Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And Thanksgiving is next week. Can you believe it? Oh, my goodness. This is an important time for weight loss. You may have heard, because I've said it before, that I love when people want to lose weight during the holidays. It is such a beautiful time. It's accelerated.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:27]:
It's like summer school. You get everything all at once. You get to practice a lot of great concepts. You have situations that you wouldn't normally, and so your learning goes really high and you show yourself that you can lose weight. It's really exciting. And we're going to talk a little more about that idea. But first I want to tell you that around the Thanksgiving time, there are a lot of issues with family, with decision making, with planning for the holidays and all the rest of that stuff. It seems like it's a really special time, but it's a lot of the same principles we've always talked about, and they're just used in these specific ways.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:09]:
So I want to point you to some great episodes to listen to for the Thanksgiving holiday. This will be our third Thanksgiving together. I've gone over a bunch of things for Thanksgiving, so episode 106 is the first one I listened to. It gives you support in making decisions around whether you're gonna go to Thanksgiving, not go, how you're feeling this year. And it will support you in that decision making and then in staying with that decision, in liking your reasons for making the decision and being able to be okay with yourself, be kind to yourself, be understanding with yourself about the decision that you made and how not to feel guilty about it, or waffle. I love this episode, especially around this time, because it may be very hard to decide not to go to family, but you may have very good reasons for it. And on the other side, you may decide you want to go and have good reasons for that, too. It's really good to examine your reasons and then to really like them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:14]:
So episode 106, we're going to hook these up in the show notes. But episode 106 is the first one. Episode 53 is about planning and the three phases to plan for. I highly recommend listening to that one. And then episode 54 is the emotions that come with Thanksgiving, family and fertility in particular. And I love that one because that's where I talk about Martha Beck's dysfunctional family. Bingo. It's such a good strategy.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:44]:
And so I highly recommend you go listen to that. That's episode 54 today, the Week before Thanksgiving, we are going to Check in on something. In the Halloween episode, I touched on the idea of the Bermuda Triangle of weight gain, and that starts with Halloween. Another point on the Triangle is Thanksgiving. And the third point is Christmas. Winter holidays with the bonus alcohol holiday of New Year's Eve. So that's the Bermuda Triangle of weight gain. And there are studies that show that people gain an average of five pounds, but that's an average of everybody.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:26]:
And so, of course, some people gain more, some people gain less. And the issue with it is that if we're not paying attention, and every year people gain five pounds and over again and they don't lose it. That's how people can gain weight. And from October 31st, so really two months, right? November and December, five pounds is really easy to do, right? That's not even a pound a week. It's basically half a pound a week. It can come on easily. And so that's why we started talking about it around Halloween and why I want to use this week's episode as the check in, sort of midpoint, a little before midpoint, which is perfect timing. How is the holiday going? How are you feeling? How did the month go before this? So since Halloween, there's really only three ways it could have gone.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:30]:
It went according to plan, it went better than expected, or it went off course. How will you know which one? Now, a lot of the times when we're thinking, oh, my gosh, it's terrible, it's the worst thing in the world, if we really look at the information that we have, look at data, it's not as bad as we thought. So my advice is definitely taking some time to check in, because if weight loss is on the menu for this holiday time, then it's a perfect time to see how it's going. I don't know if you've heard about this. Like airplanes, if they're off course just a tiny fraction of a degree or however it goes, they can end up in Maine or they can end up in Florida. It's the distance that they travel on the wrong path. So if they correct in the beginning or earlier, they can make an easier transition back to where they need to go. It turns out that with flying, they actually have to course correct constantly.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:44]:
They're always going off course, and they're just constantly redirecting. That is really what happens with weight loss, too. We're going along. If we notice we're going off course, we just course correct. And the sooner we course correct, the better the path is, the easier the path is. There's not as much to make up. So that analogy works really well for weight loss here. So we want to first find out are we off course? And if we are, what are we going to do to course correct.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:22]:
And the evaluation process is what we're going to do. So first you're going to see, is everything going according to plan? Did it go better or did I go off course? You're going to find that out by whatever goal you had for yourself. Am I at the weight? I'm thinking, have I been doing the hunger scale? The percentage that I've wanted to? Am I overeating more than half the time, less than half the time? Our clothes fitting a certain way? Those can be points at which we're evaluating. We're determining whether we're on course. How much candy did I have or not have? Did I ever feel out of control around food? All those things can be pointed that mean we're on course or off course. Good to know. And then the evaluation process that I really like for everyone to use is this one. We ask ourselves 3.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:24]:
What worked, what didn't, and what am I going to do differently? Three questions. What worked, what didn't, what am I going to do differently? And it's very important that it happen in that order. Order. We want to start with what worked, because no matter how off course we've been the last month or three weeks, there's something that worked. Because if we were being intentional at all, if we use the hunger scale at all, then something works. Something we could see was different than if we weren't paying attention and trying to lose weight. It might be hard to find, but we can find it. And it is worth your effort and time to find it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:07]:
Because we want to train the brain to look for things that worked. Because there is always something that worked. Our brain likes to be negative. No, nothing worked. Terrible, awful. There's always something that worked. Finding it is a huge accomplishment and deserves an ovation. So we start there.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:28]:
What worked, then what didn't. That might be a longer list or it might not. It might be one thing. Snacking after dinner when I wasn't hungry. Or there could be multiple things. But it's important to see them and to see them really. And what I mean by that is not over, exaggerate, not say everything is terrible. Be very specific if you can.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:51]:
It's always really helpful to be specific. Same with what worked, what specifically worked, and then we want to know what specifically did not work. And then when we really flesh out what didn't work, why? We get curious, like, what was going on there? What happened? Then we can answer the last question, which is, what will I do differently? It's going to be based on what didn't work and your deeper thinking around why it didn't work. And if we're including stuff that did work, the first question, what worked? Then one of the things we're going to do is do more of what worked. If it worked, keep doing it. And if it didn't work, we want to question why. And then we want to put that in our list. Now, we don't want to overwhelm ourselves.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:42]:
So when we think about what we're going to do differently, we can just do a couple. A couple suggestions. Now, ideally, we're doing this evaluation every week. You may notice it from a food date. And I love for us to be doing food dates every week. But if that's not something we're in the habit of, now is a good check in time. Because the holidays can be especially challenging when it comes to food and weight loss and all the rest of it. So this is just a perfect time to evaluate how the Bermuda Triangle is going.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:17]:
And once you have your what I'm going to do differently, then that's your marching orders for the next month. You're going to know what to look out for. You're going to know what you're working on, and you have a better understanding of how things are really going this year. How have they really been going? And what is a realistic thing to ask of myself in the next week or two weeks or however long you want to give yourself? I would love it if it was just week by week. You will see incredible progress if you're doing the evaluation each week. What worked, what didn't? What am I going to do differently now? If it's felt like you've been off course for this past month, remember we're talking about the Bermuda Triangle. We're in the middle. And Halloween was the start.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:06]:
Really. The week before Halloween is the start. Even if it's. It's almost impossible to find something that worked. Everything, nothing stuck. All is not lost. This is such an important idea to embrace because not giving up is a huge transformation in and of itself. So many times if something's a little hard, particularly when it's weight loss, we just want to give up.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:37]:
Eff it. Never mind. Too hard, can't do it. But our brain loves to generalize, so it likes to just think it's too hard, meaning all of it. What every single part of it is too hard. It's probably not too hard to eat when you're hungry. And it might not be too hard to stop when you've actually had enough. But you have to play with it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:59]:
Is it certain foods that are harder to stop? There's data there. It's not broad strokes. There really are things that worked. We don't want to let our brains get away with this generalization thing, because when it does that, it's successful in having us give up. It wants us to have an easy, breezy life, and God bless it for that. It wants us to survive. But we have goals, and in order to achieve those goals, we have to work with our brain. And the brain really wants us to just give up.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:39]:
It does not want to change at all. But we want to change. So even if everything has not gone to plan, it's the perfect time to accept that, to notice that and still choose to continue going with intention. This is really a big deal because it might feel uncomfortable to think about not being able to what we set out to do. You know, maybe I was gonna certain stuff with the candy and it ended up lasting for two weeks and I've been having candy every day. It might feel hard that I had wanted to not eat candy and I ended up eating candy every single day. That is not a problem. That is the reality of the situation.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:34]:
That's okay, because now we're stopping and saying, oh, I see what's happened. I don't want to be doing that. I lost focus. Like I just turned off my brain. Good to know. Really good to know. So now we can tweak that because the way we set it up before clearly wasn't working. And maybe we said not to have any candy and we ended up having candy every day.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:04]:
So that wasn't a great solution. Telling myself I should have no candy whatsoever didn't work out. So how. What do I want to try next? And we're just going to give ourselves little tweaks like, okay, the past is over. That didn't work. I still have my goal of weight loss. I can do it. I can try something else.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:29]:
This is such a big deal. I cannot stress it enough. Black and white thinking, all or nothing thinking is a major problem with diet mentality. I'm either perfect and having no sugar ever at all, or I'm eating everything under the sun. The middle ground is where we lose weight and keep it off, and it's where we can enjoy life and have a body we're comfortable in. This is a very big deal. That's why this checking in is really useful right now. So it might feel uncomfortable to think that we weren't able to do what we set out to do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:10]:
But we are going to use that as data, not as ammunition to beat ourselves up. In the past, we've used it as ammunition to beat ourselves up. And so of course, the brain wants to avoid it, but instead we're going to use it as data, just as I described with the candy. Oh, I notice I did that. Maybe that's not a way that's going to work for me. What can I try instead? And when we're using it as data and just experimenting, that's how we build the skill of creating a loving, trusting relationship with ourselves. When we're kind to ourselves, when we miss the mark, when we show ourselves unconditional love, no matter what happened, we are building trust. We can trust we're not going to use anything against ourselves, anything in our past against ourselves.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:11]:
We're not going to beat ourselves up with it. We're going to use it as information. Looks like I wasn't able to do that when I had piles of candy in the middle of the kitchen. Okay, maybe I'll put them in the pantry. Maybe I won't have some. Maybe I'll decide I can have some and I'll plan for it. One of these ways is bound to work, or at least give us more information going forward and when we can use the data not to beat ourselves up, but to make new decisions going forward, we're building trust. We're allowing ourselves to not do it perfectly and still love and respect ourselves.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:51]:
It's so important. This is a really big deal. So if you're in the process of doing this, if you're listening to this and you are checking in the Bermuda Triangle, you are a superstar. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. But if you're listening to this in real time, you have an entire week. You can make a new plan, and there's definitely time for that. So I want to give you a big hug, congratulate you for considering being intentional going forward. All is not lost.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:29]:
It's not over. We don't have to just slide on here. From now until Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's, you can start again. You can create an intention, build the relationship with yourself that will take you forward into all the decisions, the holiday season. Next week, I'm going to talk to you about your Thanksgiving plate. And it's just in time because you only need a day for that. Planning your plate. So you can do this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:04]:
I'm so impressed with your willingness to check in to do your evaluation so that you know what you're going to be focusing on the next month, six weeks. And if you ever have any questions about that, please contact me. I'm @StephanieFeinMD on Instagram and on LinkedIn and on my website. You can contact me at StephanieFeinMD.com I am here for you, happy to answer any questions you have. And I'm sending you so much love until we talk next week.
