The Progress You’re Not Seeing

0:00Welcome to Spark Faith with me, Dr. Chris Sargent. This show is about renewed health, rooted in truth, and restored by grace. What does finding health look like for you? Do you have a vision for your future self and a way to get there? I'm Dr. Chris. And after 33 years in functional medicine, and a lifelong journey through brain health, weight loss, hormones, mindset, and faith, I know that real transformation doesn't come from willpower, or white-nuffling your way to wellness. It comes from gratitude, honoring your body as the temple that God created. This show is about body stewardship, not shape. It's about rewiring your mindset, your metabolism, and your spirit to find lasting health without the garine. I'll help you cut through the noise, see opportunities, instead of obstacles, and finally,

1:01live a healthy, purposeful life you were created for. Let's Spark Faith and transformation together. Spark Faith starts now. Hey, hey, everyone. This is Dr. Chris Sargent. Welcome to the Spark Faith Show. I am going to continue our conversation on health, because this is the eight week of FRESH, you know that I roll through all of those introducing different ideas around foundation, regulation, energy, strength, and then total body health. And today, I want to talk a little bit about the progress that you're not seeing, right? So we tend to measure health on whether we've reached some XYZ outcome, right? X number of pounds, blah, blah, blah, right? But some, there's actually some different evidence

2:04of progress of who you've become along the way. And since I really don't believe that health is not all together, a destination, it is a direction, right? I think we need to continue to think about that whole continuing on and not restarting. So how does that happen? Some of it has to happen in this little tiny mindset shift that I want to take you on this journey today. We're going to talk about a couple of different things that I hear a lot in practice. Women who don't like cooking, women who are afraid to go to the gym or don't want to go to the gym or just feel stupid about both of those things or either one of those things. And so I guess that's what I want to do because health is really, it's a direction because every right step we take builds on skills

3:08and confidence and capacity and over time, all of these ordinary choices transform the way we live if we allow that. And if we shift that little thing in our head that says, well, when I get to X, I'll get to, right? Because I'm not really sure that getting to XYZ, yes, great. If you need to lose 10% of your body weight, go for it. If you want to lose 40 pounds, 100 pounds, whatever that is, I think it's really important for you to get there. And then what though, right? Like you didn't stop having a body to take care of, right? So that's what I want to talk about today. Like what happens when we get to our goal or how do we shift the way we think around goals, right? So we, like I said, we tend to start this health journey with some sort of outcome. I want to lose 20 pounds, I want more energy, I want to sleep better, I want my labs need to improve, right?

4:09You kind of have a freaked out a little bit. I want to get stronger, I want to feel like myself again. This is something that we talk a lot about in the living fresh collective is feeling like yourself and not like some other person is living in your body, right? And there's not, like I said, there's nothing wrong with any of that. But because the results were watching, sometimes it becomes the only result we see, right? We get so focused at into like, am I there yet? Are we there yet? Like our kids in the back seat, right? Like are we there yet? Mom, are we there yet? That we don't really understand and we don't notice like a journey if you're in the car, like you missed all of the Blue Ridge Mountains because you didn't look around, right? And so that's what we're talking about. This is health in living fresh. And you know what, join me on Instagram because I am about to open the living fresh collective

5:10and I know that because you've been listening, you're gonna want to get in on it, right? I have got some really, I am posed to launch. I have a price, I have all the things ready to go. My site is ready and it is just a matter of a week or two that we are gonna open all this whole thing up. So get on Instagram so that you're the first to know about it. Anyway, so health is a direction, not a destination. And I think that the goal is supposed to change you. And sometimes we don't really allow that, right? We just wanna get to the goal. And so it's not gonna just change your weight or your blood pressure, your lab values. Yes, all of that. But what about you in the process? Because while we're moving toward that thing, we want we're learning if we allow ourselves to learn

6:10and not just stay in our head and be like, I'm on the process like some autonomous on, right? Like you're practicing tracking your macros, right? You're practicing weighing yourself at a regular, unregular intervals. You're practicing lifting five pound weights or whatever that is. You're becoming much more capable and you're doing things that used to intimidate you. You're making choices that once required an enormous amount of effort. And eventually you don't think about them anymore. We talked about that a couple episodes ago, right? How our normal becomes abnormal and uncomfortable. And then we have to like that new normal, right? And because that transformation happens tiny little steps, we can completely miss it. Just like you miss the Blue Ridge Mountains if you are driving through. So today we're gonna talk, I don't really wanna talk about where you're going.

7:13I want you to turn around for a minute, like flip that, flip your camera, right? And look at yourself and see who you've become since you started or who you could become. So one of my, one of the things that I get told a lot is, well, I don't like to cook anymore. I don't wanna cook. And this sounds like I'm gonna have to start cooking. So I'm gonna wipe this off from your resistance today. Okay, first of all, living fresh meats you wear your at. So let's say you've decided to join living fresh, right? You're tired of your parryment of puzzle body. You're tired of being tired or whatever those symptoms are that you're experiencing, right? Maybe your labs, maybe you need to lose weight, maybe you're sick of whatever, right? Your brain fog, you can't even think straight, right? But you're like, I don't, I'm not cooking, right? I'm busy, I'm tired, I'm taking care of a whole bunch of people. And when 530 rolls around and you have absolutely no idea

8:17what you're doing for dinner, you just pick the closest drive through, right? I know women that do this. So you do not have to feel guilty if you're one of them because you are not alone, sweetheart, not at all, right? So I can't ask you if you're one of those people to just be like, hey, why don't you go shopping at Whole Foods and come up with 12 perfectly made Instagram worthy meal prep containers, excuse me, but I don't even do that. Okay, just let's get real. Mine don't look anything like Instagram and I still food prep, right? That literally nothing like Instagram, I just throw meat in a glass dish for a week, like not pretty, just functional, right? So, but here's what I'm saying is, you're not suddenly gonna become this perfect organic chicken and broccoli person, right? That's just too big of a leap. And I would never expect that from anybody,

9:19but what if this woman who's been just grabbing takeout decides to take, okay, what's one next right step I can take? Well, I'm still getting takeout because I'm not cooking, but I'm gonna pay attention. What if I find a place that I can get some grilled vegetables and some grilled chicken, right? Or what if I changed up from a burrito to a burrito bowl and cut down on some of the carbs and increase the protein that's there, right? What if we get a burger and get a side salad and drop one half of the bun, right? Like you're still getting takeout, you just have to change a couple little things, nothing dramatic, right? But something has changed, right? You've shifted just a tiny little bit and you don't even realize it. That does not mean you're gonna drop 20 mounds as week, okay ladies, we're not dropping 20 pounds in a week. I hate to bust up your reality, right?

10:21This is not gonna happen. So after a few weeks or so of doing that, you're like, hey, you know, this is just kind of shredded chicken and I know that the store has like a Caesar salad or a Mexican something salad. I think I'm gonna stop and get a rotisserie chicken and a pre-packaged salad. Okay, and maybe some microwave rice, right? Okay, that's not really cooking. I call that fixin' and I have a whole guide on fixin' versus cooking that is gonna show up in the Living Fresh Collective. So fixin' food is perfectly legitimate. Yes, I understand that the Costco rotisserie chicken may or may not be full of all kind of things that your body probably doesn't need to digest.

11:23However, if that is where you are, then embrace that. Just embrace it, okay? We can move to whole foods chicken later or we can move to something else, but just do what you can for now, right? Run by Walmart, grab a rotisserie chicken, whatever that needs to be and some bag salad, grab some microwave rice or a few potatoes because they can go in the microwave too and fix some food and you realize, right? Like, oh, wait, there's frozen veggies. There's pre-cooked chicken and there's a couple of sauces and there's a couple of manufacturers that make healthy sauces. And so now we're putting chicken breasts in the air fryer and making the same salad, right? But now we're making the chicken at home, so it's a little healthier, but it doesn't take very long because we have an air fryer and slowly

12:23over the course of a couple of months or maybe a little longer, however long it takes, right? Meet you where you are. All of a sudden, you have like three meals that you know how to make. And then you can take those three meals and make more of each thing, right? Or five, add a couple extras, but then later in the year, you notice like six months down the road, seven months down the road, like, wait a minute. I went from takeout to taking home groceries and making food in half an hour or less, right? Almost the amount of time that it takes to wait in the line of the takeout, wait for the takeout and get on home, right? You just take that time through the grocery store and take that to the food home. So here's what I want you to see. This woman, maybe you, right?

13:25Didn't start with, you started with like, I don't cook, but now you know how to feed yourself. That's a different, that's a different gain, right? Not only do you know how to feed yourself in that five or six months, you've lost 10 pounds. Not even really trying, right? Just shifting from full on takeout to making some, to fixing a couple of meals at home and learning how to take out healthy. Or, you know, whatever that combo of things needs to be in your life. So you learn how to plan ahead in some of this, you learn where you're gonna be hungry, you may have learned like which foods make you feel better, you learned how much protein is an appropriate amount on your plate, you know what, you need to keep in your fridge, you know how to shop a little different, you know,

14:26you use your time a little different, and you learn how to make eating well, easier. So what changed, your nutrition changed, your energy may have changed, your metabolic health, for sure would have changed, and your vitality might have changed. And so when those patterns can continue over time, you could influence your future health, right? This is that direction, this is that trajectory. So that's what we wanna do. You could step on the scale and still see that you haven't lost that entire 20 pounds of think, this isn't working, but wait a minute. Because look at the woman who started, you're not hurting more, right? So if you're only looking at the scale, you can completely miss the transformation happening along the way. We call those non-scale victories,

15:28and they're just as important, your genes got a size smaller, right? So like those are the non-scale victories. How about the other one? I don't do gyms, okay? And honestly, this one was me not too long ago. I know I've talked about it, like going upstairs and not going into a class, but going onto the floor of the gym, where all the whoah guys were that look like they knew what they were doing, and they were talking in acronyms that I have no idea, you know, audio and single audio and blah blah blah blah. So, you know, front squats, back squats, all these things. I didn't know anything about any of that, right? So I don't do gyms. So intimidating. And I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, and it makes me feel dumb. It made me feel dumb, right? So, but you know that you need to exercise, right? So let's start where we are, right?

16:30So you're not stupid, right? You're just a beginner, and that's a huge difference. So what's the next right step? Well, what if you went on YouTube, right? YouTube literally has everything you need. Beginner's strength work out at home. Let's say you have a pair of threes, fives, and eight pound dumbbells. Well, somewhere, maybe they're under your bed since like 2020, right? And so you do that, and the first time you do the video, you have to stop it like 20 times. Rewind it. Wait, where does my feet go? How am I supposed to hold my posture? Mine doesn't look like that, and it takes a little bit longer, right? But about a month or even a week later, something interesting happens. Those eight pounds don't feel like anything anymore, right? You're gaining strength, that's adaptation, that's progress.

17:30But now you need heavier dumbbells. And when you start shopping, you're like, well, I can spend 20 or $30 every time I need another pair of dumbbells, or there's a really cheap gym, maybe like planet fitness, no, I don't get paid by them, or something like that, right at the street that basically has everything I need. It's about maybe 10 bucks a month. And now she has a new problem, right? She actually has to walk into that gym. Yes, that's me walking onto the floor at lifetime fitness. Wow. And just walking in might actually be a bigger challenge than the workout that you're gonna do, right? So the next right step, what if you get back on YouTube and you type in like planet fitness workout for absolute beginners, all right? You know there's one, there's 700 of them. And so somebody can walk you through the equipment

18:30and then you don't feel so dumb, right? Cause you got somebody walking you through the equipment and you have an idea of what you're gonna do when you get there. And you could choose a time when nobody's there, right? Like seven or eight o'clock on Saturday morning when nobody's there and you're like, oh, I have to get up early. Yes. Or maybe you go later in the evening. And whatever feels manageable fits into your schedule, right? And the first time you go, you do like five exercises from the video and you just leave, right? It doesn't have to be perfect, right? You just get to be successful. And then you go back again and again and again. And after a few weeks, y'all, this has become like not a big deal. You know how to use the machines, right? You know which dumbbells you need. Eventually you know what an RDL is, right? And I'm gonna make y'all look that one up. I am not gonna tell you. And then she, like, and then you learn like

19:34how a hinge is supposed to look like and you can track your weights and eventually you like two full body workouts and then maybe upper body, lower body push, pull, whatever fits into your goals and your life, right? And you're like, oh, I should really be doing more. No, look at this woman who would not walk into the gym three months before, right? You didn't just build muscle. You belt vulnerability and courage and vocabulary and body awareness. You learned how to use equipment. You learned how to challenge yourself. You learned how to recover. You learned that you're not a beginner anymore. What? And just being a beginner doesn't mean that you don't belong. So you can go from, I don't do gyms to, I know how to train my body. And honestly, y'all, that's gonna, that's the fish, right?

20:36The fish are meant to teach you how to fish. That's what trans, that's a transformation that no scale can measure, right? So, you know, becoming happens so slowly that we miss it. And you're gonna be like, wait, that's not even a word becoming. And it is a word. It's becoming, right? What am I going to be? Come, right? What am I coming to be? I know that's like, wait, you have to think about that. This is transformation. This is change of your form. And it's not just change of your form of your body. It's change in your form of your mind. And so it didn't happen like one dramatic Tuesday became like, ooh, I'm a woman who cooks and a woman who lives, right? It happens slowly. One choice made after the next best choice possible.

21:38Takeout became better takeout, better takeout became fixin' food, fixin' food became cookin' food. And like doing nothing became, became an at home YouTube video workout. Eight pound dumbbells became too light, right? So sometimes the old way feels easy because we've practiced it, but here's the other side of that. Eventually unfamiliar becomes familiar, right? Sometimes you stop noticing your progress precisely because your progress has become normal. That's your new normal. So I just want you to think about that. The thing that intimidated you doesn't intimidate you. You're different. This is becoming. This is adapting and learning. And not about like, it's not, did I reach my goal? It's like, who am I becoming as I pursue that goal? Like I, this is a completely different way

22:39of measuring progress. Okay? That's where I want you to think about this. So, I had somebody and I've talked about this a couple times, but are you gonna try, somebody asked me, are you gonna track your food for the rest of your life? I was talking about doing macros and using my fitness pal. And I really was kind of taken back by that question and I realized over the next couple weeks that I'm gonna track my food until it no longer serves me. Until I know exactly what 30 grams of protein looks like versus 40 grams of protein. Until I know exactly which meals are satisfying. Or, you know, I keep the tool because it continues to teach me, right? So, I don't think that I don't need that tool. I'm gonna keep the tool that taught me, right? I'm going to learn skills in between all of that.

23:44I changed, right? So, I think that's, I think the questions we need to ask are like, what do you do now? When you get to this place where, you know, you're kind of at the end of your rope, what do I do now? What do I know now? What am I willing to shift? Just a little bit to get to a place that I need to go. And then when you get there, right? Like, okay, you've learned how to go to the gym. You've now you're cooking food. What do I know now? Look at how much progress I've made. What am I no longer afraid of? What choice has become ordinary that once felt super hard or impossible to make, right? What have you learned about caring for yourself? So, I want to talk, lean into stewardship a little bit and then I'm going to close for the day. But, you know, there's a phrase that Paul uses

24:48in second Corinthians three that I just love. He's talking about something way bigger than physical health. He's talking about the transformation as followers of Christ, but listen to the language, because it's really beautiful. We are transformed, da-da-da, from one degree of glory to another, right? This is about being transformed. There's movement in that. There's process. There's becoming. And sometimes I think we miss what God is doing in us because we're waiting for some dramatic moment because that's all we see on Instagram. We see the before and the after. We don't see the messy middle of becoming. And because there's so much formation that can happen incrementally. And transformation can only happen over time, right? The butterfly doesn't pop out of the chrysalis in one moment. It takes time. The chick has to peck through the entire shell to get out, right?

25:53And so we have to live in that space between that beginning and oh, look, I'm learning new things and who are we becoming and continue on to that next right step, right? And take inventory of what doesn't intimidate you anymore. And what once required enormous effort that has become normal and like see the process and the progress that you've made. So that's a whole different way of looking at our goals. We continue. This is that continuation process that we talked about, right? This isn't starting over. This is starting where we are and learning more and learning again and learning again. Right, there's still a lot of machines in the gym that I have no idea how to use. And I know they're probably going to show up at some point on my workout and I'm going to have to go in and feel intimidated until I figure it out.

26:54And I'm confident because I figured out some other ones that I can do it. And guess what? You can too. You absolutely can. Because we are here to talk about renewed health, right? Rooted in truth and restored through grace. And we're going to give ourselves a lot of grace around learning. I love you guys. Can't wait to see you next week. Have a great week. Bye bye. You've been listening to Spark Faith with me, Dr. Chris Sargent. This show is about renewed health, rooted in truth and restored by grace. Tune in every Thursday morning at 9.30 AM Pacific on the transformation talk radio for more simple, faith-fueled steps to live the vision God placed in your heart. Are you ready to take the next step? Schedule a discovery call or connect with me at DrChrisSargent.com that's drkriisSargent.com. While you're there, download my free e-book,

27:57Endless Energy, the six non-negotiable keys to Endless Energy, and sign up for an upcoming Masterclass. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share the show, and I do love to connect with you on social media at Dr. ChrisSargent. Let's keep Sparking Faith and transformation together. Can't wait to see y'all next time.