Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. Today we are talking about motivation. And the way we're going to talk about it is with rewiring the brain. We love our brain. Our brain is so helpful, it's such a useful tool, but its bent is negative. And there was a reason for that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:23]:
It helped us survive. If we found the problems, if we were really vigilant about all the problems, then we were less likely to be eaten by, you know, saber tooth tiger. That's the example I'm always given. So that's the one we'll use. It's simplified and it's useful because that is the way the brain developed. And it was very helpful when we were in nature and we were looking for dangerous things that would kill us. So helpful. But in this day and age, we don't have those same problems so much anymore in modern society.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:02]:
So our brain, still wired to look for problems, finds them everywhere. And it doesn't have a modulator so it can think. So many things are life or death when they're not. They feel that way a lot of the times, but they aren't necessarily so. And that results in stress for us. If we can rewire the brain so that we use its power for good, so we use its ability to find things, it's a wonderful problem solver. We give it a task, it can do it. So we want to give it the task of finding progress, of finding places to be proud of.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:52]:
If we give it that problem, that puzzle, then it will solve it. And so it's a wonderful thing to rewire the brain. That way we can get it in the habit of finding the good, finding the progress, finding, finding the places to be proud. When we do that, we get so many benefits. First, I'm going to say, why? Why find the progress? Why find the good, the places to be proud? For two reasons. One, it feels a whole lot better. Life just feels better. When we're looking for progress, we're looking for places for us to be proud of ourselves.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:46]:
Because remember, and this is Back in episode 133, thoughts create feelings. So if we're having thoughts of our progress, of showing ourself where things are getting better, then we're going to feel better. Because thoughts create feelings. And number two is we're much more likely to keep going if we're feeling better. We're looking for progress. We're seeing the places where we can be proud. That's where the motivation comes in so we can stay motivated because we're reminding ourselves of the progress. We're showing ourselves the progress.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:22]:
And we're showing ourselves where we can be proud of the things that we've done. If we're not intentional about it, we won't. It won't happen. And that's that negative bent of brains. Brains look for problems. They don't look for things that we've already done that worked out well. They're like, okay, that's not something I have to worry about. So let me just worry about the problems.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:50]:
That does not serve us well. It may be the way the brain is, and I'm sure you can relate to that. One of the examples in terms of weight loss is people can. This happened the other day to someone. It was actually a friend who wasn't a client at this point, but she'd lost weight and it was so exciting. I was really happy for her. And the response was something like, well, I should have weighed this before. And that is the way our brains work.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:20]:
Like negating or poo-pooing is the word that came to mind. The progress, the work we've done that does not serve us well. And so changing our brain so that it doesn't do that, so that it will be proud of the work we've done, notice it. For some people, that may feel really uncomfortable. I'm not asking you to brag about it necessarily, although I think talking about it is fantastic and it shows other people, it models for other people about that. But you certainly don't have to do that. But even in your own brain, that you can show yourself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:00]:
Look at what I've done, look at what I've accomplished. Nice job. When the brain is more likely to find the progress, when we've directed it there and we're rewiring, so we're having that be more of an automatic thing. That's the goal. Then we're feeling proud, we're feeling. We're seeing the progress and we're motivated to continue that. It feels good to see progress. We get a dopamine hit from that, and that's gonna have us keep going.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:32]:
And so then we're able to get to the finish line. However long that takes, however far away the finish line is, we're able to get there. But when it comes to weight loss, we not only wanna lose all the weight we wanna lose, but we wanna keep it off. And so sustained motivation is a really good thing to have. And we have it when we see our growth now. Eventually we'll have the new habit in place. Our brain will get very used to finding the progress, finding the places to be proud, and we won't have to be as conscious about it. But that's because we've created the habit of finding our progress.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:13]:
And it will serve us so well. It is so worth doing this sort of, I call it mind management. I got that from my mentor, managing our mind. And when we do that, we are in this particular example, we are changing it from looking for the problems to looking for the progress. The other piece of this is that when we get in the habit of finding the good, this skill also aids in developing self trust and high self regard. Self trust and high self regard are keys to feeling better in general, but also to weight loss and sustained weight loss, particularly when we use the hunger scale. Because when we have self trust and high self regard, we are more inclined to listen to our bodies, listen to what's going on inside us. And we'll eat when we're hungry, stop when we're satisfied, when we can do that consistently, you will be the way you want.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:31]:
So it all goes together, it fits together. Self trust, high self regard, listening to our bodies, developing the ability then to easily lose weight and keep it off forever. Because if we keep generating good feelings, we feel closer and want to treat the things we love well. When we cherish ourselves, we will treat ourselves really well. And that's sustained motivation. That's the ultimate in. So no matter the situation you find yourself in, you will be able to figure it out. Because you have high self regard, high self trust, you can figure it out.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:19]:
You're happy to treat your body with the respect it desires. And you'll know what that is because it will tell you. It will tell you when it's hungry, it will tell you when it's tired, it will tell you when it needs to move around. And you'll easily be able to listen to it and it will make so much sense, there won't be overriding anything. And all this comes from developing the high self regard, the self trust. And this is enhanced by finding the progress. It's an upward spiral of goodness. Finding the progress.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:05]:
Feeling more connected, easily able to find more progress. On and on and on. Now, the way we start finding the progress. Remember our brain is wired for the negative bias. So we're working to find the progress. And that can be hard for us to do because we're with ourselves. You know, like with weight loss in particular, you're with yourself as you're losing weight. But when someone who hasn't seen you in a couple Months comes to see you, like, oh, my goodness.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:37]:
Right? So we want to train ourselves to be able to have that idea, like, nice job. Look at how much work you've done. And it can help, especially in the beginning, it can help to have a witness. And that's. That's really what coaching is. I will show you your brain, show you what's going on. And this particular podcast was born from some remarkable examples of progress. Just this week that I was pointing out some of these examples, the client could tell that it was progress, but a lot of them, they didn't see it until I pointed it out.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:16]:
And that makes sense when our brain is wired the way it, you know, factory settings. But modeling it and pointing it out and showing it so that we can start to notice the places of progress is really an important piece of this. So let's go into some examples. I have a client who's going through some tough things. Many people in fertility are. And the way she reacted to all the pieces of it and the people in it was so much different than it had been before. Before, there was a lot more drama, like created drama. There was more overeating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:01]:
And that was, of course, to escape the feelings. And really the escaping, really the escaping feelings just postpones dealing with the feelings. Right? That's often what emotional eating is, is that we are just covering up the feelings and we're postponing them. And that doesn't work because not only then do we tend to feel guilty about the overeating and we feel physically uncomfortable, and then we have the consequence of extra weight. We still have to deal with the emotion that comes. So she's been doing an amazing job of staying present even when things are difficult. And no one really wants to do that, except that it is so much easier to deal with it in the moment than if we create drama or overeat or try to avoid and then have to deal with it later. Plus all the things that we've created.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:06]:
An example two is that she was not snappy to her loved ones, which could happen before. And so there wasn't the guilt, There wasn't the apology. There wasn't the diversion of the drama of being snappy. It was. She was able to see all of this, be in it, and not have these extra hard parts. I think of it like, I don't know if you. This is so old now, but I Love Lucy episodes. And there's the famous one where she has the chocolate.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:39]:
She's at a conveyor belt chocolate factory. And the conveyor Belt has the chocolates coming. The idea is to deal with the chocolates, right? Then not put them in a pile. And just the pile keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and then you have to deal with it. She was able to deal with the chocolates as they arrived. That's huge. When we can do that. We are not going to use overeating as a coping mechanism.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:09]:
Not as much. Right. We're not perfect. But when we're learning this stuff, this is an incredible piece of progress. Like a huge, huge piece. When we start to see this ability of being able to be in the moment and not leave it by snapping or creating drama or overeating, it is such a huge win. Even though it doesn't feel great because you're not adding pain on top of pain on top of pain. This was just such a huge shift and really exciting.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:56]:
And this is what's going to happen with some of these other things, too. But there was still parts where she was beating herself up for some of the other things that were going on. And I get it, our brains do that. But it was really true that she handled it completely differently than she would have in the past. And so having our brain leave the safe, comfortable criticism. Saying comfortable and criticism in the same sentence sounds funny, but our brain is just so used to doing that that it feels familiar and comfortable to do. But when we redirect it to the progress it made, we really can feel some relief. We're not beating ourselves up for not being perfect.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:42]:
Instead, we're able to see, oh, my goodness, that really was a huge change. I'm so impressed with myself now. That can be hard for some of us to say, but again, we don't have to say it out loud, but we want to show our brain that stuff's happening, it's working, things are changing, and we feel better. Ultimately, even when we're going through something difficult, we ultimately feel better because we're not overeating through it. We're not snapping at people. We're not doing things that are more destructive and add pain to the already uncomfortable situation. It's huge progress. Then I had someone else who would have eaten a macaroni salad.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:32]:
She was at a family reunion, and macaroni salad is one of the things there. And she just knows, because she's been to this reunion before, that she would have eaten the macaroni salad even though she wasn't hungry. She was able to enjoy the other things that she wanted, and she just was not hungry anymore. And she did not have the macaroni salad. That felt like a huge win. She didn't have macaroni salad because she was on a diet. She just genuinely wasn't hungry for it and it didn't make sense to have it. And that felt so good to her.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:12]:
And she knows that in the past she would have eaten it and it would not have been enjoyable because there would have been physical discomfort and guilt afterwards. Being able to see that she easily made the decision not out of force, not out of dieting, but because it just didn't make sense because she wasn't hungry. That was beautiful progress. And when you're watching yourself be able to do this just naturally, this naturally happens that you used to think that people would not eat macaroni salad because they were forcing themselves not to, or because they were naturally thin and had some other superpower that you didn't have. And then you watch yourself do it. And you get it. You get it that it's possible to make a really good decision that you're happy with. I don't mean good, like no one should eat macaroni salad.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:07]:
Have it as much as you like. But it was a decision that was easy for her to make because she was not hungry. And it didn't make sense to eat something when she wasn't hungry. This is huge. And what that looks like from the outside is just someone saying, no, thank you. But so much mental progress is going on inside. It's amazing. I had another person who was at Disneyland and she found that ordering the kids size of things was perfect.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:39]:
So she got to enjoy all the things she wanted. And the kid size was just exactly what she needed. I actually thought that was a brilliant idea. And she had all the things at Disneyland she enjoys. And you know, at Disneyland you walk around so much. There was zero weight gain. And she enjoyed. She was very happy about that because this is someone who goes to Disneyland relatively often.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:04]:
I mean, and she knows what it used to be like to go to Disneyland and eat. And she was able to see the progress for herself. She's lost so much weight, so it makes sense. And she can see how she'll be able to do this forever. And she gets to go to Disneyland as much as she wants and she gets to enjoy it all. This is what's so important about the way we lose weight here. The only way for it to be sustainable is for you to be able to do the things you like. And that's possible in the way that we lose weight here.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:41]:
I had another client who went to A kid's birthday party. And normally she would have piled the plate high, not wanting to miss anything. But she was able to say in her brain, I can come back for seconds if I want. Which of course is 100% true. And so she didn't pile it on, and she didn't go back for seconds because she was no longer hungry. And she could see the big, huge difference of her own behavior, of what it would have been like before and now. And seeing that progress is so useful, we want to remind ourselves, we want to show ourselves, and we want to say, too, how easy it was. So this wasn't her beating herself up or forcing herself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:27]:
It just made sense and it was easy to do. I have someone who used to finish her plate, and leaving some food on the plate didn't even seem like a possibility. And now she regular leaves bites on the plate. It really is an amazing feeling, actually, to go from finishing everything on the plate always to easily leaving some on the plate. It's a big difference. This is not forcing yourself to leave something on the plate. This is checking in with the hunger scale. I'm no longer hungry, so I'm not gonna eat that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:02]:
And there's some food on the plate, and it's just easy to do. Watching that progress and showing your brain what you're capable of now, what feels good and easy now is so important to have us keep going. I have people who this week didn't order dessert when they normally would have. Again, not because they were torturing themselves or they are making themselves. It just didn't make sense. And the last one, this one was such a huge change. She was alone for a couple days, husband out of town, and she took herself to a sushi dinner, which here was a huge deal, because before she. When she found herself alone, she would only ever go for peanut butter and jelly because it didn't seem worth it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:59]:
I'm putting air quotes around it. To have a whole meal that she would only ever do peanut butter and jelly for herself. This is such a huge difference, taking herself out to a meal. The progress between peanut butter and jelly and sushi meal is enormous. And it is such a valuable thing to see. All the work that had to go into that she did, and she's done it. We were able to put it in these terms, peanut butter and jelly to sushi, just from the work that she's been doing. And it's huge when we can see this kind of progress, all these things, and you see how varied these things are.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:45]:
And you would have your own version of that something that's hard for you. And then it becomes easy having your brain tune into those things. And we start by noticing the little things. So each time you're able to stop at positive too. Each time you plan a lunch, each time you decide to go for a walk with your friend instead of drink, these things are the things to look for. Watch for the progress and basically praise yourself, right? Notice it when you do, you're rewiring your brain. And the rewiring has benefits that are so long lasting. Training our brain to find the progress, the places to feel proud, help us feel better generally, but also get us motivated and have us stay motivated also.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:49]:
When we generate good feelings by finding good thoughts, remember, thoughts create the feelings. We promote high self regard and create a positive spiral of care for ourselves. We're kinder and more caring when we cherish something. And when we do this with our bodies and weight loss, we transform our relationship to ourselves and our relationship to food. And that's how we lose weight painlessly and forever. And that's what I want for you. I'm sending you so much love. If you ever want help with this, you just reach out to me.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:23:22]:
@StephanieFeinMD on Instagram and LinkedIn. StephanieFeinMD.com is the website and you just click the lose weight with me button right there and we will be connected. I'm sending you so much love.
