Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. And I had a fabulous client experience recently I want to tell you about. She's a new client and she had this— I just found it to be an amazing process that does happen, but it just happened to be really clear when we were talking about it. So we start working together and I will happily give suggestions. That can be how it works. It's not always, but And this client took it home with her and it did not sit well.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:36]:
She tried it, but it wasn't, it didn't gel. And this is the process part that I'm so excited about. She noticed the resistance. Noticing resistance is a very big deal because oftentimes what we'll just do, we don't notice it and we'll just plow right over it. But when you notice resistance, what's happening is you're— something's not okay with what you're asking to do. And that's meaningful. Often we'll think of resistance as just an annoyance, right? It doesn't matter. Really what we're saying is it doesn't matter what you think, we're doing it anyway.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:18]:
That doesn't feel great if someone says that to you. And that's in effect what we're doing if we're not noticing the resistance. So she noticed the resistance and then asked questions of herself. What am I willing to do? What should we try instead? These are brilliant questions. Brilliant. And so she came up with something that worked for her. That is literally how it works. Noticing the resistance, checking in to see what could work instead, that your creativity works because you're being open in asking and your create, creativity works for you because it's you-specific, right? It's things that you're willing to do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:03]:
Amazing. She figured out a way that she had her own buy-in. And not only was I super amazed and proud of this process that she did, but I'm very familiar with it personally, with the phenomenon. I, for, I have a different example that I'm going to tell you, because sometimes when we look at it in a different lens, we can more easily see it in ourselves or for what we're working with. So here goes. Currently, I'm very productive. I used to be very productive, and then I went through a time when I was not very productive, and now I'm back to being productive. But the difference between when I was productive before and when I'm productive now is night and day.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:57]:
And I'll tell you more about that. When I was extraordinarily productive, that was medical school and residency. I had 95,000 things to do. This was also before they had like hours that you could— you weren't allowed to have residents work certain— and now they have boundaries around hours. They did not have that then. And there was always a lot to do, but my fuel was fear and a whip. It was, I was so harsh with myself, the way I got myself to do things, to stay up, to go faster, to know more, to read. It was even right now saying it, I'm like, it was painful.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:35]:
I was, it was like I was under a heavy weight all the time and it was of my own doing. It was the only way I knew to, motivate myself. The truth is it's not that motivating, but I was productive, right? I got the things done. This is jumping ahead a little bit. I wonder how much more creative I would have been, how much more compassionate and understanding, and how much more I would have learned if I had been able to do it in a different way. I did not have the skills. And a lot of us don't if this is the way we develop how, if we, if the whip and the fear is the way, the guilt and the shame, the beating up is the way we get ourselves motivated, then it just feels like crap all the time. And we're getting stuff done.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:20]:
It's a little like putting your foot on the brake and the gas at the same time. There's a better way, but we don't know what it is. So I had that part, right? The productivity in med school and residency. And then I had my rough start to motherhood. Which was that my son came at 24 weeks. He is now in college. Now I love to be able to tell you that part of the story, but of course it was difficult when we were going through it. And as I know you can imagine, because you're having your own rough start to motherhood, priorities change.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:56]:
Like things shift, your understanding of what's important, what matters to you changes. And the things you're willing to put up with and not willing to put up with can shift. And that's what happened to me. I was no longer willing to traumatize myself to get things done. So I didn't get things done. That's basically the short version of that is I was stuck. I went through a period where I was getting stuff done, like the minimal stuff done. I had kids at that point and I was doing what needed to be done, but I did not have the way yet.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:34]:
When I noticed this stuck, when I felt this stuck, I needed to do something. And I started, among other things, I started to create sort of baby steps. And I had to do that because I had to develop a trusting relationship with myself. I did not trust myself in terms of motivating myself because the only way I knew was the whip. And I was like, nope, no whip anymore. Sorry. What else you got? And I didn't have anything else. So I had to figure that out.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:05]:
And what I could do is how you do it with kids is you ask them to do something that you know they can do. They try that, you praise them a lot, and then they're willing to do more. That's basically it. And if you can do that with yourself, It works just as well. I had to show myself that I wasn't going to beat myself up, and I did not believe myself because there's that idea of, okay, we'll just do this. We'll do an hour of studying. And then I would do an hour of studying and we could do one more hour of studying. No, I said one hour of studying.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:47]:
I didn't say two hours of studying, but now I've said you've done one hour of studying. You should do another hour. That kind of bait and switch wears on one's relationship. You can't trust the person what they say, right? If they know really we're just going to study for an hour and be like, look, you still have time, you should do it. That does not set up a good relationship. And that was the only thing I knew how to do. So I had to not do that. And it is so painful.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:20]:
I don't know if you've tried this. If you're an overachiever, you may be able to identify with this stuff. But if I could get an hour of something done and I had some more time, I'd— it would be really hard to stop at the hour. But that's what was important. What I said I had to do for me. This is all about me. It's so interesting. It was building the relationship with myself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:51]:
And it can feel so strange to do something that, you know, you can do and then not do more because for the value of keeping your word to yourself. Now, if I kept noticing that I had extra hours, then I could say, oh, you know what, tomorrow we're going to, let's try 2 hours. Like I'd say it upfront. It's not that you can't do more work, but it's, you have to do it with preserving your relationship. I'll say I had to do it with preserving my relationship with myself. It wasn't worth it to burn that bridge. And so I showed myself over time that I could trust myself. When I said that we would stop, that's what we would do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:38]:
When I said, when I felt tired, I would give myself rest. Now I'm not saying I would I would build in the rest that I needed. And that ended up being really important. It was painful to have a time when I wasn't as productive as I thought I should be. I worded that carefully because it wasn't that even that I wasn't that productive, it's that I thought I should be more productive. I was actually productive, but that harsh taskmaster was never satisfied. And so easing the taskmaster out and siding more often with the kind, trusting part of me was what I had to do. Now, I'm happy to tell you that it works really well because now I'm back to being, I would say, very productive.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:39]:
And I love that about me now. But the difference, like I said, is night and day. How I feel at the end of a productive day is proud, energized, ready to do it again tomorrow. That is not how I felt before when I would whip myself and should myself and guilt myself and beat myself up. It felt impossible to do it again the next day. It felt draining. I needed a glass of wine. I needed cake.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:10]:
I needed, like, I needed to soothe myself because it felt awful. It does not feel awful anymore. And the value of that is enormous. First of all, I don't feel like I have to soothe myself at the end of the day. I get to do something that I plan to do, that I like to do, that I could rest or I can be with friends or I can do that because I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with a reasonable ask. And then I trust that I don't, I'm not secretly saying, oh, you really should be doing more work. There's really too much to do. When I have this relationship with myself where I do what I say I'm going to do and I include rest in there and fun, then I have, it's just so much more valuable.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:03]:
I have something that I can partner with, use forevermore, and it feels so much better. One of the key aspects of having a trusting relationship is that you can do trial and error. You can try things, and if they don't work out, you're not worried you're going to beat the crap out of yourself. That is essential for figuring anything out. We have to be able to try and fail. If we can't, then we will not succeed. We have to be able to try something, feel good about trying it, and then if it doesn't work out, be like, oh, let's try something else. Okay, we got data out of that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:52]:
What's the next one? With that calm sense about it. Not, oh, I can't believe you, not again, you messed that up. That prevents trial and error because I wouldn't sign up for that. I'm just not going to try. No way. I'm not going to— I'm not signing myself up for that. When we have that kind of relationship, we won't ultimately get things done. And we can only get things done if we force.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:24]:
If we have the trusting relationship with ourselves, we're willing to do trial and error and figure things out. And then there's literally nothing you can't do. When it comes to our body, trial and error is literally the only way we can do things. It's the only way we can figure things out for our own body because a book or a guide can suggest things, but Only you will actually know what works for you because how it feels for you, a body is so complex, only you know how. So we have to have the ability to try and fail and try and fail and try and move in this direction so that we can find our way. And you can't try if you're afraid of the consequences. There has to be a safe place to land, a warm embrace, not a slap on the wrist. And if we can be that for ourselves, that's it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:29]:
There's nothing you can't do. Once I had the trust, then here, and this is the irony, once I had the trusting relationship, I actually could push myself a little bit. Now I hesitate to use the word push because it's not a harsh push. It's more going a little outside the comfort zone. It sounds more, let's give this a try, or wouldn't that be cool if, or I bet you have it in you. That pushing or, or exploring really, it's more like exploring rather than pushing. There's a willingness to do that because you're not worried that you will beat yourself up if it didn't turn out the way you thought. When it's said with a genuine curiosity and care, support and openness to the possibilities, not as a tactic to manipulate.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:24]:
That's another thing I would've done back in the day, but you really can feel the difference. We can feel the difference if there's manipulation or if it's genuine. Let's see. Let's just try. We can then do things we haven't done before if we're not afraid. And if we have that soft place to land, the trusting relationship gives us the freedom to stretch. And when we have the trusting relationship, developing it is just the key to the universe. Because when you know you have your own back, you're willing to give so many more things a try.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:07]:
So you may relate to the middle part of my story, the stuck part. When it comes to weight loss, you want to lose weight, but you're no longer willing to do it the way you did before, like that harsh restrictive diet mentality thinking where, you know, it's all or nothing. So you're stuck and it may be unconscious. You're like, I wanna lose weight, but I know I don't wanna do Whole30 again. So this may be what's going on. It could be conscious or unconscious resistance to the hell that is restrictive diets. And when I say hell, I'm not even talking about the like no gluten, dairy, sugar, coffee, alcohol program. I'm talking about the hell inside your head, the shaming, the blaming, the scolding.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:53]:
And that's a reasonable response. And I can tell you the way out is with your own buy-in. It's with the promise that you will not beat yourself up. You won't do anything that doesn't feel okay to you and your body, that you have the buy-in from yourself because two is better than one in this case, meaning that both you and your body are on the same page. You're both willing. When you do that, your body relaxes. You start to build a nice working relationship with yourself. It's not you against you or you against your body.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:31]:
It's you and you together. And the place to start is checking in with yourself. Like my client, look for the resistance in your body, in your behavior, in your mood, in your attitude, wherever you find it. Instead of pushing through or forcing through, step back and ask what's going on. What feels off? What's not right here? And then pivot or shift, try something else and check in with that. How does that feel? And when you land on something that feels okay, start there. It may feel like barely anything, especially if the harsh version is looking in. But we are looking for congruence, for buy-in, for togetherness on the body and your brain, your— the capital Y-U.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:27]:
When you feel good, when all parts of you feel good about it, that's where we're gonna start. And so an example is like a harsh workout. It might be that when you're thinking of, weight loss, you think of like Orangetheory, you know, those really hard workouts, but maybe you're not willing, you're going through fertility treatments, you may not be willing to do those kinds of workouts anymore. So when you're checking in and asking, a walk may be on the table that everyone's willing to do that. And maybe it's a short one. And then we give lots of praise. We get to feel successful that we set out to do something and we did it. And I know this can feel so hard for all you overachievers, which is basically all of you.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:14]:
All are— and when we're all-or-nothing thinkers, which is often what we're doing when we're coming off diets, diet mentality, all or nothing. But it's what's required. It's the new skill we have to learn is to be able to handle doing something that we're all on board with. Not the thing we're going to push ourselves to do, but the thing that we're willing to do. And you can see that it's what you might do with a small vulnerable child. See what they're willing to do and then praise them for the effort. And then once they see that they can do it, they will be willing to do maybe a bit more the next time with lots of praise. And you're learning to trust that you won't pull out the big guns after a while, like that you're like, come here, and then wham, So you'll need to consistently praise and offer something that everyone's on board with and then praise and continue to do that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:09]:
We're building a trusting relationship. This is the, again, the irony. This is, it's the same irony. You may end up with the challenging workout. You may end up there, but it will be with a sense of adventure and openness, not force and disappointment waiting in the wings. It's a huge difference. When it comes to weight loss, a kind place to start that can help build the self-trust is the hunger scale. When it comes to weight loss, getting a new relationship with our food and eating is the number one thing that will help.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:46]:
And the hunger scale is the best tool for this. With using the hunger scale, And that's when we're eating at -2 and stopping at +2. I have a lot of podcasts about the hunger scale. Just by design, you're checking in with yourself. You have to check in to find out when you're hungry. Am I hungry now? How hungry am I now? Am I hungry now? How am I satisfied now? You have to be asking, you have to be checking in. And as you do, you'll listen and give yourself what you need. So you give yourself food when you're hungry, you're not waiting until you're overhungry.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:22]:
And you're stopping eating when your body's had enough, not uncomfortably full, but satisfied. And so you're starting this relationship just by using this hunger scale. You eat what you like. And because you're checking in, you're more connected with how the food makes you feel. And so you can attend to that. Oh, it feels good when I eat this food. Oh, it doesn't last very long when I eat that food. You're checking in with the hunger scale, so you're noticing those things.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:52]:
Just naturally you're listening more and more to your body and being able to give it what it needs. As you're doing this, you can note any harsh talk that you may uncover and just remind the critical voice, remind it calmly that we're not going to speak that way to ourselves anymore. Thank you so much for the input, I know you want to be helpful, but I got it from here. This is what you say to the harsh, mean voice. Thank you for the input. I know you want to be helpful, but I've got it from here. No harshness to the harshness because we're cultivating kindness, because kindness is what builds trust. And when we have trust, we can achieve any goal we have because we're on our side.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:45]:
If you're feeling stuck in your weight loss, consider that your body is protecting itself. Might it be worried about harsh treatment? That could be the stuckness. If so, it's time to get its buy-in. Promise not to speak harshly to it, no forcing or restricting, and mean it. It's not a manipulation or a strategy, it's true meaning. No more harsh speak, no forcing, no restricting. And so then you negotiate a way that feels safe to you, both your body and you. I recommend starting with the hunger scale as you practice noticing any criticism and gently directing it away.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:28]:
And when you know you can trust you not to beat yourself up for not doing things perfectly, then there's nothing you can't accomplish together because you can try and fail and pivot and get where you want to go. With you on your side, it's amazing. I am here to help you with all this, always. You can find me @stephaniefeinMD on Instagram and LinkedIn, or stephaniefeinmd.com. There's a Lose Weight With Me button right there and you can press it and we will be connected. And I would be thrilled to help you with this. This is the most important thing about weight loss. It's the skill that you take with you forever.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:23:15]:
This is why it will be the time you lose weight forever, because you will be building this skill and this skill won't go away. You will take it with you always. I am sending you so much love. Until next week. Mwah!
