Did you know YouTube started out as an online dating site? Twitter developed from a podcast startup?
Some of the biggest companies in the world only found success, after pivoting their business in another direction. That’s what this episode’s guest experienced.
Trina Dorrah, MD, MPH is an internal medicine physician hospitalist and founder of Dr. Trina Dorrah Life Coaching.
She is a certified self-love and body acceptance coach who earlier this year found there was a disconnect in her business, and she need to do something about it quickly. She got up the courage to change her coaching niche in mid-stream, and this action transformed her practice to even greater heights! If you are feeling your business may need to go a different way, you’ll definitely want to hear her story!
LINKS:
Dr. Trina Dorrah Life Coaching Website: https://drtrinadorrah.com
Facebook Group for Women: https://www.facebook.com/groups/selfloveandbodyacceptanceforwomen
Facebook Group for Physicians Only: https://www.facebook.com/groups/weightlossfreedomforphysicians
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trinadorrah/
Dr. Trina Dorrah’s Contact Info Email: trina@drtrinadorrah.com
The 8 Week Body Acceptance Bootcamp – https://mailchi.mp/drtrinadorrah/8wkbodyacceptancebootcamp
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike. welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD really looking forward to this talk. Another physician coach. He’s an internal medicine physician hospitalist and the founder of Dr. Trina Dorrah life coaching. She’s a certified self love and body acceptance coach. Her mission is to help women learn more about how to break free from the diet mentality and the culture of self sneaker that teaches women, that our bodies are never good enough.
And I was so intrigued about her bio. I really wanted to have her on. So it’s really just coincidental, but I think it’s pretty awesome is that we actually have the founder of Dr. Trina Dorrah Life Coaching. Dr. Trina Dorrah.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: Hello! I’m doing good. How are you doing?
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: It’s really unique how you actually named it after yourself now?
I was really intrigued about this because before we got on the call… I’ve been interviewing physician coaches lately and recently, you changed your niche, not completely changed it, but you decided to morph it into something different. And I really wanted to have you on, because I know that there are coaches you listen on here who maybe not really happy about the coaching that they’re doing, and maybe you feel that they could reach more people for whatever reason and switch to something else. So I want to get your insight and your thoughts into why you decided to do this.
But before I go in… I’m a little bit of a comic book nerd. I wanna know how did Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man? How did Clark can become Superman? So how did Dr. Trina Dorrah become Dr. Trina Dorrah life coach?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: So I actually hired a life coach myself. And so interestingly, I hired him to help me with fitness because he had been a fitness coach. And after I hired him, he said, “oh yeah, by the way, since the last time you worked with me, I’ve become a life coach.”
And yes, fitness is part of what I teach, but I’m also teaching a lot more about mindset and wellbeing overall. And so I said I’ll give it a try. I don’t really know about this, but I’ll try it. And I actually ended up really loving it. And so whenever I was able to see the impact that he was having on people, I was just like, this is amazing.
We all become physicians because we want to have an impact on people. And then I saw that he was having an impact and people were equally as touched by the work he was doing as a life coach. And that’s where that first, that thought really put, was put in my head at that time. Oh, maybe this is another way that I can help people.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming:
In addition to medicine, may I ask, where were you in, in your career and decided to go for life coach? Because although we have many non-physicians who listened to the call, many are physicians and many, suffice it to say they may be a little bit skiddish about hearing the term life coach. Where were you when you decided to reach out to this?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: I was 12 years post residency, whenever I first decided to work with him. And then, like I said, I actually didn’t reach out to a life coach. I reached out to a fitness coach. He said, by the way, I’m doing some life coaching. And so I don’t know if I would have really known to reach out to a life coach had and not just happened this way.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Interesting. Interesting. So did you have friends who had the same coach or maybe had experiences with life coaches and had a positive.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: So actually what happened was I was at a work conference and you know how a lot of times at conferences for the icebreaker, you have to say something interesting about yourself.
So I ended up saying for my interesting fact, that I was working with a life coach. At lunch that day, there was another physician who said, oh, I heard you’re working with a life coach. Have you ever heard of it? Brooke Castillo. And so Brooke Castillo actually founded the life coach school where I got my training.
And so she said, you should try her monthly life coaching program. And so I did end up trying her monthly life coaching program. I fell in love with it, decided to become certified as a life coach through the life coach school. But that was how it started. I mentioned it as a fun fact at a conference and another physician who heard it said I’ve been doing some life coaching through this program. You might find it interesting.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And why? And I assume at the time you were a busy doctor doing all your doctor stuff that we do, what just, why did you decide to take that?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: I was lucky in that I already had something else within medicine, outside of just seeing patients that I really love. So when I finished residency, I did a fellowship in quality improvement.
And so I’m actually our medical director for inpatient quality improvement at my hospital. And I love it. The ability to see patients one week and the new quality another week is so fun to me, it uses different parts of my brain and I just get to do different things. So already I was really happy by that.
Clinical care and administrative care. And then when I learned about life coaching, I was like, this is just another thing that I can do in my spare time. That brings me happiness and enjoyment. So I feel that I’m actually a pretty happy doctor because I get to see patients, I get to do quality and now I get to do life coaching.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: t’s actually sometimes rare to see a happy doctor. So that’s awesome. So you found your outlet. So tell me about your life coach journey. How did it first start? How did you first start getting clients? Or how did you first deciding what your niche was? And as we talked about this top of the show, why did you transition to a different type of thing?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: So it’s definitely not as easy as I initially thought it was going to be. I think in medicine, particularly as a hospitalist, I’ve never had to do any kind of marketing or find patients as a hospitalist. The patients are just there. And the person who had inspired me to become a life coach, which was this fitness coach.
He had been in the game for 15 years already. So he had a pretty large clientele who was very passionate about him. So I thought, huh. I’ll just announce I’m a life coach and I’ll get the same thing.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: That’s where the dreams build it.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: Oh I just assumed this is what happens. You announce a challenge and you enter people sign up and so little did I know that maybe now a few coaches have that happens too, but I think in general, It doesn’t quite happen like that.
And now I realize he’s, he was 15 years into it at the time. So I was comparing my beginning to after he’d already been working for 15 years. And so when I started, though, I immediately decided I wanted my niche to be coaching divorced women. And the reason I chose that is because I, myself have gotten a divorce in the past.
And I always said that I wanted to use my experience in divorce to help other women. And so that was initially what I did. And I did that for the first year of my coaching journey.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. So when did you decide to change this? Was it from the clients you had? Did you feel that there was a disconnect or did you want more challenges in your coaching?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: I think it stems from the fact that currently, as we are speaking today, I got divorced 10 years ago. And so I did notice that a lot of times when I was writing copy or coming up with things to say, I was having to draw on, memories that were 10 years old at the time. I also wasn’t in the place anymore where I was hurting.
I actually now look at my divorce is one of the best things that ever happened to me because of the person that I became through it. And so I was extremely happy with my life in the divorce, but I was wanting to help people who were at a place where they were not happy. They did not want the divorce. They were really hurting, broken,
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I think I saw an article from Kevin MD about that. Okay. You said the divorce was the best thing that happened in your life. You don’t hear that often. What compelled you to write that and tell us why you feel that.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: I think it’s just because I became such a different, stronger, more powerful person because of the divorce.
I got married in my twenties. As soon as I graduated from medical school, I got married the very next day after graduation. And so I just got really used to this habit. I was a busy intern at that time, we took Q4 overnight call, working 80 hours a week. And I just lost myself in the marriage.
Like I just focused on being a doctor, let him take care of everything else. And over the course of that marriage, I really lost who I was. I lost, what? I enjoyed my own opinions, those types of things. And whenever I got divorced, it really forced me to take a lot of responsibility for myself.
And then also to just figure out who Trina was and what Trina liked to do. And it was very difficult at the beginning, but so many things. When I traveled by myself, I took up hobbies. I made new friends. I always have had a little bit of kind of social anxiety. I forced myself to get out there. I went on a speed dating event.
I forced myself to get out there and try to get over my social anxiety stuff. And so all of these things that I was doing, whereas when I was married, I just sat back and let him take control of everything. Whether it’s when I got divorced, I was forced to explore these parts of myself. And so now I never want to go back to being that kind of docile person who just did whatever he wanted.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. You make reference to Trina Dorrah 1.0 versus 2.0 point now. So suffice it to say you probably wouldn’t be. We probably wouldn’t be talking as a life coach expert, if that didn’t happen. So let’s talk about, I guess maybe we’re going to call this Trina 2.5 or 3.0, so let’s talk about the niche that you’re in. You felt that there was a disconnect. Let’s talk about why you transitioned to the new niche and tell us more about what you’re doing.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: Yeah. So there’s actually a story there. And so the story is for many years I had an eating disorder and it was one of those things where I just, it never seemed serious enough.
I tried to get treatment a couple of times over the course of my life. Never really stuck. And then I just have convinced myself that it’s not that bad. I’ll just live with this, the rest of my life. When COVID happened and we heard all kinds of stories, about how physicians coped and dealt with COVID.
And so you’ve heard stories of people who started drinking too much, or maybe some physicians who did drugs or sunk into deep depression, et cetera. And so my coping mechanism was overeating. And there is an eating disorder called binge eating disorder. So my coping mechanism was. I guess you use my eating disorder to try to cope with life.
I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time. Now I do understand it. And it just got to the point where I couldn’t control it anymore. And as a physician, we’re very good at controlling things. So everything else in my life was in control except for this one thing. And I just could not control it.
And so I finally did seek help, which was not an easy thing to do. I think it’s very difficult for physicians to ever say they need help with anything. And I was very ashamed. I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing except my husband. And so I went and got help. And so getting help was the new, best thing that’s ever happened in my life.
So before it was the divorce now getting help and that experience completely changed me to the point that whenever I got out, I was like, I have got to share what I’ve learned with other people. No, I do want to make it clear. I am not an eating disorders therapist. Okay. So I am not a therapist. I’m not a psychiatrist.
But one thing that I learned is yes, there’s a percent of the population that has an eating disorder, but particularly among women, there are so many women who don’t officially qualify as having eating disorders, but still have a lot of disordered eating. Disordered thoughts, self hatred. They don’t love themselves.
They don’t love their bodies. And that’s who I decided that I really wanted to help. Like I have now found so much freedom and I’m happier than I have ever been. And I felt like this is a message that I had to get out there to people. And so that’s what actually prompted me to change my needs.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Let me ask how your coaching works.
Do you work one on one? Do you do a group and who do you consider is someone that this is best for?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: So I do both. I’ve done one-on-one and I’ve done groups. So my upcoming challenge, like the eight week body acceptance bootcamp is a group coaching format, but I do one-on-one. So I definitely work with women and it doesn’t matter if they’re physicians or not.
I have worked with both physicians and non-physicians, and I really want to work with someone who is tired of the diet rollercoaster and the diet mentality. And by that, That mentality, where we always feel like we have to measure everything or weigh everything or count points, or if you eat something that’s off plan, you feel guilty.
This morning. I had a slice of apple pie and I was able to fully enjoy it and not feel guilty about it. Whereas before I would have felt so guilty, I would have been like, oh my gosh, I guess I can only eat salad the rest of the day. I need to go to the gym and workout for two hours. So I want to help women break free of that mentality and say it is okay to have a slice of apple pie every now and then it is okay.
If your body does not look the exact same now, as it looked when you were a senior in high school, like that is fine. That’s okay. You’re still worthy. You’re still beautiful. And so that’s what I really want to help people or women in particular.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Tell him, I know don’t have time for this, but. What have you noticed in terms of like how society is in terms of the term body acceptance and maybe some of these unrealistic role models that we see out there.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: You hear people talk a lot about thin privilege. And so basically what they’re saying is. We live in a society where if you are smaller, you do have a certain amount of privilege that people might think you’re more beautiful, or you might be able to get a job more easily, or people don’t think negative things automatically about you.
Oh, they must be lazy. They can’t stick to, stick to any kind of plan or anything like that. But the reality is there are so many women of all different shapes and sizes. We are not all made to be the exact same size and there was nothing wrong with people who are small either. My thing is you.
I want women to embrace and accept where they are supposed to be. So there are some women who naturally are supposed to be a size zero or a size two, and that’s okay. There are some women who naturally are a six or a 12 or 16. And so I want to help people embrace where they are. And even if they want to engage in healthier behaviors and exercise, or even if they want to try to lose weight for health reasons, it doesn’t work well when you’re coming at it from a place of hating yourself and it doesn’t work well when you are coming at it from a place of being on a very restrictive diet, which is what I always thought you had to do.
I always thought, oh, I want to lose weight. I need to go. Superscript diet a thousand calories, 10 grams of sugar. I can only eat five things. And so that’s what I thought the answer was because when I did that, I always lost weight. But what I didn’t realize is that was just setting me up for bingeing later in setting me up for gaining all the weight back because those diets were not sustainable.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And I know you both work with physicians as well as non-physicians, but have you noticed with the physicians that you work at or have gone through your program? That there may be a nut there. Another level to that, because as health providers, I know myself, who’ve had weight issues as well. There is even more of a a thought that we have to live the life that we’re as a health provider.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: I think there’s definitely a lot of shame among health, healthcare providers and physicians in particular, if they feel that they are not living life, the way that they’re telling their patients to live it. And then I also have noticed a lot of physicians say I can’t really get on board with embracing that any size is okay because of other health consequences.
But one of the things I talked about, and there’s a movement called the health at every size movement. You can still engage in healthy behaviors, no matter what your size. So even if you’re 400 pounds, there’s something that you can do to exercise or make different choices. One thing that my dietician always said, and I love this is she said, don’t think about like, when you’re looking at your plate of food, don’t think about it.
What you need to take away or what, make judgements about that food. She’s you can just think of it as, what can I add to this plate to make it more balanced. And so I have done that before. Like I might have some chicken nuggets and if you French fries and I say, okay, what can I add to make this more better?
I’m going to add some broccoli, which is a different mentality than, oh, Trina, look at this. This is bad. You’re going to gain weight. You shouldn’t eat this. I guess you’d better. Go get some broccoli. So those are two different mentalities.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Unless about, we’ve got an upcoming event you’re putting on, it’s called the Body Acceptance Bootcamp.
It starts September 7th. Tell us all about it. Yeah.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: So it’s an eight week body acceptance bootcamp. And so basically it covers these concepts so intuitive eating help regardless of your size. Self-love self-worth acceptance, et cetera. And so I really want to just, again, help people get off of that diet rollercoaster.
So even if they have a desire to lose weight, I want to help move them away from the typical type of diet that says you must restrict because restriction really doesn’t work restriction just sets us up for failure. So I want to teach all of these concepts and really just help women find freedom around food so that again, they can have a slice of apple pie.
And not feel guilty about it. Or they can go to a restaurant with their friends and not be so consumed with how many calories everything has that they can’t really even enjoy the conversation with their friends. So now that I have found this freedom around food, it’s freed up so much mental energy, like all that energy.
That from the moment I used to wake up, I used to be thinking about what my body looked like. What I was going to put in it, how many calories when I was going to exercise, like I used to think about this all the time. It’s freed up so much energy, so I could be doing what this talking to you or working on my coaching business, or be more focused on my patients at work because I no longer care as much about what my body looks like.
Yes, I still want to take care of my body and respect my body, but that is not my primary thought anymore.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I love this. So if someone is listening to this or watching this video, we’re going to go to find out more information about your boot camp and your coaching.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: Yeah. So they can definitely go to my website, drtrinadorrah.com And then they can also follow me on Facebook. And I put a lot of information on my Facebook, my personal Facebook profile.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: .Awesome. Awesome. We’ve got the body acceptance boot camps, eight week program starting September 7th. I love the passion in your voice. I could definitely tell. Your coaching is just an extension of who you are and providing more value to the world. What have you learned as a physician coach that perhaps you didn’t get prior to doing all of this?
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: It’s very different, I think, than medicine. And especially as more physicians are joining large organizations that kind of take care of all the business side of things for you. And then you just show up and see patients.
I’ve had to learn how to do Facebook ads or learn how to create newsletters or websites, marketing. All of these things do Facebook lives talk on podcasts like this. And so this is all. Very different set of skills than what I had being a physician. And so I found it to be really fun. That’s what I just try to remind myself of is that this is supposed to be fun, but I don’t want to take on a second job that is as stressful as my first job or that I’m not having fun in.
So I enjoy even all the things that I’m having to learn. What I just think of it as something that’s fun. That’s adding enjoyment to my life.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I will. I can definitely tell. I could definitely tell that you now know what your mission is. It sounds like your, or at least one parts of you mentioned.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: And I live this every day too. So what I am coaching on I’m living as well in my own life. And so in this moment, and I think it really shows.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Roughly learning from our clients as well, our students as well. So Trina, thank you so much. It was very good conversation. This is definitely a mission that I wanted, that we should all hear whether, whatever we are in life, in, big wherever we are, it’s something that we should be more aware of that as far for self, but also perhaps if we have quiet, Who deal with this as well, and to help them understand.
So go and check out her website. It’s Dr. Trina Dorrah.com.
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: Can I say one other thing? I’m sorry, you just brought this up. This is important to say. I do think it is important for physicians to educate themselves on the overweight population and even on patients that do have eating disorders, just to understand how.
Putting the patient on the scale and announcing their weight out loud may be very triggering to them or this idea of everything that is wrong with them is just related to their weight. And the fact that discourages a lot of patients for seeks from seeking care and wanting to come back to the doctor.
And so I do think it’s important as physician. For us to think about, okay, how do I have these conversations with patients? Because you don’t want a patient to think, oh, they only always think it’s my weight. I’m embarrassed, I’m shame. And I’m always shamed at the doctor, so I’m not going to go.
We don’t want that to happen. So I just wanted to bring up that point because that’s really important.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And that leads into another conversation that probably could take us. We don’t get any type of training into weight management, no weight loss. I think I had a one hour nutrition course in med school that was about it.
So again, very important point, perhaps we’ll have another conversation about this in a future podcast, but once again, thank you, Dr. Trina, please check out her site. Body acceptance bootcamp. It’s hopping on September 7th. It’s an eight week program. Go to Dr. Trina Dorrah that’s. You can find her on Facebook or wherever you follow social media, any last minute words before we end the calL
Dr. Trina Dorrah, MD: today and just thank you for what you’re doing with the website and just highlighting position coaches.
I think that. Coaching is something that can benefit every person and in particular, every physician. But I really thank you for your work in trying to make this more mainstream.
Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I appreciate it too. And I think it also, I lost a note, a pattern that those who become coaches have been coached themselves.
I’ve rarely found one that, I’m just going to start up a coaching program, personal benefit by having a mentor, having a coach on there. And that realized. Yes, they too have a message that they want to show her the world, it just making it a better place. So thanks everybody for listening. Thank you, Trina.
As always guys, if you’re considering coaching or getting coach, it’s not about just standing and research about it, go out, find the coaches out there, just like you to become. For you to do it, just start it today and keep moving forward.