Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:02]:
Hello, fabulous, it's Doctor Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And we are talking about fuel. Enjoyable fuel. One of the ways we lose weight in a sustainable way around here. Remember, sustainable is the key word you can do about a bazillion things to drop a few pounds, but it's a total waste of time and energy if it's not something that's sustainable. That is what we're going for here, always changing something permanently. And in order to do that, we have to do that with ease so that it can be permanent. When we do that, weight loss makes sense and your time is well used and the changes you made feel good.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:48]:
And last, that's where we're going with that one. So one of the ways we lose weight in a sustainable way without restriction or deprivation. Again, the reason we don't use restriction or deprivation, besides the fact that they feel terrible, is that they don't work, doesn't last. So the way we do it sustainably around here without that painful restriction, deprivation idea is to shift the way we think of and use food in our daily lives. That's what we have to do. Basically, that has to happen because if we kept doing the same thing we're doing now, we wouldn't lose weight. And if we want to lose weight, we have to change something. So the way that we do that that's sustainable is shifting the way we think about food.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:35]:
When we change our relationship to food, we lose weight. I mean, I guess theoretically we could gain weight depending on which, how we changed our relationship with food. But around here, we change it in a way that has you losing weight. So we naturally transform the way we eat. When we change our relationship with food, it just happens naturally, without force or guilt or willpower. When we change the way we're thinking about food, which a relationship is always the way we think about the thing. So our relationship to food would be our thoughts about the food. Then we lose weight because our actions change.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:18]:
When our thoughts change, our feelings change and our actions change. Remember the model that was? We just recently went over that one and that's how we do this. We lose weight sustainably, forever, because we think of food differently than we did before. So instead of thinking of food as a reward or a treat or a legitimate reason to take a break from the work that we're doing, or a comfort or a salve or a distraction, instead of thinking of it that way, we shift our thinking to think of food as fuel. Now how did you hear that just now? I want to keep that in mind, put a little bookmark there, because that will be something we're going to look into right now. But first, I want to connect this idea of food as fuel, and it goes beautifully with the idea of the hunger scale. Like they're a whole package, the two thoughts, right? So a hunger scale means that there's need for fuel. When we feel hunger.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:23]:
That's indicating that our body needs fuel. That is what hunger is. Need for fuel. That's it. It's really straightforward. Hunger needs fuel. We give it fuel, it's satisfied. And remember, with the hunger scale, we're eating at negative two, stopping at positive two, meaning we're not overeating, we're not getting uncomfortable with how much fuel we've put in our body.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:48]:
We're putting in the amount it needs now. Amazing. We feel fantastic when we do that. Things that need fuel, when it gets low, it doesn't function as well. And then if it's over full, it's not functioning either. Our goal is to get it just right in a Goldilocks. Not too much, not too little, just right. When we're empty, like in a car, you know, the gauge, the gas gauge, it's empty.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:23]:
We need to put in fuel, and then we do, and it runs well, that's what we do with the hunger scale. So hunger and food as the fuel as the answer to that hunger. That's the important idea we want to embody, to think of whenever we think of food, it's so beneficial to think of it as fuel, a necessity for ourselves, something that makes our body function well, it fuels our life, right? So it isn't our life. The idea is not that we live to eat, but eat to live. You've heard that before. But it's really true. Those little sayings usually are true. They're there for a reason.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:11]:
We want to use food to be able to fuel our life, to do what we're meant to do on this planet. For a lot of us right now, that's have kids, be a parent, among other things. There's your work you're doing in the world, the people you're loving. I mean, there's so many things that we're here to do on the planet. Those are the most important things, not what food we put in our mouth. Now, we are definitely gonna go over this. I don't mean it in a bad way. There is definitely room for enjoyment with food, for sure.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:50]:
And that can be sort of an obstacle to thinking of food as fuel, as if we're thinking there's it's wrong to enjoy food. It's never wrong to enjoy food. We're going to get into that. But first I want to say this example of using a shoe as a hammer. I don't know if you ever said, you know, like, if you don't have that tool, you, like, you know, you have your shoe and you need to hammer something in, or like a thumbtack or whatever, and you use the heel of the shoe. So it's a shoe, but we use it as a hammer or the shoe as a cup if we were wanting to drink something, or a shoe as a fly swatter, it can do these things. It can function in those ways. But there are other tools that are better suited for the job.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:44]:
So a hammer is better for a nail, a mug is better to drink out of, and a fly swatter is really efficient for swatting flies. When we know that we get the hammer, we use the mug, we get the fly swatter, and we can just use the shoe for what it's supposed to be used for, to protect our feet. That's what they were designed to do. And that's the example of food as fuel. Right? The food is designed to fuel our bodies. That's what its primary job is. And then if we need comfort or a treat or a distraction, there are other things that are better suited for that. And that transition is important if we're gonna have sustainable weight loss.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:42]:
This idea helps us put food in its rightful place. It reassigns it by its function. Food for fuel. Now here's the. It's. This is really important. This does not mean, you know, like, food is fuel. So I can never have a good time or enjoy it or eat out or, you know, have chocolate.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:05]:
It's just not true. It's just not true. We are so lucky that it tastes good. Like, if we had to. If what? If food didn't taste good, it was just gruel. It would actually be hard to eat. It had to be designed enjoyable, or else we wouldn't eat it. We would all just ignore it and then we would wither away.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:26]:
So it had to be enjoyable. There's the balance between enjoyable and fuel functioning. But now, with all our innovation, it's sort of designed too well. We've purposely designed it to flag the dopamine and the other neurotransmitters and to have us loosely addicted. Right? We've had over desire for the foods. They've been designed that way for us, and it's worked. But by shifting to this idea of fuel we start to see more clearly what foods help us and what foods don't. And that's really good information for us to have.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:15]:
When we think of food and the fact that it tastes good so that we eat it, we can be sort of in a state of being grateful that food tastes good rather than entitled to it tasting good. That is another shift that's really helpful for us, because when we're thinking that each meal has to be the best, taste wise, and we can definitely get into this, if you resonate with this, it's a waste. If it isn't. We wasted an opportunity to have deep pleasure if we didn't have the best tasting stuff. That's a really important thing to notice if we're thinking, because if we're understanding and thinking of food as fuel, not every meal has to be the best. Now, I'm not saying it's amazing to be able to get the best quality we can and the best tasting food that we can. You know, we find the burrito we love the best, and we have that one, or the, you know, our favorite ice cream, and that's the one we have. There's so many wonderful reasons to go for quality, right? We're going to eat the ones that we love the best.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:32]:
We also can just sometimes eat for fuel. So not every meal has to be the best. We just need to fuel ourselves. And sometimes it's okay to have, you know, a sort of a dry sandwich on a road trip. You know, we don't want to stop. We don't need it to be the best thing in the world. We don't have to find the best. We just want to get to our destination and be with our friends and family.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:01]:
And so we bring a sandwich, and it's not the most incredible sandwich you've ever had, but it fuels your body to get you to where you want to go. So the idea of food as fuel is not a punishment. And sometimes it can feel that way for these reasons that we've been talking about, that it's by saying that we're stripping away all enjoyment that we have to feel guilty for enjoying. We're not feeling guilty for enjoying. We're meant to enjoy. It's fantastic. But the flip side of that, it doesn't have to be the most incredible thing. So if thinking of food for fuel feels like too big a leap right now.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:52]:
I just had this with a client. It was so useful because it did feel to her like saying food is fuel sounds really depressing or harsh or punishing, and that can certainly be if we couple that with this idea of we cannot enjoy it. And for sure, diet mentality, diet culture can couple those things, but we don't want to do that here. So she and I came up with food that energizes the body. So not saying food as fuel, but food is something that energizes the body. I do think that. I do like the sound of that. I'm okay now because I've done it so much that food is fuel.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:42]:
Like, that sounds great to me. I love that. And I frequently say enjoyable fuel, which is amazing. It's fuel. Whenever I say that to myself, I really. It really is connected to. It's a necessity for my body. It's something my body needs.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:01]:
It's like, check, got it. And it really does go hand in hand with the hunger scale. My body tells me when I need it, I give my body what it needs. Amazing. But this way of saying energizes the body. I love that. So if that feels good to you, that can work too. Thinking of food as something that gives you energy, and that's its primary reason.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:31]:
It's to give you energy to do your life. The stuff that goes along with this is ability to enjoy our food. Right? We talked about that. And also that this doesn't mean you can never have ice cream or anything else you like, because maybe it's not the most nutritious. So sometimes the aspect of food is fuel means that you have to only have the most perfect macros. And I don't even know what you would think. We do talk about focusing on protein here, but not to the exclusion of other things. We just want to make sure there is some protein in there, because that lasts us the longest and it will make us not need fuel for longer than processed sugar or flour in particular.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:27]:
So we do talk about that. But this is not to say that every meal has to be the most perfectly nutritious, balanced everything. We get to have things that we enjoy that we think taste good. That's how we're going to effectively fuel our body. So we're never talking about having the perfect I'm putting air quotes meal, either in how it tastes or its nutritional impact. We are thinking of fuel as something that addresses the hunger that we feel. We're paying attention to our hunger. We're fueling it, we're addressing it, and then we're stopping at satisfied, not full.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:09]:
We have therefore fueled our body. Amazing. Or we can say we energized it. That's fantastic too. When we're thinking about it this way, then we can be very clear about the times we are nothing fueling our body when we are using food in other ways as our shoe, as a hammer. And that's really valuable because then we can understand that we can notice it. We can see that we're doing it, and we can start to address what's happening if we notice that we're. And this is why the hunger scale is so amazing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:50]:
If we're noticing that we're eating when we're not hungry, but we discover it's because we're bored and we wanted a distraction or we did something great at work and we want to give ourselves a treat, those are really important things to notice. We address that with the hunger scale, and we notice that it's not fuel, it's something else and not a problem. Now we know, and we can start looking for amazing ways to reward ourselves for job well done. Totally important to do, by the way, celebrate our successes and, you know, doing good work that we were proud to do. Very important to reward ourselves and celebrate that it does not have to be with food. And thinking of food as fuel, eating when we're hungry, stopping when we're satisfied will help us be able to shift this thinking. And it's such a valuable, valuable shift in thinking. It is how we sustainably lose weight.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:53]:
So thinking of food as purposeful, it supports permanent weight loss and aligns with the body's design. Right. It needs fuel. How do we get fuel? It asks you. By being hungry. You give it the fuel, it no longer feels hungry. And then when we have food primarily as fuel for the body, fueling it, to be able to do the things you're here to do in the world. Life is to be lived.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:26]:
We want to fuel our life. And this idea goes hand in hand with the hunger scale. When we're hungry, it's calling for fuel. We give it what it needs, and it no longer feels hungry. And we don't go to discomfort. The other direction. We stop before full. The body will let you know when it needs fuel and when it's had enough.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:49]:
And this is just like that gas gauge in the car. It'll go all the way down, and then it'll go up, and you can't put any more in. We get to be thankful that fuel for the body is enjoyable. Yay for that. It's wonderful. We get to enjoy feeling grateful and thankful for that. Fact. Shifts our thinking from sort of perfect meal entitlement to grateful that we get to enjoy what we chew and swallow and it reminds us to find better tools to address different needs.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:31]:
So thinking of food as fuel or as something that energizes the body helps us with sustainable weight loss. What do you think about this? I would love to help you with it. It is such a great shift and really supports sustainable weight loss that we can have in preparation to become pregnant during pregnancy. This works beautifully and after too, you can always find mefaniefinemd on Instagram or LinkedIn. And to lose weight with me just go to my website stephaniefinemd.com and hit the lose weight with me button. I am sending you so much love. Until next week.
