Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with Weight Loss for Fertility. And I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about the real work of weight loss. It's not what you think. It's not how to force yourself to eat salad for every meal. It seems like it might be that, but it's not.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:26]:
The work of weight loss is being able to change the way we think about change. Okay, stick with me here. We decide we want to lose weight for many different reasons. We may be physically uncomfortable, our doctor told us to. We want to feel better, we want to improve egg quality or decrease risk when we're carrying a pregnancy. There's so many reasons why we decide to lose weight, but we really decide it. Not we wish or it would be nice, but we actually decide to do it. The next step is we need to change our eating habits.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:04]:
And we know this, this part is true, right? We have to change something. If ever we want change, we have to change something else. If we keep doing the same thing, we'll get the same result. So we need to. And the work then becomes changing those habits in a way that's effective and sustainable, meaning we actually do it. And we do it in a way that works for us. So change that's effective, meaning we actually do it. And sustainable means we do it in a way that's okay with us, that we don't have to change ever, we don't have to stop doing it, it's okay with us, it feels fine.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:58]:
That is what I mean by sustainable. We can do it forevermore and we can do it because it's not against any part of our. So we can't do it in a way that's punishing or harsh or mean because that activates in most of us a rebellion. Rebellion is the opposite of sustainable because it takes us in the opposite direction. We need a way that takes us forward, all the way down the road, not backwards, but all the way forward. And the only way I know to do that is with kindness, with permission, with buy in from ourselves. We need all the parts of us to be on board. And when I say all the parts of us, we all have parts inside us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:55]:
This is one way of looking at it. This is internal. Family systems is a conceptual way of thinking about how our brain works, how our development and brain works. And it includes parts of us that were, I'm going to say, sort of traumatized. And it doesn't even have to be capital T trauma. It can be that we felt lonely or sad. Or didn't understand something. Often that of course happens as we're children and then we make sense of it in our own little five year old brain and we have a permanent part that protects us in a certain way.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:36]:
So when I'm talking about parts, there's many, and this is a rich source of theory and help. But here we're going to talk about like a rebellious teen who bucks authority that could be part of us. Or the lonely 10 year old who used food as her friend. Or the sad 5 year old who got sweet treats when she was good, otherwise known as quiet. Or the tired adult who just wants to feel better about the injustice of having to deal with fertility issues. There's lots of parts of us and they all need to be okay with the changes that we're making because if one of them isn't, she will let herself be known and get us off track. So for it to be sustainable, they all need to be okay with the changes that are being made. So the teen can't be told what to do.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:35]:
The 10 year old has to have connection. The 5 year old has to be able to feel good about herself, confident, without food as a reward or motivator. And the tired adult needs comfort. We need to address all these parts, all these needs in ourselves. It's not just as simple as eat salad. We have to find our parts and take care of their needs. The rebellious teen in this example needs collaboration. The 10 year old needs connection.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:10]:
The 5 year old needs praise. Speaking of which, go see episode 118 for a simple technique on how to do that. Go look at episode 118. It was the Valentine's Day episode. The adult needs comfort. Episode 10 explains the idea of the comfort list. Now you may have all or none of these parts and you may have other parts, but this is a good sample of parts that we have that make traditional weight loss tricky. Traditional diets are often all or forceful, harsh rules, restriction, deprivation.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:54]:
And they don't take into account these parts of us. So they all fail at some point and we just don't do it that way around here. We're looking for a permanent solution. So we acknowledge and work with all, all the parts that show up. And they start to show up as we make changes. So as we start to decide we want to lose weight and we do it in a way, eyes wide open, not harsh. But by making kind, conscious decisions we see where it's difficult for us and that's how we find the parts that come up. Today we're Going to talk about how to work with the rebellious part, because that's a super common one.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:47]:
It's the don't tell me what to do part. She's often responsible for the eff it phenomenon. You know, like, I'm not doing this anymore. Eff it. And then just eat everything in sight. She's the one that bucks up against authority. We work with her by collaborating with her. As a teenager, she is used to being bossed around because she's part kid.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:18]:
As a teenager, we're part kid, part adult, and we're struggling with that. It's a challenging time, to be sure, because we really are part kid. We don't have all the experience and our brain isn't fully developed, but we also aren't a little kid anymore. So we want to make our own decisions. And she wants what she wants that teenage part of us. And she often comes into being as a protection. All the parts usually do. They were sort of born out of a need that we had and a solution that we created.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:55]:
Our brain created it. Maybe she was comfortable telling people off. Even if you weren't, this part of you sort of took charge and she. She is strong and she created boundaries that you may have needed. Often inelegantly, you know, she. She may have done it in a teenage way. You know, yelling or being mean, sarcastic, harsh. But it worked.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:24]:
But now as an adult, it doesn't work as well because there are consequences to that. Yelling at people or being harsh. So that no longer serves us. And as adults, we feel more confident to make decisions and stick to them because now we actually are grown up and we can make decisions for ourselves. The teenager usually could not, but we can. And we can have what we want much of the time. So we are in a different position than the teenager. But the teenager does not realize this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:02]:
She thinks we still need her and her sort of harsh ways. We need to let her know that we're here now. We've got this. We're grown up and we can handle the situation. And when we're in dialogue with her, which is interesting, we literally do this in our heads. We sort of talk to her. We have to make sure we don't force her to do anything she doesn't want to do. She will rebel.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:34]:
That is her territory, right? She sees someone forcing her to do something and she rebels. That is her job. This is her one trick, so we won't win at that. We need to help her see that we have bigger goals now that we are the adult and we can Handle this. There's no one else telling us what to do. We are in charge now and we've got this. We're good at it. Teenagers live in the moment, but adults have goals and plans.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:11]:
So she needs to understand that she can trust you. We want to get her buy in to the bigger picture. And for us, right now, what we're talking about, the bigger picture is weight loss. And we need her help. And that help looks like not kicking into high gear when we're trying to make changes. Because if she digs her heels in, it makes it very, very difficult to change habits. So we need to get her buy in and her understanding, her trust that we're not going to force her into anything and that we have our best interest at heart. We want her to feel comfortable hanging out in her room listening to music so our adult self can work on changing habits so she doesn't feel like she has to be in protection mode, guarding on high alert for any perceived infraction.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:12]:
She can trust that we can take care of things. She gets to relax now. That is such a relief for her when all she wants is to be able to trust us. And when she can, she's free to go do her thing, which for a teenager is, you know, hanging out with friends, listening to music, talking on the phone, whatever. So it would be a huge bonus to her to be able to trust us. And so we want to build the trust with ourselves. This is why building trust is so central to permanent weight loss. Knowing we have our own back, that we will not throw ourselves under the bus, that we won't risk our well being, our sanity, our physical health, our physical comfort to get a goal.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:04]:
We will get goals. We just don't want to sacrifice ourselves anymore. And we may have done that for a long time, thinking that grinding or forcing is the only way to do it. That stops working and we pay a price for it. Burnout, physical illness, strained relationships, we pay for it. Wait, overweight is a huge way. We've paid for that. We don't need to do it that way anymore.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:39]:
And traditional diets force. They run roughshod over. The feelings we have. Inside parts of us just are not okay with that anymore. Like there's we have a knowing that that doesn't work long term. I mean, not only that, we've probably tried it a billion times and so we know it that way, but there's also sometimes a knowing, like there has got to be a different way. And there really, really is. When we're young, we're Forced to do things like when we're a child, we're often forced, I'm going to put that in air quote.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:10]:
Forced to do things like through fear or guilt or threats or, you know, that sort of thing. And we don't have to endure that anymore because we're grown up, we are in charge. So we can do it differently. And I highly recommend that we do, because that's how we get permanent change. A solid, trusting relationship with ourselves creates the ability to have permanent change, which for us will mean permanent change. Weight loss. And that's the weight loss for fertility way. We build trust.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:52]:
We lose weight in a way that feels good to us, meaning we're not forcing any part of us to feel uncomfortable or ashamed or little or anything. We're taking our sweet parts into account. And then we create the permanent change that's needed for permanent weight loss. And there's quite a few ways that we do that around here. All the tools we have in weight loss for fertility are designed to build trust, to have us lose weight in a way that's very different than traditional dieting. Again, because we need it to be permanent. And one of those ways, you will not be surprised, is the hunger scale. So we don't go from like, if.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:47]:
If someone has a. Is used to eating things like burgers and nachos and that. We don't go from that to dry salad. We use the hunger scale and we eat the foods we want. This is how we build trust, trust with ourselves. We're not doing a bait and switch. We're not forcing ourselves to eat things we don't like. We eat what we genuinely want, but we do it by eating when we're hungry and stopping when we've had enough, when we're satisfied, not full.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:21]:
And the teenager can usually get on board with that because we're not. We are giving her what she wants, the foods she wants. She's not triggered. She does not see eating when we're hungry stopping when we're satisfied as a forcing. If we ate dry salad and we hated dry salad, then yes, she would see that as a forcing. And she'd be right, by the way. But when she's not triggered, we can keep on keeping on. We can build trust.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:53]:
We can lose weight, we can feel okay, we can feel fine about the choices that we're making. Not conflicted, not triggered, not unsafe. We feel okay, and then we're losing weight. And in the process, we're building trust with ourselves. And what that does. Not only do we have permanent weight Loss. But there's so many other things that we get to do in our lives. Decisions we get to make, feel easier about, relationships that don't cause guilt and difficulty because we trust ourselves to make good decisions and follow through with them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:40]:
And we can do that because we trust ourselves. We have our back. So the work of weight loss is being able to change the way we think about change. Forcing or traditional dieting does not work long term and we need another way. And thinking about ourselves as having parts that have legitimate needs has us discovering those needs. Examples we talked about are collaboration, connection, comfort, affirmation. We discover those needs and then we satisfy them with things other than food. So we do the collaboration, we get the connection, we feel comfort, we affirm ourselves, we give ourselves what we need.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:30]:
And not with food anymore. We may have done that with food earlier, but that's because we didn't have a better way of doing it. And this happened so early. Often this happens so early, baby. 3, 4, 8, 12. These are the ages and we are much older than that now. We focused on the rebellious teenager today and getting her buy in. And one of the ways we do that here is using the hunger scale.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:04]:
No restriction on what we eat, only a new respect for the information from our body honoring her signals of hunger and enough and the teenager can understand that. And we're still eating the foods that everyone's happy with, all the parts of us. Learning to do that calms the teenager, builds trust with ourselves and our bodies, and results in painless, permanent weight loss. If this just makes a lot of sense to you and it feels like a yes and you want to get started, reach out to me and we can work together on this. I would love to support you in this process. This is what we do and it works. And not only do you come out with weight loss, but with a stronger relationship with yourself. It's a beautiful thing.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:04]:
I'm on Instagram @stephaniefeinmd or you can go to my website stephaniefeinmd.com or weightlossforfertility.com and click the lose weight with me button right there. We will be connected until next week. I am sending you so much love every part of.
