Speaker 1: Welcome to Spark Faith with me, Dr. Chris Sargent. This
Speaker 1: show is about renewed health, rooted in truth, and restored
Speaker 1: by grace. What does finding health look like for you?
Speaker 1: Do you have a vision for your future self and
Speaker 1: a way to get there? I'm Dr. Chris, and after
Speaker 1: 33 years in functional medicine and a lifelong journey through
Speaker 1: brain health, weight loss, hormones, mindset, and faith, I know
Speaker 1: that real transformation doesn't come from willpower or white-knuckling your
Speaker 1: way to wellness. It comes from gratitude, honoring your body
Speaker 1: as the temple that God created. This show is about
Speaker 1: body stewardship, not shame. It's about rewiring your mindset, your metabolism,
Speaker 1: and your spirit to find lasting health without the grind.
Speaker 1: I'll help you cut through the noise, see opportunities instead
Speaker 1: of obstacles, and finally live the healthy, purposeful life you
Speaker 1: were created for. Let's spark faith and transformation together. Spark
Speaker 1: Faith starts now. Hey, hey y'all, welcome back to the
Speaker 1: Spark Faith Podcast. I am Dr. Chris Sargent, and today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about an elephant that's been in the
Speaker 1: room for a little while. I know, and you may
Speaker 1: be like, well, there's a lot of them. But today,
Speaker 1: I really wanna talk about sustainable change, and that sounds
Speaker 1: like super clinical, so just hang with me for a second,
Speaker 1: because what I wanna talk about is this like Monday
Speaker 1: restart thing that, that so many of us, including myself, right. Have,
Speaker 1: have done like, okay, when the kids go back to
Speaker 1: school or January 1st or whatever that like, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to start on, you know, it's, it's, Whatever that is.
Speaker 1: So I really, I want to talk about that, but
Speaker 1: I want to go, we're going to go a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper today in like, first of all, like, why
Speaker 1: do we do that? But also like, what if you
Speaker 1: never had to start over again? What? Like, what would
Speaker 1: you do on Monday morning if you didn't have to
Speaker 1: make yourself all these promises? Like, okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be perfect on my diet. I'm going to track all
Speaker 1: my food. I'm going to get my 10,000 steps. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go to bed when I'm supposed to. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get up when I'm supposed to. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to add an hour of Bible study on top
Speaker 1: of everything. Like, how many times have you started over?
Speaker 1: And how discouraging is that? And how do you think
Speaker 1: that impacts the way that you trust yourself to do
Speaker 1: something new, right? Whether it's like every Monday or next
Speaker 1: month or after vacation or after the holidays or when,
Speaker 1: you know, when work settles down, right? When we get
Speaker 1: our ducks in a row or whatever we say, I
Speaker 1: just need to get back on track, right? I was
Speaker 1: doing so well, dot, dot, dot, right? I just need
Speaker 1: to get started again. And like I said, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about this a lot lately and over the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, actually going back to health is not
Speaker 1: a destination, right? It's like, it's, it's, it's this trajectory piece, right?
Speaker 1: It's this keep on going piece instead of starting all over.
Speaker 1: Like we go back to something and, So anyway, a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, we talked about resistance to change,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of a crazy episode. Admittedly, I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the best place to do that episode, and
Speaker 1: I did it anyway, because I'm human. And so why
Speaker 1: can we want something to be different and still resist
Speaker 1: doing it differently, right? Right? Why can we want something
Speaker 1: to be different and resist doing something differently? So last week,
Speaker 1: we talked about why the old way always feels easier,
Speaker 1: even when we've decided to change, right? And that was pretty,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty simple ending on that, right? You
Speaker 1: can go back and listen to it to see how
Speaker 1: I got to where I'm about, what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1: But The whole thing about this is because we practiced it, right?
Speaker 1: The old behavior is familiar because of how long we
Speaker 1: practiced it. And new behavior requires more attention. And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit more about attention today.
Speaker 1: But I think I left you with like, don't wait
Speaker 1: for the new to feel natural, right? Repetition is part
Speaker 1: of what makes it feel natural. But that raises another question.
Speaker 1: If new behaviors... initially require more attention and more thought
Speaker 1: and more intentionality, how many things can we realistically change
Speaker 1: at once? Right. At the beginning of the show, I
Speaker 1: just like, okay, I'm going to lose weight. I'm going
Speaker 1: to get on my exercise plan. I'm going to walk
Speaker 1: away 10,000 steps. I'm going to go to bed early
Speaker 1: and I'm going to throw some extra Bible study on top. Whoa. Right.
Speaker 1: Feels a little too much. Right. because I think this
Speaker 1: is where we get ourselves in trouble. We decide that
Speaker 1: something needs to change and it's everything, right? I'm going
Speaker 1: to track every bite. I'm eating 140 grams of protein.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give up sugar. I'm meal prepping, taking
Speaker 1: all my supplements, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to
Speaker 1: meditate and we're going to organize the garage and we're
Speaker 1: going to like clean out all the closets on the
Speaker 1: same day, right? Like we get this fantasy thinking going
Speaker 1: right so good luck on that day right not like
Speaker 1: that's just we're super unrealistic with our expectations and because
Speaker 1: here's what I think ends up happening we we could
Speaker 1: get confused me too right we confuse wanting significant change
Speaker 1: with needing to change everything simultaneously right we can have
Speaker 1: significant change without changing everything Think about that. Right. And
Speaker 1: then like, so we try to change everything. And then
Speaker 1: when we can't sustain all of it, we just decide like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just not disciplined enough. Or I, you know, I
Speaker 1: just need to pray more or whatever that is. But
Speaker 1: maybe you just exceeded your capacity for change. Because change
Speaker 1: costs us something before it becomes familiar. This is what
Speaker 1: we talked about last week. It costs attention and decision-making
Speaker 1: and planning and effort. And so, you know, today is
Speaker 1: an energy episode, but we're not going to talk about
Speaker 1: metabolic energy. We're going to talk about your capacity for change, right?
Speaker 1: Your capacity for change. And more importantly, How do we
Speaker 1: stop repeatedly going on something, right? I'm going to start
Speaker 1: a new blah, blah, blah. And how can we shift
Speaker 1: into this learning how to live in a way that
Speaker 1: we continually adapt, right? The way that we flow instead
Speaker 1: of stop, start, stop, start, go back, stop, start, stop, start,
Speaker 1: think old, blah, blah, blah, right? So this can be
Speaker 1: more of a flow in that I don't want it
Speaker 1: to sound woo-woo because that's not where I'm coming from.
Speaker 1: But here's what happens. And I think that I know
Speaker 1: that I have learned to change through this cycle. But
Speaker 1: once I kind of defined it and narrowed it in,
Speaker 1: it looks like this, right? We're like going through life
Speaker 1: on autopilot. We've already talked about this, right? The slow
Speaker 1: drift kind of autopilot way that we walk through life.
Speaker 1: Something happens, we react, we put up resistance, and then
Speaker 1: we restart. Right? So autopilot. Most of us don't wake
Speaker 1: up every morning thoughtfully examining every area of our life, right?
Speaker 1: And thank goodness. Oh my gosh, we'd never get anything done.
Speaker 1: We'd just like never get out of bed. However, we
Speaker 1: can sleepwalk through patterns for a really long time. And
Speaker 1: I definitely have talked about that. Like we eat the
Speaker 1: way we eat because we've always eaten that way. We
Speaker 1: structure our days the way we've always structured them. We
Speaker 1: respond to stress. This is a big one because this
Speaker 1: is a lot of reaction versus response, right? We respond
Speaker 1: to stress the way we've always responded. We spend our
Speaker 1: money the way we've always spent it. We communicate the
Speaker 1: way we've always communicated it. We don't necessarily ask whether
Speaker 1: it's working or not, right? We just live. This is autopilot, right?
Speaker 1: Until something gets our attention. Our genes don't fit. The
Speaker 1: lab results are off the scale. We're completely exhausted or
Speaker 1: like financially, like the credit card bill arise. Our relationship
Speaker 1: starts really struggling. Maybe your doctor says something you don't
Speaker 1: want to hear. And then you look in the mirror
Speaker 1: and you're like, whoa, when did that happen? Right. And
Speaker 1: now you're like awake, but instead of becoming curious, we react. Okay.
Speaker 1: That's it. No more starting tomorrow. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.
Speaker 1: Reaction is always going to hit a hundred, right? First
Speaker 1: thing out of the gate, it is going to hit
Speaker 1: 100 it loves extremes reactions right we aren't going to
Speaker 1: start walking 20 minutes after dinner no we're not going
Speaker 1: we're going to the gym six days a week We're
Speaker 1: going to become aware of what we're eating. We're eliminating
Speaker 1: sugar and gluten and dairy and alcohol and processed food
Speaker 1: and anything else that looks like, you know, on YouTube
Speaker 1: that is inflammatory. We're fixing this. Whoa. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of emotional energy though, right? And is it healthy, right?
Speaker 1: Is that fear, frustration, embarrassment, shame or guilt? Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: excitement for a little while and that energy can carry
Speaker 1: us until like real life shows up and you walk
Speaker 1: into your office and somebody brought in donuts and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: one donut, right? Like real life shows up and you're
Speaker 1: tired or you're traveling. Somebody has a birthday, right? Something
Speaker 1: gets crazy, crazy. We get busy. The meal plan, you know,
Speaker 1: the novelty basically wears off. And suddenly the thing that
Speaker 1: you were so excited about two weeks ago feels like
Speaker 1: you have to fight for it. So we start negotiating, right?
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this before on other podcasts. We
Speaker 1: start negotiating, we skip, we avoid, we resent. And because
Speaker 1: we built a plan that required us to do everything correctly,
Speaker 1: that one disruption feels like a failure. And so you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll just start again next week. Or I blew it. Or, well, tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Or I'll get through the weekend. Or I'll start off,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever all those things are. But then we're
Speaker 1: back on autopilot. So it's autopilot, react, resist, restart. Autopilot, react, resist, restart.
Speaker 1: For years, decades, whatever. And I want to be clear, like,
Speaker 1: the problem isn't that the plans are bad. They can
Speaker 1: be super useful. I use plans. I give people plans.
Speaker 1: It's just how are they structured, right? And structure can
Speaker 1: be exactly what we need when we're trying to learn
Speaker 1: something new. The problem is how do we follow the
Speaker 1: plan if our only skill is follow the plan, right?
Speaker 1: Because eventually life is going to not cooperate. And then what?
Speaker 1: What do we do when life gets in the way?
Speaker 1: We're back to autopilot, right? So here's something I want
Speaker 1: you to think about. If the only way I know
Speaker 1: how to be healthy is when life cooperates with my plan,
Speaker 1: I haven't actually learned how to live a healthy life yet.
Speaker 1: And I said yet, because there's a way to keep
Speaker 1: moving through this. So let's stop thinking plan and let's
Speaker 1: start thinking practice. Right. We talked about that a lot
Speaker 1: last week. So it's not about not it's not about
Speaker 1: stop making plans. Right. Because I think it's really more like,
Speaker 1: what do you what you think the plan is for? Right.
Speaker 1: Like we approach it like, am I going to get results?
Speaker 1: Am I going to lose weight? Am I going to
Speaker 1: do this? Am I going to do that? And then
Speaker 1: we complete that challenge, right? Like maybe 75 hard or
Speaker 1: like there's a whole bunch of challenges out there, right?
Speaker 1: But then you're done. And that's an end point. And
Speaker 1: so it's like, I'm doing this for now. What happens afterward, right?
Speaker 1: And I know this is a little in your face,
Speaker 1: but what happens afterward? And so if we can just
Speaker 1: shift to thinking in terms of practice, right? And practices,
Speaker 1: I'm learning how to live a different way, right? I'm
Speaker 1: learning how to live a different way. This is a
Speaker 1: different trajectory. We talked about this a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: And like a diet says, am I allowed to eat this?
Speaker 1: But practice says, I wonder what happens when I eat this, right?
Speaker 1: For me, I have a glucose monitor. You can get
Speaker 1: them on Amazon, blah, blah. But I know what happens
Speaker 1: when I eat oatmeal, right? I know what happens when
Speaker 1: I eat rice. I know what happens when I eat
Speaker 1: a heavy protein meal. And they're completely different, right? right
Speaker 1: a diet says i have 37 grams of carbohydrates left
Speaker 1: today and i am all about macros but i play
Speaker 1: tetris and not macros okay it's a whole different game
Speaker 1: practice basically says i learned that i feel better when
Speaker 1: i put most of my carbohydrate carbohydrates here here and
Speaker 1: here right and Today is leg day. How about my
Speaker 1: body needs some strength training and I've learned how to
Speaker 1: make that fit into my week. And the way that
Speaker 1: I make that fit into my week is splits, right?
Speaker 1: I do body parts on different days. Bedtime at 10.
Speaker 1: How about, I know what happens when I don't get
Speaker 1: enough sleep and because recovery matters, I'm going to adjust
Speaker 1: my bedtime, right? A plan provides structure, right? But practice
Speaker 1: develops your skill set. So we're learning a new skill set, right?
Speaker 1: And somebody said, are you going to do this forever?
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, I never really thought about
Speaker 1: tracking my food forever. But what I realized is that
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that as long as it serves me.
Speaker 1: And right now I'm still learning, right? I'm seeing portions.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing patterns. I'm seeing what happens when I change
Speaker 1: up my pre and my post and when I distribute
Speaker 1: my food differently through the day. I'm gathering data. I'm
Speaker 1: not making judgments on myself. I'm not feeling guilty. I'm
Speaker 1: just learning, right? I'm practicing. This isn't about restarting because
Speaker 1: I went out to dinner and had two glasses of
Speaker 1: wine and now I need to start all over. It's like, okay, no,
Speaker 1: I planned in those two glasses of wine. And maybe
Speaker 1: I went over and that's okay because the next meal
Speaker 1: or the next morning I was back practicing again and
Speaker 1: maybe practicing better and maybe I could do it better
Speaker 1: next time. So I think we need to ask a
Speaker 1: different question when we begin something new, right? Not really just,
Speaker 1: can I follow this, right? What if it's, What is
Speaker 1: this teaching me that I eventually need to know how
Speaker 1: to do for myself? Life changes, schedules change, bodies change,
Speaker 1: family changes, work changes, your capacity changes. And that exact
Speaker 1: plan that worked beautifully two years ago or 10 years
Speaker 1: ago or before perimenopause or whatever, okay, ladies, right, may
Speaker 1: not work anymore. And so we have to learn to
Speaker 1: float and flow. And this is about adaptability, right? It's not,
Speaker 1: I need a perfect plan for forever. It means that
Speaker 1: I need to make decisions about adjusting. And so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna introduce a new cycle here. And that new cycle
Speaker 1: is going to be, remember we did autopilot, react, resist, restart.
Speaker 1: What if it looked like this? Awareness. Oh, look, when
Speaker 1: I eat all of this for dinner, I don't sleep
Speaker 1: as well. Or, wow, I had a bunch of pasta
Speaker 1: at lunch and I got sleepy in the afternoon. I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's a correlation, right? It's getting curious and
Speaker 1: having this awareness. So the new pattern is awareness, choice,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you all the choices. You have agency.
Speaker 1: And then we can adjust. And then we just keep
Speaker 1: moving on. Instead of this whole restart thing. And this
Speaker 1: is not a straight line. This is more of a cycle.
Speaker 1: You don't graduate from needing awareness. We always can use
Speaker 1: more self-awareness. Life changes again. So you pay attention again.
Speaker 1: So you choose again. So you adjust again and you
Speaker 1: continue your trajectory towards that health goal instead of, okay,
Speaker 1: I am at a destination. This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm done. Right? So let's unpack it just a little bit. Awareness,
Speaker 1: let's stay awake to your life, right? And awareness is
Speaker 1: different than obsessing. We are not going to monitor every
Speaker 1: sensation and every calorie and every pound and every thought
Speaker 1: and every decision. It's not, that's not awareness. That's exhausting, right?
Speaker 1: That's just, that's overkill. But awareness is like, oh, I
Speaker 1: noticed that. I'm paying attention. How am I feeling? How
Speaker 1: am I sleeping? How is my energy? And maybe you
Speaker 1: do this once a week, or maybe you do it
Speaker 1: every day for a little while. What's happening with my body?
Speaker 1: What's happening in my relationships? How am I spending my time?
Speaker 1: What's working? What isn't working? What's changed? What did I
Speaker 1: stop doing? What did I start doing? What am I avoiding?
Speaker 1: And we talked about the slow drift and I mentioned
Speaker 1: it earlier, right? And that's what happens when we aren't
Speaker 1: paying attention. We just like... And we drift off into
Speaker 1: whatever's the easiest, right? And a few of us wake
Speaker 1: up one morning dramatically somewhere we never intended to be.
Speaker 1: So that's the slow drift. But awareness can catch that
Speaker 1: drift earlier. And when we start catching that drift in
Speaker 1: the two glasses of wine that I had that I
Speaker 1: didn't plan on, then I know that I can choose
Speaker 1: my response on my next meal, not Monday, right? So
Speaker 1: awareness really lets me respond to a whisper instead of
Speaker 1: freaking out like we do on autopilot when something finally
Speaker 1: causes us to react. You cannot intentionally choose what you
Speaker 1: haven't been aware of. So first you have to see it.
Speaker 1: And this is not about guilt. This is not about shame.
Speaker 1: This is really about collecting data, right? Huh, get curious.
Speaker 1: What's happening? Okay, I see that. Now I could choose, right?
Speaker 1: You get to choose. You get to decide what matters now.
Speaker 1: And awareness without choice just becomes endless, right? Analysis paralysis, basically.
Speaker 1: But so at some point, okay, I've seen this. What
Speaker 1: am I going to do with what I know? Right?
Speaker 1: And I did say choice, not react. Reaction is like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, choice allows you to breathe. it creates
Speaker 1: a pause. Like what matters most right now, right? That's
Speaker 1: really what we have to figure out. It requires some
Speaker 1: discernment and that's agency. And then we adjust, right? I
Speaker 1: was in Boston last weekend and I had to make
Speaker 1: some adjustments to what I was eating. I needed to
Speaker 1: stay on some macros that are on my plan. I
Speaker 1: kind of understand how to do that because I've been
Speaker 1: doing it for a long time, but I had to
Speaker 1: make some menu choices fit that, right? I did not
Speaker 1: I made those choices instead of just going off the
Speaker 1: rails and coming back and having to restart on Monday.
Speaker 1: I kept making individual choices as I went, right? Four
Speaker 1: workouts don't fit this week, fine. Two will fit, right?
Speaker 1: Adjustment isn't failure. It's adjustment is a skill. And this
Speaker 1: is where a lot of perfectionists get stuck, right? We
Speaker 1: believe that changing the plan means we're abandoning the goal.
Speaker 1: But what it really means is, This week, I'm going
Speaker 1: to work only workout twice. Next week, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go back to four. This is adjust to whatever life
Speaker 1: brings you. It's not like, okay, I'm doing two and
Speaker 1: that's all I'm ever going to do again. No, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go back. We're going to adjust. We just
Speaker 1: have to swerve back and forth. And so this is
Speaker 1: about continuing. It's not about starting over because where exactly
Speaker 1: are you starting from? You go on vacation for a
Speaker 1: week and you make the choice to be like, I'm
Speaker 1: on vacation. I'm not. You know, when I went on
Speaker 1: my honeymoon, I did not track my macros. I just didn't, right?
Speaker 1: I didn't lose my strength because I didn't work out
Speaker 1: on my honeymoon. I did work out on my honeymoon,
Speaker 1: but I didn't lose strength because I didn't do all
Speaker 1: my workout. I only did part of it. I didn't
Speaker 1: destroy my health because I ate a piece of birthday cake.
Speaker 1: I had an experience. that didn't say I fell off
Speaker 1: or I need to get back on track or I
Speaker 1: blew it, right? No, health is a direction, not a
Speaker 1: need to start over. Just need to orient yourself to
Speaker 1: what is the next step, right? You only have to
Speaker 1: choose your next right step. So I want to pull
Speaker 1: this all back together. I have so much more I
Speaker 1: could say here. And bring this back to stewardship because
Speaker 1: I think there's something important here because sometimes we import
Speaker 1: perfectionism into stewardship. And stewardship is really just about faithfully following, right?
Speaker 1: It's really about getting back into the groove and staying
Speaker 1: in that groove. It's not getting back into the groove.
Speaker 1: It's like staying in the groove, but the groove can move, right?
Speaker 1: And because of grace, we know there's going to be
Speaker 1: that flow and awareness and choice and make an adjustment
Speaker 1: and continue. So that's the new pattern. I'd like to
Speaker 1: see things, how you kind of shift to, and that
Speaker 1: is pay attention, choose faithfully, adjust when necessary and keep walking,
Speaker 1: continue to walk, right? The old cycle autopilot, react, resist,
Speaker 1: restart becomes awareness, choice, adjust, continue. And now we have
Speaker 1: a direction, a trajectory for health. This isn't about rigidity
Speaker 1: and all the things, right? So sustainable change isn't the
Speaker 1: ability to perfectly follow a plan. It's the capacity to
Speaker 1: remain aware, choose intentionally, adjust to reality and continue moving
Speaker 1: in the direction that you've chosen, right? So that you
Speaker 1: can enjoy renewed health, rooted in truth and restored by grace.
Speaker 1: I love every single one of you. Hit subscribe and like,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to see you next week. Love
Speaker 1: you guys. Bye. You've been listening to Spark Faith with me, Dr.
Speaker 1: Chris Sargent. This show is about renewed health, rooted in
Speaker 1: truth and restored by grace. Tune in every Thursday morning
Speaker 1: at 930 a.m. Pacific on the Transformation Talk Radio for
Speaker 1: more simple faith-fueled steps to live the vision God placed
Speaker 1: in your heart. Are you ready to take the next step?
Speaker 1: Schedule a discovery call or connect with me at drchrissargent.com.
Speaker 1: That's D-R-K-R-I-S-S-A-R-G-E-N-T.com. While you're there, download my free ebook, Endless Energy,
Speaker 1: the six non-negotiable keys to endless energy and sign up
Speaker 1: for an upcoming masterclass. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share
Speaker 1: the show. And I'd love to connect with you on
Speaker 1: social media at Dr. Chris Sargent. Let's keep sparking faith
Speaker 1: and transformation together. Can't wait to see y'all next time.