. It is really the information that when I learned it after struggling with my weight for literally decades, made all the difference in me understanding what was actually going on and then what I needed to do to be able to lose weight and keep it off. And not only that, just to create freedom and peace around food, something that we'll talk about later in this episode. But just getting to that point where you can just coexist in the world with food and it doesn't feel like such a struggle. It doesn't feel like it's controlling you, it's just normal. It's just not really a thing. So it's tomorrow, Wednesday night, October 27th at 8:30 PM Eastern Time, 5:30 PM Pacific. To register for that, so you can come and join me live, just go to karinaubellmd.com/loseweight.

L-O-S-E-W-E-I-G-H-T. Again, katrinaubellmd.com/loseweight is how you can get the information to come and join me live. Live is always best, but as you'll see, not everybody can always come live because the person I'm interviewing today, the success story that we have today, is from one of our amazing, amazing doctor clients who lives in Australia. So I do understand that you may not be able to come live sometimes just geographically, right? It just doesn't work out. And if that's the case, go ahead and register anyway, because we will send you the replay and you're going to want to listen to that right away because there is a bonus. A very time sensitive bonus that I will be talking about at the end. I will tell you more about working with me at the end if you're interested, but if you're not and you just want the information about how to actually lose weight permanently, you should come anyway.

Okay? Don't let the fact that I'll tell you about an opportunity to work with me deter you from coming because this information's going to be so helpful anyway. And you might be interested in just hearing what I have to offer. So I would love for you to join me. And the way you can register is katrinaubellmd.com/loseweight, let's do it.

So my client success story today, weight loss success story is with Jo Braid, and we're just going to call her Dr. Jo Braid because the number of initials that she has after her name, I don't even really know how to say it all. And so she told me that they just go by Dr. Jo Braid, that's her name. She called herself a physiatrist, but she does rehabilitation medicine. So kind of depending on where you are in the world, that will make sense to you as to what she does.

I think she specifies in traumatic brain injury, she'll tell you all about that. And she is one of our lovely, lovely, lovely people who lives in Australia. So you may be thinking, “How is it possible for a doctor in Australia to take part in a weight loss program that's in the United States?” Well, it totally works. Did you know that we have coaches all around the world? We have a coach in Hawaii. We have a coach in Hong Kong. We have coaches in the UK. We have coaches all around. So we can basically offer one-on-one coaching 24/7 essentially. So, we really are able to offer some really great help. And in addition to that, everything that we offer is recorded. And as Jo will tell you, I only personally coached her one time in the 12 months that she was with us for six months in Weight Loss for Doctors Only, and then six months in the Master's Program that she continued on with.

So I think a lot of people think, “Well, I won't be able to get on those calls or I won't very often be able to.” It really honestly, doesn't matter. What I teach you to do is I teach you to listen so you can get all the coaching help you need, even when someone else is being coached. And then also, maybe on occasion, you want to get up super early or stay up late, so you can try to be on a call live and that's totally fine as well if that's something you want to do. And of course you get all that one-on-one private help. So I just want to let you know that, that if you are not in straight up US or Canada, that yes, we do offer a lot of availability for other parts of the world as well, which is so great.

But anyway, Jo is just a lovely, delightful person. You're just going to love hearing from her. She's originally from the UK and then moved quite some time ago to Australia and has lived there ever since. And I was thinking about it, I'm like, “I think the weather's probably a lot better in Australia.” That's my guess. It's just far away from things, right? There are trade-offs to everything.

So anyway, I know you're going to enjoy this conversation with Jo. She's just such a lovely person. And she even told me after we finished recording that she had just as one of the nice byproducts of being in the program, she started playing violin again and really enjoying that. And then she's part of this whole Australian group of women who play the violin, who all played… I'm not going to explain it well, but everyone's playing and they're singing and whatever, and it's one of those…

Because they're in lockdown, so it's like all… I want to say manufactured, I don't think that's the right word, all edited together so that it looks like everybody's together and it sounds like everybody's together. And I just think that's so great, so great. All the ways that we are able to support each other in these days of pandemic surges and some places are locked down, some places are open again and all of that.

So in any case, I will stop and let you listen to my interview with Dr. Jo Braid. Please enjoy, please come and join me tomorrow night on that free training. And otherwise, I will talk to you next week. Take care. Jo. I am so happy to have you on the podcast today. Welcome.

Josephine Braid: Thanks so much, Katrina. I'm delighted to be here today.

Katrina Ubell:      Yay. So fun. So I want to start off… I always just love hearing everybody's initial story. I would love to know just a little bit, but just tell everybody a little bit more about you, where you live and all that fun stuff.

Josephine Braid: Sure. So my name's Jo Braid. I live in Orange, in New South Wales, a little town in Australia and I am a mom of three gorgeous boys aged five, eight and nine, and a wife to an amazing husband. And I originally came from the UK where I did medical school at Nottingham. Then in 2003, I traveled over to Australia. My dad's Australian and I've lived here ever since and just had such a great time in life and in healthcare here as well.

Katrina Ubell:      Amazing. I'm just going to totally show you my ignorance. Is this a thing amongst people who are British or from the UK, going to Australia? Do people go kind of back and forth or is this unusual? Okay.

Josephine Braid: I would say it is quite a thing. I mean, there's lots of other Brits or Poms or whatever we call them over here, even locally in Orange, as well as certainly around Australia. And then yes, we'd also see Australian doctors when we were working in the system there too. So definitely a thing.

Katrina Ubell:      So, back and forth, because I feel like that's come up even as I've coached other doctors who live in England, they're like, “Oh, and then we're thinking about going to Australia, it's a thing we do, we just go to Australia.”

Josephine Braid: Yeah.

Katrina Ubell:      Okay.

Josephine Braid: It is, pretty normal.

Katrina Ubell:      Good to know. Good to know. Amazing. So I would love to know what your story is with food and weight when you started struggling and how that kind of presented itself in your life.

Josephine Braid: Sure. So I was always pretty skinny as a kid. I'm sure I was given the name Robin Legs in junior school. There was no real dramas at all. Until I went over to Japan in my gap year for six months, had a great time working in a care home there. Ate a lot of rice, came back home and my brother, who was 16 at the time, I was 19, said, “Whoa, what happened to you?” As we opened the front door. “What a welcome home. Thanks Al, love you too.” And I think I really had a sense of awareness then of, “Oh, okay.” And so then—

Katrina Ubell:      I mean, in your own recollection or when you see pictures, do you think you really had gained a lot of weight or… Oh okay.

Josephine Braid: Yeah, yeah. Really chubby cheeks. I looked quite inflamed, I guess is what I'd say now. But I looked like—quite full of extra stuff. Yeah. So I don't know how much I weighed before I went there, but then I was very aware and I sort of went through uni. So then I went into uni and I was quite obsessed by things then, I guess. Working as a junior doctor in Sydney, I definitely went through Weight Watchers and nailed that and did well. And when I stopped that, then it sort of came on and the long-term management was just not there for me. Fast forward to when I… We got married and I was my wedding weight, shall we say, then we quickly conceived our first born. And I had a lot of morning sickness.

And when I got back home on about day two or three, I was four kilos lighter. And I was like, “Oh my God, what happened? I just had a baby and lost weight.” That was a little bit strange because I just couldn't figure out how that had happened. But then I stayed really stable then pretty well with all my three boys. I didn't really go up and down, certainly not gaining per pregnancy. And then it's just been much more in the last two or three years, I went back up to my wedding weight, which is a funny way to think about it.

But I was actually sort of less for about, I would say the best part of seven years, less than my wedding weight by about five or six kilos. So it's never been a huge amount, but it's just got into me that I can't really maintain. I can do fasting, I can do a spray, I can try out these different things, but the long-term management just wasn't there. So I guess that's my story of sort of getting to how different your program has been and how I can see the maintenance is going to be there with your program.

Katrina Ubell:      Yeah. So for most people, when they talk about their wedding weight, they mean that as a low, as a goal, but for you, it was higher, just to clarify. So it was higher. I'm only laughing because I was just listening to a podcast a couple days ago where the host was saying that so many women try to lose weight for their weddings. It should be the other way around, you should get yourself as big as you can be so then when you see the pictures, the whole rest of your life, you're like, “Dang, I look good.”

Josephine Braid: That's great.

Katrina Ubell:      That's coming to mind. So anyway. So you found yourself kind of with the weight creeping back on, you've got the three boys, you're working and you didn't say what you do as a doctor.

Josephine Braid: Sure. In American terms, I'm a physiatrist and in Australian terms, I'm a rehabilitation medicine doctor and I specialize in traumatic brain injury.

Katrina Ubell:      Okay, great. Excellent. So, you're working, you're doing the kids and you're just noticing the weight creeping back up again. Did you have a moment where you're like, “Okay, I have to do something about this”?

Josephine Braid: I think part of me was going, “Maybe I'll just sit with this. Maybe this is going to be okay.” It was so all within my head, I was not getting any external feedback that there was an issue at all. It was just within me and I'm like, “Maybe this is just my norm and I just sit with this.” And then other days I would go, “But no, I feel so much better five kilos down. I know I do.” I was there in March, 2019, for an example, and I knew… Well, I had that feeling of “life will be better when I get there.” So I was sort of hanging onto that as well. And then what was the other part of your question or?

Katrina Ubell:      Oh, I was just saying, at what point did you know, “I need to make a change, I need to do something”?

Josephine Braid: Yeah. I think it was more I found your podcast and I was like, “Maybe this is the approach that I need to take.” I think I felt always something I needed to change, but I had no idea what that other tool in the toolbox was. I couldn't see anything different. It all looked like whatever style of protocol people had you on, that was that. But I never saw anything that really had thought work as the crux of it. So, I was just looking out and I found you and I found your podcast and I went right back to the beginning of your podcast. And I was like, “Oh my God, listen to this approach.”

Katrina Ubell:      So something resonated, obviously, you were like, “Yes. This might be something I need.” So then what made you take the leap to sign up for the program? I'm just curious.

Josephine Braid: Sure. It was a case of… And I'm sure other people have said this to you. It sounded like you were talking to me, I just could hear you on the podcast talking about… What was it in the beginning? Sort of sticking to a protocol or sticking to what you said you'll do and not reneging on what you've said you'll do. And I was like, “Oh, that sounds a bit like what I've done in the past, reneging on what I do.” And why does that happen?

There were just lots of sort of aha moments that I realized I could pick up some things from the podcast, but I really wanted to get into the program to see what the real pathway was. And without that sort of one-on-one group structure program that you've got set up there, I just felt like I wasn't going to apply it to myself so well. So it was a really easy decision. I found out about you in July, 2020, I could see your September group coming up. I literally had to think about it for two or three weeks, watch the webinar and jumped on board. There was not much waiting around here. I was like, “I'm doing this.”

Katrina Ubell:      Decision maker, but what I think what that really speaks to is how much it was clear to you. “This is what I need. This is the path, this is the way I want to take this.” I mean, I think I had very similar story in the sense that I was just like, “I'm not even sure what this is, but I'm pretty sure I need it. So yes, sign me up. Here's my credit card.” That's great.

So you got into the program and there are so many different things that you have learned and applied yourself. One of the things that you wrote was so novel for you was processing emotions. I would love to know what your background was on… I mean, my understanding, and again, I don't want to be making presumptions, but between the shows that I've watched and a brief visit to England, it's my impression that culturally, it is really valued to keep your emotions under lock and key. I mean, I think this is the case for a lot of cultures, but in the UK in particular, would you say that's correct?

Josephine Braid: Yeah. I think stiff upper lip, keeping it all held within you is a very normal way of the English way. And I know I've had some Aussies here who sort of said, “Oh my God, you're so English in that way sometimes.” But then, Katrina, I'd say, add on medical training and training as a doctor, from early on, you need to set up this emotional barrier, even though they never really said emotional or this cloak or this gown. And I felt that that was almost a led radiography kind of ground that was really… It was really hard for me to see those emotions come out. It was really hard to feel what was going on. And I knew that had been my norm for about 20 years, let alone the English part of my life, but sort of the medical part of my life.

I felt that I really hadn't expressed my emotions much at all. And through working with your wonderful coaches, I really have had many sessions where I've been able to embody my emotions, which are not always comfortable emotions, but I have that real sense of what they feel like in my body, how they move, what their color's like, what their temperature is like. It's so descriptive, it's all in there and once I was able to start processing emotion… Which has also been a bit later in the program for me, it's been in my second six months, not my first six months, then a depth of understanding of myself was sort of unpeeled. It was amazing.

Katrina Ubell:      Well, I think that that's actually a relatively common experience, right? Where “I'm only going to do the processing emotion part if I absolutely have to, let me do the other things first, let me see.” That's the last thing you leave for the end if you have to, and then you're like, “Oh wait, I have to do it.” What I found is that with it… Because similarly, I mean, I just did not have access to very much emotionally at all.

And what I found is that when you are able to process emotion, particularly with somebody else and you really understand, like you described so well, what it actually feels like, and you stop thinking you shouldn't be feeling that way, meaning you stop resisting the fact that you have that emotion, it becomes a lot less uncomfortable. Not to say that it's necessary really comfortable, but it's not as bad as you think it's going to be. You're like, “Yeah, I can do this. I can get through this,” which allows you to actually process it and move on rather than going back to, “Let me eat something,” or all the other ways that we try to avoid and distract.

Josephine Braid: Yeah. So true. Just getting comfortable with the uncomfortable and awareness of the uncomfortable rather than… Exactly, as you say, buffering with food or spending or alcohol or whatever.

Katrina Ubell:      Yeah. And I think too, it's like get comfortable with the uncomfortable, which everyone hates because everyone's like, “No, I don't want to do that.” But I think what it comes down to too is that the uncomfortable becomes familiar too. There's a familiarity to that, that's at least my experience where I'm like, “This doesn't feel good, but I know this emotion.” Just reminded me of when you have little babies and the baby cries and you got to get up and you don't want to do it. And everything, you're so tired, it hurts and you don't want to get up, but there's the familiarity of, “Well, I mean, I'm just going to go and do it. It's not going to get any better. So let me just get up feed this baby and change him and off we go.” It's just kind of that same thing where you're like, “Well, I mean, it's not my first choice, but I can do this. I can get through this,” knowing that it gives you the result you want later.

Josephine Braid: Yes, that's right, absolutely.

Katrina Ubell:      So you had an experience where you went back from Australia to the UK and were there with your mom and you had kind of a transformative experience there in terms of… Well, lots of things. So I'm going to let you talk about it, but could you share what happened?

Josephine Braid: Yeah, absolutely. So here we are in 2021, Australia has locked its borders. So you have to apply to the government to even get out of the country. So my first application was rejected.

Katrina Ubell:      And tell everybody why you wanted to go back to the UK.

Josephine Braid: Okay. So my mom was unwell in the UK, she was having cancer treatment. My father had passed last year and I couldn't get over for his last days or his funeral, so it was a very tender moment to be able to get over. My amazing husband said, “You sought out getting out of the country and we'll manage here.” Full-time medical practice for him. There were so many steps involved, but my second application, I worked out sort of what the words were—

Katrina Ubell:      How to figure out how to play the game.

Josephine Braid: Yeah. How to play the game. And I got the approval to go and I booked my ticket. I already had a travel agent lined up. I sort of booked my ticket within days. I was on a very empty plane over to London and my mom had been in hospital for most of April. She managed to get herself discharged home at 9:30 PM on a Sunday night of the day that I got into England, go figure. I don't know that I've ever discharged anybody on a Sunday night at 9:30 PM, but she could do it. So, we all woke up in the morning, my brother was there and mom was there and it was the most amazing moment. And so I had quarantined at her place, which was fine because I was only there to be with her and we had the most amazing four weeks together of totally loving on mom.

It was a really different part of our relationship than we've had earlier on. I've always felt like the child, but I think this time I felt like the adult daughter next to her and all I can say was it was like, “Mom, what can I make you? Mom, what are your favorite things that you want to have?” She'd had weight loss in her cancer treatment and she'd just not been particularly enthused about foods. There was a lot of love, there was a lot of baking. Bought a new freezer, filled that up. And there were lots of meals together, which was great, although I was still only having coffee and cream for breakfast, which was… I owned, I totally owned because historically, it always been a bowl of porridge or muesli or whatever.

And I just had morphed through that I stood in myself knowing what I was going to be having, but totally loving on her and not making her judgment on me wrong or whatever I felt might have been going on there. So I wouldn't say I dropped the ball, but I changed how much I watched the scale and my protocol and so forth. I'd pretty well dialed in my protocol, so I knew what that was and actually it was the easiest with mom because that was all the things I'd enjoyed from my childhood. And it sort of tied in well with just meat and veg or fish and veg and some fruit. And so we just had a gorgeous four weeks together. Then I got back on the plane. Fortunately, I got back on allocated plane because in the return flights into Australia have been very difficult.

Lots of people get bumped and have two months to wait before they actually get home. So I was so glad to get back into Sydney for two weeks hotel quarantine there, that's just the all, that's what you have to do. You get locked up in this room, you cannot step over the threshold for two weeks. There's army around, there's police around. It's super serious and plenty of COVID swabbing going on and so I'm sure you can imagine. And I did have my travel scale with me and I weighed in when I got in the hotel room and as I dropped four kilos, which is about nine pounds, I think, over those four weeks that I'd been with mom and I just couldn't even quite figure out how it had happened, but there had just… There had obviously been a big change up in the environment in the scene that I'd been in and there was time and there was love and there was love for mom.

And I think there was also a lot of kindness that came towards myself as well. And that continued through the hotel quarantine, which I actually ended up loving rather than feeling that I was stuck in this room for so long. It was amazing for so many different reasons. And I met up with my family and I achieved my goal weight as per what I'd set up in the program by June. So I was away late April through till 8th of June, I saw my family once again and over those six weeks, it all happened and it's all been maintained. I mean, there are little bumps in the journey, but this is like, wow.

Katrina Ubell:      Because I bet there's a lot of people listening who are like, “Hold on a second. What voodoo magic was that? That you went across the world and then you were with your ailing mother for a month together. And there was so much love, all this, and you're like, ‘And I got to go away while I was going through that process.'” How is that possible? So I would love to just first of all, just point out that the reason why I think you were able to approach your mom from that place is because of the work you'd already done on yourself and working through everything. You're not just going back from the old relationship that you had and then poof, magically it was different. You'd put effort into that to create a different experience for yourself.

Josephine Braid: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, I think one of my very common themes through those sort of nine months of coaching that I'd already had was about self-love, it was about self-worth. It was trying on that new belief about myself that was okay to believe. And it took a lot of practice and it took a lot of failing and there was still a lot of challenges that happened in those earlier nine months. And I do think it was that fail and try again, fail and try again that the try again came through with the goods in that time in England. So there was a lot of background work beforehand. I was continuing to coach in the UK, which actually opened up your calendar to different coaches, because of the time change, I was like, “This is awesome.” And then, back in hotel quarantine, the lovely M Wong in Hong Kong was on a more similar timeframe so we had some great coaching sessions together then.

Katrina Ubell:      Amazing, amazing. I just want to point out that what you did that, that was really the culmination of all this work that you had done. You know what I mean? And I love how you were like, “I wasn't so focused on… And on top of everything, I need to get this weight off.” You just kind of let it go. You know what I mean? You opened up the grip that we often have, we're clenching like, “I have to create this.” You can just open your hand and just live it. You don't have to be stepping on the scale necessarily every single day, right? You're feeding your body in a way… You were cooking for her, you filled a freezer of food, you were baking, you were doing all this stuff and you still lost weight because you can be around food and not gain weight and even lose weight when you have done this mind work and when you continue to do it.

Versus, “How am I going to control myself and the stress of everything? And I'm going to have to eat my way through this,” and you go home considerably heavier. You're such a great example of what's possible and you didn't even go in thinking, “This is what I'm going to create.” It just happened, it was just a result. So when everyone's like, “How do you get to that goal weight?” This is how, right? You really love on yourself.

Josephine Braid: It was one of the last things on my mind, I was not focusing on my goal weight at that point. I had so many other… I don't know that we can rank things in terms of importance, but I had so many things that I was drawn to in that moment. I knew it was an amazing four weeks with mom that, I don't know how wherever across the world going to create that happening as well. It was an absolute gift and that's what I was focused on, the time with mom there. And so it wasn't my weight that I was focused on there. But taking that pressure off myself exactly as you say that, “I'm going to come back into Australia and I'm going to weigh this weight,” that was not how I was approaching it at all.

Katrina Ubell:      But I also think it shows that you were not looking at it like, “I'm only going to do these things until I get to goal weight.” Because that's often what we do, right? I'm only, for me, counting points at Weight Watchers like I was only going to do that. I wasn't going to do that long-term. I never thought that I would do that long-term, but when you're thinking about it like, “This is the way that I nourish my body. This is the way that I treat myself, regardless of what my weight is,” your body can then settle into a normal weight for your body and then you can just easily continue with that, right? You maintain it because that is how you continue to treat yourself versus, “Now I got to figure out how I cannot be miserable following this diet plan that I'm not willing to follow.

Now what am going to do? Sure, I lost weight, but I'm not going to do this forever. What am I going to do instead?” And you mentioned you still have the coffee and cream for breakfast in the morning that you were still doing, fasting, but I was like, “You probably would've lost it even if you'd eaten breakfast.” There's nothing mad necessarily magical about that, I love to just think about it like it's possible all the ways to create that. When you're really listening to what your body needs, maybe your body's saying, “Yeah, you know what? I don't need anything in the morning.” Or sometimes maybe it does need it and you can still create the results that you want because you're not overeating.

Josephine Braid: Yeah, 100%. And I think I just want to let you know that when I… Definitely comparing before I went away and when I came back, so in the mornings… I'll totally own this, I would have a bit of a poor me mentality, making lunch boxes, cooking hot breakfast for my kids, trying to have a hot coffee if possible.

Katrina Ubell:      A lot of people can identify with that story.

Josephine Braid: And I'd be like, “Oh God, I'm not eating anything this morning. Kind of already want to have an omelet as well or something like that or scrambled eggs.” And that had all changed when I came back. So something about that thought work and I am more than happy to cook for my kids. I always was happy to cook for them, but I don't feel a sense of lack or a sense of missing out anymore in the morning. And exactly as you said, sometimes I do tap into my hunger and… No, I always tap into my hunger, but sometimes I do have a breakfast. It won't be often, but sometimes I do and it doesn't make a difference on the scale. So just listening—

Katrina Ubell:      I just think that we're so used to thinking so black and white about food and our bodies that we're like, “Well, if you like to fast through breakfast, that means you have to do it every single day for the rest of your life.” And I mean, you can, if you want to, and if that's what feels good to you, then absolutely, you're welcome to do that. But what I love then thinking about is, okay, we've prayed what we want, now we really… I mean, as you said, continue to develop this, but really moving into, “What is my body telling me?” Every now and then my body's like, “I would like to eat this morning.” The most loving thing to do would be to go, “Okay, I'm going to eat something then, and maybe I'll have a light lunch. Maybe I'll end up not even having lunch if I'm not hungry, who knows?”

But being open to letting the body express its signals and then following them, which is truly the natural way to eat. We all ate that way when we were born. And we just are trying to come back to that. So the plans and the protocols and all that can be very, very helpful, especially in the beginning. And then we're like, “Oh, but do I have to follow it forever?” Well, maybe, maybe you want to, maybe that works great for you. Or maybe you want to actually build in some flexibility to be able to do what your body's actually asking for. What's really in service to your body and yourself for the day, which I just think it's important to recognize, it doesn't have to be so black and white.

Josephine Braid: Yeah. No, definitely doesn't feel that way. I mean, the protocol's very similar that I write out every morning, it just seems to be very same, same, but it keeps me in my groove and it doesn't feel punishing. I've created it, nobody else has told me I have to eat this way. I've experimented with it.

Katrina Ubell:      It's like a gift you're giving yourself, and that leads me into another we talked about is decisions ahead of time. So like learning that concept of you decide in advance and then you don't have to think about it later. So that's really worked for you well then too.

Josephine Braid: Sure, absolutely. I mean, particularly for a food point of view, I guess, is what we're talking about here. But I write my protocol first thing in the morning, I now have this little routine and all my family say, “Oh, mom's in the mommy spot.” Which is my morning routine of my hot coffee, before 7:00 AM, because that's just when it can totally happen. And I do my protocol and I do my thought download. And I just do my mind work, first of all and I'm so ready for the day once I've done that, and I have consistently done that now since probably May, consistently, which is different to also how the early days of what the WLDO Program started for me.

Katrina Ubell:      And just for anybody who doesn't know, WLDO was Weight Loss for Doctors Only, just because sometimes we just always use that, but that's the abbreviation, and we lovingly call it WLDO. And what I love too is you weren't… Because I usually tell people, “Write it out the night before,” and you're like, “No, I'm going to do it in the morning.” And here again, you make it work for you. If you're going to be consistent in the morning, then do it in the morning. The most important thing is that you're doing it and then following it. I think particularly doctors, but in general, some of us, more type A, or just people like to control things, we just are like, “But I need to know the exact rules so I can figure out how to get the A.” Whether that works for us or not.

Kind of at our own expense or we sacrifice what works well for us, you don't want to do it at night, then don't do it at night, but make sure you do it. So when will you do it? I mean, you could plan for the whole week if you wanted and just get it over with once a week. I mean, you can do it however you want. It's just, are you listening to what works best, figuring it out, trying different things out until you figure out your own personal way? Because you're the one who has to live it, not me, and what works for you is not necessarily going to work best for me. And like you said, you chose it, you made the plan, not in a, “Well, you chose it,” kind of a way, but more in a ownership, taking responsibility, this is me taking great care of myself. This is just another example of that.

Josephine Braid: Absolutely. It's great.

Katrina Ubell:      I love that. That's amazing. So, so good and so good. Okay, great. All the things that we teach you, you're like, “These are all the things that have helped me.” List of vacations and working through all of those and how to deal with eating to feel better and all of that. So good. So, so good. So what I would love, kind of the final thing that I'd love to ask you about is what your… Think about somebody who is on the fence, maybe even one of your Australian colleagues, who's like, “I don't really know and should I really do this? And does it really work for someone who's in Australia and can you really get out of it what you need to get out of it?” What would you say to someone who's thinking that?

Josephine Braid: I would say, “Jump in, jump on board, give it your best shot. Don't put pressure on yourself to achieve your goal weight at a certain time. That's just sort of unnecessary, unhelpful…” For me, when I did try that out for a little bit, just kind of brought out the perfectionist mean girl in me, so that wasn't really helpful. And your coaches guided me through that. I would say, “This is a different way of doing weight loss and doing weight management for the long-term. It's just a different toolkit to anything else. And it works and it's kind, and it's loving, there's a lot of group hug or there's just sort of a lot of lovely—

Katrina Ubell:      It's positive and supportive.

Josephine Braid: Yeah. From within Weight Loss for Doctors groups. Certainly, I would say, “If you no longer want to be consumed by thoughts of what you have eaten or what you will eat, this can be a place where that will free you up from those thoughts that might recur for you a lot and be quite heavy and be quite weighing down.” I feel I've got a much clearer mind now, and that is translating around me in the house as well in sort of decluttering and less stuff around than there used to be. And that's taken time as well, but it's that external way that looking around that is also great. So I would say Katrina's got this, she is well practiced at this. You've been doing this for, I've got no idea how many years.

Katrina Ubell:      Five years, which is like a million years in the online world.

Josephine Braid: Yeah. And the new program is A1, I am going to be redoing your program because you've sort of revamped this, got some new concepts in there. It's so amazing that you let us keep looking at it or keep doing it even after we've finished. I would say jump in.

Katrina Ubell:      Amazing. So good, so good. Wait, one more thing that I wanted to talk about, I forgot, you kind of reminded me with something you said. So you were invited to be a member of the Royal… Is it Australasian, Australasian?

Josephine Braid: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katrina Ubell:      How do you say that?

Josephine Braid: That's the word, Australasian, you got it—

Katrina Ubell:      The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Member, Health and Wellbeing Committee. And this is what you wrote, you said, “A year ago. I would've felt too shy, no value to add, to reserved to join. Now I am so looking forward to being part of this committee and feel I have lots of value to add and good ideas to contribute.” That seriously, I was just like… See, this is what I'm talking about when I'm like, “It's not about the weight.” Right? It's like, “Yeah. Okay, great. You handled that and that's amazing, but think of the whole ripple effect, all these other changes, that's incredible.” What do you have to say about that? It's so good.

Josephine Braid: I saw this opportunity come up and I just didn't know, didn't really know much about it. I thought, “Well, I'll just put in an application and say all the exciting things that I'm looking forward to.” And it was about two months till we actually heard back. I only coached with you once in the whole Weight Loss for Doctor's program and the one time I did-

Katrina Ubell:      That's just a good example, right? You can be in another part of the world on the opposite side and still get so much out of the program.

Josephine Braid: It might've been 6:00 AM in the morning on our summer break and that was just when it had to happen. But I got on that call and I talked to you about sort of authority and my confidence in the presence of somebody else who seems to have a more authoritarian role in an organization. And you really helped me work through some of those blocks that I had there. So that was January, and now fast forward to July, I feel so much more comfortable in that work space. I think the English medical system is a hugely hierarchical medical system. It certainly was when I was a junior doctor in about 2002.

And that has stayed with me for a while. But now through the work also that I've done here, I feel a lot more value just to give what I am, who I am. And if people want to have an opinion about that, that's wonderful, that's their opinion. I don't need to be swayed by that. I can just give what I've got to give and if it's not wanted, well, that's fine, but I reckon it's pretty worthwhile and that's why I'm here. And that's why the first committee meeting, we might even talk about how we can zip that name together so it's not such a long committee name.

Katrina Ubell:      You need some sort of abbreviation. I don't know how to say that.

Josephine Braid: Don't we? I feel I've got a gift to give which in January, I would've really struggled if that opportunity had come up. Yet, actually, I think some of the same knowledge would've been in there in January, it was just the confidence in expressing that. So this is phenomenal.

Katrina Ubell:      It's you believing in you, it's your thoughts about yourself that have changed, that are now driving the action of you applying for this and doing this and believing that you have something to offer and that you deserve to be there just as much as anybody else. I just love that. I think because here's the thing, we all want things to change. We all want… Like you said, just with the hierarchical system and how to deal with all the hierarchy and the authority and all the different things that we're kind of taught when we're super down low on the totem pole like, “You're not allowed to think this way or act this way or whatever.” And just when do you get the permission to be you? You are not going to get that permission.

You have to give it to yourself and you have to recognize that there's value in who you are. The world needs you and now you're giving of yourself in that way and that's so exciting, I'm happy for you. Yay. So good, wonderful. And congratulations for being chosen, I think that's amazing.

Josephine Braid: Thank you. Thank you so much-

Katrina Ubell:      Well, Jo, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. And actually, we found a time that wasn't in the middle of the night for either of us. So, which is awesome. So happy for both of us.

Josephine Braid: Yes, absolutely, me too, Katrina.

Katrina Ubell:      So good.

Josephine Braid: Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been such a great ride. 12 months in Weight Loss for Doctors Only, amazing outcomes, far, far, far beyond weight loss only, there's been so much more. So, thank you so much for all that you do. You're a real gift to women doctors around the world and beyond.

Katrina Ubell:      Thank you so much. Thanks Jo.

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