Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And today we're talking about one way to make weight loss so much easier. It's a strategy that saves brain space and brain energy and a lot of time, both actual time and like time in your brain. It also reduces food noise, which is that brain chatter that can derail our weight loss. And it's a way to streamline the system of life and weight loss too. And that concept is the food uniform.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:39]:
Okay, so when I say that, I'm going to explain it as clearly as I can and hope to win over some people who have a knee jerk reaction to no way, I do not want a food uniform. So let me see what I can do here. So, you know, a uniform is like a school uniform or one that you wear to work. It takes all the stress out of what to wear in the morning out of the equation. Right. One of the arguments about kids having school uniforms is for kids, you know, everyone's on the same page. But I always thought, what a great thing that you don't have to worry about what you're wearing in the morning. And I know it particularly saves time for girls in terms of.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:22]:
And also, I mean, this is total side girls in school together, when there are not boys there, boy. When there's a uniform and no boys around, girls get ready in five seconds. And if it's otherwise, it can take them a long time. That's an aside, but yes and no, because that's what I'm talking about with food. When we have no choices or fewer choices. Of course, when we make the choices ahead of time, that's when the brain noise, the food chatter goes out the window. We've talked about making choices ahead of time so much around here because it's such a great strategy. We plan our food week, we have a food date.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:10]:
But this is another way of talking about it in terms of the food choices that we make for ourselves, making them ahead of time and making them very straightforward and easy. So with uniforms, you look professional or neat and clean. You look presentable. It may not be the trendiest or most glamorous outfit, but it gets the job done in a completely acceptable way, ideally, comfortably. It's very functional. It may be provided for you, this uniform, or you may have created one yourself because it is such a great idea to have something that you wear to do the job that you do. You may have one of a few suits. If you go to the office, you may just swap out colored shirts.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:57]:
Or if you work from home, you may have yoga pant outfit that you wear and it's just a no brainer. The point is that you have no friction, no extra time debating what to wear, losing precious morning time. And it works just as well for our food decisions, especially when we're losing weight. It's particularly great for maintaining weight loss too. And the time we're usually saving is the precious time when we notice we're hungry so often at the minus two mark, that's just hungry. If 30 or more minutes go by while we're figuring out what we want, deciding where to get it from, and getting it, we are well on our way to negative 3 or negative 4. And then our best laid plans fly out the window because we're over hungry. And now we're more likely to overeat and no longer care about any decisions that we may have wanted to make about our food for that day.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:57]:
But if we have our lunch already figured out and available to us, then when we hit negative two, we feed ourselves well, easily stop at positive two and we move on with our day. No guilt, no drama, no brain noise, nothing. That is the beauty of the food uniform. It's regular food choices. Now. It could be breakfast and lunches, maybe only during the weekday. It could be dinners too. Obviously.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:27]:
Do this however you want to do this, this, and you're probably already doing some version of it already because usually we eat one of a couple things for breakfast. We're usually not, you know, spending a lot of time dreaming of what we exactly want to eat in the morning. And if you're already doing it, that's just the same idea. We just expand it as we're able to till lunches. Lunches is a great place to expand it to. And also some dinners. And again, you may already be doing this. Like if you have burgers every Friday, or you have taco Tuesdays, or you go to your mom's house on Sundays, that type of thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:01]:
That falls under this idea of a food uniform where we don't have to worry about what we're having. We've already planned it out, it's streamlined, it's easy. It's a big relief to the brain. So how do you create a food uniform if you don't already have one? It's completely not about rigid rules. It's about making it easy on yourself and your brain. So first we're gonna assess where you are right now. Maybe you already have one. And just as an aside, if you do have one but you aren't losing weight Then some tweaks need to be made, and that's just really good to know.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:40]:
And having regular food choices that you make makes it easier to do the tweaking because you already know what you're having and you're just gonna be tweaking those things. And that's true, by the way, for when you do have and get a food uniform in place. If you're ever hitting a plateau, if you're ever not losing weight, it is much easier to start tweaking because you can see what's happening and where you need to go from there. If you have regular dishes now, great. Just consider expanding it a bit. Like if you're doing breakfast, you can add lunches. If you're already have breakfast and lunches set for the weekday, you may be set, that may be plenty for you. Or you may want to add a dinner or two during the week.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:23]:
Amazing. You get to decide where you stop. I just highly recommend breakfast and lunches, particularly weekday. It makes the workday so much easier. And if you're starting from scratch, this idea of the food uniform, you want to take a few things into consideration. Okay. And you have to start with what you like. Remember, we're never making decisions about our food that we don't like.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:52]:
That's old diet way of thinking. We do not do that around here. And the reason we don't do that is because it does not work long term. We care mostly about long term. We want to lose weight and then we want to be able to stay at the weight we want. We don't want to gain it back. So we have to start with what you like. It has to be something you like.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:15]:
So good news, right? It has to be something you like. The second piece, ideally, it's something that lasts you a good long time. And that doesn't mean forever. I'm just saying you get 3ish hours out of it in terms of a meal. That would be amazing. And what that usually means is that we have protein in there. Protein is the thing that lasts in our GI tract, our stomach the longest, making us feel satisfied longer. That is what we're looking for.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:49]:
So I highly recommend protein in there. And that's something you can experiment with and play with, right? Which proteins last you, which ones do you like? What, that sort of thing. So we're always thinking first of tastes and next how long it lasts. And then you want to consider things like ease of preparation, do you have to cook it? How long is it hard to get the ingredients? Is it easy? Is it around the corner. Do you do it once a week? You know, taking all that into consideration, if there's some strange ingredient that your market never has, that's probably not gonna work for a regular food decision choice. Other considerations are like messiness, cleanup. I had one client who would talk about the smell like she couldn't bring certain things to work because she didn't want to smell up the common area. All of that is something to take into consideration.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:45]:
And the beauty is once you find something that works, it's like magic. You're like, great, done. This is what I'm having now. That just reminded me to say it does not have to be the exact same lunch every single day of the week. It absolutely can be. So if you like this lunch and it lasts you the longest, you don't have to think about it. It's super easy to make. You can have it every single day.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:15]:
You do not have to have a different nationality of food every single day. You really can have the same things for lunch and same with breakfast, or between two things. Or one week you have this thing, and the next week you have another. You can figure out how to do it in a way that works for you, your taste buds, your stomach, in terms of how long it lasts and your time and your effort and all of that taken into consideration. It is so beautiful to be able to rotate things that you know you like. And if again, you're starting from scratch, you may have to experiment. I just spoke with a client of mine recently about similar issue. And the homework was take a look at Trader Joe's.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:07]:
I talk about Trader Joe's a lot because that's a place around here that has prepared food. Like, you know, I was gonna say semi prepared food, but like heat and eat kind of things. And I just love that as an option. Sprouts has it. Like a lot of places have that. If you go to your local place and check out what they have, it can be semi homemade. You know, they have meatballs and you just add green beans and rice. Or they have, you know, chicken enchiladas or they, you know, that you can try these things and you certainly can make them your own.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:49]:
And that may be a great option for you. On Sundays you make a big batch of whatever. And for breakfast you have your yogurt or your cottage cheese or your eggs or your, you know, and you have that available lunch is the one that we often don't have this dialed in. And it makes a huge difference to be able to have your go to lunch so being willing to experiment is really important when we're finding what works for us. It may take some time, and that's not a problem because you're headed in that direction. It's amazing. There may be parts that are seasonal. You know, certain foods are available.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:29]:
Certain times we can take all that into consideration. You may have a half life of a particular dish that's like two months. After two months, you need something else. Okay. Then that'll be in the rotation that at two months, I start to change things. Fantastic. Once you know the things you like, then you figure out how to have the things on hand that you need in order to make that you find and plan time to prepare the stuff. Are you doing it the night before? Are you doing it one day a week, two days a week? And also making sure that you have the appropriate storage containers.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:06]:
That was a rate limiter for one of my clients once, and it made so much sense. I mean, for some people, this is a whole new thing. Bringing lunch. And so having the right, you know, if it's glass or if it's the right size, or if you have a bag that can hold those things, all that stuff matters because we want to make it as easy as possible for you in the morning, and that will include bringing it. And when you have all that in place, voila, you have a food uniform. It's amazing. Now, the thing about this, and I alluded to it before, is that it's not necessarily for everyone. I mean, I think it's for everyone.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:45]:
But there are some people who it feels very important that there's variety in their food. Now I argue that it's even possible for people who really crave variety. You just plan for variety. And it may be even more important, this exercise in creating a food uniform for people who really crave new foods, since it's likely there's a lot of time spent on thinking what to have and making sure it's amazing every time. And if we can find out, because what will happen is, if you're working on this, you'll see what the issues are. What are the food beliefs you have about novelty, about? It has to be amazing. And bringing those issues to the surface so they can be examined will really help with weight loss. But also, if you're spending a lot of time there, you will decrease your amount of food noise because you will no longer be spending a lot of time there each day.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:56]:
And that can make a very big difference to your day, to your weight, to how you're eating everything. If you can figure out a way to make your version of food uniform. I highly recommend it. And if you can't, that will be useful information for you. The other really important wonderful thing about a food uniform is how it fits so beautifully with planning your food week. Remember, I highly recommend planning your food week, and that is looking at the week ahead and seeing where you're eating out, where you're eating in, and then making plans for those meals. And then extra points if you make a shopping list at that time and then decide when you're going shopping. That's planning your food week.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:47]:
A food date is a little, slightly different. A food date is looking at the week before, deciding what worked, what didn't, and what you're going to do differently. And then you can at the same time plan your food week. They can really go together, but they don't have to. And a food uniform makes planning your food week so much easier. And vice versa. Planning your food week makes the food uniform so much easier. And that can be the answer for people who need variety is just a little more time spent on the planning your food week so that you have different dishes in there for yourself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:33]:
Food uniforms help us lose weight by making it easy to follow the hunger scale because we know exactly where our next meal is coming from and we can actually access it when we reach our minus two. So valuable because remember, when we eat at minus two, it's much easier to stop at positive two. Food uniforms save brain energy, brain space and time. I was going to say brain time, but it's also just time. Food uniforms reduce food noise by streamlining the food choice process. It's so wonderful to have less food noise, and we can do that by making choices ahead of time so our brain doesn't sort of go crazy and run away with us when we're vulnerable to it. If we haven't made the decision and now we're hungry, trying to make the decision much more difficult. Food uniforms make planning your food week super easy and vice versa.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:41]:
I love food uniforms. This is a really easy thing for me because I'm someone who can have the same thing all the time. I feel very lucky in that regard. I will say I got there over time. So if you're someone who wants variety, it's possible that you can get into a more food uniform kind of way of being. That may sound terrible to you right now, but I promise you it's not. Because if you're thinking it's terrible, you're thinking that you're going to decide to make yourself eat something terrible. That is never what you're going to do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:24]:
My goal for you is that you always like your meals. Always. You're never forcing yourself to have something you don't want. That just doesn't make sense. So I would love to hear if you have food uniforms now and what's on them. And if not, I would love to hear how it goes when you are putting a food uniform in place. And you can always contact me. You can DM me @stephaniefeinmd on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:56]:
And if you want to lose weight with me, you just go to my website, stephaniefeinmd.com Click the lose weight with me button and we will be connected. I am sending you so much love and I'll see you next week.
