Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:01]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility and we are here again this week. And if you're listening to this when it comes out, it is Christmas Eve and a whole bunch of holidays are happening. Hanukkah's happening too. So maybe you're getting prepared, packing, doing something. I'm happy to be keeping you company while you prepare for the festivities. We have a bunch of podcasts, by the way, on if you have holiday concerns or anything like that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:35]:
We talked about food pushers last week. I have lots of episodes that are talking about holidays. Anything for Thanksgiving would work for Christmas. I have vacation ones for travel. There's a bunch here for your help. So today isn't going to be about holidays per se, but instead I started with a brand new client. Such an amazing. I love my clients.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:01]:
I just have to say I don't. Maybe it must be all of you who listen to just thoughtful, sincere thoughtful is just such, there's such a perfect word, people, and it's so wonderful. Anyway, I love working with clients. And you, I'm happy to work with you too. Just go to my website, stephaniefinemt.com but I was speaking with her and she's new, so she was just starting with the hunger scale and so many beautiful things came out of the discussion, but one of them was this realization that she was overeating. And that may sound really basic, but I've got to tell you, it's like earth shatteringly important and it's so easy to miss. And that's what we're talking about today. So the important thing about overeating is that that is what causes excess food to be processed and weight to come on our bodies.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:06]:
So it's really valuable to see when we're overeating and we have a perfect tool to find that out. And that's what I'm going to be talking about, the hunger scale. If you're new around here, it's my favorite. If you're not new, you know perfectly well. Hunger scale is amazing. And I'm going to talk to you about this. The understanding, the realization that we're overeating can honestly be shocking. It can be like a surprise discovery, unexpected, because we're not doing anything different than we've been doing for years and years, sometimes decades.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:44]:
And it's not different than what all those people around us are doing. So we feel like, hey, we're just eating. And so the question becomes overeating compared to what? So if we are comparing it to the wrong thing, then maybe we don't think we're overeating because everyone around us is eating the same. So it's not overeating. When we ask ourselves, overeating compared to what one of, I'm going to start here. Compared to those around us, then no, we're not overeating. Right. Because our culture is still steeped in food.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:30]:
Eating out is part of life these days. There was a time when most meals were prepared at home. This is a long time ago at like 70s, even maybe up into the 80s. And. But that usually requires a dedicated human at home to prepare me like multiple meals and clean up after it. It's, it's, it can be very time consuming. And that has changed over the years. So our eating habits have changed out of necessity.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:59]:
And so eating out has its own culture, its own amount, its own way of doing. And then in our culture, food is attached to so many activities, movies, watching, sports and entertainment basically of any kind. Like, you just add food there. It's really, it's about money. I'm going to go into that later. But there in our culture, there's just so much eating, and so it's part of it. And so if we ask ourselves, are we overeating? The answer is no. I should be able to have popcorn here and, you know, cotton candy there.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:39]:
It's just very much a part of our culture. And then there's family culture. And food can be the love language of a family. We talked about food pushers last week that dovetails into this. But also food as connection time, food as relaxation, feeling, food scarcity. Like, if there's big families and you gotta get it while you can, there's so much family culture that goes into our eating. Understandably, we literally grow up with it. And so compared to our family, no, we're not overeating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:16]:
That's why this is an important question. And so overeating compared to what? The second one is overeating compared to what we're served. If we're eating out more than we usually are, then we're starting to see those portions. No, we're not overeating compared to what we're served. We may even leave some on the plate. And that still can be overeating in how we're going to define it, but it's, it's not. I don't go back for seconds at a restaurant. I just eat what's on my plate.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:50]:
And so we're defining it by what is given to us. So then if we ask ourselves, am I overeating the answer is no. I'm just having one plate. Portions are not based on what a body needs, but by other factors, like in capitalism, especially because. And you know, there's many wonderful things about capitalism there. There's. This isn't political and nor am I. But what I mean is I'm not making a value judgment on it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:23]:
I'm just saying for capitalism, they want you to come back. The goal is to have you as a customer and that you enjoy it and you keep coming back. So they're going to make it really tasty with butters and sugar. Like, whatever it is, they're going to make it super tasty. They are not caring about your health. That's not their concern. And they're going to want you to come back if you think it's a great deal. So if they make it a little bigger, like a bigger tortilla, burrito, some more rice, more pasta in there, that's really inexpensive stuff.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:03]:
But they can. So it can look really big and it feels like you're getting a great deal. And our brains just love the dopamine hit from a good deal. And so that's what it's about. Not your health, your body, anything like that. It's just about getting you to come back. So compared to our culture or what we're served, we can easily think we're not overeating. The only real thing that we can use to decide if we're overeating is hunger.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:39]:
Hunger, our body's signal, because eating is necessary only in response to those cues and nothing else. Eating was designed as the way to get fuel into our bodies so we could do the things we want to do. It was not designed to entertain us. Now, we've certainly made it that which is. And there's not a problem with that. But when we're talking about overeating and we care about it because it leads to extra weight on our bodies, then if we stop doing it, we will drop the extra weight. The great thing about hunger scale is it gives us a way to know this. Now we have a way of knowing it because we can be uncomfortable, right? If we eat overeat, we're uncomfortable.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:40]:
We're physically uncomfortable. And on the hunger scale, we're either at a 3, 4, or 5. So if we are uncomfortable or at a 3, 4 or 5, then yes, we ate too much, we overate. That is so useful for us to know because overeating leads to extra weight. And then if we stop overeating, we drop the extra weight. So Just becoming aware of the fact that we're overeating is vital. We have to have that insight. And the hunger scale helps us do that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:24]:
It helps us see that. And it's really the only thing that can. Because if we use anything external, it will always fail us because hunger, our body is designed to give us this valuable information in the form of hunger. Now, for people, it's different, right? Some people get lightheaded, some people get a headache, some people get irritable, some people have a growling stomach, some people have an emptiness in their stomach. I mean, there's all different ways of feeling the hunger. But there's a sensation. We came with the information for us, a sensation. I always think of peeing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:07]:
I know it's like not the most lovely thing, but we have a sensation about when we need to void. That's what tells us. It's the same thing with food and eating. We have a sensation that tells us when to eat and it's always with us. And so it can be exquisitely, like titrated, right? Like so if we exercise more, we may need more and our body will let us know. If we're pregnant, we may need more and our body will let us know. The hunger scale is so important because it gives data numbers to what's actually going on in our body already. It's the system that's installed, comes installed, and we usually end up ignoring it or using the external cues instead of the internal ones.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:01]:
And it's so important to get back to our internal ones. And with like traditional dieting, some of the ways that people try to lose weight is that they use these external forces, like time. You know, I fast, like fasting, you know, I won't eat until noon, even if you're very hungry. Those are artificial ways, you know, and calorie restriction, of course, is the, you know, I would say gold standard of. What I mean is gold standard of diet. Dieting, which is not the thing we do around here, that the idea that one size fits all or you or just do anything you can to get only these few amount of calories in, it just doesn't last. Like, it doesn't last. Fighting against the system that we have, our factory settings will fail at some point.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:01]:
And so we want to work with our system, not against it. And that's why the traditional ways of dieting do not last. But the hunger scale is something that lasts. It can help you now when you're pregnant and when you're lactating after you're pregnant, when you go through menopause, all of it. Because it's the system that you came with. Now, I'm not saying that all systems are created equal. There are definitely people who have a much tighter hunger cue system. They are your naturally thin people.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:40]:
But we absolutely, those of us I definitely do not consider myself a naturally thin person, we can get much better at using our hunger scale and get really good at it and get to the place that our body is most comfortable. And the wonderful thing about it is what we're doing is we're honoring our body by following the hunger scale. Hunger is such a valuable sensation. It lets us know when we're low on fuel, and it lets us know when there's enough for now. The way we do that is our body lets us know we've had enough for now. And the ideal way of using it is that we can do things afterwards. We can go on, we can function with our day. We don't have to take a nap or be in a food coma.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:37]:
That's when we get in pain from eating too much. That's when we have to lie down. But if we end up eating until we've had enough, when we're satisfied, not full, we can go on and do all the things we need to do. We got the fuel that we needed, and often we've just lost touch with that system due to all the factors above. You know, the culture, our family, all the rest of that stuff over years and decades. So we want to get back in touch. And the way to get back in touch with our hunger cues is to practice the hunger scale. And the hunger scale goes from negative 5, which is completely empty, to positive 5, which is overstuffed, undoing your pants, laying down.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:31]:
We never want to be at the extremes. Where we want to be is negative two, which is just hungry, not the first whiff of hunger. The first whiff of hunger is negative one, but just actually hungry is negative two. And then positive two is satisfied, not full. And that's such an important place to learn to be because most of us stop when we're full, which is three. And that usually comes with some sort of discomfort. It's often an easier signal to interpret, to hear in our sort of distracted, loud world. We're like, oh, a little bit of pain or discomfort.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:13]:
Okay, now I'll stop. But what we really want is to stop before that. And we can learn to do that by practicing using the hunger skill. And the way we do that is we ask ourselves multiple times a day, what number am I at? What number Am I now? And remember, it goes from negative 5, negative 4, negative 3, negative 2, negative 1, 0, and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And our sweet spot is we eat at negative 2 and we stop at positive 2. And as we're practicing in the beginning, of course we're not going to get it right. I'm putting right in air quotes. We're going to still overeat, maybe less than we did before, but that's.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:01]:
We have to practice, we have to try. Before we can know what we're doing, we have to be able to try it. This is experiential. There's no other way of doing it. Then we learn what our hunger scale is and we start to adjust our intake to honor our body. And it starts to make so much sense to be kind to our body, to listen to it. When we know that the food is really related to it, the body is the thing that needs it. And it's going to tell you when it wants it and when it's had enough.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:49]:
So it starts to make less sense to make our bodies chew and process food when it's not needing any. And then we also don't want to give it too much so that it's physically uncomfortable. We grow to love our body. We start to have a better relationship with it because we want it to feel good. And then it becomes a mutual love affair because then your body starts to feel better, not as tired, no food comas, no discomfort. And then it drops weight because it doesn't have to keep the excess anymore and it doesn't have to process extra food. It just gets what it needs because you're attuned to it more. And that only comes with practice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:46]:
But it's so nice to have a mutual beneficial relationship with our own body, to love it, to respect it. And that can be really hard if we're very used to hating it, frankly, which is what our culture especially does to women, that we should hate our bodies, that it should look this way and if it doesn't, it's terrible. And then, and then fertility issues are make that worse because we're thinking it's not working the way it's supposed to. And when we lose weight this way, we're strengthening the relationship we have with our bodies. We're appreciating things about it, we're listening to it. And that sort of attention and love always benefits us. It benefits the body, but it benefits us our way of thinking as well. And this is ideal weight loss from a place of love for our body, a place of understanding our body, of being kind to it, learning how to give it what it needs and not have to deal with the excess.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:57]:
This can be done, and it starts with the hunger scale. I just love this tool, the Hunger Scale. If you're new to it, welcome, welcome, welcome. And if not, then you're very aware of all this stuff and it's nice to get a refresher. I have a lot of episodes of this podcast, past episodes that cover each number in depth, and we're going to link those up in the show notes. So just to sort of recap, overeating is the only problem we have to solve to lose weight. And the only way to tell if we're overeating is not by looking to our family or the culture that we live in, but by learning to listen closely to what our body is telling us through its hunger and satiety signals. And the best way to learn to do that is with the hunger scale.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:53]:
I'm just sending you so much love. I love the hunger scale. I love our bodies. I love the way things work. I love working with you. There are so many things I love. And I'm wishing you happy holidays with love. So I hope you have a wonderful week.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:10]:
I'm going to see you next week. I hope you have connections and joy and celebrations and light and love, love, love. If you want to reach out to me at any time, you can do that. Stephaniefinemd.com or stephaniefinemd on Instagram and LinkedIn. Have a beautiful holiday. Sending love. Mwah.
