Reclaiming Your Health Journey: The Danger of Glorifying Unrealistic Results

In my work, I’m always supporting people on their journey to better metabolic health, and it’s fascinating how new themes emerge each week. This week, I noticed many patients getting caught up in what I call the “vocal minority.” These are the people who share their extreme results with medications—often loudly and visibly—leading others to feel like their own experiences are "less than." This comparison can leave them discouraged and dissatisfied with their progress, as they measure themselves against these atypical stories.

In this episode, I discuss how comparing ourselves to the vocal minority can derail our progress. Instead of fixating on extreme results, I invite you to focus on your unique health journey. I'll share real patient stories that highlight steady, meaningful progress and offer practical strategies for setting realistic expectations and achieving attainable goals. Tune in for tips on shifting your mindset, empowering your health journey, and surrounding yourself with positive influences. Don’t let the noise drown out your success—join me to discover how to prioritize what truly matters!


References

Body Weight Percentage Reduction = (Weight Lost ÷ Starting Weight) × 100


Audio Stamps

00:30 - Dr. Rentea urges listeners to focus on their unique health journeys rather than comparing themselves to the few with extreme, atypical results.

03:52 - Dr. Rentea reflects on a patient’s steady progress, emphasizing the importance of focusing on real, personal health gains instead of comparing to unrealistic portrayals online.

06:40 - Dr. Rentea shares data on weight loss expectations with certain medications, urging patients to focus on realistic, evidence-based goals and consult their physician to track healthy progress.

09:45 - We learn how successful patients adapt to their health journeys by creating practical solutions, staying flexible, and continuously finding ways to incorporate healthy habits into their busy lives.

14:55 - We hear Dr. Rentea’s top tip for stopping comparison from weighing you down and affecting progress.

21:20 - Dr. Rentea shares an update about the January round of The 30/30 Program.


Quotes

“Comparison is just the biggest killer.”

“They get so much attention. They are so vocal. Yet they are the minority.”

“Why am I obsessed with you not comparing? Because you lose sight of all the amazing things you can do for yourself.”

“If you have achieved a total of a 5 percent body weight reduction, it is working for you.”

“I would really recommend over time that instead of looking at pounds lost, you look at total body weight loss percentage.”

“There is no, ‘I hit the jackpot, get the answer, and then never again have to think about this.’”

“Stop following people that make you feel horrible about yourself. You should feel uplifted with who you're following.”

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

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I hope you are all having an amazing start to the week and today's episode is coming directly from so many of my patient visits this week. I'm actually recording this on a Friday and I always think about with the podcast, What is actively happening with my patients or maybe a lot of coaching clients or the small group that I run 30 30 and I think about what is the moment that is happening. Every week has a theme, right? We, I don't know if we've talked about this a lot, but it's so interesting to me how in my job, although I'm always helping people with their metabolic health and working through things like that, every week something emerges. And the theme this week was. People listening to the vocal minority that have had these really extreme results with medication that are not typical, that are not normally seen, yet they're thinking that they should, they're feeling bad about where they are because they're comparing to that. Now, we have talked often on this podcast, if you're new, we talk all the time about how comparison is just the biggest killer. Because we all have different, Patterns when we're working on our health, how things go. Some people, if we're talking about fat loss, which we talk a lot about on this podcast, some people consistently are losing fat week after week and they have a certain pattern. Others you're, again, maybe I come up with a more, it's a more technical term for this, but you are whooshers, meaning nothing is happening for a few weeks and then you suddenly release a few pounds and ultimately everybody has progress in the direction forward, but it looks different. And the problem with listening to this, the reason I call them the vocal minority, these people are really loud online. They are very loud. There are channels that get a lot of attention. They have, when I say extreme results, they've been able to achieve things that most people will not. So they will be losing huge percentages of weight. They have just, and again, people are enamored by this and they want to be inspired by it. So I totally get why these channels grow. I have no. Problem with these channels. The problem that I have is when you are not keeping your blinders on and looking at what am I doing to support myself? Am I doing the things that make sense in my life? And really worrying about your own genetics, your own biology, your own medical history, what's possible for you in your life where you're at? Like, I'll give you an example. If you are currently going through this. The throes of a depressive episode, that might not be the time to really crank it up with weight loss. And so, I say all this because they get so much attention. They are so vocal, yet they are the minority. If we looked at, you know, I'm helping hundreds of patients per year. If I look at that data, And now, granted, my data can always be skewed, right? We, I feel like there's always a lot of disclaimers, because again, I'm a, I'm a doctor. I'm not your physician. Most of you, some of you are my patients that are listening, but the, the problem when we say minority is that those results are not typical. They're at the far, it's a the bell shaped curve of what's happening with patients. And so when I educate on this podcast, I educate a lot about the middle, the median, the norm. We talk about hypo responders, meaning you're going slower than normal. Again, does not matter, you're going to keep going. We do talk about hyper responders, where things are just going lightning fast, but https: otter. ai So, what this came out of, I had a moment this week with a patient where I am very pleased by their results. You know, several months in a row, they've been going up on medication. They're not, here's the thing that's not happening. They're not having that honeymoon moment because they've seen online, this is what they're expecting. Okay, you ready? Yep. Yep. They're expecting this moment where like, like a Disney movie. Okay. Cue the scene where the princess comes on and there's, there's like singing birds and food noise is gone. It's really easy. They're never wanting anything. Portions are down. Weight is flying off. Like everything is magical. That's not reality, and I'm actually convinced, even in this population that, you know, they're making really aesthetically pleasing videos on social media, and they're sort of glorifying this story. They're not telling you all the things that they're doing. You are seeing this little highlight reel, but you're comparing your entire journey to that 30 second sound bite, that sensationalized thing where they're probably making money on the views, or they're selling a product, or they're doing something, right? Right. So you're completely taking this out of context, and then the problem becomes then, not that that person has made that video, but that you're thinking that your experience is less than, that your experience is wrong, that there's something wrong with me, that this should be happening faster, that it's not going to be happening for me. And when we look at the data, which we have to come back to the data because the data tells us if it's working or not. Okay. So if you are purely using these medications for weight management, which most people are not, I'm just here to say. 99 percent of my patients, their cholesterol is coming down, their blood sugar is coming down. They're less short of breath. Their urinary incontinence is improving. They're able to ambulate better. They're able to finally start doing things with their kids or grandkids. Their life is radically changed. They're able to travel. They're able to fit in airplane seats. They're able to actually walk around Disneyland or wherever they're going. I could go on. We're not just looking at a weight number, but if that was the only metric we were looking at, if you by three to four months in have achieved a net 5 percent total body weight reduction, again, we will put in the show notes, the formula for how to calculate that. If you have achieved a total of a 5 percent body weight reduction, it is working for you. So with this person, they were over that. And they're on a trajectory where they're going to be well above 10, 15%, like even just me extrapolating, right? Which again, I don't like to do, but I can tell with looking at things. So that is going to work. But what's required is that they don't sit there comparing themselves to this other person. Why, why, why am I obsessed with you not comparing? Because you lose sight of all the amazing things you can do for yourself. So what I want to put a little bit of energy toward today is, again, I'm going to. Reiterate the evidence based numbers here from trials, okay? So on average, if you're taking Wachovia, Which again, Wagovi is FDA approved for weight management. That's the same thing as Ozempic and that's semaglutide. Okay, so that's all the same medication. Just the dosing will change based on which one you're on. Wagovi on average will have about a 15 percent total body weight reduction. It was interesting, a friend that I have, she sent me a Marco Polo and she's like, you know, I'm seeing Ozempic talked about everywhere right now. And she said, Is it true that you can only lose 15 pounds with it? So isn't this funny how when I always say this playing phone, right, what was it where, you know, one friend after the other, you say something in the ear to the next person at the end of it, that phone tree, what are they saying? So no, it's not 15 pounds. It's 15. percent body weight loss on average, right? So if you're starting in a body that doesn't have as much to lose, you might not need to lose 15%. And if you're having a body that needs more to lose, maybe that medication on its own won't provide you all the results you want. Maybe you'll lose more than that, maybe less, who knows, but that's on average. Okay. 15%. And then Zep Bound, which is again, the same thing as Benjaro, that's terzapatide, that's on average a 21 percent total body weight loss reduction. And so when you're using these medications, Most people are only focused on the scale. You need to know what's realistic. So you, before you even start the medication, you calculate what would that actually be. Look at that number. And, and, and, and just sit there for a second in that number. Because most people will never acknowledge that that number can be reality. Because let's say that you're starting at 280, that number might realistically say that you can get to 220. And most people don't want to hear that. They want to be 150, 160, you know, whatever. They've made up a number in their mind. And so, I'm not saying that that's going to be your reality, but that's what the data is suggesting. So, now that you know what those two numbers can realistically produce, I would really recommend over time that instead of looking at pounds lost, you look at total body weight loss percentage. And again, we're going to have the formula in the show notes. So again, if you don't know on your phone how to click right or left on the show notes underneath this, you can always go to rentia clinic. com R E N T E A clinic. com and there's you click on podcast. So forward slash blog is how it shows up on our website. You click on podcast, there's a show note for this episode and we always have all of this written out. You can even go back to previous episodes. We have everything written there. You can actually search on the website. So again, rentiaclinic. com, you click on podcast, there's a search bar on the right upper hand side and you can type in if you're wanting to look, let's say that you got started on Q Semia, right? You got started on Phentermine, different things. You can actually search because we have information at this point on all of it. You can find the episode. Or you can say, ah, she talked about something in that thing. We link to books or anything we talk about. Okay, so look at the percentage of where you're at and then talk to your physician. Are they thinking that you're keeping pace? What are their thoughts? What would they recommend for you going forward? And they will be able to help you out with the next steps on that. Now, the thing I want to say here, the people that I see do the best, here are the kinds of things they tell me in the visit. And it's always so profound to me. I don't know if they realize when they're saying it to me, how my brain is hearing it, but here's what they say. They've created little hacks. They're realizing, you know what, I'm out at work these days and I'm busy, I'm gonna grab a tuna pack, I'm gonna bring a little veggie tray, I'm gonna create a sort of adult lunchable, if you would, where I have, where I have, some pieces of deli meat, some cheese, some, different veggies in there, a hard boiled egg, maybe a cheese stick, whatever the combination might be, maybe some nuts in there, some fruit, like they are creating things that work for them. Maybe they're pairing a protein drink with an apple because they want some fiber, maybe they're making a concoction with a protein powder, you know, I'm always obsessed with talking about Devotion's protein powder because I like the taste. Again, use whatever works for you with your choice of ingredient or whatever you're looking for. But what I've started to do when I make my little devotion concoctions where I do one egg A fourth of a cup of unsweetened applesauce, one scoop of Devotion protein powder, a little bit of vanilla extract, a little bit of cinnamon. I actually add some flaxseed in there because I know that there's 26 grams of protein in what I just described because there's 20 from the Devotion protein powder and six from the egg. So that's 26 and then I want more fiber. So I add some flaxseeds. So you start to hack the things that you'd like, the things you want to do. They have found little workarounds, right? If you have kids and they're, you know, you're thinking, gosh, I really want to impose some healthy things on them. A lot of the time with kids, we don't come directly at them. More is caught than taught. They're going to learn more if we're just bringing veggie platters in the house, we're prepping it or we're buying it. We just went on a family trip here. I talked about this online and there were not veggies to save your life anywhere we were going. So at one point I went to the food store. Got a big veggie trade, had celery, carrots, I think tomatoes, I think it had a little like pepperoni or something, you know, some type of meat thing in there. But I sat there eating and there was like a yogurt ranch dip in the middle. And so I'm sitting there eating that, that's my hack. Yes, I didn't have time to prep it before we went on the trip. We were in the middle of a busy thing. We're in a hotel where there's a smaller fridge, doesn't matter. It fit in there. So they are thinking of, how can I make this work? They're thinking of, I make a protein smoothie in the morning because they're a teacher and they need to go to school and they're going to drink it on their way to work or they know that that's socially acceptable, they can sit there and take a sip of that between classes. They're figuring out within the bounds of their life what they can do. With movement, they're looking at what can my body physically do, and then they're building that in, whether that be swimming, whether that be a five minutes of walking here or there, whether that be some strength training, they're looking at how can I use data in other capacities that's not just the scale. So, for example, you know, you always hear me talk about the in body body composition, but they're looking at, okay, monthly, how can I look at this data and adjust strategically what I'm doing? They are just staying level headed. They're not putting a timeline on things. Majority of my patients that have been with me the longest, the thing that they literally say at every single visit is, it's not an option to stop. I always have to keep figuring this out. They have learned. There is no, I hit the jackpot, I get the answer, and then I never again think about this. That, unfortunately, if you think podcast. I'm just, I'm just putting it out there. So I really subscribe to the thought process that. You're going to have to figure this out for life. So the quicker that you realize that Like, I'll give you an example here in the Midwest, weather's constantly changing, which is beautiful. I love the four seasons, but right now we're in fall time and it's awesome. You can kind of have a sweatshirt on and you can walk around and do all these things. We very quickly are going to be in a zone where you're going to need a warmer jacket. It might not be so fun to walk outside. Now some of my patients, I'm challenging them if they have jobs where they're more mobile during the day to still continue those outdoor walks. As long as there's not. You know, like ice on the ground or something like that. We're trying to see, Hey, can we still say active during those periods? Is there a gym membership that might work? Is there a home class, right? Like we're already future proofing that we know the weather's going to change. We know that this obstacle is going to exist. We know it's coming. Can we start to plan for it? What can we do for it? So instead of saying, Oh my gosh, I've loved walking outside and now I can't do it. And now, now that means the next six months I don't do anything. No. What can we do? Is it walking around your house during that time? Is it finding a high school where they have, I'll give an example. By our house, there was a high school that has a severely discounted. It's, I know it's well under a hundred dollars. I forgot if it's 40 or 60, but it's for the entire year. You can come and use their facilities. You can walk around the gym. You can get steps in. So there are answers out there that work in every single price point, or maybe it's all the way you work with a trainer, or maybe you do Dr. Allie Novitsky's. I really love her muscles and mindset where there's multiple workouts per week. It's the 10 minutes. It's very strategic, but you focus on what can I actually do? So here's my top tip. You've listened to a lot here. Here's my top tip, when you're sitting there and comparing, because you're human and there's no problem, it's only when it gets in the way of you starting to get down and feeling like you can't achieve results and it, it, it weighs you down like, like an anchor and you're going to drown. Okay. That's when it's a problem. When that is happening, I want you to stop and pause and I want you to ask yourself, what are the two things that I'm going to do today to support myself? What are two things that I can do today that are going to move me forward? I actually have a patient just did a follow up with this person and they have set an alarm in the morning at a certain time. When they ask themselves this genius guys is would it shock you if I said that this person's doing amazing? No, it's not going to shock you, right? Because by the way, notice this person's life isn't taken over by journaling a bunch of stuff, doing a bunch of hard stuff. They're literally one time in the day checking it and saying, what are the two things that I can do today to support myself? Let's give examples of what this could be. Lower the bar way down. This could be a I have water. I mean, I'm literally as I'm recording this, I'm sitting at my desk. I have a protein iced coffee that's left over from breakfast and I have a water sitting here. One of the things that I'm going to do today is hydrate. I don't know why since I've been doing all this traveling and stuff, I've literally been more swollen than normal. Guess what? I'm going to, I'm going to hydrate. We're going to flush this out. Okay. So can I hydrate today? For me, it's always, how can I get the movement in? That's usually one of my big, how can I do that? For other people? It's how can we focus on the protein with each meal? How can I listen to my body? Can I for one second take a pause before the meal starts? What are the, could you maybe take a 10 minute break? Some of you are living your life where you have literally not one moment of white space and I don't know how you do it. And when I work with you, I call you out on it. And the reason being is When one thing wrong happens, your entire life explodes. So, notice if you have scheduled yourself every single minute with something. I mean, yes, there's the, you know, when you have a lot to do, you get a lot done, sure. But then there's a point where you just tip over into emotional eating, and you lose control of everything, and there's always a moment that precedes that when you can tell, Hey, this is actually falling off the rails. I'm, I'm, I'm actually not going to be able to do this anymore. And we need to get more skilled in noticing that and then keeping your life more in those bounds. So yes, I love to work a lot. I love seeing patients. I love the programs I run. I love the things I do and I put breaks between my programs because there's a certain amount of, if I'm going to work a Monday night and we're going to do those calls, Then I'm more tired Tuesday and it snowballs throughout the week. And so I've really had to learn with myself. I can handle it X amount of weeks. And then after that, I need to recover a little bit. And then again, I'm fresh and I really bring good energy. So you need to start to honor. What is happening for you? It's the same obstacles again and again, the weather changing, the schedule being busy with kids doing certain things. We start to plan for these things. We start to create little hacks. Okay, what if I have this protein bar in the car? Alright, this one actually doesn't melt. I can carry this one around in my purse. Whatever the case might be. But you stop sitting there and thinking that these things can't happen for you because you're seeing this one person that's making you feel horrible. Last thing I'm going to leave you with, Please stop following these people. Stop following the people online. I feel like I'm yelling at you all right now, but that's how passionate I am. Stop following people that make you feel horrible about yourself. Don't do it when you're online. You should feel uplifted with who you're following. The content should, there's someone that I follow and everything she puts out as positive and I love it. It's just always, she refuses to be negative. I'm here for it. I want that. Yes. Give me that. Stop following people that, that every week are giving you these reports of, you know, and here I am. I lost 10 pounds last week. Why are you following that person? Like, seriously, cut it out. It's not helpful for your psyche. If you want to go check in later and see how that person's doing, make a little mental note six months to come back to their account. Okay, literally create a thing in your calendar, pop away their thing, unfollow. Start to say you're just interested in those videos. The algorithms will stop showing it to you. You have to surround yourself. With people that are going in the same direction as you that are perhaps like minded in the sense that they're not doing diet culture y things. They're not only focused on the scale. They're a little bit more holistic with things. The reason being, I call it the brain baths. If you are following these people all day long that are only obsessed with that, it's natural that you are only obsessed with that. So you need to start to Follow people that do things in a different way. Find that community. I know it's hard to find. I know this All right I'm gonna leave it here so I feel like we kind of we always start somewhere and we get somewhere else but Don't be overly influenced by people that are sharing certain stories. You have no idea of their background, also I'm just, I'm going to throw it out there, you don't know their body composition either. I can't tell you how many people come to me to work with me or do a coaching session with me where they never really cared about protein or anything on the way down. Suddenly they realize, Ah, I feel weak. I feel bad. I had no idea what I did. We look at it there, there, there's nothing. They're usually anywhere from 25 to 40 percent muscle loss and it's totally fine. We can work on the recovery aspect and it's, it's work that we do. There's no problem. But on the front end, if you were not as panicked to lose as quickly and you did things in a different way, initially it looks like you're losing the race. But in the long run, your basal metabolic rate is amazing. You've maintained your muscle. You have increased longevity. You are going to do phenomenal. And not everything is what it seems on the way down. And so I just want to bring this up because you normally don't have that perspective. I'm here to offer it every week to you. When I work in my patients, every time I meet with them, they're like, Oh, every time it's a reframe, it's a reshift. And by the way, I will say when things aren't working or things are not going as expected, I'll be the first to say, You know, this medication isn't for you or this really isn't working, but majority of the time, that's just not the case. And the perspective needs, the perspective needs to be shifted. All right, I'm going to get off of here. I hope you have an amazing rest of the week. Just an update on the January 30, 30 program. We have. We have all the spots filled for that. I'm really looking forward to that group. And if you're someone that didn't get a spot, I really hope that in a future round you can know that we always prioritize who's currently in the group if they want to do another round of it. I'm thinking that the next one will be May, but I might actually move it to April because I don't know that we quite want to do a May, June, you know, kids get out of school. It just doesn't end up being such a great time to do a program. So I might end up shifting that to April. So. Stay tuned on that. I hope that more of you get to participate in that program because I'm actually in the midst right now of redoing the videos. So I really loved the content and what I shared, but I always, as we go through, I learn different things. I think about different things and I don't know that I'll always redo the videos, but I really. I wanted to change the messaging a little bit in there. Let me just, spoiler alert, for those of you, if you're not in there, you know, I thought we were going to do all this stuff in the program, that we were going to eat all these, you know, different colors of rainbow and nuts and seeds and veggies and all this stuff. So that was going to be one aspect, the plant aspect, and then there was the protein aspect and then there was the movement aspect. It's too much, too much, it's too much because what, what most of us realized is it's really hard to switch anything up with what we're doing. Super hard to switch it up, super hard to maintain it. Just, there's a lot going on in life. And so I, while that will still remain in it, I think the focus really of what I'm going to ask people to do, it will not be each category throughout all the days. It will really be sort of more of like a weekly mini focus because I'm telling you the whole, the whole point of that program is how do we do new things? How do we bring them in? Shockingly, it is incredibly hard to do new things. I'm not talking about for a day or two. I'm talking about actually bringing things in, sustaining change. And so that was really normalized throughout this experience. I think the WhatsApp group for this, for this September round was highly valuable because we could kind of talk about some of these things and share a little bit more behind the scenes. And it's so much better than Facebook or any of these other things where you never see any of this stuff. So anyway, I hope that you get a future round. Again, as long as you're on my email list, again, redtiaclinic. com, if you go, right at the top it says, or, sorry, at the bottom of the first page it says, hey, are you on our email list? If not, let's fix that. Make sure that you're on there and then you'll get notifications for when future rounds come out or other things. If you're still wanting to, uh questions and do things like that. You can always join that mini course that I have the five mistakes that people make when starting a GLP one and there it's a mini course. There's a bunch of videos. They're all sort of under 10 minutes. I do have a lot of bonus content at this point and we actually do a monthly live Q and a call in there. And so if you're someone that you want to ask me questions or you want to learn from at this point, we have so many good recordings of Q and a calls that you can access when you get in there And so the few months when you're in there with us, that's a really good, accessible way to, join this community. I think we have an amazing community in there. You can ask questions under videos. You can come to those Q and A calls. We always the week before send out an email that let that where you can ask questions, even if you can't make it, we let you know when the replays go up. So if that's something that's interesting to you, there's always that option as well, if you weren't able to get into the 30, 30 program. All right. I hope you have a great rest of the week and we'll talk soon.