Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And when we're losing weight, we're changing a bunch of things because if we didn't change anything, then everything would stay the same. I know, that's clear. I'm gonna be talking about some basic things, but some of them are important to point out. And when we're changing things, it can be hard. And that's what I want to talk about today.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:32]:
How to make it easier. How to make it easier to follow through on something we decide to do that is such an integral part of losing weight. And of course, the way we're going to do it here is with kindness. That's a little sneak peek. The most important thing being that this works. So whenever I introduce the idea of kindness, it always feels like, oh, that's not gonna work. I have to be very tough on myself. I promise it's worth it to try because I'm always looking for sustainable changes.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:07]:
Not changes for two months, but changes forever. And the way we do that is with kindness. I've been around long enough to be able to tell you that with much authority. It really works. So that's going to be one of the key ingredients. But let's go, let's go into this idea of making things easier to do. Okay. We do have to make the decision.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:30]:
So we're actually not going to talk about that today. I can talk about that in the future. I have definitely talked about in the past how you make the decision to go forward. But once you decide, how do you follow through? So it's a four step process. Step one, decide. Step two, do it. Step three, celebrate. And step four is repeat.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:55]:
Again, I know that sounds basic. Decide, do it, celebrate, repeat. But those are important as the main things we do and we cannot leave any out, including the celebrate. But as you may imagine, the key, the real way that we make it easier to follow through is the stuff in between. The stuff in between deciding and actually doing it, and then between doing it and celebrating. Those spaces, the spaces between deciding and doing it and doing it and celebrating, that's where the rubber meets the road. That's where we have to have a process for ourselves. And I'm going to give you that right now.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:41]:
So the deciding, once you decide, the main issue that comes up between deciding and doing it is in our brains. It is all the stuff our brain will tell us and feelings we will have. And the main thing there is to notice all the mind drama, the tricks your brain uses to distract you, and the Key here is expecting it, making space for it. The moment you decide to do something, go ahead and expect that your brain will kick up a whole bunch of reasons why it's a terrible idea. No, we shouldn't do it. And part of that is in the deciding. When you're deciding, your brain will tell you reasons not to. But here we're talking about the decision to do something and then actually doing it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:34]:
So we're not going to talk about when the brain gets into confusion, which is another something that can happen. Once you decide and you want to do it, your brain's like, I have no idea. It's impossible. We're going to assume here for this podcast, that you're deciding on doing something that you know how to do. Okay? You have all the things you need to do it. It's just once you've decided to do it and doing it, there's resistance there. And one of the most important things I can tell you from experience is expect that this will happen. It does not mean not to do it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:15]:
It doesn't mean it's a bad idea. It's just what the brain does. The brain resists change because its job is just to keep you safe. And if you don't change anything, you're alive right now. Perfect. The brain would be so happy if you just sat. It would need fuel at some point. But besides that, if you just stayed in a safe place, and any safe place is the place you're alive right now, it's happy.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:42]:
So it will always give you resistance. But we don't want to live a life like that. We have things we want to do, and here we're talking about weight loss. And so there's things that we're going to have to change, no matter what that is. Our brain will tell us not to. And then if that doesn't work, it will try to distract us. And again, it's so important that we don't take this as a message from our higher self that we shouldn't do this thing. That's not it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:14]:
If you've made a rational decision, you know there's benefit for you, then all the rest of the brain chatter is just the brain's way of resisting because it wants to keep you safe. But you had a good reason to decide you wanted to do the thing you wanted to do, so we're going to do it. We're just going to expect that our brain will put up a fight. Nothing's gone wrong. Your brain was designed to do this because it hates change. Now Once you recognize this. So now you're like, okay, and I'm going to get into some examples later, but once you've decided to do something, you're about to do it. Your brain kicks in all these distractions and doubt and all the rest of it, you're going to notice that it's doing that, which is a very, very important piece.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:04]:
Because sometimes we don't. Right. Sometimes we're like, oh, yeah, it is a good idea to check email. Oh, I definitely have to do the laundry. But if we're have this idea in mind that we're going to hold space for when the brain is resisting, then we're going to start to notice it. And when we notice it, we're going to handle all those thoughts with kindness. Oh, hi. Distracting thoughts.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:34]:
I was expecting you. Welcome. We're going to do this anyway. But I hear all your. I'm going to register all your complaints. This is completely natural and normal. I was expecting my brain to do this. Brain, you seem to be working just fine.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:50]:
This is not a problem. I'm safe, I'm loved. All is well. I understand your upset brain. And we're going to do this anyway. That's the kindness. So we're not going to notice the distractions and doubt and yell at it, force it, ignore it. We're gonna acknowledge it and respond to it in a kind way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:17]:
It really calms that. It doesn't make it go away completely, but it doesn't amp itself up because we're not resisting it. We're allowing it to be there. Okay, so that's decide between decide and doing it. You're gonna hear the resistance in your brain. You're gonna notice it, and you're gonna respond kindly to it. And then you're going to do what it is you wanted to do. Now while you're doing it, the brain is still going at it, and we're going to allow the feelings to be there.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:53]:
What we're going to do here in talking about this is we're going to expect that it's uncomfortable. Remember, we're talking about doing hard things, doing new things. This is not like, you know, doing things you've done all the time. Likely there won't be resistance or uncomfortable feelings, but new or different things. Very likely there will be uncomfortable feelings. And those kind of feelings will be things like doubt, inadequacy, like, we're doing it wrong, we're not doing it well enough. Fear, anxiety, wanting to escape. That's the distraction piece, an urge to do something else.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:29]:
We will feel all these things. And when we expect them and allow them to be there, that's when we can get something done that's been hard or elusive to us. And it's the brain still kicking up those thoughts and then feeling the feelings. And we've talked about urge work before. It's this idea that we have a physical feeling in our body of. I just had one recently, I'm talking about minutes ago, about wanting to check my email. I had to handle that. I had to feel the urge.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:03]:
I had to say, I understand you want to check your email, and we're not going to right now. That is doing something while feeling the urge. And in fact, it's this podcast that's one of my examples that I'm going to give. Letting the urge be there and still doing what you want to do, not resisting it, letting it be there in the background. This is a superpower when you can do this, when you can do the thing you want to do. With uncomfortable feelings in the background, there is nothing you can't accomplish, including losing all the weight you want and keeping it off. And once you practice this idea of being able to do something while feeling some discomfort in the background, then you get better and better at it, because then you expect the discomfort. You don't have to spend time, you know, processing the feeling.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:07]:
You just know it's going to be there and you just keep going. And another way to talk about this is tolerating the feelings. Like you're able to tolerate the discomfort of doing something new, of doing something hard, because you understand where it's coming from. The brain. You understand the feelings. They come from the thoughts that the brain is thinking. And you're able to complete the task you've decided you wanted to do. The other piece here is being okay with B work.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:39]:
We've talked about this before. Instead of your usual A work, which I know is your usual standard, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to be okay with less than perfect work. Most I'm going to say all the time, because perfect is not real and it causes a lot of problems. But there could be times when you want a work or a minus work. But a lot of the time we can have B minus work, and that will come up when I talk about examples. But when we're working on this process of doing hard things, actually getting them done, getting the task done is more important than what it actually looks like. For some reason, the image of a wrapping a present just came into mind and you just want the thing wrapped. It does not have to be the most gorgeous thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:35]:
That may not be a great example, because if you're giving it to someone, you really would like it to be pretty. But learning something new, how to do it, you just want to get it done, and then you can tweak it. That's always what we want to get the thing done. And then we can evaluate it. Then we can say, oh, I can work on that bow a little bit better. Oh, the tape doesn't look good. I can do it differently. We want to get completely through to the task so that we can celebrate the accomplishment, which is, of course, the third step.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:12]:
And it's a really important one we cannot skip. Because what we're teaching ourselves when we celebrate the accomplishment is we're giving ourselves the feeling of pride. And that is a good dopamine hit. We want a dopamine hit from completing the task, because then we're training our brain. It's more likely that we'll do it in the future, that we will follow through with what we say in the future when we give ourselves a dopamine hit, of pride, of celebration, when we accomplish it, even if that present looks less than perfect. Because the fourth step is repeat. We're going to keep doing the things we want to do to improve. We're going to keep doing it this way until we get better and better at it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:02]:
And being able to do that builds on the past tries, right? You're building the skill, and what happens is the discomfort fades and the pride persists. You'll get better at the task at hand, but also at the process of getting things done, of following through on things that you say you're going to do. And this process builds trust with yourself. And we've talked about this before, but strengthening your relationship with yourself means you can do anything. And you've proved it to yourself over and over again by this process. So that's the skeleton. That's the basics. That's the four steps about following through and getting stuff done.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:46]:
Decide, do it, celebrate, and repeat. And the key are the things that you do between deciding and doing it. And while you're doing it, that's expecting the discomfort, expecting the distraction, feeling the discomfort, and still doing it. Anyway. So let's make this a little more concrete. The first thing that came to mind is hormone shots. So giving yourself shots, or in however you did that, if you had them done to you any way. But shots in general is a hard thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:25]:
And so the first part is deciding you're going to do it. And the next one is doing it. And I'm sure this is often compressed, but you can see the examples of the thoughts. Some of them are scary, but then you talk yourself through it because you actually end up doing it. So it may be messy. And I'm not saying the shot doesn't get in you. I'm saying, like, how you were able to talk yourself into it, but you had resistance thoughts, most many people, and you spoke to yourself to get yourself through it. I'm recommending that it's kindly and you can see this in the future.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:08]:
But you decided you ended up doing it even though it was uncomfortable. And then hopefully you were proud of yourself afterwards. And if you were, there could be relief. And that's another way of getting a dopamine hit, relief. But then proud of yourself that you managed to do it. And you likely saw that you got a process afterwards and it got a little easier. I mean, it's not always easy. It hurts.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:34]:
But you had trust in yourself that you were gonna go through with the shot. Okay, that's one example. The example that I wanted to give you is about doing a podcast. So in my calendar, I rarely wanna do it. I put it in my calendar and I know I'm gonna do it now because we're at 130. They get done. But still today I moved things around a little bit. I noticed that I was doing that, and I was kind to myself about it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:09]:
I said, oh, see, you're procrastinating. I know you're toying with the idea of blowing off the day. That's okay, it's natural. But you'll be so proud of yourself when it's done. And that's how I got myself back on track. I sat down at the computer. It felt uncomfortable, and my brain was complaining. It was distracted.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:27]:
This is where the email comes in. And then an app I needed for my ideas was updating. And then it froze across all of my platform. It was a bit of a mess. And I don't love tech, but I was already in the mode of starting to do it. I knew I was in the part between deciding and doing it, and I had recognized my behavior. So as much as I felt doom, and that would have been a perfect excuse, I just kept talking to my brain, it's okay, you can do this. You have lots of options.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:01]:
You've dealt with this before. And it completely worked. Now. It wasn't gorgeous and smooth and perfect. I did have to talk to myself. I found what I was looking for, and then I was Able to start. And once I started writing, then I'm in it and it works. It gets so much easier once you get over the hump of starting.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:24]:
And that hump of starting is the brain drama between deciding to do it and actually doing it. Now, let's talk about some weight loss examples. The classic one is like going for a walk in the morning. So you've decided that you're going to go for a walk in the morning and you're starting that. So let's say it's not easy for you right now. The most important part is expecting the resistance, truly, because you can know that you're going to wake up in the morning and you're definitely not going to want to do, doesn't mean you should not go. And your brain will be very clever about it. It's really cold outside, or, oh, you really didn't sleep well.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:06]:
If you're expecting that and you've prepped yourself to expect the resistance, then you can meet it with understanding and kindness. Oh, sweet brain, I knew you were gonna do that. I know it is a little colder outside, but we're gonna be so happy we did this. Then you go for the walk, even if it's less time than you originally planned, even if it is cold. And you do have to change your route and you're not gonna stay out as long, do it anyway. Because completing the loop of deciding, saying you're going to do it and actually doing it has so much value beyond the, like, calories you burn walking around the block. The act of following through, creating even more trust with yourself. I say, I'm going to do something and I'm going to do it becomes so important.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:59]:
Now remember, this is really important. It's with kindness. We're not whipping ourselves into following through. We are allowing the distraction thoughts, the uncomfortable feelings to be there. We're being kind to them and we're doing the thing we want to do anyway. And then remember to celebrate when you get back. And the celebration can be anything. You can actually give yourself a sticker, you can give yourself a high five, you can hug your dog.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:29]:
You know, I mean, there's a million things. But even just acknowledging that you did it and you feel pride, that will help. It will really, really help for the next time you want to do it. And then we repeat and we're going to tweak the things that didn't work, like, oh, you know what, deciding to wake up at five in the morning just does not work. Six o'clock will be fine. That Or I'm going to have, oh, I couldn't get my shoes without waking up my partner, so I better put my shoes in a different place. That all is a beautiful way to be able to repeat next time. So that's the example of walking.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:10]:
I have a few more. Choosing a meal ahead of time. Like if you're going to a restaurant and you know the restaurant and you look at the menu and you're deciding ahead of time what you're going to have, that is such a wonderful practice for weight loss because we can get depending on how hungry we are. Remember, if we're very hungry, it makes it more difficult. We're always eating a negative two and stopping a positive two. That's part of the reason. But when you choose ahead of time, you make that choice with your rational brain. It's amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:38]:
Now you're going to pick something you're going to enjoy. You're not going to pick something disgusting that you would never like. We have to be realistic with our choices. But when you go and you're sitting with your friends and everything, you will notice that your brain will say, oh, you know what? No, let's have this instead. That's when we want to do this work of making it easier to follow through on what we want. And the way we do that is by expecting and then speaking kindly and then following through with the uncomfortable feeling in the background and ordering what you've decided ahead of time is a great example of that. And then definitely celebrate when you've done it. It's amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:24]:
Eating lunch that you brought to work is a similar one. You know, a lot of the times we'll be like, oh, I don't want that. I want something else. We're saying that for a reason. Either you got too hungry, or the choice you originally made for yourself wasn't a realistic one, or you're feeling stressed or anxious, or I deserve a treat or something there. And that is the important thing for us to figure out. We've talked about that too in past episodes about figuring out that's emotional eating. And there's other ways of figuring that out.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:00]:
But if we're deciding to follow through, if we know that our brain is gonna do that and we are perfectly happy with the actual lunch that we brought, then we can expect a little bit of the discomfort as we decide to eat the lunch that we brought and then remember to celebrate that decision. Because as we're building the new habit, as we're bringing lunch and deciding to eat it, that's something we Want to praise, to encourage. And so we want to be proud of that accomplishment, which it is. It's totally an accomplishment. Another example is following the hunger scale, let's say at dinner. So stopping at positive two. If we decide ahead of time that we're going to be stopping at positive two, we can expect our brain to have very clever manipulation. Oh, it tastes so good.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:52]:
It's just a couple of bites, you know, that sort of thing. We're going to respond to those ideas, those thoughts, with kindness. We're going to feel the sort of low grade discomfort of leaving a few bites on the plate. And we're going to be so proud that we're learning our positive too. And if it looked a little messier than you wanted it, like you could have left four bites, but you ended up leaving three. It's amazing. You can see that. That's amazing because it's a long term project we're working on.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:23:25]:
We're working on stopping at positive two. And we can get closer and closer. We can build. We have time to practice that. Leaving three bytes rather than four is amazing. There's a huge celebration of that that does not get punishment or criticism. It is fantastic that you're getting closer and closer to stopping a positive too. It's amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:23:48]:
And so we want to make sure that we celebrate that. And then the last example is food dates. So a food date again, we have podcasts on that one too. Food dates are a time that you schedule for yourself to look over the week you've had, plan for the week ahead, and many people combine that with the grocery list and meal planning. You don't have to, but let's say you're doing that and you've made a time and you keep moving it. This is a perfect time to use this process of making it easier by deciding ahead of time, expecting the resistance, allowing the discomfort, and then doing it anyway. And when you get through it, and you are so proud of yourself, however you got through it, maybe you did it in five minutes, it wasn't all that great. But you planned two meals.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:24:50]:
I mean, whatever it is, it doesn't matter because if you actually did it instead of not doing it, that means you're willing to get in there and get messy to figure out how it's going to be better. So let's say you only had five minutes to do it, but you spent the five minutes doing it. Amazing, huge celebration. And then there's the repeat where we tweak. Oh, you know what? This timing wasn't a great timing or I don't have the energy to do it here so I'm not going to expect myself to do it here. Oh, I didn't have what I needed to look back at the week. Or you know what, it would be better if I had the market app with me so I could just order right then. All those are tweaks, but we can't even get there if we don't get through the first messy time or the fifth messy time, or the eighth messy time or the 25th messy time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:25:41]:
Those are my examples. So the wrap up of this is that the four step process for getting hard things done are Decide, do it, Celebrate, repeat. The key is how to handle what happens in our minds after deciding between deciding and doing and while actually doing the hard thing. Anticipating the resistance, treating it with kindness, letting it feel uncomfortable while we're doing it, and making finishing more important than the quality of the task itself gets you to the finish line and celebrating it means you're more likely to do it again. Getting that dopamine hit. Repeating means you build on your hard work and you strengthen your follow through muscle and the trust you have with yourself. This process will have you losing weight and I hope you can see that the weight loss will be permanent because you are practicing and establishing habits like following the hunger scale that support losing weight and maintaining that loss forever no matter what stage of life you're in. This is the Weight Loss for Fertility way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:26:52]:
If you want to lose weight with us, please go to weightlossforfertility.com to get started. I am just sending you so much love until next week.
