Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. And I want you to picture this. Things are going well. You're using the hunger scale. You're getting really good, which means you're not overeating. You're only eating when you're hungry.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:19]:
You're stopping when you're satisfied, not full. You're losing weight. You're doing your Food Dates, you're planning the week in general, knowing when you're going out, when you're staying in, when you're going grocery shopping. You looked at what worked over the past week and you saw what didn't. And you're going to do things a little differently the next week. We're experimenting. You've shown yourself that it works because you're losing weight, you have less food noise in your brain, and you're in the groove with your lunches on weekends are super easy. You feel great going out with friends.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:53]:
There's no restriction, deprivation. It's just. It's going to. And because you're feeling so well, you decide to start doing some exercise regularly. And you go to a class at the gym. And it's one that you did a long time ago. You loved it then and you're loving it now. So you're so excited and you feel great doing it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:14]:
But as soon as you start going, you notice that it seems like a good idea to skip breakfast even though you're hungry for it. And you start to notice that you're reprimanding yourself more and more about food choices and you're starting to categorize foods as good and bad when you weren't before. When those things are happening, you've officially slipped back into all or nothing thinking. When it comes to food and weight loss, I refer to that usually as diet mentality. Thinking that's the restriction, the deprivation, the good, the bad. That diet mentality, that cultural diet idea that we have to restrict and that's the only way we can lose weight. Oops, slipped. It's a problem because it does not last.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:11]:
Remember, diet mentality is what sets us up for yo yo weight gain restriction. But we can only do that so long, and then we respond by eating everything in sight, gaining all the weight we lost and more. Our brain feels like it works because we do in fact lose weight. But if we expand the definition of works to more than one month, then we see that it doesn't in fact work because maybe we lost weight, but we immediately gained it back and then some. So it does not work. And it feels terrible when we're doing it because we're going against every fiber in our being and forcing ourselves to do things we don't want to do. It does not work. It's not sustainable and it burns out because we can't eat plain cottage cheese and dried chicken breast for the rest of our days.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:01]:
And we know that. So trying to do it in a way that is restrictive or depriving does not work. The good news is that you already know a different way and you've been doing it and you've been losing weight using the hunger scale, doing the Food Dates, listening to the podcast, the Weight Loss for Fertility way, you just got sucked back into the conditioned thinking. And it can happen because the old way of thinking, the diet mentality thinking is really in there. It's deeply grooved in the brain. And this new way of thinking is has a lot. This new thinking has been around a fraction of the time. Our goal if we slip into the diet mentality thinking is to be able to notice, catch it and then turn it around.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:59]:
The weekly Food Dates help us do that because we have a week at a time, so if something happens during the week, we can catch it. This is one of the fabulous things about Food Dates, doing them weekly. But our brain can be super tricky about can subtly slip into the diet mentality because it thinks it works better as described above, where it thinks, yeah, I can lose weight quickly, but you gain it right back. So it does not actually work. That decades of thinking in a diet mentality way has the deep grooves and the new thinking is much newer. So it makes perfect sense that this can happen. So there's a couple times that I've definitely seen happens in times of inattention. So this is why especially at this is something I see at maintenance where if people they've got it down, they lost their weight, they're thrilled and they're the way they think about food is amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:01]:
But if they don't keep up with the Food Dates, then it can start to slip in. Our attention can get the better of us and our brain goes on default and our default can still tend towards restriction. The other time I see it, and this was inspired by a client is in times of change or stress. So times to look out for slipping back into diet mentality are things like adding exercise. Now it's not a problem to add exercise. Exercise is amazing. I just want to caution you to look out for if your body and your brain want to go into diet mentality with my client, particularly because it was an exercise she used to do when she was losing weight in a different way, the imprint came back and for her it was. You may very much identify with this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:09]:
It started to be like, I'm exercising this much, so I can eat this much and I'm exercising like this, so I can't have anything bad. It was that old way of thinking and talking about food that was starting to creep in. And it's so uncomfortable that we want to catch it. We want to catch it because really, because it's uncomfortable and it doesn't work. So adding exercise is a time to look out for it. Change in relationship status, like if you're getting married, if you're breaking up, if there's anything going through, something difficult or also something really going on a big trip, the change, the big changes can have you. What happens is you get stressed. And in that stress, your brain is looking for all the coping mechanisms and often controlling food is one of them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:07]:
Particularly if we're in the process of losing weight or we think we have to lose weight in order to do the thing we're doing. If we're getting married, if we're going on a big vacation, or if we're doing IVF, if we want to get pregnant, all those things cause our brains to be more stressed and then our old coping mechanisms will come in. So the adding exercise, the change in relationship status, IVF cycles in general, especially the waiting periods, those can be very challenging. And the restriction thinking can come in, especially if we want to keep losing weight. And then pregnancy itself is certainly a change. And we want to just watch for labeling foods good and bad on diet mentality, that sort of thing again, because it really doesn't feel good. And so it doesn't feel good, it doesn't work, and it harms the relationship we have with ourselves, both our brains and our body. That's how the Weight Loss for Fertility way was born.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:12]:
Because this way doesn't work. And we want to look out for when that may be, when your thinking falls into that so we can help you get out of it. It's understandable, but we want to be aware of it and turn it around. As soon as we notice that way, we're training our brain to think in a different way. A way that's sustainable and kinder in general, a way that has you losing weight and keeping it off, A way that feels good, feels normal, right? Not that you're on a diet, you just feel normal and you're building trust with yourself. You're building the trust with yourself and your body. Instead of harming those relationships. And that is so important because that relationship you have with yourself will get you through everything.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:07]:
Jobs, parenting, relationships, everything. When we have a strong, trusting relationship with ourselves, we can believe and listen to our intuition. We can believe and listen to what our body needs. It's so valuable to have this great relationship with yourself. And weight loss, the weight loss for fertility way promotes it and diet mentality harms it actively. And the way it does that is because we're restricting. We want something and we tell ourselves no. But even though that's a lie, because we want it too.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:45]:
So it is a problem in terms of the relationship we have with ourselves. So how do you know if you're back in diet mentality? Here's some examples. Things to look for if you think you should start to count calories. This has been working, but I think it would be better if I started to count calories, started to get one of those apps that counts the calories. If you start to think I really should skip breakfast, I don't need breakfast. Even though you're hungry. Remember, you could absolutely skip breakfast if you're not hungry. If you're not hungry, you're not hungry.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:23]:
But if you're hungry and you skip breakfast, that's the issue. If you want to try fasting or juicing. And when I mean juicing, like only, you know, juice all day. If your brain is starting to tell you that, that's an indication that you're going into diet mentality. If you start having cottage cheese in the morning, but you hate cottage cheese, so insert any food here. If you start having a diet food, I'm putting that in air quotes. It's only a problem if you don't like it. If you love cottage cheese, have cottage cheese.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:57]:
Amazing. But if you don't like cottage cheese and you're forcing yourself to have cottage cheese, that needs to be looked at. That is classic diet mentality. Similarly, if you skip dessert even though you really want it, and you've been able to in the Weight Loss for Fertility plan, you've been having dessert, but now you're telling yourself you can't, that should be examined as diet mentality. Or you feel like you need to exercise so that you can have dessert, or you start to use the exercise as a bargaining chip. Anything that takes you away from listening to your body's hunger signals, that is going to be a telltale sign. So both overeating. If you find yourself all of a sudden that you're overeating, a lot more investigating that would be really a great idea because it could be that you've been restricting, and overeating is the equal and opposite reaction to restricting.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:57]:
So you may be able to follow that thread back to the fact that you went back into diet mentality. If you hadn't been overeating and all of a sudden you're eating chip bags, it really could be that you had been restricting. And of course, the other thing when you're not listening to your body is if you're not eating when you are hungry, that would be a sign of diet mentality, restriction, deprivation. Or you're eating things you don't like or you wouldn't normally choose. You can tell you might be in diet mentality when you start playing the numbers game. I can have this because I did this. Or thinking of foods as good or bad. That is a great sign.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:43]:
That can take a little while to get out of our system. So if it's out of your system and it comes back in, that's a good thing to investigate why that might be the case. Anything that feels like restriction or deprivation. Now, restriction is different than a choice to have chicken. This is a really important difference. Restriction is when you're forcing yourself to have something you don't want to have, a choice you don't want to make. That's different than deciding to have chicken. I.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:16]:
I could be going out with friends tonight, and I'm like, you know what? Tonight I'm going to have that chicken dish that I love. I'm deciding to do that. And I don't want to have the cheesy nachos today because they're not my favorite, and I really want more protein. So that's a decision. I'm not saying you better have the chicken because you really want to be losing weight, and the chicken is gonna be the better thing, even though you really want the nachos. See the difference there? So it's not the fact that you're eating chicken, it's why and how it feels inside that restriction. Deprivation is the diet mentality thinking, and we do not have to have it. And this isn't a secret way to say have different words to pick the chicken.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:10]:
You can have the nachos if you want them. And when you're choosing them, you're choosing them in your whole week. You're figuring out how that works. You're eating them when you're hungry, or you're stopping them when you're satisfied, not full. When you do it with the whole Weight Loss for Fertility way in Mind, it's possible. And you can also choose the chicken if that's what you want to have. You just that we're not going to force ourselves or say that's the only way to lose weight. It's not.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:41]:
Restriction and deprivation are like slingshots. It's the only thing I could come up with is that idea that if you pull back, you know, the harder you pull back, the bigger the reaction forward. So if you're really restricting, you're going to eventually end up really overeating. And that's the yo yo weight gain scenario. So we really want to avoid it. We want to be onto ourselves, know what it feels like inside with the decisions that we make with food. And if they are against our will, we have to think differently, we have to decide differently. So if you do notice one of these things that your diet mentality's creeping back in, especially if you've been losing weight, the Weight Loss for Fertility way, and then it creeps back in, just notice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:33]:
Be super loving and understanding with yourself. See if you can pinpoint the reason why it happened. That we do that around here because we want to learn. We want to learn from everything that we do so that we can tweak it going forward. So if you found out what it was part of an IVF cycle, then the next IVF cycle that you do, you'll be prepared, you can support yourself even more, you can make different decisions going in all these sorts of things. We love to learn from everything that we're doing. That way things aren't fails or we can't say we're terrible, we're learning we're human. We're doing this and we're going to learn everything we can from all the things and choices that we make.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:20]:
And then we go back to what we know to do. So we've noticed, we were understanding with ourselves. We pinpointed the reason if we could find it. And then we just go back to doing what we know to do, which is hunger scale and food dates. And we go back with a lot of love, understanding we're human. This can happen. There was some sort of stressful thing that happened. And when we go back with a whole lot of love, we can tell ourselves, because this is true, that we just broke through another knot of diet mentality in our brain.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:59]:
You imagine all those knots of diet mentality and we just broke through another layer, meaning we swept it out, got rid of it, and now when we go to exercise or do whatever it is that triggered it, we'll either be aware or will know to look out for it and catch it before it gets any toehold. As we clear out the knots of diet mentality in our brain, we're that much closer to permanent food freedom. It's really how it works. It's not a problem that this happens. We just want to notice it and clean it up. And when we do, we've now exercised the muscle of noticing and cleaning it up and we've healed part of our brain. When it comes to food and how we think about it, it's really very exciting. And with one client in particular that we did this with, it was a beautiful thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:59]:
She really caught it and she was able to pinpoint what happened because we're training our brain to be noticing itself, looking at our thoughts, understanding our motivations, and when we do that, we can have some influence over it and it makes such a big difference. So to recap, as we learn something new, it's inevitable that we'll slip back into old habits. Weight loss. The weight loss for fertility weight is new thinking for most of us. We want to keep an eye out for diet mentality thinking, all or nothing thinking. And the clues are things like good, bad foods. When we start thinking of foods as good or bad, restriction of any kind or deprivation of any kind, we gently notice. We respond with love and understanding for ourselves and our brains, and we return to what we know to do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:50]:
Listening to our body's cues, that's always going to be the answer. I'm here to help with that. If you want to lose weight with me, I would be more than thrilled. You can find me @stephaniefeinmd on Instagram or LinkedIn. You can go to stephaniefeinmd.com and hit the lose weight with me button and we will be connected until next week. I'm sending you so much love.
