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Chef AJ: Healthy Living LIVE with Dr Doug Lisle - Cramming and Bingeing
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the Netan and Jennifer and Julie lots of people are already here so that's fantastic so welcome everyone this is the first time I'm trying the live format with dr. Doug Lyall I'm so happy he's here so before we get started I know you're here by your comments but I'm not seeing the number go up so somebody just type in on the screen that you can see us and hear us okay hi Tina pretty sure you're there even though the numbers not changing I'm just gonna wait a second because there's no sense ah there you are okay perfect so welcome everybody to this wonderful live broadcast with none other than one of my favorite people in the whole world dr. Doug Lyall many of you are already familiar with him but if you're not he is the co-author of the pleasure tract if you haven't read it you must check that book out he's the psychologist at both the mcdougal 10-day program and the True North health center both located in Santa Rosa California and what some of you don't know and I didn't know until recently is he has a wonderful weekly podcast called beat your jeans you can listen live every Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. Pacific time and even call in and ask questions or you can listen to the archived episodes on BlogTalkRadio or iTunes and I believe there's over 80 now thanks and for telling us you can see us in Heroes before we get started dr. Lyle I made you a present I know you're not gonna be able to taste this but what these are okay so let me explain you have created quite a stir with your new lecture about the cram circuit so what these are I call these cram muffins because I feel if people are gonna cram anyway they may as well cram with carrot cake and if they're gonna cram with carrot cake which is your favorite it may as well be healthy so these have no sugar no flour they don't even have dates they basically are cram muffin CRA M which stands for carrot raisin Apple and millet I was going to put pineapple in but then I would have had to call them crap muffins and they didn't want to do that so next time we're together you're gonna taste these and speaking of the cram circuitry you introduced that concept in the vagus at the live ultimate weight-loss conference and you created quite a stir many people found it extremely helpful I think everybody did but a lot of people are saying well you know there's nothing I can do about it I've got this circuitry so yeah what do you say to that to those people let's let's uh what this is is just a little it's a little deeper inside actually I think an important additional insight into why this whole problem has been so difficult so we've all known about the pleasure trap for a long time which is just the the taste sensitivity issue that if you eat healthy foods your taste buds will become more sensitive and you'll be far more welcoming and accepting of healthy food and the more rich food that we eat the more processed food that we eat the less and less we'd like natural food it that's the that's the basic trap that that is set however now it looks like there's gonna going to be in a second problem here and it's a problem that we you and I have observed for years hidden in the healthy world and that is people that are doing McDougal style or TrueNorth style they're people that are actually eating very healthfully but some people are clearly systematically overeating so they're still eating too much and they may be thirty or forty pounds overweight in a very puzzle and so we've got a lot of people that may switch to a healthier diet and they might lose 50 or 60 pounds and then they stop and they're there they sit 30 or 40 pounds over their ideal weight and they're puzzled and you and I have thought well I have thought for years that really the issue then was just that the food was still a little bit too rich and so that's the discussion that you and I had many years ago so you were eating healthy foods AJ but you you're you were eating foods that were you're reading too many foods that were too rich and so as we moved you from a from a richer diet to a more unprocessed TrueNorth diet we saw the weight come off and so it all works according to plan and it all worked out great and it does for many people just that way but what what has puzzled us you know for a long time has been the people that will swear up and down that they are eating nothing but healthy food but there's still 30 40 pounds overweight and those of us that they talk to each other and scratch our heads about this dr. Goldhamer and and our friends in the in the industry we have very often not totally believed people we have and we have scratched around for evidence that in fact they're reading foods that were too rich and so that's why I was convinced that you were reading too rich a food and it turned out we're right sometimes so dr. Goldhamer had a patient once that was switched to a healthy diet and lost a great deal of weight and then stopped but he was still quite a bit overweight and he swore up and down he was saving everything healthy and Alan kept questioning him and kept crushing him because he was sure there was some naughty thing in the pile and it turned out it was juice so the guy was drinking juice and Alan thought she she couldn't possibly be keeping 60 pounds on this pen you know he's lost 60 or 80 pounds he was way overweight he's done fabulously well why is he stopping and so Alan kept questioning him and kept crushing him and we hit the juice and Alan just thought well the Jews can't be anything and he said he just thought well how much you see you drinking guy said a gallon a day he's drinking a gallon a day of apple juice and so when he's knocked off the gallon the day of apple juice he started to lose weight again so we've had many sleuthing incidences like this that convinced us for a long time that the issue was calorie density all the way animal experiments calorie density the Penn State experiments Barbara Rawls volumetrics calorie density these are these are the big that was the big thing that we believed in now however there's been our little cohort that's been jumping up and down and saying I'm not doing anything out of line I'm really not and I'm still having a problem and and so we didn't know what to think about that until this idea so this idea comes along and the notion is that that you can actually become conditioned to overeating and specifically the reason why this would work would be that in our national history we would be very excited about eating food that was particularly rich and that you would get into only on occasion and when that rich food would would be there it would pay our ancestors to go ahead and cram it in past normal satiety and so normal satiety is working fine virtually all the time but once in a while under the relatively rare conditions of rich food you would go ahead and cram cram it in if it was available now when you bring that into the modern world obviously the rich food is there all the time and so as a result we would be cramming all the time which a lot of people are cramming all the time essentially every day or every evening is very common and so now we run into an additional problem and that is that and that is that once you do something over and over then then the nervous system gets ready for it and anticipates it and so in this case the nervous system is anticipating the fact that it's going to get a bunch of calories after dinner and so what it will then do is it will actually kick up digestive process getting ready for that food and as it gets ready for that food those digestive processes to us feel like craving so we literally have a craving after we're already full for rich foods so this is the this is the conditioned crammed circuit so it's the crammed circuit is natural the conditioning is natural but a conditioned crammed circuit is not natural you have to have you have to have a bizarre set of circumstances where there's rich food around every day that's available and then you could wind up with a gram a condition gram circuit so people that may have heard this I may have rung true for them and they might have said well now what am I supposed to do about this well the issue is is that this is exactly the same process as it comes to getting rid of any any condition process which is what we call extinction and so if you're going to ever quit cigarettes you know we can talk to the cows come home about all the tricks that we're going to do but the truth is it's pretty simple you have to stop doing it and mm-hmm and the first day is very hard and the second day is very hard and the third day is very hard and the fourth day is very hard and through all of those days your nervous system is going to be throwing a fit because essentially it's used to the dopamine hit that comes with the nicotine and if you don't give it to it it's going to scramble around looking for that reward and it's going to put out a lot of energy trying to get it this is exactly how an animal would be designed so if you have a a cat it comes by your back sliding door and it belongs with the neighbors but it finds out that you have some rich food and you decide to feed it to be sweet will you even count on it coming in the next day and then you can count on it coming the next day after that and so it's going to start craving that food and it's good that craving is going to remind it that you're going to be there to feed it and if you don't feed it it's gonna throw a fit and then it's gonna come back tomorrow and it's gonna throw it now another fit and then it's gonna throw a fit the day after that and then finally it will quit throwing a fit so essentially what will happen is the mind of whether it's bad cat or you runs a cost-benefit analysis on whether this is worth the trouble about whether it's starting to look like we're not going to get the reward so it's not worth hopping the guy's fence and then going over there and screaming at the top of our lungs and the same thing is true of your mind your mind will quit screaming at you and insisting that it wants to get that treat if you quit giving it to it every night it will quiet down and then you will not have the digestive system act up so you won't have those feelings of craving because you will have counter conditioned the circuit so that's the solution to the problem and and people will roll their eyes and say well that's doesn't sound very easy and elegant it's not easier elegant getting off alcohol it's not easier elephant elegant even getting off coffee so it's not easy or elegant getting off of a conditioned cram circuit but it can absolutely be done what it takes is a little determination some resolution and then you just do it and we don't fiddle around we don't pussyfoot around and we don't whine about it we just do it and once you do it of course what happens is within a week or two it's way easier so once you get through the little fit that your nervous system throws then pretty soon your nervous system starts to not expect it and pretty soon it quiets down so you can imagine running a business where we're fairly often if people squawked you gave raises what happens today when you say no more raises oh boy you can expect the yelling to get even louder well wait a second I didn't ask for one last week but everybody else got one so I would have asked last week for one I would ask but you know I didn't I thought it was being good so now you should give it to me now it's like no okay so you're gonna have a little riot on your hands for a little while until everybody finds out oh no more raises and then they're just gonna settle down so this is the nature of nature and you we can command your nervous system to settle down but we have to be resolute about it this is fascinating and what you're saying doesn't that just bring home the point that you've always said how you have to work harder on your environment than you do ourselves and the number-one rule of healthy eating is no junk food in the house and if you if there's nothing rich in your environment you can't cram on rich food you might be able to cram on carrots and broccoli and apples but is that even cramming into people even crammed on those those less rich foods essentially almost nobody so I would say the only people that would cram on really healthy relatively low density foods are that's probably one in a thousand happen so those people exist but they're extremely rare and they're not the people that we're talking to almost every day absolutely yeah we have to go not only away from rich junk food which is the pleasure trap but we have to go away from rich healthy food shareable little a to cram trap right like like like Ezekiel bread and peanut butter you know things like that yeah you know butter you know I can't tell you in the last three or four months where I've been talking to clients on phone consults about this that how many times I used that as an example and how many times people said how did you know what was it that's hilarious that well that's why I tell people their environments the number one predictor of their success if it's in your house it's in your mouth it's not a question if you will eat it just when dr. Lyle a really interesting question from Christina just popped up on the feed and by the way guys thank you so much for watching and while you're watching why not hit the share button so more people can glean dr. Lyles wisdom and maybe he'll consider even doing this a weekly feature if we get enough people to watch so Christina says she says does the cram circuit show up more for women given significant hormonal changes before and during menstruation I noticed this is the only time during the month that I have several cravings or severe cravings can it be that menstruation is a trigger for the cramp circuit and a lot of the women on this broadcast are saying they feel the same way um I doubt it so let me tell you though what they're observing the your monthly cycle could be conditioning something and so you could be you could be conditioned we actually know for example that that cravings for chocolate are higher during menstrual cycle than at any other time which is very interesting the so it's very possible that you've gotten into routines around your period where you you have you have some conditioning processes going on there the cram circuit per se being something that would be conditioned that then it's possible but I don't think that particularly makes any necessary theoretical sense I'm not saying it couldn't be true I'm just saying hmm it's more likely that specific types of foods a specific pattern that you get into around that that time of the month you you could easily then wind up with cravings so I don't think its cravings just in general for cramming I think it might be cravings for specific foods that you that you've got a little habit pattern built up and then it's expecting it's made the link between that time of the month and that treat so I think that that's very possible well so cramming and binging aren't the same thing though necessarily right I mean the that's that's a good question I would say that the following is true the cramming is something that I would call that junior varsity binging though the words cramming is something that you're going to see is totally normal so it's a completely normal instinct and it's going to happen routinely if you put people in the situation where there's rich foods around so they may eat healthy food they get full then they go ahead and cram so that that there's really nothing about this that looks at all pathological it starts to be look pathological under certain conditions like for example it's happening every day because unlike our Stone Age ancestors we don't have rich food once a month we've got it every single day it's in the kitchen so now we're indulging this circuit which is which is therefore your survival and now we set up a conditioning paradigm so now we've set up a conditioned cram circuit so we're expecting and craving it so that I think AJ that is unbelievably common uh I I would hazard to say I wouldn't be surprised if eighty percent of the United States has a conditioned Grimm circuit the now binging is not something that eighty percent of people do so in geing is a little more ragged so a lot of times what what will set up binging is people will be much more conscious in trying to control their food and so they may get themselves hungry and they're actually trying to do some smart things so they're trying to restrict their calories they're trying to lose weight they're trying to behave themselves etc and then very often what happens with that strategy is they'll they're big they get ravenously hungry so they they may go quite a number of hours without eating and then what happens then is that they then will eat but then they're going to be driven to eat and they're driven to eat really rich foods so then bit binging looks a little different in that that most of the people that are binging are not starting out with a bunch of healthy food and then afterwards then they start eating dessert and then they eat a whole tray full of chips ahoy cookies no that's a standard cram a binge is more like I'm trying not to eat I'm trying not to eat I'm trying not to eat I'm trying not to eat and then when I do eat I eat rich food and I eat a tremendous amount of it so it's it's clearly the same type of circuitry and they are very close cousins but the binging has underneath it a more turbulent process that's going on and usually binges are instead of being instead of binging on you know eight hundred calories worth of potatoes and rice and beans and corn and steamed vegetables and a salad ie a nice bit Keltie dinner and then eating a bunch more usually a dinger starts out with something that's rich at the beginning mm-hmm they start out with a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake and ice cream and french fries and and then they go to a liquor store and they get a big three bags of Doritos and everything that they're eating is highly concentrated and and so what what I believe happens is is that they get conditions to doing this so they probably if we were to look at a benchers digestive system my guess is is that they are probably churning out a great deal of bile in order to break down a high fat tornado that is about to hit them and so probably if we looked at that process as the binge is starting or as it is beginning to start we're probably going to find a very antsy person that has a lot of digestive enzymes an awful lot of digestive reflux is taking place because it's expecting to get hit with five or six or seven thousand calories and as a result they crave it okay and then once it starts as you begin to eat the first rich thing it reinforces a net now the system basically says ok this is for real it's going to happen again and so the it braces itself for the storm and it creates its own craving it can be pretty intense so I think binging is clearly a more more pathological if you were process it's it's I I would say that the two things are not dissimilar maybe to the difference between being addicted to coffee and being addicted to cigarettes so coffee is you know not a trivial addiction on its it's relatively mild it's not that destructive you could just put this little hook in your mouth okay and it's not great but it's not it's not super intense whereas cigarettes are much more intense and much more problematic and but they are but they are not dissimilar they're in there in but one of them is clearly more intense than the other and more difficult and that that is how I would see the difference between a conditioned cram circuit and binge eating hey so I want to repeat back to briefly what you said to make sure that I understand it because um Amanda says that you described her to a tee she eats healthy food all day til full and then gives into cravings at night place chip and ice cream so that's the crammed circuit she didn't have crit if she didn't and that's normal you're saying that we all have this condition crammed circle that's not pathological she doesn't need to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist because of this and however I would add that if she didn't have ice cream and chips in her house she would not be able to cram on it but binging if I understand you is a little bit more pathological even though it may be creating its own circuitry and that it is from restricting either somebody restricting calories are particularly calories from starch is that correct because it seems to me that at least the people I know that are suffering from binging they're not only restricting calories but but it seems to be there particularly restricting starch which to me is the only thing that's ever going to make you feel full and satisfied I think there's a lot to that I think that there are individuals where there are individuals that get a conditioning system loaded up that they can binge on anything so they're not not typical but there are people that can that can binge on very healthy food and it can be it can be something to see so there's people that can that can eat eight pounds of baked potatoes wow that is an extraordinary situation and only takes place behind essentially a conditioned binging a really serious condition cramming is kind of what this is so I see these things on essentially a continuum and whoever made Amanda is that that's a that's a very standard healthy normal nervous system that has itself wandering into a pathological kitchen that's right I love that dr. Lisle so it's not her circuitry this pathological is her kitchen that's fantastic again the environment guys don't forget to share this so that hopefully dr. Lisle wood will come back so these people that can binge on these 8 pounds of potatoes I can't help them can they come to you for private sessions because I know that you have a website which is www.hyken.com plan and at the end of the day sooner or later somebody has to face this thing down and look it in the eye and say I'm going to go ahead and be uncomfortable in waves for the next week or so so I'm gonna have several waves where my my nervous system is going to be screaming to indulge to get to get rid of these cravings so I'm gonna have to just look at in the eye and not do it one of the things that I I did when I was about it's about when I turned 50 I had I'd always been interested in itching I don't know why I know you said that like a little bit interesting the fact that it has a contagious quality to it if people even talk about it tell told me that this is part of our natural history that if you saw somebody itching or talking about feeling itchy then you better start scratching yourself because there may be a set of ticks right around where we happen to be sitting so you need to it increases the probability that if I'm itching then you've actually got some little parasite so so this is I believe why this is a contagious sort of process and now I've got the Qing on my forehead and now I the minute you said that my face started itching no I said you can now see even though it seems very odd that I would be interested now you're starting to see that it's actually quite interesting and and so the one day I decided that I was going to not scratch an inch and I tried to do that and I failed and then I failed again and then I failed again and then I failed about 30 times at this and then one day I had it out with myself and I said what are you gonna be 80 years old before you actually try to face this thing down like you should just try to face this thing down let's just find out what's at the other end because I'm looking right at my arm or whatever it was and knowing full well that there was no flea biting me I could see it that there was nothing wrong with that skin I knew that all this was was a little rogue circuit going off so I stared at this thing and I did something that I hadn't done before which is what I took off my watch and I looked at my watch and I said I'm gonna time how long this is gonna take and I'm just going to stare at this watch and we're just gonna see now it took two minutes and that was an extremely long two minutes obviously I had failed many times but for some reason by timing it it made it more more endurable and so I stared at this thing and it went away and then subsequently I've done it many times since and it always winds up being between a minute or two is when a essentially a rogue circuit that's going off for no good reason settles down and you don't have the edge I always wondered would you always then walk around and always want to itch that thing or because you wouldn't ever go away and the answer is I knew that it had to I had no idea when I thought it might be half an hour whoo enough so in the same way it's useful to know that these waves of craving are they are not gonna last forever they will come and they will go and the itch feels like you should and must itch this thing and it feels like it's not gonna go away if you don't itch it but it turns out that is incorrect it will go away if you don't it you and you just have to you know obviously it was in our best interest in our natural history to go ahead and scratch even if you couldn't see anything there because if there was a if there was a three a chance that some mosquito was biting you then you should go ahead and try to kill it and even if that means you got a bunch of scratches on your body where there was nothing there that was worth it it was more worth it to scratch and maybe get some little parasite and not scratch and not get it in the same way with obeying a condition cram circuit it was always in our bestest interest to go ahead and cram in some rich food if it's available even if you're not hungry even if you're overweight even if there's been nothing but other than a constant food supply for the last six months it doesn't matter the natural history of our species said there might not be very much food in the next 60 days so go ahead and load up while we've got it so that circuit is in there and that circuit will wise up and create a wave of craving but folks that wave of craving will not last it will pass just like the itch and so it might pass in 15 minutes it might pass in half an hour it may be mild may wise and get a little bit more intense but it's really not that intense and so once we once we break its back by actually facing this down for several days in a row it quiets down and you have what everybody would say is a new habit but when we talk about habits you know people don't even know what that is well we know a great deal of what habits are formed upon and they're formed on classical conditioning just like we're talking about in this let's just anticipate certain rewards and then we go obey it and go get those rewards and if we don't get them the system throws a fit so if you're going to change a habit you have to go through the process of having the system throw a fit you have to face it down you have to grit your teeth and stare at your watch and realize it's going to pass now one binge binge eater that I worked with and I was getting very confident very confident that I could manage this problem and I said listen these waves of craving are gonna last maybe half an hour to an hour so don't sweat it and don't worry about it just realize that that's what it's gonna be go for a walk go bowling whatever it is yeah I said but it's gonna be you know they'll come in waves and might be might be as much as an hour which makes sense to me about the you know other people had reported similar things sometimes much less she came back the next week and said dr. Lyle three hours gone to a movie was it very happy with me three hours it's like okay I didn't know that you could have cravings that would go on for three hours obviously a deeply conditioned circuit in that individual but nevertheless she broke the back of it so this is very possible to do so just because this is a tricky trap and those of you that heard me in las vegas just because we know how tenacious this trap is that this thing will not just go away without a fight you can win this fight everybody can win this fight just as everybody that is now smoking cigarettes can get off the cigarettes okay the I would say that people that are addicted to very powerful drugs that may not be possible in other words you're starting to reach out to the limits of human willpower about those those are the hard drugs don't play fair at all they create a wall so high than many people the matter how many they are they cannot scale the wall that's what makes them that the incredible dangerous things that they are but cigarettes no cigarettes are within the capability of the average human being in almost all human beings to grit your teeth and suffer through the the squalling that your nervous system is going to do and the same thing is true with this this is one home not one mole class lower in difficulty than cigarettes in terms of the sheer physiological cravings it's just tenacious okay it's and that's why as Ajay is saying if the stuff is in your environment those cues and knowing that you're in the environment is going to trigger ah cravings because your nervous system it's going to imagine that it's there and it's gonna see it in its mind's eye and it's gonna know all it has to do is walk over there and open the freezer door and it can start to imagine what its gonna taste like and all of that will keep this being reinforced and every time you reinforce it you strengthen the Association and make the fight a little bit harder absolutely thank you so much for saying that before we go on I just want to share a few the comments with you people are loving that you're here they want you to come back everybody's been itching since you talked about the its circuitry Jennifer wants to know if that's your original artwork and Jenny wants to know if you'll ever auction that painting off because apparently a lot of people think it's beautiful you know I live in an abaya Park and there's a lot of stray cats in the neighborhood and so sometimes people feed them and our landlord has written a letter saying we're not allowed to do that or we could be evicted and so when people stopped feeding them you know for a few days they would still come by and Yau and Yau and Yau but like you said after about three days they stopped coming by so kind of that's what I think about these cravings when you give in to them people think if they give in to the craving they make the craving go away no they're intensifying it and the only way for it to ever go away permanently would be to stop giving in to it as hard as that may be yes yes of course as I'm sure you understand this and we all do and that is when you give in to the craving it eliminates the craving for right then of course it does and there's a beautiful relief when that takes place and so that but that's the problem the now now we've reinforced it and so that's believe me that cat is all happy and purring and all relaxed and just nothing's better than when you open that can and put it down in front of it but now you've made sure that things coming back tomorrow and it's determined it is sure then that you know when you are not given at the can and you've got one and it deserves it and if you yells long and loud enough it's get it which is exactly what happens as we reinforce our own our own bad habits right cuz you've often said that we're just a bunch of raccoons in the garbage and if we want to stop that then throw out the garbage right so that that's just absolutely fascinating now Christina said that your intervention for anxiety which is to run or march in place does she said would that also interrupt the cram circuit I would think any distraction might help yeah you know that's interesting I think I think going and exercising definitely would I've noticed something in myself if I have something something troubling me but that's hanging over my head something that I was supposed to do and didn't and Agis upset with me the I noticed that when I go what I do for recreation is I'll go play basketball and I noticed that when I go play basketball I'm in the you know in the game and I'm playing for a couple hours and I come out of there and I literally haven't thought about anything and the rest of my life for the two hours I'm in that gym like everything all I'm thinking about is the guys that are there and the teams and you know who called the chintzy foul on me and all that that's all that I haven't concerned about and it's not until I get outside the gym door walk into my car do I start to then my brain shifts gear and starts thinking about all the things that I was supposed to be doing and so this is very interesting that human beings are what we're gonna call context dependent they are very context dependent you're very what's going on in your mind I think we can get overly fascinated with the fact that human beings have these incredible imaginations and that you can take yourself out to Star Trek just in your own minds eye and sit there and see Captain Kirk and Vulcan and you know everything else under the Sun of course you can but the truth of the matter is is that we are very sensory oriented that we are highly subject to the realized sensory inputs that are right in front of our face and those things start dominating the mental Shinra so when I'm out there playing basketball and I'm upset about something I could I could have had something wonderful happen to me you know half an hour before but before I went out on the court and then 45 minutes into the game of the court somebody does something and I get arguing with them and now I'm all bent out of shape it's like really I've completely forgotten that something terrific just happened an hour before and so this is the context dependence of human nature and absolutely all animal nature humans are so imaginative that they can forget just how important their sensory environment is in terms of what's actually going on with them so this is why we need to pay such close attention to our environment and do a really good job designing it for success because if the environment is conducive to you doing a really good job and enjoying your life from within the context of doing a good job then you will and if the environment is actually set up for self-indulgence and you know counting and conditioning things that we don't want conditioned they will they will condition and so these are this is why you know this is a long-standing message that you and I are trying to share with people you know get your environment really clean and get your routines down let's make sure we've got a bunch of healthy food right under our hands and now we know also not rich healthy food we've got to have it yeah intermediate calorie density healthy food available and no rich food available if we do that then we can keep out of this trap absolutely Mimi says we love you Doug and since you mentioned environment we have two very similar questions from Julie and Jennifer it's about their work environment because they both say they would never dream of having any crap food in their house however that their binges start at work because maybe they're stressed and they it that you know we have a lot of people that aren't the boss and so you know you go to every business today whether it's the bank or the pet store and there's free samples of candy so they're saying what do you do about the work environment their home is clean there's no processed food or junk but but if sometimes they give in to the crap in the in in the work environment which then starts the binge earlier in the day and how do you help these people have more things it's very interesting these these are the good news is that you're going to be able to watch these patterns over and over again and really learn the potency of it so small confession the the sometimes the last couple three weeks I went to a Japanese restaurant had a really healthy meal at the end they bring a little mint a little chocolate in it so I ate it and I have to tell you it was it was entertaining watching my brain as I drove home my brain was scheming it out where it is that I could go and get some more chocolate thing I'm like that is incredible because I I am not at all that that no way is that a habit I don't think about it I you know etc this is not something that goes down and yet here it was this taste is lingering in the nervous system it was so reinforcing obviously because my my meal is a bunch of you know vegetables in a big soup okay so meals all healthy and fine and solve three hundred two hundred calorie pound vegetables and you know so there we go and now what do we have three thousand carry pound chocolate on my tongue little bit of it and what happens scheming this was interesting and of course then I watched it and I watched the decay function on it for my own entertainment and within about ten or fifteen minutes who was completely gone so it fired up a bunch of circuits the the little the little raccoon was trying to figure out where the where there would be a boxes mints and then then you you know we wasn't gonna do anything about it and so then by the time I got home and got distracted and headed the cat's fed the neighbor's cat that comes by did but the point is is that once I got distracted got out of that got out of that stimulus situation than it all quiets down you know that make that makes sense yes same way oh I I told a friend recently that was having the same problem at her work and she says oh you know it's this time of year you know she's the Jewish faith and so this is a time of year there's a bunch of there's a bunch of really tasty foods around and I said and she says oh and it's free and I said free cocaine okay it's very interesting by recognizing by by saying look this is cocaine this is gonna stand this is standing right between you and your weight-loss goals and your fitness goals etc and so yeah just because it's free and it's hanging around working three samples you need to understand no that's free cooking and and soon as I said that her reaction was it's disgusting like just you know she had to conceptualize it in a different way so suddenly it wasn't so friendly and suddenly it was you know not that there's evil people scheming but close enough you know I'm saying close enough essentially the modern the McCartan food supply is essentially an evil scheme to have you fifty pounds overweight and feeling bad about yourself like I don't care how friendly it looks nice free samples forget it it's free cocaine don't get home yeah well there is a cost to free isn't there you know your experience with the chocolate mint reminded me of something that maybe will help these two young ladies with unclean work environments there was a brief period of time in my 50 pound weight loss where I was still the pastry chef and I didn't want to be doing that I knew I would have to quit eventually and so I wouldn't eat the food but every now and then I would just to make sure I'd have to taste it and so I didn't want that lingering chocolate or mint or whatever on my tongue so I had a bunch of steamed kale and every time I had to taste a batter I would put in a piece of plain steamed kale because I wanted that to be the last taste so maybe something so maybe if they had a lot of healthy food there when they see the chocolate just eat something that's not chocolate and let that be what you remember last you know I will I don't want to sound sink and I nice or pure as I make plenty mistakes but I have to tell you that I think my favorite personal taste in the world is a right cool watermelon and there really isn't anything you know there is no junk food of any concoction of course it has a different experience that will blow that away in terms of calorie density reach in and artificially hammer the the pleasure centers of the brain so that little piece of chocolate mint you know was quite a little snort of cocaine is what it was but there is really no experience that is so integrated it's so good for me as that piece of watermelon because it it's it's wet and it's fibrous and it's crunchy and it's sweet but it's not overly sweet and it you know and it's healthy and I know it's healthy and everything is within the normal parameters of how it should be it's effectively like listening to really great music at the right at the right volume level and whereas anything else is listen to something that's overly loud and I mean it can be it can be racy and it can be exciting when it's are really loud of course it is but it's it's a different experience but there's something just beautiful about treating this nervous system you know in the right way with the right stuff and so that's that's what we need to keep focused on we are not deprived when we say no to the cocaine we are we are limiting our life experience we're drawing boundary lines around it and you know some people may have extraordinarily difficulty with that concept but the truth of the matter is is that when you limit your adventurousness to healthy living then you expand the possibility of not only the length of your life quality of it so it is a trade-off you know I mean the the lure is there and we all understand the tremendous lure of the artificially rich food and even even the healthy rich food on a repetitive basis we understand it but folks it's costly and it's costly in these very subtle long-term ways that it's a it's like a little debt that is building up and it's pricey so yeah nothing like that watermelon in fact I'm gonna go right after this and go get myself one Bert now you're gonna have everybody on this broadcast itching and eating watermelon by the end of the broadcast out that that's hilarious so Gabriella has an interesting question because in Vegas you said that a full stomach was actually a cue for us to cram so her question was well then should we be eating smaller meals so that we don't experience a full stomach a very good question I would say I would say no and here's why so that's very good thinking on Gabrielle's part and so this is that but here's what it is that I'm after I'm not afraid of you eating to society not at all what we have to do this is this would be similar to saying I smoked cigarettes out on my back deck after dinner okay and so what we would say is well for a while you may want to switch up and not go out to your back deck after dinner so we're gonna try to break that conditioning paradigm apart but what we're not gonna say is you don't get to go sit out on your back deck nothing wrong with sitting out on your back deck and pretty soon and after a while you can sit out on the back deck and not be craving the cigarettes in the same way there's nothing wrong with eating to society I'm whole natural foods but we have to get out of the conditioned process that that means that it's a biological signal that we're going to cram by the time you do not cram five six seven days in a row after you need to society then eating to satiety will will start to not be a queue for the Kremen and so now we counter condition that and yeah the last thing I want people to do is to be obsessive and worried about have the eating too much because they still need a little more have they eaten to society it's like no I don't care just get it halfway right we know when it's wrong all of us know when we are not hungry we're actually full and our stomachs distended but we're cramming a peanutbutter sandwich in there anyway that's the cram circuit that's the one that we stopped and if we do that repetitively and consistently then we basically break up the conditioning so great question and and so it's an immuno well I'm glad she asked because it's an important one that we answer that you're not saying don't eat too comfortable Society right good yeah I'm glad we brought that up and that you answer that and I think that's a great analogy about how the junk food in the rich food is like you know like like a like rap music and in the watermelon is kind of like smooth jazz and I would much rather you know the rap concert can be exciting but I kind of prefer this at least now it with my age so Tracy says what's the quickest way to recover mentally from a binge and get back on track there that you know we hear that a lot because it seems like once you do it then you keep doing it and that's why you don't want to when people relapse I feel so bad because they could do well for days weeks months and then they can get hit with this and then sometimes it takes them just as long to get back on track as they as they were compliant and and I know that's a real issue for a lot of people yeah I think binging is I think that what's useful for cheaters is to understand that that there's nothing cat illogical about them but what they're living in is they're living in a pathological environment and they've got themselves neuro adapted to rich foods and they also have a cram circuit which is completely reasonable that they have one but the problem is is that ironically a lot of your cheaters are actually intensively more they're more intensively conscientious than just a normal run-of-the-mill Kramer okay in other words because a lot of what sets up binge eating is restriction and so these people will restrict because they're they're embarrassed and humiliated and disgusted with themselves because they binge yesterday and so now they're like I don't need to eat you know I was bad so now I'm not gonna eat well now they they grit their teeth and they wind up you know four in the afternoon they haven't eaten anything all day and now they're in trouble again and so so if anything we need some more we need some more cutting ourselves a little more slack about this and to understand that hey these are just this is just a combination of adaptive instincts essentially planning out inside of the pathological environment where some people happen to be more susceptible than others for very interesting reasons none of which are pathological the fact that some people are more determined to grit their teeth and not eat for sixteen hours or 12 hours after they binge that isn't a pathological psychological problem that's a heroic determination to to slap themselves on the back of the head and say why did you do that yesterday we're gonna make up for today that's not that's not a it's not a psychological problem to fix it's actually a characteristic that is walking us into the problem again so it's almost essentially greater self understanding and appreciation for how these things fit together how these pieces fit together can hopefully make a binge eater less critical of themselves for this process and so we we try to begin the next day by saying let's eat moderate modestly modestly but comfortably you know during this day and we're not gonna quote lose all the way today that we gained yesterday forget it we're not gonna do that we're going to begin today with a much more important agenda which is to unwind this pattern by by not being so self-critical by being more consistent with the amount that we eat and knowing that that once you start to hit anything that remotely resembles a reasonable amount of food you got a conditioned cram circuit that wants to run away with you okay that's why I tell people eat a reasonable amount of food for example in the evening and then you get up from that kitchen table and you do not come back you are not back in the kitchen you're not back in the kitchen fixing tea you're not back in the kitchen with just a handful of nuts you're not back in the kitchen for a carrot you're not back in the kitchen for anything okay we're not in the kitchen looking to put anything into your mouth you drink water the reason why is that we you know what about this little locale thing what about that little what about an apple nothing okay nothing the answer is we want your nervous system to not be thinking that there is food coming after we're full that is how we're gonna counter condition this thing because even if we put an apple in there an hour later we're not really that hungry but we want to little something we feeling a little bit of a craving for something and we're going to be a good good person instead of having a tray full of I don't know some chocolate yummy rich thing that we used to have that we threw out yesterday we're gonna have an apple instead I don't have anything stare down the edge scram circuit and in a relatively short order we'll have this thing under control I find sometimes just going for a walk after dinner I have a dog and Charles and I often take a walk after dinner but now I'm thinking you know last night when I got home I ate I actually ate a half an apple I wasn't hungry why didn't you call me I I mean I really did it's not gonna hurt me but I think I still do it unconsciously it was like yeah you know I kind of want a little something but at least in my house that's the worst that's gonna happen is an apple or maybe a sweet potato so I don't worry about it I'm never worried about that I'm yeah about a normal condition nervous system that is not in a conditioning paradigm nibbling at a pear after dinner sometime but I am worried about it when we're trying to break up a conditioning paradigm right I am worried about though this is where we want to slam on the brakes and not scratch that edge and that's how we're gonna be out of the trial because it becomes a it seems to become a cycle for a lot of people binge restrict repeals and we've got to break that cycle Wow this this is just an amazing you know I could I know you wanted to keep it to no more than an hour I want to respect your time but to tell you that a lot of people were watching and they're sharing it thank you for sharing and hopefully maybe you'll talk to us again about this or other subjects because lots more questions we love hearing from you people love you and and this topic is really important so that so thank you so much dr. Lyon thanks everyone for watching you know you can still share this right now with all the people on your group Facebook pages and friend Facebook patients we really appreciate that maybe we can encourage dr. Lau to maybe do this as a as a monthly feature as busy as he is with the MacDougal webinars once a month on Thursday in his weekly podcast we love talking to you so thank you dr. Lyle and thanks all yeah thanks everybody for watching and come back tomorrow at 4 o'clock for weight loss Wednesday and we had Josh love Johnny we had some big big big big heavy hitters watching this so thanks so much thanks dr. Lyle I'm chef AJ and I make healthy tastes delicious thanks y'all
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