Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous! Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And this is a second part of a two parter. Last week we talked about the key to going to the gym, even if we're dragging our feet. And in it I introduced the concept of expecting a smile on your face and a song in your heart. I just love that saying. It's a little long, but it's evocative.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:22]:
Like I really. Anyway, as you can tell, I really love it. I'm hoping you love it too. Saying that a smile on your face and a song in your heart is a shorthand way of saying, saying we can do hard things and it doesn't have to feel perfectly comfortable when we do it in order to make an impact, in order that it influences change. And specifically last week we talked about how the brain works and to expect its protestations, to expect it to protest when we're trying new things, especially behavior change. That's just how the brain works. That's not personal to you. The brain will always kick up excuses, tricky thoughts.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:06]:
Nothing's gone wrong if your brain does that. We just plan for it. And we increase our ability to tolerate the tension between wanting to do it and the brain making noise about it. Now there is nuance, and this is why it's important to go back and listen. We don't do this with force or suffering. We do this with kindness and understanding. Forcing ourselves to do stuff is not the way we do things around here and I won't ever recommend that. So for the nuance, go back and listen.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:41]:
As we get better and better at tolerating the tension as listening to the thoughts and not having to believe them. There's nothing we can't do. Any goal you have is within reach. We also discussed the rocket fuel that helps you get further, faster, and that is celebrating every little win, every millimeter step in the direction that you're aiming for. This is such an important thing. It really makes all the difference in getting you where you want to go. So I recommend you go back and listen. That would be episode number 167 and we'll hook that up in the show notes.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:18]:
But you don't have to listen to it first in order to get something out of this one. So up to you. But you can certainly keep listening and then if you haven't already listened to it, and if you have, then definitely keep listening. Okay, today I have a real life example of dropping the need for someone to have a song in their heart and the magic that can happen because of it. I just love this example so much. So it's a client example. I have a client who was home for the holidays, so, you know, not too long ago. And her mom is a notorious food pusher.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:57]:
So in the past, this has been difficult for my client to handle. Parents usually are really. Parents are the final frontier. I think I've said this before, but it's one of my favorite little ideas that, like a seeker had been meditating on a mountaintop with their guru for years. And then the seeker comes to the guru and says, I think I'm enlightened. I'm ready, I'm fully formed. And the guru said, okay, now go spend a week with your family of origin and let's see what happens. Exactly.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:31]:
It's not easy. Even an enlightened person has a challenge. So this is why I say parents are the final frontier. Because even if you are don't have a difficult time with others, you may have a difficult time at home. So that's why this is a particularly amazing example. I think one of the things that her mom does is buy lots of food, like her kids favorite when they come home and visit, and then she wants the kids to take the leftovers home so her fridge is cleaned out and it doesn't go to waste. That whole idea of waste can be so tricky. It's so ingrained in us, and I have bunches of podcasts on that about the idea of waste, because we're not a garbage can.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:18]:
There's lots of ways to think about this. But anyway, moms can have these thoughts, which is often where they'll come from parents and pass them down to us. So the mom likes to give all the leftover stuff, lots and lots of stuff. And my client didn't want to bring it home. She wanted to enjoy it there and then wanted to go back to eating her usual way when she got back. So my brilliant client brought this up. We thought of this together, that what would be some issues when she was going home. And so we prepared for this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:52]:
And it's so helpful to do that, to think of scenarios ahead of time. This is one of the many ways coaching supports weight loss, because we can work through these ahead of time. So my client knew she would have feelings about saying no to her mom. And that's what makes it difficult. It's the feelings. And of course, remember that feelings come from thoughts. So it's really the thoughts and feelings that would happen as a result of the scenario, the very familiar scenario that my client is in all the time. The Feelings of not wanting to disappoint mom and worried about her reaction.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:34]:
Now, this is not my client. Like, this is a good example, but it's not that her mom goes crazy or whatever, although moms can last. I explained about a scenario like that where crazy is relative, but where you can have an irrational response. I'm just going to say a list of reactions, not that her mom had these reactions, but ones that we can be worried about. Guilt, anger, judgment, bullying. There's lots of crying, yelling. There can be all sorts of things. And it even can be so subtle and it still feel terrible.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:09]:
Like just a look or a turning of the head. It can be so subtle. And we can have all these thoughts and feelings about someone being angry with us, making us feel guilty. Basically, it's a version of we're wrong or we're bad. It really does connect to a core wound. I'm not exaggerating. Like, that's actually what's happening here. And that's why it can feel so deep.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:39]:
Even though it's just a look. And the worrying about the reaction is often a protection. Your brain is trying to protect you from having these feelings of guilt and shame. So it's a protection to say yes when you really mean no. It's protecting you from feelings. And so it's really understandable, especially when we develop this response. Usually as a kid, right. As a kid, we didn't have the know how to find out, how to have different coping mechanisms.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:14]:
But we're not children anymore, and that's the difference. And if we can get a handle on this, if we can tolerate feeling, then we are free. Issues around food can bring up all of this stuff. Food. Even if we feel very grown up around our family in all other areas of our life, food can be the final frontier. Parents or family and food can feel so intense. So it's not for nothing that we do this, but like I said, we're not children anymore. We're adults.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:52]:
And so there are different ways of handling it. And that's where we're going in. And this is why I love weight loss. Because it's so much deeper than just eat a leaf of kale. It's this stuff that makes permanent weight loss elusive for a lot of people. But when we deal with these things, then it's a forever thing. We can forever be the weight we want. This is what we do around here.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:21]:
So with all that, my client and I talked it through and she was clear about and liked her reasons for wanting to say no, thank you to the food. And she was prepared for how her brain works, and that's really important. So when her mom went to give her the food, which of course she infected, my client was able to say, no, thank you. We don't want to take it home. And then she stopped talking. So she let that be a complete sentence, first of all. Amazing, right, that she actually was able to do that, and then she was able to stand in it. Like, my decision is, no, thank you so much.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:01]:
I appreciate your generosity. And no, thank you. I don't want to take it. My client was prepared for the worst. Like what? And again, this is the specifics in terms of if the mom would fly off the handle. That's not. I didn't even go into that with my client because it doesn't actually matter. It certainly matters if someone is violent.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:20]:
That was certainly not the case. Like I said, it could just be a look. So the. That part of the reaction doesn't matter. It's what's going on inside my client. So she was prepared to feel really uncomfortable feelings, but instead, something really interesting happened. Her mom figured out a way to be okay with it. She rationalized it in a different way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:52]:
Her mom took care of her own feelings. That's the dream, right? That's really when we're separating from our parents, that we let them have their feelings. We deal with our feelings. When my client was willing to experience some discomfort, she found it was actually minimal because she didn't have to take care of her mom's feelings by saying yes to something she didn't want, she was able to say no. So my client was able to give herself what she wanted, which was not taking the food home. And her mom handled it. And this, by the way, happened in seconds. And that's what I mean by so interesting to watch, because her mom's brain, instead of saying anything, just accepted it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:39]:
So the energy could have been different from my client. There's lots of reasons why it might be that her mom did something different than she normally does. It could also be that my client's state of mind was one where it wasn't going to take any look or gesture as wanting to change her mind. It's like a combo, right? Wayne Dyer famously said, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. That's exactly what we're talking about here. My client changed in her attitude and willingness, and her mom then did too. So interesting. Now, this won't necessarily work this way for everyone, but it really.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:35]:
It honestly does Work this way a lot of the time. When my client was willing to experience of discomfort, it was not anything like she thought it would be. Having the silence, being willing to say what she wanted in a way that was clear and I'm guessing, competent in a way that was clear to her mom. It allowed her mom to come up with her own solution. This is huge for my client and for us to see. It's a reminder of what's possible when we try something new. It really could work out. It really can.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:11]:
Being willing to say what you truly want without requiring the other person to have a smile on their face and a song in their heart frees you to get what you want more of the time. Yes, please. That is. That's it. Being willing to say what you truly want without requiring the other person to have a smile on their face and a song in their heart frees you to get what you want more of the time. Men when we know we can handle any feeling, an uncomfortable one in particular, we usually don't have a problem with happiness. Although sometimes that can occur. But when we know we can handle any feeling, we can be more of who we are.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:01]:
What I mean by that is we start telling the truth more to ourselves and others. Do you see how that works? If we're not afraid of others reactions, we can say we what we want and we know more what we want because we're using the hunger scale. We're tuning in, we're seeing we're feeling what we want, we're getting to know who we are. And when we start doing that more and more, we're more of ourselves. That's such a beautiful thing. First of all, it feels so much easier and we may get to know ourselves. Things are much easier when we are congruent, right? We're doing what we say we wanna do, we know what we want. We're just.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:41]:
We're doing it all in alignment. It just feels so much better. So when we know we can handle any feeling and we can be more of who we are, we don't say yes when we mean no. Because we can handle the reaction and our feelings around it. We don't sacrifice our needs for someone else's. Unwillingly, we always have the option to choose to put someone's needs before ours. But when we do it consciously, we can prepare for it. We can make it easier on ourselves.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:18]:
An example that comes to mind about that is like eating later. Let's say you Normally eat at 5:30 and people want to go to dinner at 7. If you're conscious about it. You can decide to eat at 7 and you'll just bring a snack instead of being resentful and hangry about it. So we don't need to sacrifice our needs for someone else's unwillingly because we can handle the reaction and our feelings. And we trust ourselves more when we're being more of who we are. When we listen to our true desires and find a way to make them happen, we develop trust for ourselves. We know we can count on ourselves and that trust is everything.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:05]:
Because when we have faith in ourselves, we can count on ourselves. We can try things and we're not worried about failing because we know we have our back. This is huge and really important for sustained weight loss because then we can try things and tweak them. We can try it and not go. We can try something else. It means we will be successful eventually. Like it's inevitable that we get the results that we want. We can get stuck in our weight loss if we find it hard or impossible to tell people what we really want and need.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:43]:
We fear the discomfort of witnessing someone else's reaction. And then we deal with our anxiety by doing the thing even though we don't really want to do it. And this is a childhood coping mechanism. Taking care of their feelings and sacrifices of what we actually want is the old way of doing it. And with food we can especially see it. We can even consume food that we don't want. We actually chew and swallow it. We don't want it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:10]:
But we do this in service of taking care of someone else's feelings so that we don't have feelings. We're not going to do that anymore. Being willing to allow another to have feelings. P.S. they're going to have feelings anyway. You notice the whole thing actually doesn't work. We free ourselves and the other to figure out another way. This is a new dynamic.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:35]:
It's a win win. We take ourselves out of the equation, we just say what we want and we let the other person have their reaction and feeling. My client didn't need to take something she didn't want and her mom figured it out. Maybe next time her mom won't buy as much food. Or maybe she will. It doesn't actually matter. Mom gets to be mom and deal with her emotions as she sees fit. She doesn't have to have a song in her heart for us to be able to say what we want.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:07]:
When we release the needs for others to behave in a certain way because we can handle the reaction and our feelings, we are free to pursue our dreams without drama, resentment or guilt. Omg. Amazing. Doesn't that just sound fantastic? And it feels even better. If you want help with this, I am always here for you. Find me @StephanieFeinMD on Instagram and LinkedIn or go to my website stephaniefeinmd.com and hit the lose weight with me button and we will be connected. I look so forward to connecting with you there. Until next week, let's feel free.
