Speaker 1: Welcome to Spark Faith with me, doctor 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 doctor Chris and after
Speaker 1: thirty three years in functional medicine and a lifelong journey
Speaker 1: through brain health, weight loss, hormones, mindset, and faith, I
Speaker 1: know that real transformation doesn't come from willpower or white
Speaker 1: knuckling your way to wellness. It comes from gratitude, honoring
Speaker 1: your body as the temple that God created. This show
Speaker 1: is about body stewardship, not shame. It's about rewiring your mindset,
Speaker 1: your metabolism, and your spirit to find lasting health without
Speaker 1: the grind. I'll help you cut through the noise, see
Speaker 1: opportunities instead of obstacles, and finally live a healthy, purposeful
Speaker 1: life you were created for. Let's spark faith and transformation together.
Speaker 1: Spark Faith starts now. Hey, Hey, y'all, welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Spark Faith Show. I am doctor Chris Sargent, and
Speaker 1: today we are going to pull back the curtain on
Speaker 1: my life. Right. So here's the thing I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about this since our last episode, and how maybe some
Speaker 1: of y'all are out there going, Okay, you have given
Speaker 1: us all the physiology, You've given us all the physical
Speaker 1: reasons why we need to do this. We know that
Speaker 1: we understand blood sugar, we understand nervous system and how
Speaker 1: all that interplays with our hormones. We understand our hormones better,
Speaker 1: and so that's a lot of practical information. And it's like, Okay, great,
Speaker 1: this seems like a lot and I have no idea
Speaker 1: and it's overwhelming, and I can't even start your program
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't even know where to begin, and you
Speaker 1: can't be doing all of this yourself. Blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. Right, Okay, So I think we need to
Speaker 1: get a handle on expectations and where I started, where
Speaker 1: I am now, and where you might be right because
Speaker 1: I know everybody out there is starting in a different place.
Speaker 1: We're starting from a different place, and I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure that that we're like on the same
Speaker 1: level here. So I'm going to pull back the curtain
Speaker 1: and I've shared little bits and pieces of my own
Speaker 1: story since December of kind of falling apart physically and
Speaker 1: not really being able to do the things that I
Speaker 1: needed to you. And I had been training, I had
Speaker 1: been counting calories and macros, and I had, like, I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of the things, mostly some for personal reasons,
Speaker 1: some for professional reasons. I wanted to understand what would
Speaker 1: happen if X, y Z, if I did ABC, if
Speaker 1: I did this test, if I tried that supplement, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. So just so you know, like I might
Speaker 1: have done what you're doing already, just out of thirty
Speaker 1: five years of experience and figuring out my own health
Speaker 1: journey and figuring out what might work for y'all. So
Speaker 1: over the last several weeks, I've shared a little bit
Speaker 1: about mindset mindset shifts, say that mindset shifts that I've
Speaker 1: been making in my own health journey. And after last
Speaker 1: week's episode, some of y'all might be thinking, Okay, but
Speaker 1: what does this look like in real life? Like? Okay,
Speaker 1: because here's the truth. Right, I don't wake up every
Speaker 1: single morning feeling motivated to go to the gym. Right,
Speaker 1: I would much rather sit and spend more time in prayer,
Speaker 1: or spend more time reading my book, or even spending
Speaker 1: more time studying sometimes anything other than getting out of
Speaker 1: the house around early or o dark thirty or right
Speaker 1: now it's six forty five, so that I can get
Speaker 1: to the gym during a time when it's not so busy,
Speaker 1: and I can get my work done and get out, right.
Speaker 1: But I don't wake up every morning ready to do that.
Speaker 1: And I don't magically have any extra hours in a day. Right,
Speaker 1: God did not just give me with twenty five hours
Speaker 1: or thirty hours a day. I still own a business
Speaker 1: and run a business. I'm still in seminary pretty much
Speaker 1: full time in a master's program. I am a newlywed.
Speaker 1: I am a parent to two adult children, one division
Speaker 1: one baseball player, one artist, and so I still do laundry, right,
Speaker 1: I don't have a maid. I still do meal prep.
Speaker 1: I prep for my podcast, I see clients, And yes,
Speaker 1: I definitely can struggle with time management and keeping things organized.
Speaker 1: Particularly Richard will tell you that I am definitely not
Speaker 1: the neat one in our relationship. I am not the
Speaker 1: organized one. I am not I'm not the tidy one.
Speaker 1: He is, and that's it's a beautiful mix. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm still keeping up with all those things. And you know,
Speaker 1: at one point I did all that in took care
Speaker 1: my mom. So you know, I just thought i'd share
Speaker 1: a few practical things that have made the biggest difference
Speaker 1: in my own living fresh journey. So today, no fancy physiology,
Speaker 1: just a little bit of real life, right RL. So
Speaker 1: the first thing I want to talk about, which can
Speaker 1: sound a little bit boring, is time and time management.
Speaker 1: And it isn't about finding more time, because there is
Speaker 1: no more time to actually find. Right, We're all gifted
Speaker 1: with twenty four hours in a day. We need to
Speaker 1: spend seven or eight of those hours sleeping actually, right,
Speaker 1: whether that includes you know, maybe eight hours for sure,
Speaker 1: including your some wine down time and then a little
Speaker 1: bit of stretching before you get out of bed. Right,
Speaker 1: So I kind of need to confess that time management
Speaker 1: is not my greatest strength always. Right. I am in
Speaker 1: Enneagram three, and if you don't know what that means, means.
Speaker 1: I am a producer. I am a driver. I get
Speaker 1: stuff done. I like to be doing. I love projects.
Speaker 1: I am an idea factory. I love creating, which also
Speaker 1: means I can convince myself that I have enough time
Speaker 1: to do three hours of work in an hour, and honestly, right,
Speaker 1: I actually have this alter ego that you know in
Speaker 1: many many of you may or may not know who
Speaker 1: I'm about to mention, mind Martha stewartself back in the
Speaker 1: day when she was making her own marshmallows for her somores.
Speaker 1: That's a thing. I mean, it's way before some of
Speaker 1: y'all were even born. But I like, I just think
Speaker 1: that there's plenty of time to do everything I want
Speaker 1: to do. However, that wasn't that I wasn't The problem
Speaker 1: was that I wasn't really valuating that I didn't value
Speaker 1: my health. The problem was that I expected to fit
Speaker 1: health into kind of whatever time was left over. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I planned my workouts. Yes I knew it had to
Speaker 1: happen in the morning. However, sometimes getting out of the
Speaker 1: house is throwing in an extra load of laundry and
Speaker 1: doing the jog walk first, or making sure blah blah
Speaker 1: blah happened right. And what I've learned over the last
Speaker 1: few months is healthy living really doesn't happened because you
Speaker 1: finally get organized, all right. I didn't have to get
Speaker 1: all of my ducks in a row, and if you
Speaker 1: could see behind me, you'd know that there were several
Speaker 1: boxes on the floor from moving in in April. Yep.
Speaker 1: So it happens because I had to make a decision
Speaker 1: about what is important enough to schedule, and now literally
Speaker 1: my workouts are on my calendar. I know some of
Speaker 1: you are like, I hate the calendar and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to calendar everything, and that's fine. However that means
Speaker 1: to work for you. I'm just going to tell you that,
Speaker 1: whether it's in written form or on a Google doc
Speaker 1: or in a notes app or somewhere, you probably have
Speaker 1: a checklist and if it's sitting in your brain, it
Speaker 1: needs to get out onto a piece of paper or
Speaker 1: into some kind of document, whichever way you prefer to
Speaker 1: have your life kind of organized ish okay, And I
Speaker 1: can only say that because you know already like I've
Speaker 1: just confessed not the most organized person. So now I
Speaker 1: understand that my meal prep needs to be calendarized, grocery
Speaker 1: shopping needs to be on my calendar because if it's
Speaker 1: not scheduled, honestly, life will gladly schedule something else, and
Speaker 1: my idea factory will schedule something else that's way more
Speaker 1: fun and way more creative. It feels like I'm actually
Speaker 1: doing something, and so Honestly, our calendars and our checkbooks
Speaker 1: reveal our priorities way better then our intentions ever, will.
Speaker 1: I know that's a hard pill to swallow, right, because
Speaker 1: when you take a look at someone at your checkbook,
Speaker 1: you see where your money is being spent. And if
Speaker 1: a budget is important to you, then you have to
Speaker 1: figure out, oh, well, all those Amazon stops or all
Speaker 1: the Amazon packages that are showing up may or may
Speaker 1: not be that important, right, And the time that it
Speaker 1: took for you to scroll through Amazon to find those
Speaker 1: things could be time used elsewhere. Okay, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to drop some bombs here in an attempt to help
Speaker 1: you understand the way I had to think about the
Speaker 1: time and how I was using my time. And if
Speaker 1: we're scrolling doom scrolling, right, First of all, we know
Speaker 1: that that's a dopamine addiction in a way, and not
Speaker 1: the productive way to spend our time or create our
Speaker 1: own dopamine. Right, if you listen back, I have several
Speaker 1: episodes about creating dopamine and positive ways and being able
Speaker 1: to keep those things in perspective. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: just tell you that your calendar and your checkbook will
Speaker 1: reveal your priorities way more than what your intentions will,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk about some another like a
Speaker 1: practical aspect of that. And it's something that I know
Speaker 1: a lot of you have done, and like, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I got away from it because I went on vacation,
Speaker 1: or I got away from it because of something life happened,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Right, and I
Speaker 1: have to tell you for a while, and you can
Speaker 1: look back in my old Instagram posts. I thought that
Speaker 1: meal prep had to look like Instagram, right, Like perfect
Speaker 1: identical containers, the perfect recipes, lots of time in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: And as much as I love to cook, and I do,
Speaker 1: and I know that some of you don't, and I'm
Speaker 1: here for that too, some of you don't love to cook.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, I didn't have that kind of
Speaker 1: time along with everything else that I was trying to do.
Speaker 1: And so I've created like meal prep in the simplest
Speaker 1: way post possible. Right, And I'm fortunate enough to have
Speaker 1: a nice big grill outside so I can make lots
Speaker 1: of food at the same time. However, that wasn't always
Speaker 1: the case, and so any good size baking dish can
Speaker 1: create the same meals that I'm creating. Right, It doesn't
Speaker 1: take any longer to make four chicken breadths for your
Speaker 1: family and your dinner than it does to make twelve.
Speaker 1: And if you make twelve, that's a lot less meal prep.
Speaker 1: That's at least three more meals for your family that
Speaker 1: you don't have to spend time cooking when you get
Speaker 1: home from work or get home from wherever it is,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is that you're doing, taking kids, doing carpools, whatever,
Speaker 1: all those things are that are in your life right now.
Speaker 1: So it can look different than what you think it
Speaker 1: needs to look like, right, And it also doesn't have
Speaker 1: to just be chicken breasts. Right. If you're gonna make
Speaker 1: your family burgers, you might as well make ten of
Speaker 1: them or twelve of them and have some extra leftover,
Speaker 1: because you can cut them up and put them into
Speaker 1: a salad. You can cut them up and make them
Speaker 1: into tacos. You can cut them up, or you can
Speaker 1: just have more burgers, or you can put them between
Speaker 1: lettuce wraps. You can cut them and put them in
Speaker 1: a wrap and make something ouse out of it. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to look like I've got my eight
Speaker 1: six little containers, and they all have their perfect carbohydrate
Speaker 1: and protein and veggie and all those things. I am
Speaker 1: here to blow that up out of the water mine
Speaker 1: are It's for me, And I think you might understand
Speaker 1: this as I talk a little bit more. I keep
Speaker 1: it really simple, right. Protein is what I prep. I
Speaker 1: prep protein, and the reason behind that is that's what
Speaker 1: takes time. That's what takes the most amount of time.
Speaker 1: Because if you get home from a long day, I've
Speaker 1: taken care of kids and parents and whatever, all the
Speaker 1: things that you do, and there's frozen chicken breast in
Speaker 1: the freezer, hard as a rock, and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a box of easy tacos or a pizza or no,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna door dash it tonight. You're going to
Speaker 1: do one of You're gonna take the easy route. Right.
Speaker 1: So I figured out that if I made enough protein
Speaker 1: for at least four days, that I really only had
Speaker 1: to cook protein twice a week. Baked potatoes, rice, veggies.
Speaker 1: These things are simple and take less than twenty minutes
Speaker 1: if your protein is already done. So I cook up
Speaker 1: a batch of protein and put them in glass dishes
Speaker 1: and throw them in my fridge. The only time those
Speaker 1: glass dishes are opened is when I'm pulling out what
Speaker 1: I need for a meal, and they go right back
Speaker 1: in the fridge and so they easily last for four days.
Speaker 1: I do not have to do anything else, right. I
Speaker 1: keep fruit really simple, strawberries, blueberries, things that I don't
Speaker 1: have to cut up, right. I don't want to cut
Speaker 1: stuff up because that is just boring and time consuming.
Speaker 1: And veggies, okay, to cut up a whole head of
Speaker 1: cauliflower takes less than three minutes, right, like junk junchin.
Speaker 1: You can just get it done and throw it in
Speaker 1: the microwave steam. It add a little butter, add some seasoning,
Speaker 1: and good to go. Right, Because here's the thing. When
Speaker 1: life gets busy, and we all know that it does,
Speaker 1: I don't have time either to negotiate with myself, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to take the time to be like,
Speaker 1: oh I should be eating this or should be eating that.
Speaker 1: I've already made that decision. There's chicken, there's burgers, there's steaks.
Speaker 1: There's something in there already, right. So I also make
Speaker 1: my dog food. So I do that six pounds at
Speaker 1: a time, so I'm only making food for him like
Speaker 1: once every five or six days, just like I do
Speaker 1: for my family. Rice can be cooked ahead. Potatoes even
Speaker 1: baked potatoes, can be cooked ahead and just put them
Speaker 1: in a dish. Right, You've got greek yogurt, non fat,
Speaker 1: full fat, whatever it is you're at, wherever you are,
Speaker 1: on your plant, boiled eggs. These are all grab and
Speaker 1: go options. And so the less I have to think
Speaker 1: about things, the more likely I am to stay consistent. Right,
Speaker 1: And my coach laughs at me. She's like, Okay, food
Speaker 1: is not the issue here. It's resting. And she's always
Speaker 1: telling you, telling me, not telling you. She's always telling
Speaker 1: me that rest has to be a more important priority.
Speaker 1: So and I've told you that over the last few
Speaker 1: weeks as well. So you know, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: nights that meal prep may suspiciously look like scrambled eggs
Speaker 1: and Greek yogurt. Right, So it's never perfect, but it's
Speaker 1: something that can be done fairly easily and fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: And meal prep is definitely not about perfection by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination. For me, it's making tomorrow easier,
Speaker 1: it's making my next meal easier. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I also think that setting up those kind of expectations
Speaker 1: for yourself is a really big lesson. So when I
Speaker 1: started working with my coach, I thought I would have
Speaker 1: immediate results. My goal was to be thinner for my wedding,
Speaker 1: but what my body needed was something completely different. I
Speaker 1: needed time to restore myself. And I got to tell you,
Speaker 1: it's that skinnier self was not what needed to show
Speaker 1: up for my wedding, all right. That skinnier self was
Speaker 1: absolutely the wrong goal and the wrong expectations that I
Speaker 1: needed to shift around in my head. What needed to
Speaker 1: happen was for my body to be stronger, right, for
Speaker 1: my body to be more rested, for my body to
Speaker 1: be able to do the things that I needed to
Speaker 1: do to be a good wife. It wasn't about feeling
Speaker 1: stronger immediately. It wasn't about eating to feel more comfortable.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about a fast mindset sets change. Right, None
Speaker 1: of that happened. There were weeks when I questioned everything everything.
Speaker 1: There were weeks when I wondered if eating more was
Speaker 1: a mistake. And I think I mentioned that right. I
Speaker 1: had believed some lies that work clearly not true. However,
Speaker 1: I had spent decades building certain beliefs, and you know, Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't expect any of my clients to change overnight,
Speaker 1: so why would I expect myself to do that. Growth
Speaker 1: takes time, Building muscle takes time, changing habits take time,
Speaker 1: right and renewing our mind takes time. And so setting
Speaker 1: some healthy expectations will protect you from unnecessary disappointment. And
Speaker 1: was I a little disappointed when my coach kept telling me, Hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't about getting skinnier, this is about being stronger
Speaker 1: and being more vital. And it finally sunk in, right,
Speaker 1: And I met with her last week and she basically said,
Speaker 1: You've got a couple more months of this. I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: So the next process that I'm going to go through
Speaker 1: with her is not going to start until September. And
Speaker 1: I thought that I was going to start my program
Speaker 1: at that place. So this is a completely different place
Speaker 1: to start, in a completely different place than I ever
Speaker 1: expected to be on my journey. And I want to
Speaker 1: put that out there to help you wrap your head
Speaker 1: around some healthy expectations, right. And the key to that
Speaker 1: is really the last thing that I want to talk
Speaker 1: about today is trusting the process. So if you've listened
Speaker 1: over the last few episodes. I think you've heard me
Speaker 1: say that I gradually had to increase my calories to
Speaker 1: two thousand a day. And that's called maintenance, y'all. Maintenance, maintain,
Speaker 1: that's just maintaining my body. And yes, I'm still smile
Speaker 1: when I say that, because if I had told you,
Speaker 1: if somebody had told me a year ago that I
Speaker 1: would be eating that much and my weight wouldn't change,
Speaker 1: I would have left hysterically, right. I would have been like,
Speaker 1: no way, not going to happen. And I told you
Speaker 1: last week, like I confess, right, Like, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of fear around that because I thought what I
Speaker 1: was doing was working, and what was actually happening was
Speaker 1: I was getting weaker and weaker and weaker. Right, So again,
Speaker 1: if you had told me a year ago that I'd
Speaker 1: be eating two thousand calories and maintaining my weight, I
Speaker 1: might have panicked or laughed or both. And every week
Speaker 1: and every day that went by, I had a choice.
Speaker 1: I could trust decades of fear or I could trust
Speaker 1: a new process. So let that sink in. Are you
Speaker 1: trusting decades of fear or are you going to trust
Speaker 1: a new process. So the same thing happened at the
Speaker 1: gym right every week she was like, keep going at
Speaker 1: a little wait. My son and I had to have
Speaker 1: this conversation. He was like, Mom, in order to do
Speaker 1: progressive overload, you have to overload, which means you don't
Speaker 1: know what overload is until you fail. And so I
Speaker 1: had to embrace failure at the gym of not being
Speaker 1: able to do ten reps, like, oh gosh, I only
Speaker 1: got six. What the heck? That? That just means I
Speaker 1: have potential to get to ten the next week, right,
Speaker 1: And every week I've been able to increase that and
Speaker 1: the experienced mean something way deeper than my muscles. Right.
Speaker 1: It changed my confidence. Those areas of the gym that
Speaker 1: we're all afraid of or were afraid of, are not
Speaker 1: that way anymore. Last week I shared a short story
Speaker 1: about bird seed, right, which seems so inane. However, that
Speaker 1: forty pound bag of bird seed or dog food were
Speaker 1: getting harder to carry, and I didn't want to admit that, right,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't really about the bird seed. Right. I
Speaker 1: realized that I needed to shift something for my life.
Speaker 1: This was about carrying groceries when I'm eighty. This was
Speaker 1: about moving furniture around my house. When I wanted to
Speaker 1: in my older years. This was about hiking and being
Speaker 1: mobile when I go to Greece or Italy or Israel
Speaker 1: or someplace. Right. This was about being able to help
Speaker 1: my grain and kids someday. Right. This was about saying
Speaker 1: yes to adventures that I don't even know may come
Speaker 1: in my life instead of wondering whether my body could
Speaker 1: handle them. And if those are stories that you're already
Speaker 1: telling yourself, I don't think my body can handle this.
Speaker 1: Let this sink in, because it can and it will.
Speaker 1: It does take time, and you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to put that time in. But that really hit me hard.
Speaker 1: Strength isn't really measured by what I can lift in
Speaker 1: the gym today, It's going to be measured by what
Speaker 1: I can do and have freedom outside of the gym.
Speaker 1: And so as the months progressed and I picked up
Speaker 1: that giant bag of bird seed at Costco the other day,
Speaker 1: I realized that WHOA, not only could I pick it up,
Speaker 1: but when I got home, I carried it to the
Speaker 1: back deck, right, And I didn't need to stop. I
Speaker 1: need to ask for help, which that's a whole different program, right,
Speaker 1: Not that I couldn't have asked for help. He was
Speaker 1: staying at My husband was staying right there, right. But
Speaker 1: I smiled to myself and I was proud not just
Speaker 1: of lifting the bird seed, but because I'm building a
Speaker 1: life that I actually want to live twenty years from now. Right.
Speaker 1: So what we do now is how we're going to
Speaker 1: be able to live in the future. So trusting the
Speaker 1: process really can teach you how to trust yourself again.
Speaker 1: And this is really through this journey of stewardship. Stewardship
Speaker 1: isn't dramatic. It's choosing the ordinary, it's choosing the non
Speaker 1: sexy things, and it's keeping promises to yourself to be
Speaker 1: faithful in all of those little things. All right, y'all,
Speaker 1: this has been kind of serious, and I know that.
Speaker 1: And life that we want isn't usually built in leaps, right,
Speaker 1: It's built over hundreds of tiny, little ordinary decisions repeated
Speaker 1: over time. I love, love, love you all. Do not
Speaker 1: compare your beginning with someone else's middle or end. And
Speaker 1: this is what you see on Instagram. Just know that
Speaker 1: living fresh is a very different way to move through that.
Speaker 1: But it's it's going to be it's going to be
Speaker 1: a fun ride, right, all right, y'all enough for today.
Speaker 1: I want you to understand that we are here to
Speaker 1: renew your health, rooted in truth and really just trusting
Speaker 1: that Grace has us every single day. I love you guys.
Speaker 1: Hit subscribe, hit like, reach out to me. I do
Speaker 1: see clients. I'd love to hear from you, and I
Speaker 1: love you. See you next week. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Spark Faith with me, Doctor Chris Sargent. This show is
Speaker 1: about renewed health, rooted and true and restored by Grace.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Thursday morning at nine thirty am Pacific
Speaker 1: on the Transformation Talk Radio for more simple, faith fueled
Speaker 1: steps to live the vision God placed in your heart.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to take the next step? Schedule a
Speaker 1: Discovery call or connect with me at doctor Chris Sargeant
Speaker 1: dot com. That's d R Kris Sergeant dot com. While
Speaker 1: you're there, download my free ebook Endless Energy, the six
Speaker 1: non Negotiable Keys to Endless Energy, and sign up for
Speaker 1: an upcoming masterclass. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share the show,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to connect with you on social media
Speaker 1: at doctor Chris Sargent. Let's keep sparking faith and transformation together.
Speaker 1: You can't wait to see y'all next time. Bestcake, the
Speaker 1: best take,