110. Why Gratitude Might Be the Missing Piece in Your Weight Loss Journey

This Thanksgiving, we’re talking about something deeper than turkey and pumpkin pie — gratitude. 🦃✨

In this episode, Dr. Stacy dives into how gratitude isn’t just good for your mood — it’s a proven mindset tool that can lower stress, improve emotional eating, and make healthy habits stick. Learn how a daily gratitude practice can help you feel calmer, sleep better, and finally shift from “what’s wrong” to “what’s working.”

You’ll hear:
💛 How gratitude lowers cortisol and helps regulate appetite
💛 Why focusing on what’s enough changes everything
💛 Simple gratitude practices you can actually keep up with
💛 How to use gratitude to calm cravings or negative self-talk
💛 Real ways to make gratitude part of your day — no journaling marathons required

By the end, you’ll see that gratitude doesn’t replace your protein or workouts — it amplifies them.

So before you dive into leftovers, tune in for a mindset reset that could change how you see your body, your habits, and your health journey.

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody, happy Thanksgiving. I want to talk about gratitude because it's Thanksgiving, number one. Number two, I do think it is very useful in weight loss and I think it's often overlooked, but it is one of my favorite mindset tools to use. So I know we can get really like cliche, especially around this time of year, everything in the stores is like gratitude, all the, right, everywhere.

Gratitude really can change your body chemistry and it can change your entire outlook on everything without trying too hard, right? We don't need to like sit for hours and list a thousand things we're grateful for. One little piece of gratitude a day can absolutely change how we interact with the world. It can lower cortisol, that's our stress hormone, we know that it does all kinds of bad things for weight loss, but being grateful when you go to sleep, you like sleep better, boost your serotonin and your dopamine and all your feel-good chemicals. And it changes our focus. And so when we are trying to think of things that we're grateful for, and it's in our mind to like, what's one thing I can find today to be grateful for? Our brain finds what it focuses on. So we're focusing on gratitude, our brain is going to find things to be grateful for.

I always think of it like if you go to work and you're like, I hate this place, I hate work, right? Your brain is going to tell you all the things you hate about work. And when you're focused on that, that is what you're going to find. You're going to find everything bad about work. When you go in and you're like, I think I really like my job. And you ask your brain to start finding the evidence for that, it will. And so you'll find all kinds of things you like about your job. Now, that's not to say some of us have not reached an end point with our jobs. That's just an example, so no judgment. I've left jobs I didn't like. I get it, okay? Sometimes we are past the focusing on nice things. But the idea of looking around the world and finding things in our universe that we can be grateful for, when we focus on that and we like ask our brain to find that evidence, it really can strengthen this idea that the universe is working for me, okay?

The universe is giving me things to be grateful for. The universe is good and I'm good and I deserve happiness and all of these great thoughts that help with weight loss at the end of the day, all can start with just asking ourselves, what am I grateful for?

So I don't want to take a lot of time today because it's Thanksgiving, but I just want to say this focus from scarcity to enough, from let me find what's wrong to let me find what's good can change our entire experience of the world.

I call it like a love shield, right? When we put on the gratitude filter and we ask our brain to look at the world through that, right? It is like rose-colored sunglasses. So if I'm asking my brain to filter the world, to find what is good, find things I can be grateful for, I'm going to see a lot more of it, okay? I remember being coached myself once because I am a doctor. I sometimes go into the world with this idea of what can I fix, right? If I went into the medical field to help people, when I want to help people, that means something must be wrong. So without even consciously thinking of it, my brain was always scanning for like, what's wrong? What can I fix? What can I help? And when that was pointed out to me, I could absolutely see where my brain was doing that all the time. It made perfect sense.

So this idea of being just a little bit mindful of what our brain is searching for in the world, what filter we've asked our brain to put on, which pair of sunglasses we've asked our brain to put on, can really change our entire experience in the world. So because it's Thanksgiving, I'm asking you to put on your rose-colored sunglasses or fall-colored sunglasses, whatever color you want. But that filter of gratitude and thankfulness and see how it can change your experience in the world.

When we turn that filter on ourselves and ask things like, what's one thing about my body I can be grateful for today? You can see where that can start to change our negative self-talk, right? If I'm normally someone who goes into any experience with my body with this negative filter of my body is wrong, when I look in the mirror, my brain is going to tell me what's wrong with my body. Because I've asked it to focus on that. If I say what's one thing I can be grateful for about my body, it's going to find the evidence. It all goes back to the same concept of asking better questions. So when we are asking, what's one thing I can be thankful for in my marriage, in my family, in my environment, in my job, in me?

What's one thing about me I can be grateful for? That filter can really change everything. So I don't want you to underestimate the power of looking for things to be grateful for, of asking our brain, what can I be grateful for? Especially when it comes to our self-talk and our bodies. Okay, so here's some potential gratitude practices that might stick, okay?

Gratitude at the dinner table. I know every year we do this at Thanksgiving, like that's kind of what I grew up with, but there's no reason we can't do it every night. So at Thanksgiving, we would go around the table and say one thing we're thankful for. Imagine your experience of the world if you did that every night. If everyone at the table said one thing about their day that they were grateful for. Like, my gosh, how nice, right? First of all, we'd be talking to each other, which a lot of people miss out on, but a lot of times it's like a gripe session, right? So if we could switch the focus, let's ask everybody what they can be grateful for.

Maybe do one to three things I'm grateful for right before bed and keep a little journal. I sent one of my clients this one gratitude journal. I don't even remember how often it is, but it goes for a couple years. She said it's so easy and she's so excited because at the end of that time, she's going to have all these amazing memories and things to be grateful for. So we can do it at the dinner table, we can do it before bed, we can send a text every day or once a week to tell someone that we're grateful for them. How nice would it feel to get that from someone saying like, I'm grateful for you. Like, thank you. Maybe we should find a way to send it to ourselves, right? How nice would that be? Send it to yourself a week from now. Like, I'm thankful for you today. Like, thank you for food prepping for me today. Plan ahead, Stacy, right? It would be lovely.

Morning gratitude. If it's something that you already do, right, we have it stack. This is just about habit stacking. If you already have a moment that you're not thinking or doing, maybe that would be the time. So I always think like brushing your teeth, right? You have to brush them for at least a minute. So while you're brushing your teeth, you could easily just think of something you're grateful for.

And I think it's easier, you can do this either time, right? We're brushing our teeth more than once a day. I think the end of the day is a little bit easier. Most of the time, mornings are a little hectic, so it's a little hard to find something like in the most hectic hour of our day, like what's something this morning I'm grateful for. But if you can, that's even better, right? Morning and night, you'd have two things a day. Like I'm grateful that everyone is getting their school clothes on without me having to yell or the weather is beautiful, anything. These don't need to be major, like I'm grateful for this very deep-hearted thing. Just be like, I'm grateful that the sun's out and it's not raining or I'm grateful that it is raining, the plants need water, right? Just one small piece of gratitude. If you can pair it with movement, like if you do take a morning walk, I find it's easiest to be grateful for lots of things while I'm taking a walk.

Like I love counting critters and like just thinking about all the things and like how nice, like I love our neighborhood. So just any of these can be gratitude practices that stick a little bit, okay? Habit stack in the morning, do it with something like brushing your teeth. If you can pair it with movement, I think it's just easier, like moving already. I'm asking you guys to be grateful that you're moving anyway. So your brain should already be searching for things to be grateful for.

We can schedule some texts or put it on our calendar to send a text to somebody, dinner table or before bed. So the most important thing I want to say on this Thanksgiving is that I am very thankful for all of you who have listened to my podcast. It's been over a year. It's two years actually this month. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving. All right, I'll talk to you guys next week. Bye.