Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. Happy summer vacation time. Hope you're having a great, great summer. Maybe you're floating in the pool right now. How fun. I do love summer.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:19]:
So I was talking to a client today about vacation re entry. I actually do have a episode all on that reentering after vacation. It's episode 83. We'll hook that up in the show notes. Because she did a fantastic job on her trip. She really did. I mean, it was amazing. But found that getting back home was the issue, which it often is.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:44]:
She'd planned so well, like amazingly well for the trip, and it was able to go so smoothly and then wobbled a little when she got home because she hadn't planned for that re entry, which can be a very vulnerable period, which is what episode 83 goes into. But it got us into this discussion of Future Self, which I love this topic. I hit it about a year and a half ago. And if you want to listen to Future Self 1.0, that's episode 65 again. We'll hook that up in the show notes, episode 65. And this is future self 2.0, also known as Summer Edition, because we're talking about in the summer. So the future self, if you have never heard about it before, is the version of you that is living your life in the future. I mean, it's sort of self explanatory, but it's worth diving into.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:38]:
It's the one that gets on the plane next week. It's the version of you that's having lunch tomorrow. It's any version in the future from now until the end of time. And the important thing about her, it's a really valuable thing to cultivate a kind relationship with her. We love her, we want to make things easy for her. And when we do, when we think about her and her experience, we're building trust with ourselves. We're showing ourselves that we look out for each other, that we have our back, that we're thinking about her, that we want to make things easy for her. That's how we're showing our love for her.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:28]:
So we don't throw her under the bus like that. We sort of intentionally leave something for the last minute, making her scramble around and stressed and working unnecessarily hard. If we do that a lot, we start to resent past self. And then our relationship with ourself is not trustworthy. We lose trust in ourself. And that feels horrible. Now, one of the reasons why that happens, we'll get into that a little bit, is that we're not realistic with what one can accomplish in the future. And if we're not realistic, then we keep putting her in a position and she feels.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:12]:
Does not feel good, as you well know, because if you've been her, you've been future self who's been put upon, it feels terrible. So it's worth it to think of this concept, sort of past self, present self and future self, so that we can make things run more smoothly. Now, this concept, of course, can be used in all of life. We're going to talk about it here in terms of weight loss, just because it's helpful to use an example. But this idea of setting her up means we are building a trusting relationship with ourselves. And when we do that, there's nothing we can't accomplish because we know we'll get it done. But we know we'll get it done because we know we won't ask anything crazy of our future self. We will ask that she do something that she can handle.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:12]:
Maybe we'll stretch her a little, but we're not going to put her in a difficult position where she's going to feel defeated and angry at you. Basically, when we're thinking about our future self and making things easier on her, which is us, when we're talking about weight loss, that often refers to planning. So planning. And we talk a lot about that here because it's not restrictive planning. And that would be something that would not be nice to her. Right? So if, let's say in the future she's going to a party, let's say a wedding, and she loves wedding cake, you love wedding cake. But you're asking that she not eat wedding cake. That's not kind and it's not realistic because you love wedding cake.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:05]:
You know, every time you've been to a wedding, you love to have the wedding cake. So asking her not to have it or expecting that she's not going to have it doesn't make sense. It's not kind, it's not realistic. So there could be other plans that you can make. I'm just gonna. I'm thinking of some off the top of my head. But if you really didn't want to have wedding cake, which I don't know why exactly that would be. But let's say you didn't.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:31]:
You could leave earlier. If you. You could have one piece instead of three. You could split a piece with your partner. You could not have alcohol and have the cake instead. If you're working towards Weight loss. There are so many other options, but thinking of them ahead of time so you can set her up that she, she doesn't have to suffer by not having wedding cake when she really, really wants it. I mean, there are so many scenarios here because if, you know, I was going to say if she doesn't want wedding cake, but that's not what we set up.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:06]:
She wants wedding cake now. It could end up being chocolate and she hates chocolate. And so there you are. But unless you're going to call the bride and ask her what kind of cake it is, then. And that would be one way of setting up future self. But otherwise setting a realistic goal is the point. It's knowing yourself now and in the future. Now I'm.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:35]:
We gain skills in the future. So depending on how far in the future we can decide. But, and what I mean by that is if the wedding is this weekend, you could be skill building, but it's probably not going to be leaps and bounds. But it may be true that you are not going to want wedding cake in a year. That may be possible, but we're not planning for that version. We're planning for the one that we know and we can see in about a week. And you certainly can try things out and if they fail miserably, that's just good information. And you may have a very good reason to try something out.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:21]:
Like maybe you're deciding to give up gluten because you've noticed you have terrible bloating and discomfort. And so that may be a reason you want to try to not have wedding cake. And you'll try it and that may work. I always think that when we have a real reason, a good reason for our decision, that can really help. I will say that often just trying to lose weight doesn't always work. I'm putting work in air quotes. That's more of that restrictive model that sets up a relationship with ourself that's not long lasting. If we have however, like a physical reason for not having it, that sometimes can happen a little easier.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:12]:
And I'm not suggesting you lie to yourself. If it's in fact the case that you're giving up smoking, then that may work. You know, you have a health reason for giving up smoking and you're just going to sort of grit through it because you have a long term goal. But the cake, that doesn't have to be a long term goal for weight loss, but it may be for your health in terms of gluten. If that happens to be the case for You. But if you don't have physical symptoms and there's no medical reason for you to stop having gluten, then telling yourself you don't want gluten may or may not work. The point of all this is I want there to be a realistic expectation of your future self. Taking your future self into consideration, not restricting her for a reason that she wouldn't be on board with.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:07]:
Meaning you're not on board with. Leaving it up to her. Thinking that she has abilities that you don't have is setting her up really. And again, the problem with that, the major problem with that is creating less trust with yourself. That I can't trust my past self to set me up, that I'm always on the hook for something my past self did. Now there is a good. Actually, I can do another episode on this. Loving your past self also.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:43]:
But today we're talking about future self and setting her up for success. So we want to have an intentional relationship with her. We want to be kind to her. We want to love her. And doing that. Being kind to her means we have realistic expectations about what's achievable in the future. And the way we do that, I'm going to tell you that right here, is that we think like her. So we put ourselves in her shoes.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:18]:
She's at the wedding when after she's had some champagne, she's having fun with friends. Is she going to want to have cake? If you really put yourself in her shoes and feel what it's going to be like to tell her she can't have cake, if you can really get into her knowing yourself, you could say, oh, yeah, that's not going to work. I'm going to come up with some. A different plan. And that is really helpful because you still have weight loss in mind. But you love her. You know that asking her not to have wedding cake for her is a particular issue. And that's not gonna go well.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:59]:
So then you'll come up with some other ideas. Maybe you'll go for a walk. Maybe you will skip something else that you normally would have. Maybe we went into some of those. But your brain gets to be creative. Instead of the only answer being that she must be restricted. That's never the only answer. And when we do this, when we're realistic, when we put ourselves in her shoes and then we problem solve, if the original plan wasn't feasible or realistic, then we've set all of ourselves up, our past, present, and future self.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:36]:
Because now we can get our goal without sacrificing our. Without sacrificing our integrity, our desires, our abilities, we're meeting ourselves where we are, and that is loving. In the same day that I was talking to my client about re entry, which is a really vulnerable time. And so planning through the beginning of when you're home after vacation works out really well. That's another future self. That's two future selves, right? It's the vacation self and then it's the self returning from a vacation. And being in the shoes of those two different versions is important in terms of being able to plan ahead. But I spoke to someone else who did such a good job of setting her future self up.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:36]:
This is such a wonderful example. I'm so impressed. She's going on summer trip with family and part. It's like multiple parts. And one set of family is really not great about asking about grandkids. They're always talking about grandkids. There's lots of kids in the family and they're always bothering my client, frankly. I mean, those are my words, not hers about grandkids.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:09]:
So she 100% knows that's happening. That's a really important point. I love that she accepted that that was going to happen. And sweetly, her immediate family understood the situation and was like, hey, don't go if you like, truly no problem. They have her back if she didn't want to go. And that could have been an option. But when she thought about it, she decided she wanted to go, knowing they're not going to change and that likely that's going to happen. But what she did, and this is where it's setting up her future self so beautifully, is she put a buffer day between one family part and the family.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:54]:
That's going to be challenging. So she has a day where she's just with her husband, together, hanging out, getting rest, being in a beautiful place. So she's shoring herself up to interact with that family. I just thought that was brilliant. And it's such a good example of how you put yourself in your shoes in the future. You're feeling through that experience. Now, of course, she doesn't know exactly what's going to happen, but she's been with this family over and over again and it's been similar. So she's making a very educated guess.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:39]:
It's the same thing about wedding cake. We know that cake comes after in a wedding and we know what it's like. So of course things could be different. But we use the information that we have at the time. And she didn't want to set her future self up to be bombarded or vulnerable or whatever. So she came up with an amazing solution. And I just loved how much she was able to love her future self. Set her future self up for success.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:15]:
This is what we do every time we plan for our future self. Every time we bring a lunch, every time we bring a snack in our purse, every time we look at the menu ahead of time, Every time we make decisions about weekend plans, every time we go to the grocery store. All of that makes it so much easier for your future self to do what you want to do in terms of following through on decisions that will help weight loss. It's such a beautiful thing, doing something now. Setting your future self up so that she has so much ease is the kindest, most loving thing that we can do. And you can see how it really sets us up to continue to lose weight. It sets us up to have smooth sailing. Because one other thing that we know about the future is it's very unpredictable.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:16]:
So we can make all these plans and something goes wrong. But the odds of success are so increased by thinking ahead of our future self. And remember, the realistic piece is the most important. If we've never, you know, run a mile, then we're not going to ask my future self to do that without training or anything else. We're going to be realistic, set ourselves up. So the main takeaways here are planning sets up our future self for success, being kind to her. Having realistic expectations is key. And they're realistic because we know ourselves and we know the situation as best we can and we make a realistic goal.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:08]:
Then we think like her when deciding what will work and we're putting ourselves in her shoes. And then we problem solve if the original plan won't be feasible, isn't realistic. So we thought, I'm not going to have cake. And then you put yourself in the position of really sort of being at the whole wedding and you're like, oh, yeah, that's not going to go well. And we come up with a different plan. This process will save you heartache and keep you on track. And the best part, it will feel effortless when your future self becomes your present self. And that feeling is amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:52]:
Well worth thinking ahead of your future self and planning for her success. Then it strengthens the trust you have with you. And your future self is thankful for the past self. Your present self is loving your future self. And that keeps the love circle going. When there's that much trust, when you know you have your own back, you will help yourself. There's nothing you can't do. If you want help with this or anything I talk about on the podcast, just reach out.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:29]:
I'm @stephaniefeinmd on Instagram or LinkedIn or stephaniefeinmd.com is the website. You just click the lose weight with me button and we will be connected. I'm sending you and your future self so much love.
