if I had a miracle cure that would guarantee you and your family living to a ripe old age whilst feeding vigorous fit and fabulous, Would you be interested? Well I do, it's called healthy living. Hello and welcome to fit and fabulous with me. Dr Alina Carrick. Healthy living for families, made easy Hello and welcome to fit and fabulous with me. Dr Alina Carrick, I hope that you are feeling fabulous. I have a super exciting treat for you today. I have a lovely guest called dr lisa Olson who is a weight loss doctor and she's going to be giving her, giving us some of her wisdom in her expertise of how she has helped so many people lose weight, including her concept of waBI Sabi weight loss. So I was really lovely chat and really interesting to talk to her now before we dive in and chat about chat to lisa, a few things that I would like to say number one if you're not in the facebook group, come and join the facebook group where we just continue the chat a little bit.

It's a really good place to be able to connect for me to actually get to know you, which is fabulous and secondly my healthy, you healthy family group program is amazing. I have now finished the scholarship phase one and I am on scholarship phase two, so I am looking for 10 more people who would like to come and join the group. So let me just read a little message that I had from one of the ladies in the group, she said things are going well for me at the moment. I've made tremendous improvements, Not only in what I eat, but in my whole life. I really do feel amazing and I'm having fun whilst I'm doing it. I'm so grateful to you and your simple, doable and enjoyable course. So if you're interested in finding out more scholarship, phase two, so not free, but at a reduced price, the price is going to go up in november after my healthy, you healthy family challenge. So that will be starting november the eighth.

That's going to be super exciting. A free challenge. So I'm getting ready to do that. It's lots of work, but I totally love it. So, put that in your calendar and I will tell you when you can sign up for that. And then after that the price will be going up again. So if you're interested and think, okay, I really want to make healthiest me easy and fun and I would like some support then get in contact. You can either, if you're my email list, you can reply um to one of my emails or you can email me at Alina at dr Alina dot com. So that's O R L E N A at dr D our Alina dot com. Okay, let's start chatting to lisa. Hello and welcome lisa Olson. I'm super excited to have you here. I'm super excited to be talking about weight loss and making it easy and fun. So thank you first of all for being here. Oh, thank you. Super excited to would you like to start by just having people a little bit of your background and your expertise. Sure.

Thanks. Okay, great. Well, as you said, I'm dr lisa Olson and I am a weight loss physician. And I think my journey to where I am right now started at a very young age as a teenager being immersed in that toxic diet culture that so many of us, uh particularly women are exposed to when we're young with a lot of restricting and dieting and um, you know, you and I are aligned in knowing that's a lot of nonsense and that's not really the path toward a happy, successful weight loss journey. So I really rejected that. And it has, it has been an experience, it's been a journey for me to find my path to what I think really healthy transformative lifestyle changes need to be in order to manage, wait for the long haul.

And so um yeah, so I've made so many positive changes in my own life along the way besides getting board certified as a very attrition or weight loss specialists. I also got certified as a life coach because what I have come to learn and understand is that the biggest part of my job helping people with their weight. It's all about managing our minds, our thoughts, our feelings, our stress, getting enough sleep. I don't think it's any big news flash to tell someone that an apple is healthier than a slice of apple pie. And so you know I was always searching for what what is the thing I need to to do to help people take it to the next level, a more transformative change. And so that for me has been figuring out all the mind, body connection, that's the bit I absolutely love and I totally agree with you I think Well I don't know if you've listened but I talk about four pillars and Pillar # four is my emotional wellness Pillar which includes stress and I think without what I want To hear your other pillars because I also say four pillars, I wonder if ours are the same.

Okay, so my four pillars are pitcher number one is loving healthy eating. Now I can go down a rabbit hole with healthy eating but essentially it's plant based, it's vegetables and all about the vegetables, sort of mediterranean style diet, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, olive oil, a bit of healthy protein but it's about loving healthy food and it being easy and fun, pitcher number two is exercise that lights you up because that's where you feel fit and fabulous and get your energy from pillar number three is what I call delicious healthy sleep so that you wake up feeling refreshed and full of energy every day. And then pillow phone number four is the emotional aspect and you know as you're saying, it's like the foundation, if you don't have that emotional aspect, any of those changes that you make in the top three pillars, they just fall apart. They're just not sustainable because you don't have that concrete reason for doing things. So tell us what are your for? Yes.

Okay, my four pillars are about the same but they don't have such delicious adjectives associated with them. So I always say nutrition and I use um almost the exact same approach, but I use the term plant forward um and that's really like all the same things you're talking about um the lagoons, the nuts, the seeds, the olive oil, the vegetables, all of that. Um and it just sprinkles in a little flexitarian ism in there because sometimes people start working with me with a nutrition approach that involves a lot of Mcdonald's or chick fil a and there's a long road from eating that to a plant based way of eating. And so I just like to think plant forward, that's kind of like that's where our journey is headed. We may or may not land in plant based, but we're going in that direction with all the same things that you just mentioned.

My second one. I shy away from the word exercise I'm really interested in, I think this is probably cultural, but I um I just call it movement because movement to but as you know, sometimes exercise freaks people out if that's not already part of their life or if they've been intimidated by it. So I always like to say like movement can be, you know, depending on where you are, you might just like pull your shades, turn down the lights, crank up the music and just kind of move around your kitchen, you know, no one has to know, no one has to see it. Um it could just start with something like that or brisk walking and certainly, you know, you can go from there. Number three is definitely sleep for me. Also, a number four is just the stress management, the emotional piece managing your mind. We kind loving, I can't believe it, which is so funny because I've heard other people who have pillars for whom the pillars are like drink all your water manager hunger.

Like there are a lot of other things but yours and mine are quite similar. Oh I have to say, I love the odds are similar and I think for me, I just wanted to keep it simple, I can see it's so easy to get tied up in. Oh, is this one particular kind of food? Something that is going to promote weight loss when people say there's a food promote weight loss and like how does that work? Right, that magic food pomegranates are gonna make me lose weight or whatever it is. Yeah, exactly, but it's about keeping it simple, I think in in my mind and not looking at the broad picture and not worrying too much about those tiny details of, you know, how much turmeric should we have, or should we have cinnamon in our diet and all of these kind of things, There's a time in a place for those things, but in big terms, particularly when we're talking about sustainability and keeping going, it's the big picture and I love your approach to forward. What did you say, vegetable forward?

Forward, Forward? I love that, I love that and I totally get that as well. So I love that. So in your work of all the years, what do you think, what do you see the most frequently as the thing that trips people up? Oh, it's all about the self talk. When progress isn't as fast as people expect. In my experience, people might be showing up for themselves making some healthy changes. Sometimes they're expecting too much from exercise in terms of weight loss and so sometimes that can burn people out. But I really think sometimes when people show up for themselves and they start making changes, they are making such big changes and expecting big drops on the scale and when it's not quite that dramatic, it's not like a social media post, I dropped £100 in four months, you know, then they feel like, well why am I even trying then it's not working, That's the phrase, that's the phrase that trips people up, it's not working.

I like to say, are you sure? Because I think it is working if the scale will touch up when people make the right changes and they just keep showing up. So like with your plant based eating, you know if people just keep eating their vegetables, keep eating their nuts and their seeds and there you know they're berries and they're writing their bikes, you can't tell me that's not going to eventually make a difference. But I think we get frustrated when the progress is too slow. Do you think or lena do you find that to be like a social media thing? That I think? I think so as well. And I think one thing that I see is people have this constant idea that you have to be constantly making progress and my response is you don't have to be constantly making progress, what you have to be doing is constantly moving forward and not slipping backwards. And that in itself is progress that people may have a bad day or particularly, you know, difficult week or whatever it is and then they aren't doing life perfectly.

And I always think you actually get far more benefit by not slipping backwards then you do by protecting the perfect the perfect never exists, but we're always striving for this perfect time, this perfect day, this perfect life when I do everything perfectly, but actually if you can just minimize the amount of I'm going to use square scare quotes, damage that you do when things aren't going right, you actually made so much progress, but you don't see it and you don't acknowledge it, you just beat yourself up about it and go, I'm not perfect. And I think that that's why it all boils down to this mindset, it's just keep going right. You know, you just made me think of something that I've recently started doing. I mean, I think it, I did it anyway, but I started being formal about it and that is for all the people that I coach, I keep a running list of their non scale victories. So it used to be able to just talk about it like, oh, you know, you had this event and you didn't go to the food carnival, like that's great.

That's a victory. You know, you didn't lose weight, but that's not what it's all about. Like you maintain some control, but now I'm starting to like really tease it out and write down like, okay, why did you have success? You're getting really good at making plans, You're getting really good at listening to your own positive self coaching. Like I'm going to choose to, you know, double my vegetables in this dinner. So maybe I'll need a little less of the desert or something because I'm really excited about the health benefits because I want to live healthy to 100 I'm choosing this because I feel great when I eat this way. I'm choosing not to over drink at a party because that it feels better to me to be eating and drinking in a healthy way. And so capturing some of those in an ongoing list of non scale victories. I went to this party and I only had one glass of wine.

I went to this party and I didn't eat all the fried appetizers or um, you know, I went to this party and a tiny healthy dinner before I went so that I didn't overdo it with desserts and cocktails at the party or whatever it is, like just finding these little tiny victories and capturing them. So that over time when we reach a moment where we kind of hit a wall, we can be like, well, hey, let's look at all of the progress that has been made. That's not just on the scale. Like you can go hiking with your friends, you didn't get too tired, you're writing your bike on your errands, you're feeling great, You're all of these wonderful, you can fit in your jeans that you did, you weren't able to wear last year. I'd like to just capture all the positive and I think you are really positive in your approach to. And I think one of the really important things that I see as well is that people start making changes and then it becomes the new normal and they totally forget that they've had those changes.

So documenting it is a really good idea because otherwise you start getting despondent again and going, oh I haven't done anything. And then when you look back and you really think about it, you're like no I have, I have made all of these changes and it's moving me forwards. That's right. 100%. The other thing I do which is maybe related to our stress pillar or emotional pillar is sometimes people are so hard on themselves, they have such a hard time supporting themselves complimenting themselves. I have people keep like a little compliment folder on their computer or in their journal or on note cards and that can be any kind of complement. Not just compliments about the body, but like someone says you're such a great teacher, you made a difference for my child or you know you're really good friend or you look beautiful in that blue shirt or you know whatever it is, just when someone gives you a compliment, write those down except you catch accept it.

And then when you catch yourself being hard on yourself critical of yourself, pull those out like yourself. Well I think it's true and I think it's a we have to learn to accept compliments. Were so trained to brush off compliments and go, oh no it was nothing or no, no actually I may have done it one well right once, but actually mostly I don't do it right, but actually it's a real skill to say, well, thank you, thank you for the compliment and really except that complement and allow that complement in so great. I think that speaks to worthiness right? I don't know if you see this to like sometimes people don't necessarily feel worthy of having a fit, healthy body of wearing clothes that make them feel beautiful. They have beat themselves up or beat themselves down so much over the years. They don't feel their own worthiness and maybe part of accepting compliments like you said, I like that is recognizing that you are worthy of love your own as well as other people's.

No, absolutely. I think it's one of the core problems that we have and I suspect and I don't have any proof of this, but I suspect that most people have issues with self worth or one level or not either. They kind of think, oh, I haven't made it big, therefore I'm not worthy or they've made it big and then they feel like fraud and think I'm not worthy of making it big either way. I think this self worth is a big issue for an awful, awful lot of people but that most people don't talk about it. And so you think that you're the only person who is struggling internally, but I think it's a very, very common scene, particularly in terms of creating your healthy life. Yes, I think so too. And it kind of speaks to something I heard you mention on one of your other podcasts that I like to say as well, like do be level work? Not all, like, you don't always have to, but like that's great to give an example in my own life.

My husband and I very often wake up really early and take a walk and this morning, I don't know what happened. The alarm went off at 5 45 snooze, snooze snooze and it was 6 20 and I said, Hey, you want to just go like walk 10 minutes that way in 10 minutes back. We can't walk all the way to the lake and back. But you know, 20 minutes. And um, and he said, my God, it's not worth it. And I was like, what? I'm gonna do some B minus work here, like lovey out the door with my speakers. So I think, yeah, but that's better than, that's 20 minutes is better Than 10 minutes, which is better than five minutes, which is better than zero. And I think we're also trained to think, Oh, you know, normally I do an hour or whatever. I haven't done that. It's not good enough. Whereas actually we don't look at it in that positive light of hate, but I did, I did do 20 minutes and that's fabulous. Did you enjoy your walk?

It was amazing. It was great. I listened to a podcast And so, uh yeah, it was a lovely little start to my day and then I came back, got the kids ready for school, got to work. It really set the tone for me. I'm so glad. I didn't miss that. Really glad. So here's a question out of all your years of experience, what are some of the big lessons that you would like to impart to us as people who are striving to lead healthy lives, perhaps losing weight weight? Well, okay, so I have this concept, I'm gonna say it really quickly for you because I know we're in concluding mode here, but I came up with this concept that I use a lot in my work that I call wabi Sabi weight loss. So wabi sabi is a concept used a lot in the art world and also to talk about the natural world. It's a japanese term and it speaks to the value and the beauty in what's natural, what's changing, what's imperfect.

So in the art world you might picture like a beautiful ceramic bowl and ancient artifact, but that has a crack in it and how and maybe some artisan has filled in that crack. And now this full has almost greater value than had it been perfect or you can think about like with our Children, maybe they had like a little lovey of blanket or a stuffed animal that's gotten old and tattered and kind of falling apart and dirty. But that is the most treasured item that they have in their bedroom when I and those are, that's wabi Sabi wabi Sabi is, you know, the natural process of changing and evolving and not being perfect and sometimes things break or some things go awry or sometimes we get off protocols, sometimes we lose weight and then we have excess skin.

Sometimes we mean to walk for an hour briskly and we only walk for 10 minutes slowly and so it's this. So when I think of wabi Sabi weight loss, I think about the fact that the journey is always evolving. There's not a finish line. We don't have to be perfect along the way. We can find the little treasures along the way that add value. Like your podcast is a new treasure in my life. I'm going to enjoy listening. Yeah, for sure. Like that's not been part of my weight loss journey from the get go, but now you're going to be a part of my journey to being healthy to 100 which is what I want to have. And so I like this wabi Sabi idea. I hope all of your listeners think, you know, I want to have fun along the journey. There's not a finish line, there's not an end point, I'm gonna go down different paths. I'm going to find different people to accompany me on the way, I'm gonna be plant forward or plant based, but if I accidentally eat a hot dog, the world has not ended.

I love that concept and thank you for sharing it with us because it's a new concept and it just reminds me when you talk about Children and their loved ones and I have to tell you this story that my daughter who is now nearly nine. But when she was little she used to suck her thumb and she had this really gorgeous little mouse, she sucked it, she sucked her firm all the time and she had this mouse all the time. We used to call it a coup mouse because you know when Children suck things they get a little bit discouraging it kind of disintegrated and it just you know I would wash it occasionally but it just got more and more disintegrated. I even wrote to the company and they kindly they didn't sell this particular one anymore. They sent me another one which was bigger but it wasn't perfect, it wasn't her thing. But in the end it turned into something that looks like an extra from the mummy because it was so eventually she lost it in a shop and on that day she stopped sucking her thumb. It's really strange. But there you go.

See that journey is Yeah, there's the beauty in her journey. I love it. She had a wabi Sabi thumb sucking journey. Thank you so much for being on our podcast and sharing your amazing will be Selby weight loss, which I totally love. Thank you. Where can people find more about you? Thanks for asking. Okay, so I have my website is old Son medical dot com But starting this month I will be launching. I have the RL and the website will appear sometime in the next few weeks. Smart weight loss coaching dot com. So yeah, I'm trying to tone down the medicalization of health and wellness and wait, you know because it's all up here. I totally agree. I totally agree. Well congratulations on your new website and thank you once again being on. Thank you so much. Great. Thanks so thank you so much lisa for chatting to us and make sure you go and check out lisa's website.

Now remember come and join the facebook and if you are interested in joining DR Alina's healthy you healthy family group program with scholarship phase two then send me an email and we will book a time to chat. Send me an email at Alina at Dr Alina dot com and I will see you next week. Have fabulous week. Bye bye.