May 3, 2022 • 33 mins
Virgie and Laurie unpack harmful happiness myths like "the perfect body" that contribute to diet culture, and Laurie tells Virgie how the science of happiness can be used to fight them.
Topics include:
Harry & David Pears [01:20]
City of Angels (1998) [03:54]
The “Arrival Fallacy” [11:38]
Hedonic Adaptation [17:50]
Science of Happiness [20:38]
The Tool of Self-Compassion [31:34]
You can find more of Laurie’s work on social media @lauriesantos or through her podcast ‘The Happiness Lab.’ Follow @virgietovar and @transmitterpods to stay up to date on all things Rebel Eaters Club. And make sure to visit rebeleatersclub.com to download your Rebel Eaters Club starter pack!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Rebel Eaters, it's been a minute. Welcome to Season
three of a Rebel Eaters Club. I am Virgie Tovar.
This season will be offering you our very best tools
for taking on love, happiness, diet, culture, and body image
with some incredible guests, and we'll do it all as
(00:25):
always with snacks. We're kicking things off with doctor Lorie Santos.
I met Lorie a few years ago when I visited
Yale to talk to students about the impact of fat phobia.
Lorie teaches there and lives in what is basically a castle.
For about a week, Lorie and I were neighbors that week.
(00:47):
I learned so much about her amazing work as a
psychology professor. I mean, she teaches the school's most popular
class ever. She also hosts a podcast based on the class,
called the Happiness Lab, where she explores evidence based ways
to improve your well being. It's great, she's great, oh
(01:09):
when she also has the best hair like ever. Laurie, Welcome,
Welcome to Rebel Eaters Club. I'm so glad you're here.
I'm just thinking about your long, luxurious, beautiful hair. Maybe
that's weird, but it's just so beautiful. I hope. I mean,
(01:30):
I wish everybody could have an opportunity to experience you
in real life. But welcome to the show. Welcome, creepy Welcome.
I'd expect nothing less great. Thank you, Laurie. In Rebel
Eaters Club tradition, we begin every conversation with a snack.
(01:53):
Do you want to introduce what the snack is? Yeah,
so it's kind of weird his neck, but um, it's
like it's right now, it's like winter, and so there's
not really like great produce happening, but there are delicious,
delicious pears right now. And so my snack is a pear.
(02:13):
I'm really obsessed with Harry and David pears, which are
like the most excellent pears in the universe. Yeah. So
mine arrived yesterday carefully swaddled like a little chubby green baby.
And when I opened up the tiny box that it
was in, it's sort of the aroma just filled the
kitchen with this like floral. It's pears have a distinct aroma.
(02:36):
It's it's very floral and sort of I don't know,
it's really beautiful. Also, we're missing this a little bit
because but I think like the chubby sheep like the
shape of them, like they kind of have like a
little butt, and the stem is so kind of perky
and cute. It's just it's a wonderful creature. Yea, we
might call the pear, you know, a body positive fruit.
I don't know. I mean, yeah, exactly. My pears like
(02:57):
really nicely sliced up. So I made it all the
sliced and pretty. I don't see. I was going to
ask you, Like, immediately before I was thinking about talking,
I was like, is this a slice situation? Are we
biting into it? Actually? I decided to do a half
and half, so I cut half of it and then
I left half of it in case the crunch felt
like an important part of the ritual. I think if
(03:21):
you start with the slice version, it's good, right, because
then it's like you just get to enjoy the pair,
but not like your face smushing into the middle of
the kind of pariness. You know. Yeah, it's a thing.
It is a thing. Yeah, especially for a good juicy half.
But yeah, if you go slice, I think we'll be okay, great, Okay,
should we? I've got the slice? Okay, okay, three two one.
(03:49):
Mine is super it's super juicy. The awesome thing about
a pair is that I don't know, you expect it
to be a kind of hard like apple, but actually
it's sort of more juicy, like on like the orange
level of juicy spectrum, and it's awesome. So, I mean,
I was also immediately transported to the movie City of Angels,
(04:10):
which do you remember that scene and City of Angels
where Meg Ryan is talking to Nicolas Cage, who's an
angel but she doesn't know it, and she's talking about
what it's like to eat a pair because he doesn't
have any senses or something sweet, soft on your tongue,
grainy like sugary sands. I think that in terms of
(04:36):
my memory, it's like one of the only memories I
have of a woman talking on screen lovingly about any food,
and I just it's just so poetic. Um okay, So
can you tell me about what memory or experience is
associated with this pair? Yeah? Well, for me, you know,
(04:58):
pairs are really complicated. I have a amplicated history when
it comes to kind of enjoying my eating and really
loving food. I feel like, you know, I of course
grew up in the diet culture that pretty much everyone
grew up in, and there was like you know, the
you know, good for you food that was kind of
not delicious and nasty, but that was what you're supposed
to eat. And then there was like the delicious stuff
(05:18):
that like, oh my gosh, that was bad for you. Right,
Like this was my headspace growing up, you know. So
what I've kind of come to and my eating is
like I'm trying to feed myself lovingly. Like that's my
move now, right, Like how can I feed myself something
that's both delicious and ideally nutritious but not necessarily nutritious?
Like what can you go for that like maximizes all
of that stuff so you can be nice to your
(05:39):
body and also have stuff that tastes freaking good. And
one of my earliest experiences, especially with the Harry and
David pears, came with my roommate Angie. This is my
roommate in graduate school, and her family like would send
her these Harry and David fruits all the time, and
she'd get this box of pears, and again, in my
like diet culture brain, that was like that's good for
(06:00):
you thing. It's not going to be delicious, it's just like,
you know, a healthy thing, and like, holy crap, it
was like a dessert. It was like, this is delicious.
In fact, I might be revealing too much about Angie,
but Angie would say that eating the Hairy and David
fruit was like going down on a woman as she
imagined it. She's straight, so she just had to imagine.
But it's like juicy. There's like, as you said, this
like gritty, like like all crazy. And so for me,
(06:22):
the like whoa to think that something that could be
again with this messed up dichotomy that I grew up with,
that could be good for my body, that could feel
really nutritious, was also you know, so delicious. It was
like going down on somebody. It's like, you know, world,
world mess up. So that's why I picked the part.
I just think it's freaking delicious. And it reminds us
that all these dichotomies that we get in our head
(06:42):
from diet culture. There b s right. You're just paying
attention to your body and what feels good to you
should be the way to go. You know, feed yourself
like you'd feed a friend. That's kind of the mantra.
Oh I love that. That's really sweet. Can you talk
about what you learned about food growing up. Maybe that
was home, and maybe it was you know, the culture
(07:03):
at large or school. I just want to know, you know,
what environment were you steeped into before you started having
all these critical thoughts about diet culture. Yeah, I mean,
you know, I think the environment that so many of
us were in right where you just grow up and
like just every piece of the environment around you is
pushing you towards diet culture. You know, I grew up
(07:24):
my mom was on weight Watchers. You know, I remember
being a young kid and she'd be grilling up like
liver and onions because that's what you ate on weight Watchers,
like in the you know, late seventies, early eighties and stuff,
And so there was kind of always this air of like,
you know, food is this thing that you know can
affect you negatively or can make you look ugly, or
(07:45):
that you have this kind of complicated relationship with and
so yeah, I mean I kind of I feel like
I kind of got to critically thinking about it, you know,
maybe embarrassingly, like in my you know, late thirties where
I started to learn more about this stuff in part,
you know, because of work of people like you, right,
you know, I was like in college right where you
read all the woke stuff and you know, like all
(08:05):
the kind of typical stuff. And then but it was
much slower that it started to apply to me. And
it came through recognizing, you know, a lot of what
this bad messaging was doing to the way I talked
to myself in my head, you know, to the way
I reacted and was able to enjoy things in the world.
It was really mindfully recognizing how these patterns were affecting
(08:27):
me and realizing like, wait, I want to switch this
stuff around. Quite explicitly, yes, totally. I mean I was
just writing about, you know, how our value system can
really be almost like a map to how this work
can become integrated. I did this personal value sort a
couple of weeks ago. Or there's just a ton of
cards and there's just a ton of different values, potentially
(08:49):
maybe sixty potential values that a person can have, and
then you're asked to sort them from very important to
not important. And I found that my top values were pleasure, joy,
you know, adventure. And I was realizing when I thought
about my path to this, I mean, because you know, similarly,
I was aware of fat activism. I was aware of
(09:11):
sort of some level of critique around diet culture and
body constructions of body. But it wasn't until a fellow
fat person said you can have a fabulous life as
a fat person that it got under my skin. That
it went from a message that was sort of an
idea to something that was in my heart and it
(09:32):
made complete sense because of my value system. I was like, yes,
of course, something that's going to lead to something feeling
exciting and amazing and very pleasurable is the thing that's
going to sell me and get me all in. Yeah,
totally exactly. Yeah. So you host the amazing podcast, The
Happiness Lab. As you mentioned, it's about examining the science
(09:52):
of happiness and the surprising things that stand between us
and give you our own best life. So, Laurie, you're
basically I mean, I think of you as the happiest
expert or do identify that way? These so many people
call me that that. I'm like, okay, fine, you know,
as long as people realize that it doesn't necessarily mean
that I'm happy all the time, then fine, Yeah sounds great. Yeah,
(10:15):
I mean, well, so this podcast, your podcast started as
the most popular course at Yale, which you teach called
psychology and the good life. So, Laurie, why are you
teaching happiness to super smart young people who are at
an extremely well respected institution in a beautiful part of
New England. Explain well, I think we really have these
(10:38):
strong misconceptions when it comes to what it means to
be happy, right, I mean, we think happiness is about having,
you know, the perfect job, the perfect amount of money,
the perfect relationship, the perfect body. You know. My Yale
students think it's getting into the perfect school. It's like perfect, perfect, perfect.
But what the science shows is that you know the
real route to happiness. And let me define happiness how
(10:59):
social sciences think about it. Social scientists think of happiness
as kind of two parts, being happy in your life
and with your life. So with your life is like
you have a sense of meaning and purpose. It's overall
the answer to the question how satisfied are you with
your life? That's kind of being happy with your life.
But being happy in your life is like positive emotions.
You have joy, you delicious pairs all the time, you know,
(11:20):
you have liked great friends like you. It's not that
you don't experience negative emotion because, as we'll probably talk
about grief, negative emotion. All of that is part of
being happy. In fact, it's part of living a meaningful life.
But the ratio is pretty good, and I think we
think we get both of those from all the pursuits
I've just talked about, right, Like, if only I could
get the perfect body, right, then I would be happy.
(11:43):
But in practice you can ask this, right, there are
people who you know, achieve what they think is the
perfect body, or at least, you know, lose weight or
get plastic surgery or what have you, and we can
ask are they happier? And the answer is like, not really, right.
You know, the evidence really sage us that people who
go through these changes that they chose and wanted, and
(12:03):
in lots of cases work super hard for they're not
as happy as they expect. And this comes down to
a bunch of different cognitive biases and fallacies. You know.
One of the big ones is what's called a rival fallacy.
And this is true, you know, and body change domains,
but it's also true and just like any domain, like
when I find out I get into Yale, I'm going
to be happy, or when I sell my first book,
(12:24):
I'm gonna be happy. You know, when your book Virgie
gets on the New York Times bestseller lists. I will
be happy, right, we pick some event that, like when
I arrive at this place, I will finally be happy,
and the data suggests that basically never happens. My colleague
at Harvard, Dan Gilbert, who I interviewed from my podcast, said,
happily ever after, only happens if you have three seconds
left to live. Like, it just doesn't. There's just no
(12:47):
you know, like our life changes and stuff comes up,
and there's going to be these transitions. And so I
think part of it is that we really assume that
happiness comes from these kinds of achievements, these accolades, but
in practice that is just not what the science shows.
Happiness comes from other things. It comes from social connection.
It comes from being present, even if that presence is
(13:08):
with negative emotions. It comes from self compassion and giving
yourself and other people grace. It comes not from Mimi, Mimi,
me and focusing on the self, but focusing on others
and community. Like people who do that stuff wind up
self reporting that they're a lot happier. And this is
not like the version of the pursuit of happiness that
(13:30):
we've all been sold, but it's what the science really shows. Oh.
I love that. Now, before we move on, I just
want to take a second to acknowledge that happiness isn't
the only motivation people have to participate in diet culture.
People who are higher on the weight spectrum might get
(13:50):
in a diet culture because they're being denied basic humanity,
not because they necessarily want the so called perfect body
or partner. There's no arguing with the fact that smaller
bodied people are afforded more basic humanity and access to
all kinds of things, from fashion to friendship, to romance
to a regular day free from street harassment. We also
(14:15):
know that ending diet culture isn't just about finding a
better path to happiness. It's about something bigger justice. The
arrival myth doesn't quite capture all of that nuance, but
I still think it's important to say that regardless of size,
this work around noticing where the arrival myth does show
(14:35):
up in our thinking is useful because we all definitely
buy into some version of this myth. Noticing is a
great way to start breaking down some of that external
messaging to make room for your desires and values, whatever
they may be. I have this realization a few years
(14:56):
ago related to die culture and body ease, that we've
sort of been told and socialized into believing that privilege
and happiness are one hundred percent overlaid. That you know,
the acquisition of a certain type of body or a
certain type of eating or whatever is absolutely you know,
it's one to one ratio of like privilege happiness. And
(15:19):
I think right, diet culture is a really popular or
common path that is supposed to lead to happiness, and
I think for a lot of us, the allure of
staying in diet culture is the happiness we are supposed
to unlock or earn at the end of our journey.
And of course the end never seems to ever actually arrive,
(15:40):
or to your point around the arrival policy, but nonetheless,
happiness is the carrot in that process. Yeah, I mean
there's so I mean, first off, there's just your happiness.
Researchers have studied whether everything correlates with happiness. You know, income,
which city you live in, which culture you're from, religion, like,
you know, how much you exercise, how much you like
have social connection. Like. They've looked at everything and they've
(16:02):
never found a correlation between being skinny and being happy,
Like it's just it's just not there. Right. But like,
you know, people who really are trying to lose weight
and then they get to their goal weight or they
get you know, to whatever they were, you know, again,
their arrival never really comes. But you know, to the
extent that they got to some arrival point that they picked,
are they happier? And the answer is no, And then
(16:24):
this just isn't just true and diet culture, it's pretty
much a feature of the human brain, right, you know,
So take income levels, right, A lot of people think like, oh,
if I could only make I don't know, one hundred
thousand dollars right, then I'll be happier. Or I could
only do you know, if I could only like you know,
I don't know, by this school new car, then I
will be happier. And the evidence suggests both the arrival fallacy.
(16:45):
When you get there, you're not as happy as you think.
But even once you get the thing, you kind of
get used to it really really quickly. Right, Like, there's
no kind of race that we can play where we
get to the carrot, because as soon as you get
to what you think is the carrot, the carrot's like
a little bit further away. And this this is what
scientists call hedonic adaptation, which is just a fancy way.
Yeah it sounds great, right, hedonic, Right like happiness adaptation,
(17:09):
You just get used to stuff. What does it mean?
So you know, I don't know. You get the new
the new version of an iPhone, which you're really excited by.
This happens to me sometimes because I'm like a lotty
and I keep technology like forever, and then I finally
get a new one. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's
got all these new things. The colors is so awesome,
and I can like download these apps that I couldn't
download before. And for a second, like a brief moment,
you're like, this is so cool. But then you just
(17:31):
get used to it. It's just your phone. It doesn't
have any like special features anymore. Right. The same is
true for, sadly, pretty much every good thing in life.
The flip side if hedonic adaptation is that all the
bad things in life you kind of get used to too,
Like there are definitely things in life that you're like,
this is just going to be awful and I'll never
get through it. But like, actually, you get used to
(17:52):
that stuff too, like think a breakup or you know,
like some bad news, right, like all your rationalization processes
kick in and wind making you feel okay with just
a reasonably small amount of time. You know, if you
had us predict how long it would take. And so
that's hedonic adaptation. But what it means is like all
these things in the ideals of you know, the kind
(18:13):
of diet culture that you talk about being perfect, getting
the perfect dress, like getting the perfect relationship, all the
stuff that we think these kinds of changes are going
to bring, they don't bring in the way we think.
And so hedonic adaptation means we're constantly on this treadmill.
People often talk about the hedonic treadmill where we're like
chasing something thinking that once we get to it, it's
(18:34):
going to be great, and either we never get to it,
because that's the structure of these kind of you know,
privileged chasing things, or once you do get to it,
you're like, Okay, that wasn't as awesome as I thought, Like,
move on to the next thing I think is going
to be awesome. And you know what we've looked at
in the podcast, which is funny. I mean it's sad funny.
You know, it's kind of sad funny is that if
you look at people who've achieved these ideals of privilege
(18:55):
after lots of hard work, they're still not happy. And
so I interviewed this fantastic to guy Clay Cockerell, who's
a wealth psychologist. So he's a mental health professional that
works with the point zero zero zero zero one percent. Right,
So you have to have at least like over one
hundred million dollars to like go to this guy. And
already it should be shocking that he has like clients, right,
because many of us thought if I had one hundred
(19:16):
million dollars, a lot of stuff would get sorted out, right,
could fire the therapist, you know, it's like, but no,
and their problems are, oh my gosh, if only I
could get to a billion dollars. And so it should
kind of remind us that so many of the things
we think are going to work. Again, a lot of
things that we get these values of what's going to
work from our culture. We think it's going to work.
Our culture told us this is the thing we're supposed
(19:37):
to do. But then we get there and we're just
not very happy, right, I mean, yes, like I have
so many thoughts and questions. I mean, I call it
diet brain. But I notice, I mean, diet brain is
what you're talking about, which is like, when I do this,
I will get X, Y Z, And it's okay if
I'm miserable on the way, because I'm going to get
this thing at the end. But it's like I've noticed,
(19:59):
even though I don't restrict food anymore, the diet brain,
which we could call the capitalist brain, we could call
it the white supremacist brain, whatever you want to call it, right,
it's essentially it's the same function applied to all these
different parts of life. So I'll notice my diet brain
showing up in my romantic relationships, my diet brain showing
(20:19):
up around work. And it goes back to you know,
not being present, not being okay and accepting where you
are right now. I think all of us have the
experience of sort of feeling the arrival fallacy, and maybe
it's just there for a second where we're like, maybe
the game is rig even if it's only for a
couple of seconds. But from a cognitive science perspective, why
(20:44):
do people ignore that sort of maybe moment of like hmm,
maybe something isn't right. Why are they attached to this fallacy?
Why is it so alluring? I think it's just, you know,
one of the things that's annoying about our brains is
that this process fedonic adaptation, we're blind to it. We
just don't know what happens, right, and that means we
(21:05):
can't accurately predict what we're going to enjoy and what
we're not going to enjoy. One of my favorite kind
of funny studies about this, So a lot of the
studies about this have people predict like, this wonderful thing
is going to happen to you or this really terrible
thing is going to happen to you. How happy will
you be or how sad will you be? And for
how long? And what you find is like, as you
might expect, people get this wrong. So you know you're
gonna lose fifty pounds, How happy? Oh my gosh, I'll
(21:27):
be so happy. No, you just think you got to
lose another twenty or something, right, you never you know,
how you get into Yale University, How happy will you be? Like? Nope,
you know you're immediately going to move on to the
next goal post, right, So people are wrong about this,
but there's some case where that they can find situations
where people have to predict about the same thing over
and over again, like literally the exact same thing, and
(21:47):
they still get it wrong. And I think this is
why diet culture takes hold, you know, for people who
are kind of really embedded in it is like I'm
gonna lose weight this time, and then maybe you lose
some weight and then you gain it back, but then
you're like, this time when I do, it's really going
to be happy if I get there right, and it's
like you're not. You can't update. It's very sad. Yeah,
this is this is a trick of our brain, and
(22:07):
you can kind of know it rationally, but it's very
hard to feel it in your body. Yes, absolutely, I
mean a rebel eaters club, we're really big on listening
to our bodies and following our intuition. But it sounds
like sometimes those impulses are not actually always aligned with
our biggest desires or values. How do we deal with
that complexity? Laurie, Yeah, well, I think I mean this
(22:30):
is a problem, right, like our brains. Our brains through
this like clugy like pile of meat. That's been evolving
over time. Like it's not sordid, right, like, like we
give it like, oh my gosh, the human brain is,
but like, no, it's got problems, right, And one problem
is that you know, trauma leads us in all kinds
of different directions when it comes to our intuition. I
think you're you and this podcast and so many great
(22:51):
people have done such good work trying to figure out
how to unpack that. But even if you're not going
through that, the evidence really shows that we have these
brains that sometimes lead us in the wrong directions. Like
or so, how I would build a brain. I would
build a brain that was really good at like detecting
things that were pleasurable, Like you know, brain is walking around,
finds a pair is like, oh let me try this.
(23:13):
Oh this is pleasurable. Let's go after this, right Like,
it would kind of know that and the amount I
worked to get to something would map on to like
how pleasurable it actually was in reality for me. Right,
turns out brain stupid not designed like that. We seem
to have a system. We seem to have a system
for liking stuff, and by that I mean, you know,
(23:34):
the actual enjoyment I get out of the pair, Like
when I taste it, it just there's a sensation, this
taste that feels good, right, you know, you get that
probably out of social connection, out of the kind of
you know, joyful after interactions. I'm getting out of this
conversation with you. Right, there's this stuff that feels good. Right.
But then we have a separate system that craves stuff,
that wants stuff. That's the motivational system that's kicking me
(23:57):
in the butt, and say, go after that, go after that,
go after that, get obsessed with it, you know, beat
yourself up if you don't go for it. And you'd
hope that those are connected, Like you'd hope that my
motivational system, my wanting system as the scientists call it,
would only go for stuff that I actually liked, But
it turns out not. So there're these interesting disconnects between
the system, even in like local things. I think when
(24:18):
I've had a bad day, I'm like, I will really
like to sit on the couch and scroll through Netflix
and like do nothing and not talk to anybody and
not leave the house. But actually what would I like.
I'd probably like calling a friend, I'd probably like going
for a walk and like moving my body in a
kind way like there's all this stuff that would feel better,
I just don't want it. You know. We get a
(24:40):
lot of wanting for my phone, Like I definitely feel like, oh,
I want to scroll Reddit for like sixteen hours, or
I really want to like look at it, like the
wanting system makes me do it. But then if you
ask me at the end of it, like, hey, how
did that feel, I'm like, I kind of feel sort
of apathetic and nasty, you know, but I don't have
like craving or wanting for you know, talking to other
(25:00):
humans necessarily, or like again, doing the stuff that will
really give you liking. That is a disconnect between the
wanting and liking system. And I think that that disconnect
gets worse when you have different kinds of cultures and
systems feeding into your wanting system. Right, the wanting system
gets way hooked up in fear. I think trauma plays
all kind of like you know, you want to be
(25:22):
by yourself and protect yourself, right, it gets fed into
that system, and that doesn't necessarily map on to what
you're going to like. And so I think for me,
you know, you could hear about this disconnect and be like,
oh my gosh, I'm never going to sort out my brains.
I should never listen to my intuition whatever. But really,
when you hear about this, it gives you a path forward,
which is which is presence, which is mindfulness, which is like, gosh,
(25:46):
I really got to take time to figure out and
notice what I like and what I don't like. And
you know that's one of the reasons I pick the
pairs for this, right is. I feel like it's like
a pair is one of these cases of like, actually
I like the pairs. They're freaking really good, Like they're
they don't have to get categorized as like healthy food
in my diet brain. It's like I can enjoy this,
right Yeah, I mean absolutely, I'm wondering, like, for someone
(26:10):
like me who really values intuition but also knows that
other factors like trauma and cultural influences play into the
information my body is giving me, how do we arrive
at the right answers for us? Yeah? Well, I think
it's really I mean, from this perspective of this wanting
liking system, it's finding ways to get in tune with
the liking, and that means being present and noticing right,
(26:33):
like you know, mindful eating, like tasting the food and
noticing how it feels in your body, and really trying
to do that in a way where you're really paying
attention to the physical sensations of this stuff, right, That
can be really powerful. Taking time to notice how you
talk to yourself, right, like what are the voices in
your head saying? And realizing they're just thoughts, right, I
mean Freddie listener, who doesn't know the thoughts in your
(26:55):
head aren't you? They're just your thoughts. And those thoughts
can be influenced by all kinds of crap, your trauma
about your culture, you know, like capitalism, blah blah blah.
It's not you. It's just like a conglomeration. And when
you start to recognize that and question it and realize
you can change the way you talk to yourself, that
can be really really powerful for breaking some of these
things down. And so I think, you know, real practices
(27:17):
where you engage in that kind of presence, whether it
be a meditation practice of breath based practice, all of
those things can be powerful. And I think within that
is also the necessity of getting in tune with your
negative emotions again, misconception. You know from all the stuff
that we have to be happy, and you do have
no negative emotions, no anxiety, no sadness, no anger. Just
(27:41):
get rid of those, avoid them and suppress them completely,
and then I'll be happy. First of all, it doesn't work.
You know, there's lots of empirical evidence that you just
cannot suppress your emotions. You try, but they leak out
in your physiology. The body keeps score as it were,
So it just doesn't work. But it turns out that
the way to get through negative emotions is actually to
(28:02):
go through them and not avoid them. And so practices
where you really sit with the sadness and the trauma
that comes from you know, like body hating culture, Like
the time that you sit with whatever came from being
part of a like nasty childhood or a traumatic childhood.
You know that you sit with like just how pissed
(28:23):
off and frustrating, like you know, the fact that we
haven't achieved all that we want to achieve in social
justice feels like right now? Right those are things that
we need to take time to literally sit with and
allow in our lives. And the odd thing is that
by sitting with them, by not rejecting them, but being like,
it's here, let's go, let's hang out together. You know,
negative feelings of frustration, sadness, whatever, that's how you get
(28:46):
through them. That's how you process them and overcome them. Yes,
and I think you're going back to the concept of happiness,
Like I think that this is how you create a
meaningful life. So okay, Laurie, being a human being is
a lot of work and conclusion. I love what you said.
I love what you say about the brain, and I
(29:07):
think there's an opportunity. Immediately when I was thinking about
this idea of kind of like our imperfect, weird, sort
of strangely designed brains, I was like, it's another opportunity
for radical self acceptance, right exactly. Yes, yes, it's like
and I think you do powerful. Yes, yes, I have this,
you know, because so one of the things I realize
is that the right move is embracing what you know,
(29:31):
social scientists call like self compassion, like, which in the
scientific literature comes with these three parts. One that we
talked about a lot mindfulness, right, like noticing what these
voices are making you feel, like noticing what you need
um non judgmentally. That's like the important part of mindfulness
having a common humanity, realizing, hey, everybody goes through this,
lots of folks have trauma. I'm just human with this
(29:53):
beat up meat brain that's leading me in the wrong directions,
and like I shouldn't beat myself up. And then just
like a real sense that you know, you are just
human and it's okay, and you need to give yourself
some self kindness. That's kind of the third piece that
the way to get yourself to achieve any goal isn't
to drill sergeant yourself, Like, the way to motivate yourself
(30:15):
is with kindness, Like talk to yourself like you talk
to a friend. And you know, this is why I
love this podcast so much, because I think it's really
trying to help people cultivate exactly that balanced voice, Like
you know, we're all like reacting to this awful diet
culture and like we're all going to do it differently
and that's cool, and we're like figuring out our journey
and our path and that doesn't involve beating ourselves up. Yes, yes,
(30:37):
I love this. I'm so excited, Laurie. It's been so
fun talking with you, Laurie. Last question, if you had
one tool you wanted to pass on to people who
are breaking free from diet culture, trying to build their
own version of happiness and something meaningful. You know what
is that tool? I mean they already of your podcast,
(30:59):
so I feel like they're doing okay. But yeah, my
psychological tool, my psychological tool would be to invest in
practices that build your self compassion. Self compassion as being mindfulness,
an okay, recognition of your common humanity, like non judgmentally
recognizing that you're just human and being kind to yourself.
(31:19):
And if you need a good reference for this, I
would suggest checking out this lovely book called Fierce Self
Compassion by the researcher Kristin Neff, where she argues that
the only way to you know, come through through trauma,
to fight privilege, you know, to fight diet culture, all
the social justice stuff we want to see in the
world is to be fiercely self compassionate with ourselves. It's
(31:40):
not to beat ourselves up. So yeah, self compassion would
be the one tool. Ah, Laurie, you're wonderful. You're a genius.
You're doing amazing work. Thank you for being on Rebel
Eaters Club. Thanks so much for having me it was
super fun. Yay Wow. Laurie's work always blows my mind.
(32:11):
I'm going to be thinking about hedonic adaptation a lot
this year. Laurie brought up some important questions I'd love
to encourage us all to chew on, like how do
you sort intuition from trauma from cultural influence? And how
can we remember to use the tool of self compassion
early and often to push back on the messages we
(32:33):
get from diet culture. If you have thoughts on these
questions or the conversation you just heard, or even if
you just want to say hi, reach out shoot us
a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com.
Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by Transmitter Media.
This episode was written and produced by Isabelle Carter. Sarah
(32:56):
Knicks is Transmitters executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our managing producer,
and Greta Khane is our executive producer and I'm your host.
Virgie tovar Rick Kwan is our mixed engineer. And thanks
to Taka Yasuzala, who wrote some of the music we
use in the show. If you love Rebel Eaters Club,
tell your friends and share the love by writing a
(33:16):
review on your favorite podcast app. See you next week.
Hey, Rebel Eaters, it's been a minute. Welcome to Season
three of a Rebel Eaters Club. I am Virgie Tovar.
This season will be offering you our very best tools
for taking on love, happiness, diet, culture, and body image
with some incredible guests, and we'll do it all as
(00:25):
always with snacks. We're kicking things off with doctor Lorie Santos.
I met Lorie a few years ago when I visited
Yale to talk to students about the impact of fat phobia.
Lorie teaches there and lives in what is basically a castle.
For about a week, Lorie and I were neighbors that week.
(00:47):
I learned so much about her amazing work as a
psychology professor. I mean, she teaches the school's most popular
class ever. She also hosts a podcast based on the class,
called the Happiness Lab, where she explores evidence based ways
to improve your well being. It's great, she's great, oh
(01:09):
when she also has the best hair like ever. Laurie, Welcome,
Welcome to Rebel Eaters Club. I'm so glad you're here.
I'm just thinking about your long, luxurious, beautiful hair. Maybe
that's weird, but it's just so beautiful. I hope. I mean,
(01:30):
I wish everybody could have an opportunity to experience you
in real life. But welcome to the show. Welcome, creepy Welcome.
I'd expect nothing less great. Thank you, Laurie. In Rebel
Eaters Club tradition, we begin every conversation with a snack.
(01:53):
Do you want to introduce what the snack is? Yeah,
so it's kind of weird his neck, but um, it's
like it's right now, it's like winter, and so there's
not really like great produce happening, but there are delicious,
delicious pears right now. And so my snack is a pear.
(02:13):
I'm really obsessed with Harry and David pears, which are
like the most excellent pears in the universe. Yeah. So
mine arrived yesterday carefully swaddled like a little chubby green baby.
And when I opened up the tiny box that it
was in, it's sort of the aroma just filled the
kitchen with this like floral. It's pears have a distinct aroma.
(02:36):
It's it's very floral and sort of I don't know,
it's really beautiful. Also, we're missing this a little bit
because but I think like the chubby sheep like the
shape of them, like they kind of have like a
little butt, and the stem is so kind of perky
and cute. It's just it's a wonderful creature. Yea, we
might call the pear, you know, a body positive fruit.
I don't know. I mean, yeah, exactly. My pears like
(02:57):
really nicely sliced up. So I made it all the
sliced and pretty. I don't see. I was going to
ask you, Like, immediately before I was thinking about talking,
I was like, is this a slice situation? Are we
biting into it? Actually? I decided to do a half
and half, so I cut half of it and then
I left half of it in case the crunch felt
like an important part of the ritual. I think if
(03:21):
you start with the slice version, it's good, right, because
then it's like you just get to enjoy the pair,
but not like your face smushing into the middle of
the kind of pariness. You know. Yeah, it's a thing.
It is a thing. Yeah, especially for a good juicy half.
But yeah, if you go slice, I think we'll be okay, great, Okay,
should we? I've got the slice? Okay, okay, three two one.
(03:49):
Mine is super it's super juicy. The awesome thing about
a pair is that I don't know, you expect it
to be a kind of hard like apple, but actually
it's sort of more juicy, like on like the orange
level of juicy spectrum, and it's awesome. So, I mean,
I was also immediately transported to the movie City of Angels,
(04:10):
which do you remember that scene and City of Angels
where Meg Ryan is talking to Nicolas Cage, who's an
angel but she doesn't know it, and she's talking about
what it's like to eat a pair because he doesn't
have any senses or something sweet, soft on your tongue,
grainy like sugary sands. I think that in terms of
(04:36):
my memory, it's like one of the only memories I
have of a woman talking on screen lovingly about any food,
and I just it's just so poetic. Um okay, So
can you tell me about what memory or experience is
associated with this pair? Yeah? Well, for me, you know,
(04:58):
pairs are really complicated. I have a amplicated history when
it comes to kind of enjoying my eating and really
loving food. I feel like, you know, I of course
grew up in the diet culture that pretty much everyone
grew up in, and there was like you know, the
you know, good for you food that was kind of
not delicious and nasty, but that was what you're supposed
to eat. And then there was like the delicious stuff
(05:18):
that like, oh my gosh, that was bad for you. Right,
Like this was my headspace growing up, you know. So
what I've kind of come to and my eating is
like I'm trying to feed myself lovingly. Like that's my
move now, right, Like how can I feed myself something
that's both delicious and ideally nutritious but not necessarily nutritious?
Like what can you go for that like maximizes all
of that stuff so you can be nice to your
(05:39):
body and also have stuff that tastes freaking good. And
one of my earliest experiences, especially with the Harry and
David pears, came with my roommate Angie. This is my
roommate in graduate school, and her family like would send
her these Harry and David fruits all the time, and
she'd get this box of pears, and again, in my
like diet culture brain, that was like that's good for
(06:00):
you thing. It's not going to be delicious, it's just like,
you know, a healthy thing, and like, holy crap, it
was like a dessert. It was like, this is delicious.
In fact, I might be revealing too much about Angie,
but Angie would say that eating the Hairy and David
fruit was like going down on a woman as she
imagined it. She's straight, so she just had to imagine.
But it's like juicy. There's like, as you said, this
like gritty, like like all crazy. And so for me,
(06:22):
the like whoa to think that something that could be
again with this messed up dichotomy that I grew up with,
that could be good for my body, that could feel
really nutritious, was also you know, so delicious. It was
like going down on somebody. It's like, you know, world,
world mess up. So that's why I picked the part.
I just think it's freaking delicious. And it reminds us
that all these dichotomies that we get in our head
(06:42):
from diet culture. There b s right. You're just paying
attention to your body and what feels good to you
should be the way to go. You know, feed yourself
like you'd feed a friend. That's kind of the mantra.
Oh I love that. That's really sweet. Can you talk
about what you learned about food growing up. Maybe that
was home, and maybe it was you know, the culture
(07:03):
at large or school. I just want to know, you know,
what environment were you steeped into before you started having
all these critical thoughts about diet culture. Yeah, I mean,
you know, I think the environment that so many of
us were in right where you just grow up and
like just every piece of the environment around you is
pushing you towards diet culture. You know, I grew up
(07:24):
my mom was on weight Watchers. You know, I remember
being a young kid and she'd be grilling up like
liver and onions because that's what you ate on weight Watchers,
like in the you know, late seventies, early eighties and stuff,
And so there was kind of always this air of like,
you know, food is this thing that you know can
affect you negatively or can make you look ugly, or
(07:45):
that you have this kind of complicated relationship with and
so yeah, I mean I kind of I feel like
I kind of got to critically thinking about it, you know,
maybe embarrassingly, like in my you know, late thirties where
I started to learn more about this stuff in part,
you know, because of work of people like you, right,
you know, I was like in college right where you
read all the woke stuff and you know, like all
(08:05):
the kind of typical stuff. And then but it was
much slower that it started to apply to me. And
it came through recognizing, you know, a lot of what
this bad messaging was doing to the way I talked
to myself in my head, you know, to the way
I reacted and was able to enjoy things in the world.
It was really mindfully recognizing how these patterns were affecting
(08:27):
me and realizing like, wait, I want to switch this
stuff around. Quite explicitly, yes, totally. I mean I was
just writing about, you know, how our value system can
really be almost like a map to how this work
can become integrated. I did this personal value sort a
couple of weeks ago. Or there's just a ton of
cards and there's just a ton of different values, potentially
(08:49):
maybe sixty potential values that a person can have, and
then you're asked to sort them from very important to
not important. And I found that my top values were pleasure, joy,
you know, adventure. And I was realizing when I thought
about my path to this, I mean, because you know, similarly,
I was aware of fat activism. I was aware of
(09:11):
sort of some level of critique around diet culture and
body constructions of body. But it wasn't until a fellow
fat person said you can have a fabulous life as
a fat person that it got under my skin. That
it went from a message that was sort of an
idea to something that was in my heart and it
(09:32):
made complete sense because of my value system. I was like, yes,
of course, something that's going to lead to something feeling
exciting and amazing and very pleasurable is the thing that's
going to sell me and get me all in. Yeah,
totally exactly. Yeah. So you host the amazing podcast, The
Happiness Lab. As you mentioned, it's about examining the science
(09:52):
of happiness and the surprising things that stand between us
and give you our own best life. So, Laurie, you're
basically I mean, I think of you as the happiest
expert or do identify that way? These so many people
call me that that. I'm like, okay, fine, you know,
as long as people realize that it doesn't necessarily mean
that I'm happy all the time, then fine, Yeah sounds great. Yeah,
(10:15):
I mean, well, so this podcast, your podcast started as
the most popular course at Yale, which you teach called
psychology and the good life. So, Laurie, why are you
teaching happiness to super smart young people who are at
an extremely well respected institution in a beautiful part of
New England. Explain well, I think we really have these
(10:38):
strong misconceptions when it comes to what it means to
be happy, right, I mean, we think happiness is about having,
you know, the perfect job, the perfect amount of money,
the perfect relationship, the perfect body. You know. My Yale
students think it's getting into the perfect school. It's like perfect, perfect, perfect.
But what the science shows is that you know the
real route to happiness. And let me define happiness how
(10:59):
social sciences think about it. Social scientists think of happiness
as kind of two parts, being happy in your life
and with your life. So with your life is like
you have a sense of meaning and purpose. It's overall
the answer to the question how satisfied are you with
your life? That's kind of being happy with your life.
But being happy in your life is like positive emotions.
You have joy, you delicious pairs all the time, you know,
(11:20):
you have liked great friends like you. It's not that
you don't experience negative emotion because, as we'll probably talk
about grief, negative emotion. All of that is part of
being happy. In fact, it's part of living a meaningful life.
But the ratio is pretty good, and I think we
think we get both of those from all the pursuits
I've just talked about, right, Like, if only I could
get the perfect body, right, then I would be happy.
(11:43):
But in practice you can ask this, right, there are
people who you know, achieve what they think is the
perfect body, or at least, you know, lose weight or
get plastic surgery or what have you, and we can
ask are they happier? And the answer is like, not really, right.
You know, the evidence really sage us that people who
go through these changes that they chose and wanted, and
(12:03):
in lots of cases work super hard for they're not
as happy as they expect. And this comes down to
a bunch of different cognitive biases and fallacies. You know.
One of the big ones is what's called a rival fallacy.
And this is true, you know, and body change domains,
but it's also true and just like any domain, like
when I find out I get into Yale, I'm going
to be happy, or when I sell my first book,
(12:24):
I'm gonna be happy. You know, when your book Virgie
gets on the New York Times bestseller lists. I will
be happy, right, we pick some event that, like when
I arrive at this place, I will finally be happy,
and the data suggests that basically never happens. My colleague
at Harvard, Dan Gilbert, who I interviewed from my podcast, said,
happily ever after, only happens if you have three seconds
left to live. Like, it just doesn't. There's just no
(12:47):
you know, like our life changes and stuff comes up,
and there's going to be these transitions. And so I
think part of it is that we really assume that
happiness comes from these kinds of achievements, these accolades, but
in practice that is just not what the science shows.
Happiness comes from other things. It comes from social connection.
It comes from being present, even if that presence is
(13:08):
with negative emotions. It comes from self compassion and giving
yourself and other people grace. It comes not from Mimi, Mimi,
me and focusing on the self, but focusing on others
and community. Like people who do that stuff wind up
self reporting that they're a lot happier. And this is
not like the version of the pursuit of happiness that
(13:30):
we've all been sold, but it's what the science really shows. Oh.
I love that. Now, before we move on, I just
want to take a second to acknowledge that happiness isn't
the only motivation people have to participate in diet culture.
People who are higher on the weight spectrum might get
(13:50):
in a diet culture because they're being denied basic humanity,
not because they necessarily want the so called perfect body
or partner. There's no arguing with the fact that smaller
bodied people are afforded more basic humanity and access to
all kinds of things, from fashion to friendship, to romance
to a regular day free from street harassment. We also
(14:15):
know that ending diet culture isn't just about finding a
better path to happiness. It's about something bigger justice. The
arrival myth doesn't quite capture all of that nuance, but
I still think it's important to say that regardless of size,
this work around noticing where the arrival myth does show
(14:35):
up in our thinking is useful because we all definitely
buy into some version of this myth. Noticing is a
great way to start breaking down some of that external
messaging to make room for your desires and values, whatever
they may be. I have this realization a few years
(14:56):
ago related to die culture and body ease, that we've
sort of been told and socialized into believing that privilege
and happiness are one hundred percent overlaid. That you know,
the acquisition of a certain type of body or a
certain type of eating or whatever is absolutely you know,
it's one to one ratio of like privilege happiness. And
(15:19):
I think right, diet culture is a really popular or
common path that is supposed to lead to happiness, and
I think for a lot of us, the allure of
staying in diet culture is the happiness we are supposed
to unlock or earn at the end of our journey.
And of course the end never seems to ever actually arrive,
(15:40):
or to your point around the arrival policy, but nonetheless,
happiness is the carrot in that process. Yeah, I mean
there's so I mean, first off, there's just your happiness.
Researchers have studied whether everything correlates with happiness. You know, income,
which city you live in, which culture you're from, religion, like,
you know, how much you exercise, how much you like
have social connection. Like. They've looked at everything and they've
(16:02):
never found a correlation between being skinny and being happy,
Like it's just it's just not there. Right. But like,
you know, people who really are trying to lose weight
and then they get to their goal weight or they
get you know, to whatever they were, you know, again,
their arrival never really comes. But you know, to the
extent that they got to some arrival point that they picked,
are they happier? And the answer is no, And then
(16:24):
this just isn't just true and diet culture, it's pretty
much a feature of the human brain, right, you know,
So take income levels, right, A lot of people think like, oh,
if I could only make I don't know, one hundred
thousand dollars right, then I'll be happier. Or I could
only do you know, if I could only like you know,
I don't know, by this school new car, then I
will be happier. And the evidence suggests both the arrival fallacy.
(16:45):
When you get there, you're not as happy as you think.
But even once you get the thing, you kind of
get used to it really really quickly. Right, Like, there's
no kind of race that we can play where we
get to the carrot, because as soon as you get
to what you think is the carrot, the carrot's like
a little bit further away. And this this is what
scientists call hedonic adaptation, which is just a fancy way.
Yeah it sounds great, right, hedonic, Right like happiness adaptation,
(17:09):
You just get used to stuff. What does it mean?
So you know, I don't know. You get the new
the new version of an iPhone, which you're really excited by.
This happens to me sometimes because I'm like a lotty
and I keep technology like forever, and then I finally
get a new one. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's
got all these new things. The colors is so awesome,
and I can like download these apps that I couldn't
download before. And for a second, like a brief moment,
you're like, this is so cool. But then you just
(17:31):
get used to it. It's just your phone. It doesn't
have any like special features anymore. Right. The same is
true for, sadly, pretty much every good thing in life.
The flip side if hedonic adaptation is that all the
bad things in life you kind of get used to too,
Like there are definitely things in life that you're like,
this is just going to be awful and I'll never
get through it. But like, actually, you get used to
(17:52):
that stuff too, like think a breakup or you know,
like some bad news, right, like all your rationalization processes
kick in and wind making you feel okay with just
a reasonably small amount of time. You know, if you
had us predict how long it would take. And so
that's hedonic adaptation. But what it means is like all
these things in the ideals of you know, the kind
(18:13):
of diet culture that you talk about being perfect, getting
the perfect dress, like getting the perfect relationship, all the
stuff that we think these kinds of changes are going
to bring, they don't bring in the way we think.
And so hedonic adaptation means we're constantly on this treadmill.
People often talk about the hedonic treadmill where we're like
chasing something thinking that once we get to it, it's
(18:34):
going to be great, and either we never get to it,
because that's the structure of these kind of you know,
privileged chasing things, or once you do get to it,
you're like, Okay, that wasn't as awesome as I thought, Like,
move on to the next thing I think is going
to be awesome. And you know what we've looked at
in the podcast, which is funny. I mean it's sad funny.
You know, it's kind of sad funny is that if
you look at people who've achieved these ideals of privilege
(18:55):
after lots of hard work, they're still not happy. And
so I interviewed this fantastic to guy Clay Cockerell, who's
a wealth psychologist. So he's a mental health professional that
works with the point zero zero zero zero one percent. Right,
So you have to have at least like over one
hundred million dollars to like go to this guy. And
already it should be shocking that he has like clients, right,
because many of us thought if I had one hundred
(19:16):
million dollars, a lot of stuff would get sorted out, right,
could fire the therapist, you know, it's like, but no,
and their problems are, oh my gosh, if only I
could get to a billion dollars. And so it should
kind of remind us that so many of the things
we think are going to work. Again, a lot of
things that we get these values of what's going to
work from our culture. We think it's going to work.
Our culture told us this is the thing we're supposed
(19:37):
to do. But then we get there and we're just
not very happy, right, I mean, yes, like I have
so many thoughts and questions. I mean, I call it
diet brain. But I notice, I mean, diet brain is
what you're talking about, which is like, when I do this,
I will get X, Y Z, And it's okay if
I'm miserable on the way, because I'm going to get
this thing at the end. But it's like I've noticed,
(19:59):
even though I don't restrict food anymore, the diet brain,
which we could call the capitalist brain, we could call
it the white supremacist brain, whatever you want to call it, right,
it's essentially it's the same function applied to all these
different parts of life. So I'll notice my diet brain
showing up in my romantic relationships, my diet brain showing
(20:19):
up around work. And it goes back to you know,
not being present, not being okay and accepting where you
are right now. I think all of us have the
experience of sort of feeling the arrival fallacy, and maybe
it's just there for a second where we're like, maybe
the game is rig even if it's only for a
couple of seconds. But from a cognitive science perspective, why
(20:44):
do people ignore that sort of maybe moment of like hmm,
maybe something isn't right. Why are they attached to this fallacy?
Why is it so alluring? I think it's just, you know,
one of the things that's annoying about our brains is
that this process fedonic adaptation, we're blind to it. We
just don't know what happens, right, and that means we
(21:05):
can't accurately predict what we're going to enjoy and what
we're not going to enjoy. One of my favorite kind
of funny studies about this, So a lot of the
studies about this have people predict like, this wonderful thing
is going to happen to you or this really terrible
thing is going to happen to you. How happy will
you be or how sad will you be? And for
how long? And what you find is like, as you
might expect, people get this wrong. So you know you're
gonna lose fifty pounds, How happy? Oh my gosh, I'll
(21:27):
be so happy. No, you just think you got to
lose another twenty or something, right, you never you know,
how you get into Yale University, How happy will you be? Like? Nope,
you know you're immediately going to move on to the
next goal post, right, So people are wrong about this,
but there's some case where that they can find situations
where people have to predict about the same thing over
and over again, like literally the exact same thing, and
(21:47):
they still get it wrong. And I think this is
why diet culture takes hold, you know, for people who
are kind of really embedded in it is like I'm
gonna lose weight this time, and then maybe you lose
some weight and then you gain it back, but then
you're like, this time when I do, it's really going
to be happy if I get there right, and it's
like you're not. You can't update. It's very sad. Yeah,
this is this is a trick of our brain, and
(22:07):
you can kind of know it rationally, but it's very
hard to feel it in your body. Yes, absolutely, I
mean a rebel eaters club, we're really big on listening
to our bodies and following our intuition. But it sounds
like sometimes those impulses are not actually always aligned with
our biggest desires or values. How do we deal with
that complexity? Laurie, Yeah, well, I think I mean this
(22:30):
is a problem, right, like our brains. Our brains through
this like clugy like pile of meat. That's been evolving
over time. Like it's not sordid, right, like, like we
give it like, oh my gosh, the human brain is,
but like, no, it's got problems, right, And one problem
is that you know, trauma leads us in all kinds
of different directions when it comes to our intuition. I
think you're you and this podcast and so many great
(22:51):
people have done such good work trying to figure out
how to unpack that. But even if you're not going
through that, the evidence really shows that we have these
brains that sometimes lead us in the wrong directions. Like
or so, how I would build a brain. I would
build a brain that was really good at like detecting
things that were pleasurable, Like you know, brain is walking around,
finds a pair is like, oh let me try this.
(23:13):
Oh this is pleasurable. Let's go after this, right Like,
it would kind of know that and the amount I
worked to get to something would map on to like
how pleasurable it actually was in reality for me. Right,
turns out brain stupid not designed like that. We seem
to have a system. We seem to have a system
for liking stuff, and by that I mean, you know,
(23:34):
the actual enjoyment I get out of the pair, Like
when I taste it, it just there's a sensation, this
taste that feels good, right, you know, you get that
probably out of social connection, out of the kind of
you know, joyful after interactions. I'm getting out of this
conversation with you. Right, there's this stuff that feels good. Right.
But then we have a separate system that craves stuff,
that wants stuff. That's the motivational system that's kicking me
(23:57):
in the butt, and say, go after that, go after that,
go after that, get obsessed with it, you know, beat
yourself up if you don't go for it. And you'd
hope that those are connected, Like you'd hope that my
motivational system, my wanting system as the scientists call it,
would only go for stuff that I actually liked, But
it turns out not. So there're these interesting disconnects between
the system, even in like local things. I think when
(24:18):
I've had a bad day, I'm like, I will really
like to sit on the couch and scroll through Netflix
and like do nothing and not talk to anybody and
not leave the house. But actually what would I like.
I'd probably like calling a friend, I'd probably like going
for a walk and like moving my body in a
kind way like there's all this stuff that would feel better,
I just don't want it. You know. We get a
(24:40):
lot of wanting for my phone, Like I definitely feel like, oh,
I want to scroll Reddit for like sixteen hours, or
I really want to like look at it, like the
wanting system makes me do it. But then if you
ask me at the end of it, like, hey, how
did that feel, I'm like, I kind of feel sort
of apathetic and nasty, you know, but I don't have
like craving or wanting for you know, talking to other
(25:00):
humans necessarily, or like again, doing the stuff that will
really give you liking. That is a disconnect between the
wanting and liking system. And I think that that disconnect
gets worse when you have different kinds of cultures and
systems feeding into your wanting system. Right, the wanting system
gets way hooked up in fear. I think trauma plays
all kind of like you know, you want to be
(25:22):
by yourself and protect yourself, right, it gets fed into
that system, and that doesn't necessarily map on to what
you're going to like. And so I think for me,
you know, you could hear about this disconnect and be like,
oh my gosh, I'm never going to sort out my brains.
I should never listen to my intuition whatever. But really,
when you hear about this, it gives you a path forward,
which is which is presence, which is mindfulness, which is like, gosh,
(25:46):
I really got to take time to figure out and
notice what I like and what I don't like. And
you know that's one of the reasons I pick the
pairs for this, right is. I feel like it's like
a pair is one of these cases of like, actually
I like the pairs. They're freaking really good, Like they're
they don't have to get categorized as like healthy food
in my diet brain. It's like I can enjoy this,
right Yeah, I mean absolutely, I'm wondering, like, for someone
(26:10):
like me who really values intuition but also knows that
other factors like trauma and cultural influences play into the
information my body is giving me, how do we arrive
at the right answers for us? Yeah? Well, I think
it's really I mean, from this perspective of this wanting
liking system, it's finding ways to get in tune with
the liking, and that means being present and noticing right,
(26:33):
like you know, mindful eating, like tasting the food and
noticing how it feels in your body, and really trying
to do that in a way where you're really paying
attention to the physical sensations of this stuff, right, That
can be really powerful. Taking time to notice how you
talk to yourself, right, like what are the voices in
your head saying? And realizing they're just thoughts, right, I
mean Freddie listener, who doesn't know the thoughts in your
(26:55):
head aren't you? They're just your thoughts. And those thoughts
can be influenced by all kinds of crap, your trauma
about your culture, you know, like capitalism, blah blah blah.
It's not you. It's just like a conglomeration. And when
you start to recognize that and question it and realize
you can change the way you talk to yourself, that
can be really really powerful for breaking some of these
things down. And so I think, you know, real practices
(27:17):
where you engage in that kind of presence, whether it
be a meditation practice of breath based practice, all of
those things can be powerful. And I think within that
is also the necessity of getting in tune with your
negative emotions again, misconception. You know from all the stuff
that we have to be happy, and you do have
no negative emotions, no anxiety, no sadness, no anger. Just
(27:41):
get rid of those, avoid them and suppress them completely,
and then I'll be happy. First of all, it doesn't work.
You know, there's lots of empirical evidence that you just
cannot suppress your emotions. You try, but they leak out
in your physiology. The body keeps score as it were,
So it just doesn't work. But it turns out that
the way to get through negative emotions is actually to
(28:02):
go through them and not avoid them. And so practices
where you really sit with the sadness and the trauma
that comes from you know, like body hating culture, Like
the time that you sit with whatever came from being
part of a like nasty childhood or a traumatic childhood.
You know that you sit with like just how pissed
(28:23):
off and frustrating, like you know, the fact that we
haven't achieved all that we want to achieve in social
justice feels like right now? Right those are things that
we need to take time to literally sit with and
allow in our lives. And the odd thing is that
by sitting with them, by not rejecting them, but being like,
it's here, let's go, let's hang out together. You know,
negative feelings of frustration, sadness, whatever, that's how you get
(28:46):
through them. That's how you process them and overcome them. Yes,
and I think you're going back to the concept of happiness,
Like I think that this is how you create a
meaningful life. So okay, Laurie, being a human being is
a lot of work and conclusion. I love what you said.
I love what you say about the brain, and I
(29:07):
think there's an opportunity. Immediately when I was thinking about
this idea of kind of like our imperfect, weird, sort
of strangely designed brains, I was like, it's another opportunity
for radical self acceptance, right exactly. Yes, yes, it's like
and I think you do powerful. Yes, yes, I have this,
you know, because so one of the things I realize
is that the right move is embracing what you know,
(29:31):
social scientists call like self compassion, like, which in the
scientific literature comes with these three parts. One that we
talked about a lot mindfulness, right, like noticing what these
voices are making you feel, like noticing what you need
um non judgmentally. That's like the important part of mindfulness
having a common humanity, realizing, hey, everybody goes through this,
lots of folks have trauma. I'm just human with this
(29:53):
beat up meat brain that's leading me in the wrong directions,
and like I shouldn't beat myself up. And then just
like a real sense that you know, you are just
human and it's okay, and you need to give yourself
some self kindness. That's kind of the third piece that
the way to get yourself to achieve any goal isn't
to drill sergeant yourself, Like, the way to motivate yourself
(30:15):
is with kindness, Like talk to yourself like you talk
to a friend. And you know, this is why I
love this podcast so much, because I think it's really
trying to help people cultivate exactly that balanced voice, Like
you know, we're all like reacting to this awful diet
culture and like we're all going to do it differently
and that's cool, and we're like figuring out our journey
and our path and that doesn't involve beating ourselves up. Yes, yes,
(30:37):
I love this. I'm so excited, Laurie. It's been so
fun talking with you, Laurie. Last question, if you had
one tool you wanted to pass on to people who
are breaking free from diet culture, trying to build their
own version of happiness and something meaningful. You know what
is that tool? I mean they already of your podcast,
(30:59):
so I feel like they're doing okay. But yeah, my
psychological tool, my psychological tool would be to invest in
practices that build your self compassion. Self compassion as being mindfulness,
an okay, recognition of your common humanity, like non judgmentally
recognizing that you're just human and being kind to yourself.
(31:19):
And if you need a good reference for this, I
would suggest checking out this lovely book called Fierce Self
Compassion by the researcher Kristin Neff, where she argues that
the only way to you know, come through through trauma,
to fight privilege, you know, to fight diet culture, all
the social justice stuff we want to see in the
world is to be fiercely self compassionate with ourselves. It's
(31:40):
not to beat ourselves up. So yeah, self compassion would
be the one tool. Ah, Laurie, you're wonderful. You're a genius.
You're doing amazing work. Thank you for being on Rebel
Eaters Club. Thanks so much for having me it was
super fun. Yay Wow. Laurie's work always blows my mind.
(32:11):
I'm going to be thinking about hedonic adaptation a lot
this year. Laurie brought up some important questions I'd love
to encourage us all to chew on, like how do
you sort intuition from trauma from cultural influence? And how
can we remember to use the tool of self compassion
early and often to push back on the messages we
(32:33):
get from diet culture. If you have thoughts on these
questions or the conversation you just heard, or even if
you just want to say hi, reach out shoot us
a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com.
Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by Transmitter Media.
This episode was written and produced by Isabelle Carter. Sarah
(32:56):
Knicks is Transmitters executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our managing producer,
and Greta Khane is our executive producer and I'm your host.
Virgie tovar Rick Kwan is our mixed engineer. And thanks
to Taka Yasuzala, who wrote some of the music we
use in the show. If you love Rebel Eaters Club,
tell your friends and share the love by writing a
(33:16):
review on your favorite podcast app. See you next week.
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