Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. And this is the Weight Loss for Fertility Podcast, 200th episode. Woohoo! It's almost 4 years. It's very exciting. I wanted to do something special. So I'm recording a love note of sorts.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:23]:
Now, truthfully, all my podcasts are love notes. That's how I think of them. I love you. Truly, you are strong and courageous. You are going through something very difficult, building your family in the face of obstacles. And I have so much love for people doing this. And on top of that, as part of it, you're taking on weight loss. But you have the inkling there's a better way than the traditional diet culture.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:53]:
And you're right. And you found your way here. And I'm so glad. I hope you feel supported and even loved. Now I do it this way because number one, I can't help it. But number two, to model love and being loving. And that is what I want for you. Being loving with yourself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:13]:
You may be great at that in so many areas of your life. I bet you are. But in my experience, one of the hardest places for some of us to be loving with ourselves is when we're losing weight. So this shorty episode is about one thing: changing our perspective on being in a body that is bigger than we want it to be. Specifically, it's not shameful to be overweight. If there is any amount of shame you're holding about being overweight, having a big— If there's any amount of shame you're holding about being overweight, Having a higher BMI, carrying the diagnosis of obesity, I'm hoping you'll try on this idea and let it shift things for you even just a little. It's not shameful to be overweight. Shame comes from feeling like you are wrong or you are bad.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:08]:
And you are not wrong and you are not bad. No human being is wrong. That is just not even a concept that's Makes sense, or human beings are human beings. They're not wrong. And that's the first really important thing is that shame does not have a place in thinking of your body and your weight. You may feel it, but this is my argument about why it's hurtful and counterproductive. To have that feeling around your body and weight. Now, you may even buy me saying that you are not wrong, that they're like, human beings are not wrong.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:52]:
But you may think then, okay, I'm not bad, but I'm lazy. The reason I'm overweight is that I'm lazy. 'Cause I've heard that before. And I'd have to disagree with you there too. You are not lazy. I have not met one fertility patient who is lazy. Not one. You move mountains.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:17]:
Have you seen what you had to deal with? There is not a lazy one of you in the bunch. So our brains are really interested in that pattern of blaming ourselves and then Blame and looking for the way that we are responsible can lead to this shame piece. So if you're not lazy or bad or broken in some way, what could it be? If we have a body that's bigger than we want it to be, it's a combination of hormones, genetics, diet culture, diet mentality, misinformation, disconnection from our body and its signals, And eating for emotional regulation. None of that was some personality or moral shortcoming. None of that. I'm going to go into that a little more in depth. Hormones impact our weight. Hunger hormones, insulin, growth hormones, sex hormones, steroid hormones.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:23]:
There's so many messengers and Things that have to work well in order for us to be at a weight that we're happy with. And some of that we have some influence over and some we don't, but hormones affect us. Genetics impacts us too. Our blueprint for our shape and the interaction with hormones and metabolism is something we just come here with. So there's an aspect of that. We have some impact, environmental impact on that too. But this is something that I don't want to say determines, but influences heavily our body. So again, that's not our morality or personality or anything like that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:15]:
Diet culture mentality is a big deal when it comes to Our body size, because it sets us up. The yo-yo dieting, the all-or-nothing thinking, the biggest problem with it is how it damages the relationship we have with ourselves. Because we're telling ourselves we can't have things, we're restricting, we're depriving, and that always backfires. We end up telling ourselves we can't have something when we can, and it erodes the trust we have with ourselves. And we do it over and over again because it feels like there's no other way, that this is the way that should work. But that diet mentality culture really does a number on us, especially if we've grown up with it and we've known it for decades. Connected to it is the misinformation. And what I mean by that is, as a youth or from your family of origin, they may not have known any better.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:10]:
We certainly learned a lot in decades. And so Our parents grew up in the environment they grew up in, and they may not have known any better. And then they pass that on and so on. So we get misinformation both just from the sort of pool we swam in as we were growing up with our parents and the information they had. And then sometimes from social media or magazines back in the day, there was just misinformation. Also, like I said, we've learned more. So there's— that's in the mix of how we are now, all these influences. Another one that impacts us is our disconnection from our body and its signals.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:58]:
And that's also cultural. There are so many jobs where you're not allowed to pee. It's crazy. And of course, the same would go for eating, right? You have to not eat until this or that. Again, family of origin may have had and encouraged a disconnection from our bodies and its signals. If we didn't learn how to handle our emotions, we would have wanted to disconnect from our emotions, from our body, because it was so uncomfortable to feel sad or frustrated. So that disconnection was a learned thing, usually very early. And that definitely impacts our eating.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:36]:
And then the big one is eating for emotional regulation. Sadness, grief, disappointment, actually any feeling at all, frustration, despair, defeated. There's so many that are so uncomfortable to feel. And if we never learned how to handle the emotion, we often learn to eat it, which Temporarily works. And so it feels like it's helpful, but ultimately it isn't because we're not addressing the actual thing that's the issue, which is a feeling. Learning to process it, learning to regulate our nervous system around those kinds of things. That's what's very important. But as a kid, we learn to eat, distract, push down, and we don't learn any other coping mechanisms.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:25]:
And Now, that may be because our parents didn't know and their parents may not have known. And it's not— this is not a blame thing. It's just a, when can we learn these skills? They are available to us now, which is exciting. But if we already have the pattern, that would contribute to everything that's going on with our food now. And the main point that I want to make here is this idea that if we're overeating, and remember, overeating is any eating Above what our body needs to function. So anytime we're eating past hunger or not for hunger, for any other reason than hunger, and past satisfied towards full, that would be considered overeating. If you're overeating, there's a very good reason for that. That's such an important point.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:23]:
You're not overeating for no reason. There is a reason, and usually that reason no longer serves you as an adult, or you've grown to have different understandings, and you may have access to other skills where you didn't as a child. But it soothed you when you had no other options as a kid, and that's a pattern that was set up— eating to handle emotions, eating When you're not hungry also is a distraction. And that is something that, again, you could have learned and it became a pattern, or you're hungry and you had the experience of food insecurity in one form or another. And that pattern is established. These are established patterns that are unconscious. And that's what can lead to overeating. If you don't want to overeat and you end up overeating, there is a reason.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:14]:
And the reason isn't you're bad. That is the main thing I want you to know. You may not like your reasons for overeating anymore. You may have outgrown the reason. You can decide to change it and then get help to do just that. And that's what we do here. And there's 199 other episodes to support you in that. The shame is not useful.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:40]:
And it's what I'd like you to release. That's what I'm hoping to help you with here. If you're experiencing it, we wanna move to something else more empowering, something like understanding. And that's what we're going for here. Understanding where we are with love and care and grace, that it's— the answer isn't— It's your fault. The brain wants to do that, right? It just wants to be done with it. It's your fault. It's because you're lazy.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:11]:
There's something wrong with you. That is not the reason. There is a good reason you're overeating, and it has to do with the patterns that are set up. Now, the good news, of course, is that we can change those patterns if you want to. And when those patterns are changed, it's easy to not overeat. Easy, meaning effortless, meaning not restriction, not deprivation, not forcing. That's why we sort of want to go to the source so that it becomes like unconscious. It's never unconscious.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:46]:
I always like you to be conscious, have a connection with your body and your eating, but it becomes super easy. There's not— there's no friction there. That's where we're headed with this. And shame can get in the way of that. You cannot like something and want to change it. When shame is part of the equation, it keeps us stuck. And we're looking for something more empowering, like understanding. And I have 2 reasons that we want to release the shame.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:18]:
Number one, it feels better. That's always a good reason. But number 2 is it allows you some wiggle room. If we go from shame, which is completely— we're stuck there. If we move to understanding, there's a little wiggle room to see things a little more clearly, to feel a feeling, to make a different decision. And we can make different decisions from love for ourselves, from growth, from changing our mind. Shame is not necessary for change. Our brain likes to tell us that it is, but it's not.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:55]:
We do not have to shame ourselves into change. We can change from love. You can just decide to make a change. They can be empowering when they're not punishing. Shame requires punishment. Love leads to decisions. Punishing decisions sound dramatic and harsh. I will never eat sugar again.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:16]:
Or more likely, you can't ever have a cookie ever again the rest of your life. A loving decision has more grace. I want to eat less at dinner tomorrow. This amount left me feeling bloated, uncomfortable. My stomach felt stretched. I was tired. So how can I do that? What would help? And then when we sit without judgment, the ideas flow in. When we don't have guilt or shame clogging up the system, ideas can flow in when we are curious.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:49]:
This is a skill. It can be learned. And learning to shift the shame to understanding leads to curiosity and then loving decisions. And then from there, anything is possible, truly. Definitely permanent weight loss, but so many other things too. You know, I'd love to help you with this if you want it. Reach out to me @StephanieFeinMD on Instagram, or go to my website, StephanieFeinMD.com and hit the Lose Weight With Me button and we will be connected. I am sending you so much love.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:22]:
And here's to another 200 episodes together. Mwah.
