April 3, 2024 • 56 mins
In this episode, Dr. Jud Brewer discusses how to manage your hunger habit through updating reward values and other important strategies. He emphasizes the significance of mindfulness in navigating emotional eating and changing behaviors around eating. Dr. Brewer offers several practical strategies and valuable perspectives for individuals seeking to address unhealthy eating habits or addictions.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the power of updating reward values in habits for lasting behavior change
- Uncover the neuroscience behind habit formation and how it influences our daily choices
- Learn the art of mindful eating as a powerful tool for effective weight management
- Overcome food addiction by cultivating awareness and taking control of your eating habits
- Understand what it means to become disenchanted with unhealthy eating patterns
- Explore effective strategies for updating reward values in habits to create positive change in your life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's really what it's about, is what I'm doing causing suffering.
And if it's not causing suffering, then it may not
be worth judging yourself for right.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
(00:37):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
(00:58):
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is doctor Judson Brewer, also
(01:18):
known as doctor Judd. He's an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author.
He studies the neural mechanisms of mindfulness and has translated
research findings into programs to treat addictions. Judd also founded
an app based digital therapeutic treatment program for anxiety, overeating,
and smoking. He's Director of Research and Innovation at Brown
(01:38):
University's Mindfulness Center and Associate professor in Behavioral and Social
Scientists in the Brown School of Public Health and in
psychiatry at Brown's Warren Albert Medical School. Today, doctor Judd
and Eric discuss his book The Hunger Habit, Why We
Eat when We're not Hungry and How to Stop.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hi, jud Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I think this is your third or fourth time on
the show, so I am always happy when we get
a chance to talk. And we're going to be discussing
a new book you have called The Hunger Habit, Why
we Eat when We're not hungry and how to stop?
And this seems to be a topic of perennial interest
among people because I think in our modern world, right,
(02:20):
it's really really easy to overeat, Right, we have a
problem of abundance, not scarcity anymore. Right, Yes, absolutely, So
we'll get into that in a second, but before we do,
let's start like we always do with the parable. In
the parable, there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and
they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf,
(02:41):
which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
they think about it for a second. They look up
at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
(03:02):
that you do well.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
To me, in a nutshell, it's about whatever we put
energy into and that energy is going to grow wherever
we're directing it. And so in my personal life, if
I feed, you know, greed, for example, it's going to grow.
If I feed kindness, that's going to grow. And I
(03:24):
see that in my own life. And this is directly
relevant to basically all the work I do as an
addiction psychiatrist and a researcher as well, because the idea
is to help people feed habits that are going to
be helpful for them and for others as well.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, So I want to start with your book with
a statement that you make at some juncture, and I
don't quite know where you make it, but to me
it sort of summarizes the whole approach of the book,
which is, you say, when it comes to changing habits,
whether letting go of old ones or developing new ones,
it follows one path in one path only changing reward value.
(04:04):
So say more about what do you mean by changing
reward value and why do you see this as the
primary way to intervene in habit change.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So to me, the dominant paradigm for the last century,
if not hundreds of years, has been this idea around
willpower and self control. You know, there's a relief carved
into the Parthenon in Athens, I think in Greece that
depicts a rider and a horse, and the horses the passions,
the rider's reason, and the idea is that there's this
(04:38):
age old debate about, you know, how do we control
our passions? Can we basically think our way out of problems?
And that is still the dominant paradigm when it comes
to changing eating habits today. It's all about, you know,
use your willpower. It's a great marketing and retention strategy
for companies because they can tell people, you know, use
(04:59):
our die and it's your fault if you fail. So
that sets people up to feel like there's something wrong
with them and also unfortunately gives them the wrong impression
that they need more willpower in whoever it is that
telling them, you know, whatever, the diet jejoor is is
correct from a neuroscience standpoint, I don't know how else
(05:22):
to put this, but willpower is not even part of
the equation. And so I mean, I'm not kidding like
when we run our analyses for behavior change, and it's
not just us. These are formulae that have been tried
and true. Back to the nineteen seventies. There are two
researchers named Riskerla and Wagner who came up with this
(05:44):
basic formula and it's still used today. So this is
a non controversial, very good model that has a lot
of explanatory power for how habit forms and how habit changes.
And it has nothing to do with willpower, So what
does it have to do with It has everything to
do with reward value. And so that's why I say
that's so critical because from a neuroscience standpoint it's pretty clear,
(06:08):
But more importantly, as a clinician and from a pragmatic standpoint,
we can actually watch that behavior change through targeting reward value.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
What one thing to feed your good Wolf comes to mind?
If the thing that came to your mind was more
time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
a quick tip that might make it better for you.
And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
(06:42):
to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
of the time. Every three seconds, fail again and failed again.
We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
(07:05):
if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
it relaxing, check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
dot me slash Calm. In it, I walk you through
my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
and a lot of people have found it really helpful,
that's goodwolf dot me slash calm. And so when we
say reward value right, we're basically talking about our brain's
(07:27):
way of ranking how enjoyable or unenjoyable something is, yes, right.
Reward values the fancy way of saying essentially that yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
So what would a simple example be if I slam
my hand in the door, low reward value, higher reward value,
not slamming my hand in the door. And the same
is true for food. In fact, we have a lot
of evolutionary mechanisms built in so that we'll actually have
natural preferences for calorie dense foods. For example, so if
(08:00):
if we eat some broccoli versus some chocolate cake, our
brain is very very likely to prefer the chocolate cake
just because it's saying, hey, there are a lot of
calories here, you know, let's pack those in. And the
idea is that our body is constantly preparing for famine,
and so it wants to pack the calories in. In fact,
(08:21):
opulence was a sign of prosperity back in the day.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And so the idea then is that if I can
train my brain or reteach it so that it begins
to count the full cost of the negative behaviors that
I engage in, I will naturally seek them less.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yes, And I would say the brain will train itself
even if we help orient it in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
One of the things that I know about people who
have dealt with food issues, so to speak, right is
that they're very aware on some level of the costs.
They're very aware of the fact that they don't feel
good about it, that they often feel worse afterwards, and
that's not changing their behavior. Is it because they're not
(09:13):
accurately connecting all the dots in a systematic way? Would
you say that's the primary thing that's kind of missing.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
There generally speaking?
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
And what I see the most is that people get
stuck in this, you know, trying to think their way
out of the problem, so they think, you know, it's
back to the willpower piece. But on top of that,
they also get stuck in these self judgmental habit loops
where they're judging themselves and they think that the judgment
(09:42):
is going to kind of give them a swift kick
in the pants and that's going to actually help them
change behavior as well. It's what they're feeding. They're feeding
energy to you know these thinking processes, and they're feeding
energy into judging themselves rather than taking that energy and
putting it in a place that's actually going to affect
behavior change, which is in the feeling body.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Right, Because it does seem I got this idea from you,
but I think I've also heard it other places and
in different ways. Right, that judgment, in many cases stops
our ability to learn. Right, we're so wrapped up in
shame and judgment that we're not actually able to use
the parts of our brain that learn well, and so
(10:22):
thus we're not actually learning. And that's what we're trying
to do here, right, We're trying to teach the brain
that it's value judgments far as whether this is a
good behavior that I should keep doing or behavior I
should do less of those aren't getting updated.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yes, And I think the way you said it is
perfect where it's we get wrapped up, Because when we
get wrapped up in judgment or shame or blame or
whatever or guilt, those all feel closed down, they feel contracted.
And I like the language that Carol Dwakius is here.
She talks about fixed versus growth mindset. And so when
we're judging ourselves we're in a fixed mindset, and we're
(11:00):
not actually in the arena of learning, which is a
growth mindset. We're in the opposite so here it prevents
us from actually opening and growing from our experiences.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It makes me think of I don't know if you're
familiar with her work, Mayasavolitz, who's written about addiction, and
you know, she brings forward a theory of addiction that
aligns with what you're saying here, which is that essentially
many people think of it almost as a learning disorder,
meaning that for the average person, right as they go
(11:35):
along and their experiences of negative consequences from alcohol or
drugs start to grow, they naturally do less of it.
But for the addict that learning doesn't seem to take place.
Right It just seems as if the previous reward value
of drugs equals good, regardless of what's happened since, remains
(11:57):
almost locked in place. And that makes me think a
little bit of a phrase from twelve step programs, you
know where I got sober, And it was basically the
idea that you know, we're unable with sufficient force to
bring to mind the humiliation and suffering of even a
week or a month ago, Yes, And I think what
(12:18):
your book does is lay out sort of almost a
learning plan for the brain so that it can start
to update these reward values, to update these senses of
what is working for us and what isn't in a
way that is more effective than maybe randomly hoping that
eventually it happens.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Absolutely, And the idea there is it starts with learning.
If we don't know how our brain works, how can
we possibly learn to work with it? And so the
plan starts with like, here's how your brain works, and
learn how your brain works. And it's not like you
have to learn it down to every single neural sinopse,
but we can learn some of the basic principles pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Excellent, So let's let's go into that in just a second.
But let's for a moment talk about something you say
early on in the book, and you say, though the
wires connecting their brains to their stomachs have been crossed
with their emotional wiring. You're describing people who are having problems,
you know, maybe eating more than they want, and worse,
they seem to be walking around much of the time
(13:21):
with their brains disconnected from their bodies.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Say more about that yes.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
So we have this very basic survival mechanism that is
about hunger. It's called homeostatic hunger. And so if we
are low end calories of our stomach's empty, our brain says, hey,
do something about this, you know, and we are motivated
to get some food you know that's been at play,
that's evolutionarily conserved all the way back to the sea
slug you know. So this is a very well known process,
(13:49):
and the process itself at a high level is called positive.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
And negative reinforcement.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
And the way it works is that our ancient ancestors
who didn't have refrigerators, didn't have live in abundance, had
to remember where food is. And the way to remember
that is to learn where food sources were. And so
they would be out foraging, they'd find the food, and
then their stomach would send this dopamine signal back to
their brain and say, hey, here's the food.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Remember where it is.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And it's called positive reinforcement. Same would be true for
you know, if they see, you know, where all the
tigers hang out, and they said, okay, let's avoid that area,
and they would learn, you know, okay that area is,
you know, don't go there. Unless you want to become
lunch and that's called negative reinforcement. The crossing of the
wires comes when that mechanism is still at play. But
(14:38):
we learned to eat food not because we're hungry, but
because of a mood. And so, you know, for example,
how many times have we gone to birthday parties as
kids and our parents, you know, they're like, okay, why
don't you not eat breakfast and lunch so you'll be
starving for the cake and the ice cream. You know,
probably the opposite where they're like, let you know, let's
(14:59):
give them a healthy meal so that they'll eat less
of the sugar. But then you know, kids start to
eat ice cream and cake because they're having fun, and
ice cream and cake taste good, and so they learn
to eat because of the celebration.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
And then on top of.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
This, we learn to eat when we're sad or bored
or lonely or frustrated or angry or all these things.
And so this food mood relationship starts to shift for
a lot of people. This is where these unhealthy habits
come in from. You know, like eating when we're actually hungry,
that homeostatic hunger to eating, you know, when we're not hungry,
(15:34):
but because of any sort of emotion that we might have.
That is so common now that there's a term that's
actually a misnomer, but it was designed specifically to help
researchers study this phenomenon. It's called hedonic hunger. So in
contrast to homeostatic hunger, which is, you know, getting us
back in balance, handenic hunger just means we're eating out
of emotion, you know, that mood food relationship, and that's
(15:56):
where the wires get crossed.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Okay, so up till now, we've sort of laid out
that there's this mismatch happening, that we are beginning to
eat for reasons beyond just hunger, and that our reward
values are not updating. So let's talk about a piece
of chocolate cake, right, because a piece of chocolate cake
for different people is going to be different things. Right.
(16:20):
It's probably going to be delicious for most people, right.
I Mean there's some people that don't like it, but
I don't even let them listen to the show. So
assuming that now I'm kidding, but assuming that a piece
of chocolate cake is fairly delicious, right, and it's going
to be delicious partially for the reasons you laid out before,
meaning that our bodies are sort of wired up to
(16:41):
want that sugar and fat. So where does this go
from and in what cases do you start to think
about this starts to become problematic versus sort of a
default human behavior of enjoying sweet and fat.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Really good question, and I don't know if there's a
clear line, So I think we can start at the
far end. Simple definition of addiction that I learned in
residency was continued to use despite adverse consequences. There's a
controversial topic around can people be addicted to food? A
lot of people are arguing, well, if you look at
(17:21):
this simple definition of addiction, you know, if somebody is
eating and their adverse consequences, that would fall into the definition.
So on one end of the spectrum, when people are
consuming food not because they're hungry, but because of a
mood or any other reason and it's causing adverse consequences,
you could say, okay, that falls into the category far
(17:43):
into the spectrum where there's addiction. And then you know,
in the grayer zone is when people are you know,
just they might pick up a piece of candy or
something because it looks good, but they're not particularly hungry.
But they stop at one piece, whereas somebody else, you know,
they see a bull of M and m's or something
like that, and they're going to eat the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I talk in the hunger habit about my own gummy
worm addiction, where I was literally eating entire bags.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Of gummy worms, you know, in one sitting.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So some of this really is partially our own feeling
about how problematic it is, right. I mean, again, on
the extreme ends of things, right, it becomes fairly obvious.
You know. We might all say, you know, a heroin
attic like me that has hepatitis c in, weighs one
hundred pounds, right, and keeps doing drugs even though he's
looking at going to jail for a long time. That's
(18:54):
pretty easy to just be like, Yep, that's clear, clearly problematic, right,
you know, but you get in to that middle ground, right.
I had a conversation. I was talking with my doctor
this morning, and he practices in a relatively affluent area,
and he was saying, you know, he's like, I have
conversations all day long, day after day about people and
(19:15):
their alcohol use, right, and these are people who are
fully functioning people. Right, They're not going to necessarily fit
lots of definitions of alcoholism. And again, I know that
the scientific community is moving even away from that as
a way of defining the problem. But these are the
people that are going to be in the middle area, right.
Their consequences, their adverse effects are going to be a
(19:38):
little bit more mild. They're going to probably be if
they're physical. They're a little bit further down the road.
And I often find this to be the really tough
place for people because I know a lot of people
who have stayed in a relationship to substances alcohol or
marijuana as an example, in this middle ground for a
(19:58):
long long time time because the adverse effects don't ever
seem to get bad enough for them to really go
about making a change. So it seems like some of
this is by nature self diagnosed, right.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Absolutely, And I think there are ways that we can
put our thumb on the scale a little bit.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
And so you're.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Highlighting, you know, there are all these these memes around.
You know, you have to get rock bottom for whatever
it is, you know, whether it's alcohol or social media, yep,
to become disenchanted and that is true for a lot
of people, and for a lot of people, you know,
for example, I think of cigarettes is the slow burn,
because you know, somebody can smoke cigarettes for twenty or
(20:41):
thirty years and not get lung cancer or not get
emphysema for all that period of time. That's a really
unfortunate rock bottom to hit. And at that point it's
too late. You can't really reverse emphysema or in lung
cancer is really tough to treat. So here that is
very challenging for people where they see, you know, and
you can think of cigarettes and alcohol as things that
(21:02):
aren't critical for survival certainly, you know, cigarettes are the
easiest ones to look at because some people are like
I need a drink to be able to function socially.
So food, on the other hand, is even more challenging
because we all have to eat to survive. Yes, and
we can come back to this if you want, But
it gets really interesting where, you know, does everybody have
(21:25):
to hit rock bottom, because somebody might never hit rock bottom,
if you know, if they're at an unhealthy weight but
not a terribly unhealthy weight. You know, it's kind of
like where somebody smoke cigarettes but they haven't quite gotten
emphysima yet. So we can put our thumb on the
scale a little bit there and actually help people, you know,
double click on what they're eating habits are now, and
(21:49):
it can actually help to accelerate the process of change.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Say more about that, what sort of things might you
focus on? I mean, the one that comes to mind
for me is sometimes the worst part part of these
behaviors is how they make us feel about ourselves, about
our own self efficacy. That that's one very clear, sort
of internally definable thing. What are some of the things
(22:13):
that we might do that help people see it a
little more clearly.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Well, a lot of it starts with helping us step
back from you know, trying to think our way out
of the problem and feel our way into our experience.
So if we feel our way into our experience. Let's
use overeating as an example. When I have somebody really
recall the last time they overeate. You know, often for
people the easiest scenarios or holiday meals, you know, there's
(22:39):
been a lot of abundance and they've often you know,
had some alcohol, which will you know, make it easier
to be disinhibited. Then they just overeat nobody's come back
and said, Wow, it felt great to overeat. You know,
it's usually oh I felt so terrible and then that
was just physically, and then on top of it, they
feel guilty and all of that. Yes, so we've actually
(23:03):
developed what I call a disenchantment database already, most of us,
for most of our lives, we've been collecting this information.
And it's a gold mine where we can look back
on those experiences and ask, you know, how did that go?
You know, like not in an intellectual way, but in
a feeling way, like how did I actually feel after
I overindulged? And we can feel into that, and that
(23:26):
helps us become disenchanted with doing the behavior, because our
brains are really set up to predict future outcomes based
on past experience. And so if we imagine, you know,
we're at the next holiday meal and we imagine, okay,
what's it going to be like when I do this,
We're we're calling our previous experiences, and if we can
(23:48):
recall what it was like and we're like, oh, that
didn't feel so good, we're suddenly more motivated to not
repeat that behavior because we are disenchanted with it and
all of that comes from just a recollection of what
happened in the past.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
So when you use the phrase disenchantment, you're basically meaning
I start to see the not good sides of this behavior.
In essence, right, I'm beginning to update my reward value
and say, oh, this actually isn't quite as wonderful as
it seems, because I have my own personal data that
(24:23):
says when this is done, I really feel lousy. That's
kind of what you mean by disenchantment, absolutely, And so
you know, I think this gets to the question I
sort of asked earlier and sort of keep sort of circling,
and you even say it yourself. You said, it's very
easy for our brains to forget what it feels like
to overeat discounting that for the remembrance of positive things past, right,
(24:44):
it tasted so good, right, And so it does seem
that for some reason our brains have a difficult time
building that disenchantment up, or for some reason we tend
to focus more on the positive and don't remember what
comes a little further down the road. So what are
some of the tools you recommend for starting to build
(25:07):
up this disenchantment, right, Because in essence, that's sort of
what we're saying, right, If you become disenchanted with the behavior,
if you actually fully see that and you update your
perceptions of good versus bad on this as a behavior.
I don't mean morally, I mean in your own experience, right,
you will naturally cease to do less of it. So,
(25:30):
you know, how do we start to connect the dots?
You know, as we said earlier, that most people have
some degree of disenchantment with these things, but that disenchantment
hasn't gotten to the point that it's turned into real
change yet. So what are some of the ways we
connect that dots or help grow that disenchantment.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
One of the key areas that I have people focus
on is just really feeling into their experience and keeping
it simple, because often people they'll get stuck in their
heads and that isn't where the behavior change happens. So
I have them really just focus on if you just overeate,
(26:06):
for example, what does it feel like if you overate yesterday?
Can you recall what that felt like? And the more
we can recall that and keep that memory fresh, the
simpler it's going to be, because we're not going to
be focusing on You know, there are lots of ways
that our brains will try to distract us. For example,
where they'll say, oh, remember, it was such a good time.
(26:28):
You know, there were all these people there, or you
had a great conversation, or this or that. All of
those can be true, and you know, it's not like
it changes that information, but we're focusing on the wrong
thing because our brain's like, no, it was a good time,
you had a good time. Maybe we did have a
good time. How good of a time did our body have?
And so we just really focus there and it's kind
of asking the body, hey, how'd that go for you?
(26:51):
Was it as good as I remember? And then the
body says, you know, actually I felt like crap. So
we can remember that when we zoom in and focus
on those details.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
All right, now, let's pause for a quick Goodwolf reminder,
and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
as a moment of failure, like, ugh, my mind wandered again.
But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
moment of celebration, because in that moment, your mind actually
(27:23):
woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
a our brain is going to do it more often
because we're training it, and b that we're going to
enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
(27:47):
Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash Calm. I was thinking about this idea through the
lens of twelve step programs because I often spend a
lot of time thinking about, like, what is about twelve
step programs that when they do work, they do work right,
And there's lots of data out there about how effective they.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Are or aren't.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
But you know, you can walk into a room anywhere
in America and find millions of people who have gotten
sober as a result of them. So they worked to
some degree, and it's what worked for me. And I
looked at it and I thought, you know, in some ways,
the fact that we sit there and tell each other's
stories about what it was like and how difficult it
(28:27):
was is almost a to use your terminology an ongoing
disenchantment discussion. It's a way in which we are sort
of helping each other update our disenchantment. You're helping me
remember my own disenchantment.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Absolutely, And I think that's where community can be very,
very helpful, where we're not only helping provide the environment
for somebody to do that recollection out loud, but we're
bearing witness yep.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
So we reflect on our bodies, and that being one way,
I mean that makes sense to me. I mean I
like sweets, right, so I will tend towards perhaps eating
sweets a little more often than would be ideal. Perhaps,
But what I have internalized is I deeply hate how
it feels when I've eaten too much, Like, for whatever reason,
(29:20):
for me, it's a very visceral, deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable experience.
And so that's actually one I don't do that often
because for whatever reason, somehow in my mind that learning
linked up and I was like, that is an awful,
truly to me, for whatever reason, one of my least
(29:40):
favorite feelings. You know, In some way it seems like
I was able to tune into that aspect of my body.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
And that's a beautiful example of the simplicity of this
process of change, where tuning into our bodies, you know,
this very wise body is going to be on stronger
than our thinking brain. And that's that's really I'm not
saying it's easy, but it is simple because it's as
simple as tuning in like you're describing.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So in addition to sort of as you're saying, pay
more attention to our body, you have another line you say,
which is awareness is everything when it comes to behavior change.
You let that sink in. Awareness is everything when it
comes to behavior change. So what we're trying to do
then is tune into our experience of eating in this case,
(30:34):
and you've got something called the craving tool, which is
I think, another way of sort of connecting these dots.
Do you want to walk us through what that is
and what the core questions are in the craving tool?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Sure, So the craving tool is really there as an
awareness tool to help us see very and feel more importantly,
feel very clearly what the results of our eating behaviors are.
So you know, there are two ways that we can
approach it, depending on how we eat. One is if
we're eating food that's you know, that's not very healthy.
(31:07):
For example, for me, it was gummy worms. Or if
we're eating an amount of food that's you know, it's
like overeating or over consuming, or eating when we're not
hungry or both. For me, it was over consuming gummy worms.
Then we can start to pay attention to the process,
and so we keep it pretty simple, where it's just
having people pay attention as they eat whatever the food is,
(31:30):
and so paying careful attention to what it tastes like,
what it feels like in their stomach, and then also
importantly paying attention to the emotions afterwards. You know, for me,
when I eat a bunch of sugar, I tend to
get a sugar rush and a crash, and I can
be pretty moody afterwards. So being able to really see
clearly what the results of the eating behavior are, those
(31:52):
results help us develop that disenchantment database.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
That's what the craving tool is really for, is to
help us really connect the dots between whatever the behavior
is and whatever the result is with.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
You and your gummy worms, right, was that primarily what
you noticed was the sugar crash was primarily the thing
that you felt into and made you realize that this
behavior wasn't one you want to continue engaging or are
there are other elements of it that you were able
to key into.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
There was so much there, you know, where I would
feel this urge, this out of control urge to consume,
and then I would basically eat them as fast as
I could and eat all of them so they'd be
out of the apartment, and then, you know, and then
sleep really poorly and feel bad about doing it and
(32:46):
feel bad about being out of control, and then you know,
wake up the next day a little bit relieved because
I didn't have gummy worms in the house that day until.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Until I got some more. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
So there was a lot there to pay attention to,
including just how good did they taste themselves? You know,
when I started paying careful attention, I realized that for me,
gummy worms were kind of this sickly I best described
them as like this petroleum product.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
It was just like this off suite.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Where my brain's like, I want more, but it just
doesn't taste right, and it's kind of I can't remember
the last time I had a gummy worm, because it's
been years now, but I can still remember what my
body's reaction was was.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Like, eugh, this just does not taste very good.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
And do you think that all those things started to
influence your perception of the taste. Did you start to
actually pay closer attention to what they tasted like? I mean,
you know, I guess I'm kind of curious whether your
taste shifted as the rest of your consciousness shifted, or
whether you simply hadn't been paying enough attention to the
taste to begin with.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, it's a good question. It's certainly the latter, where
I hadn't been paying enough attention to what it tasted
like in the first place. And I think maybe my
taste shifted a little bit as I started paying attention.
As a kid, it was like anything sugary tasted good.
(34:16):
But I could probably eat sugar, you know, breakfast, lunch,
and dinner and still function just fine. I can't do
that anymore, and so there are many more consequences that
come from an all sugar diet now than when I.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Was a kid.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's a sobering thing that
happens to many of us, right, with many different things.
Is you know, what used to be somewhat consequence free
as children or as young people just isn't anymore. And again,
so there's an example of needing to update our reward values, right,
because suddenly these things have a downside that certainly I
(34:54):
couldn't sense before when I was younger. Absolutely, there's something
(35:16):
else that you discuss while you're discussing the craving tool
that I thought was really interesting. And the second question
in there is how content do I feel? Right, you
talk about the fact that you know, on one hand,
we could use the word, you know, satisfied, how satisfied
do I feel? But you say that satisfied and content
might seem like the same thing, but they're not right.
(35:39):
And that asking people that question very specifically as to
whether they were content versus satisfied actually really helped to
get clearer on disenchantment. Say more about that.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, So when my lab studied this, we were really
looking for the language that was going to capture the
right experience, and what we found was a lot of
people will say, oh, yeah, I felt satisfied after that meal,
you know, because there was something satisfying about, you know,
eating when you're hungry. And when we double clicked on
(36:11):
that and ask people, well, how content do you feel?
That helped to bring out of the noise of satisfaction.
When somebody had overeaten, for example, you know, their body
just didn't feel that good, they didn't feel that content.
So the contentment gets into this embodied experience more than
(36:32):
satisfied does satisfied. You know, we probably had a lot
of people still stuck in their heads. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
It does. The other thing that I think contentment does
is it to me, it brings together both the physical
elements of how I feel after I ate, but also
the emotional elements, right, and it points me towards aiming
for a better experience, right, an experience that's better than
just satisfied.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
To me, it intuitively makes sense. I was fascinated to
see that, you know, your lab had figured that out.
And that's one of the things that I love about
reading your work is all of this stuff. You guys
have a fair amount of data supporting that these things work.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, it'd be hard for me to write a book
and feel comfortable about writing that book if I didn't
have actual research behind it. And by research I mean
like not just reading the Internet or reading other people's work,
but actually doing the research myself. So I feel pretty confident,
you know, because I've seen this in my clinic, and
(37:37):
so i can write about those stories, and I've also
seen it in my research, and I can write about
you know, our peer reviewed research studies.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
We jumped over this earlier a little bit, we sort
of alluded to it, but I'd like to kind of
go back and hit it a little bit more directly.
Right in an earlier process in this overall thing, right
is you call it mapping your food habit loops, right,
and you really talk about getting clear on three things,
the why, what, and how? So say more about what
(38:07):
each of those are and what this mapping looks like.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yes, so the mapping helps us start to see what's
driving the eating behavior. So that's the why why am
I reaching for food? The what? What am I reaching for?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
You know? Is it?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
You know, like why am I eating? Am I hungry?
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Or am I bored?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Lonely, sad, angry, frustrated, whatever. If we're eating because of
an emotion, we tend to reach for comfort food, right,
That's where that term comes from. And so you know,
these hyper palatable, hyper processed foods are these things that
kind of give us that. You know, it's the modern
day soma if you think of the eldest Huxley, this
(38:50):
pill that people take that just gets them to you know,
numb out. Basically, food is like that for a lot
of people. I've had patients describe, you know, eating to
numb themselves. And so you know, what am I reaching
for is the type of food or amount of food
even and then the why, what and how how am
I eating? Am I eating just to shove it down?
Speaker 4 (39:12):
You know?
Speaker 1 (39:12):
For me it was the cumming worms. But I've seen
this so many times where people are just eating as
quickly as they can because they're trying to make that
unpleasant feeling go away. They're trying to get that numbing
to take effect as quickly as possible as compared to
haying attention as they eat.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
So that's the why, what, and how?
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, you mentioned in the book this idea of eating mindfully.
I love that you make a little joke about it, right,
because those of us who have been exposed to mindful
eating have sometimes been exposed to it in ways that
seem extraordinarily tedious and silly. I think you joke about
like mindful eating doesn't mean like spending ten minutes to
(39:52):
get to know a raisin, right, which most of us
don't have time for. But something you said that really
struck me was that mindful eating doesn't mean I have
to eat slower. It means I have to be aware
of how I'm eating. And that struck me as a
lot more of an approachable way to get to it, right,
So say more about that.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yes, a lot of us don't have the luxury of
eating a raisin slowly for ten minutes, right, So here
we can embody the principle and understand the concepts and
then use those concepts to develop wisdom through our own experience.
And so, you know, if somebody only has ten minutes
(40:33):
to eat a meal, well, they can pay attention as
they eat that meal. It's compared to you know, scrolling
through their social media on their phone or doing something
or reading a book or doing something else. They can
also pay attention to the amount of the food that
they eat. They can pay attention to the results of
you know, if they eat you know, crappy food versus
you know, mentally processed types of foods. So we can
(40:56):
pay attention to a lot of different aspects of food.
But it doesn't take a lot long time to do that.
That's the basic principle there.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yeah, I think many of us may not have the
luxury of spending ten minutes on a raisin, nor the desire, right,
you know. I always go back and forth with this
in my mind because I seem to have a little
routine worked out for myself. It is often I have
breakfast while I read something I enjoy, and the part
(41:25):
of me that's trained in mindfulness and meditation says, well,
that's that's a bad idea. You shouldn't be doing that,
and yet it seems to be something I so genuinely
kind of enjoy and the fact that, like, you know,
I know what my breakfast is, and it is what
it is. It doesn't change. But I've just kind of
been like, you know, a lot of different things to
worry about in life for me, this one I'm going
to just choose to say, eh, this one's okay.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, Well you're highlighting something important, which is it's not
about you know, looking at this and giving ourselves rules
like I have to eat everything and mindfully, you know,
and not do anything else. You're highlighting I know, the
amount of food and the type of food that brings
me nourishment. I'm assuming you're not just eating a bowl
(42:10):
of fruit lips or something.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
O the sugar, that's right.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
What was the Calvin and Hobbs that Calvin always had
sugar coated chocolate bombs or chocolate coated sugar bombs or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
They'd always have ones where like after you to eat
it is like teeth would be battering.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah. That was such a great cartoon.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
I use it in my habits that matter course as
a teaching tool because there's so much brilliant wisdom in
Calvin and Hobbes.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Absolutely. Yeah, so that's it in Nutell. You know, you're
not eating the sugar coated chocolate bombs for breakfast. And
so if you have a ritual that you really enjoy
and it's not causing suffering, you know, that's really what
it's about, is what I'm doing causing suffering. And if
it's not causing suffering, then it may not be worth
(43:03):
judging yourself for right or saying oh I should be
just reading this book or eating my you know, my breakfast. Yeah, good,
good enough.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Good enough.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
We've kept most of our focus to this idea of
learning to update our value rewards hierarchy.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
But there are some other things, particularly as we get
later into the book, that you talk about, and you know,
one of them is learning to deal with when we
face setbacks.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Right.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
I think this shows up in a chapter under you know,
looking back to move forward. But you know, when I've
coached people on behavior change, right, one of the things
I always say is, there are inevitably going to be
times that we don't do or do the behavior that
we're trying not to do. Like, it's largely inevitable, it's
(43:58):
totally normal, Right, It's going to happen, and if we
don't realize that, we're likely to end up with you know,
I think you call it the fuckets often right in
this book, right, which is where we make a small
mistake and we throw everything away. But the other thing
I was really struck by in your book is how
powerful retrospectives, how powerful looking back on what can I learn? Right?
(44:23):
I always count to people like what can we learn?
But the thing that you said that I thought was
really interesting was that we can actually use the retrospective
as a way of updating our values hierarchies, right, we
can look back even if we don't catch it in
the moment, and still go back. And I thought that
was a really interesting framework that sort of shows us
(44:44):
even when we quote unquote make a mistake and I'm
not even sure I love that phrasing, but that there's
always ways to profit from that.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Well, there are a couple of things here. One is
that often when we're in the middle of it, when
we're in the middle of the dust storm, we can't
see and we can't see clearly, so it can be
really challenging to learn from an.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
Experience when we're caught in the middle of it.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
When the dust settles, we can look back and we
can see all of the damage that's been done, for example,
so that it's much easier to see, oh, yeah, that
was problematic, that didn't go so well. And it also
gives us the opportunity to be at a palm or
safer place to look back as well, where we've developed
(45:32):
some balance and equanimity, and we can lean into that
and say, oh, Okay, that didn't go so well. What
can I learn from this? And I would argue that
we could we could actually take a radical view here
and say there is no such thing as a setback.
I'll say that again, there's no such thing as a
setback if we're learning from that. Why am I saying that?
(45:55):
Because often we learn more from when things haven't gone
well than when they have gone well. And so if
we're open to the learning, then is it a setback
while we've learned And maybe we've learned more from that
quote unquote setback than if we hadn't had it. So
here we can approach everything in life from this growth mindset.
(46:16):
I guess where we're learning from, whether things go sideways
or go forward. And with the retrospectives, we've probably had
a lot of times where things have gone sideways or
backwards where we haven't actually mined the gold from that,
where we haven't looked back and said, you know, what
(46:36):
exactly were the consequences of that?
Speaker 4 (46:38):
How well did that go?
Speaker 1 (46:40):
So we've got this gold mine where we don't have
to go back and repeat all of these experiences. We
can simply go back and recall them and ask, you know,
if we can really feel into the experience, that's the
key piece. Once we can truly feel into that, that's
when we know we can mind that gold.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, yeah, I love that idea that there's you know,
no such thing as a setback, right, And I think
part of the reason that that is so important, and
it gets to something we talked about earlier, and you
actually talk about in some chapters that are even a
little bit later than this, is getting back to how
we relate to our experience and how we relate to ourselves, right,
(47:20):
And normally our looking back, right is just chastisement of ourselves.
It's just judgment of ourselves. It's just self loathing of ourselves,
which means that we're actually not really learning from it, right.
And so the beauty of being able to approach it
(47:41):
as a learning is that often that can be the
way that we can set aside, you know, the self
loathing and the chastisement and vice versa. Right, they sort
of feed each other, you know, you talk about kindness
and curiosity, right, And I think your work, Carol Dweck's work,
Kristin Neff's w work have all you know, driven home
(48:02):
for me a like it's just better to be in
a brain that is kind to itself, Like that's just
a better experience. But really how critical that actually is
in getting better and improving.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yes and kindness can be seen in the same way
that we've been talking about changing eating habits. We can
look at our old habits of self judgment, of guilt,
of shame, of whatever, and see where they fall on
that reward hierarchy relative to kindness. You know, to our brain,
it's a no brainer. Kindness wins every time. So we
(48:36):
can imply the same principles that we've been talking about
eating to kindness and fostering that as a healthy habit
as well.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
So this idea of looking back reminds me of a
quote I love from He was a leadership writer arre
in Venice, but he says, true understanding comes from reflecting
on your experience. I love that is how we actually
get de or understanding, And you know, I think that
it's one of the things I encourage people a lot, Like,
(49:05):
you know, listening to a show like this is like
really valuable, But what's more valuable is to actually stop
and go, well, how is what I just heard actually
apply to my life? Like, let me think very directly
about like what did doctor Judd talk about? How does
that apply to me in my life? Versus just sort
of hearing it?
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, I love that because that reminds me of this
idea of concepts in the service of wisdom. So you
and I can talk about these concepts and we can
talk about, you know, how people's lives might have been changed,
but ultimately somebody listening, their life isn't going to change
until they put these concepts into practice and through their
own direct experience. That's how they're going to develop wisdom.
(49:47):
That's the only way we can develop wisdom is through
our own experience.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yeah, let's talk about something else that comes up in
a couple points in the book, but you hit on
it a little bit more directly near the end of
the book, which is the idea of a bitigger better offer.
Talk to me about what a bigger better offer means
to you and how it applies to what we've been
talking about.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yes, so this is the same concept as the reward hierarchy.
And so we can look at old habits like overeating
or eating junk food. You know, it's the gummy worm,
whatever our gummy worm habit is, and we can become
disenchanted with that just by paying attention, like, oh, gummy
worms don't taste that that good to me. We can
(50:28):
also apply the same thing when we compare gummy worms
to other food. So, you know, for me, it was
not only discovering that gummy worms don't taste very good,
but then my brain said, well, give.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
Me something better.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
So way high on the bigger better offer hierarchy is blueberries.
You know, I absolutely adore blueberries, and I just realized
recently that they actually provide this intermittent reinforcement because you
never know just how sweet and next one is going
to be. You know, like one could be slightly more
(51:03):
tart and the next one could be a slightly sweeter,
one could be a slightly you know, pop in your
mouth a little bit more juicier versus the next one.
And so it's like, if we're paying attention, it's a
lottery in our mouth. Yeah, every time, you know, and
to me, number you play.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
When intermittent rewards those are those are pretty sticky?
Speaker 4 (51:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (51:27):
So are you eating your blueberries one at a time?
Speaker 4 (51:30):
Generally?
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, if I'm starving, I maybe a couple at a time,
but the best reward comes from eating them one at
a time.
Speaker 3 (51:38):
Speaking of my chocolate frosted sugar bombs, as part of
my breakfast, I put I put my blueberries in with those,
so it's maybe why I'm not getting the individual blueberry flavor.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
So I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
But that's the principle, is you know, using the same
awareness that we're using to become disenchanted with the old
habits to build these new ones. You know, whether it's
the habit of kindness, whether it's the habit of curiosity,
or whether it's finding our blueberry equivalent.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
That's great. So listener and thinking about all of that
and the other great wisdom from today's episode. If you
are going to isolate just one top insight or thing
to do that you're taking away, what would it be.
Remember that, little by little, a little becomes a lot.
And a habit for me that has accrude and benefit
over time is meditation. However, one of the things that
(52:31):
gets in our way of building a steady meditation practice
is that very striving.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
let striving go and focus on just being there and
experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment.
We want to let go of that. So if you
want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable,
(53:00):
check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash calm. So we're nearing the end of our time here.
Is there anything that you feel like is really important
to this book and to these ideas that we have
completely missed. Is there anything you would like to leave
us with that you feel like is really important that
we either completely missed or didn't cover sufficiently.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
The one thing I would say, because you know, the
two key principles here are curiosity and kindness, and so
we I think we've covered kindness pretty well, but I
just want to just add one.
Speaker 4 (53:33):
Piece around curiosity.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I think we've covered it as well to some degree,
but just a pragmatic element that I've often found helpful,
which is in a nutshell, when somebody judges themselves, you know,
like oh I shouldn't eat that, or oh I ate
too much, or oh I can't believe I did that. Again,
there's that closing down quality of their experience that oh,
(53:55):
oh no, and we can recognize that oh and that
oh actually is that awakening of curiosity, And so maybe
just to leave us with something very pragmatic, which is,
we can awaken curiosity anytime we've got an oh no,
we can use that as our curiosity bell and go
oh there's oh no. So that I found very simple,
(54:21):
very pragmatic, and a great way to awaken you know,
this superpower of curiosity?
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, I think it reminds me of an idea that's
been on my mind a lot lately. And I interviewed
I don't know if you know him, Aj Jacobs. He's
a writer. He's written a bunch of best selling books
where he sort of does like hilarious experiments on himself,
like The Year of Living Biblically, or he wrote a
book recently about puzzles, and you know, I had him
on the show because I wanted to talk to him.
I was like, wow, are we going to even make
(54:48):
a show out of puzzles?
Speaker 4 (54:49):
Right?
Speaker 3 (54:49):
But the guy's brilliant enough, I thought. But the core
idea that resonated and still sticks with me, and it's
exactly what you just said, is that the minute we
start reframing I mean a problem as a puzzle, it
changes our whole.
Speaker 4 (55:04):
View of it.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
Right, And for you the oh no is the oh,
there's a problem, but the curiosity is turning it into
a puzzle. Like I love that you know so well.
Thank you so much, Jud, I always love talking with you.
I thought this book was excellent. I think it's going
to be a big help to a lot of people.
We have links in the show notes where people can
get access to the book and to your app and
(55:25):
all the great things you have going on around this.
You and I are going to continue in the post
show conversation where we are going to attempt to use
your framework here to help me with my intermintent problem
of playing solitaire when I should be writing. Okay, so
we're going to see if these concepts actually work in
(55:45):
the post show conversation. So, listeners, if you'd like access
to that and all sorts of other great things and
ad free episodes, all that One Youfeed dot net slash
join you can become part of our community, and we
also have monthly community meetings now, so we hope to
see you there. Jud Thank you so much, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
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(56:40):
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That's really what it's about, is what I'm doing causing suffering.
And if it's not causing suffering, then it may not
be worth judging yourself for right.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
(00:37):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
(00:58):
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is doctor Judson Brewer, also
(01:18):
known as doctor Judd. He's an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author.
He studies the neural mechanisms of mindfulness and has translated
research findings into programs to treat addictions. Judd also founded
an app based digital therapeutic treatment program for anxiety, overeating,
and smoking. He's Director of Research and Innovation at Brown
(01:38):
University's Mindfulness Center and Associate professor in Behavioral and Social
Scientists in the Brown School of Public Health and in
psychiatry at Brown's Warren Albert Medical School. Today, doctor Judd
and Eric discuss his book The Hunger Habit, Why We
Eat when We're not Hungry and How to Stop.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hi, jud Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I think this is your third or fourth time on
the show, so I am always happy when we get
a chance to talk. And we're going to be discussing
a new book you have called The Hunger Habit, Why
we Eat when We're not hungry and how to stop?
And this seems to be a topic of perennial interest
among people because I think in our modern world, right,
(02:20):
it's really really easy to overeat, Right, we have a
problem of abundance, not scarcity anymore. Right, Yes, absolutely, So
we'll get into that in a second, but before we do,
let's start like we always do with the parable. In
the parable, there's a grandparent talking with their grandchild and
they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf,
(02:41):
which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
they think about it for a second. They look up
at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
(03:02):
that you do well.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
To me, in a nutshell, it's about whatever we put
energy into and that energy is going to grow wherever
we're directing it. And so in my personal life, if
I feed, you know, greed, for example, it's going to grow.
If I feed kindness, that's going to grow. And I
(03:24):
see that in my own life. And this is directly
relevant to basically all the work I do as an
addiction psychiatrist and a researcher as well, because the idea
is to help people feed habits that are going to
be helpful for them and for others as well.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, So I want to start with your book with
a statement that you make at some juncture, and I
don't quite know where you make it, but to me
it sort of summarizes the whole approach of the book,
which is, you say, when it comes to changing habits,
whether letting go of old ones or developing new ones,
it follows one path in one path only changing reward value.
(04:04):
So say more about what do you mean by changing
reward value and why do you see this as the
primary way to intervene in habit change.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So to me, the dominant paradigm for the last century,
if not hundreds of years, has been this idea around
willpower and self control. You know, there's a relief carved
into the Parthenon in Athens, I think in Greece that
depicts a rider and a horse, and the horses the passions,
the rider's reason, and the idea is that there's this
(04:38):
age old debate about, you know, how do we control
our passions? Can we basically think our way out of problems?
And that is still the dominant paradigm when it comes
to changing eating habits today. It's all about, you know,
use your willpower. It's a great marketing and retention strategy
for companies because they can tell people, you know, use
(04:59):
our die and it's your fault if you fail. So
that sets people up to feel like there's something wrong
with them and also unfortunately gives them the wrong impression
that they need more willpower in whoever it is that
telling them, you know, whatever, the diet jejoor is is
correct from a neuroscience standpoint, I don't know how else
(05:22):
to put this, but willpower is not even part of
the equation. And so I mean, I'm not kidding like
when we run our analyses for behavior change, and it's
not just us. These are formulae that have been tried
and true. Back to the nineteen seventies. There are two
researchers named Riskerla and Wagner who came up with this
(05:44):
basic formula and it's still used today. So this is
a non controversial, very good model that has a lot
of explanatory power for how habit forms and how habit changes.
And it has nothing to do with willpower, So what
does it have to do with It has everything to
do with reward value. And so that's why I say
that's so critical because from a neuroscience standpoint it's pretty clear,
(06:08):
But more importantly, as a clinician and from a pragmatic standpoint,
we can actually watch that behavior change through targeting reward value.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
What one thing to feed your good Wolf comes to mind?
If the thing that came to your mind was more
time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
a quick tip that might make it better for you.
And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
(06:42):
to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
of the time. Every three seconds, fail again and failed again.
We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
(07:05):
if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
it relaxing, check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
dot me slash Calm. In it, I walk you through
my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
and a lot of people have found it really helpful,
that's goodwolf dot me slash calm. And so when we
say reward value right, we're basically talking about our brain's
(07:27):
way of ranking how enjoyable or unenjoyable something is, yes, right.
Reward values the fancy way of saying essentially that yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
So what would a simple example be if I slam
my hand in the door, low reward value, higher reward value,
not slamming my hand in the door. And the same
is true for food. In fact, we have a lot
of evolutionary mechanisms built in so that we'll actually have
natural preferences for calorie dense foods. For example, so if
(08:00):
if we eat some broccoli versus some chocolate cake, our
brain is very very likely to prefer the chocolate cake
just because it's saying, hey, there are a lot of
calories here, you know, let's pack those in. And the
idea is that our body is constantly preparing for famine,
and so it wants to pack the calories in. In fact,
(08:21):
opulence was a sign of prosperity back in the day.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And so the idea then is that if I can
train my brain or reteach it so that it begins
to count the full cost of the negative behaviors that
I engage in, I will naturally seek them less.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yes, And I would say the brain will train itself
even if we help orient it in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
One of the things that I know about people who
have dealt with food issues, so to speak, right is
that they're very aware on some level of the costs.
They're very aware of the fact that they don't feel
good about it, that they often feel worse afterwards, and
that's not changing their behavior. Is it because they're not
(09:13):
accurately connecting all the dots in a systematic way? Would
you say that's the primary thing that's kind of missing.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
There generally speaking?
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
And what I see the most is that people get
stuck in this, you know, trying to think their way
out of the problem, so they think, you know, it's
back to the willpower piece. But on top of that,
they also get stuck in these self judgmental habit loops
where they're judging themselves and they think that the judgment
(09:42):
is going to kind of give them a swift kick
in the pants and that's going to actually help them
change behavior as well. It's what they're feeding. They're feeding
energy to you know these thinking processes, and they're feeding
energy into judging themselves rather than taking that energy and
putting it in a place that's actually going to affect
behavior change, which is in the feeling body.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Right, Because it does seem I got this idea from you,
but I think I've also heard it other places and
in different ways. Right, that judgment, in many cases stops
our ability to learn. Right, we're so wrapped up in
shame and judgment that we're not actually able to use
the parts of our brain that learn well, and so
(10:22):
thus we're not actually learning. And that's what we're trying
to do here, right, We're trying to teach the brain
that it's value judgments far as whether this is a
good behavior that I should keep doing or behavior I
should do less of those aren't getting updated.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yes, And I think the way you said it is
perfect where it's we get wrapped up, Because when we
get wrapped up in judgment or shame or blame or
whatever or guilt, those all feel closed down, they feel contracted.
And I like the language that Carol Dwakius is here.
She talks about fixed versus growth mindset. And so when
we're judging ourselves we're in a fixed mindset, and we're
(11:00):
not actually in the arena of learning, which is a
growth mindset. We're in the opposite so here it prevents
us from actually opening and growing from our experiences.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It makes me think of I don't know if you're
familiar with her work, Mayasavolitz, who's written about addiction, and
you know, she brings forward a theory of addiction that
aligns with what you're saying here, which is that essentially
many people think of it almost as a learning disorder,
meaning that for the average person, right as they go
(11:35):
along and their experiences of negative consequences from alcohol or
drugs start to grow, they naturally do less of it.
But for the addict that learning doesn't seem to take place.
Right It just seems as if the previous reward value
of drugs equals good, regardless of what's happened since, remains
(11:57):
almost locked in place. And that makes me think a
little bit of a phrase from twelve step programs, you
know where I got sober, And it was basically the
idea that you know, we're unable with sufficient force to
bring to mind the humiliation and suffering of even a
week or a month ago, Yes, And I think what
(12:18):
your book does is lay out sort of almost a
learning plan for the brain so that it can start
to update these reward values, to update these senses of
what is working for us and what isn't in a
way that is more effective than maybe randomly hoping that
eventually it happens.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Absolutely, And the idea there is it starts with learning.
If we don't know how our brain works, how can
we possibly learn to work with it? And so the
plan starts with like, here's how your brain works, and
learn how your brain works. And it's not like you
have to learn it down to every single neural sinopse,
but we can learn some of the basic principles pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Excellent, So let's let's go into that in just a second.
But let's for a moment talk about something you say
early on in the book, and you say, though the
wires connecting their brains to their stomachs have been crossed
with their emotional wiring. You're describing people who are having problems,
you know, maybe eating more than they want, and worse,
they seem to be walking around much of the time
(13:21):
with their brains disconnected from their bodies.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Say more about that yes.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
So we have this very basic survival mechanism that is
about hunger. It's called homeostatic hunger. And so if we
are low end calories of our stomach's empty, our brain says, hey,
do something about this, you know, and we are motivated
to get some food you know that's been at play,
that's evolutionarily conserved all the way back to the sea
slug you know. So this is a very well known process,
(13:49):
and the process itself at a high level is called positive.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
And negative reinforcement.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
And the way it works is that our ancient ancestors
who didn't have refrigerators, didn't have live in abundance, had
to remember where food is. And the way to remember
that is to learn where food sources were. And so
they would be out foraging, they'd find the food, and
then their stomach would send this dopamine signal back to
their brain and say, hey, here's the food.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Remember where it is.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And it's called positive reinforcement. Same would be true for
you know, if they see, you know, where all the
tigers hang out, and they said, okay, let's avoid that area,
and they would learn, you know, okay that area is,
you know, don't go there. Unless you want to become
lunch and that's called negative reinforcement. The crossing of the
wires comes when that mechanism is still at play. But
(14:38):
we learned to eat food not because we're hungry, but
because of a mood. And so, you know, for example,
how many times have we gone to birthday parties as
kids and our parents, you know, they're like, okay, why
don't you not eat breakfast and lunch so you'll be
starving for the cake and the ice cream. You know,
probably the opposite where they're like, let you know, let's
(14:59):
give them a healthy meal so that they'll eat less
of the sugar. But then you know, kids start to
eat ice cream and cake because they're having fun, and
ice cream and cake taste good, and so they learn
to eat because of the celebration.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
And then on top of.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
This, we learn to eat when we're sad or bored
or lonely or frustrated or angry or all these things.
And so this food mood relationship starts to shift for
a lot of people. This is where these unhealthy habits
come in from. You know, like eating when we're actually hungry,
that homeostatic hunger to eating, you know, when we're not hungry,
(15:34):
but because of any sort of emotion that we might have.
That is so common now that there's a term that's
actually a misnomer, but it was designed specifically to help
researchers study this phenomenon. It's called hedonic hunger. So in
contrast to homeostatic hunger, which is, you know, getting us
back in balance, handenic hunger just means we're eating out
of emotion, you know, that mood food relationship, and that's
(15:56):
where the wires get crossed.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Okay, so up till now, we've sort of laid out
that there's this mismatch happening, that we are beginning to
eat for reasons beyond just hunger, and that our reward
values are not updating. So let's talk about a piece
of chocolate cake, right, because a piece of chocolate cake
for different people is going to be different things. Right.
(16:20):
It's probably going to be delicious for most people, right.
I Mean there's some people that don't like it, but
I don't even let them listen to the show. So
assuming that now I'm kidding, but assuming that a piece
of chocolate cake is fairly delicious, right, and it's going
to be delicious partially for the reasons you laid out before,
meaning that our bodies are sort of wired up to
(16:41):
want that sugar and fat. So where does this go
from and in what cases do you start to think
about this starts to become problematic versus sort of a
default human behavior of enjoying sweet and fat.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Really good question, and I don't know if there's a
clear line, So I think we can start at the
far end. Simple definition of addiction that I learned in
residency was continued to use despite adverse consequences. There's a
controversial topic around can people be addicted to food? A
lot of people are arguing, well, if you look at
(17:21):
this simple definition of addiction, you know, if somebody is
eating and their adverse consequences, that would fall into the definition.
So on one end of the spectrum, when people are
consuming food not because they're hungry, but because of a
mood or any other reason and it's causing adverse consequences,
you could say, okay, that falls into the category far
(17:43):
into the spectrum where there's addiction. And then you know,
in the grayer zone is when people are you know,
just they might pick up a piece of candy or
something because it looks good, but they're not particularly hungry.
But they stop at one piece, whereas somebody else, you know,
they see a bull of M and m's or something
like that, and they're going to eat the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I talk in the hunger habit about my own gummy
worm addiction, where I was literally eating entire bags.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Of gummy worms, you know, in one sitting.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So some of this really is partially our own feeling
about how problematic it is, right. I mean, again, on
the extreme ends of things, right, it becomes fairly obvious.
You know. We might all say, you know, a heroin
attic like me that has hepatitis c in, weighs one
hundred pounds, right, and keeps doing drugs even though he's
looking at going to jail for a long time. That's
(18:54):
pretty easy to just be like, Yep, that's clear, clearly problematic, right,
you know, but you get in to that middle ground, right.
I had a conversation. I was talking with my doctor
this morning, and he practices in a relatively affluent area,
and he was saying, you know, he's like, I have
conversations all day long, day after day about people and
(19:15):
their alcohol use, right, and these are people who are
fully functioning people. Right, They're not going to necessarily fit
lots of definitions of alcoholism. And again, I know that
the scientific community is moving even away from that as
a way of defining the problem. But these are the
people that are going to be in the middle area, right.
Their consequences, their adverse effects are going to be a
(19:38):
little bit more mild. They're going to probably be if
they're physical. They're a little bit further down the road.
And I often find this to be the really tough
place for people because I know a lot of people
who have stayed in a relationship to substances alcohol or
marijuana as an example, in this middle ground for a
(19:58):
long long time time because the adverse effects don't ever
seem to get bad enough for them to really go
about making a change. So it seems like some of
this is by nature self diagnosed, right.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Absolutely, And I think there are ways that we can
put our thumb on the scale a little bit.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
And so you're.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Highlighting, you know, there are all these these memes around.
You know, you have to get rock bottom for whatever
it is, you know, whether it's alcohol or social media, yep,
to become disenchanted and that is true for a lot
of people, and for a lot of people, you know,
for example, I think of cigarettes is the slow burn,
because you know, somebody can smoke cigarettes for twenty or
(20:41):
thirty years and not get lung cancer or not get
emphysema for all that period of time. That's a really
unfortunate rock bottom to hit. And at that point it's
too late. You can't really reverse emphysema or in lung
cancer is really tough to treat. So here that is
very challenging for people where they see, you know, and
you can think of cigarettes and alcohol as things that
(21:02):
aren't critical for survival certainly, you know, cigarettes are the
easiest ones to look at because some people are like
I need a drink to be able to function socially.
So food, on the other hand, is even more challenging
because we all have to eat to survive. Yes, and
we can come back to this if you want, But
it gets really interesting where, you know, does everybody have
(21:25):
to hit rock bottom, because somebody might never hit rock bottom,
if you know, if they're at an unhealthy weight but
not a terribly unhealthy weight. You know, it's kind of
like where somebody smoke cigarettes but they haven't quite gotten
emphysima yet. So we can put our thumb on the
scale a little bit there and actually help people, you know,
double click on what they're eating habits are now, and
(21:49):
it can actually help to accelerate the process of change.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Say more about that, what sort of things might you
focus on? I mean, the one that comes to mind
for me is sometimes the worst part part of these
behaviors is how they make us feel about ourselves, about
our own self efficacy. That that's one very clear, sort
of internally definable thing. What are some of the things
(22:13):
that we might do that help people see it a
little more clearly.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Well, a lot of it starts with helping us step
back from you know, trying to think our way out
of the problem and feel our way into our experience.
So if we feel our way into our experience. Let's
use overeating as an example. When I have somebody really
recall the last time they overeate. You know, often for
people the easiest scenarios or holiday meals, you know, there's
(22:39):
been a lot of abundance and they've often you know,
had some alcohol, which will you know, make it easier
to be disinhibited. Then they just overeat nobody's come back
and said, Wow, it felt great to overeat. You know,
it's usually oh I felt so terrible and then that
was just physically, and then on top of it, they
feel guilty and all of that. Yes, so we've actually
(23:03):
developed what I call a disenchantment database already, most of us,
for most of our lives, we've been collecting this information.
And it's a gold mine where we can look back
on those experiences and ask, you know, how did that go?
You know, like not in an intellectual way, but in
a feeling way, like how did I actually feel after
I overindulged? And we can feel into that, and that
(23:26):
helps us become disenchanted with doing the behavior, because our
brains are really set up to predict future outcomes based
on past experience. And so if we imagine, you know,
we're at the next holiday meal and we imagine, okay,
what's it going to be like when I do this,
We're we're calling our previous experiences, and if we can
(23:48):
recall what it was like and we're like, oh, that
didn't feel so good, we're suddenly more motivated to not
repeat that behavior because we are disenchanted with it and
all of that comes from just a recollection of what
happened in the past.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
So when you use the phrase disenchantment, you're basically meaning
I start to see the not good sides of this behavior.
In essence, right, I'm beginning to update my reward value
and say, oh, this actually isn't quite as wonderful as
it seems, because I have my own personal data that
(24:23):
says when this is done, I really feel lousy. That's
kind of what you mean by disenchantment, absolutely, And so
you know, I think this gets to the question I
sort of asked earlier and sort of keep sort of circling,
and you even say it yourself. You said, it's very
easy for our brains to forget what it feels like
to overeat discounting that for the remembrance of positive things past, right,
(24:44):
it tasted so good, right, And so it does seem
that for some reason our brains have a difficult time
building that disenchantment up, or for some reason we tend
to focus more on the positive and don't remember what
comes a little further down the road. So what are
some of the tools you recommend for starting to build
(25:07):
up this disenchantment, right, Because in essence, that's sort of
what we're saying, right, If you become disenchanted with the behavior,
if you actually fully see that and you update your
perceptions of good versus bad on this as a behavior.
I don't mean morally, I mean in your own experience, right,
you will naturally cease to do less of it. So,
(25:30):
you know, how do we start to connect the dots?
You know, as we said earlier, that most people have
some degree of disenchantment with these things, but that disenchantment
hasn't gotten to the point that it's turned into real
change yet. So what are some of the ways we
connect that dots or help grow that disenchantment.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
One of the key areas that I have people focus
on is just really feeling into their experience and keeping
it simple, because often people they'll get stuck in their
heads and that isn't where the behavior change happens. So
I have them really just focus on if you just overeate,
(26:06):
for example, what does it feel like if you overate yesterday?
Can you recall what that felt like? And the more
we can recall that and keep that memory fresh, the
simpler it's going to be, because we're not going to
be focusing on You know, there are lots of ways
that our brains will try to distract us. For example,
where they'll say, oh, remember, it was such a good time.
(26:28):
You know, there were all these people there, or you
had a great conversation, or this or that. All of
those can be true, and you know, it's not like
it changes that information, but we're focusing on the wrong
thing because our brain's like, no, it was a good time,
you had a good time. Maybe we did have a
good time. How good of a time did our body have?
And so we just really focus there and it's kind
of asking the body, hey, how'd that go for you?
(26:51):
Was it as good as I remember? And then the
body says, you know, actually I felt like crap. So
we can remember that when we zoom in and focus
on those details.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
All right, now, let's pause for a quick Goodwolf reminder,
and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
as a moment of failure, like, ugh, my mind wandered again.
But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
moment of celebration, because in that moment, your mind actually
(27:23):
woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
a our brain is going to do it more often
because we're training it, and b that we're going to
enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
(27:47):
Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash Calm. I was thinking about this idea through the
lens of twelve step programs because I often spend a
lot of time thinking about, like, what is about twelve
step programs that when they do work, they do work right,
And there's lots of data out there about how effective they.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Are or aren't.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
But you know, you can walk into a room anywhere
in America and find millions of people who have gotten
sober as a result of them. So they worked to
some degree, and it's what worked for me. And I
looked at it and I thought, you know, in some ways,
the fact that we sit there and tell each other's
stories about what it was like and how difficult it
(28:27):
was is almost a to use your terminology an ongoing
disenchantment discussion. It's a way in which we are sort
of helping each other update our disenchantment. You're helping me
remember my own disenchantment.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Absolutely, And I think that's where community can be very,
very helpful, where we're not only helping provide the environment
for somebody to do that recollection out loud, but we're
bearing witness yep.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
So we reflect on our bodies, and that being one way,
I mean that makes sense to me. I mean I
like sweets, right, so I will tend towards perhaps eating
sweets a little more often than would be ideal. Perhaps,
But what I have internalized is I deeply hate how
it feels when I've eaten too much, Like, for whatever reason,
(29:20):
for me, it's a very visceral, deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable experience.
And so that's actually one I don't do that often
because for whatever reason, somehow in my mind that learning
linked up and I was like, that is an awful,
truly to me, for whatever reason, one of my least
(29:40):
favorite feelings. You know, In some way it seems like
I was able to tune into that aspect of my body.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
And that's a beautiful example of the simplicity of this
process of change, where tuning into our bodies, you know,
this very wise body is going to be on stronger
than our thinking brain. And that's that's really I'm not
saying it's easy, but it is simple because it's as
simple as tuning in like you're describing.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So in addition to sort of as you're saying, pay
more attention to our body, you have another line you say,
which is awareness is everything when it comes to behavior change.
You let that sink in. Awareness is everything when it
comes to behavior change. So what we're trying to do
then is tune into our experience of eating in this case,
(30:34):
and you've got something called the craving tool, which is
I think, another way of sort of connecting these dots.
Do you want to walk us through what that is
and what the core questions are in the craving tool?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Sure, So the craving tool is really there as an
awareness tool to help us see very and feel more importantly,
feel very clearly what the results of our eating behaviors are.
So you know, there are two ways that we can
approach it, depending on how we eat. One is if
we're eating food that's you know, that's not very healthy.
(31:07):
For example, for me, it was gummy worms. Or if
we're eating an amount of food that's you know, it's
like overeating or over consuming, or eating when we're not
hungry or both. For me, it was over consuming gummy worms.
Then we can start to pay attention to the process,
and so we keep it pretty simple, where it's just
having people pay attention as they eat whatever the food is,
(31:30):
and so paying careful attention to what it tastes like,
what it feels like in their stomach, and then also
importantly paying attention to the emotions afterwards. You know, for me,
when I eat a bunch of sugar, I tend to
get a sugar rush and a crash, and I can
be pretty moody afterwards. So being able to really see
clearly what the results of the eating behavior are, those
(31:52):
results help us develop that disenchantment database.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
That's what the craving tool is really for, is to
help us really connect the dots between whatever the behavior
is and whatever the result is with.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
You and your gummy worms, right, was that primarily what
you noticed was the sugar crash was primarily the thing
that you felt into and made you realize that this
behavior wasn't one you want to continue engaging or are
there are other elements of it that you were able
to key into.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
There was so much there, you know, where I would
feel this urge, this out of control urge to consume,
and then I would basically eat them as fast as
I could and eat all of them so they'd be
out of the apartment, and then, you know, and then
sleep really poorly and feel bad about doing it and
(32:46):
feel bad about being out of control, and then you know,
wake up the next day a little bit relieved because
I didn't have gummy worms in the house that day until.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Until I got some more. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
So there was a lot there to pay attention to,
including just how good did they taste themselves? You know,
when I started paying careful attention, I realized that for me,
gummy worms were kind of this sickly I best described
them as like this petroleum product.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
It was just like this off suite.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Where my brain's like, I want more, but it just
doesn't taste right, and it's kind of I can't remember
the last time I had a gummy worm, because it's
been years now, but I can still remember what my
body's reaction was was.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Like, eugh, this just does not taste very good.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
And do you think that all those things started to
influence your perception of the taste. Did you start to
actually pay closer attention to what they tasted like? I mean,
you know, I guess I'm kind of curious whether your
taste shifted as the rest of your consciousness shifted, or
whether you simply hadn't been paying enough attention to the
taste to begin with.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, it's a good question. It's certainly the latter, where
I hadn't been paying enough attention to what it tasted
like in the first place. And I think maybe my
taste shifted a little bit as I started paying attention.
As a kid, it was like anything sugary tasted good.
(34:16):
But I could probably eat sugar, you know, breakfast, lunch,
and dinner and still function just fine. I can't do
that anymore, and so there are many more consequences that
come from an all sugar diet now than when I.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Was a kid.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's a sobering thing that
happens to many of us, right, with many different things.
Is you know, what used to be somewhat consequence free
as children or as young people just isn't anymore. And again,
so there's an example of needing to update our reward values, right,
because suddenly these things have a downside that certainly I
(34:54):
couldn't sense before when I was younger. Absolutely, there's something
(35:16):
else that you discuss while you're discussing the craving tool
that I thought was really interesting. And the second question
in there is how content do I feel? Right, you
talk about the fact that you know, on one hand,
we could use the word, you know, satisfied, how satisfied
do I feel? But you say that satisfied and content
might seem like the same thing, but they're not right.
(35:39):
And that asking people that question very specifically as to
whether they were content versus satisfied actually really helped to
get clearer on disenchantment. Say more about that.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, So when my lab studied this, we were really
looking for the language that was going to capture the
right experience, and what we found was a lot of
people will say, oh, yeah, I felt satisfied after that meal,
you know, because there was something satisfying about, you know,
eating when you're hungry. And when we double clicked on
(36:11):
that and ask people, well, how content do you feel?
That helped to bring out of the noise of satisfaction.
When somebody had overeaten, for example, you know, their body
just didn't feel that good, they didn't feel that content.
So the contentment gets into this embodied experience more than
(36:32):
satisfied does satisfied. You know, we probably had a lot
of people still stuck in their heads. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
It does. The other thing that I think contentment does
is it to me, it brings together both the physical
elements of how I feel after I ate, but also
the emotional elements, right, and it points me towards aiming
for a better experience, right, an experience that's better than
just satisfied.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
To me, it intuitively makes sense. I was fascinated to
see that, you know, your lab had figured that out.
And that's one of the things that I love about
reading your work is all of this stuff. You guys
have a fair amount of data supporting that these things work.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, it'd be hard for me to write a book
and feel comfortable about writing that book if I didn't
have actual research behind it. And by research I mean
like not just reading the Internet or reading other people's work,
but actually doing the research myself. So I feel pretty confident,
you know, because I've seen this in my clinic, and
(37:37):
so i can write about those stories, and I've also
seen it in my research, and I can write about
you know, our peer reviewed research studies.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
We jumped over this earlier a little bit, we sort
of alluded to it, but I'd like to kind of
go back and hit it a little bit more directly.
Right in an earlier process in this overall thing, right
is you call it mapping your food habit loops, right,
and you really talk about getting clear on three things,
the why, what, and how? So say more about what
(38:07):
each of those are and what this mapping looks like.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yes, so the mapping helps us start to see what's
driving the eating behavior. So that's the why why am
I reaching for food? The what? What am I reaching for?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
You know? Is it?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
You know, like why am I eating? Am I hungry?
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Or am I bored?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Lonely, sad, angry, frustrated, whatever. If we're eating because of
an emotion, we tend to reach for comfort food, right,
That's where that term comes from. And so you know,
these hyper palatable, hyper processed foods are these things that
kind of give us that. You know, it's the modern
day soma if you think of the eldest Huxley, this
(38:50):
pill that people take that just gets them to you know,
numb out. Basically, food is like that for a lot
of people. I've had patients describe, you know, eating to
numb themselves. And so you know, what am I reaching
for is the type of food or amount of food
even and then the why, what and how how am
I eating? Am I eating just to shove it down?
Speaker 4 (39:12):
You know?
Speaker 1 (39:12):
For me it was the cumming worms. But I've seen
this so many times where people are just eating as
quickly as they can because they're trying to make that
unpleasant feeling go away. They're trying to get that numbing
to take effect as quickly as possible as compared to
haying attention as they eat.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
So that's the why, what, and how?
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, you mentioned in the book this idea of eating mindfully.
I love that you make a little joke about it, right,
because those of us who have been exposed to mindful
eating have sometimes been exposed to it in ways that
seem extraordinarily tedious and silly. I think you joke about
like mindful eating doesn't mean like spending ten minutes to
(39:52):
get to know a raisin, right, which most of us
don't have time for. But something you said that really
struck me was that mindful eating doesn't mean I have
to eat slower. It means I have to be aware
of how I'm eating. And that struck me as a
lot more of an approachable way to get to it, right,
So say more about that.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yes, a lot of us don't have the luxury of
eating a raisin slowly for ten minutes, right, So here
we can embody the principle and understand the concepts and
then use those concepts to develop wisdom through our own experience.
And so, you know, if somebody only has ten minutes
(40:33):
to eat a meal, well, they can pay attention as
they eat that meal. It's compared to you know, scrolling
through their social media on their phone or doing something
or reading a book or doing something else. They can
also pay attention to the amount of the food that
they eat. They can pay attention to the results of
you know, if they eat you know, crappy food versus
you know, mentally processed types of foods. So we can
(40:56):
pay attention to a lot of different aspects of food.
But it doesn't take a lot long time to do that.
That's the basic principle there.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yeah, I think many of us may not have the
luxury of spending ten minutes on a raisin, nor the desire, right,
you know. I always go back and forth with this
in my mind because I seem to have a little
routine worked out for myself. It is often I have
breakfast while I read something I enjoy, and the part
(41:25):
of me that's trained in mindfulness and meditation says, well,
that's that's a bad idea. You shouldn't be doing that,
and yet it seems to be something I so genuinely
kind of enjoy and the fact that, like, you know,
I know what my breakfast is, and it is what
it is. It doesn't change. But I've just kind of
been like, you know, a lot of different things to
worry about in life for me, this one I'm going
to just choose to say, eh, this one's okay.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, Well you're highlighting something important, which is it's not
about you know, looking at this and giving ourselves rules
like I have to eat everything and mindfully, you know,
and not do anything else. You're highlighting I know, the
amount of food and the type of food that brings
me nourishment. I'm assuming you're not just eating a bowl
(42:10):
of fruit lips or something.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
O the sugar, that's right.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
What was the Calvin and Hobbs that Calvin always had
sugar coated chocolate bombs or chocolate coated sugar bombs or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
They'd always have ones where like after you to eat
it is like teeth would be battering.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah. That was such a great cartoon.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
I use it in my habits that matter course as
a teaching tool because there's so much brilliant wisdom in
Calvin and Hobbes.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Absolutely. Yeah, so that's it in Nutell. You know, you're
not eating the sugar coated chocolate bombs for breakfast. And
so if you have a ritual that you really enjoy
and it's not causing suffering, you know, that's really what
it's about, is what I'm doing causing suffering. And if
it's not causing suffering, then it may not be worth
(43:03):
judging yourself for right or saying oh I should be
just reading this book or eating my you know, my breakfast. Yeah, good,
good enough.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
Good enough.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
We've kept most of our focus to this idea of
learning to update our value rewards hierarchy.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
But there are some other things, particularly as we get
later into the book, that you talk about, and you know,
one of them is learning to deal with when we
face setbacks.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Right.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
I think this shows up in a chapter under you know,
looking back to move forward. But you know, when I've
coached people on behavior change, right, one of the things
I always say is, there are inevitably going to be
times that we don't do or do the behavior that
we're trying not to do. Like, it's largely inevitable, it's
(43:58):
totally normal, Right, It's going to happen, and if we
don't realize that, we're likely to end up with you know,
I think you call it the fuckets often right in
this book, right, which is where we make a small
mistake and we throw everything away. But the other thing
I was really struck by in your book is how
powerful retrospectives, how powerful looking back on what can I learn? Right?
(44:23):
I always count to people like what can we learn?
But the thing that you said that I thought was
really interesting was that we can actually use the retrospective
as a way of updating our values hierarchies, right, we
can look back even if we don't catch it in
the moment, and still go back. And I thought that
was a really interesting framework that sort of shows us
(44:44):
even when we quote unquote make a mistake and I'm
not even sure I love that phrasing, but that there's
always ways to profit from that.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Well, there are a couple of things here. One is
that often when we're in the middle of it, when
we're in the middle of the dust storm, we can't
see and we can't see clearly, so it can be
really challenging to learn from an.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
Experience when we're caught in the middle of it.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
When the dust settles, we can look back and we
can see all of the damage that's been done, for example,
so that it's much easier to see, oh, yeah, that
was problematic, that didn't go so well. And it also
gives us the opportunity to be at a palm or
safer place to look back as well, where we've developed
(45:32):
some balance and equanimity, and we can lean into that
and say, oh, Okay, that didn't go so well. What
can I learn from this? And I would argue that
we could we could actually take a radical view here
and say there is no such thing as a setback.
I'll say that again, there's no such thing as a
setback if we're learning from that. Why am I saying that?
(45:55):
Because often we learn more from when things haven't gone
well than when they have gone well. And so if
we're open to the learning, then is it a setback
while we've learned And maybe we've learned more from that
quote unquote setback than if we hadn't had it. So
here we can approach everything in life from this growth mindset.
(46:16):
I guess where we're learning from, whether things go sideways
or go forward. And with the retrospectives, we've probably had
a lot of times where things have gone sideways or
backwards where we haven't actually mined the gold from that,
where we haven't looked back and said, you know, what
(46:36):
exactly were the consequences of that?
Speaker 4 (46:38):
How well did that go?
Speaker 1 (46:40):
So we've got this gold mine where we don't have
to go back and repeat all of these experiences. We
can simply go back and recall them and ask, you know,
if we can really feel into the experience, that's the
key piece. Once we can truly feel into that, that's
when we know we can mind that gold.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, yeah, I love that idea that there's you know,
no such thing as a setback, right, And I think
part of the reason that that is so important, and
it gets to something we talked about earlier, and you
actually talk about in some chapters that are even a
little bit later than this, is getting back to how
we relate to our experience and how we relate to ourselves, right,
(47:20):
And normally our looking back, right is just chastisement of ourselves.
It's just judgment of ourselves. It's just self loathing of ourselves,
which means that we're actually not really learning from it, right.
And so the beauty of being able to approach it
(47:41):
as a learning is that often that can be the
way that we can set aside, you know, the self
loathing and the chastisement and vice versa. Right, they sort
of feed each other, you know, you talk about kindness
and curiosity, right, And I think your work, Carol Dweck's work,
Kristin Neff's w work have all you know, driven home
(48:02):
for me a like it's just better to be in
a brain that is kind to itself, Like that's just
a better experience. But really how critical that actually is
in getting better and improving.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yes and kindness can be seen in the same way
that we've been talking about changing eating habits. We can
look at our old habits of self judgment, of guilt,
of shame, of whatever, and see where they fall on
that reward hierarchy relative to kindness. You know, to our brain,
it's a no brainer. Kindness wins every time. So we
(48:36):
can imply the same principles that we've been talking about
eating to kindness and fostering that as a healthy habit
as well.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
So this idea of looking back reminds me of a
quote I love from He was a leadership writer arre
in Venice, but he says, true understanding comes from reflecting
on your experience. I love that is how we actually
get de or understanding, And you know, I think that
it's one of the things I encourage people a lot, Like,
(49:05):
you know, listening to a show like this is like
really valuable, But what's more valuable is to actually stop
and go, well, how is what I just heard actually
apply to my life? Like, let me think very directly
about like what did doctor Judd talk about? How does
that apply to me in my life? Versus just sort
of hearing it?
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, I love that because that reminds me of this
idea of concepts in the service of wisdom. So you
and I can talk about these concepts and we can
talk about, you know, how people's lives might have been changed,
but ultimately somebody listening, their life isn't going to change
until they put these concepts into practice and through their
own direct experience. That's how they're going to develop wisdom.
(49:47):
That's the only way we can develop wisdom is through
our own experience.
Speaker 4 (49:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yeah, let's talk about something else that comes up in
a couple points in the book, but you hit on
it a little bit more directly near the end of
the book, which is the idea of a bitigger better offer.
Talk to me about what a bigger better offer means
to you and how it applies to what we've been
talking about.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yes, so this is the same concept as the reward hierarchy.
And so we can look at old habits like overeating
or eating junk food. You know, it's the gummy worm,
whatever our gummy worm habit is, and we can become
disenchanted with that just by paying attention, like, oh, gummy
worms don't taste that that good to me. We can
(50:28):
also apply the same thing when we compare gummy worms
to other food. So, you know, for me, it was
not only discovering that gummy worms don't taste very good,
but then my brain said, well, give.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
Me something better.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
So way high on the bigger better offer hierarchy is blueberries.
You know, I absolutely adore blueberries, and I just realized
recently that they actually provide this intermittent reinforcement because you
never know just how sweet and next one is going
to be. You know, like one could be slightly more
(51:03):
tart and the next one could be a slightly sweeter,
one could be a slightly you know, pop in your
mouth a little bit more juicier versus the next one.
And so it's like, if we're paying attention, it's a
lottery in our mouth. Yeah, every time, you know, and
to me, number you play.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
When intermittent rewards those are those are pretty sticky?
Speaker 4 (51:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (51:27):
So are you eating your blueberries one at a time?
Speaker 4 (51:30):
Generally?
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, if I'm starving, I maybe a couple at a time,
but the best reward comes from eating them one at
a time.
Speaker 3 (51:38):
Speaking of my chocolate frosted sugar bombs, as part of
my breakfast, I put I put my blueberries in with those,
so it's maybe why I'm not getting the individual blueberry flavor.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
So I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
But that's the principle, is you know, using the same
awareness that we're using to become disenchanted with the old
habits to build these new ones. You know, whether it's
the habit of kindness, whether it's the habit of curiosity,
or whether it's finding our blueberry equivalent.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
That's great. So listener and thinking about all of that
and the other great wisdom from today's episode. If you
are going to isolate just one top insight or thing
to do that you're taking away, what would it be.
Remember that, little by little, a little becomes a lot.
And a habit for me that has accrude and benefit
over time is meditation. However, one of the things that
(52:31):
gets in our way of building a steady meditation practice
is that very striving.
Speaker 4 (52:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
let striving go and focus on just being there and
experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment.
We want to let go of that. So if you
want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable,
(53:00):
check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
slash calm. So we're nearing the end of our time here.
Is there anything that you feel like is really important
to this book and to these ideas that we have
completely missed. Is there anything you would like to leave
us with that you feel like is really important that
we either completely missed or didn't cover sufficiently.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
The one thing I would say, because you know, the
two key principles here are curiosity and kindness, and so
we I think we've covered kindness pretty well, but I
just want to just add one.
Speaker 4 (53:33):
Piece around curiosity.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I think we've covered it as well to some degree,
but just a pragmatic element that I've often found helpful,
which is in a nutshell, when somebody judges themselves, you know,
like oh I shouldn't eat that, or oh I ate
too much, or oh I can't believe I did that. Again,
there's that closing down quality of their experience that oh,
(53:55):
oh no, and we can recognize that oh and that
oh actually is that awakening of curiosity, And so maybe
just to leave us with something very pragmatic, which is,
we can awaken curiosity anytime we've got an oh no,
we can use that as our curiosity bell and go
oh there's oh no. So that I found very simple,
(54:21):
very pragmatic, and a great way to awaken you know,
this superpower of curiosity?
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah, I think it reminds me of an idea that's
been on my mind a lot lately. And I interviewed
I don't know if you know him, Aj Jacobs. He's
a writer. He's written a bunch of best selling books
where he sort of does like hilarious experiments on himself,
like The Year of Living Biblically, or he wrote a
book recently about puzzles, and you know, I had him
on the show because I wanted to talk to him.
I was like, wow, are we going to even make
(54:48):
a show out of puzzles?
Speaker 4 (54:49):
Right?
Speaker 3 (54:49):
But the guy's brilliant enough, I thought. But the core
idea that resonated and still sticks with me, and it's
exactly what you just said, is that the minute we
start reframing I mean a problem as a puzzle, it
changes our whole.
Speaker 4 (55:04):
View of it.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
Right, And for you the oh no is the oh,
there's a problem, but the curiosity is turning it into
a puzzle. Like I love that you know so well.
Thank you so much, Jud, I always love talking with you.
I thought this book was excellent. I think it's going
to be a big help to a lot of people.
We have links in the show notes where people can
get access to the book and to your app and
(55:25):
all the great things you have going on around this.
You and I are going to continue in the post
show conversation where we are going to attempt to use
your framework here to help me with my intermintent problem
of playing solitaire when I should be writing. Okay, so
we're going to see if these concepts actually work in
(55:45):
the post show conversation. So, listeners, if you'd like access
to that and all sorts of other great things and
ad free episodes, all that One Youfeed dot net slash
join you can become part of our community, and we
also have monthly community meetings now, so we hope to
see you there. Jud Thank you so much, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
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Feed podcast When you join our membership community. With this
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(56:40):
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