Episode 155: Strategies to Combat Burnout and Reignite Your Weight Loss Journey with Dr. Nora Vasquez

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss, where I help you get on track and stay on track with your weight loss journey. I'm your host Dr. Alicia Shelly. So let's get started. Welcome to the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss podcast.

[00:00:32] I'm your host Dr. Alicia Shelly. Now stress and burnout affects us all. And when it's too much, when it's so overwhelming, it can make it so difficult to lose weight. When you're having signs of burnout, which is exhaustion, irritability, social isolation,

[00:00:50] anxiety, sleep deprivation and depression, it can make it harder for you to want to eat healthy or even exercise. You may be doing the best you can just to get up in the morning, go to work and come home.

[00:01:04] And not to mention the increase of our cortisol levels due to the high stress can lead to fat depositions and more weight gain. And so today I thought it was super important that we discuss ways of not only how we can

[00:01:19] prevent burnout, but how we can actually improve burnout if we aren't in it. And I'll call my expert today, Dr. Nora Vasquez, see what helps us with how we can prevent and overcome burnout. Dr. Vasquez is an internal medicine physician.

[00:01:35] She's triple certified high performance coach and CEO of the renewed leaders in medicine CME coaching program. She partners with medical organizations nationwide and leads an evidence based CME coaching program proven to help health care professionals overcome burnout and improve wellness and lead with confidence.

[00:01:56] Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Vasquez. So good to have you today. Thank you so much, Dr. Shelly. I'm just really honored and delighted to be able to be here. I really appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome.

[00:02:08] Before we get started, will you please maybe tell us a little bit more about yourself to get into this space? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So as you said, I'm an internist and love serving my patients.

[00:02:21] And I think I came into this because I experienced burnout myself and I didn't even know I was in burnout when I was in it after about probably a decade of practicing on the front lines of our health care system. It was really a dream come true.

[00:02:36] I always want to be a doctor and I was the first in my family to go to college, the first to become a physician. And it was always my mission to work with underserved communities. And so I started out my practice as a primary care physician and loved

[00:02:51] what I was doing. But about a decade in, I started to feel just dissatisfied. You know, there were a lot of challenges in health care. And I was doing my best to manage them. But the tools that I had at the time only took me so far.

[00:03:05] And it was through that journey that I discovered coaching to actually be such a positive way to manage stress. And through my journey of going through burnout, decided that I want to learn more about this and decide to become a certified coach so I could bring

[00:03:22] these tools to my colleagues nationwide. Oh, wonderful. And I know you have been able to treat and just help so many people in your practice, your current practice of coaching and with burnout. But what are some reasons that people or what causes people to develop burnout?

[00:03:41] Burnout is an occupational hazard. There's actually a World Health Organization definition. And what happens is that as we are in our jobs, we're exposed to chronic stress. And I tend to focus on a lot of health care professionals because that's kind of my experience.

[00:03:59] But the truth is burnout is across all industries and it can affect our teachers. It can pick people in finance and business and also medicine. And what happens is it's hard being an adult. There's lots of challenges, lots of adversity.

[00:04:14] And especially in healthcare, primary care physicians, nurses, all health care professionals are exposed to daily stressors and we are exposed to trauma really, you know, trauma that our patients go through. And we need tools and skills to kind of manage those stressors.

[00:04:33] And if we don't have them over time, it can take a toll on our well being physically, emotionally, mentally. And so it's not a character flaw. Put anybody in a chronic stressful situation. There's going to be some risk for burnout.

[00:04:48] And what I've learned through my journey and helping those nationwide to kind of overcome these pitfalls of burnout is that it's preventable. We can mitigate it and we can do something about it. And also not blame ourselves for being in that situation, right?

[00:05:05] There's tools and ways that we can help ourselves get out of it too. Yeah, almost. And thank you so much for sharing that. And then just recognizing that it is occupational hazard. If you're working, there will be some stress.

[00:05:16] Then chronic stress can lead to more issues and more chronic issues, such as unhealthy health and weight gain. How does burnout affect those areas? Yeah, that's a great question. So we know that chronic stress can increase our cortisol levels.

[00:05:33] It puts us in this stress response cycle where if we don't learn how to manage those stressors, we can really spin out in stress and it can start to affect our health and our well-being.

[00:05:46] And so what I typically see in working with a lot of my clients is that you start to get a little bit more irritable, maybe you're a little bit more snippy when you feel exhausted, emotionally drained, physically drained.

[00:06:00] It can even show like as in myself, just this negative kind of cynicism about your situation or your life or maybe even your career. And then ultimately it can affect your sense of overall accomplishment, your overall sense of being effective in your day to day life.

[00:06:19] And so if you start to feel those symptoms, that's a red flag for you to take notice, to take pause and say, OK, hey, maybe I need support. Maybe I need some other tools to kind of help me manage this stress better.

[00:06:32] And I will tell you mindset is a big part of that because when we can really manage our mind around these stressors and have hope that things can get better and have the tools to better support us, everything changes.

[00:06:46] And that's what's so exciting about this work, because when you have those tools, then you can make better choices for taking care of yourself, prioritizing your well-being, having a joy plan, having a plan to mitigate those stressors day to day. And it changes everything.

[00:07:02] It changes how you interact with people in your life, how you live your life. And it's really been a joy to see that transformation for many of the people that I get to work with. So you mentioned the joy plan. What exactly is that?

[00:07:16] Yeah, this is a concept that in coaching so many of my clients that we've kind of developed together. And so what I like to think about it is we know there's going to be challenges in our life personally, professionally.

[00:07:28] And so a lot of times we tend to be surprised or surprised. We think a lot of our mindset coming into our career is that, oh, things are going to be great. I'm going to have an amazing life and I'm going to get to this point

[00:07:41] in my career where everything just flows, right? And that's true about half of the time. The other half of the time there's going to be challenges. There's going to be adversity. There's going to be feelings of, I don't know what I'm doing at times.

[00:07:55] And so those stressors, we want to anticipate them because that's the normal human experience. The normal human experience is that half the time things are great and half the time things not so good, right?

[00:08:06] And so if we can anticipate that, then we can have a plan of action of how we're going to take care of ourselves through those challenges. And a joy plan is really when I'm in the thick of it, when I'm feeling stressed, overwhelmed, really uncomfortable with the challenges

[00:08:21] that are before me, how am I going to acknowledge those emotions that I'm experiencing, manage my mind around that by allowing and accepting what is the reality of my circumstances. And then say, okay, there's some good and some maybe not so good in the situation.

[00:08:37] But I know that I'm capable. I'm very resourceful. I can tap into some of the skills and tools that I have. Decide who I want to be through these challenging times and then take care of myself. And so that joy plan is really acknowledging the adversity

[00:08:52] and saying, okay, even through this challenge, I'm going to take care of myself. I'm going to prioritize my well-being. I'm going to take a pause, a rest. Maybe it's a five minute walk at lunchtime just to kind of reset

[00:09:03] my mind during this day so that way I can look at this with a fresh and new perspective. So I like to work with my clients in developing a plan that makes sense for them because we're all unique.

[00:09:15] We all have different challenges and we have different tools that we can use that can really uplift our spirit through those times. Well, that's amazing. Now let's say we have somebody who is going through burnout right now and they are hearing about this joy plan, but they're like,

[00:09:29] there's nothing that brings me joy. But how does someone find items or things that bring them joy? How do they be like a coalmire and kind of shoo away until they find that joy? Everyone has something that brings them joy, happiness, pause, peace, presence of mind, right?

[00:09:48] And so I'll give an example for me. A lot of times suck the joy out of my day was a lot of the administrative work of my day doing, charting, paperwork, those kinds of things. What I loved about being a doctor is taking care of patients, right?

[00:10:01] And really helping them, guiding them, making better healthcare decisions for themselves. And so during my day when I'd have to chart or take care of those administrative tasks, I would allow and accept like this is okay. This is just part of the job.

[00:10:15] Maybe I don't enjoy it 100%, but how can I make this more joyful experience for me? And so when I would chart, you know, or have to be on the computer, what I would do is maybe I'd bring in some music, put it on my

[00:10:28] AirPods, or maybe I would make myself a cup of coffee just to kind of, if I'm going to have to do this, let's make it joyful. Let's make it pleasant. There's no sense in being grumpy about it all day long, right?

[00:10:40] It's just this is part of the day. This is the part that maybe I don't love so much and that's okay. I don't have to love it, but I can make it more enjoyable. So my joy plan was to take care of myself.

[00:10:51] Maybe I brought myself an extra cheat or a snack that I really enjoyed, made myself a cup of coffee, put on some music and did the work. And I will tell you having that little shift in my mindset made so much of a difference.

[00:11:04] Or even for some of your listeners, they may have kids, they may have families that they have to take care of, right? Not all of that adulting is fun. How can you make that fun, right? How can you make chores more pleasant, right?

[00:11:20] Maybe it's blasting your favorite songs. Maybe it's listening to a podcast while you're cleaning. Those are some of the tricks and tips that I like to suggest. And then we work together on finding out what would bring you joy. Awesome.

[00:11:31] Thank you for those examples that makes it a lot easier. Well, any last minute advice that you have for the audience who may be experiencing burnout, maybe any other strategies that you would also use? Yeah. My best advice is that if you are going through a

[00:11:46] difficult, challenging time in your personal life, in your professional life, don't do it alone. Get support, get help, whether it's confiding in a confidant, a peer, a coach, someone that you trust, right? Because we're not meant to do life alone, right?

[00:12:02] We heal and thrive in community and we need support. And even coaching so many leaders and professionals across many industries, we're all human. We all have this human experience. And a lot of times we like to think that we have all the answers.

[00:12:18] And for the most part, you know, we are very resourceful, but you can also just really up level your own life experience by reaching out, getting the support you need and having a joy plant. Knowing that in this life, challenges are going to be there.

[00:12:32] We're going to go through adversity sometimes and you're not broken, right? If you feel stuck, if you feel some of the symptoms of burnout, that's not a character flaw. That's just the human experience. And so to allow for that, acknowledge it, acknowledge those

[00:12:47] feelings, get the support that you need and figure out that you can create joy in your life even through those hard times. And one of the tips that I love to share is that you get to decide who you want to be through those times, right?

[00:13:00] You get to anchor back to those values that matter so much to you and then decide that, yeah, this is hard and I can do hard things and I can be compassionate with myself through

[00:13:12] this and I can get the support that I need so that I can be successful at the full my potential. Well, amazing. I'll lend those last words. Well, before we go, can you share with the audience how someone

[00:13:23] can work with you or how can they find is they want more information? Be happy to do that. If you'd love to get that support, I'm your girl. I can help you or I can find support for you. That makes sense for your unique situation.

[00:13:38] And so they can find me at www.renewyourmindmd.com. And again, that's www.renewyourmindmd.com. And I love to work with all types of professionals out there and especially the health care leaders and frontline workers as well. So happy to be of service. Well, thank you again, Dr.

[00:14:01] Vasquez for joining us today on the back on track, Achieving Healthy Weight Loss Podcast. If you liked this episode, please share with others, like it and subscribe. And don't forget to leave us a star review and we'll see you on next time.