The Power of Perspective: How Your Beliefs Shape Your Health Journey

Feeling stuck on your health journey? Maybe you don’t even believe it’s possible to achieve the outcomes you want? It’s easy to get bogged down by the numbers and let frustration and self-doubt take over. But here’s what all my long-term successful patients have in common: they believed it was possible from the very beginning.

When setbacks occur or results aren’t immediate, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed and question if it’s really worth it. So how do you start believing that something else *is* possible, even if you’ve never achieved it before? In this episode, we dive into the power of self-belief and its impact on your health journey. You’ll learn why focusing on what you want to achieve, rather than what you’re trying to avoid, is the key to maintaining progress. Plus, we discover how shifting away from a scarcity mindset and into a more abundant outlook can unlock your potential and drive lasting success—even when past struggles have made belief seem out of reach.


References

Check out Dr. Ali Novitsky's Nutrition Training Program* for personalized, evidence-based strategies to optimize health and nutrition, featuring live Q&A sessions and bonus sessions with me!

Sign up for my email list here to stay updated on the latest content and be the first to know about the next round of The 30/30 Program.

*Note: This is an affiliate link. I may earn a small commission if you choose to make a purchase, which supports my work and helps me continue sharing valuable content.


Audio Stamps

00:52 - Dr. Rentea highlights that believing in the possibility of achieving health goals is crucial for long-term success.

05:43 - Dr. Rentea encourages us to focus on daily choices and continuous improvement, marrying the journey rather than fixating on specific goals like weight.

18:00 - Dr. Rentea walks us through an exercise to reflect on why we can achieve our goals, urging us to focus on our existing strengths and capabilities, and to believe in making small, daily progress.

20:15 - We learn about the next round of Dr. Rentea’s 30/30 Program and Dr. Ali Nowitzki’s Nutrition Training Program (starting Oct 7th) with live Q&A, open to both patients and healthcare professionals.


Quotes

“You don't even need to do anything differently today other than believing that you can do it.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“Every day you get to decide what you want to be.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“Whenever I focus on the scale, I get zero traction.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“If you're not honoring your wins and the next steps you're taking, and believing it's possible, you're always in a place of scarcity, lack, and shame." - Matthea Rentea MD

“It's so much more empowering when I think about what I do want versus what I don't want.” - Matthea Rentea MD

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

Transcript

0:29

Good morning. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Now I can't find my little special mic this morning. So I hope that there's not too much, too many extra sounds or that you're hearing, but we're going to go ahead and record. I'm actually heading into doing a group coaching session this afternoon and I always, Think about what are some things that I talk about if not too many people are getting coached and something that has been coming up a lot with a lot of my patients that have been in the clinic for more than a year. It's that when we get to that one year mark, we sort of reflect on okay, what, you know, we're always looking at what weight loss percentages and side effects and all these different kind of things, but something that I universally hear from all of the patients that stick through it and really figure it out and keep going is that They say how important it was for them to believe that it was possible for them in the beginning. And I think we've talked about this at different times, but today I want this whole episode, well, maybe the 10 15 minutes, to really focus on thinking about, no matter where you're at in your health journey, how important it is to believe that it's possible for you. Now the reason we even have to talk about this, It's that a lot of us have actually never achieved the result that we're going after. And maybe it's, again, just the people that I tend to really like to help, but a lot of people that I help have struggled for decades. This has not been the past few months. This is not, okay, the past year this has been going on. They, for years, have not been able to, um, achieve the weight set point going down and staying down. They maybe have not been able to achieve sustained habit change. So for example, yep, I take a walk three times a week and I do that. Or the strength training part or upping the protein and keeping the protein up or getting more fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds in. These are all things that are challenging to people. By the way, it's challenging. Because a lot of the time, there are a lot of things that are required for those things to change and to permanently stay that way. I just want to start with highlighting that. I think we don't give enough credit to people how many things need to change for these things to stick around. And so that's why when you look at any type of habit science, as far as, okay, how do people actually achieve habits, and how do they, new habits, and how do they stick around? You need to go about it in a slow enough way, but that's not ever, you know, That's not ever the attractive way, that's not ever the glitzy way, that's not ever the glamorous way, right? The fun thing is overhaul everything and then look at this. Quite often, if you actually look down the road, those people don't end up sustaining those things. And so how do you believe when you've always struggled, how do you start to believe that something else is possible? And I guess I want to start with this. What's the alternative? Is it actually helpful to sit there and keep reinforcing that I'm someone that can't do this. And look, I've never been able to do this. And, and, and then I'll tell you the biggest thing I always hear and look at my relatives, you know, my, my mom and dad had bariatric surgery and my cousin and my, you know, and by the way, that's helpful on the first medical visit and that first medical visit only it's, it's helpful just to know the genetic pool that we're coming from some people around us. Okay. Amazing. But then, but then. We need to flip a switch and decide, I'm gonna go for my most optimal outcome. And part of that is, is believing that you have control over a lot of things. I choose to really bring a lot of information to my clinic for my patients, where it shows what's possible. So I want to give you an example. At the time of recording this, I'm heading into recording videos, so this 30 30 program that I have, and again, if you, by the time this comes out, the program will have already started. It was the month of September. Again, we're going to have another round starting in January. This is a very small group that we do. So we really focus on. How we can kind of create new habits, how you can do new things. I have sort of the baseline track in this program and then there's sort of what I call the explorer track. So and I know things will change by the January round as well, but one of the things that I'm stressing when I'm talking about the gut microbiome in there is that if you look at the research of Tim Spector, he's really someone that is doing a lot of research in this gut microbiome area. What he's seeing is that we have more control over this than we knew. More so than some of the genetic associations that we thought, and this is really empowering, and this is why I'm bringing this to people in my clinic and in my coaching program, because we need to hear all the information for what is possible for us, and why we actually can do this. Why can it be different if this time we're on a medication, if we're eating XYZ, if we're moving in certain ways, what's, What is the baseline minimum where this is what gets it done? Do we actually need the version where we're going crazy every day? Spoiler alert, no. And so if we can start out with, yes, this is possible, but I'm going to have to figure out my, bio individual response of how to get it done, the road gets easier. So I want to suggest this. What if anything is possible? I really like the analogy that imagine you're at Target or whatever big box store you live by. I know we have, this is so incredible. We have, we have people listening in the UK and we have people listening in Canada and everywhere. So whatever store equivalent that is, whatever store you go and you just love when you go shopping there, you always find things you love. Okay. Imagine you could go there and you could just like. Pick up the result on the counter and pay for it, right? Like, it was that easy. Okay, what would that result be for you? Where it's like, if I could achieve these things, it would be amazing. Now, here's the interesting thing. You think that by achieving this, you're going to be super happy and that's the end. But our brain does what's called habituate, means that when we achieve those things, we then want the next thing. So we get used to it. We stopped getting the dopamine hits from it. And so changes is always constant. Change is always evolving. You're always going to be going after the next thing and what part of the skill here It's to cultivate the beliefs that I can achieve things, the ability that I can evolve, that I can continue to go after these things knowing that I'm always going to change what I'm going after and that's actually not the problem. You know, you hear this being said all the time that it's not actually about the destination, it's about the journey. You'll hear me talk a lot, Allie Nowitzki talks about this marrying the journey. This is what is required because it's through you figuring out how do I get more protein or how do I Increase the diversity of what I'm eating or how do I do this? How do I do that? That's the fun part You know, I talk a lot about that whenever I focus on the scale I get zero traction. In fact, it's pretty much a really good way to know that I'll gain weight. And I don't know if it's that I get so stressed or what happens, but whenever I focus on the scale and not just, Hey, what, what does actual health look like to me or what's in my control? You know, what, what's my health goal today? What do I want to do? What matters to me? What can really work within my work schedule? These are productive questions for me. They get me headed in the right direction. I ended up getting to a new place. But when I'm sitting there thinking, well, how can I get this number to go down? It doesn't inspire me. It doesn't make me believe it's possible. It makes me quite depressed. It makes me quite frustrated. Well, why does my, why did my body ever get to this? Or how did I ever get to this? All unhelpful questions. So if anything is possible and you could just buy the result, what result would it be that you want? And then how can we decide today? How we're going to go about that. So every day you get to decide what you want to be. And this is a fun concept because I really sort of subscribe to this. We have to take every day as it comes. It's almost very, I don't know, it's almost very like addiction minded, right? Like if you think about any of sort of AA programs or Anything like that, or Overeaters Anonymous, there's just many variations of sort of addiction theory and some of them are better than others. A lot of it focuses on, today I'm just going to handle this. I'm not going to worry about cravings days down the road. I'm going to today worry about things. And I don't like to Lump food and with addiction. I know there are some people that say, yes, you're addicted to sugar and they sort of lump all these labels. I don't find it to be helpful. I don't find it to be helpful to, to say these things because we get ourselves really freaked out, right? Like if we say, oh, I can never have candy because I can't stop. Like, does that work for you to say that? To me, I think it creates panic and anxiety and there probably is a world where you can figure out Maybe you don't ever have it because it gets you going too much, or maybe you only buy, I was talking to someone online in the DMs, and they were telling me, yeah, you know, I had posted how I finally tried Nerd Clusters. It's a type of candy, which don't even, I mean, I, my kids had been asking for this for the past few years, and I just had never tried it, and they were saying, Yeah, I love this, but you know, I can't bring the big bag in the house because I wouldn't be able to stop, but the little ones they can do, right? So they've kind of figured out I figured out like a hack around that with, okay, this is, that's the loving boundary, right? Like if we're going to bring it in the house, I'm going to bring something in where if I polish it off, no problem. It's, it's a one serving versus a pack that, like a big bag that's going to have ten, right? And so I just want you to think about, if anything is possible, what do I want to do today? It, I mean, things are going to compound over time. This is the thing about it, right? Another great post. And this is, you can always tell how long, if you follow my stuff, how far in advance I record these podcasts. But there was another one that I saw where it was like, look, if you are walking 10 K steps per day, that's equaling, Oh, I hope I'm getting this right. 70 marathons per year. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, if I think about, now everyday I don't get to 10k, but that's usually a goal of mine, I get pretty close to it. And I thought to myself, wow, if I thought daily, I'm a 70 marathon per year person, that feels a lot different than thinking, oh, I get 10k steps. I mean, 10k steps is phenomenal and it took me years to get there, so I'm not discrediting that. But my brain has habituated to that. It's habituated to the fact that we get a walk in every morning. Yes, it makes me feel good, it regulates me, it does all the things, but But wow, if I can think about myself, you know, morphing more, and we've talked about this this past year if you go back to my January episodes about goal setting and like deciding who you are, things like that, you've heard about how I'm coming more into this era of realizing what my body is more capable of. Even though it has never done these things. It has never been able to do push ups and planks and weighted squats and hinged deadlifts and all the things. Coming more into that era, and so when I saw that post, I thought, wow. If I think of myself, how many marathons this equals, that's different than however many steps per day. So if anything is possible, maybe the first change is I just think differently. That it is possible. All right. I'm going to like double back to this. Cause I want to make sure that this makes sense. You don't even need to do anything differently today other than believing that you can do it. Why would that matter? Why are we, why are we playing semantics? That's what I always say. It's like, why are we like doing these thought exercises? So if we come back to science, we know that if you sit in shame, If you are going to use shame as a tactic, by the way, you're going to use this when you're going to say, gosh, I've done nothing today. I really should be doing these things. Like, like all these words where you're forcing things on yourself, like I should, I have to all those type of words. If that is what you're staying in, it is not empowering, uplifting and motivating longterm. We know this. So when people have what's called internalized bias, if you're, if your negative talk is through the roof all day long, you're putting yourself down. How did I get here? Why don't I do more? I should be doing more. I could be doing more. You're just shame, shame, shame, shame, shame all over the place. You're not going to get far doing that. Remember the way we talk about things around here. You are in this for the long haul. Unfortunately, obesity and overweight, it's a chronic medical condition, means you for life need to manage this. So if you're only ever going to stay focused on well I want to do this real quick, and this, you know, I, I, unfortunately I had a patient message me that in the first few months They had lost 12 pounds and they said, well, I'm really disappointed and I want to lose more. And again, there was other contexts there, but I was thinking about it and I'm so proud of this patient. I think to myself, this person's doing phenomenal. I mean, wow. If you ever tried to pick up a 10 pound weight, that's a lot. And you know, I was thinking also in the global context and the reality is if you're not honoring your wins and honoring the next steps I'm taking and believing it's possible. And you're heading toward things that you want. If you're not doing those things, you're always in a place of scarcity of lack and shame. I want you to think about what's enough for me. What's enough, what's possible. What can I create? Maybe at this moment, I don't even change anything, but even just to believe it's possible. What ends up happening with that expansive scenario? I want you to think about a vacuum, right, when you, like, or a straw when you suck something up. You need to create the pressure for that thing to come up in the cup. That is you when you believe it's possible. You start to create the pressure that those things come to you. I don't know if that's the best analogy, but that's, but that's the thing that just came to me. So I often say, instead of saying all the things you don't want, I really work with coaching clients on tell me all the things you do want, it's really easy to be like, and I don't want this. And I don't want that. So I'll give you an example with food, but here's very practically where that comes in. I don't want to eat processed food and I don't want to have too much junk food. And I like all this like morality and rules and you're like, okay, Okay, what do you want? Do you want to eat the rainbow? Do you want to get some fiber on every plate, meaning some fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds? Do you want to hit a certain protein goal? Do you want to hit a certain water goal? It's so much more empowering. It's so much more this is possible when I think about what I do want versus not what I don't want. It's like we're energetically almost calling it in when we focus on that, right? We're almost like, like when we have this fear of like, Oh my gosh, I can't have this processed food. It's overwhelming instead of. Listen, did I get all those other things in? Do I, do I need to go chop a salad up? Do I need to put something different on that grocery list? Do I need to ask my significant other to help out to like, hey, how can we get a few more veggies in here? Right? The goal is so different when we're focusing on that stuff. So believing it's possible creates an abundance. You start to pick up on different stuff online. Like, literally, as I'm scrolling, I'm like, there's, wow, look at that! It shows the steps in a different way that makes me think, wow, that's possible. Like, marathon. Like, I would never use the word marathon in association with, with Matea. But when I see it in that way, wow, this stuff's equaling a marathon. Okay, great. I'm like, looking at that. That's the thing I'm sharing of stories. That's the thing I'm I'm thinking about weeks later. That's the thing that's sticking. It's because I'm looking for that because I believe it's possible. So I start to look for ways to make it happen, right? You start to believe like there's always going to be a way something's going to present itself, right? We've recently been going through with the medication, you know, we'll, we'll compound and not be an option in the future and all these kinds of things. And I think to myself, well, There, there's generic Leraglutide, there's manufacturing coupons, there's other ways of doing all this stuff and I'm like, there will just always be a way if someone is willing to stick through it. There will always be different combinations, there's always something that can be done if, if you believe that it's possible. If you don't get into and see they're taking it from me and my insurance is doing this or that, I'm totally acknowledging that there's realities of the world. What if we're like, but I'm not going to give up and I'm going to find the way because I know it's possible. And this one roadblock, like there's always going to be roadblocks, right? We know that. If we can just acknowledge that we're planning on there being roadblocks, we're planning on there being hard times to not always feel good. We're human. Welcome to the human experience, right? But if we can stay rooted in anything as possible, and every day we get to decide what we want to do and how we want to do it, Yes, by the end of the day you're going to get tired, exhausted, fatigued, and it's not going to be the same as mourning you. But you know what? Mourning you deciding anything is possible. Making a few plans, making a few goals, deciding roughly quarterly where your boat is headed, doing a program every so often being like, yeah, I got to like refocus this. I've got to do a deep dive. I've got to get some other ideas. I've got to be around people that are doing this. Put my brain with other people that are doing the same thing instead of sitting in my own sort of doubt all the time. Right. It's hard when we're going after these things. There's a reason that people seek out community. We are communal creatures. We thrive off of other people's energy. I mean, if the pandemic showed us nothing else, it's that we don't thrive in solitude. Everyone was forced to be in their own home and introverts a little bit liked it, but collectively mental health suffered overall in the United States. So coming back to this, this is so funny, I thought this was a quick one, but I want to just come back to what Do you believe it's possible? And I don't want you to go down the road of, and if not, why not? Why don't you believe it's possible? I want you to go the opposite direction, to challenge yourself. Who better than me to do this? Why can I not, over the next 10, 20 years, change the direction of this? Why do I not deserve to feel more comfortable in my body, even if my body shape never changes? I really want to, like, highlight that. Even if I never achieve this weight that I think, but why, why should I not deserve to feel more comfortable in my body? To move it, to like the way I dress, to like the way I eat, to really feel good, to not be bloated all the time, to get better sleep, to like who I'm in community with. Why do I not deserve that? Why would I not do all those things? I want to just challenge you that it does matter you believing it's possible. All right, I'm going to end it here. The thing I want to challenge you to is just to close your eyes for half a minute here, okay? And just to think about, do I believe it's possible, if not, why? Why would I not be the perfect person for this to happen? Do I believe that in other areas I've achieved massive things? I want you to think about one hurdle you've overcome. Maybe you have a kid with special needs and you have figured out how to navigate the healthcare system for your child. You're a boss. You're amazing. Maybe at work, you have a coworker that's insufferable and you've figured out a way to Because you know your family depends on you going to work, you figured out a way to make it through. Maybe you yourself have a health condition. Forget overweight and obesity for a second. But maybe you have a really disabling type of pain. And you have figured out a way to get through those times when you have pain flares. You have figured it out. So here's the thing. You already have evidence that you can do big things. That you have done big things. I need you now to To turn that into, I can really do anything if I just stick with it. If I just keep coming back to it. If every day I believe I'm going to get a little, little step further in the direction that I want to go, you can do it. Anything is possible. All right, I'm going to leave it here. I hope you have an amazing rest of the week. If you're someone that, again, this round of the 30, 30 program will have already passed, but if you're someone that thinks, you know what, January might be my time, I want to throw it out there that January might be. a time that's going to fill up a lot quicker than this round, because people in January tend to say, yeah, this is the time I want to refocus. Although we, we have an amazing group right now doing the September round. We do limit the spots. We do not go over 20. In fact, my goal for these programs is anywhere from 10, maybe 15, but we do not go over 20. We stop enrolling and it turns over to a waitlist page. So I just want to tell you if that's something that you're interested in, We will actually have the link below here so that you're on that waitlist so that, or I don't even want to say waitlist, you make sure that you're on the email list, okay? But just make sure that you're on that because we usually enroll about a month or two before the program and I don't want you to be in a spot where you're like, Oh, I wanted to do that. And then the spots were gone. I keep it very small for a reason. I take my programs very seriously. Okay. I do not. Do these big enrollments, in this capacity because the whole point of doing this small group is that you're not left behind. I really get to know you. I want to talk daily to you in that WhatsApp group. I really want you to be part of things. I purposely have different tracks with what we do because I know that everyone has a different amount of stuff going on. So some people are able to just go wild with ideas and, and trying different things and stuff like that. And guess what? I don't want the rest of us, cause I'm kind of in the like. The baseline minimum group. I mean, I want to do all the things in my mind. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go do all those things. Guess what? I don't often do that. It's like, eh, once a month I'm like, wow, I made this Mediterranean salad and it had all these things. Or I made, for example, this is all stuff I talked about in my program with the gut microbiome, but I made this, nut and seed diversity jar with 10 different ones. I was like, gosh, you're amazing. The fact that I, Got a glass jar together and I got these different keto mixes and I put them together and I was like wow! But like, listen, once a month. Once a month that's happening for me. So what's ironic is we have this explorer track where, you know, if you really, this is sort of like taking it to the next level but you don't have to do that. There can be the baseline where it's like, this is what I want to hone in on. These are the things I want to solidify. This is the stuff I want to do. I want to be in a group where I get inspired. I actually think it's great to see when people are going all out and doing all the things. Do you know, I feel like I'm at a little, so sorry, this is such a tangent. I didn't think I would talk about my next program so much, but. I have to tell you, I feel like I'm at this, this, advantage because I'm talking all day long to patients and coaching clients and they're telling me like, you know, this whole thing, like this recipe is amazing. And I'm like all day long writing these things down and then trying different things at times. And I feel like that. Braintrust is the name I want to give it, where smart people come together, and you're kind of getting those ideas. It is such an advantage, and I, I'm so happy that in our community that, that in this 30 30 program that we can provide that to each other. And then in the months in between, you actually go practically do the things. Most people get exhausted being in a program. They don't want to like 24 7 be coming to calls and stuff, but there's something really powerful about like this month. I'm really going to do these things. And then after that, I implement. I maybe rewatch stuff if I need to. I sort of fine tune things and then I decide again if in however many months I want to kind of do another round to like kind of refuel myself up. But I just wanted to throw it out there. This is always a small program and I don't see that changing in the next year. So. If you're interested in that, we'll make sure to have the link down below so you could get on our email list just so that, keep in mind, we email you once a week on Mondays, we let you know the episode that's come out, and then rarely different things that are happening, so for example, I know that this episode will go out, sorry, there's another thing we have to talk about, totally forgot, so, Dr. Allie Nowitzki, she's doing a nutrition training course. It is geared toward healthcare professionals. Guys, when I say that this is Flipping incredible. It is phenomenal what she's teaching in there. So I have learned a lot of amazing things from Dr. Ali Novitsky. She's an obesity medicine board certified physician. She has very practical knowledge on nutrition That is really amazing when you're on a GLP1 medication. I will say this It's geared toward health care professionals because there's a continuing medical education. You get 12 credits if you're doing that. The other thing I want to say though, and I'm going to try to get this out in the email when I send it to you guys, you can do it as well if you're not a healthcare professional. And what's unique about this round, so it's starting in October. It's going to be, I think, seven, eight weeks depending on How many weeks are all in there? This is the round when she's going to have live Q and a calls and things like that. So in the future, that won't be the case, but this is the one that you want to do because you'll be able to ask questions. I mean, if I were you, I'd be asking, I'd be asking my scenario. Hey, what about if blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd ask all the things, get her input on it. I am biased. I'll tell you why we're going to link this course as well. And, and why you, if you're on my email list, why you got so much information on it? Because I, you. I am leading two of the Q& A calls. I really want to help other healthcare professionals for how they can bring this nutrition into their clinic. So, a lot of people say, well, you know, send to a dietician, a nutritionist. They're all amazing. They're great. That's all phenomenal. A lot of us though, actually majority of us, We'll not have that as a resource and we'll do a lot of the education ourselves. I personally love it. I love so much going over the nutrition audit, seeing small ways things can change, creative ways, and, and also taking people in stages. So when people come into my clinic, we're not just doing all the things at once. My first goal is, all right, let's see where you're at. Let's do protein fiber first. We're doing this, we're doing that. Later we get to, okay, the gut microbiome, the body composition optimization. But there are these levels to what you can offer. How do you know if someone needs more of an intuitive approach versus more of like a macro counting approach? There's different recommendations for people, right? So her course will go over that. So we will also have the link to that as well. If that's something that you're interested in and, and we'll leave it there. All right. Have an amazing rest of the week. It is possible for you to do these things. Maybe if that's, if that really resonates with you, you could write that down and kind of come back to that. Remember, you got to write some stuff down or remember it. Otherwise this podcast is in and out of your ears and I want you to actually implement stuff and actually see change in your life. That's really the real key here. All right. Have an amazing rest of the week and we'll talk soon.