Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. Today we're talking about past Diet Gold. I'm excited. The reason we're talking about this is because when people come to me or when their next attempt, they know they want to lose weight, there's often a sense of dread about it because this is the next in a long line of diets that have worked on putting air quotes around that to various degrees. In my way of thinking about it, if you're not the weight you want. All diets before technically did not work because the definition of success is maintaining the weight loss, permanent behavior change.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:46]:
Now, that doesn't mean that we didn't get some good health experience or information from our past attempts. But I want to encourage you. I want to help you not feel dread. I want you to be in the best position you can be in when you go for weight loss, this time with the idea that it will be successful and that definition of successful, that you will maintain your weight loss. And that's possible. And I'm going to show you how to get all the information you possibly can out of all the past attempts so that we don't have to look back with guilt or regret or worse, thinking that there was something wrong with you or that it's not possible for you. That feeling of hopelessness. When we've tried diets over and over again and they haven't ultimately worked, we can feel the dread or the hopelessness.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:45]:
And I want to help you out of that feeling. And I have just the thing. So I invite you to think of past diets differently. I want you to think of them as experiments, ones that you can get really good information from and that can set you up to succeed. This is turning lemons into lemonade. Those past attempts were just experiments. They're leaving clues. And we want to squeeze as much information as we can so that we can do it differently or better next time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:23]:
And that makes them not a waste of time. That makes them not failures because it means it was an experiment and we're just getting information. So we don't want to just leave those experiences. We don't want to leave those because they're too hard to look at. That's what ends up happening, is we feel shame or guilt around them and we don't want to look at them. But if we can become more neutral in looking at our past diets, our past tries at losing weight with some distance, with some dispassion, and what I mean by that is that we're not taking it so personally, we can look at it with curiosity, not judgment. You'll recognize that idea. Curiosity, not judgment.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:19]:
It makes things accessible. If we're still in judgment around them, we can't look at them and we can't learn anything from them. But if we look at them as experiments, like, I wonder what I can learn from that. Then we turn something that felt like a shameful thing into useful, necessary. It's magic. And so I'm going to tell you how to do that here. Okay? To get the most value out of past attempts, really of anything. But we're talking about diets here.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:54]:
To get the most value out of that, you do the evaluation process. We have talked about this before, but we're going to apply it to past diets here. But you'll be familiar with this structure because we use it in food dates every single week. Remember, with our food date, we talk about what worked, what didn't, and what we will do differently. Those are the three questions we ask ourselves. And it's very important, the order, because we want to start with what worked. Our brain always wants to look for the negative, so we have to train it to look for the positive. And there is always something positive.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:36]:
So we're going to do that with past diets. And my example is a whole 30 diet. And I've had many people who've tried the whole 30. And I'm going to go through the evaluation. I was going to make some comments first, but we'll be able to see all my points as we go through. Okay, so with a Whole30 attempt, this is hypothetical, but it's based on information I've gotten from many clients in the past. So something that could have worked with doing Whole30. So just in case you're not familiar, Whole30, I don't even know exactly, but it's a pretty restrictive diet.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:15]:
It's based on an elimination diet where you take out some big groups of foods. I think they may base it on things causing inflammation. I'm not entirely sure, but you basically go 30 days without large groups of food, and people can lose weight because you. That happens when you take out large groups of food. But what usually we see is that after the 30 days, weight comes roaring back on because you start eating your normal way and you haven't really been able to learn or sustain or change behavior in a meaningful way. So let's say someone did whole 30 for the month and they did lose weight, but then the whole next month they gained weight and more, which is a typical scenario. Okay, so if we're doing the evaluation. We start with what worked.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:10]:
Some of the things that could have worked are, I learned I like vegetables or certain vegetables. I found a farmer's market that was nearer me than I thought. I didn't even know it was there. I figured out a way to drink water more regularly. I got myself a mug I liked or a bottle that I liked, and we got a filter, and now we use it all the time. I started cooking more than I used to. And also I got into the habit of reading labels when I was doing whole 30, because that was part of the thing. Those are all wins, especially.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:44]:
And this is how I would like you to identify what worked. It's what you're still doing now. So whenever you did this diet that you're evaluating, if you're still doing the behaviors, then it worked. If you're not, we're not going to define what worked. As, did I lose weight? Because there's many ways to lose weight that are ineffective. And anytime you lost weight and then immediately gained it back in my mind, to me, that is not a success, because we tape our mouth shut and we'll lose weight, but that's not sustainable. So that doesn't help us. So we are looking for things that are forever.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:26]:
So in the diet attempt, things definitely changed. And these are just some examples. Like, maybe you're reading labels now. Maybe you were more willing to try, you know, different vegetables, and you hated most of them, but you still liked three of them. And so now you have that in your repertoire. There really are things that worked. And finding them is a really great exercise, a really good use of time. This is just an example.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:54]:
So then we can go, what didn't work? And the first one would be if the weight didn't stay off, then that would be number one in my book. Also, I missed eating lots of foods that I love. I gained back the weight. I hated cooking all my meals. It was very difficult. I couldn't really go out. I felt isolated from my friends. I was hungry all the time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:15]:
And this last one that I'm going to say is it was a harsh way to keep myself in line. Like, the way that I kept myself motivated to do Whole 30 wasn't kind. It was, you better. You have to lose weight. You're terrible at this and that and this and that and you better. And you can do it in discipline, in a way that's not useful or feels good. The reason I always talk about feeling good is not because I'm a really nice person. I like to think I'm nice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:46]:
But that's not the reason. The reason is because love lasts and harshness, punishment does not. It just doesn't. If it did, we would all use it. It works to a point where. But then it always fails because punishment we will rebel against doesn't feel good. And we don't want to be motivated that way. Ultimately, love is the way that motivates us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:16]:
And I know sometimes this is a hard one to swallow, but I promise you it's true. And remember, my definition is permanent change changes that are loved into being. That's a Louise Hay quote and it's my favorite because it is 100% true. So if you noticed that you were harsh keeping yourself in line to do this fictional Whole30 diet that I'm talking about, that would be something that didn't work. That would go in the what didn't work column. And then when you look at the. So we're 2/3 of the way through the evaluation of the diet. Nice job.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:50]:
So we have a third one. We look at the what worked and what didn't, and we decide what we're going to do differently. And that's based on what worked and what didn't. So in this example, we will do what we'll do differently. We'll cook some meals at home, but we don't want to cook all of them. We want to be able to go out with friends. We want to eat foods that you enjoy, not cut out whole food groups. And you'll know if that's right for your body.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:18]:
You want to feel energized, not hungry. You don't want it to come back right away. And you want a natural, kind motivation. When you see what didn't work, then you can decide to do the opposite. Often that will be a good idea for what might work the next attempt. But then you have this list of what you are looking for in a weight loss program. What am I willing to do? And what's coming to me now to tell you is it's not that there was something wrong with you and you should be able, I'm putting that in air quotes, to do Whole 30 forever. That isn't the goal.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:07]:
Unless you have health issues that really need you to keep out lots of food groups. You can lose weight permanently and eat foods you love. And often that will be the way we can sustain it. Because we're talking about decades here, decades of we want to lose weight and then we want to keep it off for decades. So we have to do it in a way that's possible for the rest of our life. And the answer is never. That restriction is possible for the rest of our life. And if only you were better, I'm putting air quotes around that you would be able to do restriction for the rest of your life.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:47]:
No, that's not how it works. And seeing that in general would be an amazing outcome of these evaluations. Because if you can see that I tried restrictive dieting 14 times and it never worked, it might be that it's the diet, not you. I promise you it's not the way. So when you have, when you've looked and evaluated the things that you've done in the past and you can take out, you can glean, you can squeeze the juice out of that experiment, you're going to be pointed in the right direction. And also, by the way, when you see what worked, meaning what habits are still in place, that can happen. It can happen that you now have a water bottle that you like and so you drink more water. You did get a filtered water system somehow, or Brita, whatever, so that you're drinking water.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:46]:
Amazing. Notice. Notice how that happened. First of all, notice that it did happen, that it's possible for permanent behavior change and that there was a way you did it. And I bet it had a couple things going for it. Likely it was easy. It didn't feel like a hard thing. The decision to get the filtration system maybe was something and maybe if someone had.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:11]:
You had to get someone to help you do it or not. I just had a friend put in a whole reverse osmosis system by herself. I was very impressed. So there was a little something there. But then once you did it, it was super easy. And so that's a clue. If something's easy, you can do it. So then we want to find ways to make things easy for you.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:34]:
Maybe it was just some information you were missing. Maybe you hadn't known how to read labels on food before and you were like, oh my goodness, I didn't know how much. I didn't realize that the portion size was less than this bag. That's very tricky. And now I know. And if that's the case, then we're just going to look for the gap, the information gap you have, and then get the information. And another way that it could have stuck is that it felt good physically or emotionally. Like maybe going for walks outside was started to feel amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:08]:
You hadn't really walked in a long time and you started doing it and you love it. Amazing. Or you did a behavior Change in a way that did not feel punishing. It felt good. Emotionally. You felt, you know what, I can eat fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Like that turned out to be a great thing. I was eating bigger breakfast, and it turns out I didn't even need that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:37]:
It worked out great. When things are not very hard, to me is resistance. And it means there's something more there. Not that you're incapable, not that there's something wrong with you, but that there's some. It's not ready yet, or that's not the way yet. And so then all we have to do is figure out a different way. And that's what this evaluation of past diets can help you find. So when we're looking at what worked, it means what felt good and what was easy, not what produced weight loss.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:14]:
Because remember that if it didn't feel good and it didn't last, then it's not useful to us. What worked means what felt good, what was easy, and ultimately, ideally, what's still around, what behavior change is still around, Then you're left with a great plan for how to proceed. Whether you do this on your own or you realize, you know what, that would be really great if I had help. That would help me a lot. That was one of the things that didn't work. Amazing. Whatever you discover, you'll be pointed in the right direction for your next experiment, which will hopefully be your last as you're navigating yourself through this. So some takeaways, guilt proof your past diets and everything else.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:02]:
Like you actually, of course, can use this evaluation process on cycles with your rei, on interactions with loved ones, like what happened in that blow up with the family member or in work situations. You can always guilt proof any of this. Learn from the experience. It becomes an important stepping stone rather than a failure. Turning everything into a learning experience means we are squeezing the juice out of that lemon. So when the time is right, not when you're in deep regret or guilt or pain, but when you can have a little distance from the experience, then do the evaluation. Start with what worked, go to what didn't, and then decide what you would do differently. And then you'll know what to do next, what to look for in your next weight loss program, and hopefully that would be your last.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:59]:
Of course, I am biased that I have a great way of doing it that feels very loving and is permanent. That's weight loss for fertility. And we have an entire podcast about it. We have 178 other episodes to listen to. And you always can reach out to me. I'm on instagram, @Stephaniefeinmd or stephaniefeinmd.com and you can lose weight with me with the button right there. I am sending you so much love. Until next week.
