Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. And today is the Halloween episode, Halloween and Sugar. Now I have other Halloween episodes. I'm going to hook those up in the show notes, episode 50, 102, and 155. And they hit some really important topics when it comes to Halloween. So that's why I'm hooking them up here in the show notes so that you can go back and— Listen to them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:28]:
Listen to them, but I am going to mention 2 good, important ideas when it comes to Halloween. The first one is the best day to buy Halloween candy. Best day to buy Halloween candy. That is on Halloween. That's so it's not hanging around and we don't have to keep rebuying our candy for Halloween. If you do give out candy for Halloween, Highly recommend that you buy it on Halloween. Yeah, please listen to episode 50 to get more in-depth on that one. Highly recommend buying it on Halloween.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:05]:
The second point that I've addressed previously is the idea that Halloween is the start of the Bermuda Triangle of weight gain, which includes Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, New Year's. And a lot of times people can think, oh, it's a slide on ice basically into the new year. So I'm not going to lose weight even though I want to. If you would like to lose weight, I highly recommend we don't think of it that way. And it really doesn't have to be because if you think about it, there are really only a handful of days. So when I'm recording this, there are 87 days until January 2nd. And if we take every holiday day, that's 5, 6 days depending on how you slice it out of the 87. So that's more than 80 days that are just regular days.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:05]:
And even if we're talking about 6 days of holidays, we're talking usually about 1 meal in that day. So you can see when we think about it like critically, it's not Really that every day is over. There could be parties in there and special days, but those are just isolated days. And we have lots of ways of handling all of that, including partaking in them, right? It's not that we're avoiding them, but we don't have to— when we think of it as all or nothing, I'm either on or off a diet, that's when we get into trouble. When we're restricting ourselves and thinking of ourselves as on a diet, off a diet, that's the problem. But that's not the way we do it around here. When we're using the hunger scale, nothing's off limits. And so we don't have to think of this as a scary time or a time when it's impossible to lose weight.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:02]:
It's actually my favorite time to lose weight. There's a lot of opportunities to work on the hunger scale, on planning, on all the things that we do around here. So just be mindful of Halloween is only one day. And we're going to talk about sugar in particular, because that's the issue when it comes to Halloween. And in this time, when we're starting the holidays, we just used our hunger scale, we plan our food weeks. This is the same thing we do every single week. And the special thing about these holidays is about Connecting, remembering, enjoying. And that doesn't only have to do with food, but we can have our favorites when we use the hunger scale and we plan our weeks.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:45]:
There is no problem with it. So know that there's enjoyment. And I'm wanting, I'm hoping that there is, we can mitigate any fear you have about going into the holidays and still wanting to lose weight. It is 100% possible. Every year, people lose weight using these hunger scale planning techniques and enjoying their holidays. It is possible. So stay tuned because we'll definitely talk more about that in the coming weeks. But in honor of Halloween, which is coming up next week, we're going to talk about something a little spooky.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:22]:
And that is urges for sugar. And the reason we're going to talk about that is because What I don't like about sugar is that it's sneaky and it can have us feeling out of control and we blame ourselves for that. And that's what I don't like about it. I don't like that sugar can be a way we beat ourselves up. Halloween, of course, is a perfect time to talk about sugar because it is part of our culture that we have sugar In Halloween time, and our culture normalizes it. Our family culture may have a big sugar, may be a big part of that, and it tastes good to us and to our brain. So this is why sugar—it's not a terrible thing, except in the way that it makes us feel about ourselves when we feel out of control. And that's what I want to talk about.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:20]:
Truly, sugar is an addictive substance, and that's. Why it does what it does, and I don't want us to blame ourselves, but I want us to be aware. Go into eating sugar eyes wide open. So the definition, or a definition, of an addictive substance is a chemical or drug that alters the brain's reward system, dopamine, creating a powerful and persistent urge to keep using it. Despite harmful consequences. Powerful and persistent urge to keep using it. Does that sound familiar? When it comes to sugar, that's exactly what happens. And I've explained this before, but I always like to talk about it because I think it's so useful.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:08]:
Sugar, yes, occurs naturally in nature, like sugarcane, but it comes with a lot of fiber. So if you Not on a sugarcane. You'd get some sugar, but not that much. Same with fruit. There's sugar in fruit and we get it, but there's also the fiber and everything else in it. So you don't ever get a very intense amount of sugar that goes directly to our brain and our dopamine receptors. The way nature has set up the sweetness, it's mitigated by the delivery system. But when we take it out of the natural delivery system— And we process it and then we concentrate it and then we put a lot of it into a little thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:52]:
That's when we have the problems. When we eat it concentrated like that, it floods the brain with dopamine and that's pleasure. Now we, we need a reward system. Dopamine is the mitigator of the reward system. We need that because we need our behavior to be controlled a little bit. by something, and it happens to be dopamine, so that we have sex, we eat food. If we didn't have pleasure seekers, we might not do these things, and then we would not survive or continue. So we have to have the reward system.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:32]:
The problem is we've, as humans, we've created a con— we've taken that and run with it, right? And concentrated it and made it something that wasn't intended. And what I mean by that is our brain can't handle it. Now it can, of course, but it can then be triggered in this loop of wanting more and more. That's what happens when we concentrate something out in nature. It's the same with heroin or cocaine. These things are naturally occurring, but we collect them and process them. I'm assuming, I haven't done them. Then have a concentrated way and the dopamine It just cannot handle it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:17]:
And in fact, it then downregulates the dopamine receptors because it literally can't handle it. And then you need more and more to get the same effect. That's what happens with drugs. And it, in a less potent way, happens with sugar, but it still happens. And for some of us it's intense. And for some of us it's less, but if you look for it, you can see. That it happens. So the reason I'm telling you this is to make it clear that though you want more sugar once you eat sugar, because it's a physiologic process, it's biology, it's how it was designed.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:59]:
And that's important to know so you don't think there's something wrong with you that you want sugar all the time. If you're eating sugar and you keep wanting it all the time, it's not because you're weak or there's a— Problem with you. It's— there is a brain process going on. Sugar begets sugar. And I want you to know that because when you do, we can at least take the judging ourselves out of the equation and then just deal with what's actually happening. I really want you to take this effect into account when you plan to have sugar. So there's one thing if you're already in this loop. And you have the food noise about the sugar and the urges and all that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:41]:
And it's another thing if you are deciding to have sugar. And you know, around here, of course we can, we can have anything. There's nothing we can't have. We eat when we're hungry. We stop when we're satisfied, not full. If we decide to have sugar, that's no problem at all. But I want you to remember that this is part of eating sugar. You will have A hangover, a withdrawal effect, and that will be that you want more sugar.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:09]:
The withdrawal is wanting more sugar. So we're going to have to ride out some urges. We're going to have to have our brain want sugar and then not give it to it. And then the good news, of course, is that it will die out, right? So you can get a washout and then not— Have urges for sugar. If you completely took out sugar, didn't have any, you would not want sugar. It's really, it really does work that way. For some of us, it would take a little longer, a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks to get completely out of your system. And then you don't want sugar.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:48]:
It's really amazing. Strawberries are unbelievably sweet. They're not if you're eating sugar all the time, then Strawberries don't seem very sweet, but if you don't have sugar for a while and then you eat a strawberry, it's unbelievable how sweet that strawberry is. And eating a strawberry won't beget wanting more sugar. Again, because of the delivery system, because there's fiber and the amount of sugar that's in there. I did an episode a while back called Sugar AI. It was episode 117. We will hook that up in the show notes too.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:22]:
And this is a similar idea because the tricky part is that the voice that urges you to have sugar sounds like you. It sounds like you're just having a great idea to have some more sugar. Oh, I just want it. Oh, it's no, no, I could, I don't have to have it, but I just want it. That is the sugar talking. It's so Fascinating. It's your brain on sugar. That's the voice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:53]:
So I just don't want you to be tricked into thinking that there's something magical about sugar. There is something magical about sugar. It takes over your brain and then allows your brain to want more, to keep asking for more. In that way, it's magical, but that's not you. There's nothing about your soul that needs or wants sugar. That's a really important point. It's your brain on sugar that wants sugar. That can make it easier to decide not to have it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:27]:
If you know it's just the withdrawal talking, it's not a deep-seated need in you to have sugar. You never need to have sugar. You can live a beautiful life Never having sugar again. I mean, processed sugar. There's so many foods available to you that you can eat and enjoy and have a wonderful full life without any sugar. So my point in that is just that you don't need sugar. Your brain will think it needs sugar, just like it will think it needs heroin if you start with that. It's a brain trick.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:01]:
And that's what's important to know here. That's the point I'm trying to make. So remember to take that into account when you're deciding to have sugar, because remember around here, we can have anything we want and you may plan to have sugar and it may be on Halloween even. And I want to give you a couple tips that will be helpful. One of them is that having sugar with a meal is like the strawberry, right? If you have protein and fiber already in your stomach and you give some sugar, it will, the sugar will not be Yeah. Like a surprise to the system. It will be absorbed along with these other components, protein, fiber. So it won't spike in your blood nearly as much.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:51]:
So if you have dessert with dinner, that's much better than having dinner and then waiting and then having dessert or having a meal only of sugar. That will feel pretty bad, actually. I don't know if you've ever done that. Like back in the day with Weight Watchers, when you had points and you'd say like all the points were equal at one point. And so you could basically game the system and say, I'm just having M&Ms and that's all my points and I'll lose weight. There's so many issues with that thinking, but we all, we, a lot of people did that. It feels terrible. Terrible, and part of that is because there's so such a sugar dump that and it really wreaks havoc with our system.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:37]:
Our blood levels of glucose is insane. You do then have that energy and then the crash. There's a lot that goes on physiologically when you have just sugar all on its own, and I do not recommend it. I I recommend having what you want as part of your meal. And I do not recommend having only sugar as your meal, just for the record. Mainly because you will feel terrible. That's really the reason. It will feel awful.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:09]:
And your hunger scale, it will be interesting. You will be hungry, right? And then you feed yourself sugar. If you're doing this experiment— this is going down a road I was not planning on going down, but we'll just play with it. If you have, you're hungry, -2, you have sugar. First of all, it will be hard to tell when your +2 comes. That's very interesting because you don't have the fiber and the protein. And so it will feel different. If you're used to eating from -2 to +2, it will feel different if you just had a meal of sugar.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:41]:
But then you might hit +2 and you will be hungry again very shortly after. That would be the problem. Of many problems, but one of the problems of just having a sugar meal. So again, don't recommend it. If you want to have some sugar, highly recommend having it with, as part of your meal, if you're planning on doing that. Now the other thing, and this is a good thing to know, is if you normally don't have a lot of sugar and then you do have some, your experience of the withdrawal will not be nearly as captivating as someone who has sugar all the time. Meaning you'll have, if you don't normally have sugar and you have some, you may have an urge to have some more, but it won't be huge. It won't be desperate.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:29]:
But someone who has sugar all the time, it will feel that way. It will feel like that nagging. And you'll, they'll be in the habit of scratching the itch by having more sugar and then having more sugar and then having more sugar. It's a hard cycle to be in. And I'm hoping that this explanation will help you understand what's going on. When it comes to sugar and Halloween, I highly recommend not getting any Halloween candy until Halloween. Having some candy, of course, will never be a problem. It's having the whole bag of candy that could do so many things.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:09]:
Exactly what we've been talking about. You'll have an urge for more sugar, but also there might be guilt and— Guilt. That sort of thing when we've said we don't want to eat it and we end up eating it. Again, physiology is part of that, but it doesn't— we're setting ourselves up if we know it's something that's difficult for us and we bring it in anyway. So the great decision maker is at the store, not in your home. If you know too that it's going to be an issue or it has been in the past, when you give stuff out, I give bubbles or stickers or Super Balls or bracelets or something that's not food. There's so many cute things you can buy these days that are even less expensive than candy. Highly recommend doing that if you know that this will be an issue.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:57]:
And it's just saving yourself. There are absolutely ways to process urges. I have lots of episodes on that. And you can do that, absolutely. But sometimes the easiest thing is to not have 4 big bags of candy in the house, especially if it's before Halloween. So to wrap up, Halloween is coming. If weight loss is part of your end-of-year plan, be thoughtful when it comes to sugar. Remember that it's an addictive substance that comes with some withdrawal.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:33]:
In the form of food noise and urges. Best to eat it with other foods as part of a meal. I caution not to invite it home if it feels hard. And plan for it, including your favorite ones. Those are the ones to have, certainly not eating ones that are not your favorite. Planning is your friend. And so is the hunger scale. Because when we eat when we're hungry, stop when we're satisfied, not full, everything takes its rightful place.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:06]:
I am sending you so much love and a very happy Halloween. Mwah.
