Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight Loss for fertility and we're talking about the conversation that guarantees weight loss. It really does. So first we're going to talk about discomfort. So many conversations can be, especially ones that are meaningful and affect change, can be uncomfortable ones because change can be uncomfortable by definition. Right? If we're doing the same thing, we're comfortable with it, but if we're trying to do something different, it can be uncomfortable. So we've spoken about discomfort before and I'm going to link some of those episodes up in the show notes.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:43]:
Mostly it has been about the discomfort of feelings, of emotions, and we've talked about the sensations in our body that are emotions. Emotions are just sensations in our body. They're created from the neurotransmitters and hormones and things that are released based on the thinking of a thought and they create a feeling in our body. Those are the sensations. And that's some of the discomfort we've talked about. When we are able to handle that, it ends up being slight discomfort. There's nothing we can't do. That's how we influence emotional eating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:23]:
That's how we dissolve it. That's how we get rid of it, is when we're willing to feel our feelings. We don't need to cover up our feelings with food. Today we're going to talk about something slightly different, a slightly different discomfort. And it's the discomfort of the annoying voice in our head. There's usually not just one, but we're going to focus in on the one that sabotages our weight loss or really sabotages anything we're trying to do any change. That's why we talked about the conversation that influences, that impacts change. Another word for the annoying voice is the saboteur, but also resistance.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:06]:
We can think of it as resistance and I want to illustrate it first with a couple of examples. And these are non food examples, which I think can be really helpful when we're thinking about this sort of thing. And then of course, I'll talk about food. The first one is I've had a recent experience where I was writing some emails and I don't love writing and I don't love emails. So it was challenging. And at first I kept procrastinating and I haven't had so much of a problem with procrastinating in quite a while. I used to have a big, huge problem with procrastinating whenever I had something big to do. I had the cleanest closet in the universe.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:43]:
My kitchen was spotless. I would do any other activity. I would clean out the garage before I would do the activity that I was trying to do. Now, it hasn't been like that, but I started to notice a little bit of that behavior. Like when I get up and I'd rather do dishes, I know there's something going on. So my resistance was really high when I noticed that. Then I realized that the resistance voice was there, and I understood that the only way I was going to be able to go forward and do the emails, do the activity that I really wanted to do, that I wanted to do, by the way, right? The bigger I. The big me, parts of me did not want to do it, clearly, and they were very vocal about it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:35]:
That's the voice I'm talking about. So I realized I was going to have to do my activity, my writing of the emails with the voice there. So I would just have to write my emails, do my emails, and the whole time be willing to hear the little voice that was like, oh, this is so boring. Oh, you're really not great at this. Oh, that sounds ridiculous. Oh, my God, really? I think we have some dishes to do. That voice, the one that had the running commentary about all the other things I could do and how this wasn't going all that well and why would I still be doing this, all that I recognized that the only way I was going to get through the emails was to do it anyway, do it, even though that voice was there. Now, the great news is that once.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:33]:
So I was willing to have that conversation. And the conversation I'm talking about is the conversation in my head. So the voice would say something like, oh, my God, this is so boring. The loving mother voice in me, the one who has a bigger vision for myself that wants to do this and knows that it would be a good thing for the goals in my life. I said to the voice that was saying it was so boring, one's like, I know it. It is boring and we're almost done. Or it is boring, we're on our way. Another hour should do it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:13]:
Another 20 minutes should do it. Whatever it is that I had to say the voice just to have it calm itself a little bit. And I was willing to have that conversation so that I could get it done. And of course, the great news is, once I had it done, omg, it felt amazing. Amazing that I got through it. I did it. I didn't want to, but I did it. And now that's very different than whipping myself into doing it, than to using punishment or any Other bullying tactics to get myself to do it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:51]:
Because if I did it that way, way I likely wouldn't have felt as good about doing it, because I would have been beat up. And I'll tell you right now, I would not have wanted to do it again. Now I do want to do it again. I'm fine dealing with that voice because I got something done that I really wanted to get done. And that's the difference between doing it with a loving conversation and. And doing it with punishment. Another example, and this is what actually gave me the idea to talk to you about this today, because my client had such a good example of this. She was doing physical therapy for some part of her that needed physical therapy.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:35]:
And she knew that when she did the exercises in the morning, her day was so much more smooth. Like, her body felt better. She was able to do the things she wanted to do. It was clear that the physical therapy exercises worked really well. So she was able to do them one morning. And then the next morning, the voices were just really loud about not wanting to do it takes up too much time. It's hard, whatever the voices were saying. So the next day, she didn't do it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:05]:
But the day after, she decided she really wanted to do it, because the day she did it, she felt great. The day she didn't do it, she did not feel great. It was very clear how beneficial the exercises were. So she had the discussion with the voice, the sabotaging resistance voice. It said, oh, no, we don't want to do it. And she was able to speak to it in the loving mother way of, I know you don't, sweet pea. And we're going to do it anyway. We feel so much better once we do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:45]:
And then she was able to do it, and then she wanted to do 30, apparently, of each thing. And the voice still would still say, not 30. Okay, but this one, we're not going to do 30. And she'd say, let's start and see how far we get. 30 is reasonable. Let's see. And then the voice would talk up after 15, and she's, oh, halfway there. It was a running conversation, but the point is, it's a loving one, not a punishing, mean one.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:18]:
There wasn't like, you're so lazy. I can't believe you're. You won't do 15 more. It wasn't anything like that. The relationship, this conversation is much more like a loving mother with a complaining, resistant toddler. When, you know, you have the experience of having a big picture, you know that I Don't know brushing your teeth is an important habit to cultivate when they're little, or that it won't be a good idea to skip the nap today. There will be resistance from the toddler. That is a really good analogy to this voice in our head.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:02]:
And the loving mother can guide the child to do the thing that's really going to benefit them. That's the energy we're talking about. Now some food examples might be things like resistance to planning, resistance to shopping, resistance to keeping hunger scale logs, resistance to the hunger scale, resistance to trying going out with restaurants, going on vacations. There are so many things that are brain can tell us we're not going to do, we shouldn't do that's going to be bad. And when we are being the loving mother, seeing the bigger picture, we can have the conversation, talk our way through the experience. Now, flavors of the voice. We're going to talk about a couple. I'm sure there's lots and lots and you may have your own version of this, but the a couple of them are the resistor or the rebel, which sounds like I don't want to.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:03]:
And with the flavor of you can't tell me what to do. That's the rebel. The resister, the saboteur is more like the one that I was describing for myself. This is boring. So just trying to have its way of getting you to not do it. And the third one that thinking about is the indulger. In this case, it's I want to you. And the indulger will say, you deserve it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:33]:
I've talked about the idea of your head saying you deserve it before because when we're thinking of the bigger picture, you deserve much more than a Twinkie. You deserve a life that you're happy with in a body that you're comfortable with that sort of idea. So the indulger, again is a way to get you not to do something. And that's the flavor of it, is you deserve it. Now, the important thing about these voices is that they came to you honestly. They are sweet and innocent, actually, because often they were born when you needed them desperately when you were a child. I think of them as protectors so that they came when you couldn't figure out how to handle a situation when you were 2 and 4 and 6, they came in to help you. And you could particularly see it with the rebel, the one you can't tell me what to do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:43]:
If you've ever seen like a toddler saying, I'll do it myself, right? They'll put on their shoes themselves, and they put them on the wrong feet, or they get their sweater on and it's backwards or whatever. This idea of I can do it myself, you can't tell me what to do. The right circumstance, it could be helpful, but in the wrong circumstance, it sabotages. That's the piece we're talking about now is this idea that these versions of resistance are immature responses. They are immature ways of dealing with change, and that's not a problem. We love these protectors. They came when we needed them, and God bless them, because they got us this far. It's just that now they're not functioning in the way that we want to function.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:40]:
They're no longer as useful as they used to be. And that's so important to know. Why this is important to think of them this way is because we don't want to shame them, beat them, ignore them, push them away. We really want to thank them. Let's thank you for your service. You were so helpful to me. But I have a different way of doing it now. I'm practicing a different way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:03]:
I'm thinking about it in a different way. So thank you so much. I'm gonna do it this way now. And if they won't go, if they're just persistent, that's when we coddle them or work with them. We just have 15 more. I know you're bored. I know you're tired. I know you don't want to do this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:26]:
You're amazing. Thank you so much. You could also say, go ahead and go play. I got this. This is the idea of the loving mother. Whenever we can take on the responsibility for it in a loving way, let them off the hook. That will work. These are the conversations you're having in your head that I want you to have in your head so that you can get the change.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:49]:
You can do the activity or the new behavior that you want to do without punishing yourself, shaming yourself, because those are the old ways of dealing with resistance. We want this new way of dealing with the resistance, and that's loving it and yourself at the same time. So the voice, the annoying voice, the saboteur, may start off as a 10. It may be so loud because you're just very used to it, protecting you, it coming in when there's a change, and it wants to keep you safe. And then the strength of your inner loving mother voice might be at like, a 5 compared to that situation where the voice is in that matchup where the saboteur is a 10. And the loving mother voice is a 5. The saboteur may win. So then you do see yourself eating ice cream on the couch anyway.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:52]:
And it may feel against your own will because part of you was, no, I don't want to do that. And the bigger protector part was like, no, this is how we deal with it. This is not a problem. Because as we're aware of it, the numbers can change. So we're going to set about changing the numbers. This number system is just something to be able to label and identify which is stronger and how strong I'm getting and which one is the stronger one in the particular conversation that you're having. So what we can do then is strengthen the loving mother voice, which is, I submit, the real you, the core you, the you that knows what's best for you. It's the kindest voice you have inside you.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:46]:
Whenever you hear a really kind, loving voice, that's what I'm talking about. And as we strengthen that one, we are going to work on quieting the resistance. So as you strengthen your kind, loving mother voice, the number will go up. And another way to say this is to increase the trust you have with yourself. This is self trust. The loving mother voice is confident, calm down, knows that she can handle anything that comes her way. That is self trust. Resilience is another way of saying it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:24]:
I know no matter what, I will get through this in a loving way with myself. I will not sacrifice myself. I will not be cruel to myself. We will figure out a loving way to do this. That's what we're talking about. When we are able to access her more and more, we have more resilience, more self trust. So it's such a beneficial thing to do. It's such a beneficial skill to develop.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:57]:
The way you strengthen it is that you notice her voice is always kind, always loving, always. She's usually a little quieter. She's not as loud. The resistance voices will be loud, punishing, anxious, anxious, urgent. The loving mother voice really isn't those things. She may feel strongly, but she will never be mean. And listening for her is a skill because like I said, she's quieter. It's like a graceful confidence when you find that you can listen to that voice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:42]:
So first you notice her, you start noticing her more and more. Remember, she's always kind. You also know what you want. When you know what you want, what you're going for, then you can know which decisions will get you there. Like my client with the physical therapy exercises, she knew she feels better with it. That was a knowing that was a decision. So that was the bigger goal for herself. She knew that, so she was able to move in that direction.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:16]:
Another aspect of trusting yourself and building that trust is to ask reasonable things of yourself and then you're able to follow through on them. And when you're following through on things you've asked yourself to do, you feel amazing. My emails come to mind. I was not strengthening my relationship with myself, my self trust, when I was starting to procrastinate, but when I sat down and figured out a way to do it, which included having conversations with that voice the entire time, I felt amazing afterwards. It was a reasonable ask and I followed through. Now, reasonable ask is a really important point. I did not demand that I do 400 emails in two hours and I've learned this over time. What is a reasonable ask of myself? I could do a whole other podcast on that actually, and I may.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:18]:
Because that's where we build the trust with ourselves. Not that we ask for crazy things and follow through on them, but that we ask for reasonable things and follow through on them. Because when we ask for unreasonable things, we cannot follow through on them. And that damages the relationship we have with ourselves. So that's the general way of strengthening the relationship we have. Being able to recognize more and more the loving mother voice inside us, which again I relate to the core of who we are now. Some things that can weaken our ability to connect with that voice are things like poor sleep, when we're over hungry, when we've gotten some hard news, when we fight with our partner, we just had a fight, or there's some job stress, or we're in the middle of a cycle or we have our period. These sorts of things can make it a little more difficult.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:28]:
We're a little more vulnerable to connect with that loving voice. Especially if we're just practicing how to do that. And then that can make the very practice remember, because it's from childhood, the very practiced rebel or saboteur voice, comparatively louder because it's at the ready, it is ready to give you a piece of its mind. And so that unconscious voice will come stronger than if we're practicing connecting with the new one. So it's just good to have this stuff in mind, the stuff that weakens it, because the things then that support it would be the opposite of those. So this is why getting good sleep is really helpful. Eating nutritious foods that fuel our body really well and feel good in our body so that we're not tired or we hydrate, we have connections with friends, we have harmonious relationships with our partners, we have lower stress or we know how to manage the stress in our workplace. We spend time in nature, we do movement, we love.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:31]:
All those things support our ability to connect with the loving mother voice. This really is the step. That's why all these things are so important, because it allows us to connect more and more with the core of who we are, the loving core of who we are. Now, the thing about the saboteur voice is that it might always be there. And what I mean by that is it is such an ingrained voice in you, it has been with you for decades, that in a moment like we described, a vulnerable moment, it may just shoot right in there. And you could have lots and lots of experience with the loving voice and feel like it's gone. And then all of a sudden, just the perfect storm comes rushing in. That's what I was talking about actually referring to when I started to notice my procrastination with the emails.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:29]:
I haven't had that in a long time. And it was there. So the resistance was big enough to overcome the other voice for me there. So I like to point that out because the purpose of this, being able to have this conversation inside our heads is not that we get rid of, kill, squash, avoid that voice. That protector will always be there. And we love it. It's just a part of us. It's like a younger version of us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:58]:
It's part of us. So we love it because we love all parts of us. That's the goal. Because loving it means there's just more love inside. And that feels so much better than hate, avoidance, guilt, any of those sorts of things. So that's an important point. That will always be there. And that's not a problem.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:23:23]:
Getting better at the conversation in our head, tolerating the discomfort of having to have that conversation. Nothing's gone wrong. When we have to keep having that conversation in our head, getting better at it means we'll be able to tolerate the conversations outside of our head too. What I mean by that is the better we get at the conversations with the difficult parts of us. The no, it's boring or we don't want to do it, or when we get better at strengthening the loving mother voice so we know what to do when the protector voices come, we will be practiced at those conversations and we will be able to have them with the annoying voices outside of our head. And what I mean by annoying voices outside of our head are things when people are inappropriate, you know, like Unsolicited advice. Things about our fertility, our weight loss journey, like our eating. The holidays are coming up and so many times we'll be with family and they will just say really not appropriate things.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:24:42]:
Do you need that second piece of pie? When are you going to X, Y and Z? Just you've gained weight. Like, really, you can fill in the blanks of how many inappropriate things are said. Now, when we get really good at having the loving mother voice be front and center, we can see those comments in a different light. They won't be as personal. It will be much more obvious that it has to do with the person saying those comments than it has to do with us. And we can respond to it in a loving way. Now, I'm not saying you have to engage in long conversations or that you have to spend time with people who are totally inappropriate. You do, absolutely do not.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:25:30]:
And in fact, your loving mother voice will be very clear about what's the best course of action. But it won't be as painful and it won't be as dramatic. Is the other way of thinking about it. We may just smile at Aunt Martha when she's saying ridiculous things and we can say something like, oh, I do love this pie, and then move our seat, you know what I mean? Or something like, I'm on my way. Or we're excited to build our family and then just move. There's some easy things. I don't mean easy. It does get easier because when you have the conversations in your head, you'll be able to have the conversations outside and it will get easier.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:26:17]:
It's clear that they don't need any further explanation. Just a kind word is all that's needed to be able to get out of the situation and move on again. It's not that you have to be kind, but it just feels so much better to be kind so that we don't have to say something cutting. We can just understand that Aunt Martha is clueless. Doesn't mean we have to spend more time with her. But we can just say something little innocuous and then move along. When we can do this, I hope you can see. First of all, it makes it so much easier in our own head.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:27:00]:
But then it makes life easier too. To be able to move through these family situations or friend situations so much easier is such a relief. So our little recap today was a little bit of a long one, but such an important concept. I love this concept. So today we talked about the voice in your head that sabotages you. Remember, it's there to protect you. It's an immature version of this protection, and at this point, it's lost its utility. So we're developing the loving mother voice, the core you, and that's the mature version of protecting you.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:27:41]:
You will be able to do the new behaviors, whatever new behaviors you want when the loving mother voice is stronger than the sabotaging voice. And that sabotaging voice may never go away, but it will get quieter and easier to override. We discuss things that will strengthen the loving mother voice and things that weaken it, and we can decide to do more things that support us. We talked about developing this skill, being able to have the loving conversations in your own head, allowing you to do the new behavior. You want to change your reactions from the unconscious reactions to the new choice that you're making. And this means permanent weight loss in all situations because you get to follow through on the decisions that you're making, not with punishment and guilt, but with love. Tolerating the discomfort of the conversations in your head means that you can build the skill to tolerate it outside of your head in real life, too. And then there's literally nothing you can't do because you can have difficult conversations in and out of your head and you can forget more of what you want more of the time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:29:04]:
Because avoiding difficult conversations keeps us stuck. But being able to have them in a loving way means you get what you want more of the time with less resentment and much more love. I'm here to support you in all this. Weight loss this way is permanent and increases love all the way down the scale. That's my favorite way of doing it because that makes it permanent. So lose weight with me. Go to stephaniefeinmd.com and there's a lose weight with me button. You just press it or find me on Instagram or LinkedIn.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:29:43]:
@StephanieFeinMD. I am sending you so much love and hope you're enjoying your holiday season. I love you.
