Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:02]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility Podcast, and I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about sugar, and we're gonna actually be very specific about it. We're talking about sugar AI. I'm excited to talk to you about this. The basics of sugar are actually in episode 57. We will hook that up in the show notes, definitely.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:25]:
Check it out. I talk about sugar. Sugar addiction is in there, and it's a great foundation for how to think about sug, especially if it's on your mind a lot. And if that's the case, today's discussion will also be really helpful. The term sugar AI was born from a conversation with a client recently, and I was explaining how the brain worked, and then she coined the term, and I think it fits really perfectly. The rest of this episode will be fleshing it out, defining it, and showing you how it can be useful to you if you find sugar is keeping you from weight loss. So all of us have different relationships with sugar. Some of us, it's the main thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:05]:
The main thing keeping us from weight loss. And for others of us, it's. It's not so much. We may have other issues like portions or. Or even carbs. Carbs. Carbs can do this too, by the way. But we're just going to talk about it in terms of sugar now.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:24]:
So if this is a particular issue for you, definitely listen on. But also this concept will work subtly. In fact, one of the reasons I love this concept is because I've experienced it too. It's much less. I would not say I have an addictive brain and I don't have an addiction with sugar. However, I still run into this. If I have sugar, I'm going to talk to you about that. So sugar can be difficult to curb, and that's because of this concept of sugar AI.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:00]:
It's the reason it feels hard. Sugar AI is the voice in your head telling you to find some sugar now, urging you to eat more sugar. We can call it a craving, but it's almost different than that. I think many would call it a craving, but to me, it's the voice that's constantly in the background trying to get you to have more sugar. If you're under the influence of sugar, you have constant cravings, which is that voice telling you to eat it all the time. It's relentless. And the tricky part is that this voice, of course, sounds like you, right? It's in your head. It sounds like your voice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:44]:
So then it gets A little confusing. The voice is the sugar talking. Sugar AI is the sugar talking. It is not you. And that's really important. That's the basis of this idea. You do not need or want sugar. Sugar needs and wants sugar.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:10]:
Sugar AI. The voice needs and wants sugar. You are not that voice. And in fact, the easy way to see that is if you take sugar completely out of your diet, there will be no voice. There will be no Sugar AI. It's gone. And so whenever you're hearing that voice, the egging you on, wanting you to have more, figuring out how you can have it, when you can have it, why you should have it, that means you're under the influence that is Sugar AI. It's really important to know the difference of your voice versus Sugar AI's voice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:54]:
That voice you hear egging you on to have sugar is never you. It's Sugar AI. It's sugar masking itself as you. It's using your thoughts and your voice to get what it wants, what it needs. You don't need it. The voice, the Sugar AI needs it to stay alive. So it's fighting for its life, literally. Because when sugar's out of your system, the voice is gone.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:21]:
It's dead. It wants to stick around. And the way it sticks around is by getting more sugar. Sugar begets sugar, and this is the way it does it with the voice. It's such a relief for so many of us when we stop sugar and we don't have the voice, that drone of how, when, where will we get it? When, where, how? I mean, it's just like on and on and on. When will I have my latte? When will I have my Pick me up? When will I have my dessert? When will I have my snack? How about the chocolate? How about a little bit of this? How about a corner of that? Oh, just a touch. We think it's us, but it's not. This is sugar.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:03]:
It's our brain on sugar. How do we know it's Sugar AI voice and not your true inner voice? Because it's never your truest desire to have sugar. It's always Sugar AI. When your brain is thinking about sugar, it's always the sugar talking. You may want sugar and decide to have it, but by not having it, you are never going against your true self. So you're never denying your true self. If you decide not to have it, you're just denying Sugar AI. That's the sneakiest part of Sugar AI is that it wants you to believe that you deeply want it that way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:56]:
It can get it. It's super smart, and it was trained by your brain. It knows all the things to say to you specifically. So all the different voices in everyone's head are different, right? Because different things will work for different people. It knows your vulnerable areas, and it will push the buttons it has to to have you reaching for sweet stuff. That's why it's like. It's like a mask. It's like an alien, you know, it's.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:20]:
It, like, wears your body as a mask. I mean, it's so sneaky. And this is what it's like to be addicted. It's an addiction brain. That's what we're describing, and I use this term. And it will feel too strong for some people. Like, the voice isn't. That doesn't have as much of a hold.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:43]:
But for some people, this will explain a lot. It's when a substance becomes more important than anything. And the substance here, we're talking about sugar, but it could be alcohol or, you know, heroin or cocaine or, you know, it could even be, as we spoke about before, flour. We're just talking about sugar right now. And when the substance becomes more important than anything, that's where we get into that idea of addiction, that we don't have control over it anymore. And sometimes it won't feel like more important than anything, but just that it's more important than it ought to be. And that's really important to know this. And it doesn't mean anything like, it's not the end of the world if it feels like an addiction.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:32]:
But it's just good to know this piece. The piece, to me that's important for you to know, is that it's. The substance is acting on your brain. So it's not your core of who you are, the want that you have. It's not part of your dreams. It's not the same as, like, a dream of having a child or a particular home or other goals you have for your life. It's not the same. Sugar has hijacked your brain and is asking you to have that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:05]:
It will feel like it, and that's the sneaky power. And that's why we want to know the difference. Sometimes it's easy to see that the sugar is talking because you know you don't want it, but the brain keeps asking for it. And that sometimes comes after, like, a spree of sugar. If you've just had, like, a sugar binge, your brain will still want more. It will still want more. But, you know, you're like oh, no, I know. I've had enough.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:35]:
But the brain, this is where it exposes itself. It's like a slight error. It's pushing the envelope even a little too much, and then we can recognize it. It's like it. It's like Oz behind the curtain, right? The curtain opens and you can see that that can't possibly be you. It's this voice. Sugar AI wants more, and it always will. And this is where you come in.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:01]:
Your brain needs you to lead. It's like editing ChatGPT, you know, it comes up with stuff, and then you fact check it, or you proofread it, or you make the final decisions about it. It's a first draft. We need you to make the actual decision. With Sugar AI, it's challenging, but we need you to know the difference between Sugar AI voice and your own. But sometimes it's really tough. This is not like, oh, I just tell you this, and you're like, oh, it's so super easy. It's not, but it's very.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:39]:
It's very important. It's a very important step to know the difference between you, like, capital Y O, U and Sugar AI. Just knowing that it's Sugar AI is really helpful because you can start to make space between yourself and the sugar talking, and then you can implement a plan. So you have to have a plan, right? That's so often the answer around here is having a plan because we are dealing with our brains, and our brains love a plan. If we don't have a plan, our brains will run off on its own. And if we're talking about sugar, it will definitely go in that direction. So if we have a plan, we have sort of a hope and a prayer of getting the plan in place. If we can notice the difference between ourselves and Sugar AI.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:32]:
And the way we create a plan around here is that we create the solve. We make a guess, we try it out, then we tweak what needs tweaking, we try again, and we repeat the cycle. Guess, try, tweak. Guess, try, tweak. You may decide to implement a plan when you feel it has a particularly strong hold on you Sugar. Or if it's been a while that you've been on sugar and you're not feeling all that well, or you've not lost any weight even though you're using the hunger scale, or you don't like how the sugar feels in your body. These may be times that you want to notice Sugar AI the voice, and get some space between that voice and you capital U with this plan, you may want to stop or decrease sugar. And there's two ways to do that.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:31]:
One is you can stop cold turkey and let it wash out. And now this. Here's the thing about this. It's super effective. If you don't have any sugar within a certain number of days and it's different for everyone. It can be five, it can be 10, it's somewhere in there. There will be no voice. I mean it's really, really effective to do it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:52]:
When you have no sugar. The voice isn't there, but it can be difficult to get there depending on how habitual this stuff is. And if you've been around here at all, you know, that's usually not how I do things. I'm not a cold turkey kind of person. I don't want it to be challenging. All or nothing. That's not really my style. But in this particular it is effective and it's short lived, right? Because if you get through a week of this, you will be sort of healed.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:23]:
Your brain will start to heal. It won't be completely healed in a week, but you it will be so much decreased. So it's possible to do that and you may decide that that makes sense for you depending on where you are with this. But the other way is to decrease it and take away the low hanging fruit. You may want to sort of substitute things or have smaller portions of things or only have it with other food. That's having sugar on its own gets into your bloodstream much more quickly and it creates, you could feel it differently. So having sugar at the end, like having like a dessert is a much better way to have sugar in terms of how it goes into your bloodstream and then how it affects your brain. So you can make some tweaks and for some brains that'll be enough sort of decreasing it a little, changing the timing, that sort of thing will be enough to decrease the sugar AI voice.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:25]:
But for some it won't. And so that's when we can have one of these two plans and you can try and tweak and change and try again. No sugar for a period of time which is different for each person is the fix. And the voice will, like I said, will go away or if it doesn't go away, it will become very, very quiet, like easily ignorable. I think of it as like a gnat. You're just sort of flinging it away. It becomes very, very simple. Whereas it isn't simple when you're in the thick of it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:00]:
I mean it's Incredible. I don't know if you've experienced it, but it's. It's so subtle. So what clicked with me when I was talking with my client about it was, I don't now, I can't remember if it was in the holidays, but I had some sugar and I don't have a lot of sugar in my diet in general. Just, I mean, not because I think it's evil. That's just how it works out. But I had some and it was so quickly after that that the subtle voice in my head was like, oh, maybe we should have some more. Oh, that was good.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:34]:
Why don't we have a little. Maybe tomorrow, tomorrow we can have some. I never have those thoughts in my brain. And it was distracting. It wasn't constant. And part of that was because I wasn't used to having sugar. So when I introduced a little, I started to have it, but it. It didn't have such a hold on me.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:54]:
But I noticed that I was thinking about sugar more than I normally do. And that's when I knew about this concept. So what's important to note is that if you decide to have sugar, let's say you haven't had some in a while and you decide to have it, you will have post sugar symptoms and it will be the voice. So what happens is, let's say we have a treat, you know, like you just decide to have a treat. Amazing. No problem with that. But once we decide to have that treat, we have to be aware that it will have consequences. Certainly.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:41]:
I mean, one brownie is not going to make you gain weight. So that's not the issue that we're talking about. The consequences I'm talking about right now are that your voice, the voice, the sugar AI voice will be activated and now you'll have to deal with the voice asking you to have more sugar. And then either you'll get into sort of a spiral. If you do have more, then it will ask you for more and you'll have more and it'll ask you for more, that whole thing. Or you'll have to ride out a time where the voice is just talking to you and you're not obeying it. That's urge work. And I have.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:23]:
I will hook that up in the show notes too, about urge work. Going longer periods of time without sugar may make it easier to bounce back after eating some. But be prepared for the voice going on longer than you think makes sense. Like just having one brownie for four days, I'm going to have a craving for it. Yes, that can happen now, that doesn't mean you're not going to decide to have sugar. Absolutely you can. It's just I want you to be aware that there is this symptom afterwards, this consequence, and to have a plan for it. I just want you to be able to take into account the whole experience of eating sugar.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:08]:
Not only the experience of eating the sugar in the moment, but the effect it will have by waking the sugar AI in your head. And it will take effort to break free again. Now, it may not, depending on how your brain is. It may not be a lot of effort, but it likely won't be nothing. Nothing's gone wrong when this happens. This is just the nature of sugar and human brains. And that's what I want you to know about. Sugar AI is the voice of sugar in your head.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:45]:
These are some takeaways. It sounds like you and knows you really well. And it's not afraid to use all your vulnerabilities to get what it wants. It's helpful to know this so you won't be tempted to blame yourself for being weak. And that's so important to me. This is not about you, capital Y O U. This is about this mechanism in our brain and sugar. And I want you to know this so that also you won't believe that you're listening to your true desires.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:24]:
When your voice is telling. When a voice in there is telling you that you need or want sugar, you can have it, you can decide to have it. But that's not your deepest core value. That's always going to be sugar AI speaking. The quickest, surest way to get rid of it is, is to stop sugar and let it wash out of your system. But it doesn't have to be that way. Decreasing can work as well as long as you're aware of the sugar AI and have a plan for how to deal with it. Urge work is one of those things.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:59]:
Planning eating sugar after meals so that it absorbs differently into your bloodstream. All those things will help. And remember to take into account the whole experience of eating sugar. Especially again if you haven't had some. That includes the cravings and the reintroduction of the voice, otherwise known as sugar AI. When you know this, you'll be prepared and know what to expect. Including that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. It stops.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:32]:
We just have to get the sugar out. If you want help with sugar AI in your life, I am happy to guide you through this. Process can build skills and reveal capabilities. You didn't know you had. And then not only do you lose weight, but you trust yourself more. It's a total win win. So reach out to me on my website, stephaniefyemd.com or weightlossforfertility.com and there's a lose weight with me button. You just press that and we'll be connected.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:03]:
I would love to help you with this. I hope you have a wonderful week. I will talk to you next week.
