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Chef AJ: What is The Pleasure Trap vsThe Ego Trap | Interview with Dr Doug Lisle
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hi everybody chef AJ here with our good friend dr. Doug Lyall who as your Christmas present has agreed to give a session to you guys based on your question questions there's so many so we'll get started dr. Lyle said nothing is off-limits that I could even ask a personal question because one of you did so I'm gonna start with that one so dr. Lyle the question is because dr. Lyle is such a mastermind when it comes to evolutionary psychology is that the reason he's not in a relationship or dating whether he Evo Sykes the heck out of any potential mate and find she doesn't qualify or it's because of his own personality introverted and lack of openness that keeps him from playing the dating game inquiring minds want to know I knew you'd like that question well everyone - you know what they say even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then every now and then I have a date and then at the end of the day after the for after the poor lady has heard two hours of evolutionary psychology it all kind of goes south so Sunday out there I might I might get I might get a Lucky Strike we'll see I'm still no harm in continuing to try well there's so many people in our group that are also fans of the beat your team podcast so they wondered thank you alright so Stacy says if the goal is to be fitness model lean or a skinny [ __ ] and you're already eating left of the red line actively lifting weights and at a healthy and fit weight what's the best approach to take if following a health promoting died style like UWL as designed I don't think what is still keeping the vanity pounds I guess the way I guess understand the question is this person's already fit but they want to lose ten vanity pounds so that that's how I'm interpreting question didn't we as good as it's as I thought but that that's what I'm assuming the question from Stacy is the goal is to miss skinny [ __ ] you're already eating perfectly you know you're you're like like what's the best approach to take yeah Alan would say you could try heroin that would take some weight off of the rim yeah let's let's get real here so what we're trying to do is we're trying to get down below a healthy weight the kind of weights that this person's referring to or the kind of weights that shuts off the menstrual system and essentially tell the jeans basically start saying that you're in such a harsh environment that you're working so hard at getting enough coverage there's no way that you could bring a child to term so we're going to shut down reproduction indefinitely until such time as the environment gets back to some normal semblance of a human environment and at that point once you've gained those ten pounds back then will allow you to both get interested in sex and start having sex and then get pregnant okay and you can face all that so the point is is that what the person is asking is listen maybe I go on camera if you're a model or an actress and you want to you want to accent you know the camera will make you look thicker than you really are and so as a result you feel like you know I have to be unbelievably thin if I'm not going to look overweight on camera so I faced this problem before that young women or women of all ages you know sort of frantic to try to do the unnatural thing with natural food so you can already sense my inhibitions with the problem because I don't want to tell you how to do it because I don't want you to do it I want you to face whatever the the quote vanity problem is it's driving us to try to push ourselves down to the edge of an unhealthy weight however if you put a gun to my head and you said okay if I had to do it for some reason there's an Oscar on the line for this part and I you know I might be able to get this part and I'm in the running for this part and they're gonna look at me in about six weeks what on earth can I do I don't want to be using amphetamines and I don't want to start smoking cigarettes again and I don't want to I don't want to be constantly incredibly hungry so how could you best cause me to be the least outrageously hungry and as healthy as possible while I'm systematically in the feeding and the answer is to eat a raw food diet okay so the answer is is that you eat you would go essentially entirely raw you might just have now you might have a few steamed vegetables being steamed greens but basically raw salad fruit and and some steamed spinach and call it a day and you could live like that you know indefinitely super-lean shut down menses be underweight and look good on camera I didn't guess what you want to do all right well that's interesting that you said that I didn't expect that to be the answer because there actually was a question from Amy asking if a raw food diet was better for health than eating cooked food yes Waku diet is not better for helping cook food we're not designed to eat a raw food diet you can and you be the raw food diet but I guess the appropriate way to frame this is you were designed by nature to eat cooked food the fire of use of fire has been part of human nature for as long as you been homeless again and so we're designed by nature to be eating quite quite frankly probably the biggest source of calories would have been the starches the dr. mcdougal was made made the center of his diet something that the vegans get uncomfortable with is we're also this idea of meat we decided to be able to make use of those calories and they've been an important source of calories with human beings forever now you don't have to eat a male and you don't need them or any nutrient but our ancestors didn't need those calories otherwise they would survive II was started out so we widened our palate out into include meat the meat was cooked as long a long with the other cooked foods the other cooked vegetables and cooked starches and then we ate raw salad vegetables and raw fruits along with that and that comprises the human diet so do you need or is walk through the healthiest food no raw food is great but there's nothing healthier about raw food than there is about steamed vegetables or or it could starch there they're all a plus as far as I'm concerned and that goes with nuts too you know probably even a cook nut I act asked Colin Campbell this at one point too he had no problems with the idea of nuts being cooked that's different than being dry roasted by planters and salted up and having much crap all over it and fried in oil that's not a cooked net so anyway I'll bet obviously the nuts are rich and we're trying to stay away from those in an ultimate weight loss program so yeah but no the question on the table was is the best behind a wife who diet for humans and the answer is it would not appear to be the case because raw food diets systematically lead to human beings being extremely lean and they wind up by women wind up having menses shut down and that's in a moderate environment when they're not battling problems of temperature resolution at night they have heaters and they're not having to do incredible toil in order to get those carrots they they have to do very little in terms of exercise so when you start thinking about human nature it's impossible to envision human nature working in veins for eating raw foods exclusively because family we can see that even in the modern environment people having as much raw food as they want and not having to work hard and not having to fight cold at night under those conditions they get too skinny to reproduce so it's very clearly not in the natural history of human natural history includes the inclusion of cooked foods and I believe it cooked vegan diet is cooked and raw vegan diet with included spelt is the is the optimal diet for people great thank you when you answer the question about how to lose those 10 vanity pounds you said how do we face the vanity problems how do we how do the women I mean do you have any advice because I don't have them with my weight but I'm getting older and I just would love to have plastic surgery on every part of my body if I could it's called the human condition oh hey sorry all of us the most some of the most beautiful people that I've ever met are very concerned about their appearance and when they slip from the 99.9 percent aisle to the 99th percentile it's a crisis okay so of course the human condition we are inherently designed by nature we'll worry about our appearance some of us are more sensitive to those issues than others naturally and some of us incredibly are not very sensitive about those issues those people should be all put on an island together yeah yeah this is this is just a differences in human nature so unfortunately some people have a highly punch inches chip yep about their appearance and we can say is be smart do do the healthy things that are not that are not dangerous for your health and that are not going to wreck the integrity of your of your body and for goodness sakes you know a lot of these beauty treatments that women do are are just incredibly bad judgment they I'm not saying that it's always true for cosmetic surgery but a lot of the cosmetic procedures are bad news they are do they have short term benefits that cause long term damage so you should be should be avoiding those things basically under all circumstances almost all circumstances there there could be a case here and there that you can make a case for some of these things Botox and things like that but in general I would say very bad idea Botox collagen space peeling any of the stuff there's there's no there's no this is bad bad decision-making don't do it Wow well I'm the heels of that question we have one from Mary that said that she would love to know from an evolutionary psychologist perspective why women in general are so preoccupied by weight and body image as compared to men it seems to affect women of all socio-economic levels of education and races yes the reason is is that more of women's make value is located in their appearance than men that's because men provision women in in human natural history so therefore a greater degree of men's mate value is in that is associated with their ability to provision so that remains true to this day so men's self-confidence and their attractiveness as mates has a lot to do with their professional success women's self-confidence and professional professional success has basically nothing to do with their rate value this is just straight human evolution the reason why this is true as men would never need these choosing mates based on their ability to protect the male and provide for the man male doesn't need protection and provision and therefore he doesn't seek it so what he seeks instead are cues for optimal fertility and often on gene purity basically that it seeks low low mutation load mates this is true throughout the animal kingdom this is a characteristic feature made selection and so human beings are they were different they are the only difference is is that we see in our species because and only because we are paraben species the if you in mammals only about 3% of mammals are pair bonds which means that the nails stick around the provision in 97 percent of mammalian species for about 3900 out of the 4000 on another species the male's do not stick around with my offspring so the provisioning of offspring is a rare event in nature and in those cases which is the dominant characteristic in nature where the men do not want males do not provision then females are not brought throughout died with their parents at all so females throughout the animal kingdom couldn't care less what they look like they do not clean and they do not grow sexual ornaments okay there's nothing about them that is sexy all females from the standpoint of males or tens every single one of them and what the females do the females have extraordinary discriminating Beauty detection mechanism for looking at the differences of the attractiveness and Men or males so the males are the only sex that has sexual orientation like peacock feathers on the peacock the plumage this you see throughout the animal kingdom of large musculature that you'll see in in certain animals elephant seals horses in other words the Mane's that you'll see on a lion there's all kinds of sexually attractive characteristics that you will see and you'll see them exclusively on myths so the male's have no narrowed concept in their mind of female beauty the females are entirely judging the male's based on their beauty and so so essentially in nature almost all of nature is exactly the opposite of humans so in a few species like humans where there's pair-bonding both sexes will have will have characteristics that incite sexual loss to attractiveness and so that's through humans both the females are ornamented and also the males are ornamented so in both cases the they are choosing partners very carefully because they were about to go into a joint program of provisioning so that's how that works so yeah that's the evolutionary reason why in males and females the females are considerably more invested in their beauty than the nail so unless the males are dead okay the males are gay they are that's a hybrid mating image system so they have a different motivational system that borrows from effectively the female system and so they're extremely concerned about their beauty in that case as for myself I'm only moderately desert but that is really fascinating and I always wondered that so thank you it's a great question and a great answer amber says that we know it's the perfect personality is for someone to eat sofas free without any qualms or issues Alan Goldhamer but what kind of personality is required to make people want to do the ultimate weight-loss program but because their personality isn't perfect they struggle to do so boy I'm not sure I understand the question so you're gonna help me with this AJ is amber asking what's the perfect personality for persuading other people to do this oh the amber if you're watching can you clarify this and type on the screen she writes what kind of personality is required to make people want to do this yeah that's what it's does coordinate personality then go on so I think I understand now that one with importance analogy isn't perfect they struggle to do so oh yeah okay well first of all that that the the perfect personality persuade others to persuade others to do this the persuasiveness capabilities are are going to be different depending upon what it is that you're trying to sell so if you're trying to sell shaving cream to males then you want Farrah Fawcett that's how they did yeah okay if you're if you're trying to sell ice cubes Eskimos I don't know who this that's the pitch person so if you're trying to sell computers it turned out it was Steve Jobs so the so the question is what's the perfect personality to essentially try to encourage and persuade people of this you know to go this direction um there isn't a perfect personality because the audience's is not homogeneous it's it's actually a heterogeneous group of people that are going to respond to different kinds of persuasive appeals that's why some people will respond well to chef AJ other peoples respond well it's dr. McDougall others people respond well without campbell other people who can popper other people with joel fuhrman in other words we're gonna find that different personalities bringing a similar message we'll find similar differences so a really good question that that has a actually a wide diverse answer so it's going to turn out there's no such thing other than some enthusiasm and some and a high degree of confidence in the message so if we have somebody that's equivocating that's not going to work so a really even keel fair-minded person sees all all angles of every kind of a problem and etc it doesn't take a position strongly that person's not going to find a lot of followers what you're going to see is a lot of Beeman's okay so people are going to people are going to be persuasive we're going to tend to be quite vehement and then from within that demons there's going to be different personalities so Colin Campbell is vehement that he's got a different style than John McDougall and as a result they're going to appeal to slightly different personalities on the other side of events okay great so amber just typed clarifying saying not trying to convince anyone she says why are there so many hyper conscientious nut cases like us who want to do UWL but because our own person he isn't perfect fail to do you wold those that okay so yes so certainly UWL is a is a place for micro conscientious nutcases to land the indigent is the reason is as follows so if we take the camera back at point while white people are here it's called ultimate weight loss and so it's going to turn out that weight loss is the is the most common personal growth goal of people in the Western world so it's not going to surprise that you know there's basically 200 million American adults trying to lose weight so this is and not only are they trying to lose weight it's their number one personal goal they would rather lose weight and get a promotion they would rather lose weight and win a dance contest I'd rather lose weight that have their their kid graduate from high school okay their number one personal goal is to lose weight Wow alright now so now we go from there and we say okay well whenever we have something that everybody wants you can trust me we're going to have 17,000 different opinions about how to do it so it's just like what's the best way to invest in the stock market everybody wants to maximize the return on the stock market what do we have we have a hundred and fifty thousand gurus they're going to tell you how you gonna do it and you're going to have huge numbers of books being sold every year by thousands of different people and all of them are against share their secrets okay now the so the same thing is true weight loss now some weight loss is going to say there's literally a book by upping dr. Dean Odell 20 years ago that's called eat drink and be married okay now I liked him is a really friendly guy who's a los angeles-based celebrity doctor friendly character as far as I could tell but really eat drink and be merry okay the so let's let's look at what we're gonna get we're gonna get the chocolate diet we're gonna get Sam and Diet we're going get the lard diet we're gonna get everything else that we're gonna have as John McDougall would say people telling us good news about our palates all around the landscape we're going to have all kinds of people telling us the rich food everything from from you know chocolate pie to nuts okay to - lasagna - ice cream - cheese and in school we're gonna have everybody Under the Sun is going to be telling us about how rich dude is going to aid and abet this cause yeah we know something about rich food and that is the the richer the food the greater the activation of the dopamine pathway Sara there was the the the pleasure finish the brain appropriately are designed by nature try to calibrate for you how many calories are in the food you need some mechanism of incentive if you're an animal trying to survive in the environment of scarcity you need a device to help you like a like a metal detector cleric or a treasure hunter you need a device to tell you when you've got the treasure and how valuable it is and so that's what your taste buds up your taste buds are a treasure detector and the richer the treasure the better they liked it so you can imagine how few weight loss programs are going to be interested in telling you the truth Annie almost none that's it that's how many there's going to be so for every MacDougall Goldhammer or AJ there's going to be 17,500 charlatans out there they're going to be telling everybody everything that they want to hear and not what they need to know all right so who finds our way to dr. mcdougal and dr. cannibal and dr. Ornish and dr. bull hammer and said are who finds their way they're a hyper conscientious net cases that are not deterred by the fact that this that we're asking you to climb Kilimanjaro with a sprained ankle that's when we're asking you to do we're saying look you want to do this but you everybody's got such an easy solution we if that's true why is everybody failing what why is this remain year after year with the same three hundred million people the number one personal goal in the United States the answer is because nothing changes year after year that the the same 300 million people remain in the same boat that they were last year so nobody has the solution alright so what is the solution solution is you know natural food it is not high of calorie density that's the solution well we don't want this solution okay I don't care no people can just go go right ahead and continue that's a fail and unfortunately I wish I had another answer I wish I had a magic pill that helpful hypothalamus say you know what you've had you know 2,000 calories a day of chocolate cheesecake and and you know donuts and you got enough and now you're fully satiated and now go ahead and about your business and tomorrow maybe try to accept it a little healthier but it won't matter because we're going to stop you at exactly larger than calories every day I wish there was such a device but there will never be such a device and that's because this device was designed by nature to ferret out what the calorie density is of the foods and to drive you to eat the richest food in the environment that's what it's designed to do it's absolutely relentlessly designed to defend you against the number one survival problem of all time for every animal which is starvation and now so there's exactly one solution the solution is to eat a natural diet with you would you know at them what we would consider a very low calorie density diet relative to what everybody else is eating but it can die inconsistent in its natural color density with the natural diet of species in other words we got to have it pretty close to the way that our ancestors have it for the last couple of million years now so that's a diet kind of like agents diet or kind of like John McDougall style kind of like Colin Campbell's or Engine 2 or Joel Foreman's diet in other words no and Alan Goldman which diet in other words these diets are all clothes pretty similar in their calorie density they all involve a lot of whole natural foods some of them are a little richer some of them are less rich some of them are touting certain specific foods some of them aren't but the bottom line is the notion here is to eat a diet work that is not full of extraordinary rich foods that are in are essentially dragging the calorie density of the diet up higher than it would've been in his natural history now so who does this the only people that that that are interested are the hyper conscientious not distance now once we have the hyper conscientious nutcases educated and they understand what to do they don't become uneducated because they're hyper conscientious nutcases okay they they are sniffing the truth and they know what they want just like everybody else wants this they want to be thin they want to be healthy they want to be fit you want to look good and feel good about themselves just like [ __ ] so they know that this is the right way to do it there might be other tricks we could put you on Finn Finn you know amp up yeah but the hypothalamus or basically cause you to be a feta mean addict one way or the other that's another way to do it we could put you under surgery and have liposuction that's a metal way to do it there's all kinds of whack job ways to learn this and aren't gonna fly so one way this is going to work is what all-natural foods if your calorie density they're consistent with your natural history Wow how boring is that drum hey we're just going to keep beating that drum and I'm going to be beating that drum for the last month on earth but I'm going to be here is that's the only solution there is now yeah it's the only solution there is folks have the number one personal growth problem of people in the last century this is the biggest personal problem of people how it gets in the way of more self-esteem issues more business issues more friendship issues more romance issues more I'm embarrassed because my kids are embarrassed and I feel bad because I'm fat lady and now I want my kids have to be seem more concerned about our children because they're getting fat it is more problems than any other problem that there is there's no problem as big and widespread and impactful on human happiness in this Wow now what's the problem you got to eat a diet of your natural history and nobody wants to hear it nobody okay we finally a few of us we understand the answer and we've tried to figure out you know how to explain this as best we can what do we wind up with we wind up with people who are willing to listen why are they willing to listen because they've got guts and they want the solution and they're hyper conscientious nutcases babies are unusual personalities so now now the question on the table is well how come the hyper conscientious nutcases can't do it even though they want to do it I just told you we're asking you to climb Kilimanjaro with a sprained ankle you're not supposed to be able to do this every instinct in you tells you not to everyone okay the energy conservation instinct tells you eat the richest food and get the easiest way to access to it Drive Thru okay buy it in bulk don't chew anything have it be Cheetos god forbid you want some fruit oh no that's too much trouble get some ice cream instead will not only get the sweet of the fruit but we have the fat of some fatted calf that we've slaughtered but that's very high fat content in this body so we're gonna get that at the same time and then you know when you get done with that we're gonna have some chocolate but what's that it's got sugar it's got fat it's got salt all three pleasure pathways we're only designed to be activated by one of those things at a time but we're going to get all three so we're gonna give you a super normal stimulus we're gonna tell you not to do this and you're gonna try to tell yourself not to do this when the number one survival instinct is telling you to do it and you're saying yeah spawn a hyper conscience is in that case so I really want to do it it's like I understand that you're hyper conscientious in that case I understand that you found the right answer that you know exactly what to be doing and you're still not doing it okay what does that mean that means you're a rare human that's almost there okay it's the equivalent of going 99 yards at a football game and you're at the one-yard line now you got to get over the line that you don't give me any points so it's not easy to do and I have great compassion I have compassion for all people and struggle with this problem but this problem is not a natural problem so when you see somebody walking down the street it's 150 pounds overweight and you look at them and part of you may feel disgust because of the misshaped in this of their form and the feeling that they did this to themselves but I have compassion for all people struggle with this problem because I know that this is not a problem of their own making this is a problem of a bizarre environment that has been concocted by human genius over the last hundred years and it's now we need an unnatural drug like products and the easy to get them and and the complete and utter inexpensiveness an entire process to get as much as you want this is not consistent with the nature natural history of the species are any species and in fact if you provide the very same situation for any species in the laboratory they all do exactly what humans do they all get fat sick that's what happens without exception there's never been a species that's been studied that doesn't do this so now now we ask the question differently okay I'm a hyper conscientious nutcase I know that I should be doing this but I'm not doing it you know what's the problem the problem is is that this is a very difficult road and so give yourself a break if you have stumbled if you've gotten to the one-yard line and not score to touch them okay this is this is the way it goes so you do this good a job as you can maybe you get a field goal so you've got 60 pounds so this maybe you get thirty pounds of it off and that's as well as you can do that's fine you take a field goal okay so many people take field goals in this Plus and they are super hyper conscientious people but they may be agreeable or open their social they've got some they've got other personality issues that are coming in to this problem and making it very difficult for them to walk the narrow road all the way to touchdown so I want people to extend capacitor themselves that if you know at any time in your life and in this quest that the best you can do is to kick up the old goal then kick it okay to get in and take what you can and don't catastrophize over the fact that you may not have all the pieces put together and you may never score touchdown you might you might hear in the right place you've identified the right people when you've identified the right principles you're like they're okay but keep in mind this is no easy place to score yeah you would be an extremely rare individual it would actually pull this off probably on the order of 1,000 well I got one in a thousand very few people are conscientious enough to find this information and to not just go off on the next wild trick and promise to the next thing when this gets to top so the people that stick with this and stick around this information and hover around and stick their toe in the water those are unusual people already okay we've now eliminated ninety percent of humanity or 95 percent of humanity now what's what's gonna be left right well now we got a job we've got a little apart shirtsleeves we've got some rough sledding to do and probably a lot of stumbling it's okay okay don't don't catastrophize your job is to do the very best you can and learn from the mistakes along the left okay I had no idea that our pleasure pathways we weren't supposed to have them all activated at once with sugar fat I didn't realize that I know that sugar fat and salt don't ever appear together in nature but I didn't know that they weren't supposed to be what you said no at the same time simultaneously activated yeah I never knew that I loved when I learned something new thank you so much and we have an interesting really great comment that's says wow he definitely puts this weight problem into perspective and how it affects everything and is likely to would problem of many personal issues terrific Thanks so yeah you know you mentioned fen fen I was on that dr. Lisle and I mean I know it wasn't good for me but it really did work you knows it was a trick but it did work and then left you told ya it was incredible it really could eat anything you wanted you just didn't want too much of it you know which makes you make me is the way like your brain works in charles's brain works in a way yes yeah okay thank you so Elizabeth has a question what is the biggest impediment to staying abstinent once you get some abstinence under your belt is it getting cocky exhaustion fear okay this presupposes that indefinite abstinence is your goal okay so let's let's let's take this question on and let's try to understand what our real goal is our real goal is to have a nice comfortable long-term success at some level so let's look at what we're really asking rather than necessarily answering elizabeth Berkley Berkley it's going to turn out that there are two major motivational forces that we need to understand if we're going to have launch and success the one-minute motivational force is the pleasure drop so this is your this is your pleasure seeking mechanism now confronted with modern opportunity so the pleasure trap was not on top of us we did not have this unnatural problem we wouldn't be having this question so let's keep in mind this question doesn't make any sense or any humans or any other species in history except math okay this is the only time that happening it's only matters in the industrialized world so only under under very bizarre novel conditions does this question make any sense at all so that's because of the pleasure trap now there's a secondary motive Rolle dilemma and for humans and that is that human beings can can be embarrassed and they can lose status by not doing something as well as was expected so people expect you to be to win the boxing match and you lose it you have lost status that people expect you to get an A in chemistry and you don't get it you're lost status right so people don't like to lose status so they will avoid situations where they think that other people think more highly of their abilities than they do themselves so this is uh this is what I call the ego trap the ego trap is when other people saying oh yeah we think that you can do it you don't want to do it you can imagine for any men listening that you've got three buddies in the bar and there's an attractive female at the bar you you're known as sort of the ladies man of the group and they said hey yeah you should probably go for you once go hit on her she's really hot that kid doesn't want to do that that's a terrifying prospect okay so so he's very he knows he's very likely to fail why because he's probably failed in many such situations just because he's had some successes doesn't mean he hasn't had many failures and so now his status is on the one I had a tremendous report from a man at the mcdougal advanced study weekend probably about ten years ago when I spoke about the ego trap and he was uh this handsome tall athletic guy probably sixty he was an old man kind of like me now but uh he was very very fit and he was long and lean you know just like you'd expect a real terrific tennis player to look and he told me that he had been that is the number one rated tennis player in his club for 16 straight years so probably between its thirty and forty six or whatever was now he was older now so obviously there was younger guys but that's a huge stretch of dominance and he said that he didn't he never played in the club championship and the reason why you didn't do it is because of what I had been talking about that he everybody expected him to win but he wasn't sure that he could win and in fact he thought there was a good chance that he could lose his on any given day yes anybody in the top five could beat him so he would separate being status lost if he failed win the title and he always felt really bad and embarrassed and and ashamed of not entering the tournament but he couldn't do it and the reason is his mind had determined that he had more status to lose than he had to gain and so when he said to me right there processing this this you know horrendous little happiness cancer that had lived inside of him for you know twenty five years he said you know I just should have just done it I should have just done it and had I played all those years I would have lost some and I would have won some but I'd have great memories and I wouldn't have had to live all those years with this feeling that I was hiding and that I was too gutless to do this and it's really it's really quite a you know quite a moment for him to go through this and hopefully inspiring to him well I don't don't don't let it continue like be on the lookout for when you are feeling like you're hiding from the challenge because other people have set the bar to life so this is the ego travel and the ego trap can take place even if there aren't any specific individuals like forces hormonal Club it could be dead people it could be your dead mother father that expected you to be a great pianist and you you have not been on the piano for twenty years even though they've passed away because you feel like the expectations - aye and you're not the genius that they popular what happened is is that the expectations of others can infiltrate their way into what I call your internal audience which is a little group of people that that sits inside your minding watches you now what can happen is that if the expectations from both the outside either the outside world directly or the outside world indirectly through your internal audience if they are if you are being watched by your internal audience and you do a very good job what's going to happen is it's going to signal pride to you to you after the self it's going to basically say well done and what will happen when people are quote abstinent when they do an excellent job and they do something that is difficult that most people aren't able to do what happens is is that they get a steady flow of steam signals from their internal audience to their esteem meter and from the esteem meter to the self where they feel that is the internal audience is actually in a low-grade aw of the individual and it feels wonderful self-esteem less and the South rebels in this and there's an error of even superiority it comes with us there's a there's almost a bloating it can often take place it's like work and the self is saying look at what I've earned look at the self esteem that I've learned I've earned it and they have and there's a momentum at your back it sets out that chain reaction of success that can be you know a good solid set of motivational momentum this is what you see in Rocky that's what makes Rocky you know a great film is that you see a pride start to develop and it takes on you know it's kind of like a firestorm yeah the harder he works the more impressed his internal audiences with him and he feels great about this as he should he's very proud of it and so that he continues to work hard and the internal audience continues to be impressed and you wind up with a local notion of achievement okay now anybody that's ever had that and in the arena but and certainly in this arena they they know that that feels golden that you feel really good physically because you've done a great job physically and you feel great mentally that there is something that's happening and that is that the ego trap is raising its head it's raising its head because the bar is getting really hot okay the so what's happening is is that the longer you go and the greater job that you're doing the the internal audience is basically saying Dan's starting to expect perfection now because you've done perfection over and over and over and over and over again starting to expected no so it still feels good but here's the problem you might say well then why can't you do it indefinitely because we forgot about somebody you forgot about the pleasure trap pleasure trap is an omnipresent force it is trying to take you down a direction that your genes are telling you is the right direction then they keep chirping at you let's go to the mall smell the Cinnabon at their area so what's going to happen is there's constant pressure from the pleasure trap now you can do a heck of a job organizing your environment the way AJ and dr. bull network death it's people that that basically build a fortress around their existence and they build another fortress around their social existence so yeah I don't have any friends any crap because I forget it Alan only has one friend needs some crap once in a while that never went Alan's around never okay so so Alan's got himself a fortress AJ has constructed a fortress and so these are these are then it makes it easier within the fortress it's not as hard most of us are not going to construct such extraordinary fortresses so even though you will get to places where you do if you're hyper conscientious with many people that are here are and you get a little momentum going so even once it's whirling and now there's a wind at your back and you're feeling that feeling of self-esteem which is earned and its grand but then what happens is is that the internal audience starts to expect it ok and now now we're still getting under attack from the ego trap excuse me yeah from the pleasure trap and then the pleasure trap one day can crack the resolve of the self-esteem mechanism and all the fortresses to people up put up the day that that happens this person is in trouble ok because now the self you know is chagrin and the internal audience is like wow you're nuts and you're not perfect after all okay so there's disappointment so there's a signal in in fact of disgust and disappointment from the internal audience for the esteem leader the South now feels this and is like whoa whoa I guess we're not a perfect person whoa I guess it isn't that we held it all together perfectly looks like maybe we can't do this in the future bad but the but the internal audience still has expectations it's like well you know you could do it before and you could do it again and if you you know you got self-indulgent and weak but if you just do what you're supposed to do which I now expect you to do then you know you can earn my respect again and the South looks at that and basically says you know I'm not so sure that this is worth doing and it lends a cost-benefit analysis because it can smell that it's going to have failure in the future and it starts to kick over the table and it starts to send the signal to the internal audience that says not really trying watch while I eat a chocolate parfait right in front of you because I'm not trying watch while I have a glass of wine right in front of you because I'm not trying and so this is you can imagine a young person let's give this an analogy that would fit a young person who is very bright and very diligent and working very hard at junior high school high school and they haven't been perfect and they're not a genius but they're good yeah they're a bright young person and they're they've gotten like forays and two bees and then they got five days and one bee it's like boy and then one one semester you know second half of eighth grade they got all sixes and they're like wow I got success and mom and dad said wow you got all success and now now unfortunately the mom and dad get a little too excited and they say wow you're your straight-a student start telling everybody in town proudly hey my daughter's a straight-a student so now ninth grade comes around and now what are we feeling instead of the excitement of the achievement of getting as good as we can suddenly we feel the pressure so maybe the girl gets straight A's again now it's a relief it's not even pride it's just dreading any failure okay so now she goes and you know miraculously and through incredibly working kissing up they're a bunch of professors a teacher she manages to do it again okay so now we've got three in a row so now we go to the being high school 10th grade goes through first semester high school she's all nervous goes in there can't do it it's a be high school biology temporary biology tough top class bunch of smart kids you know teacher that's a hard grader gets a B okay now you're now you've got problems now the parents are like hey what's the deal and that kid can feel like you know what I've worked really hard and I did as well as I could do but I did wasn't perfect and you expect me to be perfect you know what I'm gonna do the way I'm gonna hold on to your esteem the best way that I can hold on to it is by failing utterly but if I fail utterly I make it very clear then you know I'm gonna go out there and get C's a couple of these maybe a deed like I'm just gonna crash this car I'm in a crisis I'm having emotional problems okay I'm gonna find I'm going to crash this thing so when I crash it you're gonna look over and you're gonna say well this isn't you you're doing a disgusting job and you're not fooling me I know you're better than that yeah I know that you're better than that you're not this bad you could be a straight-a student if you try any this is how we maintain the status of a straight-a student more easily and paradoxically we maintain the status of being a straight-a student by being a C student that's how we do it thank this is the ego trap ego trap is a deep instinctual mechanism in humans it's designed for any social situation where you're given more status than you deserve and you don't believe that the next challenge of that ability that you will be able to perform up up to what is expected so the right thing to do is to self-sabotage and reckon that you make it exceedingly clear that what they observe in your next effort is not your best effort that is the way to close the ability of the outside people to actually determine what you're capable of that's what it is now that that is a critical social survival instinct in humans now the pleasure trap and the ego trap working together have comprised to form a opponent process of forces that go against your ability to to manage this problem so the pleasure trap is defeating basically everybody else in the country anybody that tries some of this way will be defeated by the budget drop that's what will defeat them they don't even want to try to take on the pleasure trap they're being told by everybody that they don't have to do it everybody's got some gimmick that you can eat chocolate cheesecake and lose weight according to their really plan okay not us this is where we you take the pleasure trap on head-on we know what it is and we're trying to avoid it however the expectations can get very hot and you can get imply for yourself by defy being a hyper conscientious nut kids and do a superlative job for an extended period of time where what happens is is that you your internal audience observes greatness and so when it observes greatness what happens is it comes to expect it just like those parents and then one day along the way you stumbled just like our kid that finally got to be okay and now the kid feeling the enormous pressure of those expectations and understands this [ __ ] you can't live up to them kicks the table over and basically sabotages the entire enterprise that's the ego trap the pleasure trap and the ego trap form an unbelievable dual edged sword that is very difficult to navigate so I want you to understand that when it comes to setting goals for this kind of problem you have a continuum that looks like this on the one end if we completely defeat the pleasure trap then that means we've gone to a hundred percent perfection on the diet and we will get the maximum sensitivity of the palate and we will we will habituate to that and we won't taste anything else that will compete it because the only thing that we're gonna be eating is full mental foods so that in principle it's a simpler way to do it and that's the way Allan looks at it and he just says we'll do it that way that we don't have the problem in the pleasure trout problem with that is that that is the maximum intensity of the ego drop that is the maximum intensity so by minimizing the intensity of a pleasure drop by completely eliminating the pleasant drop from the game we have literally gone all the way to the end of the line and we've turned up the volume on the ego trap as loud as it could be put seek perfection now suppose instead we realize that's a disaster that isn't going to work so what we're going to do is we're going to back it down so one suppose we back it all the way down to we'll eat half your calories from healthy food and half the calories from jump it you do that you'll get some benefit okay it's better than you have it now or where is that that's where you start at worst if we do that we run into an interesting problem it might work for some people for a while but the problem is is that the pleasure trap is adulterating the whole process is pretty difficult for you to do it that half eight it's not that easy second of all but what we have done is we've made a reasonably possible because the ego trap isn't - of a woman it's like you know we can probably do that but but what we're also going to see is that the person won't have a lot of success and they won't have a lot of pride because it's not that great of an achievement so what we want to do is we want to actually set the bar or somewhere between too easy and too difficult just likely we do for any child with anything that they're trying to learn or anything they're trying to accomplish we don't try to set a - I to where they can't accomplish it even if they could reach it in a high note for a while that's still too far and we don't set it too low that there's no sense of accomplishment so what you're seeing here folks is that there's an art to this that's it's out of the science and so what we want to do or to set your your goals for yourself at a reasonable but high level and only you can feel what that is and you have to experiment so for myself I said it pretty high I would call it a - work in other words I don't do things perfectly and I do things that are quote off plan I don't even think of it that way okay I just know that they're not ideal and I will do this routinely okay but the majority of my calories come from really healthy food and I enjoy good health that's good okay I've enjoyed better health I've been more perfect at stretches I have felt the sanctimonious feeling the superiority of being really in a beautiful group okay and I can feel a little bit healthier I can feel it it's a very subtle but it's sterile now Alan loves that he loves everything about it that's good yeah yeah well I really sparked it okay anybody they can you can pull off a perfect score quiz after quiz after quiz for the whole life that's an unusual personality and we know what that looks like yeah but in order to get a great deal of benefit in order to to get an A do I need to be to have a perfect score no I don't the biggest biggest concern that I have what the seeking imperfection is that when you're not perfect ie human then you've catastrophize over it because you've been you've been walked into an ego trap and then you self-sabotage the whole thing so this is where people won't feel like unhealthy food just like it's like crack it's like heroin it's a disaster we have to fear it no you don't it's not like crack it's not like heroin it's not even like coffee okay these other things are mind-altering substances to create literally neuro chemical dependencies that will drive alterations of brain chemistry and the inability to use the mind it's not even remotely similar to alcohol so of course I'm not saying that it's tribute as I explained this is a road that almost no one will ever walk on only the most conscientious diligent motivated people will even find the path once you find the path it still fraught with peril there's a lot of thinking things to learn and a lot of things that you have to do and you got to do them well enough to be able to keep enough palate sensitivity and enough organization you have to fight off a lot of social pressure so what we got to do this is no easy thing it is easy enough for people to infer that when they fail that they have failed and that they have really fallen short of reasonable expectations because it would seem reasonable that they would be able to do it because others have done it and it seems like a simplistic thing to do just control what you put in your mouth is what Alan's been saying for 40 years but that's um it's incredibly difficult and in a modern environment because you weren't designed to do you were designed to follow your lustful instincts but the richest thing in your mouth okay so it isn't like control what you put in your mouth you never have to control what you put in your mouth you just followed your pleasure instincts about playing whoa losing the mouth maximize the short-term feeling of excitement that's what you did now we're telling you oh no don't do that now so one of the things that will transpire is that when people are very confused where the ego trap has sabotaged them that sabotage themselves in defense of their own status with their own internal audience or with an external audience and they have done this and they are deeply puzzled there is nothing as as nasty in the world media is the ego trap it's a horrible place to be psychologically bitter confused wasp angry sad self disgusted suicidal the ego trap is a miserable cauldron of confusion because the person desperately wants to just do their best and accomplish what they can but the circumstances have transpired and conspired so that they can't do that what's actually in their best interest is to self-sabotage like my guy with a contentos clock okay so he he self-sabotage by opting out and not trying but other people actually go further they have literally sabotage themselves in some significant ways yeah they deliberately and maliciously fail classes they'll do things like that they'll do other things now they will deliberately and maliciously drink because they know that the expectations that are that they should be it would be the alcohol but they discovered that maybe they can't and so they go on a bender and they show themselves and everybody else I'm not trying okay so these are hard things and so the answer to a question was what do you do about trying to keep absent or whatever and my answer to you is you've got the long Bowl so we begin at the beginning our goal is not abstinence our goal is long-term excellence that's the goal that means that you you should expect and anticipate that you will not build a fortress around your life that looks like chef AJ's or Allan's that you should not expect yourself to do it and you should build a partial fortresses you should be looking to be a students if you can if you can't be an A student via these students okay now the vast majority of people that have ever benefited from John McDougall message did not go a hundred percent the vast majority people who lost the majority the way who covered their health reversed their heart disease got rid their rheumatoid arthritis and it means the vast majority of the good that has come out of the work of Campbell has been MacDougall Hornish etcetera has not come inside of people 100 percent the vast majority of good came from people were about 80 percent we got their palate clean enough to do a good enough job that they continue to like a lot of walnuts or food and they did not relax back to a conventional diet that's where almost all of the benefit has ever come from this dietary lifestyle information the fact that you mean want to take it further because you don't want to stop at 20 pounds overweight you don't want to stop with 40 pounds overweight depend upon your genetics but you wanted to take this to the ultimate it's the ultimate weight loss plan you want to do that remember you are now you're seeking your rarefied goal so we're bidding ascetic please be willing to accept in any and don't think that you need to get an A+ cuz you know and along the way someday you may find yourself in a deep groove will last indefinitely for the rest of your life you might but you might not okay so I began this journey of healthful eating and consciousness about health and health and healthy eating when I was about 16 okay so that's now I'm 43 years into this and 43 years in I have been there is stable for the last couple of decades at what I would call a - work okay so there's days when I get an A+ and there's days when I get a B okay on average a - work how do I feel about it pretty good II do I have a really strong self-esteem about it that's a sanctimonious internal bloating and awe of myself nope nope that's not something that I've earned okay it's okay I can live with it I've got other agendas I've got other places where I try to earn self-esteem I've got other places where I earn esteem from others I have a good life okay but I don't seek perfection anywhere and the answer the question is don't don't seek it here either it's not a good gamble seek excellence maybe one day you find perfection for a period of time that if you do and then you stumble don't catastrophize over it okay you can you can recover a little self-esteem shock that comes with your own stumble in a matter of a couple it is you don't have to go on a bender bender kick over the table and disrupt the whole process you screw up a little bit okay so you screwed up no crisis go back in tune it is your internal audience well once again look at you and said head that's right that's not stuff that I know and it will start you can start nodding at you and smiling again don't kick over the table behind putting the bolts you want Wow okay that's that's amazing people are saying this is so liberating so true things like that good what else we got got anything else well we do but I know what I want to respect your time um I'm just ranking which question to go to what you why don't we switch gears a little bit since the holidays are coming up and it's not about food but this is from Angie how do we deal with toxic family members who are estranged but resurfaced around the holidays to cause trouble why do holidays or special events trigger these people to ruin an otherwise happy time yeah I just go by one of these on the phone today I mean well what I would would tell you I this is sort of a being blog question I'll just try to do it kind of quickly and that is that if these family members aren't good friends ears that this is some obligation that we are doing just because we're kin and that we got to kind of do this or everybody would be all weirded out by it then I would minimize this contact to a really really low level and the way the way I would do it yes I'm going to go out to dinner so I just told to pull the lady today you're getting to say dawn hat don't have Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner etc or go over there place no you just say no let's all go out if you all go out you don't have to talk to these people you can start talking to two or three people it's too noisy you can't even talk to those people and we don't have to have all this cross-examination about the food they're down the table okay it's all cool you order your food everybody orders their food at the table you throwing your money for the check shake everybody's hand hug them you look great you know everything sounds great you look great kids are great see you later done for another year yeah that's how I would do it if I did it at all all okay the truth is as I probably opt out every other year so we cut the problem in half just like that and then we are at a total leper because every other year we do show up and when we show up let's all go out to dinner that's what we want to do and you use you know you stick your stake in the ground right there and try to make it so that but this is not some long drawn-out affair where you know all it is you get there at seven o'clock you're out of there buying 20 after 9:00 and that's that you know my favorite movie is as good as it gets as it's my favorite character this Jack Nicholson who very is is truly the psychological more valid goal camera there are this is this is what this is and at one moment some guys give it Gooding jr. characters you know warming up to Jack and to Melvin character who is just as crusty completely you know self-interested but but very moral character but he sees a difficult human and and we find in the end that he's extraordinary decent that person but he's just got a rough exterior and so Cuba the Cuban character is is finally enjoying him at a restaurant and he's laughing and smiling and giving him a little bit of a hard time or for being sort of a false curmudgeon that actually has a heart of gold and Jack just looks in and says let's not drag this thing out we don't like each other that much I have said to that lions in like a hundred times and I always got a shocks and disturbs people when I do it because there's there's usually a hint of truth in this line for everybody like they don't like me that much and they wouldn't necessarily want this to go on another two hours but they like me and so it's a little bit of an over I probably said it to Collin who I love okay but but just this this this but I just love that moment and there's so much truth in that moment when we're with family there weren't out that wild about let's not drag this thing out we don't like each other that much so set it up and set it up in a way that you don't have to pay too many too much of the currency of your life on Earth by encountering or being in uncomfortable circumstances that's terrific well thank you so much dr. Lyle perhaps you'll come back next year and answer the remaining questions I sure well I'd say it'd be my great pleasure all right so a Merry Christmas Happy Holidays everyone and thank you so much dr. Lyle you got
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