January 14, 2025 • 47 mins
What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!
Have you ever found yourself reaching for chocolate in moments of stress, only to later feel a pang of guilt? This episode of Untethered with Jen Liss features Dr. Glenn Livingston, a former psychologist for food and pharma companies, who shares his personal journey through food addiction and how he emerged stronger and wiser. Together, we unravel the deep-seated societal pressures that shape our eating habits and discuss effective strategies to overcome the cycle of emotional eating. Dr. Glenn inspires with his candid revelations about the impact of diet culture and offers practical techniques to develop a healthier mindset.
We take a closer look at the emotional triggers that lead to cravings and how the advertising industry plays on these vulnerabilities. By recounting personal experiences and client success stories, we uncover the subtle justifications our minds create and offer solutions to counteract them. Dr. Glenn introduces methods like labeling compulsive cravings to introduce a crucial pause, allowing for more rational choices in our eating habits. Whether it's embracing a hearty breakfast to counteract nighttime binges or crafting personal food rules, this episode provides actionable insights to foster a healthier relationship with food.
Empower yourself to transform feelings of shame into productive change. We discuss the societal normalization of overeating and the challenges posed by pervasive food temptations, highlighting the importance of accountability and self-awareness. Dr. Glenn and I emphasize turning negative emotions into passionate motivation for adopting healthier habits. With resources like free e-books and food plan starter templates, listeners are equipped to align their eating patterns with their personal philosophies. This episode is your guide to breaking free from food obsession and living a more balanced and fulfilling life.
Meet Dr. Glenn
Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. was the long time CEO of a multi-million dollar consulting firm which has serviced several Fortune 500 clients in the food industry. You may have seen his (or his company's) previous work, theories, and research in major periodicals like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun Times, The Indiana Star Ledger, The NY Daily News, American Demographics, or any of the other major media outlets you see on this page. You may also have heard him on ABC, WGN, and/or CBS radio, or UPN TV.
Disillusioned by what traditional psychology had to offer overweight and/or food obsessed individuals, Dr. Livingston spent several decades researching the nature of bingeing and overeating via work with his own clients AND a self-funded research program with more than 40,000 participants. He earned his Ph.D. is in psychology from Yeshiva University in 1991.
Connect with Glenn:
Website
🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨
💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat
Support the pod:
- Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
- Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
- Leave a review!
Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey and welcome to Untethered with Jen Liss, the
podcast that's here to help youbreak free, be you and unleash
your inner brilliance.
I'm your host, jen, and in thisepisode we're going to talk
about how to stop lettingravings for food control your
life.
Let's dive in.
Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen.
(00:32):
Welcome back to the podcast.
Today we have Dr GlennLivingston.
I invited Dr Glenn on because Ihad this realization that there
is a huge tether that we'venever talked about on this
podcast, or very rarely.
Actually, I've talked aboutthis particular topic a lot
because I love it, I love it, Ilove it, I love it.
Food, food.
(00:53):
So many of us have a troublingor challenging relationship with
food that we know about and wefeel guilt about it and we feel
shame about it.
And all the things We've dieted, We've done all the diets Maybe
you're doing a diet right now.
You know that relationship withfood, our relationship with our
bodies these are things that wehave not talked about on this
podcast, and I had thisrealization like, oh my goodness
(01:16):
, we've got to talk about thisand invited onto the podcast
this amazing human being who hasdone tons of research in this
area and actively works withpeople and has created a program
that genuinely helps people inthe most loving and positive way
Dr Glenn Livingston.
So Dr Glenn is on the podcasttoday to help us understand the
(01:39):
reason that we have a difficultrelationship with food and what
the heck we can do about it, howwe can untether from the ways
in which food is controlling ourlives.
He actually helped me in thisconversation with one thing that
I have been dealing with lately, where I'm like why am I having
these sudden cravings?
That makes no sense.
I've never craved this in myentire life.
And he pinpointed the exactproblem right here in this
(02:02):
conversation, which might besomething that you're currently
going through.
Regardless of that, you willfind something in this
conversation for you If you aresomebody who has had a difficult
relationship with food, whosees that your relationship
could be better, who just wantsto have a healthier, more
abundant relationship with foodand with your body and with your
(02:25):
mindset around it in general.
So I am so excited to welcomeon to the podcast Dr Glenn
Livingston.
Hi, dr Glenn.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Hey, how are you?
It's nice to be here.
I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Fabulous.
I'm excited to have you on.
I was telling you right beforewe hopped on here, and for my
listeners, that there is a hugetether that we have never talked
about on this podcast nevertalked about and so that is why
you are here to help us diveinto this, because even for
myself, this has been myexperience and my life with food
(03:05):
.
It's been a thing.
It's been a thing.
I grew up with diet culture andthe diet generation, and so to
have you come on and talk aboutthis with us is so awesome.
So thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for having me.
Do you want to know a littlebit about how I wound up doing
this, or is there anotherdirection you want to go?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, I would love to hear how did you get to the
point of food being somethingthat you talk about, because you
have a long experience as a CEOof a company, right?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I was.
Yeah, I was on the wrong sideof the war.
I was working for the foodcompanies to help them sell
sugar and for the pharmacompanies to help them sell more
drugs.
In my 20s and 30s it was, butthe food problem started before
then and I like to jokingly saythat if you've been by the
Woodbury Country Deli on LongIsland in the 90s and they're
(04:02):
out of pizza and Pop-Tarts,there's a very good chance I got
there before you, which is myway of saying that I'm not just
a doctor who wants you to workwith food problems.
I'm a guy who had a very seriousproblem with food myself.
If it wasn't nailed down, I wasin trouble because I'm 6'4" and
just genetically I'm lucky.
(04:23):
I'm modestly muscular withoutdoing anything about it, and if
I worked out a couple hours aday when I was a kid, I could
eat boxes of muff, a lot toomuch time digesting and too much
time in the bathroom.
(04:45):
But I was thin, I was energetic, I was happy and I really
enjoyed my old days with food.
But when I got married, I wasabout 21, 22 years old when I
got married and I was going tograduate school and my
metabolism slowed down a littlebit bit and was commuting two
hours each way to see patientsand take classes.
(05:09):
And then I'd get home and I'dhave to work on the business and
God forbid, my ex-wife now, butwife at the time wanted to talk
to me.
I just didn't have two minutesto work out, much less two hours
a day, and I found that thefood still had a hold of me.
I'd be sitting with a suicidalpatient and thinking when can I
get the next pizza or when can Iget to the deli, and that
(05:32):
bothered me a lot more than theweight, which came on slowly.
I eventually got up to about300 pounds, but the weight came
on very slowly.
I was just obsessed with food.
I was thinking about it all thetime.
I was just obsessed with food.
I was thinking about it all thetime.
And, from a family of 17psychotherapists, being a really
great psychologist was the mostimportant thing to me.
(05:52):
I wanted to be able to lendpeople my soul and help them to
love and trust me enough tothink new thoughts and try new
things.
And it's not really all aboutbook knowledge and figuring out
the puzzle of their life, it'sreally getting them to have a
connection with you, so theyfeel comfortable doing things
that they wouldn't becomfortable otherwise.
(06:13):
And it wasn't as good as that.
I never lost anybody and I gotgood results anyway.
But I had to compensate for myfood obsession, and that's what
really bothered me.
Coming from the family that Icame from, I figured that there
must be a hole in my heart, inmy metaphorical heart, and if I
could fill that hole, then Iwouldn't have to just keep
(06:34):
trying to fill the hole in mystomach.
And so I went for the bestpsychotherapy you could find.
I saw the best psychologist, Isaw the best psychiatrist.
I took medication.
I went to Overeaters Anonymous.
I had a spiritual journey.
It was a very life-enriching,soul-enhancing journey, but it
didn't really help with the food.
I'd get a little better, andthen fatter, a little thinner,
(06:56):
and then a lot fatter, a littlethinner and a lot fatter, and
eventually there were threethings that changed my paradigm.
It took 20 years.
There were three things thatchanged my paradigm.
Took 20 years, but there arethree things that changed my
paradigm from.
You know, nurture your innermood to child and fill that hole
in your heart to or love myselfthin, for lack of a better way
to put it to.
Um, you know, be the alpha dogof my own mind, my own mind.
(07:18):
And you know, when alpha, whenan alpha wolf, gets challenged
for leadership, it doesn't sayoh, my goodness, goodness,
someone needs a hug.
It growls and it snarls and itsays get back in line.
Or because I'm the boss and I'min control.
And those three things wereworking for the food industry.
I saw that they were spendingtens of millions of dollars to
engineer these hyperpalatableconcentrations of starch and
(07:41):
sugar and fat and excitotoxinsand salt, of starch and sugar
and fat and excitotoxins andsalt.
And it was all designed to hitthe bliss point in the reptilian
brain without giving you thenutrition to feel satisfied.
And it turns out that thereptilian brain, the seed of the
fight or flight response, thefeast or famine response the
just hand over the chocolate andnobody gets hurt.
(08:01):
Response it doesn't know.
Love, it's all about survival.
It's like a bad collegedrinking game.
It's like eat, mate or kill.
When I see something in theenvironment, do I eat it, do I
mate with it or do I kill it?
So figure, that's the reptilianbrain, it's the mammalian brain
on top of that that says beforeyou eat, mate or kill that
thing, what impact will thathave on your tribe, on the
(08:23):
people that you love?
And it's your neocortex on topof that that says what impact
will that have on yourlonger-term goals and your
health and your fitness andweight loss and health
optimization and those kinds ofthings.
And it turns out that thereptilian brain has the ability
to push the rational brain outof the way.
So when it perceives there tobe an emergency, when the
(08:46):
sympathetic nervous system getsall revved up and it perceives
there to be an emergency, it canpush your rational brain out of
the way.
And that's why you can read allthe diet books you want to and
make the best plans from yourhigher self over the weekend and
then Monday afternoon whenyou're at Starbucks and there's
a chocolate bar.
It just all seems to go out thewindow.
(09:06):
I looked at the advertisingindustry and they were very good
at convincing you that youneeded this stuff to survive.
They would do things likearrange for the packaging to be
multicolored and diverse andvibrant, which in nature would
signal a diversity ofmicronutrients that were
available, but in many of thesecases they were taking the
micronutrients out of the foodand putting the money into the
(09:29):
packaging instead.
And these were very powerfulforces, very, very powerful
forces, separate and apart fromwhether my mom had dropped me in
my head or I wasn't lovedenough or anything like that and
they're all geared towards thereptilian brain, which doesn't
know love.
So I kind of started to thinkmaybe love isn't really the way
to do it, maybe I really neededto be more of an alpha wolf.
(09:53):
The final story that reallyshifted me was this big study
that I did In the days wheninternet clicks were cheap and
we didn't have things likeGoogle.
I bought clicks when peoplewere searching for stress
management and over the courseof about five years I got about
40,000 people to take a surveyand in that survey I asked them
(10:14):
what were they feeling stressedabout?
What was it that they couldn'tstop eating when they felt
stressed.
And I saw some interestingthings which I thought was going
to lead me to a solution.
It actually didn't at all, butit did change my mind.
One of the things that I sawwas that people who struggle
with chocolate and my bingesalways started with chocolate
they were feeling lonely ordepressed or a little
(10:35):
brokenhearted.
And people who struggled withsalty, crunchy things tended to
be stressed at work.
And people who struggled withsoft, chewy, starchy things
tended to be stressed at home.
And I thought this was reallycool and I was thinking, gee,
maybe I'll write a book about itor something.
But before I did, I called mymom.
I said I just want to figurethis out for myself.
Why do I run into chocolatewhen I feel lonely or
brokenhearted?
And I get her on the phone, onSkype, and I said Mom, I'm not
(10:59):
really happy in the marriage, soI am a little lonely and
brokenhearted.
But how did this pattern getset up?
Why do I write the chocolate,like everybody else does when
they feel like that?
And she got this horrible lookon her face and this horrible
sound on her voice and she goesoh honey, I'm so sorry.
And I said mom, it's decadesago, I love you, I forgive you,
(11:19):
I just want to figure this out.
And she said oh, honey, whenyou were a one-year-old in 1965,
your dad was a captain in thearmy and they were going to send
him to Vietnam.
And I was terrified At the sametime, my dad, your grandfather,
had just gotten out of prisonand I had idolized him my whole
life and I didn't know he wasguilty and he was, and so I was
horribly depressed.
(11:40):
So most of the time when youwould come running to me for
love or to play or to have someeven healthy food, I would not
have the wherewithal to do itbecause I'd be sitting and
staring at the wall, feelinganxious and depressed.
And so what I did was I got abig bottle of chocolate Bosco
syrup and I put it in arefrigerator on the floor and
(12:01):
I'd say go get your Bosco, andyou'd go running over to the
refrigerator, crawling over tothe refrigerator, you'd take out
the bottle, you'd suck on thecap and you'd go into a
chocolate sugar coma and I couldgo resume staring at the wall.
And, jenny, if that was a moviemovement, if that was a movie,
mom and I would have a big hugand a big cry and I'd never have
trouble with chocolate again.
It was a really goodconversation to have.
(12:22):
I don't regret it.
I learned to feel a lot morecompassion for her and what she
went through.
I learned a lot about her.
I wouldn't have known otherwise.
I felt more compassion formyself.
There was a softening of thatself-hatred.
You know, you, fat F, I wasn'ttalking to myself like that
anymore.
But it didn't help the food.
As a matter of fact, it made itworse Because there was this
(12:42):
voice in my head I'm notschizophrenic, but it was like a
voice of justification and itsaid you know what, glenn,
you're right, our mama didn'tlove us enough and she left a
great big chocolate-sized holein your heart.
And until you can fix themarriage or get out of it and
find the love of your life,you're going to have to go right
on eating chocolate.
Yippee, let's go get more rightnow.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Isn't that interesting One voice was
replaced with another voice.
Yeah, Exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So I kind of put this all together and I did
something a little crazy.
And this was way before I wasteaching it Maybe I was a child
and family psychologist at thetime.
I did something a little crazy.
I decided that I was going toremember.
This was not going to be public.
I decided that I needed to drawreally clear lines in the sand
so I would know what healthybehavior was and not healthy
(13:29):
behavior.
Because if I was going to takecontrol of this reptilian brain,
you know, and dominate it inthe same way that I dominate my
bladder when it says, glenn, youreally have to pee.
And I say, well, no, I have aninterview with Jen right now,
I'm going to wait until later.
If I was going to take controllike that, I was going to have
to know when it was active.
And so I set up a kind of atripwire, a line on the sand.
(13:49):
My first one was something likeI will never have chocolate on a
weekday again, I'll only everhave it on the weekend, and no
more than two ounces.
And then this is the crazy partIf I would be at Starbucks and
I'd hear a little thought in myhead, that would say you thought
in my head that would say youknow what, glenn, you worked out
really hard today and eventhough it's a Wednesday, it'd be
just as easy to start yoursilly plan again tomorrow.
Go ahead and have a coupleounces of chocolate, it's not
(14:13):
going to hurt you.
Yippee, let's get some rightnow.
I'd say wait a minute, that'snot me, that's my inner pig.
You don't have to call it a pig, you can call it anything you
want to.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Did you say pig I?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
did.
I called it my inner pig and Isaid chocolate on a Wednesday is
pig slop.
I don't eat pig slop.
I don't let farm animals tellme what to do.
As ridiculous as that sounds,as crude as it is and as
embarrassing as it is thatthat's what I did because it was
private.
It worked somewhat.
It kind of opened up a spacebetween stimulus and response
(14:41):
and it made it possible for meto wake up and say who's in
charge here, my upper brain ormy lower brain?
Now, at that point I learnedthat once you open up that space
between stimulus and response,you could fix your thinking
about food, you could disempowerthat justification, and that
was the bulk of how I got better.
I've learned an awful lot moresince then.
But for the next seven or eightyears it only takes a month or
(15:02):
two now.
But I didn't have the book thatI wrote.
For the next seven or eightyears I would keep a journal of
everything my pig would say andwhy it was wrong.
So, for example, it's not justas easy to start tomorrow,
because if you have the thoughtyou have a craving for chocolate
and you have the thought I'lljust start again tomorrow and
then you eat the chocolate.
The way the brain works iscalled the principle of
(15:22):
neuroplasticity.
What fires together, wirestogether, and if I have the
craving and think I'll starttomorrow and I have the
chocolate, I will havereinforced both the craving and
the chocolate so that tomorrowI'll be more likely to say to
start tomorrow, and tomorrow thecraving is going to be stronger
.
So you can only ever use thepresent moment to be healthy.
If you're in a hole, you've gotto stop digging.
(15:43):
That's an example of what Iwould call a rational refutation
or fixing your thinking aboutfood.
For years and years I just kepta journal of everything it said
and slowly but surely I gotbetter.
I got down to a normal weight,all kinds of health problems
resolved.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
What happened in the journaling, what was happening
with the journaling specificallythat was helping so much.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Well, it removed that voice of justification and
without that voice ofjustification there was a
cognitive dissonance thatoccurred.
There was a calmness, and Iknow that that's partially from
the rational disempowerment ofthe false logic, because the
false logic no longer seemedreasonable.
But I also know that writing ismore of an upper brain activity
(16:25):
and it's not something you cando when your emergency system is
activated.
You have to kind of breathe andcalm down.
This gets into the intersectionof what you do.
You have to be able to calmyourself down enough that it's
okay to rest and digest andthink and strategize.
And so just the goal of writingin and of itself at those times
was helpful, because thebinging, the response, the screw
(16:49):
it, just do it response looksto be driven by a falsely
perceived emergency.
We have too much work coming up, there's too much input, we
don't have enough time to restand think we're out of contact
with our tribe, we aredehydrated, we're fatigued.
(17:11):
All of those things cause yoursympathetic nervous system to
activate and think there's anemergency.
In an emergency we would seekall the resources we could.
In primitive times that was agood thing because food was
relatively scarce.
But in the modern foodenvironment where you could walk
out of McDonald's and seeanother one across the street.
It's not really so healthy foryou.
(17:32):
So that's what was happeningwith the journaling and that got
me better.
I published the book when I gotdivorced about eight years later
.
I wrote it into a book.
I knew what I was doing but Ididn't expect it to take off the
way that it did and I had abouta million readers for the book.
And then I got a gig onPsychology Today and I got about
a million readers there, allkinds of requests for coaching.
So I opened up a littlecoaching agency.
(17:54):
Over the next seven or eightyears we worked with about 2,000
clients, measured results.
Most of that time I was workingon how do I fix people's
thinking quickly, how do I letthem fix their own thinking
quickly.
So instead of taking eightyears of journaling, we could do
it in about a month.
It was kind of interesting.
There weren't as many creativeexcuses as I thought.
(18:17):
I thought if I worked withthousands of people there'd be
thousands of creative excuses.
There are about 50.
There are about 50 excuses thatpeople have and we kind of know
the answers for most of them.
So it got to be a lot quicker.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Are those excuses, the things that the voice would
say, that the pig would say?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, one bite won't hurt.
You're so stressed that youdeserve this.
Come on, you can't be goodforever, all of that kind of
thing.
In the last couple of years,when we started measuring
results more carefully, I foundthat at the one month mark for
the people who engage, somepeople take programs and don't
engage.
I don't really understand why,but we can't help them.
So the people who engage got an89.4% reduction in over-reading
(19:00):
in the first month.
But when I looked at it at sixmonths or a year, it was
significantly worse, like 55,60% and even worse at the one
year mark.
And I said, well, why is that?
Because that really bothered me.
I wanted people to hold on to itthe way that I had.
When I really investigated that, it always turned out that it
wasn't because we failed to fixtheir thinking.
(19:20):
It's because eventually peopleget to the point where they say,
yeah, doc, I don't have anyexcuse for doing this anymore.
There's nothing that I believejustifies breaking my own rules
because it's silly.
I made the rule myself andwe've gone through all the silly
excuses and showed me how todisempower that.
But oh well, what the hellScrew it, just do it.
People got to that point when Ilooked at what was behind that,
(19:42):
it was always that falselyperceived emergency, or what I
would call organismic distress,and so that's when we started
adding a certain type ofbreathing, like parasympathetic
breathing, to help peoplebreathe out for longer than they
breathed in, because if you'rebeing chased by a hungry bear,
you couldn't do that, so you'resignaling the brain and you're
trying to get the vagal.
You know more about this than Ido.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Which I mean.
It activates the part of thebrain that you're talking about,
the more human part of thebrain that gives us time to
think.
It does all of those thingsthat you're saying earlier, that
made a difference.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
We started talking to people about having regular
nutrition.
We found out that people wouldsay screw it, just do it if they
happen to skip a meal or ifthey ate an awful lot of
processed food all day anddidn't get enough actual
nutrition into their body.
I'm not a medical doctor or adietitian, but it was not rocket
science to say look, if you eatmore fruit and vegetables and
maybe some protein, you're goingto feel better than if you have
(20:35):
potato chips all day.
We learned that willpower isthe ability to make good
decisions, and there are only somany decisions you can make in
the course of the day.
So if you could take a coupleof decision-free breaks over the
course of the day, you're muchless likely to get to that point
where you didn't have anywillpower.
It kind of restored some ofyour willpower, and so we added
(21:03):
to the mix all of theserelievers of organismic distress
and when we did that, ourresults started to get even
better.
That's why I wrote the new bookcalled Defeat your Cravings.
It's kind of a combination ofhow to fix your thinking but how
to fight the screw it, just doit response and kind of put it
together into a holistic packageand then also over the course
of that eight years, I learned alot about the science of
cravings and cravings extinctionand I want to incorporate that.
(21:25):
So that's my story.
That's why I do what I do and,yeah, I couldn't imagine doing
anything more remaining.
I'm really happy.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah Well, life has sent you on this journey for a
reason and you're helping somany people and the dots that
you're connecting for a lot ofus along the way.
As you talk about the voicethat was in your head, I've got
that voice in my head all thetime.
I've got this current.
There is a current thing thatI've been fighting, which is 11
PM chips.
Like I want chips at 11 pm andyou said it's people who
(21:54):
overwork and I'm like, yeah,it's usually when I'm sitting
there working a little bit toolate that I suddenly want some
chips.
So it's like I recognize thevoice that says, oh, you know,
it's fine, just tonight.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Jen, I did a whole study on nighttime overeating
because it's a very commonproblem and it's a harder
problem than most other types ofovereating and there's some
interesting things that we found.
I could tell you about them orwe could do it a different time
if you want to go in anotherdirection.
It's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
There's like a little nugget that you can add,
because I think it's not just me, there's people who are
listening too, and I think thatthe whole reason that we're
talking is because food is atether.
Food is something that iskeeping us from living our best
lives in many ways, and it'sinterconnected, and you've
connected a lot of those dots,because it's very similar to
some of the other things that wedo too, like overbuying courses
(22:39):
and not taking them, likebuying the course because it
feels good but then not takingthe course and the habit that
that is, so you feel like youdid something.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, I'll bust through a couple of quick tips.
We found that the problemstarts a lot earlier than the
evening time.
Most people who are overeatingat night are waiting too long to
have breakfast in the morning,and they all tell me they don't
want to change that.
They all heat to eat breakfastin the morning.
They're not hungry.
They feel disgusting in themorning if they eat breakfast,
(23:08):
and once they start eating theyfeel like it's going to be
harder to stop.
But without fail, when we'vegotten people to stop overeating
at night, it's because we helpthem to start having breakfast.
It could be at nine o'clock or9.30.
It doesn't have to be at sixo'clock, but breakfast is an
important meal for people whoare trying to overcome
overeating, because the brainperceives that it's going to be
(23:29):
too long, too long of a fastuntil it gets to eat again, and
so if there's leftover hunger ortension at the end of the day,
it's very prone to say screw it,just do it.
We also find that if you addsome crunch to your lunch, like
some cruciferous vegetables,carrots, radishes, celery,
cucumbers we don't entirely knowwhy.
My hypothesis is that we buildup a certain amount of oral
(23:53):
aggression over the course ofthe day and we need to chew or
crunch, and when people aren'tdoing that, there's this
residual pressure in the eveningto chew or crunch something.
So if you add some crunch toyour lunch, you have to have a
decompression routine at night.
You have to know when workstops and the day is ending and
you're decompressing.
Think about it like in thevampire movies.
(24:13):
There's a very cleardelineation.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
I love vampire movies .
Thanks for going there.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I love vampire movies .
We actually made a list of 100best vampire movies in the book.
Yeah, it was the zombie vampiremovie.
So you have to have a cleardelineation about when dinner's
over, when does thedecompression routine start, and
that could be as simple asgoing dinner and done.
Oh, I didn't finish the vampireanalogy In the vampire movies.
(24:39):
You know when the sun goes downand you have to protect yourself
from the vampires and theserituals that people go through.
You got to protect yourselffrom your inner pig or pigula in
the evening, from all the pigwhispers, and it could be as
simple as saying dinner and done, or going into another room and
changing your clothes or takingyour makeup off.
Or I know a woman who goeskitchen's closed.
She puts it which everybodyalways says kitchen's closed.
(25:00):
There's got to be a delineation.
And then you need some type ofroutine for decompressing and
letting go of the day and if youput together that whole
protocol it makes a dramaticdifference in your ability to
stick to a rule for the evening.
So that's my quick take onnighttime overeating.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Thank you for this.
I love Pegula so much Just theidea of that and that idea of
the delineation.
So I never mind sharing thethings that I'm going through
and how that can relate.
I decided a few months ago thatI was not going to eat
breakfast because I'm doing thefast thing, but that is when
this started.
So you're connecting some bigdots for me in terms of my own
(25:40):
eating habits and what is likelyhappening there.
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Jen, I once had a conversation I've supervised as
many as 10 coaches at a time.
I once had a conversation withall of them when we were at the
height of seeing all theseclients and I said have you ever
helped anyone to stopovereating at night without
getting them to eat breakfast?
And they were all silent.
Nobody could think of a singleexample where they helped them
stop overeating at night withoutgetting them to eat breakfast.
(26:05):
So for you and your listeners,it's worth thinking about.
I also find, despite the medicalbenefits of fasting or
intermittent fasting, myempirical experience has been
that if people are strugglingwith binge eating that it's
better to wait about six monthsto really get the binging out of
your system and have regularmeals three times a day, kind of
(26:25):
like flood your body withnutrition at a slight caloric
deficit.
If you need to lose weight,that's better for overcoming the
binging and then once you'vereally got the hang of that,
then you can head back intofasting or the intermittent
fasting.
But I have about half thesuccess rate with people that
are trying to fast out of thegate.
Because, if you think about it,if we live in an environment
where food is scarce, despitethe medical benefits, despite
(26:48):
the fact that we evolved likethat.
If your brain thinks it's in anenvironment where food is
scarce, then it only makes sensethat when it finally has
calories that it wants to hoardthem.
And this is why people will saythat it feels like someone put
a gun to their head and said eat.
And some people will say beingtoo full is a trigger to eat
more, which would make sense ifwe evolved in a scarce food
(27:10):
environment where we had therisk of starving to death death
because when you found food, yougot as much as you can, even if
you were full right.
And so if you keep signalingyour brain that food is
regularly, reliably available,then it's much more likely to
overcome the overeating.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
This is so supportive .
I mean, we all have to eat andwe all.
This is very I find it veryrare that we naturally, in the
environment that we have grownup in, with advertising and all
of the food industry challengesthat we have, that we have a
healthy relationship with foodwithout some effort.
Unless you happened to grow upin a very food aware household,
(27:48):
then we all grew up basically atthe at the hands of advertising
, and so this is all so helpful.
I'm curious for you and thismay or may not be your
professional experience, mightbe more from your personal point
of view is how is ourrelationship with food impacting
(28:09):
our overall wellness and ouroverall ability to live the life
that we really want to live?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well, what happens when all food is a possibility
at every time and you're livingin an environment where there
are chemicals in a lot of thesepackages that move your ability
to know when you're hungry andfull?
What happens is a level of foodobsession that makes it
difficult to think about otherthings, and so what I try to
teach people to do is come upwith a set of rules that you
(28:37):
love not overly restrictive, notthings that make you feel like
they're a bunch of Nazi foodpolicemen following you around
all day, but rules that you love, so that a lot of these
decisions have been made for you.
And then there is a comfort anda presence and an ability to be
in the present moment, which isbliss, by the way.
We live in the present momentand most people are not there,
(28:58):
but there's an ability to be inthe present moment when you can
improve your relationship withfood.
That just isn't there otherwise.
Weird experience where I feltlike everybody was smiling at me
all the time, and then Irealized they were always
smiling at me all the time.
I just wasn't there.
I was too busy thinking aboutfood and it was actually a
(29:20):
little bit overwhelming at first.
So that's kind of a big deal.
And the other thing is thatwhen people are overeating, you
have no idea how much energy ittakes to process that stuff and
recover from it.
In my reader surveys we foundthat most people were overeating
several times a week and theyreported not feeling back to
(29:41):
normal for 24 hours later.
So let's just say that's twodays a week that you're losing
of vibrant energy and ability toplay with your kids or go
hiking or go running around orjust be the less cranky mother
or father or entrepreneur thatyou want to be.
It's dramatic.
I mean, we are what we eat.
(30:01):
It's an essential thing that wedo every day.
It's one of the core decisionsthat we make every day and it's
a big part of who you are, whatyou're processing in your body.
So for me it's a dramaticdifference.
I'm not the same person as Iwas 20 years ago.
I'm really not.
Also, my forehead has become afive head and it's all gray now.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
But you wear it all really well, so things change,
but you get to wear itdifferently For entrepreneurs.
A lot of listeners here areentrepreneurs or even people who
work at home.
I know my relationship withfood changed when I suddenly was
working at home and I wasn't ona regular schedule, because
when I was working a corporatejob, it was breakfast, was very.
(30:43):
I went down with my coworkersto go get breakfast and then at
lunch I went with my coworkersand I didn't have snacks in
between because I didn't havesnacks at my desk.
I've got snacks.
I got snacks on snacks, onsnacks here at the house, and so
do so many other people, and sothere's this tendency for
myself and likely a lot of otherentrepreneurs, to either just
(31:05):
continuously go grab snacks orforget to eat altogether.
Do you have any tips?
Is there something?
Is it with the self-presence,what is supportive to people?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, food preparation makes a big
difference.
It's worth putting in an houror two on Sundays to set
yourself up for the week, orSundays and Wednesdays to set
yourself up for the week, sothat and it's worth it putting
some time and energy intothinking about what's going to
be delicious and healthy for you.
You know it's a fallacy to thinkit's a false economy.
(31:36):
It's a false economy to thinkthat you're more productive when
you're just grabbing and goingall the time.
You're actually more productivewhen you're well-nourished and
you don't have to think aboutwhat you're going to eat all the
time.
So I tell people, for example,when they're on a trip, when
they're on a business trip, thatif you're spending thousands of
dollars and you want to beproductive, it's worth spending
(31:56):
the time before you go to Googlesupermarket and then the zip
code of where you're going to goand see what supermarkets they
have and research the inventorythat you want.
And then get a littlerefrigerator in the hotel and
stop at the supermarket beforeyou go to the hotel so you're
not tempted by the hotel minibars, you're not tempted by the
(32:17):
wings and everything else that'sdownstairs with your colleagues
and then make a list of yourtrouble foods, your trigger
foods or your trigger situations.
So if you tend to overeatdesserts when you're out to
dinner with your colleagues,then ask yourself well, what
would I be proud of?
I've got this business tripcoming up.
(32:37):
What would I be proud of interms of dessert at dinner?
Would it be one dessert everyother day.
Would it be that it's okay if Ihave dessert, but not okay if I
have chocolate?
Would it be it's okay that Ionly have it once a week?
Or maybe I don't want to haveit at all.
If I have chocolate, would itbe it's okay that I only have it
once a week?
Or maybe I don't want to haveit at all?
But step back and make thosedecisions beforehand, because
you have to recognize that whenyou're with your colleagues,
(33:00):
there's the social pressure andthere's a lot of the fabric of
society that's built intobreaking bread or eating the
same things together.
It's a tremendous pressure andit goes a lot deeper than you
think that it goes.
I explain that if we had moretime.
But don't go into battlewearing a plastic helmet.
Try to make your decisionsbeforehand.
Before you go to the restaurant, look it up online, write down
what you're going to have.
Write down if they don't havethis, then I'm going to have
(33:22):
that.
Write down a substitute, justin case.
I once knew a food critic whohad to go to three restaurants a
day for 90 days, and threerestaurants a day for 90 days,
and her only rule was that shecould eat whatever she wanted to
, as long as she wrote it downbeforehand and she'd log it all
in my fitness pal and she didn'thave to make any decisions in
the restaurant itself.
You don't need willpower if youmake your decisions beforehand.
You don't have to makedecisions by burning all your
(33:44):
willpower if you make thedecisions beforehand.
So a big trick is to know whatyour trigger situations are and
then make decisions before yougo.
It makes a big difference.
Also, there are tricks forimproving your productivity as
an entrepreneur which don'tnecessarily have to do with food
, but uses the same structure ofmind and the same techniques to
(34:05):
do that.
Let's say you want to make yourplan for the day before you get
started with actual work,before you open your email or
something like that, and let'ssay that you never open your
email before you drink your cupof coffee.
So you might make a rule thatsays I will never make my coffee
before I wrote my plan for theday.
You kind of link it tosomething that you're already
(34:27):
going to do, no matter what, andyou really want to do it
Sprinkle stacking.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I call it sprinkle stacking, sprinkle stacking,
going to do no matter what andyou really want to do.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Sprinkle stacking.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I call it sprinkle stacking, sprinkle stacking,
sprinkle stacking.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And then you define your productivity pig as any
voice that says that you shouldbreak that rule, and then you
can start to refute that and youcan use the breathing
techniques and everything elsethat we talk about.
So there are ways to use thesetechniques to improve your
entrepreneurial productivity andthat's part of why I've
accomplished as much as I haveover the years.
Productivity.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
And that's part of why I've accomplished as much as
I have over the years.
So rad, that rule of I loveyour rule I don't know if that's
a rule that you do, but I neveropen my email until I drink my
coffee that's a great rule, yeah, yeah, because it's like we all
love to have the coffee, soit's like you can really anchor
in on that.
I also another thing that youshared that I just want to
underline for everyone is whatwould I be proud of?
(35:12):
Because there's so much shamearound food and I think this
question is so good for a numberof situations in our lives, and
to apply it to food isincredibly powerful.
What decision would I be proudof?
It's such a huge reframe thattakes that shame away.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
There's another way to work with shame, which is
really important.
Do I have another minute or twoto talk?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
You have another minute or two.
If you've got something good toshare, we want to hear it, okay
.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Okay, think about an archer aiming at the bullseye.
When they aim at the bullseye,they're actually committing with
perfection.
They're not thinking progressand perfection.
They're actually committingwith perfection.
They want to become one withthe bullseye before they lose
the arrow.
They're not thinking maybe I'llmake it, maybe I won't.
If they miss the bullseye whicheven Olympic archers do more
(35:58):
than 50% of the time, theyswitch their mindset and they
say well, by how much and inwhat direction did I miss, and
what adjustments do I need tomake?
What they don't do is theydon't say oh my God, I'm a
pathetic loser of an archer.
I might as well shoot the restof the arrows up in the air,
right when it comes to food,because there's pleasure
involved, because there's atoxic pleasure involved, there's
(36:20):
all this secondary motivationto not take that very practical
human learning approach tothings.
If you have a food bullseye andyou aim at it and you miss it,
and you take assessment andfigure out what went wrong and
you learn whatever you can fromit, and you get up and you aim
again, you're going to getbetter.
We're learning organisms.
We learn by practicing andassimilating.
(36:41):
What happens, though, with food, is that our pigs want to flip
the mindset.
When you're aiming.
They'll say don't aim for aperfect target, you can't be
perfect, just progress, notperfection.
What that actually means is I'mgoing to try for a little while
until I don't feel like itanymore when it comes to
regulating toxic pleasure.
But then, when they miss thetarget, their pig will say see,
(37:02):
you're not perfect, thereforeyou're nothing, therefore you
might as well shoot the rest ofthe hours off.
Or when it comes to food, youmight as well just binge until
tomorrow morning and then we'llstart over again.
So they're actually.
I say that the energy ofperfectionism should neither be
ignored nor abused.
You want to leverage it whenyou're aiming at the target, but
you want to let it go whenyou've made a mistake.
(37:22):
Commit with perfection, butforgive yourself with dignity.
The perseveration on guilt andshame is really because the
reptilian brain is trying tomake you feel too weak to resist
more binging.
So it's actually there's asecondary gain which gets the
guilt stuck inside of you, andonce you recognize that and you
(37:43):
tell yourself, it's almostimpossible to keep binging.
If you refuse to yell atyourself, you'll find it hard to
keep binging.
So last thing about shame isthat it's very common for people
to say what's wrong with me?
Why am I such a sicko that Ican't stop eating?
Now, the questions that you askdetermine the evidence that you
collect.
(38:03):
So if you say why can't I stopeating?
What's wrong with me?
Why can't I stop eating?
You're telling your brain tolook for evidence that there's
something wrong with you and youcan't stop eating.
If you look hard enough, you'retelling your brain to look for
evidence that there's somethingwrong with you and you can't
stop eating.
If you look hard enough, you'regoing to find it and you're
going to start to feel powerlessand hopeless and helpless.
You're going to say I'm broken,I'm sick.
I can't stop eating.
If you ask instead what can Iimprove?
How could I do it differently,you're going to ask your brain
(38:25):
to find evidence that there arethings that you can improve and
do differently.
You'll develop a successidentity, and so that's really
critical.
Are you going to adopt the lensof success or the lens of
failure?
And when you adopt the lens ofsuccess, shame starts to drop by
the wayside.
(38:47):
And also we live in a perfectstorm.
First of all, there are noprisons for overeaters.
You're not going to wake up ina cell with four gray walls and
your new husband blah blahbecause you had too many donuts.
It's just not going to happen,right?
Overeaters tend to be nicepeople whose drug of choice is
food rather than alcohol anddrugs.
We don't get behind the wheelof a car and mutilate people.
We tend to take it out onourselves.
We tend to be nicer people whowill feel depressed and
(39:07):
despondent rather than taking itout on other people.
And when you live in a worldwhere tens of millions of
dollars are spent, or hundredsof millions of dollars are spent
, to overcome your reptilianbrain, and there's all this
advertising, research onplausible deniability, so that,
gee, these avocado chips aregood for you because they're
made with avocado oil, right?
(39:29):
Does anybody really thinkpotato chips are good for you?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Air-fried potato chips.
That for you, Air fried potatochips.
That's the latest one I saw.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, there's a differencebetween something being less bad
for you and something beinggood for you.
And then we live in a worldwhere everybody kind of tacitly
agrees to slowly kill ourselveswith food, while we laugh it off
and say you know ho, ho, ha, ha, a little in moderation.
You know, like when you want toeat really healthy, people call
(39:56):
you a health nut.
Doug Graham says he's not ahealth nut, he's a health
enthusiast, and I agree I'm ahealth enthusiast, I'm not a
health nut and I'm done harmingmyself with food to make other
people feel better, but anyway.
So when you think about it,there was this movie called
Network in the 70s where thisadvertiser said I'm mad as hell
and I'm not going to take itanymore to get everybody yelling
(40:16):
it out their windows.
I think we should turn shameinto anger.
I think that what the industryis doing is atrocious.
I think that 100% of thepopulation has some problem with
eating because of what'snormalized in our culture and
the type of eating and the factthat everybody jokes about
getting cheesecake when yourboyfriend breaks up with you,
(40:37):
and I think that how could younot have a problem with food in
our culture?
You might have a goodmetabolism, you might have found
some way to stay thin, butvirtually everybody that I talk
to there's not an interview thatI've been on that someone
doesn't say something like youdid, jen, like I have this
problem.
Can you help me with thisproblem.
It's 100% incidence.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
I think it's wonderful that you're out here
and talking about it and thatyou're angry about it.
We have to get passionate aboutthe things that we really care
about, and it's obvious that achange needs to be made, and so
thank you, thank you for comingand sharing also what you shared
about shame.
I know that people are going togo back and rewind and listen
to that like six times, becauseI'm going to as well.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
It really works.
It really works too, when youunderstand it's a piercing
insight.
It really helps you.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yes, incredibly.
All of this so good.
Thank you for coming on.
There is one last question thatI want to ask you.
That will seem somewhatunrelated, but it's also so
related.
I ask everybody who comes onthe podcast where do you see the
magic in the world?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Where do I see the magic in the world?
I see the magic when peopleadopt the principle of being the
change that they want to see inthe world.
Like Gandhi said, rather thanjust getting angry.
Rather than just getting angryI wrote a book about it I get up
(41:59):
and I talk about it.
I walk the walk.
I live this every day.
Even if I make a mistake, I getback up and do it again.
I forgot the other person thathad this quote.
They said be the person thatyou needed when you were younger
.
So, instead of being angry andbitter, ask yourself what did I
miss out on, what did I need,and how can I be that for other
people?
And that really heals youinside.
It's a magical experience.
So that's where I see the magicin the world when people are
(42:23):
willing to be the change thatthey want to see and be the
person that they needed whenthey were younger.
(42:46):
Something you just threadedthrough for me, dr Glenn, is
that so often the magic that wesee is the magic who people come
on this podcast.
It's the magic that they'rebeing.
I've never noticed that beforeuntil you just said it the way
that you said it.
It's so true.
Thank you for person on anorganized, passionate mission to
change the world, becausethat's actually the only people
who ever did.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Organized.
That's a key word.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing today and
doing the work that you aredoing.
Where can people get your book?
Where can they connect with you?
Where are the best places?
So I've got three free thingsfor you.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
If you'll go to defeatyourcravingscom, click the
big blue button, the freereader bonus button and sign up
for the free reader bonuses,you'll get a copy of the book in
Kindle, nook or PDF formabsolutely free.
The electronic formats are free, generous, thank you.
Thank you.
If you would like thetraditional formats, or Audible
or paperback or hardcover,there's a traditional charge but
(43:32):
it's absolutely free in theelectronic formats.
If you go todefeatyourcravingscom and click
the big blue button, you canalso get a set of food plan
starter templates.
So we've been at this a longtime and we've seen people with
a variety of dietaryphilosophies.
This is a diet agnosticmethodology means you can do it
with any dietary philosophywhich doesn't involve starving
(43:54):
yourself.
You've got to be able to getenough nutrition or this doesn't
work.
So we created potential foodrules for people who were trying
to eat low-carb or high-carb orplant-based or carnivore or
point counting or caloriecounting or just about anything
you could think about.
It's all at thefuturecravingscom.
And the last thing is I knowthis sounds a little weird and
(44:17):
almost cold in the abstract,like people are thinking why in
the world does Jen have this?
Dr Arno has a pig inside of him.
It's really not a cold process.
It's a life-giving,compassionate process which
takes people from feelingdespairing and hopeless and
confused to feeling confidentand hopeful and enthusiastic in
just one session most of thetime, and I recorded a whole
(44:39):
bunch of those sessions so youcould hear it.
You'll get that also.
It's all free.
At thefuturecravingscom, if youneed coaching, if you need
other services, we periodicallyopen our enrollments and we have
a couple of coaches on board,including me, but those have a
charge for them and they'll findout about them too, guess where
.
At defeatyourcravingscom, clickthe big blue button.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
We love easy.
The easy button atdefeatyourcravingscom.
Thank you so much for coming on, dr Glenn.
We really appreciate you.
Thanks, it was great to be here.
(45:27):
I appreciate you like smackingmy forehead saying why is this
something that we have nevertalked about on this podcast?
So thank you for Dr Glenn, forcoming on and talking about this
and if there's any tethers,anything that you're going
through in your life that youwould love to hear talked about
on this podcast that you're likeI really you know what is
really really something I'mstruggling with, you can email
(45:49):
me anytime at hello at genliscomand let me know If there's
somebody who you're like I wouldlove to hear from this person.
Or on this topic.
I'm so down to dive into anycorners and you might have
noticed in this season I've gonedown a lot of different avenues
with a lot of different kindsof people really expanding,
because there's so manydifferent people in this world
(46:10):
who have been through all theseexperiences and there's so many
different people in this worldwho have been through all these
experiences and there's so muchfor us to explore here.
So let me know if there'sanybody who you would love to
hear from I'm so down to go downthose avenues in the second
part of this year.
You can find all of the links toDr Glenn's offerings.
Of course, it's that one linkthat he shared
(46:32):
defeatyourcravingscom.
You can find that link in theshow notes.
Go and connect with him, followhim.
I know that you're going towant to learn more about his
research.
Thanks again, so much forlistening.
Stay tuned for Thursday, whereI'm going to pull a little
thread out of this episode andwe'll dive a little bit deeper.
So stay tuned for Thursday andI will see you then.
Until then, you just keepshining your magical unicorn
(46:53):
light out there for all to see.
I'll see you next time.
Bye, thank you.
Hey and welcome to Untethered with Jen Liss, the
podcast that's here to help youbreak free, be you and unleash
your inner brilliance.
I'm your host, jen, and in thisepisode we're going to talk
about how to stop lettingravings for food control your
life.
Let's dive in.
Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen.
(00:32):
Welcome back to the podcast.
Today we have Dr GlennLivingston.
I invited Dr Glenn on because Ihad this realization that there
is a huge tether that we'venever talked about on this
podcast, or very rarely.
Actually, I've talked aboutthis particular topic a lot
because I love it, I love it, Ilove it, I love it.
Food, food.
(00:53):
So many of us have a troublingor challenging relationship with
food that we know about and wefeel guilt about it and we feel
shame about it.
And all the things We've dieted, We've done all the diets Maybe
you're doing a diet right now.
You know that relationship withfood, our relationship with our
bodies these are things that wehave not talked about on this
podcast, and I had thisrealization like, oh my goodness
(01:16):
, we've got to talk about thisand invited onto the podcast
this amazing human being who hasdone tons of research in this
area and actively works withpeople and has created a program
that genuinely helps people inthe most loving and positive way
Dr Glenn Livingston.
So Dr Glenn is on the podcasttoday to help us understand the
(01:39):
reason that we have a difficultrelationship with food and what
the heck we can do about it, howwe can untether from the ways
in which food is controlling ourlives.
He actually helped me in thisconversation with one thing that
I have been dealing with lately, where I'm like why am I having
these sudden cravings?
That makes no sense.
I've never craved this in myentire life.
And he pinpointed the exactproblem right here in this
(02:02):
conversation, which might besomething that you're currently
going through.
Regardless of that, you willfind something in this
conversation for you If you aresomebody who has had a difficult
relationship with food, whosees that your relationship
could be better, who just wantsto have a healthier, more
abundant relationship with foodand with your body and with your
(02:25):
mindset around it in general.
So I am so excited to welcomeon to the podcast Dr Glenn
Livingston.
Hi, dr Glenn.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Hey, how are you?
It's nice to be here.
I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Fabulous.
I'm excited to have you on.
I was telling you right beforewe hopped on here, and for my
listeners, that there is a hugetether that we have never talked
about on this podcast nevertalked about and so that is why
you are here to help us diveinto this, because even for
myself, this has been myexperience and my life with food
(03:05):
.
It's been a thing.
It's been a thing.
I grew up with diet culture andthe diet generation, and so to
have you come on and talk aboutthis with us is so awesome.
So thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for having me.
Do you want to know a littlebit about how I wound up doing
this, or is there anotherdirection you want to go?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, I would love to hear how did you get to the
point of food being somethingthat you talk about, because you
have a long experience as a CEOof a company, right?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I was.
Yeah, I was on the wrong sideof the war.
I was working for the foodcompanies to help them sell
sugar and for the pharmacompanies to help them sell more
drugs.
In my 20s and 30s it was, butthe food problem started before
then and I like to jokingly saythat if you've been by the
Woodbury Country Deli on LongIsland in the 90s and they're
(04:02):
out of pizza and Pop-Tarts,there's a very good chance I got
there before you, which is myway of saying that I'm not just
a doctor who wants you to workwith food problems.
I'm a guy who had a very seriousproblem with food myself.
If it wasn't nailed down, I wasin trouble because I'm 6'4" and
just genetically I'm lucky.
(04:23):
I'm modestly muscular withoutdoing anything about it, and if
I worked out a couple hours aday when I was a kid, I could
eat boxes of muff, a lot toomuch time digesting and too much
time in the bathroom.
(04:45):
But I was thin, I was energetic, I was happy and I really
enjoyed my old days with food.
But when I got married, I wasabout 21, 22 years old when I
got married and I was going tograduate school and my
metabolism slowed down a littlebit bit and was commuting two
hours each way to see patientsand take classes.
(05:09):
And then I'd get home and I'dhave to work on the business and
God forbid, my ex-wife now, butwife at the time wanted to talk
to me.
I just didn't have two minutesto work out, much less two hours
a day, and I found that thefood still had a hold of me.
I'd be sitting with a suicidalpatient and thinking when can I
get the next pizza or when can Iget to the deli, and that
(05:32):
bothered me a lot more than theweight, which came on slowly.
I eventually got up to about300 pounds, but the weight came
on very slowly.
I was just obsessed with food.
I was thinking about it all thetime.
I was just obsessed with food.
I was thinking about it all thetime.
And, from a family of 17psychotherapists, being a really
great psychologist was the mostimportant thing to me.
(05:52):
I wanted to be able to lendpeople my soul and help them to
love and trust me enough tothink new thoughts and try new
things.
And it's not really all aboutbook knowledge and figuring out
the puzzle of their life, it'sreally getting them to have a
connection with you, so theyfeel comfortable doing things
that they wouldn't becomfortable otherwise.
(06:13):
And it wasn't as good as that.
I never lost anybody and I gotgood results anyway.
But I had to compensate for myfood obsession, and that's what
really bothered me.
Coming from the family that Icame from, I figured that there
must be a hole in my heart, inmy metaphorical heart, and if I
could fill that hole, then Iwouldn't have to just keep
(06:34):
trying to fill the hole in mystomach.
And so I went for the bestpsychotherapy you could find.
I saw the best psychologist, Isaw the best psychiatrist.
I took medication.
I went to Overeaters Anonymous.
I had a spiritual journey.
It was a very life-enriching,soul-enhancing journey, but it
didn't really help with the food.
I'd get a little better, andthen fatter, a little thinner,
(06:56):
and then a lot fatter, a littlethinner and a lot fatter, and
eventually there were threethings that changed my paradigm.
It took 20 years.
There were three things thatchanged my paradigm.
Took 20 years, but there arethree things that changed my
paradigm from.
You know, nurture your innermood to child and fill that hole
in your heart to or love myselfthin, for lack of a better way
to put it to.
Um, you know, be the alpha dogof my own mind, my own mind.
(07:18):
And you know, when alpha, whenan alpha wolf, gets challenged
for leadership, it doesn't sayoh, my goodness, goodness,
someone needs a hug.
It growls and it snarls and itsays get back in line.
Or because I'm the boss and I'min control.
And those three things wereworking for the food industry.
I saw that they were spendingtens of millions of dollars to
engineer these hyperpalatableconcentrations of starch and
(07:41):
sugar and fat and excitotoxinsand salt, of starch and sugar
and fat and excitotoxins andsalt.
And it was all designed to hitthe bliss point in the reptilian
brain without giving you thenutrition to feel satisfied.
And it turns out that thereptilian brain, the seed of the
fight or flight response, thefeast or famine response the
just hand over the chocolate andnobody gets hurt.
(08:01):
Response it doesn't know.
Love, it's all about survival.
It's like a bad collegedrinking game.
It's like eat, mate or kill.
When I see something in theenvironment, do I eat it, do I
mate with it or do I kill it?
So figure, that's the reptilianbrain, it's the mammalian brain
on top of that that says beforeyou eat, mate or kill that
thing, what impact will thathave on your tribe, on the
(08:23):
people that you love?
And it's your neocortex on topof that that says what impact
will that have on yourlonger-term goals and your
health and your fitness andweight loss and health
optimization and those kinds ofthings.
And it turns out that thereptilian brain has the ability
to push the rational brain outof the way.
So when it perceives there tobe an emergency, when the
(08:46):
sympathetic nervous system getsall revved up and it perceives
there to be an emergency, it canpush your rational brain out of
the way.
And that's why you can read allthe diet books you want to and
make the best plans from yourhigher self over the weekend and
then Monday afternoon whenyou're at Starbucks and there's
a chocolate bar.
It just all seems to go out thewindow.
(09:06):
I looked at the advertisingindustry and they were very good
at convincing you that youneeded this stuff to survive.
They would do things likearrange for the packaging to be
multicolored and diverse andvibrant, which in nature would
signal a diversity ofmicronutrients that were
available, but in many of thesecases they were taking the
micronutrients out of the foodand putting the money into the
(09:29):
packaging instead.
And these were very powerfulforces, very, very powerful
forces, separate and apart fromwhether my mom had dropped me in
my head or I wasn't lovedenough or anything like that and
they're all geared towards thereptilian brain, which doesn't
know love.
So I kind of started to thinkmaybe love isn't really the way
to do it, maybe I really neededto be more of an alpha wolf.
(09:53):
The final story that reallyshifted me was this big study
that I did In the days wheninternet clicks were cheap and
we didn't have things likeGoogle.
I bought clicks when peoplewere searching for stress
management and over the courseof about five years I got about
40,000 people to take a surveyand in that survey I asked them
(10:14):
what were they feeling stressedabout?
What was it that they couldn'tstop eating when they felt
stressed.
And I saw some interestingthings which I thought was going
to lead me to a solution.
It actually didn't at all, butit did change my mind.
One of the things that I sawwas that people who struggle
with chocolate and my bingesalways started with chocolate
they were feeling lonely ordepressed or a little
(10:35):
brokenhearted.
And people who struggled withsalty, crunchy things tended to
be stressed at work.
And people who struggled withsoft, chewy, starchy things
tended to be stressed at home.
And I thought this was reallycool and I was thinking, gee,
maybe I'll write a book about itor something.
But before I did, I called mymom.
I said I just want to figurethis out for myself.
Why do I run into chocolatewhen I feel lonely or
brokenhearted?
And I get her on the phone, onSkype, and I said Mom, I'm not
(10:59):
really happy in the marriage, soI am a little lonely and
brokenhearted.
But how did this pattern getset up?
Why do I write the chocolate,like everybody else does when
they feel like that?
And she got this horrible lookon her face and this horrible
sound on her voice and she goesoh honey, I'm so sorry.
And I said mom, it's decadesago, I love you, I forgive you,
(11:19):
I just want to figure this out.
And she said oh, honey, whenyou were a one-year-old in 1965,
your dad was a captain in thearmy and they were going to send
him to Vietnam.
And I was terrified At the sametime, my dad, your grandfather,
had just gotten out of prisonand I had idolized him my whole
life and I didn't know he wasguilty and he was, and so I was
horribly depressed.
(11:40):
So most of the time when youwould come running to me for
love or to play or to have someeven healthy food, I would not
have the wherewithal to do itbecause I'd be sitting and
staring at the wall, feelinganxious and depressed.
And so what I did was I got abig bottle of chocolate Bosco
syrup and I put it in arefrigerator on the floor and
(12:01):
I'd say go get your Bosco, andyou'd go running over to the
refrigerator, crawling over tothe refrigerator, you'd take out
the bottle, you'd suck on thecap and you'd go into a
chocolate sugar coma and I couldgo resume staring at the wall.
And, jenny, if that was a moviemovement, if that was a movie,
mom and I would have a big hugand a big cry and I'd never have
trouble with chocolate again.
It was a really goodconversation to have.
(12:22):
I don't regret it.
I learned to feel a lot morecompassion for her and what she
went through.
I learned a lot about her.
I wouldn't have known otherwise.
I felt more compassion formyself.
There was a softening of thatself-hatred.
You know, you, fat F, I wasn'ttalking to myself like that
anymore.
But it didn't help the food.
As a matter of fact, it made itworse Because there was this
(12:42):
voice in my head I'm notschizophrenic, but it was like a
voice of justification and itsaid you know what, glenn,
you're right, our mama didn'tlove us enough and she left a
great big chocolate-sized holein your heart.
And until you can fix themarriage or get out of it and
find the love of your life,you're going to have to go right
on eating chocolate.
Yippee, let's go get more rightnow.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Isn't that interesting One voice was
replaced with another voice.
Yeah, Exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So I kind of put this all together and I did
something a little crazy.
And this was way before I wasteaching it Maybe I was a child
and family psychologist at thetime.
I did something a little crazy.
I decided that I was going toremember.
This was not going to be public.
I decided that I needed to drawreally clear lines in the sand
so I would know what healthybehavior was and not healthy
(13:29):
behavior.
Because if I was going to takecontrol of this reptilian brain,
you know, and dominate it inthe same way that I dominate my
bladder when it says, glenn, youreally have to pee.
And I say, well, no, I have aninterview with Jen right now,
I'm going to wait until later.
If I was going to take controllike that, I was going to have
to know when it was active.
And so I set up a kind of atripwire, a line on the sand.
(13:49):
My first one was something likeI will never have chocolate on a
weekday again, I'll only everhave it on the weekend, and no
more than two ounces.
And then this is the crazy partIf I would be at Starbucks and
I'd hear a little thought in myhead, that would say you thought
in my head that would say youknow what, glenn, you worked out
really hard today and eventhough it's a Wednesday, it'd be
just as easy to start yoursilly plan again tomorrow.
Go ahead and have a coupleounces of chocolate, it's not
(14:13):
going to hurt you.
Yippee, let's get some rightnow.
I'd say wait a minute, that'snot me, that's my inner pig.
You don't have to call it a pig, you can call it anything you
want to.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Did you say pig I?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
did.
I called it my inner pig and Isaid chocolate on a Wednesday is
pig slop.
I don't eat pig slop.
I don't let farm animals tellme what to do.
As ridiculous as that sounds,as crude as it is and as
embarrassing as it is thatthat's what I did because it was
private.
It worked somewhat.
It kind of opened up a spacebetween stimulus and response
(14:41):
and it made it possible for meto wake up and say who's in
charge here, my upper brain ormy lower brain?
Now, at that point I learnedthat once you open up that space
between stimulus and response,you could fix your thinking
about food, you could disempowerthat justification, and that
was the bulk of how I got better.
I've learned an awful lot moresince then.
But for the next seven or eightyears it only takes a month or
(15:02):
two now.
But I didn't have the book thatI wrote.
For the next seven or eightyears I would keep a journal of
everything my pig would say andwhy it was wrong.
So, for example, it's not justas easy to start tomorrow,
because if you have the thoughtyou have a craving for chocolate
and you have the thought I'lljust start again tomorrow and
then you eat the chocolate.
The way the brain works iscalled the principle of
(15:22):
neuroplasticity.
What fires together, wirestogether, and if I have the
craving and think I'll starttomorrow and I have the
chocolate, I will havereinforced both the craving and
the chocolate so that tomorrowI'll be more likely to say to
start tomorrow, and tomorrow thecraving is going to be stronger
.
So you can only ever use thepresent moment to be healthy.
If you're in a hole, you've gotto stop digging.
(15:43):
That's an example of what Iwould call a rational refutation
or fixing your thinking aboutfood.
For years and years I just kepta journal of everything it said
and slowly but surely I gotbetter.
I got down to a normal weight,all kinds of health problems
resolved.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
What happened in the journaling, what was happening
with the journaling specificallythat was helping so much.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Well, it removed that voice of justification and
without that voice ofjustification there was a
cognitive dissonance thatoccurred.
There was a calmness, and Iknow that that's partially from
the rational disempowerment ofthe false logic, because the
false logic no longer seemedreasonable.
But I also know that writing ismore of an upper brain activity
(16:25):
and it's not something you cando when your emergency system is
activated.
You have to kind of breathe andcalm down.
This gets into the intersectionof what you do.
You have to be able to calmyourself down enough that it's
okay to rest and digest andthink and strategize.
And so just the goal of writingin and of itself at those times
was helpful, because thebinging, the response, the screw
(16:49):
it, just do it response looksto be driven by a falsely
perceived emergency.
We have too much work coming up, there's too much input, we
don't have enough time to restand think we're out of contact
with our tribe, we aredehydrated, we're fatigued.
(17:11):
All of those things cause yoursympathetic nervous system to
activate and think there's anemergency.
In an emergency we would seekall the resources we could.
In primitive times that was agood thing because food was
relatively scarce.
But in the modern foodenvironment where you could walk
out of McDonald's and seeanother one across the street.
It's not really so healthy foryou.
(17:32):
So that's what was happeningwith the journaling and that got
me better.
I published the book when I gotdivorced about eight years later
.
I wrote it into a book.
I knew what I was doing but Ididn't expect it to take off the
way that it did and I had abouta million readers for the book.
And then I got a gig onPsychology Today and I got about
a million readers there, allkinds of requests for coaching.
So I opened up a littlecoaching agency.
(17:54):
Over the next seven or eightyears we worked with about 2,000
clients, measured results.
Most of that time I was workingon how do I fix people's
thinking quickly, how do I letthem fix their own thinking
quickly.
So instead of taking eightyears of journaling, we could do
it in about a month.
It was kind of interesting.
There weren't as many creativeexcuses as I thought.
(18:17):
I thought if I worked withthousands of people there'd be
thousands of creative excuses.
There are about 50.
There are about 50 excuses thatpeople have and we kind of know
the answers for most of them.
So it got to be a lot quicker.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Are those excuses, the things that the voice would
say, that the pig would say?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, one bite won't hurt.
You're so stressed that youdeserve this.
Come on, you can't be goodforever, all of that kind of
thing.
In the last couple of years,when we started measuring
results more carefully, I foundthat at the one month mark for
the people who engage, somepeople take programs and don't
engage.
I don't really understand why,but we can't help them.
So the people who engage got an89.4% reduction in over-reading
(19:00):
in the first month.
But when I looked at it at sixmonths or a year, it was
significantly worse, like 55,60% and even worse at the one
year mark.
And I said, well, why is that?
Because that really bothered me.
I wanted people to hold on to itthe way that I had.
When I really investigated that, it always turned out that it
wasn't because we failed to fixtheir thinking.
(19:20):
It's because eventually peopleget to the point where they say,
yeah, doc, I don't have anyexcuse for doing this anymore.
There's nothing that I believejustifies breaking my own rules
because it's silly.
I made the rule myself andwe've gone through all the silly
excuses and showed me how todisempower that.
But oh well, what the hellScrew it, just do it.
People got to that point when Ilooked at what was behind that,
(19:42):
it was always that falselyperceived emergency, or what I
would call organismic distress,and so that's when we started
adding a certain type ofbreathing, like parasympathetic
breathing, to help peoplebreathe out for longer than they
breathed in, because if you'rebeing chased by a hungry bear,
you couldn't do that, so you'resignaling the brain and you're
trying to get the vagal.
You know more about this than Ido.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Which I mean.
It activates the part of thebrain that you're talking about,
the more human part of thebrain that gives us time to
think.
It does all of those thingsthat you're saying earlier, that
made a difference.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
We started talking to people about having regular
nutrition.
We found out that people wouldsay screw it, just do it if they
happen to skip a meal or ifthey ate an awful lot of
processed food all day anddidn't get enough actual
nutrition into their body.
I'm not a medical doctor or adietitian, but it was not rocket
science to say look, if you eatmore fruit and vegetables and
maybe some protein, you're goingto feel better than if you have
(20:35):
potato chips all day.
We learned that willpower isthe ability to make good
decisions, and there are only somany decisions you can make in
the course of the day.
So if you could take a coupleof decision-free breaks over the
course of the day, you're muchless likely to get to that point
where you didn't have anywillpower.
It kind of restored some ofyour willpower, and so we added
(21:03):
to the mix all of theserelievers of organismic distress
and when we did that, ourresults started to get even
better.
That's why I wrote the new bookcalled Defeat your Cravings.
It's kind of a combination ofhow to fix your thinking but how
to fight the screw it, just doit response and kind of put it
together into a holistic packageand then also over the course
of that eight years, I learned alot about the science of
cravings and cravings extinctionand I want to incorporate that.
(21:25):
So that's my story.
That's why I do what I do and,yeah, I couldn't imagine doing
anything more remaining.
I'm really happy.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah Well, life has sent you on this journey for a
reason and you're helping somany people and the dots that
you're connecting for a lot ofus along the way.
As you talk about the voicethat was in your head, I've got
that voice in my head all thetime.
I've got this current.
There is a current thing thatI've been fighting, which is 11
PM chips.
Like I want chips at 11 pm andyou said it's people who
(21:54):
overwork and I'm like, yeah,it's usually when I'm sitting
there working a little bit toolate that I suddenly want some
chips.
So it's like I recognize thevoice that says, oh, you know,
it's fine, just tonight.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Jen, I did a whole study on nighttime overeating
because it's a very commonproblem and it's a harder
problem than most other types ofovereating and there's some
interesting things that we found.
I could tell you about them orwe could do it a different time
if you want to go in anotherdirection.
It's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
There's like a little nugget that you can add,
because I think it's not just me, there's people who are
listening too, and I think thatthe whole reason that we're
talking is because food is atether.
Food is something that iskeeping us from living our best
lives in many ways, and it'sinterconnected, and you've
connected a lot of those dots,because it's very similar to
some of the other things that wedo too, like overbuying courses
(22:39):
and not taking them, likebuying the course because it
feels good but then not takingthe course and the habit that
that is, so you feel like youdid something.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, I'll bust through a couple of quick tips.
We found that the problemstarts a lot earlier than the
evening time.
Most people who are overeatingat night are waiting too long to
have breakfast in the morning,and they all tell me they don't
want to change that.
They all heat to eat breakfastin the morning.
They're not hungry.
They feel disgusting in themorning if they eat breakfast,
(23:08):
and once they start eating theyfeel like it's going to be
harder to stop.
But without fail, when we'vegotten people to stop overeating
at night, it's because we helpthem to start having breakfast.
It could be at nine o'clock or9.30.
It doesn't have to be at sixo'clock, but breakfast is an
important meal for people whoare trying to overcome
overeating, because the brainperceives that it's going to be
(23:29):
too long, too long of a fastuntil it gets to eat again, and
so if there's leftover hunger ortension at the end of the day,
it's very prone to say screw it,just do it.
We also find that if you addsome crunch to your lunch, like
some cruciferous vegetables,carrots, radishes, celery,
cucumbers we don't entirely knowwhy.
My hypothesis is that we buildup a certain amount of oral
(23:53):
aggression over the course ofthe day and we need to chew or
crunch, and when people aren'tdoing that, there's this
residual pressure in the eveningto chew or crunch something.
So if you add some crunch toyour lunch, you have to have a
decompression routine at night.
You have to know when workstops and the day is ending and
you're decompressing.
Think about it like in thevampire movies.
(24:13):
There's a very cleardelineation.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
I love vampire movies .
Thanks for going there.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
I love vampire movies .
We actually made a list of 100best vampire movies in the book.
Yeah, it was the zombie vampiremovie.
So you have to have a cleardelineation about when dinner's
over, when does thedecompression routine start, and
that could be as simple asgoing dinner and done.
Oh, I didn't finish the vampireanalogy In the vampire movies.
(24:39):
You know when the sun goes downand you have to protect yourself
from the vampires and theserituals that people go through.
You got to protect yourselffrom your inner pig or pigula in
the evening, from all the pigwhispers, and it could be as
simple as saying dinner and done, or going into another room and
changing your clothes or takingyour makeup off.
Or I know a woman who goeskitchen's closed.
She puts it which everybodyalways says kitchen's closed.
(25:00):
There's got to be a delineation.
And then you need some type ofroutine for decompressing and
letting go of the day and if youput together that whole
protocol it makes a dramaticdifference in your ability to
stick to a rule for the evening.
So that's my quick take onnighttime overeating.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Thank you for this.
I love Pegula so much Just theidea of that and that idea of
the delineation.
So I never mind sharing thethings that I'm going through
and how that can relate.
I decided a few months ago thatI was not going to eat
breakfast because I'm doing thefast thing, but that is when
this started.
So you're connecting some bigdots for me in terms of my own
(25:40):
eating habits and what is likelyhappening there.
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Jen, I once had a conversation I've supervised as
many as 10 coaches at a time.
I once had a conversation withall of them when we were at the
height of seeing all theseclients and I said have you ever
helped anyone to stopovereating at night without
getting them to eat breakfast?
And they were all silent.
Nobody could think of a singleexample where they helped them
stop overeating at night withoutgetting them to eat breakfast.
(26:05):
So for you and your listeners,it's worth thinking about.
I also find, despite the medicalbenefits of fasting or
intermittent fasting, myempirical experience has been
that if people are strugglingwith binge eating that it's
better to wait about six monthsto really get the binging out of
your system and have regularmeals three times a day, kind of
(26:25):
like flood your body withnutrition at a slight caloric
deficit.
If you need to lose weight,that's better for overcoming the
binging and then once you'vereally got the hang of that,
then you can head back intofasting or the intermittent
fasting.
But I have about half thesuccess rate with people that
are trying to fast out of thegate.
Because, if you think about it,if we live in an environment
where food is scarce, despitethe medical benefits, despite
(26:48):
the fact that we evolved likethat.
If your brain thinks it's in anenvironment where food is
scarce, then it only makes sensethat when it finally has
calories that it wants to hoardthem.
And this is why people will saythat it feels like someone put
a gun to their head and said eat.
And some people will say beingtoo full is a trigger to eat
more, which would make sense ifwe evolved in a scarce food
(27:10):
environment where we had therisk of starving to death death
because when you found food, yougot as much as you can, even if
you were full right.
And so if you keep signalingyour brain that food is
regularly, reliably available,then it's much more likely to
overcome the overeating.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
This is so supportive .
I mean, we all have to eat andwe all.
This is very I find it veryrare that we naturally, in the
environment that we have grownup in, with advertising and all
of the food industry challengesthat we have, that we have a
healthy relationship with foodwithout some effort.
Unless you happened to grow upin a very food aware household,
(27:48):
then we all grew up basically atthe at the hands of advertising
, and so this is all so helpful.
I'm curious for you and thismay or may not be your
professional experience, mightbe more from your personal point
of view is how is ourrelationship with food impacting
(28:09):
our overall wellness and ouroverall ability to live the life
that we really want to live?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well, what happens when all food is a possibility
at every time and you're livingin an environment where there
are chemicals in a lot of thesepackages that move your ability
to know when you're hungry andfull?
What happens is a level of foodobsession that makes it
difficult to think about otherthings, and so what I try to
teach people to do is come upwith a set of rules that you
(28:37):
love not overly restrictive, notthings that make you feel like
they're a bunch of Nazi foodpolicemen following you around
all day, but rules that you love, so that a lot of these
decisions have been made for you.
And then there is a comfort anda presence and an ability to be
in the present moment, which isbliss, by the way.
We live in the present momentand most people are not there,
(28:58):
but there's an ability to be inthe present moment when you can
improve your relationship withfood.
That just isn't there otherwise.
Weird experience where I feltlike everybody was smiling at me
all the time, and then Irealized they were always
smiling at me all the time.
I just wasn't there.
I was too busy thinking aboutfood and it was actually a
(29:20):
little bit overwhelming at first.
So that's kind of a big deal.
And the other thing is thatwhen people are overeating, you
have no idea how much energy ittakes to process that stuff and
recover from it.
In my reader surveys we foundthat most people were overeating
several times a week and theyreported not feeling back to
(29:41):
normal for 24 hours later.
So let's just say that's twodays a week that you're losing
of vibrant energy and ability toplay with your kids or go
hiking or go running around orjust be the less cranky mother
or father or entrepreneur thatyou want to be.
It's dramatic.
I mean, we are what we eat.
(30:01):
It's an essential thing that wedo every day.
It's one of the core decisionsthat we make every day and it's
a big part of who you are, whatyou're processing in your body.
So for me it's a dramaticdifference.
I'm not the same person as Iwas 20 years ago.
I'm really not.
Also, my forehead has become afive head and it's all gray now.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
But you wear it all really well, so things change,
but you get to wear itdifferently For entrepreneurs.
A lot of listeners here areentrepreneurs or even people who
work at home.
I know my relationship withfood changed when I suddenly was
working at home and I wasn't ona regular schedule, because
when I was working a corporatejob, it was breakfast, was very.
(30:43):
I went down with my coworkersto go get breakfast and then at
lunch I went with my coworkersand I didn't have snacks in
between because I didn't havesnacks at my desk.
I've got snacks.
I got snacks on snacks, onsnacks here at the house, and so
do so many other people, and sothere's this tendency for
myself and likely a lot of otherentrepreneurs, to either just
(31:05):
continuously go grab snacks orforget to eat altogether.
Do you have any tips?
Is there something?
Is it with the self-presence,what is supportive to people?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, food preparation makes a big
difference.
It's worth putting in an houror two on Sundays to set
yourself up for the week, orSundays and Wednesdays to set
yourself up for the week, sothat and it's worth it putting
some time and energy intothinking about what's going to
be delicious and healthy for you.
You know it's a fallacy to thinkit's a false economy.
(31:36):
It's a false economy to thinkthat you're more productive when
you're just grabbing and goingall the time.
You're actually more productivewhen you're well-nourished and
you don't have to think aboutwhat you're going to eat all the
time.
So I tell people, for example,when they're on a trip, when
they're on a business trip, thatif you're spending thousands of
dollars and you want to beproductive, it's worth spending
(31:56):
the time before you go to Googlesupermarket and then the zip
code of where you're going to goand see what supermarkets they
have and research the inventorythat you want.
And then get a littlerefrigerator in the hotel and
stop at the supermarket beforeyou go to the hotel so you're
not tempted by the hotel minibars, you're not tempted by the
(32:17):
wings and everything else that'sdownstairs with your colleagues
and then make a list of yourtrouble foods, your trigger
foods or your trigger situations.
So if you tend to overeatdesserts when you're out to
dinner with your colleagues,then ask yourself well, what
would I be proud of?
I've got this business tripcoming up.
(32:37):
What would I be proud of interms of dessert at dinner?
Would it be one dessert everyother day.
Would it be that it's okay if Ihave dessert, but not okay if I
have chocolate?
Would it be it's okay that Ionly have it once a week?
Or maybe I don't want to haveit at all.
If I have chocolate, would itbe it's okay that I only have it
once a week?
Or maybe I don't want to haveit at all?
But step back and make thosedecisions beforehand, because
you have to recognize that whenyou're with your colleagues,
(33:00):
there's the social pressure andthere's a lot of the fabric of
society that's built intobreaking bread or eating the
same things together.
It's a tremendous pressure andit goes a lot deeper than you
think that it goes.
I explain that if we had moretime.
But don't go into battlewearing a plastic helmet.
Try to make your decisionsbeforehand.
Before you go to the restaurant, look it up online, write down
what you're going to have.
Write down if they don't havethis, then I'm going to have
(33:22):
that.
Write down a substitute, justin case.
I once knew a food critic whohad to go to three restaurants a
day for 90 days, and threerestaurants a day for 90 days,
and her only rule was that shecould eat whatever she wanted to
, as long as she wrote it downbeforehand and she'd log it all
in my fitness pal and she didn'thave to make any decisions in
the restaurant itself.
You don't need willpower if youmake your decisions beforehand.
You don't have to makedecisions by burning all your
(33:44):
willpower if you make thedecisions beforehand.
So a big trick is to know whatyour trigger situations are and
then make decisions before yougo.
It makes a big difference.
Also, there are tricks forimproving your productivity as
an entrepreneur which don'tnecessarily have to do with food
, but uses the same structure ofmind and the same techniques to
(34:05):
do that.
Let's say you want to make yourplan for the day before you get
started with actual work,before you open your email or
something like that, and let'ssay that you never open your
email before you drink your cupof coffee.
So you might make a rule thatsays I will never make my coffee
before I wrote my plan for theday.
You kind of link it tosomething that you're already
(34:27):
going to do, no matter what, andyou really want to do it
Sprinkle stacking.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I call it sprinkle stacking, sprinkle stacking,
going to do no matter what andyou really want to do.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Sprinkle stacking.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I call it sprinkle stacking, sprinkle stacking,
sprinkle stacking.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And then you define your productivity pig as any
voice that says that you shouldbreak that rule, and then you
can start to refute that and youcan use the breathing
techniques and everything elsethat we talk about.
So there are ways to use thesetechniques to improve your
entrepreneurial productivity andthat's part of why I've
accomplished as much as I haveover the years.
Productivity.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
And that's part of why I've accomplished as much as
I have over the years.
So rad, that rule of I loveyour rule I don't know if that's
a rule that you do, but I neveropen my email until I drink my
coffee that's a great rule, yeah, yeah, because it's like we all
love to have the coffee, soit's like you can really anchor
in on that.
I also another thing that youshared that I just want to
underline for everyone is whatwould I be proud of?
(35:12):
Because there's so much shamearound food and I think this
question is so good for a numberof situations in our lives, and
to apply it to food isincredibly powerful.
What decision would I be proudof?
It's such a huge reframe thattakes that shame away.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
There's another way to work with shame, which is
really important.
Do I have another minute or twoto talk?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
You have another minute or two.
If you've got something good toshare, we want to hear it, okay
.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Okay, think about an archer aiming at the bullseye.
When they aim at the bullseye,they're actually committing with
perfection.
They're not thinking progressand perfection.
They're actually committingwith perfection.
They want to become one withthe bullseye before they lose
the arrow.
They're not thinking maybe I'llmake it, maybe I won't.
If they miss the bullseye whicheven Olympic archers do more
(35:58):
than 50% of the time, theyswitch their mindset and they
say well, by how much and inwhat direction did I miss, and
what adjustments do I need tomake?
What they don't do is theydon't say oh my God, I'm a
pathetic loser of an archer.
I might as well shoot the restof the arrows up in the air,
right when it comes to food,because there's pleasure
involved, because there's atoxic pleasure involved, there's
(36:20):
all this secondary motivationto not take that very practical
human learning approach tothings.
If you have a food bullseye andyou aim at it and you miss it,
and you take assessment andfigure out what went wrong and
you learn whatever you can fromit, and you get up and you aim
again, you're going to getbetter.
We're learning organisms.
We learn by practicing andassimilating.
(36:41):
What happens, though, with food, is that our pigs want to flip
the mindset.
When you're aiming.
They'll say don't aim for aperfect target, you can't be
perfect, just progress, notperfection.
What that actually means is I'mgoing to try for a little while
until I don't feel like itanymore when it comes to
regulating toxic pleasure.
But then, when they miss thetarget, their pig will say see,
(37:02):
you're not perfect, thereforeyou're nothing, therefore you
might as well shoot the rest ofthe hours off.
Or when it comes to food, youmight as well just binge until
tomorrow morning and then we'llstart over again.
So they're actually.
I say that the energy ofperfectionism should neither be
ignored nor abused.
You want to leverage it whenyou're aiming at the target, but
you want to let it go whenyou've made a mistake.
(37:22):
Commit with perfection, butforgive yourself with dignity.
The perseveration on guilt andshame is really because the
reptilian brain is trying tomake you feel too weak to resist
more binging.
So it's actually there's asecondary gain which gets the
guilt stuck inside of you, andonce you recognize that and you
(37:43):
tell yourself, it's almostimpossible to keep binging.
If you refuse to yell atyourself, you'll find it hard to
keep binging.
So last thing about shame isthat it's very common for people
to say what's wrong with me?
Why am I such a sicko that Ican't stop eating?
Now, the questions that you askdetermine the evidence that you
collect.
(38:03):
So if you say why can't I stopeating?
What's wrong with me?
Why can't I stop eating?
You're telling your brain tolook for evidence that there's
something wrong with you and youcan't stop eating.
If you look hard enough, you'retelling your brain to look for
evidence that there's somethingwrong with you and you can't
stop eating.
If you look hard enough, you'regoing to find it and you're
going to start to feel powerlessand hopeless and helpless.
You're going to say I'm broken,I'm sick.
I can't stop eating.
If you ask instead what can Iimprove?
How could I do it differently,you're going to ask your brain
(38:25):
to find evidence that there arethings that you can improve and
do differently.
You'll develop a successidentity, and so that's really
critical.
Are you going to adopt the lensof success or the lens of
failure?
And when you adopt the lens ofsuccess, shame starts to drop by
the wayside.
(38:47):
And also we live in a perfectstorm.
First of all, there are noprisons for overeaters.
You're not going to wake up ina cell with four gray walls and
your new husband blah blahbecause you had too many donuts.
It's just not going to happen,right?
Overeaters tend to be nicepeople whose drug of choice is
food rather than alcohol anddrugs.
We don't get behind the wheelof a car and mutilate people.
We tend to take it out onourselves.
We tend to be nicer people whowill feel depressed and
(39:07):
despondent rather than taking itout on other people.
And when you live in a worldwhere tens of millions of
dollars are spent, or hundredsof millions of dollars are spent
, to overcome your reptilianbrain, and there's all this
advertising, research onplausible deniability, so that,
gee, these avocado chips aregood for you because they're
made with avocado oil, right?
(39:29):
Does anybody really thinkpotato chips are good for you?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Air-fried potato chips.
That for you, Air fried potatochips.
That's the latest one I saw.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, there's a differencebetween something being less bad
for you and something beinggood for you.
And then we live in a worldwhere everybody kind of tacitly
agrees to slowly kill ourselveswith food, while we laugh it off
and say you know ho, ho, ha, ha, a little in moderation.
You know, like when you want toeat really healthy, people call
(39:56):
you a health nut.
Doug Graham says he's not ahealth nut, he's a health
enthusiast, and I agree I'm ahealth enthusiast, I'm not a
health nut and I'm done harmingmyself with food to make other
people feel better, but anyway.
So when you think about it,there was this movie called
Network in the 70s where thisadvertiser said I'm mad as hell
and I'm not going to take itanymore to get everybody yelling
(40:16):
it out their windows.
I think we should turn shameinto anger.
I think that what the industryis doing is atrocious.
I think that 100% of thepopulation has some problem with
eating because of what'snormalized in our culture and
the type of eating and the factthat everybody jokes about
getting cheesecake when yourboyfriend breaks up with you,
(40:37):
and I think that how could younot have a problem with food in
our culture?
You might have a goodmetabolism, you might have found
some way to stay thin, butvirtually everybody that I talk
to there's not an interview thatI've been on that someone
doesn't say something like youdid, jen, like I have this
problem.
Can you help me with thisproblem.
It's 100% incidence.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
I think it's wonderful that you're out here
and talking about it and thatyou're angry about it.
We have to get passionate aboutthe things that we really care
about, and it's obvious that achange needs to be made, and so
thank you, thank you for comingand sharing also what you shared
about shame.
I know that people are going togo back and rewind and listen
to that like six times, becauseI'm going to as well.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
It really works.
It really works too, when youunderstand it's a piercing
insight.
It really helps you.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yes, incredibly.
All of this so good.
Thank you for coming on.
There is one last question thatI want to ask you.
That will seem somewhatunrelated, but it's also so
related.
I ask everybody who comes onthe podcast where do you see the
magic in the world?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Where do I see the magic in the world?
I see the magic when peopleadopt the principle of being the
change that they want to see inthe world.
Like Gandhi said, rather thanjust getting angry.
Rather than just getting angryI wrote a book about it I get up
(41:59):
and I talk about it.
I walk the walk.
I live this every day.
Even if I make a mistake, I getback up and do it again.
I forgot the other person thathad this quote.
They said be the person thatyou needed when you were younger
.
So, instead of being angry andbitter, ask yourself what did I
miss out on, what did I need,and how can I be that for other
people?
And that really heals youinside.
It's a magical experience.
So that's where I see the magicin the world when people are
(42:23):
willing to be the change thatthey want to see and be the
person that they needed whenthey were younger.
(42:46):
Something you just threadedthrough for me, dr Glenn, is
that so often the magic that wesee is the magic who people come
on this podcast.
It's the magic that they'rebeing.
I've never noticed that beforeuntil you just said it the way
that you said it.
It's so true.
Thank you for person on anorganized, passionate mission to
change the world, becausethat's actually the only people
who ever did.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Organized.
That's a key word.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing today and
doing the work that you aredoing.
Where can people get your book?
Where can they connect with you?
Where are the best places?
So I've got three free thingsfor you.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
If you'll go to defeatyourcravingscom, click the
big blue button, the freereader bonus button and sign up
for the free reader bonuses,you'll get a copy of the book in
Kindle, nook or PDF formabsolutely free.
The electronic formats are free, generous, thank you.
Thank you.
If you would like thetraditional formats, or Audible
or paperback or hardcover,there's a traditional charge but
(43:32):
it's absolutely free in theelectronic formats.
If you go todefeatyourcravingscom and click
the big blue button, you canalso get a set of food plan
starter templates.
So we've been at this a longtime and we've seen people with
a variety of dietaryphilosophies.
This is a diet agnosticmethodology means you can do it
with any dietary philosophywhich doesn't involve starving
(43:54):
yourself.
You've got to be able to getenough nutrition or this doesn't
work.
So we created potential foodrules for people who were trying
to eat low-carb or high-carb orplant-based or carnivore or
point counting or caloriecounting or just about anything
you could think about.
It's all at thefuturecravingscom.
And the last thing is I knowthis sounds a little weird and
(44:17):
almost cold in the abstract,like people are thinking why in
the world does Jen have this?
Dr Arno has a pig inside of him.
It's really not a cold process.
It's a life-giving,compassionate process which
takes people from feelingdespairing and hopeless and
confused to feeling confidentand hopeful and enthusiastic in
just one session most of thetime, and I recorded a whole
(44:39):
bunch of those sessions so youcould hear it.
You'll get that also.
It's all free.
At thefuturecravingscom, if youneed coaching, if you need
other services, we periodicallyopen our enrollments and we have
a couple of coaches on board,including me, but those have a
charge for them and they'll findout about them too, guess where
.
At defeatyourcravingscom, clickthe big blue button.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
We love easy.
The easy button atdefeatyourcravingscom.
Thank you so much for coming on, dr Glenn.
We really appreciate you.
Thanks, it was great to be here.
(45:27):
I appreciate you like smackingmy forehead saying why is this
something that we have nevertalked about on this podcast?
So thank you for Dr Glenn, forcoming on and talking about this
and if there's any tethers,anything that you're going
through in your life that youwould love to hear talked about
on this podcast that you're likeI really you know what is
really really something I'mstruggling with, you can email
(45:49):
me anytime at hello at genliscomand let me know If there's
somebody who you're like I wouldlove to hear from this person.
Or on this topic.
I'm so down to dive into anycorners and you might have
noticed in this season I've gonedown a lot of different avenues
with a lot of different kindsof people really expanding,
because there's so manydifferent people in this world
(46:10):
who have been through all theseexperiences and there's so many
different people in this worldwho have been through all these
experiences and there's so muchfor us to explore here.
So let me know if there'sanybody who you would love to
hear from I'm so down to go downthose avenues in the second
part of this year.
You can find all of the links toDr Glenn's offerings.
Of course, it's that one linkthat he shared
(46:32):
defeatyourcravingscom.
You can find that link in theshow notes.
Go and connect with him, followhim.
I know that you're going towant to learn more about his
research.
Thanks again, so much forlistening.
Stay tuned for Thursday, whereI'm going to pull a little
thread out of this episode andwe'll dive a little bit deeper.
So stay tuned for Thursday andI will see you then.
Until then, you just keepshining your magical unicorn
(46:53):
light out there for all to see.
I'll see you next time.
Bye, thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.