Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:01]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility Today. Today we're talking about the meta skill of weight loss. I talk about this in little ways in almost all the podcasts, but today we're just talking about it directly.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:38]:
The meta skill for permanent weight loss is self trust. Self trust. I'm wondering how that lands. Okay, so we're diving deep in this. I am picking it apart. Okay, so trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability of someone. And so of course, in this case, we're talking about yourself. The firm belief in the reliability of yourself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:04]:
Now we're talking about food here. There may be other areas in your life that you feel very reliable, but even there, I'm going to poke at that a little bit because we can follow through and be very reliable with some people, but. But it takes too much out of us. So it doesn't come from a calm, grounded place. It comes from sort of a more frantic place. It's a little subtle. But with food, sometimes we really can see, especially those of us who need to lose weight, we can see this where we don't trust ourselves. We don't trust ourselves around food, around knowing what to eat, around portions, around, you know, like, the food will get us and we'll never stop that whole idea.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:51]:
And so when we build self trust around food, that is when we can lose the weight we want and keep it off forever. And we're always looking to do that, the forever piece, because you already know how to drop pounds and then gain them back. I mean, that's the norm in general, that people on sort of crash diets or restrictive diets is that they can't last. And that's not of interest to us here. It's not healthy for a body to yo yo weight gain. But also we're gonna be wanting to eat and be healthy during our pregnancies too. And we have to be. It's just easier to see that we want to be healthy and do things in a way that's good for our body.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:37]:
When we're thinking about someone else inside there, always try that. We are thinking that way about our bodies even before something's in there, because we care about ourselves, our body, that much. And you may think, of course I care about my body. But it's this deep way, especially if you notice that there's a difference when you're thinking of just yourself or yourself with some little peanut in there, that's always a tell. And one of my ideas is that we will feel that way about our bodies, just ourselves. When we treat ourselves that way, we make kind decisions for ourselves, not restrictive, not painful. And that leads us into self trust. Developing self trust requires kindness, acceptance, practicality.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:38]:
So let's think about that a little more. When we have self trust, we can go anywhere, go through any difficult time and know we have our back here. Remember, I'm going to be talking about food. This is also true generally. But for food we can go anywhere, you know, any vacation, any restaurant, any party. We can go through any difficult time which you're familiar with in terms of going through fertility. And we will have our back in terms of our food. And we won't hurt ourselves or sacrifice ourselves.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:14]:
And we'll know that we know how to support our bodies and our emotions. That knowledge keeps us really grounded and it keeps us in ease around food no matter what happens. And when we have this meta skill of self trust, we can maintain our weight loss for life. Now, not only that, but we can get through generally anything, because we're talking about resilience here, that self trust is the backbone of resilience. And resilience is the capacity to withstand difficulty or recover quickly from difficulty. Now, I know you can get through difficulties, I know you can, I know you've done it. But we can get through them in a way that hurts us or a way that strengthens us. And the way that strengthens us develops and uses or leans on self trust.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:15]:
So when we have self trust, we will get through difficulties in a way that strengthens us rather than completely depletes us. We get through it intact, basically, or stronger, not broken or completely used up. We can be exhausted and need rest or recovery. That's not what I'm talking about. It's like a broken spirit. We don't want to get through something and have a broken spirit at the end. Resilience is the kind we want to build for life. Self trust is the backbone of resilience.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:51]:
It's the how, the skill we need to have resilience. And remember here we're talking about food. The good news is we can develop it. We can build it, and today I'm going to tell you how. So when we're talking about developing self trust, and this is with food, there's two parts and they both influence each other. I always think of this like puzzle where it's not that you build on it like you've got have one and then you have the other. It's more like it has to be put together at the exact same time for it to become whole. The image I have also is like that Yin Yang sign, you know, the circle, but it has like a tadpole or sperm, I guess you could those two and they fit together.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:41]:
It's like that. So the two parts are realistic expectations, follow through. And each one is so important, it's like I keep going back and forth. Which one's more important? Which one should I say first? Realistic expectations allow us to follow through. We can only follow through really if we're realistic about the things we are asking of ourselves. We can't follow through if we ask too much of ourselves. And here's the problem, we often beat ourselves up, which is not the way we engender goodwill and trust with ourselves. But we'll often beat ourselves up for not following through.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:27]:
Because we are follow throughers, right? We do follow through and so if we don't, we berate ourselves. But what I want you to know and hear is that the ask was too big. And this is where the work comes in, like the emotional mental work. We have to ask much less of ourselves. That's how we're able to follow through. So we're going to ask the minimum we can or the maximum which will be small, so that we actually can follow through. That's the trick. The expectation has to be realistic for where we are now, not where we ideally want to be, not where we think we should be.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:13]:
I'm putting that in quotes, right, because that's part of the problem. That's the problem we get into is that we think we should be able to follow through. I should be able to do this. This is not hard. I should be able to do it. But we don't do it, which means we can't right now. That doesn't mean we won't ever be able to. But right now we, we're having difficulty with it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:38]:
And so that if we're having trouble following through or if it feels too hard, I'm thinking like, you know those restrictive diets where you have to eat like this many ounces of this or only have organic that. If it's too hard to follow through, it's the ask that's the problem. It's not your follow through muscle. I want that to be so clear. If it's hard to do, it's not your fault. There's not something wrong with you, it's that right now you're asking too much of yourself. And so all we have to do is shift that a little bit and out making it mean that we're a failure. It's just making it mean we're starting too big, we have to start smaller.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:28]:
That is such a huge important shift. And when we make that shift, we let ourselves off the hook and then we can start building self trust. And then it grows when we admit or acknowledge where we are and then move from there. We can grow faster than if we're fighting ourselves and resisting ourselves and shoulding ourselves and judging ourselves. That's what keeps us stuck. So noticing where we are, accepting it is so important because then we can move from there. So the important thing is getting the habit in place of deciding what we'll do and then doing it, having a realistic ask of ourselves and then following through. Once that dynamic is in place, we practice choosing more or different or bigger things.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:23]:
That's how we move forward. But we have to get into the place where we are consistently asking, following through, asking, following through. We have to establish the habit. And this is how we develop self trust around food. That's what we're talking about here. So we trust that when we say we will do something, we'll do it. I'm sure there are areas of your life where this feels really easy for other things. Maybe things at work, super easy, maybe things with family, super easy.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:54]:
But when it comes to food, not super easy. That's why we're gonna start where we are and be very realistic for where we are right now without shame. So when it comes to eating and weight loss, the example is choosing meals you like. So I was just talking with a client and her like diet mentality is very strong. This is very, very, very common. You know, the we should be having juice cleanse or we should be eating 800 calories or you know, something, something very restrictive. Because it's just that has been bashed into us over and over and over, like for decades. When I was talking about this concept, it was very hard to choose like a dinner that she actually wanted.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:43]:
She was sort of forcing herself to have dried chicken breast and surprise, surprise, it wasn't working. It won't work that way. That's what. Look, if we could not develop self trust and lose weight, I would be on board. But I mean, I hesitate to say that because I love self trust, but the truth is it doesn't work. It does not work. Forcing ourselves to have dried chicken breasts when we don't want that, it will never work. So we got to the point, I'm like, what would be your favorite dinner ever in the world? And she said, pizza.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:18]:
Amazing. You absolutely can have pizza for dinner and lose weight 100%. Now, I'm not saying you can eat an entire pizza, but that's where the hunger scale comes in. Because if you're following the hunger scale, you will eat pizza until you're at a positive 2, and then you will stop eating. You will feel satisfied and you will feel particularly satisfied because you're eating your favorite foods. Now, the guilt and the shame and all this, the permission is the thing that's needed. So we're building the self trust. But when we can eat what we like, that's a place I like to start in terms of being realistic, having realistic expectations.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:07]:
So dry chicken breast was not an option. It wasn't a realistic option. So the follow through wasn't happening. So the self trust was broken, not developing, non existent. But if you plan for pizza and you love pizza and then you eat pizza for dinner and you're setting your expectations and following through, I said I'd have pizza. I said I would follow the hunger scale. I ate my pizza, I followed the hunger scale. Weight loss, life is good.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:39]:
This is how we do it. And it may be that you're at a place where there's certain places that you go and you have like thirds of a favorite food. Your expectation of yourself may be that you have seconds, not thirds. But we're not going to go from having three helpings to having half a helping. It's not a fair ask. You start from where you are and then you start small and build as. As possible. And what's required here is that you know yourself and some of us, that's, that's a tricky thing because it's not our ideal self.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:20]:
It's not the one that everyone says we should be or that our mother thinks we are or that, you know, Instagram says we should be. It's your real self, your amazing self. How you are right this second. The self of everything. Not your ideal self, if everything is going perfectly self. It's your real everyday self, the one that likes to sleep in. So early morning food prep or exercise is not fair to ask. Now, I understand that you may want to become a morning person and maybe that's something that's going to happen down the road.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:56]:
But as we're building self trust, we have to be realistic. If you know yourself and you're like, look I have tried a million times. I do not like getting up early. Then asking yourself to do that is not fair. That won't build the self trust. So we want to start where we are. We want to ask fair things of ourselves. And as we're establishing the habit of asking realistic things, following through.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:27]:
And then here's the third part is celebrating. So we acknowledge that we set an expectation, we met it, we acknowledge it. Amazing. Now I'm going to go back because there's one last part. So there's realistic expectations, following through, celebrating the successes and then tweaking what didn't go exactly as planned. So let's say my friend had pizza and the pizza was so delicious and she, her brain just wanted to keep eating that she ate past positive two. Okay, good to know. But we start with celebrating the fact that she said she'd have pizza and, and she did.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:12]:
Amazing. Now we're going to tweak. Okay, well now I went to positive three. I'm going to work on having my pizza and going to positive two. There still was celebration there because it was the choice to eat pizza and followed through on eating the pizza. Amazing. Well then we're saying, oh, you know what, I did not think about the hunger scale. It was focused on what I was going to eat.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:40]:
So now I'm going to say I noticed that I was too hungry when I was saving myself for the pizza that I was going to have for dinner. I know now that's not, that doesn't end up well. So I'm going to make sure I'm going to eat my pizza at a negative two and that will be easier to stop at a positive 2. You see how there's elements here and we don't need to do everything perfectly but we need to start somewhere and we're going to start where we're able and then we can layer on more things. As we're developing our self trust, we'll be able to rely on it more and more and more. And that's how we build. And remember, knowing yourself is the basis for this. What foods do I like? What time do I have to do the things I want to do? Can I prep on a Sunday? Maybe it makes more sense to do it Monday night.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:41]:
Do I want to get exercise in? Does it make sense? Do I want to do something vigorous or can I fit a walk in during lunchtime? It is so important to be realistic about your day, your ability, your, your time, your effort, your desire. Those things are all equally important. And when we can choose based on those things based on knowing your real self, not the one you think you should be, but where you are now with acceptance and love. That is how you propel forward. Accepting and loving and knowing yourself now is how we move forward faster. It's how we develop self trust and it's how we lose weight forever. Because building the trusting relationship with yourself and food is the thing that will have you losing weight and maintaining it for life. So the takeaways from this are knowing yourself is the basis for developing self trust.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:48]:
And you get better at knowing yourself when you use the hunger scale because you're constantly checking in with yourself and you're tapping into hunger, but also all your other inner communications, emotions, that sort of thing. You are getting to know yourself more with the hunger scale. So knowing yourself is the basis for developing self trust. And we develop self trust by being realistic about what we ask of ourselves, then following through on that, then being proud and celebrating the accomplishment. Then we tweak based on what we learned and we continue the cycle over and over and over again. We build self trust around food and have this to lean on for the rest of our lives. I am sending you so much love. Reach out to me about this and anything else.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:41]:
@StephanieFeinMD on Instagram or LinkedIn. You can always lose weight with [email protected] and you just click the lose weight with me button and we will be connected. Have a wonderful week. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.
