Episode 56 - Breaking Free: Overcoming Cravings and the Food Industry's Grip - Dr. Glenn Livingston

Dr. Glenn Livingston, a former binge eater himself, shares his personal journey and research on overcoming cravings and binge eating. He discusses the manipulation by the food industry and the impact of advertising on our food choices. Dr. Livingston emphasizes the importance of taking control of the voice of justification and fixing faulty thinking about food. He also highlights the role of nutrition, exercise, and a holistic approach in defeating cravings and achieving long-term weight loss. Ultimately, he encourages self-responsibility and understanding the underlying causes of addiction. 

Dr. Glenn Livingston discusses the concept of powerlessness in addiction recovery and argues against it, emphasizing the importance of taking responsibility and using free will to overcome cravings. He explains how the brain's response to food is influenced by evolutionary factors and how cravings can be managed and extinguished through a well-planned process. Livingston also addresses the role of guilt and shame in addiction and provides strategies for turning guilt into responsibility. He discusses the extinction curve and the importance of recognizing and addressing different food stimuli that trigger cravings. Finally, he explores the power of unexpected pleasure in shaping cravings and offers practical tips for managing them.

Takeaways

• Take control of the voice of justification and fix faulty thinking about food to overcome cravings.
• Understand the manipulation by the food industry and the impact of advertising on our food choices.
• Incorporate nutrition, exercise, and a holistic approach to defeat cravings and achieve long-term weight loss.
• Practice self-responsibility and understand the underlying causes of addiction. The concept of powerlessness in addiction recovery can be disempowering and hinder personal growth. Taking responsibility and using free will are essential for overcoming cravings.
• The brain's response to food is influenced by evolutionary factors, and cravings are a natural response to stimuli associated with acquiring calories and nutrition.
• Guilt can be transformed into responsibility by focusing on learning from past mistakes and making proactive changes for the future.
• Understanding the extinction curve and developing strategies to manage cravings can help in overcoming addictive behaviors.
• Unexpected pleasure can create new cravings, but it can also be harnessed to develop healthier habits and preferences.

Chapters

03:40 Glenn Livingston's Personal Journey with Binge Eating
10:08 Realization of the Manipulation by the Food Industry
12:23 Research on Cravings and Triggers
16:07 Taking Control of the Voice of Justification
19:00 The Process of Overcoming Cravings
22:53 Updating the Approach and Results
30:17 Holistic Approach to Defeating Cravings
35:40 Incorporating Exercise and Nutrition
39:43 Taking Control of Your Body and Mind
41:39 Understanding Addiction and Self-Responsibility
41:56 The Concept of Powerlessness
42:55 The Brain's Response to Food
44:35 The Mountain Analogy
45:32 The Danger of the Disease Concept
47:20 Understanding and Managing Cravings
48:31 Turning Guilt into Responsibility
49:30 Overcoming Shame and Building Success
50:42 How Cravings Work
53:49 The Extinction Curve
56:00 The Worthy F Response
58:24 Cravings and Food Signals
01:01:58 Extinguishing Infrequent Cravings
01:07:12 Using Unexpected Pleasure to Your Advantage

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Transcript

0:00
Welcome to maxed out man helping you
0:06
become the man you were made to be hey guys this Kevin Davis from the
0:11
max out man podcast we are here episode 56 and I here with Dr Glenn Livingston
0:16
PhD he's the managing director at defeat your Cravings LLC isn't a veteran psychologist he was a longtime CEO of a
0:23
multi-million doll consulting firm uh and service several Fortune 500 clients in the food industry which I think is
0:30
super interesting you may have seen his previous work theories and research in major periodicals or other major media
0:35
Outlets uh he says disillusion by their traditional psychology had to offer
0:41
overweight and or food obsessed individuals Dr Livingston spent several decades researching the nature of
0:47
binging and overeating via work with his patients uh which I think you just said over 2,000 and self-funded research
0:54
program of more than 40,000 participants which is that's a big study I don't
1:00
think a lot of I don't think there are a lot of studies out there that are doing you know have that kind of that kind of number so was in the days when internet
1:08
clicks were cheap like 1999 yeah we could recruit people have
1:13
them take a survey tell us a couple of things yeah not as not as impressive as it sounds but yeah well we like big
1:20
numbers so we'll use it but hey thanks for coming on board I'm super interested in this topic I think you're the first
1:25
guest that I've had with this particular expertise and I've said before on this podcast a lot of times this you know
1:32
this information is for my own edification and then I like other people to listen along so I'm super interested
1:37
in this so uh welcome thanks for joining us thank you for having me I'm happy to help with anything along the way speak
1:43
so I think you know one of the things I love doing is just getting to know the guest and kind of your background and
1:49
how all this came about and kind of your expertise and so talk as long as you want about that I'd love to hear more
1:56
well if you were ever in saset Long Island and you stopped at the Woodburry Country deli and they're out of pizza
2:02
and Pop-Tarts there's a good chance I was there before you um which is my kind of cute way of
2:09
saying I'm not just a doctor who decided to work with over readers I'm a um I'm a
2:15
former um Bing Jeter myself I had what you would call exercise bulimia originally but um I was almost 300
2:23
pounds to the best of my knowledge I got fed up with myself around 257 and stopped weighing myself but I I got
2:29
pretty big and the doctors were yelling at me that I was going to die by the time I was 30
2:34
or 40 um and um it it kind of started when I was a
2:41
kid and I'm a big guy I'm 6'4 I I'm modestly muscular just genetically
2:48
unlucky and so if I worked out a couple hours a day I could eat whatever I wanted to whole pizza was nothing for me
2:55
boxes of muffins boxes of chocolate bars um if it wasn't n down it was fair game
3:01
and and I was happy about it it didn't seem like a problem it was like Doug
3:06
Graham calls it a superpower when I was young it worked out great I maybe spent a little too much time sleeping it off
3:11
and going to the bathroom but I didn't care I was you know thin and happy and everything was great when I was a kid
3:17
okay so then maybe five years later I um I'm in graduate school and
3:24
I'm commuting two hours each way to see patients and and take classes and my
3:30
my um metabolism has slowed down a little bit but I found that I couldn't stop eating the way that I was eating it
3:37
it's like the food had a life of its own and worse yet I couldn't stop thinking
3:43
about it and I'm from a family of psychologist being a great psychologist has always been the most important thing
3:49
right like and to be a great psychologist it's it's not just an intellectual game it's not just like
3:56
people come in and they show you the puzzle of their life and you say rotate this one here rotate that one there and
4:01
they say I'll get right on that dock right it's it's more like you have to be
4:06
able to lend them your soul and get them to love and trust you enough so that they are willing to think new thoughts
4:12
and try new things and leave their comfort zone and I I was hindered in my efforts to do that back then I I'd be
4:19
sitting with a suicidal cident thinking you know when can I get to the deli or you know a couple that was on the verge
4:25
of divorce and thinking um you know I need to get the next Pizza it was
4:30
I I compensated by working really hard and going over sessions and getting a lot of supervision um and I you know I
4:37
never lost the client or anything like that but um I I wasn't there I wasn't 100% present and it always bothered me
4:44
more so than the weight at first being from the family that I was from I
4:50
originally thought that the problem must be that I've got a hole in my heart and
4:56
a metaphorical hole in my heart and I've got to fill that so so that I don't have to keep trying to fill the hole in my
5:01
stomach and so I went to the best psychologists and psychiatrists and
5:07
over's Anonymous and I went to on a spiritual journey and I took medication for a little while and I every now every
5:15
time I would try something I get a little thinner and a lot fatter a little thinner and a lot fatter right and this
5:22
went on for about 20 years but in the interim there were a number of things that happened that um caused me to
5:31
eventually switch the Paradigm from Love Yourself thin to be the alpha wolf of
5:36
your own mind and yeah it's more of a more of a tough love approach and it there's a lot more to it scientifically now that I
5:43
understand but in terms of what cured me um here's what happened I was married to
5:50
a woman who traveled for business a lot so I had a lot of time in my hands I didn't commute I worked at home so I
5:57
started a second career I was a child family psychologist with a full practice on Long Island but at the same time I
6:04
was Consulting for industry I was Consulting for uh big food companies mostly also big pharmer a couple of
6:10
others but mostly big food and big Pharma all the fa all the favorite big industries of American society I I was I
6:17
I was on the wrong side of the war right yeah no I was I was definitely on the wrong side of the war I'm trying
6:23
to make up for it now I feel I feel guilty about it but I I don't think I don't think you should but but yeah just
6:29
I think that's interesting well it's helping to sell sugar sometimes the kids I I feel I feel
6:35
guilty so I'm looking at what's happening there though and I slowly start to realize
6:42
that they're targeting they're engineering these hyper palatable
6:48
concentrations of starch and sugar and fat and oyot toxins and salt and it's
6:54
geared towards hitting the Bliss point in The Reptilian Brain without giving you enough nutrition to feel satisfied
7:01
and you know so what's the result every time you're looking for love in a bag or a box or container you're there some fat
7:07
cat in a white suit with a mustache that's laughing all the way to the back right yeah right but but but Kevin my
7:13
point is this said nothing to do with whether my mama didn't love me enough or
7:19
I was in an unhappy marriage or you know I was struggling in some type of innate depression or loneliness or or anxiety
7:27
um this was an external Force and there were millions and millions of
7:32
dollars paying rocket scientists to figure out how to do this and it's targeted this part of the brain that doesn't know love The Reptilian Brain it
7:40
knows Feast through famine it knows eat mate or kill it's like a really bad
7:46
College drinking game right there's no love there it's it's the Mamon brain
7:52
that sits on top of that and the neocortex on top of that that says before you eat M or kill that thing what
7:59
impact is that going to have on your loved ones on your tribe on your family
8:04
and then in the newo cortex what impact is that going to have on your longer term goals and your health and your Fitness and your well-being um and your
8:11
contribution to society and music and art and spirituality and all the things that we think of as Indi human but this
8:17
thing here is just eat M or kill and that gave me a clue that maybe
8:24
I had the wrong Paradigm maybe I should stop looking so hard at what fails me
8:30
psychologically even though I think all that made me a better person and I should look more at um you know are
8:37
there some practical techniques for waking up and taking control when that happened I also saw that the advertising
8:42
industry was exceptionally good at convincing us that we needed this stuff
8:49
that this is where the good stuff was you needed to survive um for example and
8:54
PE people think advertising doesn't impact you but it actually impacts you more when you think that because your
9:00
sales resistance is down as a guy that does sales and marketing and all that I can tell you right now that's our whole
9:05
goal right like it's yeah it's it's very good at what it does not not knock out
9:11
the sales resistance have people just unconsciously go along and be going down
9:17
the aisle and not even know why they're picking up your product right yeah um so
9:22
for example I remember a food bar manufacturer that I work with and they
9:28
had figured out that if they took the vitamins out of the bar they could save a little money and all they really
9:34
needed to do was make the packaging look um diverse and colorful and and you know
9:41
shiny because in nature this is why they say eat the rainbow if you see a salad with green lettuce and blueberries and
9:48
red tomatoes and you know yellow carrots you're getting a diversity of micronutrients and so we've developed
9:55
this variety impulse this desire to seek diversity like like that but in this case it was more predatory they took the
10:03
nutrients out and they made it look like that instead um and so that's another
10:09
Force um that had nothing to do with my mama dropping me in my head
10:15
right um finally I'd do this 40,000 person study in the days when internet
10:20
clicks were cheap and and um I would intercept people when they were searching for some type of solution to
10:26
stress stress management was the biggest keyword that we advertised on and they would ask them what were the foods that
10:33
they struggled to stop overeating when they were stressed and what were they stressed about and when I looked at
10:39
those results what I saw was something kind of interesting but it actually led me down
10:46
a path that didn't really help it was kind of like the final straw that got me to flip the Paradigm what I saw was that
10:52
people who struggled with chocolate they tended to be lonely or anxious or broken
10:59
harder people who struggled with crunchy chewy things like you know salty chips
11:05
and you know all those bags and and boxes they tended to be stressed at work
11:10
and people who struggled with soft chewy starchy things like pizza and bagels and pasta they tended to be stressed at home
11:19
and before I was going to go talking about that publicly because I thought maybe I was on to something I decided
11:24
I'm going to call my mom who's also a therapist and I'm going to ask her what she thinks about this like what why in
11:30
the world do I go running to Chocolate because that always started my binges why do I go running to Chocolate when I
11:35
feel depressed or lonely or brokenhearted so I called my mom and I asked her that I was probably around 42
11:42
43 years old I'm 59 as we speak and I said mom why is this you you have
11:48
trouble with chocolate also why is this and she gets this horrible look on her face and she says honey I'm so sorry I
11:55
am I'm and I said Mom it's okay look this is four decades ago I'm I'm just trying to figure this out I just want to
12:01
get better what happened and she said well you know when you were one-year-old in
12:06
1965 your grandfather and my dad had just gotten out of prison and I had no
12:12
idea he was guilty I idolized him he was my whole life and he went to prison and
12:17
I didn't know where he was for two years and you know the first year of your life he was just getting out and I was still
12:23
getting over that so I was very depressed and anxious all the time when you're dad was you know in the Army at
12:30
that time they were talk he was a captain of the army they were talking about sending him to Vietnam and we were trying to
12:36
have we were trying to have a second kid and I thought I'm going to be an army
12:41
Widow with two small kids and no way to take care of myself um and I was terrified so you would come running to
12:47
me wanting to be cuddled wanting love wanting to play wanting healthy food and I didn't have the wherewithal to make it
12:54
for you because I was sitting and staring at the wall and just you know blanking out and so what I did I did is
13:00
I kept a big bottle of chocolate Bosco syrup in a refrigerator on the floor and I said go get your BOS honey and you go
13:06
crawling over to the refrigerator and you'd open up the bottle you'd suck on the suck on the chocolate and you go
13:12
into a chocolate sugar choma and then I could resume staring up wow right so so if this was a movie
13:21
right if this was a movie we would have had a movie moment like we have a big
13:27
hug and a big cry we for give each other and then I'd never have trouble with chocolate again right it was it was a
13:33
very good conversation I'm glad that I had it I learned a lot more about my mom and what she was going through I felt
13:39
less self-hatred I felt I felt more compassionate towards myself for what I've been through and it feel like it
13:45
softened me up in some ways as a human being but it made my chocolate eating worse and and all the other binging on
13:51
top of that the reason is there was this crazy voice of justification in my head
13:58
not my fault right yeah you're right Glenn our mama didn't love us enough and she left a
14:04
great B chocolate sized hole in your heart and until you can get out of the marriage or find the love of your life or fck the marriage you're going to have
14:11
to just go right at eating chocolate yippe let's do it right now go feed me right I said what is this thing going on
14:19
at that point I flipped the Paradigm at that point I said maybe what I have to do is take charge of that voice of
14:25
justification maybe it's not about solving all my emotional problems maybe I have to take charge of the voice of
14:30
justification instead kind of like if your emotions were a fire if you have a
14:36
well-contained fireplace in the living room that's an asset not a liability right people gather around and they hug
14:41
and they cry and they make memories if if there are holes in the fireplace then
14:47
the ashes can seep out and burn down the house and I hypothesized that that's what was happening and I had to take
14:53
control of this thing that was poking holes in the fireplace with all the excuses okay there's a lot of scientific
14:59
reasons why why what I'm about to tell you actually worked but it's a little crazy I want to tell people UPF front
15:05
it's also a little embarrassing for a sophisticated psychologist like me to admit it and that you don't have to do
15:10
exactly what I did you can use different names for things um but this is what I did and I wasn't going to teach this
15:16
back then I said I'm gonna draw a line in the sand
15:21
it's going to function like a trip wire so that I know when The Reptilian Brain is getting active because I'm going to
15:27
take control like the Al wolf I'm not going to say oh my goodness someone needs a hug I'm going to find some way
15:32
to say get back in line or I'll kill you right like alpha wolf would grow and snorm
15:38
and that line originally was I will never have chocolate during the week again I'll only ever have it on a
15:44
Saturday that way if I was in a Starbucks and there was a big old chocolate Barth the counter calling to
15:50
me as I was getting my coffee I and it said go ahead Glenn you can start your
15:56
silly diet tomorrow you worked out hard hard enough it's not a little bit it's not going to hurt um I could say to
16:03
myself you know what that's not me that's my inner Pig my pig is squealing
16:09
for pig slop chocolate on a Wednesday is pig slop I don't eat pig slop I don't
16:14
let farm animals tell me what to do as ridiculous as that was it wasn't
16:19
it wasn't an immediate cure or anything like that but what happened immediately was it cleared away the confusion it
16:26
kind of It kind of set my mind straight on the fact that there was this lower part of my brain that wanted the
16:31
chocolate and there was this upper my part of my brain that knew it was a bad idea and it created an alarm system so
16:37
that I knew immediately when that was about to happen it's kind of like it's it opened up a space between stimulus
16:43
and response and then it was a matter of what I was going to do there for my own personal recovery the way that it worked
16:50
was very logical I fixed my thinking about food so the pig would say it'll be just as easy to start your silly diet
16:56
again tomorrow I'd say wait a minute that's not true U the principle of neuroplasticity says that what fires
17:04
together wires together so if I have a craving for chocolate and I think let's just start tomorrow and then I eat the
17:11
chocolate I will have reinforced both the craving and the thought so I'm more likely to have a harder a deeper craving
17:18
for chocolate tomorrow and tomorrow I'll be more likely to say start tomorrow because I've already reinforced those little things so if you're in a home man
17:24
you got to stop digging always use the present moment to be healthy right that's an example of what I would call a
17:30
cognitive reputation or fixing your faulty thinking about lot about about
17:37
food okay the next eight years it doesn't take eight years anymore it takes like a month or so to do this but
17:43
back then it took me eight years because I didn't have all these other tools the next eight years I keep a journal I'm
17:49
hyper alert to when the pig is active what's it saying what's wrong with it um
17:55
I write it all down it's kind of Me versus the pig and um I did some other things also but
18:00
that's I play with different kinds of rules and I I did discover that it was
18:06
better to set a lower bar than a higher bar because it was more important that I recognized that I was in control as
18:11
opposed to letting things run rampant um but I got better you know I came down
18:17
roughly about 80 pounds depending up where you measure the starting point and um all kinds all kinds of other things
18:23
got better my triglycerides my psoriasis my Eczema all that kind of stuff got better
18:28
but um before I as I was getting divorced I
18:34
thought you know maybe this could be something I was going to have to close down some of the businesses I was running and I thought I want to do
18:40
something meaningful I just W to and I I happened to have from my marketing
18:45
Consulting days happened to have been a minor partner in a publishing company
18:51
and I called the CEO and I said you know I'm thinking about writing a book and he was actually at the time in that company
18:59
teaching authors how to Market their books and he he said you know Glenn I think we would do better marketing our
19:04
own books because I can't get these authors to do what I need them to do um they just have these fantasies and they just won't do what they have to do so I
19:12
sent them the book he calls me back two weeks later and he says Glenn Donuts are pig slap I don't need Pig slap I don't
19:18
know F I almost tell me what to do he he proceeds to lose almost 100 pounds over the next 18 months um yeah
19:26
and so along the way we kind of said there's something here publish that um
19:33
slowly but surely I took the necessary steps to Market it that the right way the long way not with all the marketing
19:39
tracks the long way and um Garner a million readers um I got a column on
19:46
psychology today get another million readers there we're getting all these requests for coaches this it's not quite
19:51
in order but we get all these requests for coaching um I form a program I train
19:57
some coaches to work with with me over the course of the next eight years I
20:02
work with that partner and we've seen we saw over 2,000 clients essentially what
20:09
we did was we Consolidated how quickly you could fix your thinking about food
20:15
um we studied all the different crazy things people told themselves you know not only just start tomorrow but a
20:21
little bit won't hurt or this is the wrong diet we got to find the right one and keep binging until we until we until
20:26
we do etc etc we figured out there are less than 50 things that people say to
20:32
themselves to convince themselves and we figured out how to fix that um got to the point that as we're measuring
20:38
results within one month people reported an 89.4% reduction in over reading
20:44
episodes um if they engage with their coach if they don't engage we don't get the
20:50
results okay when we get towards the last year my partner and I kind of decided we wanted to go in different
20:56
directions he wanted to do more soft where I want to do more of the human work um so I I thought to
21:03
myself I'm this is a really good opportunity to update the original book
21:09
actually there were six more books after that but I really want to update everything because I really haven't updated it with everything that we've
21:16
learned and also I don't like what I don't like where the results go at six months at six months it was down to more
21:22
like 55 or 60% um at a year maybe even a low lower than that and it was bodal
21:29
meaning that it was comprised of people who kept doing the stuff and the stuff
21:34
kept working and people who just dropped out so I said why are people dropping out that's that's what I need to know
21:41
and over the course of the year that we were separating I talked to my clients about
21:47
like why do they get to the point that they drop out and the answer was that inevitably there is this screw it just
21:54
do it response like I I know there's nothing right about this thinking I know
22:00
all my thinking is wrong about this I don't have any good excuses but oh what the hell I just gotta you know give me
22:07
the chocolate and nobody gets hurt then I said what's driving that why
22:15
why why if if I can fix people's thinking about food and take away these excuses why do they get to this screw
22:21
whicher steart response that was a very interesting answer um they all they're about seven
22:28
reasons and they all fall under the category of what psychologists would call organismic distress so one of the
22:36
biggest reasons could be that they're not nutrify themselves correctly they're
22:42
they get panicked about losing weight they're skipping meals they're not getting you know enough leafy green
22:47
vegetables I mean I'm not a dietitian or a medical doctor but I see this all the time um and so for example I tell people
22:57
you can't just give up chocolate you got to figure out what need that was F filling and I would start to have green
23:03
smoothies to to fill that craving um they were not as delicious as the
23:09
chocolate was I would not you know chocolate is kind of like getting high with food right it's well it's a dopamine response right and all that
23:16
right yeah so um but so if I had a kale banana
23:21
smoothie or a kale juice and banana smoothie I would find that I would feel satisfied I would not feel
23:28
extremely exotically pleasured the way that I would when I had a chocolate bar but I would feel satisfied and there
23:33
would be no crash um and so I saw that if I could get these people to flood
23:40
their body with nutrition on a regular basis um at a slight coloric deficit if
23:45
they needed to lose weight that they were much less likely to get this screwage of stent response problem is
23:53
it's very hard to get people to change their diet that that's the problem and I I've always promoted of this as diet
23:58
diagnostic I told people unless you're trying to starve yourself I can probably help you as long as you're eaing a
24:04
reasonably nutritious diet like let's even forget about the Carnivor War versus you know vegetarian argument just
24:10
get a lot of this processed food out of out of your life and or or regulate it and that's how I can help you to stop
24:16
oving and for the most part that's true um so the people who would start having
24:22
more nutrients throughout the day would do better but not everybody would do that so what else could be causing it um
24:29
turns out that willpower I'm aware I'm talking an awful lot so if you need to jump no you're good you're good I'm
24:35
listening along we're good okay so it turns out that
24:40
willpower is not really a fixed gift
24:46
that certain people have and other people don't it's more like you wake up with a certain amount of willpower in
24:52
the tank and you burn it over the course of the day by making decisions willpower
24:57
the ability to make good decisions you can only make so many good ones over the course of the day this is why if you're
25:03
struggling with overeating at night it's important to plan your food for the nighttime in the morning
25:08
um and it's not just food decisions that are causing the problem it's um it's you
25:17
know who's going to take Janny to soccer practice and do I spam delete delegate
25:24
or delay this email 4,000 times a day that I'm trying to trying to figure that out right um and so I started to have
25:33
people which I kind of stumbled on to before but never formalize it like this I started to have them take decision
25:39
free breaks over the course of the day like can you take 10 minutes twice a day put your phone down get away from your
25:46
computer go outside if you can but if you can't go hide in the bathroom so your kids can't get you and just take 10
25:53
minutes and breathe and think I know the bathroom is not the best place to breathe but you know it's it's better than being yeah right depends on your
26:00
environment right depends what you had for dinner last night um I shouldn't be too adolescent
26:07
on the show I'm sorry yeah no I mean if if Taco Bell was on the menu last night you probably want to find a different
26:12
location you you you want to get outside man yeah okay no no I can't
26:20
think um so that helped if been getting people to do that um there's a tape of
26:26
breathing that helps also it turns out one time I had this um kind of mediocre
26:34
date but the the woman was nice and she was into yoga and and I when she found out what I did for a living she said um
26:42
oh well I used to be a bing eater at night until I started doing 20 minutes of yoga before bed and now I don't even
26:47
want a binge anymore and I said what is going on with that why does that work I
26:52
started talking to I I mean I like yoga also and I so I knew a lot of yoga teachers and I started talking to them
26:59
and they explain to me that the type of breathing that they teach you in yoga it's called parasympathetic
27:04
breathing and it it you're often breathing out for longer than you
27:10
breathe in especially at the end and if you're breathing out for longer than you breathe in you trigger a
27:17
response in the brain that says there's no emergency here uh because if there
27:22
was an emergency if you had to be running from a hungry bear you would have to be going
27:28
M get air as much as fast as you can so it turns out if you Lori Hammond calls
27:34
them 71 breaths if you're breathe in for a kind of seven and out for a kind of 11 I'm not doing it now because it takes a long time if if you take seven1 breaths
27:42
the moment that you wake up and you realize your rep filion brain is active you can take yourself from a state of
27:48
urgent doing screw it just do it I need these resources now um to relaxed being
27:55
and that's the purpose of the breath so you always have the the breath with you it's easier to fix the screw it just do it response with the breathing than it
28:02
is by totally revamping your nutrition then there were things like
28:08
um there there were things like dehydration not getting enough sleep
28:13
even being too isolated from your tribe even feeling like you're don't have
28:19
enough contact not that you have to be a social butterfly but you do need to have a tribe that you know you can contact
28:26
who cares about you so that you know you wouldn't die in your apartment alone and nobody's going to find you for three weeks yeah um and not a and not a tribe
28:34
that only wants to meet you at the pizza restaurant right like that's yeah that's
28:40
important yeah um but you know we're a pack animal and so as as an organism we
28:47
experience organismic distress if we're too isolated it was very dangerous to be too isolated when we were evolving 100
28:53
thousand years ago um and so that's the essence of my journey so I I wrote a new
28:59
book called the feature Cravings it also I hadn't included a lot of scientific understanding of what's going on with
29:06
Cravings formation and Cravings Extinction and that led to a lot of misunderstanding of when people are
29:13
having cravings and what to do about them we can talk about that in a little bit if you want to but I updated
29:19
everything I Incorporated how to overcome the screw it just do it response I Incorporated a lot of
29:25
information about the science of craving in the extinction curve um and I kind of
29:31
integrated it all into this eight-step process um which is more comprehensive
29:36
and has the benefit of you know having worked with 2,000 clients and having had two million readers and etc etc etc so
29:43
that's that's my story and I'm thicking to it that's great I mean there's a ton I do want to dig into I'd like for you
29:48
to go through some of the the research and scientific and hormonal and all that
29:53
I do want to ask a you know I am I'm more of a holistic kind of of approach to health and fitness and that kind of
30:00
thing so it's um so I'd love for you to kind of contrast or how do you include
30:05
both the psychological mind response versus the more physiological body uh
30:12
aspect to defeating Cravings weight loss longevity of weight loss and all that
30:17
because like you know you have Diet nutrition Health low sugar or you know
30:22
avoiding sugar avoiding um which I self-confessed I'm a sugar I actually do
30:27
have a bit of a sugar addiction but not a processed food sugar addition my wife is a my wife's a baker so if she bakes
30:35
you know something chocolate croissants or whatever they better not be she
30:41
actually has to lock them up we actually lock them up in a particular freezer which I don't know if that's good
30:46
behavior or not but I do I you know like I'm a weight training you know moderate
30:52
cardio cortisol control all of these things can you kind of just talk about that because we talk a lot about health
30:58
and fitness on this podcast and so I'm interested to know kind of that holistic approach to defeating your Cravings
31:06
losing weight longevity of weight loss those kind of things so what I mostly
31:11
leave out of what I'm doing is solving emotional problems and traumas um I have
31:18
compassion for people and there is a lot of comorbidity with overeating and
31:23
emotional problems in terms of how it all starts but I believe essentially what's happened is you've initiated an
31:29
automatic Behavior Loop which because the brain is a calorie acquisition
31:35
machine and had to be in order to survive it it is very prone to
31:42
automating and forcing those automations into an unconscious process that feels
31:47
as if you're not even there you know most most people don't know maybe the trigger for that is that
31:54
they break up with their girlfriend and they feel like they want to go for cheesecake instead and so they drive to the sore and but they don't they don't
32:02
they're not aware of all of the processes that are happening along the way so I tell people what I'm looking to
32:08
do is to sever the link between emotions and overeating and I feel compassion for
32:13
the struggles you're going through but that's something to work on with the therapist it could take it could take five years to overcome that kind of
32:20
stuff um and there there are very practical things that you can do to
32:27
intervene in the automation of those behavior lubs and start to extinguish them so when you say holistically the
32:35
only psychological thing that I'm doing is looking at the ex the the excuses
32:41
which lubricate the shoot that goes from trigger to response that that makes it
32:46
possible for people to reverse their best intense um you know despite
32:52
believing with their whole heart and soul that they shouldn't have chocolate during the week or that they should follow X Y and Z rules um so I don't
33:00
actually do a lot of traditional psychological work we we focus on on eliminating those excuses and then we
33:06
focus on um most of the things that you focus on which are you know taking care
33:11
of your your body and your mind mostly your body to to Tamp down the cravings
33:17
and prevent the screw HS do it response does that make sense yeah so like as far as like exercise and nutrition obviously
33:24
that's you know you're eliminating the major cravings and I was happy to hear you know you're talking about making sure you actually get good nutrition um
33:31
because it doesn't do any good to to eliminate sugar you know this if I crave chocolate eliminate chocolate but then
33:38
eat you know a bunch of Vita with corn chips right like doesn't that you know
33:44
you have to make sure you get get good food and so you are recommending you
33:49
know or other forms of exercise is that kind of your overall thing how how are
33:54
you handling that I have the hardest time getting my audience to move yeah my
34:00
people are often usually women over 50 years old with 50 pounds or more to lose
34:05
that's that's the most I mean I do get younger people I do get athletes and I love working with those people I have
34:10
the hardest time getting them to move so I asked them if they could walk around
34:16
the block um you know I I asked them if they could set a low bar I'll you I'll never go I'll never go to bed without a
34:22
f minute walk again or something like that I just I just try to get them to get started and then eventually I ask
34:27
them to work with someone like you to to get a real program and get moving um
34:33
when I have the luxury of working with an athlete then I do find that it's
34:39
important to focus on the recovery nutrition I I you would know better than I but I think there's about a one hour
34:45
window after your workout when you can regly genate the muscles and I I know I
34:51
know for me I I do hot Power Yoga and I walk on the beach and I I'm a very active person I have to to take you know
34:57
a few hundred calories of fruit and I have a a green supplement that goes along with that then I I've got to eat
35:03
afterwards or else I'm craving all day long yeah yeah yeah there's a there's kind of this Dynamic and there's
35:08
research in different ways on whether or not you you know dextrose beforehand and you know there's there you know whether
35:14
you eat beforehand or after and how the glycogen stores are used and obviously your intensity of exercise makes a
35:20
difference and and you know all that interestingly enough in in terms of movement I was actually listening to
35:27
it's a Andrew huberman who's a you know neuroscientist and yeah most most people
35:32
are familiar with his podcast if you're not and you're interested in science at all it's super super interesting awesome stuff yeah he I was listening to one
35:39
this morning that was a couple years old and he was talking about this the study that they did about
35:44
effect effectively it's fidgeting so this study they went through and they had two groups of
35:51
people people that um could basically eat whatever they want they never gained weight and then people that could eat
35:56
the same am amount or less and actually gain a lot of weight and the difference was the fidget they they had they
36:02
figured out that the people that are more fidgety typically and this is a sh they call it a kind of a shiver shiver
36:09
response which is therapy and all this stuff but what they found is someone that literally will just if you
36:14
purposely sit at your desk and move your leg you know bounce your leg or your you
36:20
know like me if I'm talking like this and I'm really animated those people and it was 800 to 2500 calories extra burn
36:28
per day per day yeah so and I I'll I'll email you the copy of this YouTube video
36:34
that I found and I'll put it I'll put it in the show notes as well but it was so for those people for that population it
36:40
was he was basically saying if you do nothing else and you're not quite ready to exercise and it's not you know it's
36:45
not in lie of actual exercise but it this is a great way to increase your overall calorie burn with with very
36:53
little effort whether it's you know literally just shaking your leg or you know drumming on your desk it is it was
36:59
it was really interesting maybe sometime I'll have you on my show and you can talk all about how you can exercise
37:05
without exercising that would be I love that yeah no no that that that would that would be wonderful I mean and obviously that's
37:12
not that's Andrew huberman that's that's there's two it was two guys from the UK that did the research so I'll I'll
37:17
actually put a post I'll put a a link in the show notes to this and and send it to you but I found it very interesting
37:23
to do that and I I'm big on the whole Mind Body Connection and more I'm not what you would call a
37:29
woooo guy which I I know you're familiar with that with that phrase I'm sure but I'm more of like you have to
37:36
do being fit and healthy is not as easy as what the people that sell Health and
37:42
Fitness Products would want you to believe right like it actually takes uh in your case we're defeating the
37:49
cravings and we're talking about our inner Pig and in my mind my mine would be let's kill our our inner little [ __ ]
37:57
which Excuse excuse the language but that's but that's kind of the the same the same idea but it's it's all of those
38:05
things I often tell people um I either
38:10
you're going to be your Pig's [ __ ] or it's going to be yours which which is it gonna be you gonna take control or not yeah and I
38:16
have to tell myself often it's like and even like through soreness and acute
38:22
injury or whatever it's like I'm in control of my body my body is not in control of me and that includes stuff
38:28
like cravings and sugar addictions or you know all of those things and that's how we live the rest of our life right
38:35
like if you see an attractive woman on the street because your testicles generate this overwhelming biological
38:41
urge you don't run out and kisser right yeah right you know there there are ways to go about that we're expected to be in
38:47
control of that in a civil society if you um really have to pee in the middle
38:52
of a business meeting because your bladder is really pressing for that don't just do it on the floor right you don't just drop TR and do it on the
38:57
floor right like I'll say look I'm talking to Kevin I'll I'll take care take care of you afterwards right yeah
39:04
um what is it like why why is that I mean I'm sure that part of this came out of the research that did but why do we
39:11
give ourselves quote unquote permission in in the form you know whether it's
39:17
food addiction alcohol drugs and you know and all of that because yes it's an
39:22
addiction it's a disease and there's that whole argument between the two I don't believe that disase go good I mean
39:28
I I actually people would argue with that I'm I'm not one of those because I'm more of a self-responsibility kind
39:35
of guy and I and that doesn't mean it's not difficult right like even if you
39:40
believe that you're in control of it doesn't mean that it's an easy path but why is it that we give ourselves per you
39:46
know we're not we're not all serial rapists walking walking down the street
39:51
like you said why are we why are we able to control that why is addiction so yeah
39:57
and why aren't we why aren't we able to not over and food is one of those things and I've heard it said from an alcoholic
40:04
standpoint you you don't need alcohol to live from a food standpoint you actually
40:10
have to eat the things that you're you know lying out of the C yeah right take
40:15
it out and walk it around the block three times a day like they say buep programs yeah yeah um so let me just
40:22
address the disease concept for a little bit I I'm adamantly against the concept
40:28
of powerlessness because I think that it disempowers the it alleviates guilt um
40:35
which I can tell you other ways to deal with guilt instead but it does so at a tremendous price because it takes away
40:41
your ability to insert a space between stimulus and response and direct your life in the way that you want to direct
40:48
it um so I tell people just take take a little bit of guilt and I'll show you how to get rid of the guilt um but what
40:55
I think is actually going on I I understand the feeling of powerlessness I felt like that for 20 years um the
41:03
brain wants to automate the acquisition of caloric and nutritional
41:09
resources um a woman walking down the street is something that we naturally
41:15
evolve to respond to it um uh pornography is not right like
41:22
right five women naked in a room is not something that we naturally evolve to respond too um so we typically are not
41:29
exposed in our everyday lives as we're walking past a woman down the street to you know five women naked you know
41:35
kissing it just doesn't happen yeah um um a candy bar or a bag of corn chips
41:43
or um you know even pasta to a certain extent is an unnaturally concentrated
41:49
form of pleasure and the Brain if if you think about 100,000 years ago it would
41:56
be very difficult to find that many calories in that small space for that little effort right and so the brain
42:01
feels like it has to take advantage of that and it it wants to it wants to
42:07
automate that so that you don't have to think about it get as many calories with little effort as possible because if you
42:13
didn't take advantage of those scarce opportunities you might die like finding an ostrich egg or something like that
42:20
right like in the in the wild you know right so your brain thinks that if you
42:26
don't have the corn chips you're going to die that you're going to need the resources later as far as it knows it's living 100,00 years ago that's not a
42:32
very long time for our brains to evolve and change to the Martin food environment so I I understand feeling
42:40
like there's something wrong with you feeling like feeling compelled like you have to do it that doesn't mean it's
42:45
true there's a difference between um a very hard to climb mountain
42:51
with a or even a moderately hard to climb mountain with a well-worn path and a mountain that's just
42:57
unclimbable and I think that the disease concept tells people that the mountain is unclimbable and they have to you know
43:05
constantly be accountable to sponsors and go to all these meetings and be taken away from their family and you
43:11
know kind of walk away from their original family values and adopt a devil made me do it personality like it's not
43:19
my fault it's this disease inside of me um I think it's actually very dangerous and the evidence does not support that
43:26
it really does any better than doing nothing at all it's it's either at parity or worse than doing nothing at
43:31
all so if people get better through that process God bless them I I don't want to take that away from you um but I think I
43:40
think it's an abdication of Free Will and responsibility and I think Free Will and responsibility is the only thing
43:46
that's going to get you permanently better that's that's my opinion yeah um
43:51
I've been using this phrase lately that you know Pro and I talked about this on probably the previous previous podcast
43:56
whenever this comes out but there's this there's this song in Christian music that says Dear younger me it's not your
44:04
fault and I hate that line in that song I like the song but I hate that line in the song because I've been using this
44:10
phrase like it probably is your fault but the good news is if it's your fault
44:16
then you have the opportunity and the and the means by which to fix that if
44:22
it's if it's not your fault it's completely out of your control so how do you change that well if it is your fault then you know you because I'm I'm of the
44:29
opinion that in most cases whatever state you're currently in is probably a result of decision making up to that
44:36
point you know within reason obviously and that decision making may have been unfairly influenced by childhood trauma
44:44
or by the food industry and the advertising industry and um even the addiction treatment industry um but even
44:52
if it's not your fault then then you still have the the opportunity to take responsibility and
44:58
do something about it right my other comment about the disease concept is
45:03
that some people feel like they're broken like they're incapable of overcoming their Cravings it doesn't
45:10
logically make sense because the same scientific process in your brain like
45:16
the the use of neurotransmitters and and and learning that forms a craving is the
45:21
same process that's responsible for extinguishing a craving okay so unless your brain has been lesioned or you've
45:27
had a you know serious brain trauma um you if you're having cravings you have
45:34
the ability to unave those Cravings um so saying that you're broken or disease
45:41
doesn't really make sense um would you like me to talk more about how Cravings actually work and
45:47
what yeah I I love it and I just want to say one thing that you had mentioned managing guilt and someone had explained
45:53
someone had explained to me the difference between guilt and shame and really that's what you're describing because guilt is something you know that
46:01
that is as a result of something that you did that maybe you feel that guilt out of but shame comes from what you're
46:08
describing which is there's actually something broken in me yeah yeah so but no I love I love that explain how that
46:15
craving response and then the extinguishing response works I I didn't deliver on the promise to tell people how to get rid of their guil so let me
46:21
do that okay and and we'll talk about Cravings we have time uh we have plenty of time yeah okay um if I accidentally pouch a hot
46:29
stove in my kitchen am I supposed to say oh my God I'm a pathetic hot stove
46:36
toucher and I might as well put the whole hand down on the stove right right I'm not supposed to do that what I'm
46:42
supposed to do is say how did I miss the stove um how am I going to pay attention
46:48
better in the future so that it doesn't Happ happen again once I'm convinced that it's not going to happen again and
46:54
I've turned guilt into respon responsibility I'm supposed to let it go because perseverating on that guilt is
47:00
only going to make me too too weak to imit the Target again it's only going to make me feel too weak to resist the next
47:07
binge so what you want to do is um let go of the guilt by turning it into
47:12
responsibility and then moving on and you're correct that um where people get
47:18
stuck is with character-based kind of Shame attacks uh we we tell people that
47:24
your pig will do its very best to try to make you feel horrible and pathetic and
47:29
incapable of resisting after a bch and it's it's interestingly very difficult
47:35
to keep on overeating if you refuse to yell at yourself if if you collect evidence of success and rather than
47:42
saying what's wrong with the empathetic how come I can't stop eating which sometimes I think if I hear it one more
47:47
time I'm going to climb up on top of a clock tower put aluminum foil in my head and just start screaming man um um but I
47:56
understand the experience um you're not supposed to do that you're supposed to say how can I stop if you say why can't
48:03
I stop you're telling your brain to find evidence that you can't you're going to develop a failure identity and feel powerless and disease if you say how can
48:09
I stop then and what did I do right like how how did I have five cupcakes instead of 15 I had 15 in the past how did I
48:17
stop at five you know I eat the whole pizza but I didne the Box what I'm only half caning what what what what did you
48:23
do right and what how can you double down on that and then say what went wrong how can I prevent this in the
48:28
future I don't want to I don't want to touch the hot stove
48:33
again right okay so turn guilt into responsibility that's how that's how you get rid of it and it's much e it's much
48:39
easier to let go of guilt once you've done that because your brain latches onto it because it's afraid that if you
48:46
don't feel guilty enough that you're going to experience the trauma again so when you've gone through the process of
48:52
figuring out how you're going to avoid it in the future then your brain will let go of a guilt and let you let you move forward um which is interesting
48:59
because that's a very similar thing to what happens when you work when you weight train yeah so the the purpose of
49:04
weight training is to is to actually break down the muscle fiber which then
49:11
your body rebuilds that muscle fiber and adds a little bit more so that it can it
49:16
can then get ready for that next if that same stimulus happens again so that's
49:21
how you get stronger bigger muscles over time and it's a and it's a psychological muscle in in dealing with that guilt
49:28
that actually can that's actually I would guess that that's a very similar process
49:33
so how do you reassure your clients about that I'm just curious if you take the the analogy further well we try to
49:39
differentiate between soreness and injury for example because one of the things that you have problems with when
49:45
people weight train for the first time or after a long time not doing it or whatever is that my muscles hurt and I
49:51
always joke and say look I've been lifting weight since I was 15 years old so I've been sore for 36 years like it
49:57
just I've been in some sort of minor soreness pain for most of my life but
50:02
that's in my mind I've trained my brain to say that means I worked out like
50:08
that's that's a that's a that's a welcom satisfying feeling okay so so it's it's
50:14
retraining the brain to say okay well I and obviously if you went and lifted a
50:20
generator when you shouldn't have and you pulled your and you strained your back that's a different kind of pain
50:26
okay but if your biceps are slightly sore your chest is slightly sore your quads are a little bit sore and you have
50:32
that discomfort that's a reminder it's actually we use it as a physical reminder to tell you that you're doing
50:38
what your B your body is has done what you told it to do and the next time
50:44
it'll be ready your your body gets stronger through discomfort correct
50:49
distinguish discomfort from injury I really like that because the soreness the soreness is a result of those micro
50:55
microscopic injuries to the actual muscle fibers themselves that's you you have physically damaged the muscle not
51:02
in an injury standpoint but in a you know in just a microscopic level see the brain extinguishes Cravings through
51:09
discomfort also so I tell people to welcome the Cravings in the context of a
51:15
well-planned Extinction curve I'm going to get there in a second but I tell them to welcome the Cravings because the only
51:21
way to kill a craving is to have a craving so you want to get prepared and and do a series of steps I'm going to
51:27
tell you in a minute so that you can get through the extinction curve um but then
51:32
you don't want to shy away from it because you know you almost want to say to your pig bring it on [ __ ] bring it
51:38
on right right right because if you do that you know you're going to be better
51:43
in 30 days you're going to be so much better in 30 days um okay let's talk a little bit about Cravings if we can okay
51:50
okay so the first thing is Cravings don't mean that you're broken um they're just your brain your brain doing what it
51:56
was supposed to do 100,000 years ago if we didn't get incredibly motivated to U
52:03
identify food signals and follow them to the acquisition of calories and nutrition we would have starved we
52:09
wouldn't have had the motivation we would have sat around you know looking at the women or the sunset and we would
52:15
them staring staring into the fire we just invented right
52:21
right and by the way back that I don't think um I don't think there's really such a thing as overeating I don't think
52:28
that was sitting around saying Mart I eat way too much MTH right yeah I don't yeah
52:35
um so um what I want you to understand
52:41
is that Cravings are associated with signals with food signals imagine we
52:48
have a caveman named th t h a just because I like the name no other reason
52:54
and [ __ ] is out looking for he's out Gathering he's not looking for fruit or berries or something like that and he
52:59
happens to follow a monkey to a banana tree and he Gorges himself on bananas
53:05
and he takes bananas back to his home because you know it was pretty scarce and you get as much as you can when you
53:11
could and then th's brain makes an association to monkeys and when th's
53:17
brain says a monkey again it says it secretes dopamine says Follow That Monkey right um if th doesn't follow the
53:25
monkey bag's brain lowers the dopamine levels below normal to make him
53:30
miserable saying either Follow That Monkey or I'm gonna I'm going to torture you until you do right because it was an
53:38
evolutionary Advantage it was a survival advantage to follow the monkey to bet tray okay now let's say you want to
53:47
extinguish a habit and I'm G to go back to Tha in a second let's say that I'm eating Donuts every time I pass the
53:53
doughnut store on the way home from work so I make a rule for myself that says I'm never going to eat donuts on the way
53:58
home from work again and most people think that if I do that but the worst craving is going to
54:04
be on the first day and then it's going to get a little better and a little better and a little better and a little better until it doesn't bother me
54:10
anymore but that's not actually what happens what actually happens is that if
54:16
have a little bit of a honeymoon period it gets easier pretty quickly and then you're gonna have a worse craving than
54:21
you ever had before why does that happen this is called the worthy f for my Donuts
54:28
response or or or more professionally the extinction burst why why does that happen and and then what'll happen if
54:34
you get through that is it'll go all the way down until about 30 25 to 30
54:39
exposures or so a couple little more bumps and then you'll be mostly okay your brain will label the craving as
54:45
dormant it won't erase it because it wants to remember how it found calories in case they become available again but
54:51
it won't bother you anymore more or less um okay why do we get this Extinction
54:56
burst and what do we do about it let's say [ __ ] were to follow a monkey
55:02
the next day and find bananas and the next day and find bananas this goes on for about a month and so he always gets
55:08
excited when he sees the monkey gets happy when he sees the monkey also by the way he doesn't have to get to the bananas you can just see the monkey and
55:14
the monkey makes him happy just like people often feel this excited experience when they see the dut store
55:20
sign right or or a you know a major brand sign because they know the reward
55:26
is coming and they know they have to engage in this kind of automated Behavior but let's say Tha one day later
55:32
in the season the banana trees are getting more scarce and he follows a monkey to a tree that's empty There Are
55:38
No Bananas um do you think that [ __ ] F's brain would stop secreting dopamine and
55:44
say okay don't bother no no and you know the reason why right yeah Okay the
55:50
reason why is that following a monkey to a banana tree that at least the bananas
55:56
80% of the time is a much better alternative to having no food signal at
56:02
all no monkeys at all and just being on his own again randomly trying to find bananas so [ __ ] brain actually would
56:09
double down and say where the F of my bananas you better test that U it wants
56:15
to know if the bananas have become available at random in response to that
56:21
particular food stimuli um as a matter of fact following a monkey to a tree that had
56:27
bananas 50% of the time or maybe even 20% of the time would still be better
56:33
and not having the monkey food signal at all so [ __ ] Rin would continue to generate stronger Cravings even as it
56:40
got later in the season and later in the season and the bananas were scarce um is that kind of like a path to
56:46
least resistance response versus because it's easier for it's easier to have an 80% chance of getting bananas than
56:53
abandoning the banana you know kind of Continuum altto together to go search for a different Source yeah yeah okay
57:00
like if you have a business that was wildely profitable and then it was a little less profit a little less
57:05
profitable it usually still makes sense to milk it until it's not profitable all not abandoning it to do a completely
57:10
different thing right yeah right right so um I go through this what normally
57:19
happens is people freak out when the extinction burst happens right they don't understand I skipped a piece I'll
57:27
tell you in a minute they don't understand when the extinction burst happens and so at this point their Pig
57:32
tells them this is going to be torture forever you know this is what it's going to feel like forever you got to give in
57:37
man because you're going to be miserable forever but it's not what happens you you if you get through that you'll go
57:43
down so what you want to do is prepare you want to attend to all that organismic distress that we talked about
57:49
because you're going to be you're going to be incurring more as you go through this so pick a very specific stimul like
57:55
the dut shop on the way home from work and then figure out how am I going to get a little more sleep over this next
58:00
30 days particularly the next you know five to 10 days till I can get through that burst um how am I going to take
58:06
care of my water what what extra can I do for my nutrition um can I get some social support to to make this happen
58:13
how else am I going to take care of myself and get through that burst right and then once you're over the hump keep
58:20
going like if you climb over the prison wall don't go back to see your friends right just just keep going keep going
58:27
and run man run Asun as fast as you can um at the end of those 30 days there's going to be a couple little more bumps
58:33
that they're not horribly awful to to deal with um what happens when you're at the
58:40
top and you and you eat the dut you're
58:45
setting up a random reinforcement schedule it's called variable ratio random reinforcement or intermittent
58:51
reinforcement it's the most powerful reinforcement schedule we know know of in the behavioral literature this is the
58:57
reason that little old ladies get stuck at the slot machine having to pull it constantly because they don't know when
59:03
it's going to pay off you're telling your brain this stuff is available at random you better pull it all the time it's the worst thing you can do if you
59:11
don't want to give up donuts if you decide you don't want to give them up and you want to have them once in a while what you want to do is bind it to
59:18
a very specific context so you could say I'll only ever have Donuts on Saturdays at 10 o'clock after my workout out and
59:25
no more than two your brain will then require all of those food signals to
59:30
converge in order to know that the food is available just like if I were to set
59:36
the slot machine in the casino to only pay off at 10 a.m. on Saturdays the casino would be a ghost town during the
59:41
week right right that that's that's how your brain works okay two out of three people I find for any given substance
59:48
are able to regulate and moderate it rather than having to give it up entirely if your automation Loops are
59:54
too deep if you've gone too far down the rabbit hole for too long you might have to give it up entirely at least for a
1:00:00
period of time um sometimes it's 90 days sometimes it's five years um but you might have to let your brain recover
1:00:07
from that um okay so then I get past the 30-day
1:00:13
Park I I do all this and I get past the extension curve 30 days later I'm driving past the donur doesn't bother me
1:00:19
at all I I start to wonder why did I ever do that why did it why did I ever feel powerless why did I ever feel like
1:00:26
I was powerless over Donuts it's no big deal anymore um you don't want to get
1:00:32
cocky at that point and randomly reinforce it either uh if you're if you're going to start having Donuts
1:00:37
again you want to do it contextually bound like we like we talked about okay now suppose that I go to my grandma's
1:00:45
house um my Grandma's not alive anymore but suppose she wasn't I I I go to
1:00:51
Grandma's house and grandma has Donuts most of the time I'm there and I haven't seen her in a couple of months all of a
1:00:56
sudden I have the worst Cravings that I've ever had and I I can't believe it I thought I was all done with donut
1:01:02
Cravings what most people don't understand is that you didn't fail you
1:01:07
succeeded at extinguishing the doughnut store in the we home from work you didn't go through an Extinction curve
1:01:13
for Grandma's house and so as a practical matter your any given craving
1:01:20
is usually attached to a couple of different stimuli some of them are daily stimuli usually about 80% of them are
1:01:26
daily and people can think about the context in which they are having donuts and figure out what they're going to do about it um some of them are infrequent
1:01:34
like Grandma's house or you know going to a birthday party or something like that but Grandma's house is like
1:01:39
Nostalgia and love and comfort and peace and all of those right that's a that's a
1:01:46
that's a big psychological Mountain so to speak any of those could be a food
1:01:52
stimulus food stimula can actually the internal in particular emotional state
1:01:58
um you know it could be um the temperature or the smell of the Ocean
1:02:03
Air that makes you want ice cream um there there are a wide variety of things that can function as a food signal it
1:02:09
depends upon in what context did you find those calories right and and your brain makes that Association that's the
1:02:16
principle of neurop plasticity um okay so what you want to
1:02:23
do since it it it doesn't take 30 days exactly where most food cravings to
1:02:28
disappear or be labeled dormant it uh it takes 30 exposures and exposure is when
1:02:35
you're exposed to the stimulus and you don't re and you don't reward it so it's harder to extinguish the infrequent
1:02:42
Cravings so it's harder it's harder to extinguish Grandma's house because it's going to take a couple of years to get
1:02:48
through that 30 times so you want to recognize that you're going to have those Cravings in those situations and
1:02:53
then make a plan for it um maybe you're going to have to eat something
1:02:59
beforehand and drink some more water maybe you need to do a refutation like maybe your pig will be saying oh come on
1:03:05
it's Grandma you have to haveit to please her so maybe you need to make a plan about how else you're going to please her and be able to you know have
1:03:11
a loving time at Grandma's house without having the donuts and then organize an email to yourself to show up before
1:03:18
before during and after you're actually at at Grandma's house um and make sure
1:03:23
the subject plan his attention getting just don't go like Grandma's house email say say um you know shut up pig I'm
1:03:30
eating healthy at Grandma's it's got to be something that get your attention in the middle of a thousand emails during the day um and it also should include
1:03:38
something emotional because I I what's going to happen is you're going to forget about this whole thing by the time you get to Grandma's house and um
1:03:45
you need to bring back need to bring back all the reasons that you want her to extinguish the donut in the first
1:03:50
place um so the last thing you need need to know about Cravings is that the brain responds
1:04:00
preferentially to unexpected sources of calorie and nutrition and if you think
1:04:05
about it that makes sense because we were needing to constantly find new ones you know the banana trees would run out
1:04:11
and we'd have to find the blueberries or the blueberries would run out and we'd you know have to hunt the wild boar or something like that you you your brain
1:04:19
is looking for new sources of pleasure what this means is that if you have
1:04:24
something particularly delicious um that you hadn't expected to have or hadn't had before it can take
1:04:31
just one experience to form a new craving or a new Addiction um I
1:04:37
illustrate this by my friend Hank 25 years ago who would sometimes be at a
1:04:43
diner or something and he'd take a bite of a new sandwich and he'd say oh my God that's too good and Glenn if it's too
1:04:50
good then it's no good because didn't want to have that
1:04:55
sandwich is off the menu forever yeah yeah for him for him or I what I didn't
1:05:01
know now and he didn't either was that he could contextualize it and just make a very clear rule about when he was going to have it um so that's one thing
1:05:09
is you want to be on the lookout for unexpectedly delicious new experiences now I don't want to ruin your fun right
1:05:16
I I just want to alert you that this is how it works and so what you want to ask
1:05:22
yourself is do I want this craving or not if you don't then make a rule to regulate it um you can use this
1:05:29
experience to your benefit though you could find a dozen recipes for things
1:05:34
that are on your plant like I make a um I make a vegan
1:05:40
flowless um you know saltless lasagna which is actually really good I got it from Dr Ferman site and I'll only allow
1:05:48
myself to have it every other month or so because I want it to feel unexpectedly delicious so that I I crave
1:05:55
it again and if I happen to decide I really want to have it again soon then I might have it um but this way I'm
1:06:00
craving something that I feel is good for me not um not something that is it made with like Zoo the zoodles or where
1:06:07
it's got zucchini noodles or anything like that it's made with um eggplant and tomato paste Andes it it's yeah it's
1:06:14
really good it's really good he actually does use some hour root flour in it sometimes I put it there sometimes I don't um but they're no noodles or
1:06:20
anything like that the eggplants is but I'm not trying to promote his um lasagna
1:06:26
I'm just saying YouTube is a wonderful resource oh yeah fig figure out how you want to eat find a dozen recipes learn
1:06:33
how to make them and then rotate them through so that you're craving things that satisfy you um that you don't feel
1:06:40
guilty about instead and see the dopamine system is
1:06:46
adaptable um it up regulates and down regulates depending upon what you're doing with it so if I've never had
1:06:54
chocolate before the first day I have chocolate it's orgasmically delicious um
1:06:59
right if I have a chocolate bar every day the second bar isn't quite as good as the first one the third bar isn't quite as good as the second one because
1:07:06
my brain is downregulating and downregulating and downregulating the response this the same way that I slept
1:07:13
underneath the subway in graduate school it was an elevated Subway but I I slept in an apartment underneath the subway I
1:07:19
couldn't sleep at all when I first got there but day by day my brain down regul
1:07:24
its response because it figured it wasn't a relevant stimula now the problem with downregulation and food is
1:07:31
that um you need more and more and more of a particular stimulus in order to feel satisfied um if you get that
1:07:39
stimulus out of your system or if you regulate it in the way that we talked about then your system starts to up
1:07:45
upregulate if I move to the country then my my hearing starts to ulate and if I
1:07:51
happen to go back sleep underne the subway I'm not going to be able to sleep again if I stop having chocolate all the
1:07:56
time or just have it once a week my dopamine system is going to upregulate and I'm going to get more pleasure um
1:08:04
I'm gonna get more pleasure from the naturally sweet things in my environment like like fruit or even there even uh
1:08:11
sweet taste in certain types of vegetables and lettuce that most people are not aware of most people say they hate fruit and vegetables so they could
1:08:16
never lose weight and I'll tell them that well you hate them now but any diet that people follow for two years they'll
1:08:22
tell you they absolutely love it yeah and that's because the pleasure system is adaptable and that makes sense
1:08:28
because it had to be right because the food source could change right so when
1:08:33
your pig says this is going to be tortured forever you're going to be given you're going to lose any sense of
1:08:38
pleasure it just doesn't happen it just doesn't work like that um so those are the basics of what you need to know
1:08:44
about about craving I love it yeah it's interesting just a personal share one of the things with my Cravings so one of
1:08:50
the things I love is um semi sweet chocolate chips chips take a spoonful of
1:08:55
peanut butter stick them in you know you got a little thing of chocolate chips and that becomes chocolate and peanut
1:09:01
butter I like ree's peanut butter cups and stuff but I have this weird thing there can literally be one of those big
1:09:07
Costco siiz things of chocolate chips in my pantry my wife's a baker like I said
1:09:12
um as long as it's unopened I will not physically open it because I have for
1:09:18
whatever reason if it's open that thing is gone in like two weeks yeah so I have
1:09:24
this craving it's almost like the the I've created a rule which then I I you know I've over time created a new rule
1:09:31
which is those are my wife's for baking even if it's open those are not for me
1:09:37
but the the easy rule is as long as it's not open it's not for me right so that's
1:09:42
that's an interesting I and it's like that with almost everything that I CRA you know my Cravings BJ fog wrote a book
1:09:49
called tiny habits where he talks about the three elements of um Behavior being
1:09:56
prompt ability and motivation it's very good book by the way um and when the
1:10:02
prompt is stronger and more Salient when it would require less work to acquire um
1:10:08
you have you have a stronger prompt and stronger ability to go and get those
1:10:13
chocolate chips so it becomes harder um you can develop the ability to resist no
1:10:19
matter what right and and over time I'm not telling you to change this but over time depending upon the environment
1:10:26
you're faced with it might be necessary for you to do that like I I know a woman
1:10:32
who's incredibly successful in defeating her Cravings um and she came to the
1:10:37
conclusion she couldn't have sugar or flour now she owned a bakery and so that's tough yeah and she's surround
1:10:44
she's not only surrounded by this stuff all day long but she has to make it seem sexy she's got to sell it and I asked
1:10:51
her well how do you do that how can you possibly not have any sugar or flour when you're talking about how delicious
1:10:57
is it all the time and you're around the smells and and everybody else is asking you how much how good it is she says oh it's really easy I just look at it and I
1:11:04
say that is not my food that she's made a very clear line I never eat sugar and
1:11:09
flour it's like that is not my food and she's able to do that because you know we had work you can work on your
1:11:16
motivation you can work on making the line really clear um and over time you can build that as a as a muscle um but
1:11:24
it's work it's work to do that I don't think you need to if your wife is willing to keep the bag closed yeah yeah
1:11:29
and we have these and we have these little uh we have these little lock boxes to that help with any sugar and
1:11:35
stuff I mean it's I always joke and say my inner fact kid gets really hungry at 2: in the morning so I need extra
1:11:40
precautions to uh to keep them out I I do tell people that internal controls
1:11:47
are better than external controls when you can develop them I've had I've seen people in the extreme like there was a
1:11:53
woman who had her kids lock her in her bedroom at night oh wow yeah because she was uh afraid that her chocolate
1:12:00
werewolf was going to come out and go read the cabinets that's I I I don't
1:12:06
tend to like solutions that restrict people's lives right make you live a longer I want you to be able to seize
1:12:13
the day and get out there and not have to think about food yeah and typically for me like the lock boxes where she
1:12:19
keeps you know where for example like you know Christmas is just a couple weeks ago and so you have the stocking
1:12:25
and we we you know we typically have some sort of candy and that kind of stuff I have her put that in there and
1:12:30
then like just cuz it makes my life easier if I'm trying to get leaner which is you know it just requires a lot more
1:12:37
regimen so when I need to be more regimented I will say hey I just don't like it just takes that thing off my
1:12:42
plate so that I don't even have I don't there really is no willpower involved then because it's just not available so
1:12:49
I'm lazy that's my ability that's that helps me be lazy with my willpower well and and and we we we we all decide
1:12:56
where we want to spend our willpower and what adaptation we want to life in that way yeah um and also there's nothing
1:13:04
wrong with setting up a cocoon to nurture your new habits right so if
1:13:10
you're really struggling with something and you sometimes people need to stay in the house for a couple of days and not
1:13:15
watch TV and not go past all of their worst Food triggers and work on stabilizing their blood sugar like eat
1:13:22
lower glycemic foods for for a couple of days um in order to get this out of their system and have lesser Cravings
1:13:29
before they go on a venture to um you know fight the extinction curve some people need to do that yeah and it's not
1:13:35
in lie of you know I wouldn't recommend someone lock the lock the food up that they don't uh they don't want to eat in
1:13:42
lie of actually addressing what you're talking about which is we need to address the cravings for that food not
1:13:48
just lock it up because once you leave your house it there's it's available everywhere and so then if you don't fix
1:13:54
that then you're you're in trouble but because each of these things requires a little work you want to make an assessment of which cravings and
1:14:00
situations are most Troublesome to you yeah and work on them one at a time yeah for sure yeah well I think that's a
1:14:07
great place to land um how do we find more information about you where do we
1:14:12
get the book and I I'll put these links in the in the um in the show notes as well it's really easy I'd like to give
1:14:18
you all a free copy of the book at defeat your Cravings dcom click on the big blue button and sign up for the
1:14:24
reader bonus list when you do that you'll get a free copy in Kindle Nook or PDF format the electronic formats are
1:14:31
free we also do have Audible and hard cover and paperback but there's a there's a charge for that um when you
1:14:37
sign up for the free reader bonus list you will also get a set of food plan starter templates so these are sets of
1:14:44
rules you might want to consider um the program is diagnostic so whether you're ketogenic or you know low carb or high
1:14:51
carb or Point counting or calorie counting or macrobiotic what whatever you are as long as you are willing to nutrify
1:14:57
yourself regularly we can probably help you um so we've got these plans we put
1:15:03
some time thinking about and then you'll also get instead of recorded coaching
1:15:09
sessions the reason I did that is because um it's kind of abstract and weird you must be thinking why does
1:15:15
Kevin have a doctor around who's got a pig inside of him um and it sounds like it would be a
1:15:21
coldhearted process but it's actually a very compassionate loving process that takes people from feeling despairing and
1:15:28
confused and hopeless to feeling powerful and enthusiastic and hopeful in just one session so um wanted you to
1:15:35
hear that and it's all at defeat your Cravings dcom click the big blue button
1:15:41
that's awesome that's a great resource and and very um very generous of you to give that to the community and I realize
1:15:47
that that's something that's that's a a way for you to serve and give back and and utilize that to help people people
1:15:53
so that's that's super cool yes and I didn't hold anything back in the book either I mean I we do have things that
1:15:58
we charge for and we have coaching programs and everything but um but the book has everything you need to recover
1:16:04
and some people just like us to customize it for them and do it faster stronger better so very cool defeature
1:16:09
Cravings decom yeah defeature Cravings decom I'll put that in the show notes Dr Glenn Livingston thank you so much for
1:16:14
joining me this has been super informative and uh very interesting hope you have a great day thanks Kevin it was
1:16:20
great thanks if you're looking to really maximize your life and become the man you were made to be head over to maxed
1:16:27
out man.com and get your journey started
1:16:33
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