Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:00]:
Hello, fabulous. It's Dr. Stephanie Fein here with weight loss for fertility. And I want you to know that food is the domain of the body, not the brain. And what do I mean by that? The body knows what it needs. The brain really doesn't know what the body needs. It only knows what it's been told. There's a very real difference.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:28]:
The body has its own functioning, right? It's responsible. Well, it's not responsible. This is the problem. It's a separated thing, that the brain controls one part and the body controls the other. The brain is more susceptible to cultural influences. It's more malleable, more nimble. It creates pathways based on external inputs and it's motivated by dopamine pathways. I mean, that's a simple view of it, but we're going to use that as a placeholder.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:00:56]:
The dopamine pathways, the body just knows what it needs to function. At its best, it will deal with whatever you put in her, but it will feel better with some foods over others. And in whatever amounts. She will let you know what those are by how she feels and how she functions. As complex as the body is, she's simple. She needs fuel to function. So when it comes to the foods we eat, we want to go to the source and listen to the body, since it is the one that has to deal with the consequences. The brain might be well meaning when it comes to food, but it's misguided.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:01:43]:
It's not thinking of the body's needs, it's only thinking of its own. The brain and the body have competing goals, and not necessarily competing goals, but just different goals. The brain wants dopamine and the body wants fuel for optimal functioning. Think of them as like Tigger and Winnie the Pooh. The body has Pooh energy. Pooh, Winnie the Pooh energy. It's calm, amiable, understanding. The brain has Tigger energy bouncing all over the place and concerned with itself.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:02:21]:
So it's important to know who's communicating with you, the brain or the body in any given moment. And that's what we're doing in today's podcast. We're learning how to hear the body over the brain when it comes to eating and food. So in general, the way many of our parts communicate with us is through voices, for lack of a better word, in our head. I'm sure some people's brains and bodies communicate through, like, sensations or colors or feelings. The same general principles will apply to what I'm saying. We want to get good at knowing the difference between the brain and the Body, the communication that the brain gives us and the communication that the body gives us so we can preferentially listen to the body when it comes to eating and food. So there are definitely other disciplines that talk about the body having information for us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:18]:
And that could be 100% true. Today we're just talking about hunger. And when we're talking about hunger and food and eating, the body is the expert. The body is the one that knows. That's the one that we should be listening to. And it's sometimes very hard to do. This could be a very foreign concept, because if we think that there's only one communicator and the voice is the same, then we're very used to trusting the brain. And that, of course, makes sense.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:03:53]:
The brain is very useful for a lot of things. But when it comes to knowing how much food and what food we need, the brain is not reliable, certainly not as reliable as the body. So when we want to learn, and I hope that we do, the difference between the brain voice, the brain communication, and the body communication, a fantastic place to start is with the hunger scale. When we use the hunger scale, when we're practicing, when we're starting to use it, we have to figure out all the different numbers and how our body communicates that. And so we're spending time tuning in. Now as a refresher, the hunger scale is a scale that goes from negative five, which is empty, no food, to positive five, which is completely stuffed, like Thanksgiving, undoing your pants, laying down. Those are the extremes. And then we have four, three, two, one on either side.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:01]:
And we want to eat at negative two, which is just hungry. And we. We want to stop eating at positive two, which is satisfied, not full. Three. Positive three is full. That's what you can physically feel, full. But the body's had enough when it's satisfied. And learning your signal, your body's signal for satisfied takes some time for many of us.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:27]:
For some people, it does not. Those are naturally thin people. They are very tuned into their body signals. They wouldn't dream of eating to full. It feels too uncomfortable. Their signals are super strong and easy to read. Those of us with food issues, I put myself in that category. It's not as easy to read.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:05:51]:
It's there. But we have to sort of train ourselves in a different way. We have to pay attention, and we can absolutely do this. We can learn it, and it becomes stronger and much easier to read. But it's not as naturally available to us as it is to naturally thin people. But we can Teach ourselves. And so when you're figuring out the hunger signals and the way you know, you are done, satisfied, not full, we often use the voice in our head. And we want to be able to tell the difference between the voice in our body and the voice in our head.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:06:38]:
The voice in our head, our brain voice, is a conditioned voice. It has, like, ulterior motives. The knowing voice, the core you voice, when it comes to food, is the voice of the body. It's calm, soft, wise, understanding, peaceful, forgiving. The voice we want to learn to listen to in terms of food and amounts and eating. I'm calling the voice of the body. It's never argumentative, manipulative, punishing, demeaning, or harsh. It is never those things.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:07:18]:
So if the voice in your head is like that, saying something, I'm going to go into a common scenario. But if it's, you know, manipulative or punishing, that is not the body voice that we want to be listening to. That's the brain. So a common scenario is you're eating and enjoying your food and everything's great. And a small voice says, we're done, just very simply. And it could be a number of different ways, like we don't need anymore or that was good or something. But something along the lines of, that's enough, we're done, I'm satisfied, don't need any more something. And it's usually short and it's just a statement.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:04]:
So there's no pleading or yelling or anything. It's so we ha. We can miss it. That's often what's happened is we've missed it and now we're paying attention. So we want to hear it. But what happens is, so let's say you're eating and the voice was there. Another voice quickly comes online right after the one that said that softly said, we're done. And it's saying things like, oh, there's more here.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:08:33]:
Oh, we can't waste this. Oh, no, no, no. This tastes really good. Oh no, we gotta finish that. Hey, how about having some more of that? Oh, why don't we do this? That is the brain, because remember, it has a different goal. It wants more dopamine and it will do whatever it needs to do to get you to continue so that it can have dopamine. That is then a competing goal with the body because the body does not need any more fuel at that point. And in fact, if it had more fuel, it's just going to have to store it, it can't use it, and it will store it as fat.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:10]:
And when we're losing weight, we don't want that. We want to use what's needed and then not use anymore or not eat anymore so that we have to store it as fat. But the brain wants you to keep eating for the reasons I talked about. It wants, it wants the continued pleasure, the dopamine, the. It doesn't want to feel boredom, it doesn't want to feel lonely. It does. Like there's so many reasons why it wants you to keep eating, none of which benefit the body at this point. So that's why we're looking to be able to differentiate between the two.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:09:47]:
Because when we know that the one that's being sort of manipulative is the brain and it does not have our body's best interest at heart, we can make a decision at that point. Now, in this scenario, let's say we were eating pizza and the body said, we're done. And then the brain had its little shenanigans and all those ideas that it, that it gives you. There's more here, we can't waste it, it tastes so good. These are meant to get you to eat more of the food, to get more dopamine. That is all that's going on. The brain is using its well worn pathways, triggered by the pizza's flour, the sort of the carbs in there which hit the dopamine receptors to keep the dopamine coming. The brain is wired to do this.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:10:39]:
It loves dopamine. And there's other pathways too. I've said this is, I've simplified, loves dopamine and thinks it's very important for survival. And in fact it is. That pathway contributes to motivation. And we would have stayed warm in the cave and never ventured out for food if it wasn't for a rewarding pathway. But these days we don't need it for that so much we're awash in. And food that's designed to light up those receptors, you know, they've literally designed foods that hit it in just the right space so that you want more and more and more and more.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:11:13]:
So one thing in this day and age we'd benefit from is learning how to manage our dopamine pathways. And we're doing that here right now, when we recognize that the brain has taken over and is leading us astray in terms of how much food is needed, right? It thinks we need lots and lots and lots of food because we want to keep getting that dopamine. But the body knows it does not need more food at this particular moment, it wants optimal functioning. And when we are able to tease out the different messages we're getting, we can make different decisions. We can become conscious of what's going on and choose something different. And when we do, we're training the brain to respond differently to the cues and creating another pathway. Again, this is a little. There's a little more complexity there, but we can change the pathway.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:13]:
We have a well worn pathway. When we've been unconscious and when we're getting conscious and choosing something different, we can. And the way we start to choose something different is we can decide to stop eating whatever it is we're eating, because our body doesn't need anymore and we can address whatever needs we have after that. So if it's boredom, we can do an activity rather than continue eating. If it's lonely, we can call a friend. If it's, you know, there's a lot of emotional things too that are there. If it's about wasting food, then we have to start thinking differently and create a different pathway there. So we do want to know what the brain is compensating for.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:12:54]:
And we can get there by asking questions too. But it all starts with knowing the difference between the body voice and the brain voice. A great way to do this, to become aware of this, is to check in with the body. And that's exactly what we do when we use the hunger scale. So when we get conscious of this and sort of deliberate and intentional and the way that we use the hunger scale image I have and the way that I do it actually is sort of closing my eyes. I close my eyes and my attention moves down into my body and I'm sensing for what's going on. I was just doing the hunger scale right now and I am like about a zero. I'm neutral, which makes sense in terms of how long ago I ate and what I ate.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:13:48]:
So you will figure out a way to do it. And it's hard to teach someone how to do it because everyone is slightly different. How you get the signals, where they are located, what they are, all of that is different for every single body. So having intentional checking in with your body, that will get you in the right direction and you can fine tune it from there. When we check in to see what number we are, remember it goes from negative 5 to negative 4, negative 3, negative 2, negative 1 0, and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. When we do that, we're listening for the voice of the body, the calm voice, the knowing voice or sensations. I was going to say we're not looking for the anxious or the loud one, but we are. I mean, we're happy to notice the difference because then we can label them.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:14:49]:
In the beginning, the body voice is much quieter. She's gotten used to being sort of ignored, but she's there and if we start to pay attention, she will communicate with us. It's different for everyone. And it could be a voice or a feeling, you know, you're going to know as you're checking in. And when we're hungry, it could be a physical symptom. So being hungry, sometimes we're really aware of hunger and a lot of times we're aware of negative 3, negative 4, negative 5 when we're very hungry. And there's. It could be physical symptoms like, you know, a tummy grumbling, a pain somewhere, a fatigue.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:15:32]:
Your thinking becomes slower or cloudy, your mood changes, you have a headache, lightheaded. There's a lot of different physical symptoms. And it could be something completely different on the other end of the scale, meaning that when you're satisfied, not full, it could be the soft voice saying, done. It could be a physical sensation. You could notice something in the pit of your stomach or you could notice something in your chest. It's possible that it's that, but I have seen that it might be physical when you're hungry and a voice when you're satisfied, it could also be the opposite. So every person is different. But I give you that as a starting place.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:16:17]:
Mapping out your own personal hunger scale is really valuable in this regard. So that knowing generally how you can tell when you're at a negative one, negative two, negative three, and really valuable to find out when you're at a positive one, positive two, positive three. In my experience, the positive two, it can be one of the more challenging. It's not impossible, but it's the one we have the least practice hearing, many of us. In order to create the map, you have to get used to paying attention and listening to the body. And when you do, you'll be rewarded with all sorts of information because as you're paying attention, you're going to hear and notice lots of different things. You'll hear the brain voice and the sound of the voice may be the same, right? It's not like, I mean, in my experience, it's not like one of the voices is high pitched and one is low pitched. The pitch sounds the same, but the energy and the substance of the voice is different.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:17:30]:
And if the voice is anything but calm, soft, wise, understanding, peaceful, forgiving, then it's not the body voice. If it's in any way argumentative, manipulative, punishing, demeaning, harsh, then it's the brain voice and it's to be considered suspect. In terms of food and eating. I want to put that there. I mean, in general, we should be questioning anytime the brain is manipulative and punishing, but particularly in terms of food and eating. The brain is really a wonderful tool that helps us in so many areas, particularly planning. So it helps you get the food and earn the money for the food and prep the food. But it's terrible at knowing when the body's had enough.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:19]:
But it'll be happy to give you its opinion, unsolicited as it may be. Instead, I want you to go to the source. Tune into the body. The more you pay attention, the louder the body voice will be and the easier it will be to notice satisfied. And then stop eating there. And when you do, weight loss is inevitable and you have a skill for life. That is what I love about this. This is not, you know, eight weeks to a beach body and taking everything away.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:18:56]:
This is building skill that you can use forever. And again, what I love about that is not only are you doing it now, but you can use this during pregnancy. Checking in during pregnancy is amazing with your body, so it's a skill you have for life and practicing it only helps strengthen the skill. So generally, in summary, food is the body's domain, not the brain's. The brain and the body have wildly different goals and when it comes to food and eating, being able to hear and then follow the body voice means feeling energized and being able to obtain and stay at a comfortable weight. I would love to know if you have any questions about this. If you do, just DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn, I'm StephanieFyn MD or reach me through my website weight lossforfertility.com just hit the Lose weight with me button or there's also a contact me page. I would love to hear what you think about this and share this with someone who would benefit who would love to hear about this idea.
Stephanie Fein MD [00:20:06]:
Until next week I am sending you and all of your voices lots and lots of love.
