Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:01]:
Hello, fabulous. It's doctor Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And today we are going to talk about how to learn from all our interactions with food and why this is so important and how to be realistic when we look back. And the key word really is realistic. That's the main point of today. I'm going to show you why this is so important. Learning from our experiences is key to weight loss. It's key to all learning.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:32]:
Right? In order to move forward, we have to learn from the things we've done before. And we clearly here want to move forward. We want to learn how to lose weight and keep it off. Because when we move forward, we progress towards our goal and then we get to our goal. This is the entire reason why we want to learn from our circumstances, but why it might be hard, especially when it comes to food. And this is so interesting in so many areas of our lives, we have no issue with this. But somehow, when it comes to food and weight loss, there is so much emotion and deep programming around it that it feels harder. But really, we can get this basic about it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:23]:
It is truly about moving forward by looking at what we've done in the past and tweaking it. That's it. That's all learning. And that's what we're going to do here, too. So when we can look at the basics of it, we can sort of cut through the drama. Sometimes, not all the time, sometimes we have to deal with the drama, too. But at least when we're doing it this way, we can find out what the drama actually is and address it. We often don't look back because it is so uncomfortable.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:56]:
The reason it's uncomfortable to look back and remember we're talking here about food, like an overeat or something that didn't go the way we wanted. It's because we judge ourselves, we berate ourselves. We are so mean to ourselves about what happened. And so, of course, why would we want to look back at something and learn from it if we don't even. We just want to forget about it because it feels like a wound. Like. Like failure can be such a loaded word. It feels like a wound.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:29]:
It's so tender there. And so why would we want to sort of pick at it? But then if we deny it or we don't look at it, then we're stuck and we can't learn and we can't move forward and we can't get to our goal. This is the reason we do this often, because the way we think about missteps is part of the problem, and that can change. We can think of it much differently. We can think of missteps as a normal part of learning. And the best example of this is like a kid learning to walk when they fall, which would technically be a fail, right? They're trying to walk and they don't. They fall, but they're getting up. The muscles they use to lift themselves back up are the ones that need to be strengthened in order for them to have success.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:27]:
Learning to walk. It's literally part of the process, and that's the same with us. So we do need to have the overeats when we have them so that we can learn from them. But if we don't look back at them, we won't. There'll be missed opportunities and we miss so many of them by just thinking we're bad. That's horrible. I'm no good at this. It's impossible for me.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:56]:
It's not true. It's hard to look at these things. And once we acknowledge that, we can do it safely, and I'm going to show you how, that's what we're talking about today. So what we have to do in order to learn is we have to examine our experiences. Our food experiences, ones that went well, are very valuable to look at what worked. I'm going to do that again, over and over again. And we also want to look at those that could have gone better. And first we have to even identify those instances, right.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:35]:
To even be able to use them to our advantage. And this is why we do food dates. Remember, weekly food dates, there is a structure to them. It's what worked, what didn't, and what we're going to do differently. In order to be able to get to the. What we're going to do differently, we have to see and be willing to look at the experiences. Now, if you want a refresher on a food date week, episode 74, go check that one out. We'll link it up in the show notes in the effort to find out what we could have done differently.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:12]:
So when we do look at the scenario, we have to be realistic about it. And this is the nuance we're focusing on today. We want to be realistic, and being realistic means we're seeing the situation how it actually was, not how we wished it would have been. This is so important. Vital. Vital. This is where we get into beating ourselves up, or we should ourselves. I should have done this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:48]:
I should have done that. If only they didn't do this. If I should have been able to read that person's mind, or I should not have gone on the trip. If I'm really committed to weight loss, that just. That's not helpful. And this sort of not looking at it realistically falls into the all or nothing category. The way we think. All or nothing, and all or nothing is the death of weight loss.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:15]:
It really is. If we either have to be perfect or we're not going to do it at all, that does not work. And so we're looking at a situation, and we want to know, and we can decide this, that we did the best job we could with the knowledge and skills we had at the time. That's the safe way of looking back at an experience that we had that didn't go the way we wanted to. We really benefit from the belief that we did the best we could. I believe this to my core now, which I'm so grateful for, and it just took practice, but I really believe, given all the circumstances that we're going on, we're only doing the exact thing that we can do. This was really helpful for me when I was thinking about, like, my parents, you know, and really understanding that they just did the best they could in any circumstance, and there's really some peace around that. And, you know, sometimes the best doesn't look all that great, which definitely is its own kind of bummer.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:42]:
But we can't do more than we can do, do you know what I mean? Like, it really, it's a great, comforting assumption to say we're always doing the best we can, but given the set of circumstances. So, like, the hours you slept, the state of the connection with partner, a job performance lately, hunger level traffic, clothing choice, like, if something's uncomfortable, all given all those circumstances, we did the best we could in the moment, and if it didn't turn out how we wanted and we weren't proud of the result, that is why we do this process with compassion. And here's the, here's the key and also a willingness to do better, to learn from it. We can be kind to ourselves and want to change both of those things at the same time. It's not only, oh, it's okay, don't worry about it, and then we don't do anything about it. That's all or nothing. Like, oh, all is forgiveness, water under the bridge. That's not what we're talking about.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:02]:
We are talking about compassion and understanding and also change. And we can have both. We don't have to only change if we want to sort of burn everything down. We don't have to reject ourselves in order to do something different. We don't need to burn it all to the ground and start overd. There's that idea of the cracks. I think it might be a japanese saying or idea, but that when, let's say, a beautiful bowl cracks, it's fixed with a gold. So now you have like a gold crack in the bowl and it's more beautiful because of it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:50]:
So we don't have to throw the bowl away. We make it more beautiful and functional by sort of highlighting the issues that are going on. And for us, the highlight is that we learn from it. So important. So just notice the thing that would make a difference and decide to do that next time. That's when we look at an event or an experience. That's what we're doing. We're just noticing it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:27]:
We're able to look at it because now we're not afraid that we're going to beat ourselves up. We don't have to start over and be perfect. We're going to notice the thing that would make a difference and we're going to do that next time. Done. That's the learning. But first we have to find out if anything could have been done differently. It may not have been. That may have been the only way things could have gone.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:51]:
And that's very useful to know. So we look back on an experience and ask, what, if anything, could have been done differently? We look back with a realistic lens, not a perfectionistic one. So we think back to an experience and we see all the players, all their moods, all the circumstances that went around it. We aren't changing anything, right? If we had an overeat and now we're going to think about it, we're looking realistically at what actually happened and where there may have been space or time to do something different. So some examples could be helpful here. So often this will happen around an overeat. That will be something that didn't feel good. It doesn't feel like the result we wanted, and so we want to figure out about it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:45]:
Why did it happen? What can we learn from it? So we're not going to beat ourselves up, we're just learning, which is part of the process of getting to our goal. Right. And one of the ones that's common with my clients is getting too hungry, then ending up overeating. That one is a biggie. So we use the hunger scale around here. It's so useful. And so this is highlighted. We're very aware of when we got too hungry.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:14]:
And remember, when we get too hungry, it's very easy to overeat. In fact, almost every time you will. That's why we eat at just hungry negative two, and we stop at positive two because it's easier to stop at positive two if you're eating at negative two. If you're eating at minus three, negative four. It's very difficult to stop at positive two. So we don't have that expectation of ourselves, which is why we don't want to let ourselves get to negative three or negative four. Okay, but that can happen. So here's a couple of recent scenarios.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:52]:
So my client was invited to a football game, which ended up being like a long day excursion, or I have someone else. It was a wine tasting event, or another was a spontaneous golf game. Often these will be things that sort of just come up. And it's, of course, a wonderful thing, being alive and having friends and a community. There will be things that come up when we make our plans. It's so helpful. But we can't plan every moment of our lives. I don't think we would want to do that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:23]:
We want. I mean, maybe we would. And if it feels good to you, amazing. But also, a lot of us want to be able to be open to these fun things that happen. And in some of these circumstances, it ended up in an overeat. So when we look back, we can find, like, let's say, where it would have been easy to bring a snack. Like, oh, I could have prevented myself from getting over hungry if I had had a snack. Okay, well, it turns out in this particular scenario, she did think of bringing a snack, but she didn't have any in the house.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:01]:
So that's the fix for next time. Next time, we're gonna make sure to have some almonds or string cheese or whatever, something in the house so that she'll be able to bring it as a snack. Amazing. Great lesson. Have snacks in the house that you like, that will work for you, and then you can bring them with you. Fantastic. And in another one, they ended up at a restaurant that didn't have great options. And so when I was talking to my client about this, she was thinking, well, next time I can do research.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:32]:
But there was no Internet connection. So when we're looking at the realistic scenario, the answer couldn't have been to do research about a restaurant there because there wasn't really Internet connection. So that wasn't a possibility. And that's such a good example of I should have, but literally couldn't have. That wasn't an option. So when we talked more about it, we took the choice of restaurant off the table as something that could have been different because they didn't know many places around there. But what could have been different was that she could have split the meal with her husband. That's something they had done in the past, but they didn't think about doing it this time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:23]:
She was a little over hungry, so it made it a more difficult choice to split the meal. But in looking at it, she thinks, oh, no, no, there was something on there. We both wanted it. We could have done it. Amazing. So that's something that going forward, maybe splitting a meal will be more on her mind. Sometimes the best answer is that nothing could have gone differently, and we want to have grace for that because we could have ended the other scenario, too, where my client was in the restaurant and she was over hungry, so splitting a meal wasn't a great option. And so really nothing could have been done in that scenario.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:12]:
That's really good to know. And then what we can do is take a step back. So there was nothing to be done about the restaurant. And once she was in the restaurant, there wasn't much to be done because she was sort of over hungry. Now, we've highlighted the idea of splitting a meal, so maybe that will occur to her, but also she probably needed a snack. I will tell you that snack is often the answer to some of these things. So having them in your bag or purse or car is usually the answer to a lot of this stuff. It could be that nothing could have been different and we're taking a step back now and seeing, oh, in general, I want to have snacks.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:56]:
It could have been an I'm not remembering now this exact scenario, but maybe she skipped breakfast, so skipping breakfast isn't a great idea. You know, that sort of thing. We can take a step back once we've, if we've seen nothing could have changed in the smaller scenario, we can take a step back to see if there was something that could have changed in the bigger picture. Sometimes the answer is nothing, and that's okay, too. When we play with the realistic scenarios, we can be kind and continue to change our behaviors going forward so we can look at it. We can say, oh, yeah, you know, not really. Not much could have been different. Maybe next time I'll try splitting, or maybe next time I'll bring a snack.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:36]:
Fantastic. That is how we get to our goal and stay there forever. Weight loss with ease of this is how kindness we're going to remember that in order to get to our goal, we have to learn from our experiences. We're going to mine those experiences for the gold by taking time to think about them. That's where the food date comes in. We're also going to be willing to do this because we're not afraid that there'll be a thrashing session for us by us and really know that we're doing the best we can at all times and so we can be kind to ourselves and want to change in the future. We're also going to be very realistic when we're asking what, if anything, could have been done differently. And that's just one of the ways that we have sustainable weight loss forever.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:42]:
Weight loss that feels okay because the assumption is kindness. The assumption is we're doing our best. And also we can feel good about wanting to change things in the future. Both. And I'm sending you so much love. I can help you with this. So lose weight with me. Go to stephaniefine mD.com, click the lose weight with me button and we'll be connected.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:11]:
I would love to help you with all of this weight loss with ease and sustainability. Those are, those are my favorite. That's, that's the combo. The winning combo. Sending you so much love. Mmmdh.
