August 29, 2024 • 52 mins
This week Scott is joined by Kim Shapira, a celebrity dietician, author and nutritional therapist. Scott and Kim discuss the rules of the “Kim Shapira Method”, the psychology behind losing weight (and keeping it off) as well as the fact that a craving is not a hunger. Kim shows how changing your relationship to food can truly change your entire life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just so we're clear, we know that food is fuel.
Every single person alive has between three and five emotional triggers.
Sometimes we develop new ones when we experience anything that
is traumatic. We're just affected, and until we master them,
we're still going to remain affected. And the second we're
emotionally triggered, our mind kind of jumps out of our
(00:21):
body and we go into this forward, anxious thinking, and
until we can get our mind back in our body
and the ability to scan it, we get into this
idea that food is a great idea we must be
needing it.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Today we have Kim Shapira on the show. Kim is
a celebrity dietician, nutritional therapist, author, and creator of the
Kim Shapira Method. Her method helps people take back their
relationship with food and consists of six simple and very
doable rules which anyone can follow. This episode, we discussed
the rules, focusing specifically on the psychology behind them and
(01:05):
what it takes to not just lose weight, but keep
the weight off and be healthier and happier in the
long run. One of the main takeaways from this episode
is that a craving is not a hunger once you
really can wrap your head around this. I believe a
lot can really change for you in your life. So
without further ado, I'll bring you Kim Shapira, Kim Shapira,
(01:28):
how are you.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I'm so happy to be here, Scott.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm so happy that you are here. Do you see
what's in my right hand right now?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So proud of you. I'm so proud of you for
so many reasons.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Thank you. So you know, so you know what this
is immediately?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I mean, I'm hoping it's water.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No, but it's it's it keeps track.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh we know, I don't know. Tell me everything.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's linked to my phone and its track of how
much water I'm drinking every day.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I mean, look at all your growth potential. I'm so
proud of you.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Thanks, Kim. I appreciate you have this amazing method which
I've heard about from multiple people who have tried it
and have succeeded. So I've been trying it, and I
you know, I'm loving it and getting a little obsessive
about making sure I get in all the numbers for
(02:20):
all the dimensions. But we're going to go through all
the dimensions. I don't want to give it away yet.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I like that you're all in. That that excites me.
I'm very excited about that, and I just want to
find a way to keep you all in always.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So let's start with perhaps
my favorite sentence in your entire book. Oh and the
sentence is a craving is not a hunger. I feel
like that was really profound, and everything revolves around that
(02:59):
in a way. Oh say, more turned philosophical sets Now
you say more, I'm interview What do you mean, I'm
interviewing you?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
What do you well? I mean you know that I'm obsessed,
equally obsessed with the way that your mind works and
wanting to know more about your mind. So to me,
that seems very common sense, especially when we know our
mind and we've been setting our mind. So what's really
interesting is I know that food is fuel. I would say,
(03:30):
like eighty percent of the population knows that food is fuel.
And when we think food is fun, comfort, entertainment, joy,
or the enemy, it means that it's an alarm going
off and we're rationalizing a bad idea. And I would
think a craving would fall into the same understanding. But
(03:53):
I think I think it's profound that that's a sentence
you picked out, and especially you know the idea idea
that we get so seduced by a craving that it's
like we just visualize, internalize, feel all of the feels
when we think about what it's going to be like
in our mouth. Yeah, And the truth is all the
(04:16):
reward that we get is actually in the anticipation.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes, And we know that you know from how the
mechanisms of dopamine work. And you're really making this really
clear to people who are trying to lose weight that
you can feel. You know, eat when you're hungry is
one of your roles, right, eat when you're hungry. So
the interesting thing there is you can feel craving and
(04:44):
then really get more mindful about huh is this a
craving or is this a hunger?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And I think that just moment of reflection has changed
my life.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I mean, I couldn't be more pleased to hear that.
And I also just always wonder why people don't talk
about hunger.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, because the hunger is not a bad thing, right,
It's okay be hungry every now and then.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I mean there's like our emotional self and then there's
our physical self, and we get signals all day long
telling us what we need. Right, we're thirsty, we have
to use the restroom, it's time to go to sleep.
And for some reason, we have this natural fear that
if we go hungry, we're going to starve to death.
And the truth is nobody has starved to death. We
(05:36):
are not starving to death. And we will get so
many signals to eat, our body will go into a
full temper tantrum if we were strict, and all we
will think about in such a narrow minded way is food,
food food food. I mean, like if I said to you, okay, Scott,
here's the thing. I'm going to let you pee one
(05:56):
time today and I'm going to pick the time that
you get to pee, your mind would go into overload
and all you would think about would be having to
use the restaurant right now, think about restriction. And then
the flip side is why aren't we talking about hunger
as a signal that is great? And like our body
is requiring fuel to focus, to do all the things right,
(06:19):
regulate our body temperature, our hormones, so many things, and
yet we can't really eat all our calories in one moment.
Our body isn't capable of that, so we have to
spread it out over time and only eat as much
as we need trusting, learning to trust. I'm actually going
to eat again, you know, and we typically eat twenty
(06:42):
one meals in a week.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
It seems like I've been remiss not to bring up ozempic.
It's like it's a craze right now. Now, what are
your thoughts on using ozempic for losing weight? Do you
think it's a nice supplement to your method. Maybe it's
not necessary for everyone, Maybe some people can just apply
(07:03):
your method, and yeah, will.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I mean, the truth is, my method's been my method
for over twenty five years, and so if we think
about what is ozempk actually doing, I think we have
to slow down and like, this is the connection I
feel you and I have. Okay, everything starts with our mind,
and if we don't know where our mind is, we
(07:28):
can't make rational choices. So let's use the example, and
I'm going to come back to the ozempic in a minute.
Let's use the example. There's an alarm going off right
now in your house and we're in the middle of
shooting this podcast. You would probably say, hold tight, Kim,
I got to go figure out what that is. You
would go to the alarm box, you would turn it off.
(07:48):
Then you would scan your environment and make sure you
were safe. Then you would come back and we could
carry on. So if you start believing and start knowing
that every single time you have a thought I have
to pee, or every single time you have a thought,
food is a good idea. All it is is an
alarm coming from your environment. And then if you go
(08:12):
to your mind, you quiet it, you turn it off,
You scan your body, and you recognize why the alarm
even was triggered. You might recognize my chest is tight,
I'm having a hard time breathing, I'm really really bored,
my stomach is hungry, and then you can actually appropriately
deal with why the alarm was triggered. Right, So, just
(08:36):
so we're clear, we know that food is fuel. Every
single person alive has between three and five emotional triggers.
Sometimes we develop new ones when we experience anything that
is traumatic, Like every one of us is still traumatized
by COVID. Some of us never wanted to leave the house.
Some of us couldn't wait to leave the house. We're
just affected, and until we master them, we're still going
(08:58):
to remain affected. And the second we're emotionally triggered, our
mind kind of jumps out of our body and we
go into this, you know, forward anxious thinking, and until
we can get our mind back in our body and
the ability to scan it, we get into this idea
that food is a great idea. We must be needing it. Now,
(09:20):
what happens when we feel stressed or when we're emotionally triggered.
In less than ten seconds, we have fourteen hundred sensations
that occur simultaneously. They trigger the hippocampus. The hippocampus is
our memory center. And if at one point in your
life you ate because you had discomfort in your body,
(09:41):
your mind is like, hey, I'm here to help you survive,
and I remember the last time you felt this way,
we ate and we felt better. Let's do that again,
right and then right? And so if you think about
ozempic and everybody who you know can't really differentiate between
their emotional self and their physical self, ozembic is quieting
(10:06):
that hippocampus. That's amazing. People are like quieting food noise
for the first time in their entire life, and now
they're actually be able they're actually able to deal with
their emotions responsively. How cool is that? How cool is that? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
So like I've been teaching that all this time, but
(10:28):
now there's a medication that does it. So I think
like you either can use the medication or you can
use my rules and all of my tricks to help
you get that. But the second part of what ozembic
or a GLP one is doing is it's working on
the hormone Latin. So when you think about your stomach,
it's got two hormones that kind of regulate hungerful. And
(10:50):
if you think about your stomach is like a bowl,
the lining of your stomach when it gets when it
detects that it doesn't have enough food, it signals grilling.
That signals your brain is time to eat when you've
eaten something. And here's the fun part. And studies prove
that if you're starving and you eat a piece of
bread in a restaurant and you wait ten minutes for
(11:12):
your food to show up, you're no longer hungry, right
because leptin has now detected there's food in your stomach
and you're safe. So the gop ones are working on
the food noise and the leptin, which you have the
ability to do that too if you follow my rules,
which rule number one, eat when you're hungry, take your
(11:32):
normal portion, cut it in half, and wait fifteen minutes
to see if you need more food. That rule is
essentially a GLP one.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, I mean so you can. You can psychological You
called it a trick. You're funny because it's a psychological
trick that does the same thing than what the medicine
you're popping in your popping you're injecting. So let me
read a quote to a quote from you. The way
to break those habits and start to eat when you're
hungry is to be aware of what you're actually feeling
(12:03):
when you think you want to eat. The next time
you find yourself searching through the cabinets for a snack
or sitting down for a meal, pause and ask why.
You list four reasons why we eat. We seafood, we
are not seafood, We see food, we are emotional, we
have a craving, and we feel actual physical hunger. Do
(12:23):
you think so? You think there's a great benefit in
being more mindful reflecting on the reasons why you're going
to that food cabinet.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
One hundred percent. I think you need to know where
your mind is at all times. And like you know,
the definition a mindful is knowing where your mind is
without judgment. And so we really need to put space
between the thought to eat and the action to eat,
if that makes sense, because we all eat quickly and mindlessly.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
We do. That's not the only thing we do quickly
and mindlessly.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
No, it's not.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Welcome to America.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes, it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
We do everything that way. Let's let's before we move
on to rule number two. I wanted to talk about
how to tackle hunger for sweets. So what you know,
you say, feel it, acknowledge it, laugh at it, and
leave it alone.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Have you found that that does that work for you?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah? It does. Have you tried it?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I've tried it with candy corn, and the candy corn
is good, too good. I don't get past the laugh
at part.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Okay, So let's let's load the whole thing down so
you kind of understand what I'm talking about. Okay. So
you know, our mind produces like over sixty thousand thoughts
in response to what we see, smell, feel, here in touch.
You are not taking credit for your heart beating your
lungs to breathe, your stomach to digest, and you really
(13:51):
can't be taking credit for the way that your mind
is helping you survive every single moment. Right So, when
you can actually see that your mind is thinking about
candy corn, that's your opportunity to recognize the alarm has
been triggered. To take a deep breath, come back into
your body. And one trick that I always use is
(14:12):
to ask yourself, where is my body? And then to
repeat it's just right here, and then to say where
is my mind? And really we can go find our
mind and we'll recognize it's on the pantry candy corn
in the you know, with the candy corn, or it's
on the meeting I'm having next week, or it's on
a conversation I had yesterday that I didn't like the
way it went right. And if your mind is not
(14:35):
in the same exact time zone as your body, you
have some work to do. And so I would repeat
the entire thing again, okay, until you know where your
mind is. But what happens when we have candy corn
is if you actually slow down time and really take
your time to eat the candy corn, you'll actually recognize
that it's offensive to your brain. It's so sweet that
(14:58):
it's offensive. But we're applying pleasure in the exact same moment,
and it's getting stored in our addictive center of our brain.
And so what happens when we have the thought to
have more candy corn, it's actually a physical withdrawal, and
the hunger is coming from the discomfort you're having, and
(15:18):
it's like a pulling, like you'd almost look under a
rock for candy corn, right, And that is absolutely not hunger,
because hunger is in your stomach. It's isolated to your stomach.
It's not painful, it's not scary, and it should happen often, right,
And so what happens when we have candy corn is
we stay in the cycle and we think that that's
(15:40):
what we love, and we think that's what we're hungry for.
And if we actually took the time to recognize, wait,
I'm thinking about candy corn in the middle of the
morning while I just you know, have to do this
homework assignment or whatever it is, you'll recognize it's only
because you had candy corn yesterday or earlier in that day.
And that's what I mean by last you want to
(16:00):
break up your thought pattern.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Well, I mean that that part really is great. It
works for everything else, but candy corn.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
You how to really stop the candy corn is you
actually have to stop eating candy corn for like four
days so the sugar can leave your system, Okay, and
then you'll no longer crave it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I think there's a lot of sugar and candy corn.
I think they've really manufactured something that is really good,
not for you, but good tasting. Okay. Anything else I
want to cover within the eat when you're a hungry
part sodium, Maybe we talk about salt cravings because you
say salt cravings are a different story.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah. I would actually reach out to a doctor if
you're having real salt cravings because it may be that
you're not able to kind of keep your water balance
maintained and could actually be a real, real serious issue.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So eat when you're hungry. And then you talk about
the looking glass.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Oh, I love that you've picked up on that.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, tell us a little about how the looking glass
is relevant here, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Okay, And by the way, if you're also craving ice,
you should call the doctor because that's that's an iron deficiency. Yeah, Okay,
so it's one of my favorite quotes from Alice in
Wonderland looking Glass and the White Queen says to Alice,
the problem with people is they forget their future memories.
(17:36):
And Alice says to the White Queen, what do you
mean you know the future memories? And the Queen says,
we know exactly how this goes if we don't change.
I could predict how my clients are going to do
based on this. People can even know exactly how they
go how it's going to go if they don't actually
work on the change. And one thing you and I
(17:57):
are very aligned with, and something I've been saying for
I think my whole life is people will come to
me and they say I need to lose weight for
a wedding or a party or a graduation, and I
always say to them, what's going to happen the day after?
And I really try and change people's minds from their
goal to lose weight to make it their goal to
(18:19):
learn how to change and make sustainable results for weight maintenance.
That's the real goal.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I see that. And a big part of that is
identifying your quote triggers right triggers.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And you know this is where I think the understanding
that think about the superiority complex, which is I already
know what I have to do, but also I neglect
what I have to do. How do we change in
that mindset.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I think most people know at some level when they're
doing something that's not moving them in the direction of
positive growth. I think they know that, you know, but
that knowing it is one thing.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Right, that's not that's I mean, people know kale is
full of vitamins. But you know, really early on in
my career, I failed at putting people on diets, and
it was a really good lesson for me. Actually I
don't know if well it was in my book, but
I don't know if you know this part. What you
(19:24):
don't know about me is that I was a sick kid.
Maybe you do because you read my book. But I
spent a good portion of my twelfth year in and
out of the hospital, and then about four years after
that visiting my specialists at UCLA, and you would have
probably considered me a quiet, shy kid. And so just
picture a twelve year old going to the doctor and
(19:45):
being in a lot of pain. And I must have
been crying one day on my way to UCLA, and
my mom said to me, don't cry, will go shopping.
And this really imprinted on me, and every emotion led
me to think shopping was a good idea. And somewhere
in high school, I was talking to a doctor friend
(20:08):
of mine. I was interning with him. He was a
dietriss and he said to me, you know, food can
make people sick or healthy. And that was one of
those moments where I said, that's it for me. I
want to be healthy, and I bet everybody else does,
and I'm going to make a career in making people healthy.
And I went to graduate school. I studied nutrition and
I wanted to know everything about food. And my very
(20:31):
first client was a therapist. And I say that because
I was twenty seven, she should have been smarter than me, right,
because she knew more about her mind. And she I
helped her lose thirty pounds by putting her on a diet,
and then she said to me at the end, after
I helped her, I'm going to gain the weight back.
And this triggered me in a million different ways because
(20:53):
I just helped her get healthy and now she wanted
to change it. And she said to me, my husband
wants to be intimate with me all the time. And
I was molested as a child, and I thought, oh
my god, I don't know anything about people's relationship with food.
It's not about kale, it's not about what they know
to be healthy. And then I started recognizing the pattern
(21:15):
that my clients are eating in the exact same way
that I'm shopping. And if I can help myself, then
I can really start having you know, helping them have
sustainable results. And so that's how this all came to be,
where I started really changing the way that I that
I worked really and so it's not that people don't know,
(21:36):
it's that they don't they neglect to do it. And
that's the piece that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What what do you find is a
big motivator for people? Why do most people decide to
really commit and change isy aesthetics? What's it like the
number like three top three reasons you've seen over and
over again?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
What I mean? I would think that it would be health,
It would be definitely. I would say looks probably is
number one more than health.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Could be yeah, so looks health. And then I would
say a party or a TV show that they're about
to film, and these would not be these would not
be the answers that I would allow them to walk
away with.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
What is the best reason, too? Is wait? Health? Right?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
It is health? I mean obviously I picked this career
to be healthy and to help people get healthy. And
what do we have if we don't have our health right? Like,
that's got to be somebody's priority, and it's not necessarily always,
and it's not enough when we have short term memories
and there's candy corn.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
But I think my clients who find me are the
ones who are done dieting. They're the ones who are
sick and they're and tired and they're looking for sustainable change.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
What's the relationship between the gut and hunger?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Well, we talked about the hormone growlin sure did, And
I mean, is there one without the other? Like you
you know, hunger is in your gut and if and
if it is in your energy and if you are
like bottoming out and you're feeling like low blood pressure
or low blood sugar, these are different things in hunger.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Let's let's double quick on the gut a little bit
more because there's so much in the gut. What sort
of pre biotics probiotics do you do you recommend? I
I take like an all in one preeh post like it?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I like it?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I mean which one? Yeah? Go?
Speaker 1 (23:50):
I mean now I'm like, can I nerd out and
just like slow down on the whole gut thing? Because Okay,
so when you're talking about like gut health, we really
have to start understanding the whole digestive track. And that's
from your mouth to your anus, and it's the width
of a tennis court. And every single inch of this
track has a job, every single inch of it. And
(24:14):
food should travel down one millimeter an hour, hopefully giving
you a twenty four hour transit time. Now, what's really
important is that we need to learn to stop and
smell our food. I know this is like we don't
talk about hunger. We also don't talk about chewing our food. First,
we smell our food so we can get like a
salivary amilies. Like what happens Scott when I say think
(24:37):
about lemons, think about like a really good sour lemon
in your mouth? What happens in your mouth?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I get more water watery in my mouth. My mouth
is watering.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, so that is salivary air.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
The same happens when you say candy corn as well.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
By the way, oh interesting, I love that. Okay, interesting
and pickles, I'm sure. So your mind already told your
digestive track get ready, we're going to be eating, and
it produced salivary emilise. So just by thinking and smelling
your food, you're actually starting to prep your body for digestion.
It's very important to reduce gi distress. We need that saliva.
(25:16):
And remember I told you that when you are emotionally triggered,
you have these fourteen hundred different sensations. It actually dries
up your mouth and it actually makes it harder to eat.
And so if you override that and you eat, you're
going to end up with bloating, gas, diarrhea, constavation. But anyway,
let's go back. You smell your food, then you actually
(25:38):
need to chew your food. Now we take big bites.
We want to slow that down, and why not because
we think we love food. So let's actually be present
with the food. So you put the food in your
mouth and you chew it longer than you think necessary,
and you know what, that's really really boring, and our
mind doesn't like boring moments, and so it's telling you
(25:59):
to pick up your fork and eat faster, and we
got to practice eating slower. By chewing your food and
making it liquid, you're actually making it digestible and absorbable.
So digestion starts with chewing, and it's our only mechanical
form of breaking down the food. If you eat quickly
and you don't chew your food, well, you are like
(26:21):
swallowing whole pieces of food that are unrecognizable and you
actually can't get the nutrition from inside that food, and
that creates an inflammatory response immediately. So now we're talking.
Now the food has gone from your mouth in a
liquid form, hopefully, and it's sitting in your stomach where
it needs to be there for two to five hours
(26:42):
so it can actually be properly broken down. And so
now let's just talk about this. Think about a paper
towel holder, that cardboard ring. Okay, we're actually talking about
the inside of that carboard ring right now, and that
technically is the outside of your boy. Nothing has entered
your bloodstream, and so we need everything to be staying
(27:05):
in that hollow tube and that inside layer is called
the mucosal layer. Connected to that are called tight junctions,
and now the outside of the cardboard is called the
epithelial cardbet. Those three layers make up your digestive track.
So technically, what is inside that hollow tube has not
(27:26):
entered your bloodstream, It has not started folding into those
paper towels. If it has, and if it does, this
is the how we get an increase in mood disorders
disease states because it's not supposed to. So our first
layer of defense is that mucosal layer. Hopefully we're protecting it.
And so we're going to talk about those prebiotics and
(27:48):
private and probiotics, right, So do you have any questions
about that so far?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah? So I have Celiac disease, okay, and I one
of the biggest use in the beginning when I've first
diagnosed was that that it affected that that layer that
you're talking about. So obviously my selfish question is what
are some sort of what are some of the best
probiotics or probiotics or things at regimens I could do
(28:14):
to kind of rebuild it for people who may have
had it for various reasons. There are other reasons too,
other than celiac, why someone might have had some and
I have been able to rebuild it. By the way,
I'm like, I'm back, baby, but.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
You know I love that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Actually, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm back. But that was I
was diagnosed later in life with celiac, so it really
I went a whole lifetime of damage to it. But
I'm good now. Yeah. But but yeah, but can you
please give some advice there?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, So prebiotics. So think about it this way. When
we're born, we're born with our microbiome system, and this
is going to be very influential in our mood, our health,
the way that we break down food. And we can
have up to ten pounds of microbiome in our entire body,
(29:05):
and we have them in our mouth, our stomach, our vagina,
and our anus. And when we take an antibiotic, we
actually kill off colonies in any of these areas that
we're never actually going to replace. And when we take
a probiotic, those are kind of like little tourists that
are visiting and they're leaving messages, but they don't stick around.
(29:25):
So in order to repopulate and read ferment, let's say
that mucosal lining, we need to be consistent in the
way that we're eating and adding things to our diet.
Prebiotics are things that feed the probiotics and they're very
important for this repopulation. So some things I would say,
(29:45):
there's about five things that I would say you want
to include in your diet every single day, and that
would be fiber between twenty five for a woman, twenty
five grounds for a woman, and about thirty to thirty
five grounds for a man. Is really really important as
food for those probiotics, and they also pull out cholesterol
and toxic estrogens, very very good for immune health. You
(30:09):
want to make sure you're including fermented foods, which could
be something like sour kraut or kimchi or yogurt. These
things have natural probiotics that kind of like send messages
all over the place to boost our immune system and
our gut health. You want to diversify or in other words,
have a diverse amount of fruits and vegetables every single day,
(30:34):
and the recommendations are literally between four and seven servings.
It could be four and seven vegetables or four and
seven fruits, or a combination of the two. I'm not
a huge fruit fan. I love vegetables they've got the
same nutrients, so it doesn't matter which one you pick.
And then you also want to make sure you're including
whole grains. So the whole grains is tricky if you
(30:55):
have celiac or other GI problems, but they're not so
tricky if you don't have those problems, so I wouldn't
be so afraid of them. And one whole grain that
I would recommend would be something like sourdough. Sourdough, it's
sour and it's a fermented bread, so it already has
the probiotic in it. The last thing I would recommend
(31:18):
would be flax seed, geas seed, or hempseed every single day.
And I've spoken to many like GI doctors and I
always ask them like, what's the one thing you recommend
for colon health? And without a doubt, they say flax seed,
chia seed, and hempseed because it's high in fiber and
because it's got omega threes. So now we're talking brain health,
(31:40):
gut health, and heart health.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Our mutual friend Lisa, who I hung out with yesterday,
was like, I need to get my flax seed in today.
Kim told me that I need more flax seed.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
So every day always say literally.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yes, yes, so cal on, I think that's enough information
to wet the app to what the salvatory glands about
the gut. But it's really that is really valuable information.
I want to move on to another psychological aspect of eating,
because this is the Psychology Podcast, and I love that
(32:16):
your work is so psychological. It's psychologically changing the relationship
you have with food and with hunger, with your hunger
more specifically, so eating when you're hungry is one, but
another one is loving what you eat, like keep loving
what you eat. And I think a lot of that's
a big misconception. A lot of people think that, you know,
(32:38):
like if I'm going to diet or if I way,
I'm going to eat broccoli all day. Now, I know
you love you love broccoli. I know, I know, but
not everyone does. Kim tell us a little bit about
how you can lose weight and still eat what you love.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, so the whole rule is to eat what you love, Comma,
but make sure the food loves you back. So you know,
my degree is in human metabolism and clinical nutrition, so
my goal is to help your body be well. That's
the goal. Now, a lot of people have restricted only
to find themselves binging. They also label food as good, bad, healthy,
(33:15):
and unhealthy. They also know to eat kale, but are
finding themselves having milkshakes and then filling a lot of
shame and persecution. So the reality is it doesn't necessarily
matter what you're eating to lose weight. When you eat
when you're hungry, and when you start with half right,
that's the fail safe piece. It's important for somebody to
(33:38):
start trusting that they could eat food that they never
felt they could eat and not gain weight. That's a
really important piece to do this long term. Now, it's
also quite interesting when somebody says I love bananas and
then they're recognizing they're having diarrhea or heartburn, and it
(34:01):
turns out that the banana in this scenario is the culprit. Right.
It's shocking. Now, how often will you continue eating something
that makes you sick? This is the piece that's very
interesting to me, because you wouldn't stay in a relationship
or you actually would stay in a relationship where the
person is abusive or toxic, And this is like the
(34:24):
hero's journey. At some point you're going to have to recognize, wait,
I'm the only one who can heal myself? And now
I have to get curious, does the banana make me
feel sick? And can I see how I feel if
I don't have the banana for a couple days. This
is how we gain trust and how we can move
(34:44):
forward in things. And then what ends up happening is
people start recognizing I really don't feel great, and so
they start changing naturally the foods that they're eating on
their own, without restriction. That's how we grow.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But you do say there are some exceptions. You say,
you know, eat what you love unless you get sick
from eating. Yeah, and that mays common sense. But but
but there are some safeguards there, right, Like, what do.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
You mean safeguards? I mean, I think if I think,
if you nails, I mean, what nails are we talking about.
I don't think that people. I don't know that people
are eating nails or people eating nails.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
No, I don't think that's the thing. I don't think
that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
But I don't know there could be. I mean, people
are eating dirt, but that's you know that they need
iron if they're eating dirt or craving dirt.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
But I mean, like, let's say someone like once needs
to lower cholesterol, and they love eating food that is
really high in the bad kind of fat. You know, yeah,
you know you don't. You don't recommend eating that all.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Day, right, Yeah, So when you're talking about that, you're
talking about saturated fat, you know, fats that come from
an animal. And it's the thing is, and this is
the most amazing thing that I've ever discovered, is that
most people who have high cholesterol, it's a weight related disease.
You know, it's based on metabolic syndrome syndrome X. And
so actually, when you lose weight, and when you lose
(36:17):
the right type of weight, specifically body fat, your cholesterol
goes down. And when you start losing weight and feeling better,
you start making changes that are way more positive for
you because you have less inflammation and actually your motivation
becomes higher. Now, in some ways, people have what's called
familial cholesterol, which is type two, and they've lost weight
(36:41):
and their body fat is good and their muscle mass
is good, but their cholesterol is still high. So then
we have to look at their hormone health, and we
also have to look at the type of foods they're choosing.
So this is what you're getting at here, and I
think the fail safe and starting with half and figuring
out your hunger is so protective, believe it or not,
(37:03):
in lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar. Unfortunately, familial
to cholesterol, the one that you can't really fix with
diet does require medications. I think that people have different
levels of inflammation. Maybe they've taken antibiotics, and so I
think there's all different varieties of intolerances and those are
(37:26):
all reversible.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Rule three is eat without distractions. You say food is boring?
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Okay, so a lot of people call themselves foodies right now,
I mean that's just yeah. And then ideally I would
like you to be alone with your food, right I
would like you to actually challenge yourself to sit down
with your meal and have no distractions. Take away your book,
(37:55):
your computer, your television show, the friends, the family at
the table. Well, oh tell me, is food fun?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
No boring? Boring? It's boring if I'm not doing something
else at the same time.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
And that right there is the game changer. So you
should love what you're eating. I would never want you
to put something in your body that you do not love.
And that does not love you back. But you should
not be eating it because it's fun, because it's actually not.
And remember, we're always anticipating the next bite. We are
(38:33):
literally in love with our food. We can't wait for
our meal. We put the food on the fork, it's
in our mouth and we don't even put our fork
down for the next bite. We don't even bother spending
time chewing it. Food is boring, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, good point, good point. Oh well, most of us
enjoy the anticipation more than we actually do the actual food. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I would tell you to enjoy the food. Why are
you eating it?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So you say, stop and smell the pasta?
Speaker 1 (39:02):
I do? I mean, how long does it even take
to eat the pasta? You know, like a few minutes?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Okay, good, Well that's another psychological trick. Mindful eating is
a whole thing in the meditation literature, you know, to
the retreats. When you go to retreats, they make you
eat a raisin and and be mind They force you
to be mindful about it.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, and have you done that?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
I have, I've done it with my students.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
How long does it take to eat the raisin mindfully?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
A couple of minutes.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. And right there, that's that
fail safe where we slow down and we wait to
see if we need more. And I had a client
who in her advisory class in high school, every day,
the teacher would bring donuts, little donut holes, and she
was the kind of person who would pop a donut
(39:56):
hole in her mouth. And I'm the kind of person
who would take a couple bites of my donut hole,
and she would eat three donut holes to my one donut. Wow,
like slowing down eating a raisin over a couple minutes.
That to me, that's why, like, if you could do that,
then why we wouldn't have a weight problem.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, that's an interesting point you
just made. There's genetics at play here, and then there's
the things that we could do to change. Some people
have a higher uphill battle due to their genetics.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Right, yes, kind of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
So what do you you know, how do you work
with people who come in with all sorts of different
genetic set points.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, I think if they can get connected to all
six of my rules, then they're going to be on fire.
And I think that I actually heard you speak on
this a little bit when you can picture your future self,
which the truth is like, there was a study done fleas.
I'm sure you're aware of that where the scientists put
the fleas in a study and the fleas jumped in
(41:06):
and out of the jar. What did I just say?
The fleas put the the scientists put the fleas in
a jart Did I say that? And then they jumped
in and out. And then the scientists put a lid
on the jar, and the fleas stopped trying to jump out.
Then they took the lid off, they kept it off,
and the fleas never tried to jump out. But here's
the fascinating piece. The babies of the fleas they never
(41:29):
tried jumping out. So when you talk about limitations, if
you can't picture your future self, if you can't see
past the limitation. Right, there's a quote that I love
that says, if this disordered eating, it actually says, if
this illness right now feels like a cage, please try
(41:50):
to hear me. The door is unlocked and you are
free to go. And why people stay in the cage
is comfort, And why people don't tiptoe out is because
they haven't decorated what it looks like outside of the cage.
They don't feel safe, they feel so they stay.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Stuck, worn't helplessness. Yeah. Rule four, take ten thousand steps
every day. Okay, Now why that number? And does it
have to be running? Can it be walking? Just any
kind of movement? Is that helpful?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Such great good questions and points. So right now the
average American walks about thirty five hundred steps and they're obese. Okay,
So just we know that just by getting seven thousand steps,
you're decreasing your risk of sudden death by fifty percent
and decreasing your risk of almost every other disease, including Alzheimer's.
(42:47):
So what I have found over my twenty five years
is that in order to maintain your weight loss, it
has to be ten thousand steps. You have to be
an active person. Now here's the thing. We can't always
do it. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it
has to be progressive. You have to be the kind
(43:08):
of person who is active more times than you're inactive,
and never following follow following less than seven thousand steps.
So ten thousand steps helps your circadium rhythms with just
your sleep and wake cycles. It helps your digestion, It
helps your mood, and it helps you maintain your weight.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Okay, well those are good reasons, yeah, to talk to
me about the different types of that pay.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah. So if you're somebody who really is only averaging
thirty five hundred, then your goal right now is just
to get that number to seven thousand, right, And you
can do it anyway that you want to do it.
I don't care if you run up and down the
stairs in your own home or in your office building.
You could go to a bathroom on a different floor,
taking the stairs, I don't care how you do it.
Take less dishes out of the dishwasher. Those extra steps
(43:57):
make a difference. Right. But at some point, just like
what you love, and you're going to have to kind
of figure out what loves you back. You're going to
have to start recognizing my body needs many things. Needs
cardiovascular health, and needs strength training, and needs flexibility, It
needs endurance. I literally just saw the greatest commercial I've
(44:17):
ever seen, as an elderly man lifting weights and he
was talking about not doing it, you know, because he
wanted to look great. And then later it shows him
hugging his grandchildren and carrying groceries from the car, and like,
this is it. We need our body to be well
and remain well, and so it's got to be a
variety of things to do to make that happen.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
I love that I'm doing it to look good, though
I'm not. I am. I tell everyone the truth about
my motivation because my health metrics are great, even my
current weight. So I can't just say, oh, I need
to do it because of help. No, I want to
look good. Yeah, so that can be an okay motivation?
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
I mean you have a plan, you know. I like it.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
I have a plan. I have a plant. Well if
I drink eight cups of water a day, yeah, okay,
Well I am I according to this app I'm doing
it's it coined to my body. So everything they're telling
me do ten cups of water a day? Yeah, but
at will we st date? Is that Iteeah?
Speaker 1 (45:20):
So I would say it's minimum eight. And for every
twenty pounds of person wants to lose, it's actually two
additional cups of water. And if you drink a ton
of caffeine, for every one cup of coffee, it's two
additional cups of water. But the reality is people are
either drinking way too much water or not enough water.
And if you don't drink enough water, you're putting yourself
(45:41):
at risk for that metabolic syndrome. So water detoxin filters
all the toxins in our body, and if you're not
drinking enough water, your liver kind of kicks in and
helps your kidneys because your kidneys can't function properly without
the water. And the liver's job is actually to metabolize fat.
So we're now talking in cholesterol, body fat, and triglycerides.
(46:03):
So if you don't drink enough water, you're going to
see an increase in all three of those fats. It's
a secret sauce to losing weight. Drink your water.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
So dehydration is how does dehydration affect losing weight?
Speaker 1 (46:16):
So if you don't drink enough water, your liver kind
of helps your body detox and it stops metabolizing its
fat instead it stores it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
That's interesting because I feel like if I drink a
lot of water, I feel fatter. Interesting, that's a thing
called water weight, right.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
That's interesting, and I would actually love to know more
about what I mean. You feel fatter, you feel full.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I feel fuller. My stomach just my stomach protrudes further.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, So then I wonder how fast you're drinking water,
and I would recommend you drinking it slower. So, you know,
we have intracellular water and extracellular water, and we have
like one hundred trillion cells and they're forty percent water.
And when we eat a diet that is high in
let's say carbohydrate, which we should all be eating a
diet plentyful of carbohydrate, but people don't always hear the
(47:07):
word hydrate in the word carbohydrate. And those foods, which
are milk, fruit, vegetables, and starches are full of water.
So when we eat them, we're actually taking the water
from inside the food and we're putting it into our
intracellular cells. And it takes about three days for that
(47:29):
to diffuse diffuse back to extracellular and so it could
look like you're gaining weight, but all you did was
really what you're saying, gain water weight, and it's not real.
But like, if you're drinking that bottle right there, let's
say it's twenty four ounces, and you drink the whole thing,
you're actually putting a pound and a half of water in.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Your system, right right, Yeah, that's right, but you.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Didn't really gain weight because really your only real weight
is on a Thursday morning, first thing in the morning.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
That's right. And you do say change a relationship to
the scale, and you do recommend Thursdays. Why Thursdays to measure.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Our human body weighs more on Mondays. And it takes
again three days to diffuse back to normal from all
of maybe alcohol, salt or food that you ate that
whatever is changing the composition. It takes three days. So
our lowest way to the week is on a Thursday.
Always so interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Well, I know I find this interesting. You say, quote
dehydration can make you feel headache, constanpate, tired, and run down.
It can lead to weight gain, and it's damaging to
your organs. Make drinking water easy and make it a habit.
You do not need to be perfect, and every day
may be different. Just be patient and stick with it.
It's been fun measuring how much water I'm drinking a
day and obsessively drinking water. Can you drink too much water?
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Drinking water flushes out all of our vitamins and minerals.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Oh is that a good or bad? Not good?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Not good? We want to not good.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Rule sticks get seven hours of sleep. I always hear
everyone tell me get eight hours.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, it's really seven to nine. So it's it's a
great number. But the truth is the average American is
getting six and a half. They can't even get seven.
And so again, I don't like to add pressure to people.
I want them to just you know, get there. Yeah,
So people have problems falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking
up rested. And this is called your circadium rhythm, and
(49:26):
it's really melotonin and cortisol. And so there's just so
many things that we could talk about here. But if
you're having problems falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up
not rested, you definitely need to talk to your healthcare
practitioner or work on your sleep hygiene.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Relating to sleep and just like, like, how many hours
before you sleep should you finish eating? I'm trying to think,
I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase that. Yeah,
I think stop eating.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
I think if you are somebody who has gird or heartburn,
it has to be like four to six hours before
you lay down. If you're somebody who doesn't have that,
then it's at least three hours before you lay down.
If you eat close to bedtime, you're actually telling your
brain it's time to wake up, and your overriding sleep
and you're going to have poor sleep.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
So if you go to bed like ten thirty eight pm,
you really should kind of be done eating by seven
or so.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Yep, seven exactly right, exactly right. And I would say
my math ability is our genius level. It sounds like
you say, here are the facts. Nobody is always hungry
after dinner. Instead, you were giving in to what you're
feeling for your anxiety and titlement.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
That's interesting. You sent titlement or a search for fun
and a source of comfort, which is a bad habit
that needs to be broken. And if you do experience
physical hunger in the evening, it means you are not
eating enough during the day, so you need to change
how much you eat throughout the day. But the most
part of thing here is you say you are in control.
This seems to be a common theme of your book.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Well, it is very in line with my philosophy about
overcoming a victim mentality in life. But not everyone's into that,
you know, but really you can be in control.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
Yeah, I believe you can be in control. And in fact,
there's a paradox right people who are living this lifestyle
they're having fun, and people who are not find it hard.
But if they can actually just start just doing it
a little bit more every day, what ends up happening
is they start falling in love with it.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Let's end the whole episode on a single quote. If
this illness feels right now like a cage, please try
to hear me. It isn't locked. It has been open
all along. You are free to go. Well said. Thank
you Kim so much for inspiring so many people to
(51:56):
be healthier, look better, naked, and feel better about themselves.
You're doing great work in the world. Thank you so
much for on my podcast.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Thank you for having me so fun.
Just so we're clear, we know that food is fuel.
Every single person alive has between three and five emotional triggers.
Sometimes we develop new ones when we experience anything that
is traumatic. We're just affected, and until we master them,
we're still going to remain affected. And the second we're
emotionally triggered, our mind kind of jumps out of our
(00:21):
body and we go into this forward, anxious thinking, and
until we can get our mind back in our body
and the ability to scan it, we get into this
idea that food is a great idea we must be
needing it.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Today we have Kim Shapira on the show. Kim is
a celebrity dietician, nutritional therapist, author, and creator of the
Kim Shapira Method. Her method helps people take back their
relationship with food and consists of six simple and very
doable rules which anyone can follow. This episode, we discussed
the rules, focusing specifically on the psychology behind them and
(01:05):
what it takes to not just lose weight, but keep
the weight off and be healthier and happier in the
long run. One of the main takeaways from this episode
is that a craving is not a hunger once you
really can wrap your head around this. I believe a
lot can really change for you in your life. So
without further ado, I'll bring you Kim Shapira, Kim Shapira,
(01:28):
how are you.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I'm so happy to be here, Scott.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm so happy that you are here. Do you see
what's in my right hand right now?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So proud of you. I'm so proud of you for
so many reasons.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Thank you. So you know, so you know what this
is immediately?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I mean, I'm hoping it's water.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
No, but it's it's it keeps track.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh we know, I don't know. Tell me everything.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's linked to my phone and its track of how
much water I'm drinking every day.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I mean, look at all your growth potential. I'm so
proud of you.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Thanks, Kim. I appreciate you have this amazing method which
I've heard about from multiple people who have tried it
and have succeeded. So I've been trying it, and I
you know, I'm loving it and getting a little obsessive
about making sure I get in all the numbers for
(02:20):
all the dimensions. But we're going to go through all
the dimensions. I don't want to give it away yet.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I like that you're all in. That that excites me.
I'm very excited about that, and I just want to
find a way to keep you all in always.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So let's start with perhaps
my favorite sentence in your entire book. Oh and the
sentence is a craving is not a hunger. I feel
like that was really profound, and everything revolves around that
(02:59):
in a way. Oh say, more turned philosophical sets Now
you say more, I'm interview What do you mean, I'm
interviewing you?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
What do you well? I mean you know that I'm obsessed,
equally obsessed with the way that your mind works and
wanting to know more about your mind. So to me,
that seems very common sense, especially when we know our
mind and we've been setting our mind. So what's really
interesting is I know that food is fuel. I would say,
(03:30):
like eighty percent of the population knows that food is fuel.
And when we think food is fun, comfort, entertainment, joy,
or the enemy, it means that it's an alarm going
off and we're rationalizing a bad idea. And I would
think a craving would fall into the same understanding. But
(03:53):
I think I think it's profound that that's a sentence
you picked out, and especially you know the idea idea
that we get so seduced by a craving that it's
like we just visualize, internalize, feel all of the feels
when we think about what it's going to be like
in our mouth. Yeah, And the truth is all the
(04:16):
reward that we get is actually in the anticipation.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yes, And we know that you know from how the
mechanisms of dopamine work. And you're really making this really
clear to people who are trying to lose weight that
you can feel. You know, eat when you're hungry is
one of your roles, right, eat when you're hungry. So
the interesting thing there is you can feel craving and
(04:44):
then really get more mindful about huh is this a
craving or is this a hunger?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And I think that just moment of reflection has changed
my life.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I mean, I couldn't be more pleased to hear that.
And I also just always wonder why people don't talk
about hunger.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, because the hunger is not a bad thing, right,
It's okay be hungry every now and then.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I mean there's like our emotional self and then there's
our physical self, and we get signals all day long
telling us what we need. Right, we're thirsty, we have
to use the restroom, it's time to go to sleep.
And for some reason, we have this natural fear that
if we go hungry, we're going to starve to death.
And the truth is nobody has starved to death. We
(05:36):
are not starving to death. And we will get so
many signals to eat, our body will go into a
full temper tantrum if we were strict, and all we
will think about in such a narrow minded way is food,
food food food. I mean, like if I said to you, okay, Scott,
here's the thing. I'm going to let you pee one
(05:56):
time today and I'm going to pick the time that
you get to pee, your mind would go into overload
and all you would think about would be having to
use the restaurant right now, think about restriction. And then
the flip side is why aren't we talking about hunger
as a signal that is great? And like our body
is requiring fuel to focus, to do all the things right,
(06:19):
regulate our body temperature, our hormones, so many things, and
yet we can't really eat all our calories in one moment.
Our body isn't capable of that, so we have to
spread it out over time and only eat as much
as we need trusting, learning to trust. I'm actually going
to eat again, you know, and we typically eat twenty
(06:42):
one meals in a week.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
It seems like I've been remiss not to bring up ozempic.
It's like it's a craze right now. Now, what are
your thoughts on using ozempic for losing weight? Do you
think it's a nice supplement to your method. Maybe it's
not necessary for everyone, Maybe some people can just apply
(07:03):
your method, and yeah, will.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I mean, the truth is, my method's been my method
for over twenty five years, and so if we think
about what is ozempk actually doing, I think we have
to slow down and like, this is the connection I
feel you and I have. Okay, everything starts with our mind,
and if we don't know where our mind is, we
(07:28):
can't make rational choices. So let's use the example, and
I'm going to come back to the ozempic in a minute.
Let's use the example. There's an alarm going off right
now in your house and we're in the middle of
shooting this podcast. You would probably say, hold tight, Kim,
I got to go figure out what that is. You
would go to the alarm box, you would turn it off.
(07:48):
Then you would scan your environment and make sure you
were safe. Then you would come back and we could
carry on. So if you start believing and start knowing
that every single time you have a thought I have
to pee, or every single time you have a thought,
food is a good idea. All it is is an
alarm coming from your environment. And then if you go
(08:12):
to your mind, you quiet it, you turn it off,
You scan your body, and you recognize why the alarm
even was triggered. You might recognize my chest is tight,
I'm having a hard time breathing, I'm really really bored,
my stomach is hungry, and then you can actually appropriately
deal with why the alarm was triggered. Right, So, just
(08:36):
so we're clear, we know that food is fuel. Every
single person alive has between three and five emotional triggers.
Sometimes we develop new ones when we experience anything that
is traumatic, Like every one of us is still traumatized
by COVID. Some of us never wanted to leave the house.
Some of us couldn't wait to leave the house. We're
just affected, and until we master them, we're still going
(08:58):
to remain affected. And the second we're emotionally triggered, our
mind kind of jumps out of our body and we
go into this, you know, forward anxious thinking, and until
we can get our mind back in our body and
the ability to scan it, we get into this idea
that food is a great idea. We must be needing it. Now,
(09:20):
what happens when we feel stressed or when we're emotionally triggered.
In less than ten seconds, we have fourteen hundred sensations
that occur simultaneously. They trigger the hippocampus. The hippocampus is
our memory center. And if at one point in your
life you ate because you had discomfort in your body,
(09:41):
your mind is like, hey, I'm here to help you survive,
and I remember the last time you felt this way,
we ate and we felt better. Let's do that again,
right and then right? And so if you think about
ozempic and everybody who you know can't really differentiate between
their emotional self and their physical self, ozembic is quieting
(10:06):
that hippocampus. That's amazing. People are like quieting food noise
for the first time in their entire life, and now
they're actually be able they're actually able to deal with
their emotions responsively. How cool is that? How cool is that? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
So like I've been teaching that all this time, but
(10:28):
now there's a medication that does it. So I think
like you either can use the medication or you can
use my rules and all of my tricks to help
you get that. But the second part of what ozembic
or a GLP one is doing is it's working on
the hormone Latin. So when you think about your stomach,
it's got two hormones that kind of regulate hungerful. And
(10:50):
if you think about your stomach is like a bowl,
the lining of your stomach when it gets when it
detects that it doesn't have enough food, it signals grilling.
That signals your brain is time to eat when you've
eaten something. And here's the fun part. And studies prove
that if you're starving and you eat a piece of
bread in a restaurant and you wait ten minutes for
(11:12):
your food to show up, you're no longer hungry, right
because leptin has now detected there's food in your stomach
and you're safe. So the gop ones are working on
the food noise and the leptin, which you have the
ability to do that too if you follow my rules,
which rule number one, eat when you're hungry, take your
(11:32):
normal portion, cut it in half, and wait fifteen minutes
to see if you need more food. That rule is
essentially a GLP one.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, I mean so you can. You can psychological You
called it a trick. You're funny because it's a psychological
trick that does the same thing than what the medicine
you're popping in your popping you're injecting. So let me
read a quote to a quote from you. The way
to break those habits and start to eat when you're
hungry is to be aware of what you're actually feeling
(12:03):
when you think you want to eat. The next time
you find yourself searching through the cabinets for a snack
or sitting down for a meal, pause and ask why.
You list four reasons why we eat. We seafood, we
are not seafood, We see food, we are emotional, we
have a craving, and we feel actual physical hunger. Do
(12:23):
you think so? You think there's a great benefit in
being more mindful reflecting on the reasons why you're going
to that food cabinet.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
One hundred percent. I think you need to know where
your mind is at all times. And like you know,
the definition a mindful is knowing where your mind is
without judgment. And so we really need to put space
between the thought to eat and the action to eat,
if that makes sense, because we all eat quickly and mindlessly.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
We do. That's not the only thing we do quickly
and mindlessly.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
No, it's not.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Welcome to America.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes, it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
We do everything that way. Let's let's before we move
on to rule number two. I wanted to talk about
how to tackle hunger for sweets. So what you know,
you say, feel it, acknowledge it, laugh at it, and
leave it alone.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Have you found that that does that work for you?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah? It does. Have you tried it?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I've tried it with candy corn, and the candy corn
is good, too good. I don't get past the laugh
at part.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Okay, So let's let's load the whole thing down so
you kind of understand what I'm talking about. Okay. So
you know, our mind produces like over sixty thousand thoughts
in response to what we see, smell, feel, here in touch.
You are not taking credit for your heart beating your
lungs to breathe, your stomach to digest, and you really
(13:51):
can't be taking credit for the way that your mind
is helping you survive every single moment. Right So, when
you can actually see that your mind is thinking about
candy corn, that's your opportunity to recognize the alarm has
been triggered. To take a deep breath, come back into
your body. And one trick that I always use is
(14:12):
to ask yourself, where is my body? And then to
repeat it's just right here, and then to say where
is my mind? And really we can go find our
mind and we'll recognize it's on the pantry candy corn
in the you know, with the candy corn, or it's
on the meeting I'm having next week, or it's on
a conversation I had yesterday that I didn't like the
way it went right. And if your mind is not
(14:35):
in the same exact time zone as your body, you
have some work to do. And so I would repeat
the entire thing again, okay, until you know where your
mind is. But what happens when we have candy corn
is if you actually slow down time and really take
your time to eat the candy corn, you'll actually recognize
that it's offensive to your brain. It's so sweet that
(14:58):
it's offensive. But we're applying pleasure in the exact same moment,
and it's getting stored in our addictive center of our brain.
And so what happens when we have the thought to
have more candy corn, it's actually a physical withdrawal, and
the hunger is coming from the discomfort you're having, and
(15:18):
it's like a pulling, like you'd almost look under a
rock for candy corn, right, And that is absolutely not hunger,
because hunger is in your stomach. It's isolated to your stomach.
It's not painful, it's not scary, and it should happen often, right,
And so what happens when we have candy corn is
we stay in the cycle and we think that that's
(15:40):
what we love, and we think that's what we're hungry for.
And if we actually took the time to recognize, wait,
I'm thinking about candy corn in the middle of the
morning while I just you know, have to do this
homework assignment or whatever it is, you'll recognize it's only
because you had candy corn yesterday or earlier in that day.
And that's what I mean by last you want to
(16:00):
break up your thought pattern.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Well, I mean that that part really is great. It
works for everything else, but candy corn.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
You how to really stop the candy corn is you
actually have to stop eating candy corn for like four
days so the sugar can leave your system, Okay, and
then you'll no longer crave it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I think there's a lot of sugar and candy corn.
I think they've really manufactured something that is really good,
not for you, but good tasting. Okay. Anything else I
want to cover within the eat when you're a hungry
part sodium, Maybe we talk about salt cravings because you
say salt cravings are a different story.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah. I would actually reach out to a doctor if
you're having real salt cravings because it may be that
you're not able to kind of keep your water balance
maintained and could actually be a real, real serious issue.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So eat when you're hungry. And then you talk about
the looking glass.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Oh, I love that you've picked up on that.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, tell us a little about how the looking glass
is relevant here, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Okay, And by the way, if you're also craving ice,
you should call the doctor because that's that's an iron deficiency. Yeah, Okay,
so it's one of my favorite quotes from Alice in
Wonderland looking Glass and the White Queen says to Alice,
the problem with people is they forget their future memories.
(17:36):
And Alice says to the White Queen, what do you
mean you know the future memories? And the Queen says,
we know exactly how this goes if we don't change.
I could predict how my clients are going to do
based on this. People can even know exactly how they
go how it's going to go if they don't actually
work on the change. And one thing you and I
(17:57):
are very aligned with, and something I've been saying for
I think my whole life is people will come to
me and they say I need to lose weight for
a wedding or a party or a graduation, and I
always say to them, what's going to happen the day after?
And I really try and change people's minds from their
goal to lose weight to make it their goal to
(18:19):
learn how to change and make sustainable results for weight maintenance.
That's the real goal.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I see that. And a big part of that is
identifying your quote triggers right triggers.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And you know this is where I think the understanding
that think about the superiority complex, which is I already
know what I have to do, but also I neglect
what I have to do. How do we change in
that mindset.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I think most people know at some level when they're
doing something that's not moving them in the direction of
positive growth. I think they know that, you know, but
that knowing it is one thing.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Right, that's not that's I mean, people know kale is
full of vitamins. But you know, really early on in
my career, I failed at putting people on diets, and
it was a really good lesson for me. Actually I
don't know if well it was in my book, but
I don't know if you know this part. What you
(19:24):
don't know about me is that I was a sick kid.
Maybe you do because you read my book. But I
spent a good portion of my twelfth year in and
out of the hospital, and then about four years after
that visiting my specialists at UCLA, and you would have
probably considered me a quiet, shy kid. And so just
picture a twelve year old going to the doctor and
(19:45):
being in a lot of pain. And I must have
been crying one day on my way to UCLA, and
my mom said to me, don't cry, will go shopping.
And this really imprinted on me, and every emotion led
me to think shopping was a good idea. And somewhere
in high school, I was talking to a doctor friend
(20:08):
of mine. I was interning with him. He was a
dietriss and he said to me, you know, food can
make people sick or healthy. And that was one of
those moments where I said, that's it for me. I
want to be healthy, and I bet everybody else does,
and I'm going to make a career in making people healthy.
And I went to graduate school. I studied nutrition and
I wanted to know everything about food. And my very
(20:31):
first client was a therapist. And I say that because
I was twenty seven, she should have been smarter than me, right,
because she knew more about her mind. And she I
helped her lose thirty pounds by putting her on a diet,
and then she said to me at the end, after
I helped her, I'm going to gain the weight back.
And this triggered me in a million different ways because
(20:53):
I just helped her get healthy and now she wanted
to change it. And she said to me, my husband
wants to be intimate with me all the time. And
I was molested as a child, and I thought, oh
my god, I don't know anything about people's relationship with food.
It's not about kale, it's not about what they know
to be healthy. And then I started recognizing the pattern
(21:15):
that my clients are eating in the exact same way
that I'm shopping. And if I can help myself, then
I can really start having you know, helping them have
sustainable results. And so that's how this all came to be,
where I started really changing the way that I that
I worked really and so it's not that people don't know,
(21:36):
it's that they don't they neglect to do it. And
that's the piece that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What what do you find is a
big motivator for people? Why do most people decide to
really commit and change isy aesthetics? What's it like the
number like three top three reasons you've seen over and
over again?
Speaker 1 (21:58):
What I mean? I would think that it would be health,
It would be definitely. I would say looks probably is
number one more than health.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Could be yeah, so looks health. And then I would
say a party or a TV show that they're about
to film, and these would not be these would not
be the answers that I would allow them to walk
away with.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
What is the best reason, too? Is wait? Health? Right?
Speaker 1 (22:30):
It is health? I mean obviously I picked this career
to be healthy and to help people get healthy. And
what do we have if we don't have our health right? Like,
that's got to be somebody's priority, and it's not necessarily always,
and it's not enough when we have short term memories
and there's candy corn.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
But I think my clients who find me are the
ones who are done dieting. They're the ones who are
sick and they're and tired and they're looking for sustainable change.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
What's the relationship between the gut and hunger?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Well, we talked about the hormone growlin sure did, And
I mean, is there one without the other? Like you
you know, hunger is in your gut and if and
if it is in your energy and if you are
like bottoming out and you're feeling like low blood pressure
or low blood sugar, these are different things in hunger.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Let's let's double quick on the gut a little bit
more because there's so much in the gut. What sort
of pre biotics probiotics do you do you recommend? I
I take like an all in one preeh post like it?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I like it?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I mean which one? Yeah? Go?
Speaker 1 (23:50):
I mean now I'm like, can I nerd out and
just like slow down on the whole gut thing? Because Okay,
so when you're talking about like gut health, we really
have to start understanding the whole digestive track. And that's
from your mouth to your anus, and it's the width
of a tennis court. And every single inch of this
track has a job, every single inch of it. And
(24:14):
food should travel down one millimeter an hour, hopefully giving
you a twenty four hour transit time. Now, what's really
important is that we need to learn to stop and
smell our food. I know this is like we don't
talk about hunger. We also don't talk about chewing our food. First,
we smell our food so we can get like a
salivary amilies. Like what happens Scott when I say think
(24:37):
about lemons, think about like a really good sour lemon
in your mouth? What happens in your mouth?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I get more water watery in my mouth. My mouth
is watering.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, so that is salivary air.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
The same happens when you say candy corn as well.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
By the way, oh interesting, I love that. Okay, interesting
and pickles, I'm sure. So your mind already told your
digestive track get ready, we're going to be eating, and
it produced salivary emilise. So just by thinking and smelling
your food, you're actually starting to prep your body for digestion.
It's very important to reduce gi distress. We need that saliva.
(25:16):
And remember I told you that when you are emotionally triggered,
you have these fourteen hundred different sensations. It actually dries
up your mouth and it actually makes it harder to eat.
And so if you override that and you eat, you're
going to end up with bloating, gas, diarrhea, constavation. But anyway,
let's go back. You smell your food, then you actually
(25:38):
need to chew your food. Now we take big bites.
We want to slow that down, and why not because
we think we love food. So let's actually be present
with the food. So you put the food in your
mouth and you chew it longer than you think necessary,
and you know what, that's really really boring, and our
mind doesn't like boring moments, and so it's telling you
(25:59):
to pick up your fork and eat faster, and we
got to practice eating slower. By chewing your food and
making it liquid, you're actually making it digestible and absorbable.
So digestion starts with chewing, and it's our only mechanical
form of breaking down the food. If you eat quickly
and you don't chew your food, well, you are like
(26:21):
swallowing whole pieces of food that are unrecognizable and you
actually can't get the nutrition from inside that food, and
that creates an inflammatory response immediately. So now we're talking.
Now the food has gone from your mouth in a
liquid form, hopefully, and it's sitting in your stomach where
it needs to be there for two to five hours
(26:42):
so it can actually be properly broken down. And so
now let's just talk about this. Think about a paper
towel holder, that cardboard ring. Okay, we're actually talking about
the inside of that carboard ring right now, and that
technically is the outside of your boy. Nothing has entered
your bloodstream, and so we need everything to be staying
(27:05):
in that hollow tube and that inside layer is called
the mucosal layer. Connected to that are called tight junctions,
and now the outside of the cardboard is called the
epithelial cardbet. Those three layers make up your digestive track.
So technically, what is inside that hollow tube has not
(27:26):
entered your bloodstream, It has not started folding into those
paper towels. If it has, and if it does, this
is the how we get an increase in mood disorders
disease states because it's not supposed to. So our first
layer of defense is that mucosal layer. Hopefully we're protecting it.
And so we're going to talk about those prebiotics and
(27:48):
private and probiotics, right, So do you have any questions
about that so far?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah? So I have Celiac disease, okay, and I one
of the biggest use in the beginning when I've first
diagnosed was that that it affected that that layer that
you're talking about. So obviously my selfish question is what
are some sort of what are some of the best
probiotics or probiotics or things at regimens I could do
(28:14):
to kind of rebuild it for people who may have
had it for various reasons. There are other reasons too,
other than celiac, why someone might have had some and
I have been able to rebuild it. By the way,
I'm like, I'm back, baby, but.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
You know I love that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Actually, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm back. But that was I
was diagnosed later in life with celiac, so it really
I went a whole lifetime of damage to it. But
I'm good now. Yeah. But but yeah, but can you
please give some advice there?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah, So prebiotics. So think about it this way. When
we're born, we're born with our microbiome system, and this
is going to be very influential in our mood, our health,
the way that we break down food. And we can
have up to ten pounds of microbiome in our entire body,
(29:05):
and we have them in our mouth, our stomach, our vagina,
and our anus. And when we take an antibiotic, we
actually kill off colonies in any of these areas that
we're never actually going to replace. And when we take
a probiotic, those are kind of like little tourists that
are visiting and they're leaving messages, but they don't stick around.
(29:25):
So in order to repopulate and read ferment, let's say
that mucosal lining, we need to be consistent in the
way that we're eating and adding things to our diet.
Prebiotics are things that feed the probiotics and they're very
important for this repopulation. So some things I would say,
(29:45):
there's about five things that I would say you want
to include in your diet every single day, and that
would be fiber between twenty five for a woman, twenty
five grounds for a woman, and about thirty to thirty
five grounds for a man. Is really really important as
food for those probiotics, and they also pull out cholesterol
and toxic estrogens, very very good for immune health. You
(30:09):
want to make sure you're including fermented foods, which could
be something like sour kraut or kimchi or yogurt. These
things have natural probiotics that kind of like send messages
all over the place to boost our immune system and
our gut health. You want to diversify or in other words,
have a diverse amount of fruits and vegetables every single day,
(30:34):
and the recommendations are literally between four and seven servings.
It could be four and seven vegetables or four and
seven fruits, or a combination of the two. I'm not
a huge fruit fan. I love vegetables they've got the
same nutrients, so it doesn't matter which one you pick.
And then you also want to make sure you're including
whole grains. So the whole grains is tricky if you
(30:55):
have celiac or other GI problems, but they're not so
tricky if you don't have those problems, so I wouldn't
be so afraid of them. And one whole grain that
I would recommend would be something like sourdough. Sourdough, it's
sour and it's a fermented bread, so it already has
the probiotic in it. The last thing I would recommend
(31:18):
would be flax seed, geas seed, or hempseed every single day.
And I've spoken to many like GI doctors and I
always ask them like, what's the one thing you recommend
for colon health? And without a doubt, they say flax seed,
chia seed, and hempseed because it's high in fiber and
because it's got omega threes. So now we're talking brain health,
(31:40):
gut health, and heart health.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Our mutual friend Lisa, who I hung out with yesterday,
was like, I need to get my flax seed in today.
Kim told me that I need more flax seed.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
So every day always say literally.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yes, yes, so cal on, I think that's enough information
to wet the app to what the salvatory glands about
the gut. But it's really that is really valuable information.
I want to move on to another psychological aspect of eating,
because this is the Psychology Podcast, and I love that
(32:16):
your work is so psychological. It's psychologically changing the relationship
you have with food and with hunger, with your hunger
more specifically, so eating when you're hungry is one, but
another one is loving what you eat, like keep loving
what you eat. And I think a lot of that's
a big misconception. A lot of people think that, you know,
(32:38):
like if I'm going to diet or if I way,
I'm going to eat broccoli all day. Now, I know
you love you love broccoli. I know, I know, but
not everyone does. Kim tell us a little bit about
how you can lose weight and still eat what you love.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, so the whole rule is to eat what you love, Comma,
but make sure the food loves you back. So you know,
my degree is in human metabolism and clinical nutrition, so
my goal is to help your body be well. That's
the goal. Now, a lot of people have restricted only
to find themselves binging. They also label food as good, bad, healthy,
(33:15):
and unhealthy. They also know to eat kale, but are
finding themselves having milkshakes and then filling a lot of
shame and persecution. So the reality is it doesn't necessarily
matter what you're eating to lose weight. When you eat
when you're hungry, and when you start with half right,
that's the fail safe piece. It's important for somebody to
(33:38):
start trusting that they could eat food that they never
felt they could eat and not gain weight. That's a
really important piece to do this long term. Now, it's
also quite interesting when somebody says I love bananas and
then they're recognizing they're having diarrhea or heartburn, and it
(34:01):
turns out that the banana in this scenario is the culprit. Right.
It's shocking. Now, how often will you continue eating something
that makes you sick? This is the piece that's very
interesting to me, because you wouldn't stay in a relationship
or you actually would stay in a relationship where the
person is abusive or toxic, And this is like the
(34:24):
hero's journey. At some point you're going to have to recognize, wait,
I'm the only one who can heal myself? And now
I have to get curious, does the banana make me
feel sick? And can I see how I feel if
I don't have the banana for a couple days. This
is how we gain trust and how we can move
(34:44):
forward in things. And then what ends up happening is
people start recognizing I really don't feel great, and so
they start changing naturally the foods that they're eating on
their own, without restriction. That's how we grow.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But you do say there are some exceptions. You say,
you know, eat what you love unless you get sick
from eating. Yeah, and that mays common sense. But but
but there are some safeguards there, right, Like, what do.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
You mean safeguards? I mean, I think if I think,
if you nails, I mean, what nails are we talking about.
I don't think that people. I don't know that people
are eating nails or people eating nails.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
No, I don't think that's the thing. I don't think
that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
But I don't know there could be. I mean, people
are eating dirt, but that's you know that they need
iron if they're eating dirt or craving dirt.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
But I mean, like, let's say someone like once needs
to lower cholesterol, and they love eating food that is
really high in the bad kind of fat. You know, yeah,
you know you don't. You don't recommend eating that all.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Day, right, Yeah, So when you're talking about that, you're
talking about saturated fat, you know, fats that come from
an animal. And it's the thing is, and this is
the most amazing thing that I've ever discovered, is that
most people who have high cholesterol, it's a weight related disease.
You know, it's based on metabolic syndrome syndrome X. And
so actually, when you lose weight, and when you lose
(36:17):
the right type of weight, specifically body fat, your cholesterol
goes down. And when you start losing weight and feeling better,
you start making changes that are way more positive for
you because you have less inflammation and actually your motivation
becomes higher. Now, in some ways, people have what's called
familial cholesterol, which is type two, and they've lost weight
(36:41):
and their body fat is good and their muscle mass
is good, but their cholesterol is still high. So then
we have to look at their hormone health, and we
also have to look at the type of foods they're choosing.
So this is what you're getting at here, and I
think the fail safe and starting with half and figuring
out your hunger is so protective, believe it or not,
(37:03):
in lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar. Unfortunately, familial
to cholesterol, the one that you can't really fix with
diet does require medications. I think that people have different
levels of inflammation. Maybe they've taken antibiotics, and so I
think there's all different varieties of intolerances and those are
(37:26):
all reversible.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Rule three is eat without distractions. You say food is boring?
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Okay, so a lot of people call themselves foodies right now,
I mean that's just yeah. And then ideally I would
like you to be alone with your food, right I
would like you to actually challenge yourself to sit down
with your meal and have no distractions. Take away your book,
(37:55):
your computer, your television show, the friends, the family at
the table. Well, oh tell me, is food fun?
Speaker 2 (38:07):
No boring? Boring? It's boring if I'm not doing something
else at the same time.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
And that right there is the game changer. So you
should love what you're eating. I would never want you
to put something in your body that you do not love.
And that does not love you back. But you should
not be eating it because it's fun, because it's actually not.
And remember, we're always anticipating the next bite. We are
(38:33):
literally in love with our food. We can't wait for
our meal. We put the food on the fork, it's
in our mouth and we don't even put our fork
down for the next bite. We don't even bother spending
time chewing it. Food is boring, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, good point, good point. Oh well, most of us
enjoy the anticipation more than we actually do the actual food. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I would tell you to enjoy the food. Why are
you eating it?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So you say, stop and smell the pasta?
Speaker 1 (39:02):
I do? I mean, how long does it even take
to eat the pasta? You know, like a few minutes?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Okay, good, Well that's another psychological trick. Mindful eating is
a whole thing in the meditation literature, you know, to
the retreats. When you go to retreats, they make you
eat a raisin and and be mind They force you
to be mindful about it.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, and have you done that?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
I have, I've done it with my students.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
How long does it take to eat the raisin mindfully?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
A couple of minutes.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. And right there, that's that
fail safe where we slow down and we wait to
see if we need more. And I had a client
who in her advisory class in high school, every day,
the teacher would bring donuts, little donut holes, and she
was the kind of person who would pop a donut
(39:56):
hole in her mouth. And I'm the kind of person
who would take a couple bites of my donut hole,
and she would eat three donut holes to my one donut. Wow,
like slowing down eating a raisin over a couple minutes.
That to me, that's why, like, if you could do that,
then why we wouldn't have a weight problem.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, that's an interesting point you
just made. There's genetics at play here, and then there's
the things that we could do to change. Some people
have a higher uphill battle due to their genetics.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Right, yes, kind of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
So what do you you know, how do you work
with people who come in with all sorts of different
genetic set points.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, I think if they can get connected to all
six of my rules, then they're going to be on fire.
And I think that I actually heard you speak on
this a little bit when you can picture your future self,
which the truth is like, there was a study done fleas.
I'm sure you're aware of that where the scientists put
the fleas in a study and the fleas jumped in
(41:06):
and out of the jar. What did I just say?
The fleas put the the scientists put the fleas in
a jart Did I say that? And then they jumped
in and out. And then the scientists put a lid
on the jar, and the fleas stopped trying to jump out.
Then they took the lid off, they kept it off,
and the fleas never tried to jump out. But here's
the fascinating piece. The babies of the fleas they never
(41:29):
tried jumping out. So when you talk about limitations, if
you can't picture your future self, if you can't see
past the limitation. Right, there's a quote that I love
that says, if this disordered eating, it actually says, if
this illness right now feels like a cage, please try
(41:50):
to hear me. The door is unlocked and you are
free to go. And why people stay in the cage
is comfort, And why people don't tiptoe out is because
they haven't decorated what it looks like outside of the cage.
They don't feel safe, they feel so they stay.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Stuck, worn't helplessness. Yeah. Rule four, take ten thousand steps
every day. Okay, Now why that number? And does it
have to be running? Can it be walking? Just any
kind of movement? Is that helpful?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Such great good questions and points. So right now the
average American walks about thirty five hundred steps and they're obese. Okay,
So just we know that just by getting seven thousand steps,
you're decreasing your risk of sudden death by fifty percent
and decreasing your risk of almost every other disease, including Alzheimer's.
(42:47):
So what I have found over my twenty five years
is that in order to maintain your weight loss, it
has to be ten thousand steps. You have to be
an active person. Now here's the thing. We can't always
do it. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it
has to be progressive. You have to be the kind
(43:08):
of person who is active more times than you're inactive,
and never following follow following less than seven thousand steps.
So ten thousand steps helps your circadium rhythms with just
your sleep and wake cycles. It helps your digestion, It
helps your mood, and it helps you maintain your weight.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Okay, well those are good reasons, yeah, to talk to
me about the different types of that pay.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah. So if you're somebody who really is only averaging
thirty five hundred, then your goal right now is just
to get that number to seven thousand, right, And you
can do it anyway that you want to do it.
I don't care if you run up and down the
stairs in your own home or in your office building.
You could go to a bathroom on a different floor,
taking the stairs, I don't care how you do it.
Take less dishes out of the dishwasher. Those extra steps
(43:57):
make a difference. Right. But at some point, just like
what you love, and you're going to have to kind
of figure out what loves you back. You're going to
have to start recognizing my body needs many things. Needs
cardiovascular health, and needs strength training, and needs flexibility, It
needs endurance. I literally just saw the greatest commercial I've
(44:17):
ever seen, as an elderly man lifting weights and he
was talking about not doing it, you know, because he
wanted to look great. And then later it shows him
hugging his grandchildren and carrying groceries from the car, and like,
this is it. We need our body to be well
and remain well, and so it's got to be a
variety of things to do to make that happen.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
I love that I'm doing it to look good, though
I'm not. I am. I tell everyone the truth about
my motivation because my health metrics are great, even my
current weight. So I can't just say, oh, I need
to do it because of help. No, I want to
look good. Yeah, so that can be an okay motivation?
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
I mean you have a plan, you know. I like it.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
I have a plan. I have a plant. Well if
I drink eight cups of water a day, yeah, okay,
Well I am I according to this app I'm doing
it's it coined to my body. So everything they're telling
me do ten cups of water a day? Yeah, but
at will we st date? Is that Iteeah?
Speaker 1 (45:20):
So I would say it's minimum eight. And for every
twenty pounds of person wants to lose, it's actually two
additional cups of water. And if you drink a ton
of caffeine, for every one cup of coffee, it's two
additional cups of water. But the reality is people are
either drinking way too much water or not enough water.
And if you don't drink enough water, you're putting yourself
(45:41):
at risk for that metabolic syndrome. So water detoxin filters
all the toxins in our body, and if you're not
drinking enough water, your liver kind of kicks in and
helps your kidneys because your kidneys can't function properly without
the water. And the liver's job is actually to metabolize fat.
So we're now talking in cholesterol, body fat, and triglycerides.
(46:03):
So if you don't drink enough water, you're going to
see an increase in all three of those fats. It's
a secret sauce to losing weight. Drink your water.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
So dehydration is how does dehydration affect losing weight?
Speaker 1 (46:16):
So if you don't drink enough water, your liver kind
of helps your body detox and it stops metabolizing its
fat instead it stores it.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
That's interesting because I feel like if I drink a
lot of water, I feel fatter. Interesting, that's a thing
called water weight, right.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
That's interesting, and I would actually love to know more
about what I mean. You feel fatter, you feel full.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I feel fuller. My stomach just my stomach protrudes further.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, So then I wonder how fast you're drinking water,
and I would recommend you drinking it slower. So, you know,
we have intracellular water and extracellular water, and we have
like one hundred trillion cells and they're forty percent water.
And when we eat a diet that is high in
let's say carbohydrate, which we should all be eating a
diet plentyful of carbohydrate, but people don't always hear the
(47:07):
word hydrate in the word carbohydrate. And those foods, which
are milk, fruit, vegetables, and starches are full of water.
So when we eat them, we're actually taking the water
from inside the food and we're putting it into our
intracellular cells. And it takes about three days for that
(47:29):
to diffuse diffuse back to extracellular and so it could
look like you're gaining weight, but all you did was
really what you're saying, gain water weight, and it's not real.
But like, if you're drinking that bottle right there, let's
say it's twenty four ounces, and you drink the whole thing,
you're actually putting a pound and a half of water in.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Your system, right right, Yeah, that's right, but you.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Didn't really gain weight because really your only real weight
is on a Thursday morning, first thing in the morning.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
That's right. And you do say change a relationship to
the scale, and you do recommend Thursdays. Why Thursdays to measure.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Our human body weighs more on Mondays. And it takes
again three days to diffuse back to normal from all
of maybe alcohol, salt or food that you ate that
whatever is changing the composition. It takes three days. So
our lowest way to the week is on a Thursday.
Always so interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Well, I know I find this interesting. You say, quote
dehydration can make you feel headache, constanpate, tired, and run down.
It can lead to weight gain, and it's damaging to
your organs. Make drinking water easy and make it a habit.
You do not need to be perfect, and every day
may be different. Just be patient and stick with it.
It's been fun measuring how much water I'm drinking a
day and obsessively drinking water. Can you drink too much water?
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Drinking water flushes out all of our vitamins and minerals.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Oh is that a good or bad? Not good?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Not good? We want to not good.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Rule sticks get seven hours of sleep. I always hear
everyone tell me get eight hours.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, it's really seven to nine. So it's it's a
great number. But the truth is the average American is
getting six and a half. They can't even get seven.
And so again, I don't like to add pressure to people.
I want them to just you know, get there. Yeah,
So people have problems falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking
up rested. And this is called your circadium rhythm, and
(49:26):
it's really melotonin and cortisol. And so there's just so
many things that we could talk about here. But if
you're having problems falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up
not rested, you definitely need to talk to your healthcare
practitioner or work on your sleep hygiene.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Relating to sleep and just like, like, how many hours
before you sleep should you finish eating? I'm trying to think,
I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase that. Yeah,
I think stop eating.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
I think if you are somebody who has gird or heartburn,
it has to be like four to six hours before
you lay down. If you're somebody who doesn't have that,
then it's at least three hours before you lay down.
If you eat close to bedtime, you're actually telling your
brain it's time to wake up, and your overriding sleep
and you're going to have poor sleep.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
So if you go to bed like ten thirty eight pm,
you really should kind of be done eating by seven
or so.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Yep, seven exactly right, exactly right. And I would say
my math ability is our genius level. It sounds like
you say, here are the facts. Nobody is always hungry
after dinner. Instead, you were giving in to what you're
feeling for your anxiety and titlement.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
That's interesting. You sent titlement or a search for fun
and a source of comfort, which is a bad habit
that needs to be broken. And if you do experience
physical hunger in the evening, it means you are not
eating enough during the day, so you need to change
how much you eat throughout the day. But the most
part of thing here is you say you are in control.
This seems to be a common theme of your book.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Well, it is very in line with my philosophy about
overcoming a victim mentality in life. But not everyone's into that,
you know, but really you can be in control.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
Yeah, I believe you can be in control. And in fact,
there's a paradox right people who are living this lifestyle
they're having fun, and people who are not find it hard.
But if they can actually just start just doing it
a little bit more every day, what ends up happening
is they start falling in love with it.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Let's end the whole episode on a single quote. If
this illness feels right now like a cage, please try
to hear me. It isn't locked. It has been open
all along. You are free to go. Well said. Thank
you Kim so much for inspiring so many people to
(51:56):
be healthier, look better, naked, and feel better about themselves.
You're doing great work in the world. Thank you so
much for on my podcast.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Thank you for having me so fun.
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