Up-Level Your Life with Mindy
Conquering Cravings and Reclaiming Control with Glenn Livingston's Insights on Overeating
In this episode, Glenn Livingston, PhD and I, tackle the pervasive challenge of overeating, dissecting the mental battles we endure against cravings and the allure of comfort foods. With Glenn's rich background as a former food industry CEO and his transformative personal journey from obesity to health, he brings a treasure trove of research and experience. We share the powerful strategy of personifying the reptilian brain to combat the seductive whispers of our "inner pig," setting straightforward rules that pave the way to sustainable change.
This conversation is more than just about shedding pounds; it's a heartfelt exchange of triumphs and trials. As we unravel the psychological threads of cravings, discover how creating a strong self-identity, practicing parasympathetic breathing, and understanding the mechanisms of the brain can equip you with the tools for a balanced and autonomous relationship with eating.
To learn more about Glenn, visit:
https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/
To learn more about Mindy CLICK HERE
In this episode, Glenn Livingston, PhD and I, tackle the pervasive challenge of overeating, dissecting the mental battles we endure against cravings and the allure of comfort foods. With Glenn's rich background as a former food industry CEO and his transformative personal journey from obesity to health, he brings a treasure trove of research and experience. We share the powerful strategy of personifying the reptilian brain to combat the seductive whispers of our "inner pig," setting straightforward rules that pave the way to sustainable change.
This conversation is more than just about shedding pounds; it's a heartfelt exchange of triumphs and trials. As we unravel the psychological threads of cravings, discover how creating a strong self-identity, practicing parasympathetic breathing, and understanding the mechanisms of the brain can equip you with the tools for a balanced and autonomous relationship with eating.
To learn more about Glenn, visit:
https://www.defeatyourcravings.com/
To learn more about Mindy CLICK HERE
hey, friends, this is your host, mindy duff, and you're listening to up level your life with mindy, your number one personal growth podcast that will bring you closer to uncovering your greatest self. As a certified holistic health and nutrition coach, I created this podcast for anyone who desires to improve physically, emotionally and spiritually. I'll be interviewing experts and sharing tips and tricks that have helped not only my clients, but that have guided me on my own transformational journey. I believe that we all have a greatness that lies within. We just need to uncover it. Are you ready to level up? Then let's begin. Hi everyone and welcome back to Uplevel your Life with Mindy.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, mindy Duff, and I am going to be chatting with a guest today, and we're going to be discussing overeating and cravings and all kinds of things that I know a lot of us have some kind of experience with, to whatever degree.
Speaker 1:Maybe it might be different from person to person, but I'm going to be chatting with Glenn Livingston and I just want to tell you a little bit about him first here.
Speaker 1:Glenn Livingston is a PhD, was the longtime CEO of a multimillion-dollar consulting firm, which has serviced several Fortune 500 clients in the food industry. Glenn has sold $30 million of marketing consulting services over the course of his career, and you may have seen some of his or his company's previous work, theories and research in major periodicals like the New York Times, los Angeles Times, chicago Sun-Times, indiana Star-Ledger, the New York Daily News, american Demographics or any of the other major media outlets that you might even actually even think of. Pretty much you've probably seen his work, whether you knew it or not, to be honest. So Glenn was disillusioned by what traditional psychology had to offer overweight and or food obsessed individuals, and so he spent several decades researching the nature of binging and overeating, via work with his own clients and a self-funded research program with more than 40,000 participants. Most important, however, was his own personal journey out of obesity and food prison to a normal, healthy weight and to a much more lighthearted relationship with food. Glenn, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I've got to take you around to parties and have you introduce me. That was lovely.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you bet. So I'd like to just start with the beginning of your story. Now, how? In your intro there I mentioned many wonderful things that you've been doing, but how did you get to this point? What started this journey? With food, basically.
Speaker 2:Well, I like to say that I lost the war with a chocolate bar in 1982, when I didn't wake up for about 20 years. It's a nice way of saying that I lost the war with a chocolate bar in 1982, when I didn't wake up for about 20 years. It's a nice way of saying that I had a problem. I was, you know, I'm 6'4" and just genetically I'm kind of lucky. I'm a little broad-shouldered and, you know, modestly muscular. And when I was a kid if I worked out for a couple hours a day, it didn't matter what I ate, and when I could have 5,000, 6,000 calories a day, no problem. A whole pizza, box of muffins, box of chocolate bars, it didn't matter. I mean it did. I was spending too much time sleeping it off, but when you're a kid you don't care about that. But I loved it, I thought it was great.
Speaker 2:And as I got a little older, I was married young, at 22, and my metabolism slowed down and I had to commute two hours each way to go to graduate school and we were running a business together. The business was hers originally. We were running the business together and so I didn't have two minutes a day to work out, much less two hours and I found that the food still had a hold on me. I would be, you know, sitting with a suicidal patient and thinking when can I get the next pizza? I never lost anybody, thank goodness, and you know, thank goodness I overcame this, but you know I wasn't 100% present and that actually bothered me more than the weight or the physical effects of the food itself, because I come from a family of 17 psychotherapists and if something breaks in the house, we all know how to ask it, how it feels, and nobody really knows how to fix it.
Speaker 2:It's a joke, but when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so when I tried to fix this for myself, I made the assumption that I must have a metaphorical hole in my heart. And if I could fill that hole in my heart then I wouldn't have to keep trying to fill the hole in my stomach. And so I went to the best psychologists in and around New York City because we knew them, we were in that crowd and I confessed my soul and I cried and I screamed and I told stories and I went on a spiritual journey in Overeaters Anonymous and I took medication for a little while. I went to see dieticians and nutritionists and everything I did would enrich me as a person and it would make me lose a little bit of weight. And then I get a whole bunch back and the obsession got worse and worse and worse. So there was something that just wasn't working. Over the course I'm really condensing things quite a lot. I've got more stories if you want to go into it.
Speaker 2:But over the course of about 20 years of that type of a journey, I had three things that flipped my paradigm about how to approach food, from nurture your inner wounded child. You know, back to health or try to love yourself. Then to something more. Like you know, be the alpha wolf of your own mind. You know, when the alpha wolf is challenged for leadership, it doesn't say, oh my goodness, someone needs a hug. Right, it growls and it snarls and says get back in line or I'll kill you. Like it asserts its superiority. And I realized that I should be able to assert my superiority over these biological urges in the same way that I could assert my superiority over other biological urges. You know, like you see a pretty woman on the street, you don't just go run up and kiss them. You have to go urinate while you're in a meeting. I would say I'm sorry, but I'm talking to Mindy Now you're going to have to wait, right, like I, I'm in charge, not my biology, to a certain extent. I mean, if I decided not to pee for 12 hours, my bladder would tell me otherwise. But maybe in four or five hours at this age, but but but the three things that flipped that paradigm were that I was doing a lot of consulting for the food industry. I was on the wrong side of the war. I'm actually trying to make up for it now I feel guilty about what I did, but I was making a lot of money, you know, helping to sell sugars and packages and containers and things, and what I saw there was that they were engineering these hyperpalatable concentrations of starch and sugar and fat and salt that excite our toxins, and it was all geared to hit the bliss point of your reptilian brain. They spent a lot of time talking about bliss points without giving you the nutrition to feel satisfied, and the reptilian brain doesn't know love.
Speaker 2:The reptilian brain looks at something in the environment and says do I? This is the reptilian brain. It says do I eat it, do I mate with it or do I kill it? It's like a bad college drinking game. It doesn't know love. It's the mammalian brain on top of that that says before you eat, mate or kill that thing, what impact does that have on your tribe, on your family, on the people that you love? The neocortex says on top of that, what impact will that have on your long-term goals like health and fitness and weight loss, and also spirituality and art and music and work and contribution?
Speaker 2:But this thing here doesn't know love. So I said okay. So there is this external force. They're spending tens of millions of dollars to engineer these crazy foods and it has nothing which is geared towards my reptilian brain, which is all about feast or famine, fight or flee, eat, meet or kill. It doesn't know love. Why am I trying to love myself thin again? Why is that going to work? I saw the advertising industry and how they were stellar at leveraging plausible deniability. These potato chips have avocado oil in them and they have a big avocado star in it. And then does anybody really think that avocado you?
Speaker 2:know and potato chips with avocado oil are good for you. Does anybody really think there's a lot of nutrition in a potato chip? We eat potato chips. I mean it's fine if you want to have them, but don't do it because you think you're getting a nutritious lunch. It's just it's a potato chip, right.
Speaker 2:But all the rational brain needs is a sliver of an excuse to justify what the reptilian brain wants to do. And the reptilian brain is geared to push the rational brain out of the way when it perceives a scarce food opportunity. And 100,000 years ago, when all of these brain structures were evolving, the ability to acquire that many calories in such a small space for so little effort just didn't exist. And so the reptilian brain goes wow and it just lights up. And it's got to have it, because I can walk downstairs to a convenience store and buy 10 000 calories for a hundred dollars and walk across the street and do the next thing. She said this is a very powerful external force. It has nothing to do with whether my mama didn't love me enough, or she dropped me on my head, or I was in a bad marriage or anything like that which I was and I kind of put together eventually. I was reading some alternative addiction treatment literature. Oh and then, finally, I did that study. I intercepted people on the internet when clicks were cheap and I got 40,000 people to take a survey, which was essentially about what they were stressed about and what foods they struggled to stop overeating when they were stressed. And there were three things that came out of that study, one of which I thought was going to be my answer, but it wasn't. The three things that came out of that study one of which I thought was going to be my answer, but it wasn't. The three things that came out of that were people that struggled with chocolate on and on, but I always started with chocolate. And it turned out that people who struggled with chocolate, they tended to be lonely, brokenhearted or a little depressed. People that struggled with soft chewy carby things, like, you know, bagels and bread and pasta and pizza they tended to be stressed at home. And people who struggled with crunchy, salty things like you know, chips and pretzels they tended to be stressed at home. And people who struggled with crunchy, salty things like you know, chips and pretzels they tended to be stressed at work. And I thought this was this brilliant finding and I thought this was going to be the answer, and all I have to do is figure out how to fix my marriage or stop being so, you know, lonely or depressed. And then I wasn't going to have to.
Speaker 2:So I called my mom, who was also a psychotherapist Um, she's since passed, but she was alive back then. And I said mom, I have this really interesting things, especially about chocolate, cause you and I, we both go to chocolate. What do you think that's about? How did this pattern start, you know, when I was little. Why don't, why do I go to chocolate when I feel, you know, lonely or, you know, depressed or something? And she got this horrific look on her face. This is kind of the moment that I really switched the paradigm. She got this horrific look on her face and she said oh honey, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I said, mom, it's okay, I love you, I forgive you.
Speaker 2:This was 40 years ago. This was a long time ago. This was 1965. I don't care. Ago, this was a long time ago. This was, you know, 1965. I don't care, I just really want to know. I'm trying to figure this out.
Speaker 2:Just say well, honey, when you were one year old, in 1965, 1966, I had a. Your dad and I were really worried that they were going to send him to Vietnam. He was a captain of the army and we're really worried about it. And I was frightened I was going to be an army widow because we were trying to get pregnant with your sister and at the same time my father, your grandfather, had just gotten out of prison and he was guilty. I'd idolized him my whole life but he was guilty and I didn't know and just like my world came apart. And so half the time when you were coming running over to me for food or love or to play, I just didn't have the wherewithal to give it to you because I was sitting and, you know, staring at the wall. I was anxious and depressed. So what I did is I got a big bottle of chocolate Bosco syrup and I kept it in a refrigerator on the floor and I'd say honey, go get your Bosco. And you'd go crawling over to the refrigerator and you'd I don't know if I did this when I was one, maybe I was two You'd go crawling over to the refrigerator and you take the chocolate Bosco out and you'd suck on the bottle and you go into a chocolate sugar coma and I could resume staring at the wall. And you know, mindy, if this were a movie staring at the wall and you know, mindy, if this were a movie, that would have been the cure, right, if this was a movie, we'd have a big hug and a big cry and that would be it. I'd never have trouble with chocolate again.
Speaker 2:What happened instead was kind of crazy. I actually got worse with chocolate. I mean, it was a great conversation to have. I heated myself less. I had more compassion for myself. I had all kinds of compassion for my mom and what she was going through. I got to ask her all kinds. It was a very healing conversation. So I don't regret having that conversation.
Speaker 2:But there was this crazy voice in my head I'm not schizophrenic, but there was this voice of justification that we all live with and it said you know what, glenn, you're right, our mama didn't love us enough and she left a great big chocolate-sized hole in your heart and until you could fix the marriage or find love in your life, you're going to have to go right on binging on chocolate. Yippee, let's go get more right. And I said that's interesting, that may be the problem. It's like if the emotional conflict was a fire. Maybe the problem it's like if the emotional conflict was a fire. Maybe this thing in my head is poking holes in the fireplace. Maybe that's what's happening. Maybe if I could fix the fireplace and stop this thing from doing what it's doing, then I wouldn't have such a problem. Because, if you think about it, a fire a roaring fire in a well-contained fireplace is an asset, not a liability. A fire, a roaring fire in a well-contained fireplace is an asset, not a liability. Right, people gather around and they tell stories and they laugh and they cry and they hug, they make memories. It's an asset. It's only when holes in the fireplace let ashes get out that it can burn down the house.
Speaker 2:So I did something kind of crazy and I was not going to teach this. This was not a professional endeavor. I was a child and family psychologist and I was a marketing researcher. I had a dual career. So it's kind of odd that I wound up being the guy that teaches this. But at the time this was a very private thing. It's a little embarrassing for a sophisticated psychologist like me what I did. That actually worked. But here's what I did and you don't have to do it the same way.
Speaker 2:I decided to call my reptilian brain my inner pig. I know it's a little crazy, but this is my inner pig. And I drew a line in the sand. I said I'm going to have to know when this thing is active. So I need a rule like kind of a trip wire to wake me up when this thing gets active. So I said I'm never going to have chocolate during the week again, I'll only ever have it on the weekend, and no more than two ounces. And that way, if I'm in a coffee shop and I'm waiting in line with my latte to pay for it and there's a chocolate bar at the counter and I hear this voice inside that says, hey, that looks good and you could start your silly diet tomorrow, it'll be just as easy, I would say, whoa, wait a minute. That's not me, that's my inner pig.
Speaker 2:Chocolate on a Wednesday is pig slop. It's squealing for pig slop. I don't eat pig slop. I don't let farm animals tell me what to do. Stupid right, like stupid and crude.
Speaker 2:Um, but it kind of sort of worked. It wasn't a miracle, but I found it wasn't so mysterious anymore. I didn't feel like I had this chronic, progressive problem inside. I wasn't puzzled by what was happening, and it would give me those extra microseconds at the moment of impulse where I could make a better decision if I wanted to. There turned out to be a lot more to it, like once I was starting to wake up.
Speaker 2:I would work to disempower that justification. So, for example, it's not just as easy to start your rule over tomorrow, because if you have a craving and you think I'll just start tomorrow and then you reinforce the craving and the thought by eating the chocolate, then because our brain is always looking to repeat the things that led to calorie acquisition, then you're going to be more likely to have that thought tomorrow, more likely to say, start tomorrow, tomorrow and you're going to be in a deeper, you're going to have a deeper craving tomorrow. So if you're in a hole, stop digging. Always use the present moment to be healthy. Right? So it was things like that, you know. It would say one bite doesn't matter, and I would say one bite is a tragedy, because it's the difference between who's in charge, you or me. And I want to be the master of my own body and the master of my own fate. I don't want to be your B-I-A-T-C-H. I'm not here to be your slave, mr Pig.
Speaker 2:So I had these crazy conversations with my pig. I kept a journal about it for a long time and over the course of a couple of years that's how I got better. There were a couple of other things that happened. I figured out that there were authentic biological needs underneath the cravings, so I started experimenting with different types of smoothies when I had the chocolate craving and I found that if I had a kale banana or a kale juice and banana smoothie that it didn't feel as good as eating the chocolate, but it didn't have the crash either and I didn't crave more and more and more and more, like kind of scratch the itch, and so I settled for being content rather than getting high with food, getting high with chocolate. There are a bunch of other things that happened, but essentially for about eight years this was a private thing and I didn't lose the weight all at once. I was almost about 300 pounds and I came down about 80 pounds, but in stages, and I had to experiment with different types of rules and different types of foods. But I fixed the problem. I fixed the problem for myself.
Speaker 2:Okay, 2015, I'm getting divorced and I was kind of entangled. It was, you know, my ex-wife's business also and we were doing some other things. But they were all entangled and I said I'm going to have to reinvent myself completely. And I was a minor part of a publishing company because of some of the business dealings that I had. And I called the CEO and I'm talking to him and he said you know, we need to write our own book so we can do the kind of marketing experiments we want to do to prove that we know what we're doing and that way we could attract better authors. Do you think you could write a book? And I said that's as good an idea as any. I said I have this crazy journal of me versus my inner pig that I kept for eight years. He says I love it, write me a book. So I take that summer and I write the book. I send it to him. Two weeks later he calls me back and he says Glenn, don't answer pig slop, I don't need pig slop. I don't let farm animals tell me what to do. He proceeds to lose about 90 pounds over the next 18 months Along the way we publish the book.
Speaker 2:I start doing some of these podcasts and appearances. We know what we're doing in marketing, but I had no idea how much it was going to take off and wound up with over a million readers. I got a gig on Psychology Today writing for them, got another million readers there, and now people they don't quite recognize me by name, but sometimes in a bookstore they'll look at me and go you're the pig guy, aren't you the pig guy? I've subsequently softened it quite a bit. You can call it a food monster or, you know, your inner brat, or whatever you want to call it, but that's how I recovered. It's a long answer to what's your story, glenn, but that's what happened.
Speaker 1:Oh no, that's the perfect answer, because that's the true answer. And what a fascinating story that you have. I mean, and that's part of why you know you're here today and your story is so relatable to people, even if somebody maybe you're not 100 pounds overweight, maybe you're not even 50 pounds overweight, but we all have that moment where do I eat the brownie? Do I not eat the brownie? I just eat the brownie, right? And that's why I think this is so important.
Speaker 1:Don't screw it, just do it yeah right, yeah, like, oh, I haven't had one for a while. We're great at making excuses for ourselves, and then it just spirals.
Speaker 2:Remind me about that. I'll tell you what causes that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, well, tell me right now, because I'll forget.
Speaker 2:Well, so, if you think, largely by fixing my thinking right, I had all these justifications, so I had a trip wire. That was one part of it, so it would wake me up when the reptilian ring was getting active. And then I fixed my thinking. There were about 30 different excuses I was using, and I managed to disempower all of them eventually.
Speaker 2:When I published the book and it got so popular, we wound up developing a coaching agency and over the course of the next eight years, we worked with almost 2,000 people, we being not just myself and the groups that I was running, but also and individuals. But I wound up with about 10 coaches that worked with me, and so we were really in a unique position to study this. I think more so than just about anybody else to study this. I think more so than just about anybody else. And when we started doing long-term follow-ups to figure out what happened at the six-month mark, one-year mark, two-year marks we find that the one-month mark if people would engage with their program and the coaches a lot of people pay for programs and they don't do anything, but if they would engage with us, the average reduction in overeating was 89.4% Like we really figured out how to fix your thinking quickly. What that does is it makes it uncomfortable to cheat. There's a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance, which means that we don't like to observe ourselves doing things contrary to what we committed to, like to observe ourselves doing things contrary to what we committed to. We're very involved with identity and seeing ourselves as the kind of person who. So if I say I'm never going to have chocolate on a weekday again, I'm really saying I made a decision to become the kind of person who doesn't eat chocolate on a weekend and on a weekday. And if I see myself acting contrary to that, it not only makes me feel bad about myself for that moment, but it weakens my confidence that I can keep my own commitments in other ways. So it creates a kind of discomfort that your brain, for most people, want to resolve.
Speaker 2:When I did the long-term follow-ups and I talked to people at the six month or the one year mark or, you know, did a survey with almost 800 people not all of them were long-term people, but what we found was that it didn't really just drop to 55 or 60%, sometimes a little lower. It was bimodal, meaning that there was a group of people who were basically back to where they started from, at like 20%. And there was a group of people who were still up around 80, 85% and the central difference between them was that some people decided to stop doing the techniques. They just decided to stop using it. Decided to stop doing the techniques, they just decided to stop using it. And I said, well, what's causing that?
Speaker 2:When I would talk to people about those experiences, they'd say you know, doc, I got to the point where I would say I don't have any excuses anymore. You took away all my excuses. That was great. But eventually I say, oh well, what the hell? I just really, really want to Screw it, just do it.
Speaker 2:What's causing that? Like, I mean, look at me as compared to what I look like you know, 20 years ago, look at my life. Like, why would you do that? Well, it turns out that there's a perfectly good reason for it. The reptilian brain is equipped to push aside the rational brain. Most of the time, the rational brain has priority, but in a moment of perceived emergency or perceived scarce opportunity, the reptilian brain has the ability to push aside the rational brain and say no, we're just going for it. That's where you get the just hand over the chocolate and nobody gets hurt kind of phenomenon, right?
Speaker 2:So whenever people experience a certain level of organismic distress which they know colloquially as stress, they're more likely to experience that, and so when we look into what's actually causing that, there are a number of interesting things. First one is nutrition. It's the hardest one to change, to get people to change. So I focus on some of the other things and I like to tell people you know, you can defeat your cravings eating what you love. You really can. Two out of three people at least most people can do that. So I don't focus too hard on changing people's nutrition as long as they're eating reliably.
Speaker 2:But but people that were experiencing this, screw it, just do it moment. They were skipping meals. Um, they were trying some, you know, fasting craze or something like that, they, they. When they recounted exactly what happened, they usually had, um, eaten something kind of funky, the funky, the last meal that they ate before. So they didn't really get enough nutrition the day before because they overeat and then they're trying to skip a meal to make up for it. The brain can only take so much. Not enough nutrition. Where's my food? Wait, am I in a feast and famine environment as soon as food's available, I better hoard it, screw it. Just do it Right. This is a received emergency. So I mean one thing you can take away from that is that if you want to overcome that response, if you want to stick to your plan, you can regularly reliably neutrify yourself at a slight caloric deficit if you need to lose weight.
Speaker 2:Don't try to make up for a day of overeating with a day of crazy eating. Make up for a day of overeating with a week of crazy eating. Make up for a day of overeating with a week of normal eating. It just works a lot better. Okay, but I had a hard time getting people to do that. So I said what else is causing this form of organismic distress and how can we regulate it? It turns out that willpower is the ability to make good decisions and we're only equipped to make so many good decisions over the course of a day. There's a lot of work by a researcher named Baumeister that looks into largely, concludes largely, that willpower is more like gas in the tank than a genetic muscle that we have, and you make better decisions in the morning. So, by the way, if you struggle with overeating at night, you want to make your eating decisions in the morning, if you can. But it's not just food decisions that wear us down, it's who's taking Janet to soccer practice.
Speaker 2:And what do I do with this email 42,000 times a day? Do I spam it? Do I reply to it? Do I spam it? Do I reply to it? Do I defer it? Do I delegate it? Decisions, decisions, decisions. They're not natural and they wear you down over the course of the day. So we found that if we could get people to take two, five or 10 minute breaks away from decisions entirely, turn off the computer, turn off your phone, go to the bathroom and hide if you have to, but 10 minutes, you know five minutes. If you can't make 10 minutes twice a day, it makes a difference because your brain will restore Okay.
Speaker 2:Similarly, we found if people got too fatigued, that the brain was more likely to respond with we need calories. You know we don't have enough resources, right, we're trying to do more than this body was meant to do, and so we need more resources to do that. If you don't get enough water, if you find yourself too isolated, you know we're a tribal animal, we evolved in a social pack and it was probably dangerous for us if we became isolated from the tribe and for that reason we're more likely to receive an emergency if we feel too alone. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be a social butterfly, because about half the world are introverted, and I'm actually introverted it doesn't seem like that on these calls, but I have to force myself to do this kind of thing. What it means is that you have to have confidence in your social network. You need to know that there are people there if you need them.
Speaker 2:And so if we can get people who are feeling somewhat isolated to work on, you know, going to a class or you can do it online, it's a little better if you work it out to see people in person. Um, you know, even sometimes just going to the mall and walking around and knowing that you're you're not isolated out in the jungle, with lions and tigers and bears, oh my um, that that kind of thing helps. Um, what did I leave out? Why don't I leave out? Um, misinterpreting stressful stimuli. So you know, we can't often do a lot about what happens to us in the world, but we can do a lot about what we think about them, and so a lot of the classic um, cognitive behavioral techniques, and you know cognitive behavioral techniques and reframing how you're thinking about stress, that can help you.
Speaker 2:And so the last book that I wrote which is not the most popular one but it's the best, it's got all of the scientific evidence, it's got all of these updated things to overcome the Scrooge or Stewart response. It's called Defeat your Cravings and it really focuses on more of a dual approach, we see, fixing your thinking. Now I used to think it was the whole problem, but now I see it as a necessary but not sufficient element of overcoming cravings. The other piece is managing organismic distress and actually the third half I left out of half. The third half has to do with um, understanding how scientific, scientifically understanding how the extinction curve works. How does the brain, why do we have cravings in the first place and how does it extinguish cravings when, when it needs to? I could talk about that next, but I feel like I'm talking a lot and you must have questions, so I'm gonna be quiet for a moment.
Speaker 1:No, this is wonderful. I think it's really interesting, and maybe this is just me, because, glenn, I don't know. If you know, I have a background as a holistic health and nutrition coach myself.
Speaker 1:So some of what you're talking about. I'm like, yes, because I feel like a lot enough people are talking about the science behind it and some people go. I don't care about the science behind it and some people go. I don't care about the science behind it, but yet if you don't have some kind of working knowledge of it, it's going to be to me that much harder to overcome. So when you can understand like you're talking about that reptilian brain, when you can understand that that's where this is coming from, first of all it takes some of the pressure off of yourself, like, okay, I'm not a horrible person, there's a biological reason why this is happening, and then you can catch it easier. I think with any kind of change we're trying to make in our lives, awareness is always the first step. It's annoying but it has to happen. If you don't have the awareness of what's coming before B, you have to know what A is first. Then you can kind of control what happens after that.
Speaker 2:Well, I write in a very practical way. I'm not really writing for academia, I'm writing for the masses and I can explain. You know, I can explain the scientific part in plain English if you'd like, yeah yeah, should I do that, let's do Okay.
Speaker 2:So the most important thing to understand is that, or even before that, the real most important thing to understand is that cravings are not a sign of a diseased mind. It's not a sign of being a horrible person. We live in a world where everybody tacitly encourages each other to slowly kill themselves with food, and then we shame people when they have struggles with it. But the truth is that strong cravings are a sign of a strong mind. A hundred thousand years ago, when our physiology evolved, our cravings were what kept us alive. You see, food was pretty scarce and you had to work to get it. So if you were not incredibly motivated to follow cues that led to the acquisition of calories and nutrition, you were going to starve. It was the ancestors who had the stronger cravings that were more likely to survive. So that's the first thing you got to get into your head. If you have strong cravings, you're not a sicko. You're actually healthier than other people. Unfortunately, in the modern food environment it's a problem, but physiologically you're not a sicko. You're actually healthier than other people. Unfortunately, in the modern food environment it's a problem, but physiologically you're not a sicko. The second thing is that the brain creates and extinguishes cravings via the same mechanism. So it's not really possible unless you have lesions in your ventromedial hypothalamus or some kind of real brain injury or brain disease, unless you have a ver in your ventromedial hypothalamus or some kind of real, you know, brain injury or brain disease. Unless you have a verifiable disease like that, it's not really possible for someone to be broken physiologically where they have to eat all these donuts and they can't do anything about it. It's not really physiologically possible to do that. So it's the wrong message that our culture sends about that. Okay, so now that you know you're not a sicko and that it's actually a sign that your brain is functioning the right way. Let's talk about the function of cravings and, most importantly, how do you extinguish them? What happens when you extinguish them?
Speaker 2:The image I want you to remember is that most people think that cravings go down in a straight line when you remove the reward. So I'm passing a donut shop on the way home. Every day I stop stopping for donuts. First it's one donut, then it's two, then it's four, and they say this has to go. I will never eat donuts on the way home from work again, right, or I'll only ever have donuts on a Saturday morning, like only, I'll only ever do that again, so I'm not going to stop at home from work. So I go through the first day and most people think that the hardest part is going to be those first couple of days, and then it's just going to get easier and easier and easier.
Speaker 2:That's not what happens, and I want to tell you why and the mistakes people make. What actually happens is it goes down a little bit for a little bit of a honeymoon period and then you have worse cravings than you've ever had. Then your brain goes crazy and then it starts to come down and then, somewhere around the 21 to 30 day mark, you get a couple of little bumps. Why in the world does that happen? Why do we do that?
Speaker 2:I'd like you to imagine a caveman 100,000 years ago let's call him Thag T-H-A-G, just because I like the name and imagine that Thag finds a monkey that leads him to a banana tree and Thag goes ooh, monkeys equals bananas. Thag's brain will, the next time that he sees a monkey, secrete all this dopamine to get him all motivated and happy to go follow the monkey to another banana tree. So there's this stimulus-reward pair Monkeys equal banana Monkeys get happy. Thag's brain will make him miserable if he doesn't follow the monkey. So it does two things. There's two types of motivation. It'll drop the dopamine level below normal but then it'll raise it above normal when he does it. That's the mechanism of what happens in a craving. But let's say Thag develops this habit because of the dopamine and the pleasure and the way that cravings work and he always follows monkeys to banana trees. And Thag's living it up and his family is fed and he's happy and he's got a survival needs met. He's going to pass on his genes to his progeny.
Speaker 2:Then all of a sudden it gets to be later in the season and Thag follows a monkey to a banana tree which doesn't have bananas because the other monkeys got them or they just got scared after the season went by and people wonder what would Thag's brain do at that point? Most people think Thag's brain will give up and say well, okay, I guess monkeys don't leave to banana trees anymore. But remember, food was scarce and so were effective food signals. So a monkey that led you to a banana tree 80% of the time was better than having no monkey at all. A monkey that led you to a banana tree 20% of the time was probably still better than having no monkey at all. So what happens is when you stop rewarding things, it's like you're telling your brain the banana trees are scarce, like the queue is still there but you're still passing the donut store, but the reward has become scarce, but it's probably still available. I just have to work harder at it. So the brain goes where are the Afromy bananas? Where are the Afromy Excuse me language, it's kind of abbreviating, but some people get mad when are the HMI donuts? Where the hmi? And there's this spike.
Speaker 2:We call it an extinction burst. Now, what most people do at this point is they make a horrible mistake. They reinforce the craving. They say I can't take this. This is more torturous than I ever imagined. It's going to be like that forever. I'm just addicted to donuts. It's how it is. I'm powerless. I'm a sicko donut eater. That's just how it is right. It's not true. You're just at the top of the extinction burst. What you want to do is power through and say you don't have to do anything. Well, there are things you can do to make it more comfortable, but you don't have to do anything. You just have to keep going and then it'll get better.
Speaker 2:The other mistake people make is at the bottom, when the brain is just about to label the cream indormant. They think I've got this Like obviously donuts are not a problem for me, I could have a couple of donuts. No, if you reinforce that cue again, your brain isn't going to work, because the brain does not want to forget about how it acquired calories. Brain never does that. It learned a way to get a boatload of calories for not all that much effort. It's always going to remember that Please don't shoot the messenger. However, the brain also doesn't want to waste energy, so if it learns that the reward is no longer forthcoming, it will label the craving as dormant, which means it won't bother you anymore, unless and until you reinforce it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's how the science of cravings works. There are a couple of other implications of it. One is that it's important to remember that cravings occur in stimulus-reward pairs right. So when I'm passing the donut store, the donut sign was the cue. That's what triggered the craving. If I decide to extinguish that by not going into the donut store, then the donut store sign will no longer trigger the craving.
Speaker 2:If I go to my dad's house or my mom's house and they put out donuts, which they like to do most Saturday mornings, and I hadn't been there in a couple of months. And I'm there. I might all of a sudden have a worse craving than I've had in a very long time. That's because I didn't fail. Most people's conclusion is oh, I failed, I'm going to be tortured forever with these cravings. I can't do it. No, I succeeded in extinguishing the donut store as a cravings trigger. I did not bother to extinguish my father's house and my mother's house. That's very important because people misinterpret and they just think that they're stuck and they keep on going.
Speaker 2:The last thing is and this is why it's possible to kill your cravings eating what you love. For most people, when you randomly reinforce the cravings when you have them, you're signaling your brain that it has to work harder to go get that reward. So it actually makes it worse. So it actually makes it worse. This is why, in the behavioral literature, a variable, racial, random reinforcement schedule which just means I eat it whenever the frick, I think I'm going to have it right. But it's kind of like what happens with slot machines in Las Vegas that you don't know when they're going to pay off. It's the most addicting type of reinforcement schedule that there is the reason those little old ladies are sitting there day in and day out pulling the slot machine because they don't know when it's going to pay off and they want to be there when it is. The same thing happens with your cravings if you randomly reinforce them.
Speaker 2:However, if you say I'm only going to have donuts on Saturday mornings, when I finished a workout, and no more than four, or no more than two, whatever you want to do, your brain is capable of understanding that, in the same way that it would understand that the slot machine in Las Vegas only pays off at 10 am. Let's say there's one that only pays off at 10 am. Very quickly the casinos would empty during the week because the slot machines wouldn't be paying off. People would just be showing up on Saturday morning. Slot machines wouldn't be paying off, people would just be showing up on Saturday morning Without that much time. Over the course of that 30 days, your brain will learn that the only time I get donuts is when this very particular complex combination of stimuli occurs. I worked out it's Saturday morning and I'm only going to get to have two, right, so you can create complex cues like that and for this reason you can eat by design.
Speaker 2:We call it eating by design. You can eat what you love and still kill your cravings. One out of three people can't do that for a particular substance, and it's different from substance to substance. That just they went too deeply down that road. They just can't. People that can't have flour Sometimes the people who can't have sugar can have flour. Sometimes the people who can't have sugar and flour, they can have, you know, salted nuts or cheese or other treats. But what you want to remember is that you can try to extinguish it conditionally, so you don't have to give it up first. You want to remember all this about the science and put this all together. It's a really powerful package for defeating your cravings and, yeah, getting to a reasonable weight.
Speaker 2:That was the one that I missed. I'm sorry, I'm a little bit of a little place today. The one that I missed that also causes organismic distress is the attempt to lose weight too quickly. When people get focused on weight loss, that creates a panic reaction in and of itself, because it makes them want to starve themselves. And then they say but I just can't live with myself like this and it's perceived as an emergency, and that's perceived as organismic distress which makes you want to eat. So you've got to find a way to love yourself before you arrive. You know, slow and steady. That's why the tagline to the book is the back door to weight loss. So okay, now I've explained the whole thing. Thank you, mindy, you're such a good listener.
Speaker 2:You're sitting there with a nice smile and nice eyes. Thank you, our cravings are we live? Do we have um? We're not live.
Speaker 1:no, but this will um, I always encourage my listeners to reach out after episodes, and this episode is no different. So if you're listening, okay.
Speaker 2:So if you want me to come answer questions, I'm really happy to do that, oh yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, no.
Speaker 1:I think this is, um, just so, so key to really understand what's going on biologically behind these cravings, to know then you're going to be able to work around it a little bit more. And I love that idea of letting yourself eat the thing, whatever it is, because I think that you probably most people probably will have more success. And when you're talking about like the slot machines and whatever, my mind goes to social media. That's. That's why like facebook is so easy to sit there and scroll on. It's because you're just waiting for there's going to be a good post on here somewhere, I just don't know where so I just keep scrolling.
Speaker 2:Hit after the next yeah, yeah, and randomly available yeah exactly, and that's the same deal with the food.
Speaker 1:but when you know, when you know if brownies are your thing and you know that I eat brownies every Saturday afternoon and then somebody shows up with one on Thursday, it's not so hard to say no, because you know you get, you get brownies, I just don't get them today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah it just makes it a little easier to say no to that.
Speaker 2:Can I give people a practical technique for?
Speaker 1:how to get started with this?
Speaker 2:Yes, because a lot of this is theoretical so far. So what you want to do is come up with one simple rule. Most people that are overeating they're also good dieters, and so they kind of live on this roller coaster, and the brain perceives that as a feast and famine environment. First they're dieting and then, oh my God, food's available, let's get as much as I can. So you want to step off that roller coaster the way that we do that, unless there's a medical emergency and please, I'm not a medical doctor. I just want everybody to know that I'm not even a dietician or nutritionist, I'm just really a lay person in this field. I've done this for a long time. Come up with one simple rule, something you could and would do that's not going to be too burdensome. The reason you want to do that is that it creates a low bar that you can jump over, even when your motivation is low, and you will accumulate successes. And so your brain will stop saying why can't I stop eating, why can't I do this? And when you ask those questions, by the way, you're directing your brain to find evidence that you can't. So you want to say what am I doing right and how can I build upon that? So a simple rule. I always put my fork down between bites. Or I knew a trucker who said tell you what? I've got to eat three meals a day on the road at fast food places, but I won't go back for seconds. Or I always put my gym clothes out before I go to bed. Or, you know, I won't have chocolate during the week. Come up with a very crystal clear rule, but it's something pretty simple. It's not going to cause you to lose a lot of weight. What it will do is give you a win and make you feel like you're moving in the right direction. Just do that for a week or two, because you're going to trigger the identity function. Character is just what we habitually do at the moment of impulse. And if you see yourself not having chocolate during the week, or not going back for seconds, or putting a gym clothes out before you go to bed, your brain is going to start saying you know what? I must be the kind of person who puts their gym clothes out before I go to bed. I must be a gym goer. I must be the kind of person who puts their gym clothes out before I go to bed. I must be a gym goer or I must be the kind of person who cares about my health because I'm not having chocolate during the week, right? One simple rule. Once that's there, that's going to be like a tripwire. Figure out what you want to call your inner food enemy, your goblin, your food monster. You can call it a pig, like I did, and then start listening for the part of you that wants to break the rule. That goblet, it's going to be there. We're setting this up on purpose to bring it into the forefront. So we'll say oh, come on, one bite's not going to hurt.
Speaker 2:The moment you hear that you want to take a deep breath, breathe in for a count of seven and out for a count of 11. I'm not going to do it now because it takes a little while, but that's called parasympathetic breathing. And you see, this reptilian brain, neocortex thing. It's really rooted in the physiology of the whole body. It's really rooted in the physiology of the whole body and the reptilian brain functions in the sympathetic nervous system, which is the nervous system that gets us revved up for action. A hungry tiger is chasing us. You're going right, whereas the neocortex is what says it's okay to rest and digest and plan and work on our long-term goals. Chill, everything's okay. I have what I need right now. The neocortex allows you to breathe out for longer than you breathe in, because you couldn't do that if a hungry tiger was chasing you. Right, you're going. So your I think it's called the ventral vagal response. It doesn't really matter what it's called. Your whole being knows that if you're breathing slowly and surely like that, longer out than in, that it's time to relax and chill. There's no immediate danger. It helps put you back in your rational brain. Rational brain.
Speaker 2:Once you've taken, you know a breath or three, then ask yourself okay, mr Pig, okay, mr Food Goblin, why should I break my rule and you know and give up on my hopes and dreams right now? I came up with this rule for a reason. I was of sound mind, I had the fortitude to write it down. Why should I give up on that hope, those hopes and dreams? And that's when the pig will say one bite's not going to hurt, or just start again tomorrow, or genetically, you're doomed. Your parents were fat. You're always going to be fat. You might as well just go to town, write it down.
Speaker 2:Don't keep it in your head, take out your smartphone, write it on a piece of paper, write it down, write it out in full, take another breath, another 7-Eleven breath, and then ask yourself why is it wrong?
Speaker 2:What's wrong? Well, yes, my parents are heavy and there is a heavy genetic influence on obesity, but more than half the variance is due to diet and lifestyle factors. But more than half the variance is due to diet and lifestyle factors. And even if I were, even if it's genetically much higher a mountain for me to climb to be thin, does that mean I should get as fat as possible? Does that mean I should just binge all the time? So you disempower the logic there and finally say why would I be a happier or better person if I didn't listen to my pig right now? Well, if I stayed on my plan that I can continue to walk in the world as a tall, confident, thin man with a smiling presence, and I can be free of cardiovascular worries and diabetes worries, and, you know, I can be a role model for my kids, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So say what you need to say there and if you can implement that protocol and that alone, you'll probably find you have more power than you ever thought you did.
Speaker 2:You know some people will say, wow, I just clicked my heels three times and the nightmare was over. And it's not quite that simple and there's more work to do. And you know we've got to attend and the nightmare was over. And it's not quite that simple and there's more work to do. And you know we've got to attend to the other squeals. You got to kind of develop this like a muscle and you have to deal with all the other organismic distress. But it's kind of a miracle. It's kind of a miracle.
Speaker 2:Last thing I will say when you're going through that extinction curve, don't go into battle with a plastic helmet. Arm yourself. So ahead of time you can say okay, peg, what are you going to tell me when I get here? What are all your best reasons for me to give up? You can also say how am I going to attend more to self-care and self-regulation so I don't experience that organismic distress? Let's say I know this thing is a really bad habit. Maybe I'm going to work on getting an extra hour of sleep every day for 30 days.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'm going to carry, you know, like a big water bottle around with me or something like that. Right, you know, maybe I'm going to make some more social contacts. What else am I going to do to calm my nervous system so I can get through this extinction curve? It's going to be rough, there's no way around it. That's going to be an uncomfortable experience. The brain extinguishes cravings through discomfort and the only way out is through. You can't extinguish your craving if you don't have a craving, so don't go into battle with a plastic helmet. You can prepare, you can arm yourself and you can take care of yourself so that you can make it all the way through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I love all that Very empowering information. I think, and I hope that people listening recognize that, because this really puts the power back in your hands. You know, once you can identify these things, that's the idea Glenn's given you these great strategies, you can identify these things. That's the idea, glenn's. Given you these great strategies, you can check out the books for more details and really be prepared to get this thing you know, meet it head on and overcome these cravings.
Speaker 2:May I tell them where they can get a free copy of the book? Please do so. The whole book Defeat your Cravings is available at defeatyourcravingscom in Kindle, nook or PDF format, so the digital copies are free. We have traditional copies for people that prefer paperback or Audible or hardcover, but there's a traditional charge for that. When you do that, I will give you a couple more things to help you kill your cravings on the food that you love. One is a set of recorded coaching sessions that demonstrate the process.
Speaker 2:I know this sounds kind of cold and abstract and there's an awful lot of information in theory and you might be wondering why does Mindy have on this doctor who's got a pig inside of him? It's just really weird. It's actually a very compassionate, loving process and you can hear me coach people through it in full-length sessions. This is all free and take them from feeling confused and hopeless and pessimistic about ever getting a hold of it to feeling optimistic and confident and excited in just one session. So I recorded a bunch of those and that's available for free.
Speaker 2:And then the last thing I'll give you is a copy of our food plan starter templates. This is a diet agnostic program, as long as you're not trying to starve yourself, as long as you're willing to neutrify yourself at a slight deficit and you kind of resonate with the ideas here. Then there are starter templates for, you know, keto versus whole foods, versus high carb versus low carb, versus point counting versus calorie counting. Personally, after working with 2000 clients, I mean I'm a plant based person, but personally I wish that people would get out of that argument and just get away from all the processed food. Yeah, I think that it's much easier to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, because there's a much bigger difference when you see that, right, yes, yes, much easier to stop binging when you get. I mean, there are things in these packages that take away your ability to know when you're hungry and full, like. How are you going to eat, mindfully, if you don't know when you're hungry and full, like? It's just um, so okay, it's all at defeatyourcravingscom. Click the big blue button, sign up for the free reader bonus list and we'll get you the free book, the free food plan, starter templates and the free recording coaching sessions.
Speaker 1:Awesome, oh, what a deal that's I. I'm going to head over there and get all that stuff myself, even though um. I, I again. I'm a person that does not have 50 pounds to lose, but I catch myself going for the chocolate chips, just like anybody else or whatever you know. Your vice may be, and it's great.
Speaker 2:People tell me that they didn't realize this because they're so focused on the weight. But the worst part of food addiction is not really the weight, it's the food obsession. Yeah, it's not really the weight. It's the food obsession, it's how much it crowds out all the other thoughts in your mind and you don't feel like you're present with your kids and your pets and your hobbies and your work. And it's the food obsession and that's the bigger relief that we give to people. I mean, people lose weight.
Speaker 2:but that's the bigger relief that people are proud of. So you don't have to be, you know, a hundred pounds overweight to want to do this. You just. You want to be able to eat within your own best judgment. Yes yes, that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, I love that. Well, glenn, thank you so much for being a guest today. This was again just I could do another like four episodes and just sit here and let you go and listen to all you have to share.
Speaker 2:I hope I wouldn't run out, but um, I'll take you up on that, okay and everybody else that's listening.
Speaker 1:Like I mentioned earlier, um, message me, or glenn, and let us know what you thought about this, or if you want to try some of these things, and message me in a month or two months and tell me how it's going. I'm I here for that. I'm super interested in everybody's journeys on up leveling their own lives, whatever area it is, particularly if it has to do with food and nutrition, because that's kind of my thing. So, yeah, let me know. And again, glenn, thank you so much for being on today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. Thank you, I'm sorry if I talk quickly.
Speaker 1:Oh no, no you're good, all right. Well, everybody else, wherever you're at, I hope you're having a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next one. That's it for today. Friends, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe or, even better, leave a review and let me know what resonated with you the most. The more you tell me what you love, the better I'm able to create future episodes with even better content. I'm sending you so much love and light. I'll see you in the next episode.