Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous! Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. Have you ever found yourself struggling to get stuff done? Today we are talking about rest as your best action. So when you have a to-do list or decisions to make, especially weighty ones, like all of them when it comes to fertility, or when you're feeling like you're struggling to have weight come off, that struggle, that feeling Is telling you something. Instead of forcing or pushing through the to-do list or the decisions, try stopping, resting, and listening. That's what we're talking about today. For some of us used to achieving, achieving, achieving, doing, doing, doing, especially by sheer will, if we're used to doing that, this Idea can be the most radical and also the most effective strategy. Rest is a powerful action.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:06]:
That's the main point I want to drive home. This idea that rest is a powerful action, taking a moment, but in that rest, what happens in that rest is Your body's able to calm. And when I talk about rest, it could be a nap, it could be an afternoon, it could be 5 minutes, but the break lets our body settle and then new wisdom can come through. That phenomenon where we release the reins And then let sort of nature take over. I don't know how else to describe it, but let ourselves reset. Then things get done so much easier. I have a couple examples of that. I was reminded about this whole topic when I was speaking to a client, which so often happens.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:08]:
I would love for you to be a client. There's so much that goes on and that we learn and teach basically when it comes to weight loss. And this is one of them. So this idea that my client had a really long to-do list and she— and it just wasn't happening. And that's not usual for this client. Usually she has to-do lists and she gets the things done. But because of the work we've been doing, she had the moment of thinking, I'm gonna let myself off the hook. She was forcing the situation.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:43]:
It wasn't working. So she stopped judging herself because that is one of the biggest hurdles we have to resting, right? Is that the voice in our head absolutely thinks we should not do that. It will judge us and say we're doing it wrong, or you're lazy, or this won't work, or you can't stop, or lots of things. Things that our brain will tell us in judging the idea that maybe we need a break. So she, because we talk about this, especially with weight loss, we get that voice a lot. We work to take off the judgment because when we do, that layer of suffering is gone and our natural inclinations come online. So she did that. She stopped the judging and what she knew to do was rest.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:39]:
Because what she understood was that the struggle, the fact that she was having the struggle at all was the message her body was trying to give her that she needed rest because normally she doesn't have a struggle with getting the to-do list done. So if there was struggle there, that was a message and she was listening to it. And what she did is she took A beat. She rested. She allowed herself to do what her body was telling her it needed— rest. And then miraculously seeming, although this is how it works, she looked at the list after the rest and immediately saw a few things that would be easy to do. She was looking at that exact same list before the rest and it seemed impossible, but after the rest, She's like, oh, I could do that one and that one. And then she did that one and that one.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:32]:
And then of course, what happened after that? She had momentum and she was able to do the whole list. And it happened in a very short amount of time. Now it happened fast, certainly faster than if she had forced her way through because the forcing is the problem. It would have felt awful. It would not have happened as quickly as it ended up doing, even including the rest. And the process would have been painful. By allowing— I'm like putting air quotes around that— herself to rest, it all happened faster. But not only faster, which is sometimes something we want, right? That's what she wanted originally was a fast to-do list.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:17]:
It didn't work the way she— when she was forcing herself. But what's even better is not only did it happen faster, but with more ease. That's always what I want for you. First of all, ease feels better, but second of all, it means you're doing it with the permission of yourself and your body. It's in partnership. When there's ease, there's flow. That means You're doing it with your permission. It's not against yourself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:53]:
Ease is always a good sign, and ease in the way of your dreams, of your goals, means you're going in the right direction. That's what we're looking for. So this example of my client and the to-do list is a good reminder. It's the idea, it's the embodiment of the idea of Slowing down to go faster. And this definitely happens with weight loss. It's classic. Our old programming, our old programmed, like diet mentality kicks in when we want to lose weight and we want to lose it fast. Usually we want to get it off as fast as possible.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:29]:
And certainly when it comes to fertility, that's very understandable. We often don't have time to waste, putting that in air quotes, and we have an urgency there. And so when we do, old programming always comes on board, right? Because our brain's like, oh, we know what to do. And so we go to the old standards, restrict calories or carbs, restrict the hours of eating. Restrict is like the fallback old diet mentality programming. Take away any pleasure from eating because pleasure equals bad when it comes to food and weight loss. This is what our brain, our old programming, our old diet mentality Brain kicks in and says. The problem with all of that is that it doesn't, it can't last.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:15]:
The setup is flawed. This setup is the fastest slow part of the saying, fast is slow and slow is fast. We think it's fast. I'll cut out eating. Really, that's honestly what we think. If I just didn't eat, Right. But our body doesn't work that way. We think that's fast, but it's slow.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:39]:
And the reason it's slow is because it can't last. And it's not that it can't last because there's something wrong with you. It's that it can't last because we have bodies that have needs and overrides. And there's a way that the body works. We're told that we should be able to do it. Our will, our willpower should be able to do it, but the body literally does not work that way. So it can't last. So all we get for our efforts and pain and judgment is yo-yo weight gain.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:19]:
And it's tricky. It's almost perfectly designed because we may get some weight loss if we stop eating. But we will gain it back, and then the terrible part of it is that we blame ourselves for it. And it's not; it's the setup. It does not work that way. It just does not. And I hate so much that we blame ourselves for that. We want permanent weight loss.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:44]:
We do not want yo-yo weight gain. We want sustainable change because we not only even if we were. Only going to lose weight for fertility. There's the pregnancy. So of course we want to be healthy, even if we're— let's even pretend that we're just wanting to be healthy for our baby, which I want you to want to be healthy for yourself because not only is there getting pregnant, but then there's being pregnant and then there's raising the kid. You want to be healthy for all of that. And that's a lifetime. That's not just the moment.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:21]:
And of course, the good news is losing weight for fertility in a way that's sustainable means you get that for the whole time. But if we're just doing the restricting piece and the punishing ourselves piece, it does not last. It feels terrible and it's ineffective for what we really need, which is a healthy pregnancy and— A healthy baby. Health beyond there. And then of course, passing down how we relate to food to our kids. It's such a bigger process, a bigger goal than just lose weight for the pregnancy. We want to lose weight for the pregnancy, but we have a bigger idea about that. It can't be the restriction piece.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:04]:
It can't be the way that seems fast, but is actually slow. So we have to work with our body and the circumstances we find ourselves in now, not against it. Working against it is the fastest slow. Working with our body is the slowest fast. And now I hesitate to say that because it's not that it's slow. It's not slow. It's just that our perception It could be that it's slow, but it's actually not. It's physiologic.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:40]:
1 to 2 pounds a week is physiologic weight loss that's sustainable and real. And usually anything more than that has some aspect that isn't sustainable. So it isn't slow. That's reality. That's just how the body functions physiologically. There's also this idea that the rhythms of the body will always win out. And this is that what I was just talking about with physiology, right? We can choose how to think about the rhythms of the body, about physiology, but nature always wins. You know, that whole idea, if you've ever seen like a meadow grow back over like Civilization.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:29]:
Like nature will always win out. And so for us to accept the parts of it that are makes it so much easier on ourselves and certainly also on the body. So we can choose how to think about that idea. We can choose to accept it or fight it. And our experience will be very different Even though the process is exactly the same. And so the example I always love to talk about is this. I heard a coach talk about an experience he had. So he knew in his life, 2 different people who were working on their PhD dissertations.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:13]:
And he asked them, how is it going? And one of them said, ugh, it's the worst. worst. I get up every morning and I intend to write and sometimes I struggle and write. Some days it goes super smoothly and easily and other days it's impossible and it's a miserable experience. And then he had the other friend who he asked, how is it going? And the person said, oh, it's amazing. I get up to work each day and some days it flows and it's so easy and everything comes out and other days it's It's just not there. And it's, everything is working beautifully. Now it was the exact same process.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:59]:
Some days were, it flowed and other days it didn't, but one of them was miserable in that process and the other one was happy with it, understood it, worked with it. That story has stuck with me. I cannot tell you how many years ago I heard that story. It's effective for me, and I'm hoping for you because it was literally the same process. Writing came easily some days. One person made that mean it was bad. The other person made it mean it's the process. It's fine.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:34]:
It's good. That is what I want to point out that can happen with weight loss and other things like the first example with my client and the to-do list. Learning to trust in the rhythms of the body and life is tough when we don't have a trusting relationship with our body. And many of us raised in the dieting culture just don't. We do not have a trusting relationship with our body. We were taught to beat our body into submission. That's how it works. It isn't.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:12]:
In the process of trying to beat our body into submission, we damage the relationship with ourselves and our bodies because the premise was flawed. It just was completely wrong. Our will can't win long-term when it's working against our body. The force, this like the forcing, the Pushing cannot win long term. Partnering with ourselves, learning the signals, and heeding them will get you further faster with weight loss and everything else. Now the great news is we learn to listen to our body by using the hunger scale. So that's always the first step here in learning to lose weight is we use the hunger scale. That's a scale that goes from negative five empty to positive five.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:06]:
5, Thanksgiving full, and all the numbers in between. We eat when we're just hungry at -2, and we stop eating at satisfied, not full, +2. When we learn to use the hunger scale, we have to listen into our body. And so we're listening for its hunger cues. And all of ours are going to be slightly different as we learn, as we're tuning in, we learn the signals. The hunger scale, learning to use the hunger scale is the gateway to listening to our body, period, right? Listening to everything our body has to tell us. Because when we're tuning in to hear the hunger, we have to hear whatever else is there. Is that hunger? We're listening to everything else.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:52]:
And we can hear all manner of messages. And when we do, and we learn how to interpret them for ourselves, We get in the flow more often and life feels easier. Like the to-do list, like weight loss, like writing a dissertation. We listen to the messages. The struggle is a message. For me, that struggle, when I really feel like I'm pushing, it's like a tension. It's like a tightness in my head and my chest. And I used to think that was normal.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:30]:
Like, that's what it felt like to get work done. And I am here, thankfully, to tell you that's not the case. That was force and push. And if it feels like you don't know, like you were like me, there really are times when you don't have that feeling. And if we're just starting out, the hunger scale will help you for sure tune in. But Also, I want you to start to notice the times when you are doing what you want to be doing and it does not feel like the pressure and the tension. You'll start to see that it isn't true that you have to feel that pushing tension in order to get things done. That alone is huge because it feels like you have to have the tension.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:18]:
You're showing yourself that's not true. And remember, we work on this here. All or nothing is never the answer. Aha. But all or nothing isn't the way life usually works. There's gray in there, meaning it's not always that you have to feel tension to get something done. There are times when you're not. I want you to find those and expand them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:46]:
Start to use those as beacons so that it can feel easy and still get it done. This strengthens your relationship with yourself, with your body. Then that partnership starts to grow. Weight loss feels and is easier when we learn to listen to and trust our body. For some of us, this is going to be a tall order because it's been so long that that we've done it the other way. But for every one of us, it's possible. That's what I really want you to know. No matter how it's felt all these years before, it's possible to learn to listen to and trust your body.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:27]:
And life feels a lot easier. I promise you, when we do. It's what I do with my clients every day. And I can help you do it too. Find me @StephanieFeinMD on Instagram. Or go to my website, StephanieFeinMD.com, and click the Lose Weight with Me button. This is what we start with and really what we end with too. Our relationship with ourselves and our body is key to permanent weight loss.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:56]:
And it happens to make life a lot easier to live too. I'm sending you so much love until next week. Mwah.
