Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. Today we're talking about peaches, not because it's summer, but because acceptance of ourselves leads to permanent weight loss. And you know, that's what we do around here. Permanent weight loss, not yo-yo, not suffer, not any of that. When we accept ourselves, we're going to talk about that. It Leads to permanent change.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:27]:
Okay, so accepting yourself and your body makes it easier to lose weight in a sustainable way. We simply stop overeating. I know what that sounds— but when we accept ourselves and our body, then we make the decision to stop overeating. And remember, overeating is eating anything more than our body needs. It's eating when we're not hungry. And there's many reasons why we do that, including emotional eating or getting overhungry. There's lots of reasons that we might overeat. But when we accept where we are and who we are, we can then make a clear decision, just a decision.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:12]:
It's not punitive. It's not because there's something terrible about us. We just make a decision to stop overeating. That's a kindness to the body so that we're not doing something that it's uncomfortable with. When we get very full, that's discomfort. And so when we stop overeating, then we lose weight every time. When we decide to stop overeating, we figure out a way to do that works for our life and our body, and we get to our natural weight if we're accepting ourself and our— where we are. Right now.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:49]:
If we don't, and we do it the traditional diet way, we hate everything about ourselves. We come from a place of hate, of resistance, of not accepting, and we go to the extremes to reject ourselves and our way of life. And basically by doing that, we're thinking that everything we do is wrong. And so we need to overhaul everything because we're doing everything wrong. And how That looks like deprivation, restriction, and it ends in yo-yo weight gain. And even more than that, painful judgment before, during, and after we change the way we're eating. So of course we want to avoid that, not only because it's a painful way of doing it, but because it does not work. It does not work long-term.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:34]:
It might work very short-term, but beating ourselves up. into that weight loss has a long-term consequence. And it's impacting, destroying our relationship with ourself. And when we don't have a trusting relationship with ourself, everything becomes harder, every decision. And where I'm headed is that I want parenting to feel easier. It's already hard, challenging, delightful in so many ways, But if we're second-guessing, if we're hard on ourselves about all the decisions that we make, it's a very hard experience. And I would like us to avoid it. And we can learn how to be in acceptance, how to make decisions from acceptance now, and can lose weight in the process.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:27]:
And then also strengthen the relationship we have with ourselves. And make parenting easier down the road too. It's a total win-win. In thinking about acceptance, which I do a lot because it's such an important part of this, I remembered a concept my mentor taught me, Brooke Steele. She's one of my mentors. She thinks of herself as a peach. I think this is such a useful analogy. It's not perfect, by the way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:55]:
It can only go so far, but for right now, we're just going to Use it as it, at its surface, a peach. When she thinks of herself as a peach, she then remembers that some people love peaches and some people don't. And that's not a problem. It's not a problem in the world that some people don't like peaches. It's just a preference. They don't like the texture. They don't like the taste. They had a bad experience as a kid.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:21]:
Who knows? It doesn't matter. It's just not a problem. They don't like peaches. Okay. It's not personal. It has nothing to do with the peach that's right in front of them. It doesn't have to do with Brooke Castillo. It's not personal that she's a peach.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:36]:
That's just how she is. She came out that way. She's a peach. You either like peaches or you don't. No problem. Some people will miss out on her because they don't like peaches. And some people will have a fabulous experience because they love peaches. It doesn't matter.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:51]:
If the peach was redder or rounder or fuzzier, the person doesn't like peaches, period. So we can't shapeshift ourselves into being loved if someone doesn't like peaches. It's just not a match. This concept is so helpful to me. It makes so much sense and it makes it so much easier to not take things personally. This person doesn't want to be my friend? Oh, they don't like peaches. Someone doesn't like the podcast? Oh, they're not a peach fan. They don't think I'm funny or cute or appealing in any way? Peaches are not their thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:31]:
It's totally fine. With this concept, it's easier to not take things so personally. Oh my gosh, I would be devastated. Like, if I hadn't— didn't have this concept, The people not wanting to be my friend, if I'm friendly and they're just like not interested, it could devastate me. But if I think, oh, they don't like peaches, I— it just feels so much better. And by the way, it's probably really true. They don't— they're not in the market for peaches right that minute. That there's something up.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:06]:
They don't like playing that game, or they don't like to— they don't like The style I have. There's a million things that it could be, but it's not because they've somehow seen into my soul and they've rejected me. They don't like peaches. It's so much easier. Not only does it make it easier for me not to take it personally, but it allows me to double down on my peachiness. Because then I just want to be more of me. And then whoever is drawn to that, amazing. And whoever isn't, no problem.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:42]:
If I accept that I'm a peach, I can be the best peach I can be. I can lean in, double down on my peachiness so that it's okay that I like Columbo reruns and floating down the river and mystery novels. Like, all that is amazing. I don't have to pretend I don't. Or beat myself up because I do. These are the things that make me a peach. And there'll be some people who love peaches. They love the quirk of Columbo, or they think they love mysteries too, or they love being outside.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:20]:
It— they could just appreciate those things about me, or they could be like that and we could be a match. Peaches and peach lovers. Amazing. Good combo. So this idea, this concept encourages us to be more of who we really are, more peachy. So the people who do like peaches will love us. They'll connect with us genuinely. If we're pretending to be something else and they love us, then it's a lie, right? Because then they're loving something that isn't really us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:49]:
So accepting that we're a peach and being peachy means that we have genuine connection with others who love peaches. And it's one thing to talk about other people loving peaches, but what's much more important is, do we love peaches if we're a peach? When we're living in integrity, being more peachy and appreciating and delighting in ourselves by doing the things we love, that's how we're the The peachiest we can be. And the more we're doing that and the more we love that about ourselves, it's like a cycle, right? We can basically fall into love with our peachiness, which of course makes us more peachy and more attractive to the peach lovers. The trick comes if we don't like peaches and we're a peach. That is something worth working on. So accepting ourself is such an important piece because it's accepting the reality of the package we came in. We are who we are, and it's certainly possible to change some things, but it requires effort. And you have to really like your reason for wanting to change it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:12]:
It has to be genuine want. Weight loss can be one of the examples of this. We're not changing who we are, and especially when we're doing it the weight loss for fertility way, what we're changing is the overeating pattern. That's all we're changing. We don't want to change everything about us. And in fact, that's what makes traditional diets hard is we're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. What we do here is accept where and who we are and work from there. And that's what makes it sustainable because we're only changing the overeating patterns.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:50]:
We're not talking about you're terrible at this and you do this wrong and this wrong. It's not about that at all. It's about learning to listen to your hunger and follow that. It's really becoming more peachy, right? If we're listening for the hunger, that's our body telling us when it's hungry. And then we stop when we're satisfied, not full, so that we're not overeating. And I'm going to go into the emotion part in a little bit. So when we decide to lose weight and still be our peach self, what we're deciding to do is change the overeating pattern, not hating our body into submission. The hating our body and going from there, that's not a permanent solution and that it won't last.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:38]:
We want to change the overeating pattern because the overeating is not leaning into our peachiness. That's the difference between traditional dieting and what we do here. And it's also what makes it permanent because we can't hate our way thin. We can stop overeating and see what our body does. It will lose weight when we do that, when we stop overeating, but it won't grow 5 inches or sprout bigger boobs. It won't become a grape if it's a peach. It will be a truer version of ourself, of the vessel that we were born with, that we were given to have the experience we're having on this planet. And we can fight this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:25]:
And be miserable, or we can accept it with grace and gratitude. Now that's a bit of all or nothing. We can also work our way towards that. The grace and gratitude, I'll tell you right now, feels so, so much better than fighting the reality of our body and our circumstance. One way that we can work towards the acceptance piece is by thinking about our bodies in general and listing the things you have that, that you want. What I mean by that is the things right now that you want and have. And if we think about those things, we can start to generate some appreciation. So like a working liver or working kidneys, if you have that, if your heart's working, if your lungs are working, there may be other parts that don't work the way you want, but the ones that Do work the way you want are miraculous.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:20]:
It's not all or nothing. And thinking about those parts that are working, this is not to guilt you into appreciating your body. It's true inquiry. It's really having you think about, can you find appreciation for your beating heart? It's a real question. Is there a place in you— And this always Makes me cry. That can appreciate the fact that your heart is beating. When we go there, we can start to find appreciation for our peachiness, the way our body works. If we find that, we soften, and then we can understand nature and the millions of things that had to go right in order to make our human body, and we can appreciate our human body.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:10]:
Nothing is perfect in life at all. And so we take what we have, the combo that we have. Some peaches are rounder than others and some are redder and some are juicier and some are fuzzier than others. But what we have, that's what we have to work with. And it reminds me of the way whenever I saw a body that I wish I had, like anywhere, Yeah. It was definitely a thing. I always remembered that I don't know what else comes with that body. They may have health problems that I don't have, or maybe they're not as funny or smart, or maybe not as loving, or they don't like swimming.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:53]:
When I would do this sort of exercise in my brain, when I noticed that I was wanting something, I always ended up wanting the body that I had. It's the idea of the devil. And what I mean by that is not that our bodies are— we're a devil, but it's that once I accept, really accept that this is the body I have, I can work with it. I can make decisions with it. I can do what I want. I can change how I can if I want to, but I don't have to. I know that I have limitations and I just work within them. I'm a peach, not a grape.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:31]:
To me, that is a huge relief. If we're not accepting that we're a peach and we really want to be a grape, it doesn't matter how much we wish we were a grape if we're a peach. There could be sadness about that, but accepting it makes life so much easier. Weight loss, but everything else too. I can envy grapes, or better yet, appreciate grapes, but life is so much easier when I accept that I'm a peach. And I want that for you too. Stopping overeating is so much easier from a place of acceptance. Acceptance doesn't mean not changing or not growing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:13]:
It only means not resisting what is here now. We can want to stop over— Stop overfilling our bodies, stop eating when we're not hungry, stop coping with food. And that actually makes us more of who we are because we can discover our true peachiness when we notice the feelings that we're having. If we cover them up with food, then we don't know ourselves. We can't learn about ourselves. When we notice the feelings that we're having, we can be like, oh, I don't actually like long brunches. They're boring. And now we don't have to go to long brunches.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:50]:
We don't have to force ourselves to enjoy long brunches. If we don't love them, we just make different plans. Or if we decide to go to a long brunch, we're prepared for the fact that we're going to be bored. And then we come up with some other way of handling that rather than overeating. Or, oh, I'm scared of this. I'm scared of going to this clinic visit. When we acknowledge that's what's going on, then we can make a plan for it. I need more support.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:19]:
I'd love to have my partner here. I'd love to have my friend here. I'd love to Do it in the morning when I have more energy. We can make decisions based on it if we really get to know ourselves. And we do that through understanding our feelings. And we have to feel our feelings or acknowledge them in order to be able to do anything about them. If we cover them up with food, we can't. We may discover we love going fast.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:42]:
We love the wind in our hair. Amazing. When we know that, we can decide to do more of it. Have other experiences that are similar to that. This— these are our peachiness, our desires, our wants, the natural ones that are just there, the things we enjoy. And then also the things that are scary or boring or frustrate us. The more we learn about ourselves, the more we allow our feelings to be there, the more we accept ourselves and the preferences we have. The more of us we are.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:20]:
And when we accept that and love that, that is so valuable to us for our entire life. Then we have a partner in us. We want to do more things that we enjoy and fewer things that we don't. When we believe our desires, not judge them as wrong or stupid, We feel like more of who we are and we have more fun more of the time. When we do that, we are willing to experience— if we want to get to know ourselves, to end up loving ourselves, to end up understanding ourselves, accepting ourselves, then we have to be willing to feel our feelings so that we get to know what we really want. And in order for us to feel our feelings, we can't eat over them. We have to feel them, acknowledge them instead. So that's what this is about.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:20]:
It's a, it's like a which comes first, the chicken or the egg? But if we stop overeating, we will get to know ourselves better. And the more we get to know ourselves, the easier it will be to stop overeating and lose weight. Acceptance is the key. Embrace your peachness. And if you want help with this, I am just a click away. You can find me on Instagram @stephaniefeinMD or my website, stephaniefeinmd.com. There's a lose weight with me button and you can press it and we will be connected. I love this peachy concept.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:54]:
I printed out a peach for myself and I have it right here on my desk. The concept of becoming more peachy, more of who you are, is the answer to so many things in life. Weight loss is just one of them. I'm sending you so much love until next week. Mwah.
