Before we get started with today's episode,
I would like to quickly read you our podcast
disclaimer.
This podcast is for educational
purposes only, and it is
not to substitute for professional
care by a doctor or other qualified
medical professional.
You should always speak with your physician
or other healthcare professionals before
doing any fasting, changing
your diet in any way, taking or
adjusting any medications or supplements,
or adopting any treatment plan
for a health problem.
The use of any other products or
services purchased by you as a result
of this podcast does not create
a healthcare provider-patient
relationship between you and
any of the experts affiliated
with this podcast.
Any information and statements
regarding dietary supplements have
not been evaluated by the Food and
Drug Administration and are not intended
to diagnose, treat, cure, or
prevent any disease.
All right. And now we'll get started with
today's episode.
Hello and welcome back to another episode
of the Fasting Method podcast.
This is Dr. Terri Lance, Coach
Terri, and I'm going to do a
solo episode today.
Hopefully, it's something that will
kind of resonate with some of you who might
be struggling in your journey at this
point. Now, it might be that you are early
on in your journey, or you might be later
on in your journey and just really
struggling to keep going.
What I want to talk about today is
hope.
Now, why would I talk about hope
when we're talking about fasting and
eating in a way that helps us
to change our body weight,
or change our physical health, or
our biomarkers?
What does hope have to do with this?
Well, the other day we were in a coaching
team meeting and Coach Larry shared
an example of some research
done long ago about hope.
The details of this study are a little
gruesome, so I won't actually share the
study, but it really reminded me
that that is so important for all of
us, that if we are not
holding on to some type of hope,
we are going to easily become discouraged,
we're going to become overwhelmed,
and we're not going to keep going.
We're going to just kind of drop out
of our goal seeking
and kind of fall back into all
of our old patterns and,
therefore, all of our old same results.
Then Coach Lisa brought up an
article about hope molecules.
Now why in the heck are we talking about
hope and molecules in our
body? The fascinating thing about
this is there's been a lot of research,
and some of you might be familiar with a
psychologist named Kelly McGonigal.
She has written about this and talked about
it, other science journals have
posted things about this.
And really what they're identifying,
or what they have been identifying,
is that when we exercise--
and, no, this whole episode will not be about
exercise, I promise.
When we exercise, when we contract
our muscles, a protein
is released.
And the cool thing about this protein
(they're called myokines) is that they cross
the blood-brain barrier.
And once there, these proteins
get the brain into this
positive state.
This is why sometimes people talk about
a 'runner's high' or feeling
good after they dance, or
do anything that involves
contracting your muscles, because
these proteins are released to the brain
and, there, they get us
going with more joy,
more pleasure, more satisfaction,
and, ultimately, more
hope. So they are hope molecules.
I use this example just to kind of highlight
how important hope is in our
overall well-being.
It also affects our physical health.
There have been studies that have researched
how people think and their
hopefulness, how much hope they
have.
What they have found is that people who
have more hope have
fewer chronic illnesses,
it affects how your body functions.
And people who have more--
spend more time in a state of hopelessness,
actually have more illness,
more chronic health concerns.
And so, again, this is a
podcast about fasting and about
eating well and changing all of those
habits, but I think if we never
talk about this underlying piece, we're
really missing out on something that's really
important.
So why is it that
some of us might struggle with hope?
Some of you might be familiar with some other
places where I've talked about mindset
and I've talked about growth mindset versus
a fixed mindset, but why
is it that some of us are kind of
in one camp and others of us might be in
another camp?
One thing I encourage you to think about is,
early on in life, were you taught
to have dreams?
Were you encouraged to pursue your dreams?
Were you surrounded by
people who are optimistic and saw the good
in things?
And when it comes to hope,
were you ever taught,
or did you kind of figure out on your own
(based on some things going on on in your
world) that the best
thing you could do is not get
your hopes up?
This is a really common phrase,
and we offer it to each other and
we offer it to ourselves - "Well,
don't get your hopes up."
Now, all these years later, we've created
a pattern of blocking ourselves
from hope.
And some of you might be listening
to this and wondering, "Well, is hope
just something that we have or
don't have?" kind of like that growth
mindset or fixed mindset.
No, we're not born with
hope or without hope.
We're not born hopeless
or filled with hope.
Hope is a mindset,
a way of thinking.
And then that results in a way of feeling
that can be learned, it can be taught,
but many of us were not taught this
and haven't learned it.
So, if you are struggling right now,
I encourage you to kind
of pause and reflect and see
what might be getting in the way?
Not just behaviorally, like, "Well,
I get home from work at this time and I need
to eat at this time, and so fasting doesn't
work." Not just those behavioral barriers
that you're identifying, but do
you have some ways of thinking
that are serving as barriers?
Are you telling yourself, "Well, don't
get your hopes up about reversing this
diabetes.
I mean, I hear all these other people are
doing it, but, you know, I just don't think
that's available from me." That's the
fixed mindset.
You've learned to not
allow yourself to have hope.
Now, hope is a noun and
hope is also a verb.
So we can hope for
something.
We can believe in its possibility
and want to see its fulfillment.
And hope is also a noun.
It, again, is that state of mind.
It's a state of kind of
cognitive and affect
experiences that tell
us something is possible and
that we can move toward it.
Now, sometimes, in English
at least, and I assume in other languages,
there are words that we use
kind of interchangeably.
And you might use hope and optimism
and dreaming and wishing
all kind of interchangeably. And
the people who research these things and work
on kind of developing the concept
and understanding the concept really
try to help us separate them out a little
bit. So some of us might think
hope is like having a wish.
"If I wish for it, it will come."
Now notice, in that statement,
'wishing' is kind of like I'm
just sitting here imagining
something and just hoping that it drops
in my lap, it just descends
upon me somehow.
Maybe I should wish to win the
lottery, because there's not a lot I can
do besides buying a ticket to make
that happen.
So wishing is kind of
appropriate when you're talking about, "Geez,
I wish I could win the lottery."
But when it comes to changing
our life, developing
ourselves, changing our health,
changing our body and our
metabolism, that takes more than
a wish.
When I was a kid, I did celebrate Christmas,
and I remember we used to get the Sears
Roebuck-- I don't even remember if I'm saying
that right. The Sears, Roebuck & Co catalog.
And I would look through every
page and I would turn down the corner
of all of the things I was
wishing that Santa would
bring. And, again, nothing I needed
to do, just sit there and wait until
December 25th and just
imagine walking down and
looking under the Christmas tree and all of
those things I had wished for were there.
If that's how you are approaching your health
journey or your weight-loss
journey, I'm sorry to say that that's
not enough.
We need to develop hope.
And hope actually has some other
parts to it.
If you look at what
one person created as
the hope theory, and a lot of people
use this and research this, but,
in the hope theory,
the first part is goal setting,
having a goal.
You have to kind of know what it is that you
want. What is the desire?
What is this thing that you want to move
toward?
And then, besides having
a goal, the next part of this
theory is super important, and
this is really where all of the
details of what we teach you through this
podcast, and what we share with
everyone over in the TFM Community,
is pathways.
We
need to have some thoughts about
what are the steps I can take
to move toward that thing I'm hoping
to create, that I have hope
about.
So, again, hope and hoping -
they're not just passive concepts.
They actually involve us doing
something, engaging in something
in a way. So this part is really
important - creating pathways.
And it might mean really
creating some options.
And research shows that people
who have more than one pathway
actually do better in reaching their
goals.
They have more hope.
So have multiple pathways.
Another part of the hope theory
is agency.
And this is where I think most
of us struggle, or some of us
if you've ever noticed that you struggle with
this concept of hope.
Agency is the belief in
ourselves and our ability
to get to this goal.
So if I say, "I would like to lose 100
pounds," "I wish I could lose 100
pounds," and I sit back and do nothing,
obviously, I'm never going to reach that
goal. But if I say, "What
I really want is to lose
weight and fit into the clothes
that I imagine wearing." So
I'm creating this positive belief
in what I want.
I'm setting a goal.
I'm creating goal thinking.
And then I think about, "How
will I do that?" "Well,
I'm going to work on developing these skills
that these people keep telling me about.
I'm going to work on developing
time-restricted eating.
I'm going to stop snacking
and grazing. I'm going to focus on eating
good meals when it's time for me to
eat.
And then I'm going to work on spacing
out when I eat, skipping
meals on some days, skipping
a whole day or two days
of eating." So this is
the pathway building.
Another pathway that we talk a lot about
here, and I certainly encourage all of my
clients to focus on this as well
as the fasting piece, is
one pathway I'm going to take to reach this
goal is eating the foods that
support my body, and not
eating the foods that don't support my body.
So that's another pathway.
Now I've got some options.
So if you are someone who
kind of uses the mindset that
having hope is dangerous,
you're only going to get disappointed, your
best strategy is to not get your hopes
up, those kinds of things, I really
encourage you to start working on this
concept that hope can be built
and taught.
Like I said, it doesn't just land in your
lap. And so it's not like
having hope is dangerous.
Remember early on I told you about of the
health benefits?
There are psychological wellness
benefits from having hope.
And I get it, none of us want
to have our hopes dashed.
We don't want to have the rug pulled
out from under us.
But the reality is, if we go into
a complicated change
process without hope,
the odds are really against us.
We are unlikely to do things
that challenge us.
We are unlikely to persevere
when we are not using a basis
of hope to guide us.
So remember, the hope theory is
having the goal, having the pathways,
and then having the agency, the
sense that I can do this, I
can navigate these pathways.
I'm not going to be perfect, but I certainly
can navigate these pathways.
And if these pathways don't work exactly as
I've laid them out, I can create more
pathways.
I'm going to keep moving toward my goal.
We can teach ourselves to do
that. We can learn how to
have hope.
It's a thought process.
Like I said, it's not like a DNA
thing that we were born with
hope, DNA, or hope thoughts.
We build them, and some of us
have not yet really learned to
build them or trust ourselves
to build them and have them.
So some people, when they talk about this
concept of having hope and building
hope, they talk about the first
step being allowing
yourself to have hope.
It might seem weird to you, but giving
yourself permission because you've been
working under this premise that you should
not.
Now you need to be able to tell yourself it's
okay.
It's good for me to have hope.
The only chance I have
of reaching my goals
is to use hope in that process.
So it's not like it's the barrier
that's going to ruin everything for me.
It actually is-- it's like the water
in the river that's going to carry me.
It has to be here
or I can't go tubing down the river if
there's no water.
I can't change my life,
I can't change my body if
I'm not on that flow of hope.
So I want to tie this
back and emphasize that.
And you might hear in my voice that I'm
getting kind of adamant about this.
All the research shows that when
people are in a state of hopelessness,
they can't generate new pathways.
They have a hard time creating
new thoughts and new approaches,
so they get more stuck.
And when we get more stuck, we get more
hopeless, we're more discouraged.
I, certainly, have been in those places, and
not just around this health journey but in
other areas of my life.
So really working on
that hope building,
giving yourself permission,
imagining what's possible,
dreaming, envisioning,
creating a dream board.
Remember when everyone created dream boards
for a while? It's really helpful
because it helps you see
that you can get there.
It helps make it possible
for you.
And, again, if what's getting in
our way is an underlying belief
that this isn't possible for
me, that will hold me back.
And when my brain has to make a choice
between two behaviors-- let's
just think about this for a second.
Is it going to go for the one
that seems challenging
without any
real sense of it will pay off?
Heck, no! My brain is smarter than that.
It's going to say, "Let's go back to that
tried and true one." Even though
that tried and true effort
gets us in a bad place every time
eventually, it works in the moment so let's
go back to that.
But what we're all doing here is we're
working on changing our
approach, changing our relationship
with food, changing the frequency with
which we eat, changing the choices.
Those take
effort from our brain.
And if we want our brain to
exert that effort and give us
that work
effort, we have to
offer it hope.
There's a reason I'm doing this because
I see where it can take me.
I have hope that, in doing
this, it will take me to that next
place.
And I have talked with so many clients
recently that have all
of the knowledge, but they don't
really have the hope, because
they've had some past messaging that this
isn't available to them, that this won't work
for them.
Let's face it, when it comes to weight
and health, we've all been taught, "You're
just genetically set up this way," "There's
no hope," "It doesn't matter what you do,
you're just kind of doomed to live out
this same pattern." That is
hogwash.
We are not destined for those things.
So, if we can work on
seeing possibility for ourselves,
this is where optimism comes in.
Seeing that there is the possibility
of something positive -
that is really important.
But, again, just seeing it won't get
us there.
Again, hope is a more active
engagement with that optimistic,
positive thinking.
It's coming up with the goals,
it's creating the pathways,
and it's having that belief
in our own agency.
Doing this whole process, and
one of the reasons we have a TFM
Community is because another
way to build hope
is to get to talk
to others, get to hear from
others who have hope.
When you are most discouraged,
you kind of need to be around someone who
says, "You know what? This actually works and
it's going to be okay." It also
helps to understand
or to be exposed to other
people succeeding in it.
That's inspiration to know,
"Huh! If they could do it, I can
do it." That adds to our sense of agency.
But if you, in
the background, are thinking, "Yeah, that's
great that so-and-so did that, but I know
that doesn't work for me," that's actually
dashing hope, that's ruling out,
that's telling yourself, "Don't have hope."
So my encouragement to everyone who
might be struggling (either right now
or you might revisit
this later) is to really
dig into not just the fasting
behaviors and the food choices (obviously,
you all know I think those are really
important), but to dig down into
are you using this
hope process in
your journey?
Are you allowing yourself to have hope?
Are you creating goals,
meaning a vision of where you're going?
It doesn't have to be a five-point goal or
something, but you have a goal or
have goals.
You have pathways that you create,
and your pathways change as they need to.
And part of the advocacy part, the
third part of that theory, again, is
believing I will handle
the obstacles that come up.
My chosen pathways aren't necessarily
going to go swimmingly perfect
all of the time, but I
have the faith that
I can adapt.
I can create more pathways.
I can add more resources.
I can gain more momentum.
That's part of that advocacy.
So, again, if you're struggling, dig into
this. Do some thinking about
am I using hope in this journey or
am I trying to wing it without
this necessary component?
And remember, many of you may
be experiencing this, or you may hear others
who talk about it.
When you use hope in this
process, when you get really good at
developing your hope in this journey,
it's going to affect your hope
in other areas of life.
It's going to affect your creativity,
your joy experiences,
all of these positive things because
it naturally just kind of generates
in us. Hope builds
more hope.
Hope opens up more room
for positive emotions.
People who have more hope tend
to have less occurrence of depression
and anxiety because those
are wrapped up in the other ways
of thinking and the other emotional
reactions.
So, working on your hope right
now, in my way of seeing it, is not only
looking at how you're doing in your fasting
journey and your weight loss or your
biological marker changes,
but it's really changing your whole
life by working on hope,
even in this specific area, and
letting it spill into other areas.
I hope that this discussion has been helpful.
I look forward to coming back to you again
with another episode soon, and we will
keep coming to you with all of the things
that we've been offering.
So good luck with your fasting.
Take good care and we'll be back soon.