Ep 1 Thinner Peace in Menopause, Weight Loss and Beyond

Thinner Peace in Menopause, Weight Loss and Beyond, Episode 1

Dr. Michael Butler: Hi, I’m Dr. Michael Butler. And I am the husband of Dr. Deborah Butler, and I’ve known her since high school. One of the fascinating things about Deborah was that she used to think differently than anybody that I knew. I was in high school and I wanted to see the world and she says, “No. See yourself from the inside.” Well, she’s still doing that after decades-letting people see themselves from the inside and helping them lose weight. Ladies and gentlemen, my wife, Dr. Deb.

Dr. Deborah Butler: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Thinner Peace in Menopause. I’m Dr. Deb Butler, and this is episode number one. From here on out, I’m not going to keep saying “I’m Dr. Deb Butler.” I’m just going to say “Hi, this is Dr. Deb,” because this is the way I want you to know me and I want it to be personal.

Today, what I like to start out with is the very, very beginning of how this whole thing works and how I got into it, because I think it’s gonna make a difference if you realize that it took me a long time to figure out how to keep my weight at the same number. It’s earth shattering, really, because I spent 40 years never at the same weight-I was either going up or I was going down. So, it’s nice to get on the scale and weigh the same most of the time, and how I did that is what all of these podcasts are about. And what I want to tell you right from the start is what it’s not about. Okay?

So I am not-even though I know a lot about nutrition, and I’ve dealt with people’s bodies for a long time-this is not about telling you the latest and greatest foods or the latest and greatest diets, or what I think is best for your body. It is not about that. And the reason it’s not about that is because I think, you know all of that stuff already. If you’re anything like I was, I knew every nutritional fact and every caloric fact and every point fact about every food on this planet-that did not stop me from gaining 25 to 30 pounds over and over and over again for, I don’t know, 10 to 15 times. And really, I equate that to losing at least 250 pounds in my lifetime.

So, I don’t know exactly what your issue is, but I’m guessing that you’re not at the weight you want to be. I’m guessing that you’re in the state of menopause, entering menopause, leaving menopause, but somewhere around that and you’re sick to death of this merry go round. That’s what I’m guessing. And if you are, then I know that you’re just like I was, and I know that the information that I have to give to you will be really helpful.

Before I get into all the different tools that I use to teach people how to maintain a balanced weight, I want to talk a little bit about the basics. Because if you don’t have the basics, there’s no way I can teach you anything else. And this is what I mean by the basics-the basic connection to your body. And guess what that is, the basic connection. The basic connection is-drumroll please-do you eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full? That’s the basic connection. It’s the most innate. It’s been with you from the day you were born, and somehow, I think, in the midst of messing around with what someone outside of you has told you when to eat and what to eat, you have lost that basic connection. And so, this is what this podcast is all about-learning to reconnect to that. Now, how do we do that?

So what I did is I wrote an article about this, and it’s what I’m going to talk about today and read about to you in just a little bit, to see if it helps you understand what that really means. I think I’m going to name this podcast Podcast #1, I’m naming it “What Are You Really Hungry For?” And hint-it’s not in the refrigerator. So, what are you really hungry for? That’s such a great question. And the hint that I give you is that it’s really not in the refrigerator. And I think that somehow, we had some kind of belief that it was in the refrigerator, but it’s not. So, starting with the basics, and the basic premise is this-you have to learn to trust yourself. And I know some of you will say, “Well, I do trust myself,” and maybe you do in some areas. But I believe that most of my clients, and I’m believing you too-you don’t trust yourself around eating. And what I believe that means is that you lost the connection that you don’t know what your body is telling you anymore, and you don’t trust that because you’ve lost that connection. So how do we do that?

Well, if you’re going through menopause, and you have never trusted yourself with eating, then I will tell you this right now if you don’t already know it, menopause does not make it easier. However, if you’re going through menopause, and you have had that basic connection to your body, then menopause has a lot to teach us. I’m guessing that most of you are in the category of not being connected and not knowing and not trusting. We have to start with that before we can figure out how to fix our bodies in menopause.

So, if it all starts with learning to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full, then we always start with the simple action of eating. Why? Because we do it so often. And we do it with so little thought that we’re actually checking in to what’s going on with our bodies. Remember, our emotions live in our bodies too not just the physical sensations of hunger but, also, the physical sensations of emotions live in our bodies too. So, whenever we sit down to eat, we have an opportunity to check in emotionally and physically. So, I love to use eating as the most natural way to do this. And I’m betting that you’re listening to this, that you sit down and eat every single day, which means to me, every single day you can learn something about yourself, which is where we are going to start learning about you.

Now, I will tell you that most of my clients, they don’t trust themselves when it comes to feeding themselves, and we know that this is their basic instinct. I’ll also tell you that most of my clients don’t think they know when they’re hungry, and they don’t know how to stop when they’re full. I also was in the same boat for many, many years. I believed I did not know how to do this, and I did believe that for me Weight Watchers did. And so, I was a lifetime Weight Watcher member for 30 years in the hopes that I could have an outside control to keep my weight down.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with Weight Watchers if you use it and it works. For me, I used it as a way to lose the same 25 pounds over and over and over again. Get down to my goal weight for one day, go back up, go back to Weight Watchers, go back down-you know the drill. That’s what I did. That wasn’t working for me anymore when I hit menopause. It did not work anymore because my body wasn’t working the same, and I wasn’t losing weight the same. And losing weight to me was what it was all about not the connection to my body, not knowing when I was hungry and knowing when to stop when I was full. All I thought was the most important thing was, “How many points do I get? Did I stay within the point system that day?” And if that equals losing weight, I’m all in. 30 years of that.

I will also tell you that food does not jump into your mouth. For instance, cookies, they don’t fly, and they cannot force your mouth open. This has to sound ludicrous and a little funny when I say this to you, but I can’t tell you how many women I talked to, who say they don’t know how the cookies got in their mouth. If I tell you that, you think, “How could they not know?” or you’re thinking to yourself, “I know what you’re talking about.” We are not paying attention. We are not being conscious. We are not in our own bodies when we eat food; and we must be in our own bodies when we’re eating food, to know what the heck is going on and to know this basic connection that I’m talking to you about. Most of my clients and myself, too, believe-and I believed-that when food was so delicious, that they can’t stop themselves, and I couldn’t stop myself from eating too much even though I wasn’t hungry, and neither are they.

However, if I was on Weight Watchers and I was on a point system, I would allow myself the points of eating and I could stop when my points were over. So interesting. I could stop when the outside source told me to stop, but I didn’t think I could stop when my inner Inside source told me to stop. I didn’t even know what it was. And I don’t think my clients do too. So, of course, I weighed more than I wanted to and most of my clients do, too. What a freaking coincidence.

I will tell you that this is not about telling you the newest and greatest food discoveries that will help you lose weight faster than ever. There are a million books out there and pills and chills and all kinds of things to help you with that. That is not what this is about as I told you. This is just about the basic concept of eating and that reconnection of that most basic instinct. So, learning this basic instinct and practicing it over and over again until your brain rewires itself and reconnects back to the body in the way it was always intended. And this is the beauty about neuroplasticity is that we know the brain can change. So if you’re doing it one way right now and you think you don’t know when you’re hungry and when you’re full, it’s only because your brain has been trained to do something different-so we can retrain it.

Now, the reason I know you know how to do this is because my bet is that you help your kids and your grandkids all the time. You make sure they eat, and you make sure they get sleep. Why? Because you don’t want to be around them otherwise, you know what I mean? It’s not fun. So, you can see how important it is that they eat and that they sleep, but we’re really talking about eating right now but sleeping is the same type of instinct. And we can see what happens when they don’t eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full, and so we make sure that they do. But with you? You’re tough. You just run through your life thinking you don’t need what is basic to your kids. So interesting, isn’t it? You do it for your kids in a heartbeat. But you? You don’t need it. But you’re wrong, and it’s only because you forgot.

I want to help you remember, by starting with this connection of eating. You will just do for you what you’ve always done for your kids, which means you’re not learning something new. You’re just doing it for yourself. You’re going to pay attention to your basic body needs before you get uncomfortable or before your body starts screaming. And if it were your kids, you would do it before they started screaming and throwing tantrums. You don’t want to get to that point, so you feed them before that. That’s what you’re going to do for you. And this way, you are then following the natural rhythm of your body. So how do you relearn how to do what you wanted naturally? I’m repeating myself, but I have to-you learn to start eating when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. And what gets in the way of that most natural action is what this is all about. And I know it sounds so easy-and for a four-year-old it is-but for a 15-year-old who has had years of disconnecting? Not so easy. So, this is where we’re going to start. We’re going to learn to tune into your body every time you put something in your mouth. This will be both fascinating and horrifying, but you will learn about the most important person in your whole life-you. You will get to know “you” the way you know your kids or your grandkids, and you’re going to care that much about you as you do about your kids, what a concept. But that’s how simple it is. And the truth is that is exactly what you haven’t been doing-paying attention to you, being conscious when you sit down to eat and finding out what’s going on inside of you.

Each podcast, I will be introducing a new tool or concept on how to start doing what I’ve been talking about today and how to strengthen this connection and how to connect to this instinct on a regular basis because just think about it really, if from here on out, all you ever did was eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full, even if you didn’t pay attention to what you were eating. Now, just stay with me for a minute. I almost guarantee you; you would weigh what you’re supposed to weigh. I know this sounds so crazy, but I know that it’s true. Naturally thin people-and I don’t mean naturally healthy people-I mean naturally thin people eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full. That’s it. Now I think a naturally healthy thin person is very conscious about what they eat but, actually, just keeping your body weight at its natural weight is just a matter of eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full.

So, when we tune in next week, the first tool that I’m going to talk about is a hunger scale. And it’s not going to be like anything that you’ve ever heard or seen before, and it has never been talked about in the way I will talk about it and teach it to you. And it will add to your homework that I’m going to give you today, which is going to be very simple because everything that I asked you to do is going to be so simple because really, it is that simple. So, what I want you to do for next week, the only thing I want you to do is, every time you put something in your mouth, I just want you to ask yourself, “Am I hungry?” That’s it. And when you finish eating every single time, I just want you to ask yourself, “Am I full?” That’s it.

Next week, we’ll get into much more detail about this. But for now, all I want you to do is to start tuning in to your body on a regular basis. This is called becoming conscious, this is called a brain body connection-this is what we were all born with-and you have it. And we are going to use food as the way to begin this connection that is so natural and so necessary.

So, I hope you’ve gotten something out of this today. And I can’t wait to hear about what you have to tell me about just checking in with your body every time you eat. So please feel free to email me, drdeb@drdebbutler.com and tell me, “Oh, Dr. Deb, this was so easy to do,” or “Oh, Dr. Deb, the hardest thing I ever did. I kept forgetting.” You’ll be surprised. I can’t wait to see what happens. But it’s the beginning of becoming conscious of your own body. I’ll talk to you next week.

Dr. Michael Butler: I hope you enjoyed this podcast with my wife, Dr. Deborah. I’ve enjoyed working with her and living with her. That’s right. We work here and live together for 40 years-more than 40 years. It’s amazing how time flies, and it’s been like a little tree growing in the yard, now it’s a big tree-our love. So, I would like to invite you to correspond with Dr. Deborah. Go to iTunes, drdebbutler.com/itunes and you can review the show, and you can even give some helpful suggestions on what you would like to talk about in the future, to accomplish your mindfulness and your journey into mindfulness. Thank you.