Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight Loss for fertility. And I have a little story for you. I'm going to talk to you about the evolution of cooking in my household. This is actually a fascinating subject to me. You'll hear why. And this is where the podcast was born.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:19]:
Today's podcast. I so remember I had an image in my head of what a good wife and mother was, and that absolutely included being really good at and loving cooking. So I really tried, and I really just assumed that I would love cooking. I mean, it's so interesting to think about it now. Cause this is years ago now, but I basically made myself love it or try to love it or pretend that I loved it. It was very interesting. But the truth was, I found it extraordinarily difficult coming up with ideas, and then I just had no interest in it. But I made so much pressure on myself, not only to do it, but to love it and then to excel at it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:16]:
I mean, now that I'm saying it, it's so interesting. But sort of the evolution of that, looking back on it, it is so fascinating. It's really just, you know, my upbringing and the. All the messages and the Leave it to Beaver and the, you know, all the princess stories and, you know what I mean, all that. And I just assumed I would be good at it and love it. Spoiler alert. I didn't, and I don't. But I played that role.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:50]:
And I don't know if I ever talked about this, but my son, my firstborn, came at 24 weeks. So it was very, very early, and it was a surprise. And I was in the process of getting my PhD. So I had already gotten my medical degree, and I was in a fellowship, a research fellowship program at ucla, and I was getting my master's in public health. And then I started my PhD. I was going to do research, and I was pregnant. And I remember being in class, and then I went into labor at 24 weeks, and he came, and it turned out I had a septum in my uterus that I did not know about. So it was very, very, very difficult.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:36]:
And this is one of the reasons I have such a soft spot in my heart for rough starts to motherhood, because I had a different version, maybe a little different than your version, but it was certainly more challenging than anyone I knew. No one else I knew had any issues with their pregnancies. So it was. Anyway. Anyway, my point being in telling you that is that it changed the trajectory. I was getting my PhD, and I had plans and when he came so early, he needed so much care that I just. I did not. I stopped the PhD program.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:10]:
I did not work as a researcher or even as a physician. And I was home with my kiddo. And he's doing great, by the way. Just to. I mean it. I wish I knew that then. And of course, I had beautiful souls who would tell me everything was going to be fine. But, you know, people can tell you that and you don't believe it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:32]:
I wish I believed it. Which, by the way, side note, if people are telling you that about something, you may want to consider believing it. Just a thought. Anyway, you certainly could not have told me that back then. But the point being is that now I was home. I was home with him. And so then, of course, and I say that with a lot of sarcasm now, I believed that since I was home, that my job was definitely to be an amazing cook and love cooking. And side note, love being home and all the rest of that stuff.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:04:08]:
There were many aspects of it I loved, but I will tell you right now that cooking was not one of them. And like I said, lots of pressure on myself. But over the years, I found hacks. You know, I found ways to do it, because if I was able to parse out the idea that I was by choice, on purpose, taking on the job of feeding my family, and if I could have admitted that I didn't like to do it, I would have been able to find a way with so much more ease. And that's what I'm partly. What I'm talking to you about today is it was painful, and I want to save you that pain. You may not have as much programming as I had about being excellent with entertaining and cooking and having to. And thinking I had to like it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:04]:
And if you don't, that's amazing. But if you think you might, any resistance you have to cooking at home could be related to that. And so I'm just inviting you to investigate. But back to my story of my evolution of cooking in my household. I played the role. And finally, after years, we even moved house. I finally admitted the truth, that I hate cooking. I swear, it was like a revelation.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:33]:
It's crazy to me now that it was such a revelation, but it was because it. This is. This sounds crazy, but I just had it in my head that a woman loves cooking. Isn't that. I mean, I say that to you and I'm kind of shocked. I was a woman and I did not like cooking. So it was very challenging as an identity to admit That I didn't like cooking because I still was a wife and mother. So I'm hoping that by saying this, it's helping somebody because this is.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:10]:
I mean it. There's like a little bit of embarrassment about it because it seems so obvious now, but it was not. When I was in it. It was very challenging. And so if this can help spur something, that would be amazing. Do let me know if it does, by the way. I would love to hear that. Anyway, so I finally admitted the truth, that I hated cooking.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:32]:
It was not interesting, it was not fun. I wanted it to be fun. I see people having fun in the movies. They're drinking wine, they're dancing around, they're so enjoying themselves. That just was never me. So when I finally admitted it, I was able to do it more in a way that was okay with me. But I have to say we got into a period that was sort of boring. And the thing that I did was I did a lot of Trader Joe's.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:02]:
Where? Trader Joe's is a place. I know they have a lot of them, but not everywhere. They have a lot of ready made foods. So you can buy a bunch of them and then you sort of heat them up. It's like it's it. There used to be a show called on home and garden television called Semi Homemade. I love that title. That was basically the Persona I took on.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:21]:
Although she was really into entertaining on that show, so that wasn't me. I like to think I liked entertaining. That's another thing I realized anyway. But Semiholm Made is a great way to think about where I would have it. I would make it and then I would put something together. So the green beans and the mashed potatoes and the meatloaf and most of all of that would take a very short amount of time to make because it was, you know, already chopped. Just add water, stick it in the microwave, that kind of thing. Don't you all want to come over for dinner at my house right now? You actually will in a moment when I tell you how where we landed.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:02]:
But here's the other thing. I was okay with that. Like that food is fine for me. I am. I enjoy different foods. That's fun for me, but it's not the end all be all. I really am fine with basic food. And my husband not so much so because this is sort of where I landed.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:26]:
He was starting to consider maybe taking up some of this because also his job changed so that he was remote. And he was remote even before the pandemic. But of course Then the pandemic really got it and he started getting into, like, watching the cooking shows and trying this and getting this gadget and la la, la, la. And it turns out he loves cooking and he's really good at it. So now he's the cook in our house. It's so exciting. We're all really happy with this arrangement. And the food is a lot better, I will say now, like I said, I was fine with this sort of okay food, but definitely the food is better now.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:09]:
And we could not have ended up here if I hadn't admitted to myself and then the family that it wasn't my preferred activity. I wasn't great at it and I didn't love it. And this is what I was willing to do. And I want to encourage you to do the same thing if this is part of your journey with cooking. I had to be true to myself and now things are so much better because of it. Now all this took years. I'm hoping for you, if this is part of your journey, that you could shrink the time so you don't have to have the difficulty. But I tell you this story to inspire you to investigate your thoughts and feelings about cooking, not just assume, assume that you should cook at all or that you should like it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:04]:
I really want you to honor if there's resistance to cooking and then get curious as to why and investigating that can save you a whole lot of heartache, which is my job to make life and weight loss much easier on you. And the reason, separate of the fact that I would love for you to have ease is that then we can have the permanent weight loss. We have to figure this stuff out because cooking at home is a great way to enjoy healthier and less expensive meals when compared to like delivery or eating out. Not always. There's ways to do it, but if you hate cooking, then home cooking is a non starter. And I want you to know that it's okay. We don't have to become, you know, Julia Childs or I can't even think of the mom's name on Leave it to Bieber, but, you know, happy homemaker to lose weight. We don't have to do that to be a good partner.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:07]:
We don't have to do that. To me, what we have to do is be honest with ourselves. And then what happens when we're honest with ourselves is we can craft the solution that works for our family. That's what we're doing. That's what the message is today. So, number one, I want you to be able to release any guilt or pre programming you have about women having to love cooking. If there's any resistance to cooking at all, ask yourself why and wait for the answer. If you find yourself dreading, if you find yourself whatever it is, I want you to allow yourself to investigate why.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:50]:
Because there are solutions to all the issues that you find yourself with cooking. And as you can tell, this is not. The answer, isn't figure out a way to make yourself cook. It's not. I'm going to go into a whole bunch of ways that you can't. But we want to investigate why. Because maybe you can, Maybe there's a way that you can, and maybe not. It's okay.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:11]:
If you love cooking, great. Because there are a lot of people who love cooking. Fantastic. That is such a wonderful thing for you. And you can use this for some ideas on how you can make it easier on yourself. Because you may love it, but not have an hour and a half every night. So we still want to investigate what would make things easier, how can we make it better? And if you don't love cooking, and if you're partnered and maybe your partner loves it, and then that's the answer, then you're going to figure out a way to feed yourself. That's what we're doing here.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:48]:
We're figuring out a way to feed yourself that's easy, that works for you. That's the goal. Because in weight loss, we are concerned with feeding ourselves, eating when we're hungry, stopping when we're satisfied. But when we do that, when we're following the hunger scale, we need to be able to eat when we're hungry. And so that usually involves some sort of planning, some sort of understanding of where the next meal is coming from. You can cook it, you can buy it, you can bring it, you can have prepared it. There's many ways of doing it. But having a plan, knowing where it's coming from is important.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:31]:
Cooking can be part of it, or maybe it's just assembly. Maybe it's a particular place that you get it from. But we need to know ahead of time. That's one of the great things about the hunger scale. We eat when we're hungry, stop when we're satisfied. But we do need to have the food. Because if we get hungry and then we decide to eat, if we're buying it, even if we're cooking it, it can take, you know, half an hour to an hour. And then we're past minus two, we're into negative three, negative four territory.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:03]:
It really is okay not to like cooking. And we're talking today about releasing the judgment around being a good partner means you cook, and then we're just solving a problem. If I admit or realize that I don't like cooking, then we just have to figure out how we're going to get food. Now, if you've been gaining weight with recently and now you're looking to lose weight, one of the ways you may have solved not liking cooking is ordering out or eating out more. And that set another problem in motion, which was weight gain. So you may have already solved this problem, but you solved it in a way that created a different problem. And so now we want to solve the problem of how do we eat food, have it ready for us and not gain weight. And that's what we're talking about here.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:06]:
So here's a little list of alternatives we talked about. First of all, if you love cooking, have at it. If your partner loves cooking, amazing. Then we're going to get into these other ways. So you could hire someone. Now, depending on funding and all the rest of that stuff, you could hire, you know, a chef. There's lots of. There's lots of that out there.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:30]:
I know someone who hired a family member to. And then they prepped the meals for the week. You know, it was for just for the five days. And then on the weekend they went out. You know, you could arrange something, a neighborhood. You could maybe hire someone to help you prep or. Or the parts you don't like, planning or, you know, whatever that is. There could be some creative.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:51]:
You could trade, you know, skill sets. There's ways that you can get someone else to help you. That's one idea. The other one, of course, is a service. And I know a lot of people use them. So there's one that you like, cook yourself, right? So, like, hello, Fresh blue apron. So that's still some cooking. But you're not.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:12]:
I mean, you still may be chopping some, but you didn't come up with the meal. You had to choose one. But then it comes to you. There was also something I used to do called dream dinners, where you went somewhere and you actually assembled, you know, I don't know, however many, but five or ten meals that you then froze and then you could have them. And what was nice about that is, you know, if your family doesn't like tomatoes, you didn't put the tomatoes in or whatever. The reason we stopped going, and this is again, years ago, was that some of the ingredients I wasn't happy with. And so I love the concept but in practice it didn't end up being something that we wanted to continue doing. Of course that's going to be.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:51]:
You're going to find things with all of this stuff. But these are just some ideas to sort of spark your idea, machine your creativity, see what happens. So we go from there and I googled this and boy there are a lot and in your area there, you know, some delivery, some hiring, some cook it yourself. There's all different ways. So investigating this, especially if you're looking to not cook yourself because you don't like it, then this can be something. One thing to look out for with some of this is that like with Blue Apron I know like the portions can be really big and you can of course have leftovers or it's heavier than you would normally have. These are all things to take into consideration. So you might like one over another.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:36]:
A plant based versus a. I don't know, just your tastes. And then there's also places that you can pick up meals that you can heat and serve. I saw one called Everytable. There's like, you know they have like, it's a membership, there's lots of ways. But investigating these might be a really helpful thing and release you from something you don't want to do. Under that I have like the grocery store, like Trader Joe's where you just go to the market, they have a bunch of things that are already pre made and you just heat them up and it's a great like you know, enchiladas, meatloaf, you know they even have like chicken breasts that are already marinated, you know, all that sort of thing. So that it becomes much easier.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:25]:
You're not starting from, you know, you're not taking feathers off the chicken. You know what I mean? Like there's different levels. I love that option. There's also things like, and even if you like cooking like a prep day so that you have things are ready. So if you don't have a lot of time for dinner, you notice that that's the issue is that it takes too long at dinner time, but you can on the weekend prep things so that it's easier. These are all taking it into account how much you like to do, which aspects you like to do, planning ends up being important and trade off from if you love home cooking but you don't have time, then maybe there's just a few days that it makes sense to do it. This is all part of like the perfection. Like if we could have, you know, all organic, the most delicious, the Perfect portion size, it takes no time.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:19:19]:
Yeah, that's what we want. How close can we get there in our reality situation right now? And you know, my thought about it always is weight loss doesn't trump everything, but is so beneficial to the physiology in our body that organic everything may not be as important as weight loss itself. That weight loss and what it does for your glucose and insulin resistance is so valuable that we don't have to get bogged down with everything being perfectly organic. I love organic. It's amazing. Clean eating is beautiful, but to be perfect about it is, I think, detrimental. If we make it harder on ourselves, it's very hard to doordash every night and lose weight. Home cooking every meal from scratch is not necessarily the answer.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:20]:
And this can be an all or nothing situation. I was just talking about that, this idea that everything has to be perfect. It doesn't. We can live in the gray so we can order in some days and we can cook some days and we can figure out how to make it easier on ourselves and we can semi home make it. There's lots of ways it does not have to be all or nothing. And remember, all or nothing is a diet mentality where we're either doing it perfectly or not at all. That does not serve us long term, it doesn't really even serve us short term. Because if we're doing all perfect, we 100% are going to have a time when we boomerang to the other side.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:04]:
But if we're trying our best and doing what works for our lifestyle, we can do that forever. That's always our goal, that we like, that that's the best way. Because we're being kind to ourselves. We're taking our preferences, our situation into account and we're doing the best we can. And that's amazing. So questions to ask yourself. Do I need to change my dinner routine? And that's a great question. If you are already losing weight, amazing, you may not need to change it.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:21:41]:
But if you're pained by it, if there's a lot of resistance, if you don't like it, then the answer is yes, I do need to change my dinner routine. So do I need to change my dinner routine? If yes, am I willing to cook? And I want you to be really honest with yourself in a non judgmental way. It doesn't mean anything about you if you're willing or not willing. It's just a fact. And then it would be great to have any necessary discussions you need to with other people in the household. Maybe there's a difference there and then you're going to find a solution and this could take time and that's okay. This is going to be a forever thing because you're always going to need to feed yourself. So experimenting is fine and it may take a little while and that's okay.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:22:32]:
We don't need everything to be perfect right out of the bat. We actually never need things to be perfect. We're always trying. That's one of the reasons why we do the evaluation. What worked, what didn't, what are we going to do differently? That's part of the food date that we do each week. So releasing expectations of domestic bliss will free you up to create solutions that work for you and your family. Weight loss feels so much better when it's not laden with guilt, resentment and judgment about who and how the food gets made. If it works, it works.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:23:11]:
I'm sending you so much love until next week.
