Katrina Ubell, MD worked for a decade as a pediatrician. After years of big fluctuations in her weight, she lost 45 pounds in a year and has been able to keep it off since. With her physician husband’s encouragement, she left her practice to launch her own business, where she focuses on helping other physicians understand their food habits so they can make permanent changes to their lifestyles.
“Swapping out different actions will only help for so long, because you’ll still be thinking those thoughts and feeling those feelings that don’t support you.”
Katrina lives in Wisconsin with her husband, who is a surgeon, and their children.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Katrina Ubell is a Master Certified Life and Weight Loss Coach and host of the popular Weight Loss for Busy Physicians Podcast. After completing her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Dr. Ubell worked in a private pediatric practice for 10 years, during which time she lost 45 pounds in 12 months without surgery, pills, unhealthy crash diets, or fitness apps. Now, Ubell leverages her experience as a pediatrician and as a mother to help other busy doctors prioritize their health and achieve permanent weight loss.
Katrina’s work has been featured in notable outlets like NPR and on industry podcasts like The Doctor’s Life with Dianne Ansari-Winn, MD and The Science of Self-Help with Dr. Jennifer Greer.
Social media, website, book link:
- Weight Loss for Busy Physicians
- Instagram: @coachkatrinaubellmd
- Podcast: Weight Loss for Busy Physicians
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
- When Katrina was approaching her 40th birthday, she committed to losing weight, applying the skills she’d learned from working with a life coach. She was also feeling stagnant at her job and began to think about other options, including retiring early. She decided to take a break from working and focus on coaching other doctors who were trying to lose weight.
- Over the last five years, Katrina has built a $5 million life coaching business that has helped more than 1,000 doctors lose weight and keep it off.
- To prepare financially to leave her practice, Katrina and her husband, a surgeon, evaluated their expenses. They had paid off their student debt and her husband’s practice was still growing, and they were paying their nanny as much as Katrina earned in profit sharing each year. They realized they could still accomplish their financial goals without her salary.
- Katrina works with her physician clients to create a diet plan that works for each person, full of food they like to eat and responsive to their schedules.
- She also focuses on understanding why people developed the habits that they have and what emotions inform those habits. If her clients can address those emotions, Katrina ays, they’re more likely to make permanent changes to their habits.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, lots of people have turned to food and alcohol for comfort. Katrina says that’s normal, but we should work to recognize when we’re doing that so that we can replace unhealthy habits with healthier ones.
WORDS OF WISDOM:
“What’s unique about doctors is the schedule, the unpredictability, and also this believe that people don’t get it — people in the dieting industry or nutritionists, they just don’t understand what our life is like. I understood that because I felt the same way.”
“Every action you take is driven by an emotion, and your emotions are created by your thinking. Many of us have thoughts that create a lot of negative emotion for us that we just don’t want to feel, and therefore a snack makes it better. Or we think thoughts like, ‘I had a hard day; I deserve this extra glass of wine.’ Those are thoughts. They aren’t facts.”
“Swapping out different actions will only help for so long, because you’ll still be thinking those thoughts and feeling those feelings that don’t support you.”
“The ability to process emotion, fear, uncertainty — being with yourself, and not feeling like you have to be feeling this way all the time, and then not eating or drinking to try to make it go away — that is amazing.“
“I think a lot of people have a lot of shame around their debt. They’re trying to pay it off quickly so they can stop feeling shame, not realizing that it’s not the debt that’s creating the shame, it’s your thoughts about the debt that are creating the shame.”
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If you liked this episode, here’s another I think you’ll enjoy: Episode 24: Understanding Physician Burnout with Nisha Mehta, MD
