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Chef AJ: Stress Eating, Binging, and the Environment | Healthy Living LIVE! Interview with Dr Doug Lisle
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hey good morning everyone and welcome to healthy living live I'm chef AJ and today my guest is back by popular demand dr. Doug Lyall dr. Lisle is the co-author of this wonderful book called the pleasure trap he is also the psychologist at both the mcdougal Levin program and the True North health center both located in Santa Rosa California as well as the founder of the website esteem dynamics calm and he's the host of the weekly podcast which is called beat your jeans which you can listen to on blog talk radio as well as iTunes and it airs every Wednesday night live at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time and you can even call in to the show so thank you so much for coming back dr. Lyle oh it's great pleasure right cuz we almost we do we actually had a question occur towards the end of your last live broadcast with me and and I knew that you couldn't answer in five minutes so I appreciate you coming back so I'm gonna just give some introduction to what we're gonna talk about and then my favorite thing to do is just let dr. Lyle take it away you remind me of like a thoroughbred racehorse we have you in the gate right now and as soon as I open the gates we're gonna let you go so we did a previous interview on emotional eating and one of the things we discussed was that our past does not dictate our present struggles with weight and you've cited much research about how even if we had horrible trauma and abuse which again I'm not diminishing people need to deal with that and get help that's not the reason that people are fat and sick today and that you've said many times if people are not overweight because they have emotional problems they have emotional problems because people are overweight and I encourage you to listen to all the interviews I've done with dr. Lyle as well as anything that dr. Lyle has done which is available on youtube and his website esteem dynamics dot-com we did a particular session on emotional eating for things whether or not the past dictates so my question today because this comes up all the time in the ultimate weight loss program with the participants is does the stress that people experienced today have anything to do with the fact that they make poor food choices that they're over that they relapse that they binge so I want to just give a little bit of a set up in our program which has gone on for about six years we have a private group where people can post their struggles as well as their triumphs and when they relapse or when even if they have a slip if they have a minor slip on major relapse if they binge if they eat non-compliant food it's always prefaced with a reason it's always this occurred and so I binge this occurred and so I ate off plan now since I knew we were doing this broadcast I literally wrote down everything and I got over a hundred things I'm not gonna read them all and again I'm not diminishing some of these things are serious but my question is is this the reason so for example these are the things that the participants wrote a family member received a very serious or fatal diagnosis so I ate off plan a loved one passed away or I went to a funeral so I relapsed my pet is sick and in the hospital my pet passed away I went to my in-laws for dinner my mother-in-law was rude to me someone hurt my feelings someone was mean to me I had a fight with my husband my husband went out of town and left me alone my child did not get accepted to the college they wanted to I did not get the promotion I was seeking or other disappointments we were hit with an unexpected bill I was babysitting my grandson and they had my favorite non-compliant food in the house today was the anniversary of the death of a loved one I've had a lot of stress at work we are in the process of moving I am lonely and I have no friends I changed jobs I had trouble sleeping I sustained an injury I was in an accident my car broke down the guy didn't call after the first date my kid had the flu my kid was picked last for sports my kid was sitting alone at lunch in school these are my favorite I was cold I was tired I was cold and tired now again I'm not making fun of people a lot of people but of course like if somebody in my family guys I'm very sad too or if my pet is sick but it's always a reason and then a relapse and so my concern is is that I don't know anybody today that's living that's breathing that doesn't have stress and if people keep believing that the stress is the reason I'm not sure that's gonna help them overcome this so now I'm gonna do my favorite thing put you on screen by yourself and shut up and have you answer the well I think I think that's a beautiful I've never seen that laid out like that before that's that that's a thing of beauty the let's let me try to figure out where I want to go with this there was there was a set of experiments done in the 1970s and this was many types of experiments of led to this very same conclusion it was published I was it's a famous paper published in in the prestigious journal psychological review by Richard Nisbett at the University of Michigan along with his then grad student and now professor Timothy Wilson and the title of the article is telling more than we can know and the the what the authors explained was that people will say explanations for their behavior that are not in fact the reasons for their behavior and what the authors did was that they they showed a number of very clever demonstrations where people thought the reasons were reported the reasons they did certain things were clearly not the reason that they did them and and this showed that the the human mind has limited insight into its motivations now since that time there's been 40 more years of neuroscience on this and many other topics but there's probably never been a paper that was such a beautiful demonstration of this as the Nisbet and Wilson paper let me give you an example of the things that they did they it turns out that for some reason there was a suspected bias that when people go through an array of goods they tend to go if you set them up for example they'll go through a set of different colored socks in an array that they're looking through to try to figure out which ones they want and it turns out that that they the authors switch the the colors of the socks in different you know they put the black ones where the in the second slot or the fifth slide that's it or the fourth slot and they move these things around and so it's all counter balanced it turns out that when people search through an array they tend to they'll tend to take the things towards the end so they're much more likely to take the fourth choice than the first choice and the believe that's what they found anyway what they discovered was people would never report this they never they had no insight into that they had this process that they went through instead they would always say that the reason why they chose the sock they did was because it was higher higher quality that had a better feel to it well of course that that wasn't the case because it's counterbalanced by other subjects and that's a little complicated let me let me give you another example the another example was that they had students memorize word pairs like for example table chair let lamp dog etc all these word pairs that didn't really make any sense and they got them to memorize them a list of these things and then they're going to recall them later so they're trying to memorize these things one of the pairs that they put in to the list was Ocean Moon okay that it was just buried in this list that then later on they had a second experiment that they were supposed to think about products and so they're like you know think of a drink think of a snack etc think of a laundry detergent it turns out that the students that had memorized the list of words that did not have ocean moon in it when when they asked them later on for think of a laundry detergent 25 percent of them said Tide it turns out that when they had memorized a word pair that said ocean men and they asked them for the for laundry detergent fifty percent of them said tide so it doubled the likelihood that the person would say tide then they asked everybody in that in those groups why did you think of tide and why did you think of the product that you thought of whether it was coca-cola some other thing or whether it was in this case the laundry detergent in no case did a single subject say the reason why I said tide was because I just memorized ocean then not a single one not only that when the author's said do you think that it could have been that you just memorized the word pair Ocean Moon fifteen minutes ago every single subject said not a chance it's no way that that's what I just thought of the blocks okay I just saw I was thinking in the box as soon as I thought laundry detergent I just thought about that tide box that's why okay so this this is a demonstration that that what's going on people have surprisingly little access to why it is that they're doing what it is that they're doing and they're thinking what they're thinking now so when people are trying to come up with a reason why it is that they went off track they come up with plausible reasons they don't come up with the real reasons so the real reasons are going to be things the same reason any animal would go off track and that is that you're designed by nature to choose the richest food in the environment so that's why it is that it's happening it's not happening as a result of some stress or it's happening just because it's happening and it turns out that people are also not cataloging at the same time all the times that they go up track that have apps where there's absolutely nothing happening at all so what you have is a people are searching for a reason and I believe that there's multiple reasons why they're searching for the reason one reason they may be searching for the reason is to try it under standed another reason they're searching for a reason is they're trying to get ahold of a reason that is a socially acceptable reason to record and so this is this is akin to you know why were you late for work my car dog ate my homework all these problems had to take my kid to the vet you know all his things could come up you searched through a plausible reasons that would be socially defensible reasons and have some some degree of input on the situation but the truth of the matter is is that they're not the reason the reason is is that you stayed up too late last night you can get to bed on time and therefore you were groggy getting up and didn't answer the bell on the alarm etc etc okay so there's a chain of events there that that's the reason not that there just happened to be mysteriously more traffic today on the way to work than there are on other days so the this is what's going on so people I would also I would also say this that when we look at things that actually get people out of a deep groove where they are doing a good job the most important thing is time pressure convenience it's basically effort effort and it's constraints of time so what will happen is is that people will leave a groove of behavior that is that is essentially the most optimal cost-benefit analytic chain for executing what it is that the organisms highest priority is so if you have done a good job on your diet it's because you actually organized a chain and behavior in advance and you've got things well in place where as your mind is clicking through a cost-benefit analysis on what it is that you should be doing what's happening is is you keep coming up with aces okay so if you've got the food all there handy it's all organized you've got the time to do it all these things line up in a row and things are going very well now if there's significant turbulence in your life that there's a big a big shift or a big change then we can see trouble so this is where people are thinking that it's emotional reasons but really it's just behavioral turbulence so any anything that causes behavioral Terminator beulas to get you out of routine now what happens is is that it shifts the cost-benefit analysis on your decision-making so if you're out of place and out of touch with word is that your healthy food is what are you going to do are you just going to go take an easy option that isn't that isn't you know in the best interest on the program well the pleasure trap has got you organized that that's exactly what it would have you do it would have you go for the easiest option that's also the highest calorie density food in the environment so the only reason why you wouldn't do that is if you had organized a chain a behavior a stream of healthy options that were already the best cost/benefit and the the in general when it comes to the cost-benefit analysis of healthy living as opposed to pleasure trap living the truth is is it's usually a very fine line anyway you're it's it's not easy to make healthy living the default behavioral pattern that you are going to consistently execute that's not easy to do all around you you're surrounded by pressures from your own biology and from your social environment and your own biology number one seeking the richest food and number two also seeking the easiest access to food so your your own biology is sits in a matrix of forces that it's going to make it very very likely for you to slip it's only by having a well-organized situation that you're going to be able to consistently stay out of that any kind of turbulence that disturbs that that equilibrium where you just have a little bit of an edge towards healthy living over unhealthy living any turbulence and we're likely to slip okay so this is this is actually the reasons why this is happening and then I think what happens is is that people looking in retrospect what they do is they tell more than they can know okay and they up with the big explanation and the explanation sounds like this I was essentially put under tremendous emotional hardship and therefore I should get special dispensation and not be blamed for a lack of conscientiousness intelligence or emotional stability that that's what led me to then make this mistake okay this is an excuse and excuses are explanations is what it is that they are but their explanations that essentially have a point to them which is attempting to defend our status in the village and my attitude is hey you don't need to defend your status with me if you're struggling with the pleasure trap or with anybody else quite frankly the truth of the matter is hey we're expect this to be difficult you are surrounded by an environment and a mind that is embedded within that environment that is designed by nature to be eating pizza and sucking down chocolate shakes okay that's what the correct decision is coming from your evolutionary biology if you are remarkable enough you're intelligent enough and diligent enough to have ever combated against that for anything like the time you get five gold stars on your forehead as far as I'm concerned if you slip it isn't because you had some emotional crisis it's because you had the slightest bit of disturbance in your in your behavioral integration plan so that all that that's all it took to wobble you out of the thing that doesn't make you weak and it doesn't make you impulsive it makes you an animal that wasn't designed for the environment that you're in so just you know we don't need to to to defend this to the village all we have to do is look at it let's look at it squarely let's let's try to understand what the truth is of the problem if the truth of this problem is turbulence it's in which it means that we have to spend additional time and energy keeping ourselves organized when disorder is starting to hit us that's the that's the idea all right hopefully that's good enough for now well I it's not only good enough it's fantastic if people will just listen to this and re listen to this because again a lot of these things that people list as the reasons or excuses these are things that happen to me but like when my dog died I didn't eat for two days and when Charles had a stressful day at work yesterday he just didn't eat so I just want people to know that they have options and that if maybe if they know why they're doing it they won't do it and it sounds like that a lot of times it is to say face or to defend their status and and it really comes down to everything you wrote in this book if they would just read it or reread it and understand it I think it would be enormous ly helpful so a lot of people can have a little slip and get back on track yeah but then other people a slip can turn into a full-blown relapse and then we also have the people where the they binge and maybe they end and so I guess maybe I'd like the next question to be about binging because it seems to be so prevalent with the people in my group especially the women and what I see is these are the people that are always afraid to eat starch and maybe you could just talk a little bit about how we can help these people that are binging because it is so prevalent thank you yes yeah these are the overarching discussion that I'm trying to explain is that the that the environment is is more potent than you're appreciating and it's not so much that you're emotionally weak and that your etc that that's not really the issue the issues that the that the dynamics between your brain the way it's wired up and the environment is very problematic and so we have to we have to have greater attention to detail there so now what we're going to talk about is binging so a binging can be set up by by several different types of issues the one of the major issues is the following this is not everybody's pattern but it's a common pattern so I'll really talk about two common binging patterns one common binging pattern is that people do do a lot of caloric restricting and they do that by eating a lot of low calorie density foods so or just simply trying to grit their teeth and eat less and this what will happen is is that they'll get pretty hungry and when they get pretty hungry then what's going to happen is a lot of times as you as you just said AJ that people are are concerned about starches and so they're thinking that starches are a bad thing they sort of can't get it out of their head they don't trust it and probably there's numerous reasons for that not only has there been tremendous press against carbohydrates but it's also the case that when you if you are a weight watcher and you're watching the scale back and forth and what's going to happen is if you sometimes eat potatoes or rice or something like that you're gonna find that in the next day or so your weight may go up and it's going up because when you eat starches or you absorb glycogen what's going to happen is you also absorb water and so your your weight can go up but your fat content has gone absolutely nowhere and so a person's weight might go up two pounds and now they're all freaked out about this and so they're they're thinking that starches are a bad thing and then when they get away from starches if they actually burn out their their starches over 24 hours or so by doing something ketogenic or anything else under the Sun what happens is is that they then they can lose quite a bit of weight they might lose two pounds in a day and so they're not understanding that none of this has anything to do with fat and the only thing that matters in terms of our appearance or health ears what we're talking about is fat and fat changes only take place at the level of an ounce or two a day and you can't see it on the scale there's no way to observe this process you have to only look at this process over a longer period of time what will happen with our our benchers is that they are they are making misattributions about the nature of fat process and so instead they're watching the scale or watching it bounce up and down and they are are miss attributing this to all kinds of things and and so one of the things that they misattribute things too is that they're afraid of starches and by the way when you eat starch and then you may go up the pound in the next day or so because you're absorb more water you can't see that weight anywhere it's not fat anywhere on you okay this is stored deep inside of you all over the place so it's not having any any impact on your appearance whatsoever it's not you it's not tissue it's actually a storage just makes no the same thing as having some more fiber some more poop in your colon okay it's not this is not influencing you in any way in terms of your appearance or anything else now the ore was high starch okay so what will happen is one group of these folks will be essentially gritting their teeth and not wanting to eat the society and not wanting to eat starches as a main source of their calories and as a result of this what's going to happen is they're going to get hungry and when they get hungry their brain is basically saying we need to eat the richest food in the environment and then what's going to happen is they're gonna drift towards the richer vegan foods if they're vegan and they're gonna start eating those vegan foods and that's going to be so incredibly reinforcing that they're going to eat a huge amount of it okay so that's one way that this happens this is how we get people with a tablespoon in the nut butter okay this is this is how this sort of thing happens it's because people get really hungry and they are craving the the relief that comes from having concentrated calories you were really no way to design by nature to eat fruits and vegetables that's that's really not the center of the human diet at all those are at the periphery and starches are at the middle the and so if we if we restrict those we're gonna wind up into trouble because we're going to get edgy and now we're going to get hungry and now we're going to get we're going to be on a mission to get the rich food and once the rich food hits that that palate you can expect to put in an awful lot of it that's just how that goes the nervous system is designed by nature to be very aggressive about eating foods that are high in calorie density not only you might say well it's a more dopamine it's being kicked out but I want to look at it forget about the dopamine let's look at the level of information processing about why this would have been set up this way in a stone-age environment the the reason why is that whenever there was rich foods available it was competitive there was other human beings around that also had access to the rich foods and the rich foods would have been limited so therefore you should be designed by nature to eat very very quickly and he's very aggressively and get all it is that you can because there may not be another rich food source for 90 days and so your job is to cram in as much of the rich food as you can get your hands on and elbow everybody else out of the way that that is what the neural circuits that is how this should be configured and that is how they're configured so that's why this is a big reason why people are going to binge now the second reason what people are gonna binge is going to be a little bit different so the will also happen is people that will do a good job pretty good job all day long not be bad hungry one reason they're not that hungry is they binge the night before so they crammed the night before on a bunch of rich foods before they went to bed so so they wake up in the morning just you know a virtuous Vicky where they do everything right so it's not a problem because they're not really hungry so I'll have people it'll just drink tea or coffee in the morning and I don't need to eat breakfast and they feel virtuous about it the truth of the matter is that's not virtuous that's a telltale sign that we ate a hell of a lot of calories less yesterday evening and it's still stored in the liver and we've got a lot of glycogen in there so we're full now the so the person know can cruise through the day and be and be doing a pretty good job and they might even get to dinner and they might do a pretty good job but then what's going to happen after dinner they're gonna be nosing around looking for some rich food interestingly enough this is about the time when people thinking that the reading for emotional reasons okay I'm lonely I'm bored I'm this I'm that okay let's just look at what's really happening here what's happening is is that your nervous system does things for very specific reasons and the reasons that it does anything is that runs a cost-benefit analysis on genes survival that is the reason why it does what it does the feelings that you have or simply concomitance there are things that go along with that cost-benefit analysis so some some girl that says oh gee I really want to see my boyfriend you know for emotional reasons well of course you want to see in promotional reasons but let's actually look at the ultimate reasons why you want to see your boyfriend you want to see your boyfriend because your mind is running a cost-benefit analysis on genes survival that's actually why it is that you want to see your boyfriend okay so you you may want to establish a mating relationship with this guy but you're just getting started on or you may actually may want to mate with him which is what the genes would want you to do in order to get pregnant or you want to make sure that he's with you and he's not investing other than other people in other words what's happening is the reason why is that this is associated with genes survival as a result of that what happens is the nervous system gives you a printout of the optimal cost-benefit solution as it directs you with a thing called emotion okay so when people say I eat for emotional reasons then it's always useful to say well what is the reasoning that drives the emotion okay so the the way that the mind works is it works computation first emotion second and behavior third that is the that is the pathway by which things happen for all animals so now what we're going to do is we're going to look at the binging behavior that takes place in the evening repetitively with a lot of people the reason why is that the brain is running a cost-benefit analysis and then the person's the person's intuition might be I feel kind of bored but actually what happening is the nervous system is sweeping around its entire context of understanding where it's where it sits in the universe and what it's behavioral options are and what it's doing is it's running a cost-benefit analysis on the following question what behavior can I now execute that will optimize my gene survival that's actually what what the nervous system is doing and so as it looks around it says now do I have any like attracting mates attacking me and trying to pin you to the ground here no okay Mickey I don't okay and so in that case let's see well is there any attractive mate that I could get on the phone is there any attractive mate I could get on skype if the answer is no no no which is what it is with me well will happen next is all to be thinking well what food could I eat well the truth is I'm already full yes I am already full so it's not worth eating anymore low calorie dense food but it would be worth cramming in some high calorie dense food that would be worth it is there any rich rare high calorie density food anywhere in my environment because if there is it could be the case that eating that food would be the best thing that my genes can come up with in terms of the optimal behavior for genes survival is the door open somewhere making it cold wasting the energy that I'm gonna have to pay a check no are the kids in like my kids are my cats same thing are the kids safe and fed yes the kids are safe and fed all right kids are safe and fed no maid around trying to tackle me what else is there what about the war situation let me turn on the TV and see if my if my team is winning the war okay my team my team isn't at war tonight so therefore there's nothing worth watching okay so now what could I do well though the war situation is fine the kids are fine there is no mate i full of healthy food what's the next best thing that I could do for my genes survival answer crammed in Andy rich food that's it in the environment okay so that service and then selects his way through the optimal solutions and it basically runs a cost-benefit analysis on energy expended versus essentially Jean Survival profit and what's going to happen is very often the best solution is going to be to eat the rich fit in the environment that will pretty well trump just about anything else if the cat is scratching at the back door that will be more important than eating some rich food that's that I have managed to harvest out of my pantry because I because as a parent that disturbing nervous system as its back there I'm going to be under threat from some bully cat that I need to intimidate and I need to get the cat in so you will watch me as I will take care of that first if there's any pain in my foot okay I had that will get taken care of first the nervous system is going to scroll its way through all of the possible options and all the costs associated with those options and it's going to arrive at the cost-benefit ratio that is optimal this is essentially the concept of behavioral efficiency so this is how animals are configured they're actually considered for optimum efficiency and their behavior now so emotions will signal what those are they will tell you wait a second this is the optimal efficiency to do because that's going to feel the best or it's feeling terrible and we need to fix it all right but when you're sitting around a little bit bored in the evening after you've you're already full healthy food and you start watching your mind rotate its way towards the richest food in the environment all you're watching is this cost-benefit analysis you're not eating for quote emotional reasons you're eating for optimal behavioral efficiency for gene survival reasons that's actually what's taking place now watch what's going to happen if I in that environment if all there is is fresh fruits and vegetables and some steamed potatoes and some vegan chili etc and I'm already full I won't anything in there because the truth is I'm already full so there isn't anything that is super efficient to do because there's no evidence that there's any shortage of that and I'm not really shortage calories the only reason why I would cram in a rich food right now and binge is if there was food that was particularly rich that would be rare and I better get to it before any of these other humans that are around here are gonna get to it okay so that's that's what's gonna happen and the nervous system is going to feel a drive to do that so that's why it's not gonna be nearly as often but I would hop on a car and go somewhere and get that stuff I might okay if literally I had nothing other intelligence to do I had no life the cats are fine there's no war on and there's nothing good or nothing to do I don't want to face my desk okay so all of that is taking place and I might actually get in the car and go find some food Graham that could happen but it's not going to happen nearly as often is it that food is right there in the pantry or in the freezer okay if it's in a pantry or in the freezer then the cost-benefit analysis is going to say Wow all we're going to have to do is 13 seconds of behavioral action and less than half a calorie worth of muscle contraction and we're going to be cramming you know 700 calories of rich food down our gullet and it's worth doing it that's exactly what's happening that now when people do that repetitively then we know what happens and what happens is is that they set up a conditioning paradigm the the nervous system gets used to it and by getting used to it what I mean is is that the nervous system essentially anticipates that it's going to be getting crammed on and as a result of that even after you're full the nervous system braces itself for the cramming that is to come and it's sure that there's going to be cramming coming because there's been cramming on 13 of the last 17 days so if there's been cramming in the last 13 in the last 17 days or the last six days in a row or the last 60 days in a row or 50 out of the last 65 days in a row in other words if this is a very common event then the nervous system is going to engineer a bracing defense against the cram that is going to be coming that bracing defense is a whole set of neuro chemistry that is also in reflexes that are going to cause the digestive system to be activated so effectively it's going to get ready for the cramming that is about to take place and the cramming that's about to take place if it doesn't take place what's going to happen is is that the feelings associated with the defense are gonna linger inside the nervous system and the body and that's going to be what you and I call craving okay this is what craving is this is what craving a cigarette is so the nervous system once the nervous system gets used to the fact that it's going to get nicotine every hour then if you don't get the nicotine what happens is its engineering a defense against the nicotine it is bracing itself for the nicotine and if you don't get the nicotine what's gonna happen is that there's an agitation in the nervous system about the defense that the body is created for the nicotine and that's what we call craving okay when the person then writes it lights up a smoke and and puffs the the nicotine meets the defense and it's a relief they neutralize each other and that's how that works so a person that is been cramming repetitively very often they're having a craving after dinner and they're like this is strange because I'm having a craving but my craving is I'm not but I'm not hungry because I'm really full but I'm sort of craving anyway source sort of feel hungry so this this puzzle has been discussed by a lot of people saw the movie the other night that I'm in what's it called out eating you alive okay and i saw joel fuhrman and i thought he was very good in this movie and he he's talking about this sort of hunger and the craving and the frustration etc joel is really you're looking at a veteran of thousands of patient interviews where he's been trying to figure this out and he's had a lot of different ideas about this Alan - Alan also has has been trying to figure this out and they haven't quite had it until now they've described it beautifully Alan Alan Goldhammer has always said to people well wait a second you say you're craving food you're hungry but it's a specific comment it it's never apples it's never more asparagus he used to tell people you're still hungry go eat some more salads and and everybody rolls their eyes and laughs and and yet what we now can see is that what this really is is its classical conditioning but what's happening here is that the nervous system has conditioned itself to when it's full it's expecting to get a bunch of rich food and it's defending itself against the the the predicted onslaught of the rich food generally high-fat food that it's about to get hit with and as a result it's getting defenses ready to to neutralize and digest that food and if you don't if you if you essentially expect that it's coming that you don't feed it what happens is is that state lingers in the nervous system and creates what we're gonna call craving this is the toxic hunger that joel fuhrman talking about this is the specific hunger that Allen's talking about this is this is what these guys are describing okay and and now I'm calling it something else so coming out of the wings of psychology we're calling a classical conditioning and we're talking actually calling it a conditioned convinced story response this is out of Shepard Siegel's work you know in the 1980s now and actually even recently they're still publishing on this these issues so this is what it is that this is and this is why people cram and the way we get out of this dr. Fuhrman was saying three or four days that's like it's like very beautiful wishful thinking as as through through this whole genre of hyper healthy living my friends have always said it's quick and easy and you just do this and it's like it's never quick and easy this is a dogfight you're in a street fight with evolutionary biology and it is true that maybe in three or four days some people can sort of break through an extinction burst but more it's more like a couple of weeks it's more like a couple of weeks so maybe in the first few days you get rid of mostly but I've actually had now in the last year that I've been talking about this I've had a lot of people that didn't have a lot of problems with the essentially initial defense of the body and frustration in the cravings when they started to do this I've had other people that were completely defeated so the the intensity of the defense in other words the the extent of the cravings I can differ considerably from person to person but I would tell most people you can expect a pretty significant fight for a week if you've been cramming fairly repetitively and you get cravings and bored in the evening and be like eating something okay what that is that's your nervous system now engineering and anticipated defense against the food that it's expecting because you have repetitively crammed and the evenings often enough doesn't have to be every evening it just has to be often enough that the nervous system expects this to happen and if you do that you're you're likely to have this craving and then obviously if we give in to it we've now reinforced it and now we're gonna make it you know we have this harder to climb out of it so this is what this is and I encourage people to look at the the webinar called the condition cram that was in September of 2017 Gustavo and I on MacDougal webinar this is what we're all talking about okay so whether it's Alan Allen's horse laughs about the specific hunger dr. Fuhrman's toxic hunger my condition cram I'm sure other guys have talked in other ways about this this is a real phenomenon okay and this is a significant obstacle that drives binge eating that cheating is binge eating is a struggle and it's it's not a it's it's not just simply a bad habit it's actually you've set up a little conditioning paradigm you're effectively addicted to binging and we have to we have to go through the white knuckling it's not I think it's it's not even close to the level of cigarette it's more about the level of coffee okay that's about the level of this addictive process the annoyance that you feel getting off a couple of cups of coffee a day is probably similar to the annoyance and frustration that you're gonna feel counter conditioning a Crim circuit okay all right that that is amazing at I just want to say that so many people keep saying the same thing we've told you before they just love your laugh laughing they just so I love that you said about how you're you're just hardwired to cram the richest food in the environment so we have a few minutes left so I guess I'll ask you about the environment because you are one of the first people that I've heard this from probably when I met you eight years ago and you said and you've said this often is that we have to work harder on our environment than we do ourselves I state it as if it's in your house it's in your mouth dr. Kerry sander says if you if you hang out in a barber shop it's only a matter of time so you get a haircut any of those so recently when we had a discussion you were talking about how people that are very agreeable also very social and very open to experience we're gonna have a harder time with this and what I've noticed is the people that refuse to clean up their environment for whatever reason again that's we can have a whole nother session about the excuses they make they seem to be very agreeable people I've only met I've probably worked with not as many people as you but I probably work with thousands of people now and I've only had two people in an unclean environment that were successful but they were like me a disagreeable [ __ ] they were able to do it so III just I don't know how to help people that won't clean up their environment because even the people that are have spouses that are willing to have the locked refrigerators and the locked cabinets they still know that stuff is there and occasionally they see it so I guess in the last few minutes if you could just please bring it home and explain to people that that the environment is is it's everything it's it's everything yes this is this is this sort of it's a maybe hard for me to describe or try to get this point across people that have heard me talk about personality or heard me talk about psychology and I'm always talking about genes and I'm talking about our hardwiring etc they they then and certainly with respect to personality issues they they end up with this question because it appears to be it appears to be that I'm saying that your environment can't change you and I agree with that there was your environment can't change who it is that you are by nature cannot do so the a big hope in the 20th century at the dawn of the 20th century psychology was was pushed forward by Pavlov's work in classical conditioning and then later by Skinner's work in operant conditioning so learning theory the notion that you could modify people was huge and the the idea was that you people were ultimately tremendously flexible and this became the bedrock theory under all of the social sciences really and is the is the fundamental tenant that sits underneath so sociology and cultural anthropology and much of psychology and I just totally disagree with this for essentially I'm just saying no that isn't how it is now then but but what do I then then what should we care about the environment and the answer is yeah we should care about a lot more of the environment than we would did before the notion before was that the environment could shape you well if it could shape you then we wouldn't need to worry about you so much because we've twisted you into something new and I'm saying no you're not going to twist me into something new you're not going to change me at all so therefore it's essential that the environment fit me very well we need to find or create an environment that is excellent for me okay that fits me very well because I'm not changing I am the person I am okay so therefore you know if you got a kid that doesn't like broccoli don't keep trying to I don't know do what hit him on the head every time he takes a bite of broccoli so or you know etc let him pet the cat like I don't know or let him play with his no pokemons every time he eats broccoli like no the kid doesn't like broccoli and we're not gonna make him eat broccoli because he's not going to do it so therefore let's try asparagus okay let's try peaches we got to try something else because that's not working so actually the environment is more important so if the environment could shape us then you could throw me in a Russian gulag and I would wind up quote maybe you could have me like the gulag and I'd be happy in the Russian gulag no I'm not going to be happy in the Russian gulag when I come out of the Russian gulag if I changed into a sort of a Russian that likes you know things regimented no I haven't changed at all same personality I just spent five years in misery and I got some bad memories for it but I'm the same guy that's how that works so the issue is is that you are you that's a four for whatever advantages or disadvantages who it is that you are is who it is that you are we need to have great respect for that and so our job is then to figure out how are we going to you know the environment that you're in if you're having troubles it isn't working very well for you we need to identify the factors in the environment that are causing you to have either physical problems or psychological problems that's what we need to do we need to have a deep respect for the fact that this is not a good fit that's how it works so if you got promise with your mother-in-law you know don't let's not try to fix you so that you can get along better with your mother-in-law if you've got a boss that's a nasty sob let's not try to fix you so that you can get along better with your nasty bosses and sob let's get you to a different job and get you a nice boss to the point where it's like oh my god my life is so my better now now that I'm not working for that SOB okay so why would we change you why wouldn't we just take a look at what it is that we're feeling and what's happening and changed the environment that's what we want to do the when it comes to healthy living I'm not going to change you if you are open to experience and you are you are agreeable etc what was the other one AJ open on social social if you're open if you're adventurous and your social and you're agreeable that is almost checkmate that is very very close to checkmate in healthy living I'm not it's not checkmate but it's close okay so what's an interesting experiment this sure North Health Center you take people there of all different personalities and you put them all in a room and you put them in a place where all there is this healthy food it's right there are there some people sneaking out yeah there's always some outlier that's spending their money coming to the whole thing but they got enough issues that they're still sneaking out but rare most people there the food is all there it's enough it's varied enough they're committed enough there's enough social support around for doing the right thing we essentially create an environment that is highly conducive to success and while people are there they are very successful you see we didn't change the people we changed their environment and we have massive success when we change their environment if we instead said come to true north health center and you're gonna spend hours a day with dr. Lisle now we're gonna work on you know making you more disagreeable and making you less open and making less social etc are you kidding me and I had like a shock apparatus that every time you smile that somebody I shocked you so that you guy got you less social like come on there's no way we're gonna change you and that's not what we're here to do what we're here to do is for how you get smart about your environment and it's to end to take it very seriously and it takes seriously who it is that you are and say wait a second where am i repetitive getting into trouble because wherever it is that I'm impaired consistently getting into trouble I need to do what I can do to change that environmental factor whether it's specific individuals that are a problem whether it's specific specific times of day in circumstances that are a problem so this is where I'm getting hungry and I don't have any decent food and it turns out that there's mom I save my favorite you know pastrami sandwich places right there on the corner or right about the time that I get hungry on my way home okay so this is what we need to operate within the environment very very intelligently and so this means an attention to environmental detail that is a whole other level than people are generally thinking about and so this is this is where we get into trouble this is where when we have some little emotional thing happen which is in fact nothing other than a stressful time energy you know process disrupts our you know puts turbulence in our behavioral pattern we have to be better at preparing for those essentially environmental turbulences and so we we have a you know a better grasp of what it is to do so we can execute on a more sophisticated plan that's the idea I had I'll end this with a story an interesting story about me and swimming with a friend of mine that I think is a good a good example of this so five or ten years ago I had a friend and his wife they were into swimming and now he was insisting that it would be really good for me and so so the first time I went swimming with him at his gym it was miserable because I'm skinny and I sink like a rock and you know the water is in my eyes it's cold it's just like this I swam for like ten minutes I'm like I'm out of Europe forget it and so he's he's like no what's wrong I'm said I'm cold my ears hurt you know water in my eyes I sink it's like everything's wrong he goes well okay let's get you a buoyancy belt so next time I came with a buoyancy belt and then I'm like my front end is sinking and my back end is up high it work so then I'm cold anyway so then he had like on top wetsuit so I put on the top wetsuit as a buoyancy belt oh well now I'm scooting across the water much better but the mask I got a big nose and so the mask like my big nose is pushing against the mast so the seal isn't good and it's leaking it's like up and I got to get a different mask so then I got a different masks that fit I don't know add a custom order it okay so now I got a mask that fits that seals and so now and now I I'm not cold now I've got buoyancy and so then so then what well it turns out my ears hurt cuz they get cold okay so now I got to get stuff in my ears so now finally I get stuff in my ears I get the mask I had the buoyancy belt now I have the wetsuit now I'm swimming it's great it's great the so I did that for quite a while and then you know I I moved away and things changed and never recovered it okay but the point is is that that's what it took to get that integrated and once it was finally integrated it went smooth and I actually did feel great there's kind of nothing like swimming for some overall endorphin effect and all the joints and I mean it's really good the I'm not doing it now cuz I'm too lazy and I don't have a friend pushing me and I've lost all my equipment I'd have to start from scratch but that is an example of sometimes how many details have to be solved in an environmental behavior you know in a behavioral chain in order to make something really work well for you and so that's that's what we are doing that's what chef AJ is doing that's what all of us in this arena are doing is trying to help encourage specific pieces it is not that simple when we really look at how many pieces there are there's quite a few pieces it is quite a few pieces to it and so sometimes when you get tripped up we want to look at it is not just some emotion that let's look at it as a piece where we weren't where we weren't quite ready you know and we need to get better at adding one more little detail to how it is that we are ready for our environment okay Wow Wow people are just like loving this and I appreciate what you this is I mean everything you say is brilliant you know more about everything than most people know about anything but this may be one of your best talks and the technology gods were with us there's been no sound glitches this is brilliant I appreciate what you said about the environment so much dr. Lau because twice now when I've been a true north participants have had family members that suddenly died close family members one person had an uncle that died one person that had a sister that died they were very upset but because they came for so far they just couldn't leave I mean they could have but they chose not to and is upset with is they were they still lost weight at true north you know and so I it the the environment is so critical and as you said we can't change our personality the environment is probably the only thing we have the ability to control and change so why wouldn't we and on that note that families barking okay that means it's time to go so thank you guys so much this will be on YouTube within 24 hours and thank you so much dr. Lau for all you do and again please if you haven't read this book everything is explained there but I think when dr. Lisle talks it makes it even more understandable it will be available on audio soon so thank you dr. Lisle thanks everyone for watching another episode of healthy living live I make healthy tastes delicious and dr. Lisle makes it understandable take care everyone hi folks I can't ever and the broadcast this there we go ah frustrating
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