How to Break Free from Unhealthy Eating Habits | Judson Brewer | The Proof Clips EP #316

okay I'm Keen to kind of bring all of this together for the listener in this specific context of changing eating habits so I have a I have an avatar that I want to kind of workshop with you okay so let's pretend that you have a gentleman that comes in to see you his name is Chris and his goal is to lose 15 kilograms been to see his physician maybe he has pre-diabetes they've told him you need to lose some weight he tends to eat a what he would describe as a fairly healthy diet most nights he'll have a couple glasses of wine with dinner and often after dinner he finds himself kind of binge eating on sweet Foods while he's watching TV before bed and these are two habits in particular the drinking a couple glasses of wine each night and then having some sweet food before dinner that he would like to let go of MH he's tried before and his approach before has been abstinence just not not buying these Foods or saying as of tomorrow I'm no longer going to drink wine I'm no longer going to have dessert and also calorie tracking mhm and these have kind of served him or helped him in in the short term but ultimately have failed and he's gone back to his old habits okay so my first question here is why doesn't something like calorie tracking work at least in the long term yeah because if from a from a mathematical sense from a control Sense on paper it seems like something that should result in weight loss and then um weight maintenance yeah so starting with that I would say for the Vulcans in the audience calorie tracking would work extremely well for the people that can be hyper logical and just need to know how many calories they've taken in and how many they need to put out actually have a friend uh who did it just by the book job of losing post pregancy weight by calculating how many calories she needed to eat to or you know not eat and she lost the weight in six weeks or whatever she had planned and it all went you know perfectly because she has she can just be like yep I'm not doing that and so the tracking can be really helpful for people that are those hyper logical and I would say the reward value there is in following the logical plan like there's some it's not just that you're just going to stop doing things there's something very rewarding about being able to follow a plan is that a genetic difference I'm sure there are genetics involved I mean genetics are involved in everything so it's that's a it's a doesn't really mean much but for some people they've kind of hit that genetic Lottery and you know they're they're really good you know it just seems to come as a natural thing to them so I'm not you know and some people just need to become aware of how many calories they eat I've had a number of folks who are shocked when they just add up all the calories that they've eaten in a day like what they had no idea and that awareness can help them assign a new reward value yeah yeah so that in itself I mean kind of leans into the awareness category where they've been unaware in the past so this isn't to say that calorie counting doesn't work for anyone it's to say you know in the in the rarified cases for the Vulcans out there that's that's that would be what I would give them and they wouldn't need anything else for the rest of us it can help develop awareness for example if we're just not aware of how many calories we're putting away uh but beyond that using that as the as the stick it doesn't work so well so where would someone like Chris begin who has tried calorie tracking he tried complete elimination both of these things worked in the short term But ultimately failed yeah I would start with I would split the alcohol and the snacking into separate categories and start the alcohol because the alcohol can often you know make it harder to rely on that prefrontal cortex or just to remember things and so it can and it can also be associated with other you know kind of that enabler of other craving so we might crave sweet things after after we've had a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of drinks so alcohol contributes to the pr fontal CeX going offline yeah yeah so there are so that's I would start asking questions like what what's the difference between when you have a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of drinks at night versus when you don't and often people don't notice for example that it affects their sleep or that it just makes it harder for them you know they feel a little not quite awake in the morning it takes them a little longer to kind of become UNG groggy so there are a lot of negative consequences that even come from one or two glasses of wine that people don't even notice until they start to pay attention and then notice them and then they're like how did I not see that before so that's an example of where you know I I just like to go in and objectively take a an inventory of what all the results of the behavior are so for example what's the reward that somebody gets from having a couple of drinks with dinner you know how for a lot of people alcohol when they really pay attention they're like H I could take it or leave it it's not like the best tasting thing in the world you know and if you for somebody that's really struggling like hard alcohol you have to mask the taste of that thing because it's burn you know it tastes like burning because it's it's our body saying hey this is not really good to consume you know so we can really pay attention and see what the the process that we've learned to associate with the relaxation or the whatever that that is there that is kind of triggered and induced by the alcohol how much of the process can we keep and let go of the alcohol just using a parallel example my patients who want to quit smoking I asked so what do you get from smoking and they're like I get I get a you know I relax I'm like well cigarette you know Nick a stimulant so where's the relaxation in the smoking it's like well I get to go out on a smoke break oh well what if you went out on a non-smoke break and they go out on that non-smoke break and they they start to realize okay they like the socialization with the you know other people or just to take you know get up and walk around you know for 15 minutes as compared to sitting at their desk all day and so they can learn to actually get that break without the smoking and they can learn to capitalize on the the rewards that they're getting from that behavior and let go of the unhelpful behaviors we can do the same thing with alcohol so for example you know if it's getting to relax uh before dinner or you know having something tasty with dinner there are lots of drinks that are non-alcoholic that taste good whether it's you know flavored seltzer water or some people like kombucha or you know there are lots of things that can provide that you know that that pet pleasing taste whether it's before dinner with dinner after dinner whatever that aren't alcoholic and they don't have the negative consequences that come with the actual two carbon fragments that that come with that so you know that's one thing that I would split Out start with do people have more success with breaking a destructive habit if they're replacing it with another habit so like what your the example there that that you used with let's say someone's drinking to feel relaxed MH so step one they get they cultivate awareness they're Mindful and they realize oh hang on I don't actually enjoy the taste of alcohol but it's making me feel relaxed are they going to have more success in Breaking that habit by doing replacing it with another habit that helps them achieve relaxation so that can often be an in immediate step and I say that because the ultimate solution is learning how to relax without needing anything external because that is something that we can always rely on if we have some type of substitution then we just learn to rely on that and if we're not targeting the underlying mechanisms the substitutions are always going to fail at some point whether we don't have them or they're not providing the relaxation that we wanted and then we get freaked out like oh no it's I'm not as relaxed I need to do something else this isn't working I need more whatever as compared to learning oh here are emotions these are unpleasant I can learn to be with them right that's always available and that's something that the more we lean into it the stronger it gets so does that also apply to something like breath work for example you said uh we need to learn how to relax is you know adopting something like breath work is that just another replacement it depends on what you mean by breath work well let's just say someone learns a type of breathing that helps them feel relaxed yeah yeah it could be seen as another type of replacement as compared to learning to be with their emotions that's the ultimate I I want to say cure but the ultimate Way of working with our emotions is is really learning to see them for what they are and feel them and be with them and not resist them so breath work could be a way of distracting ourselves from those negative emotions yeah that's the distinction I was trying to to get to so ultimately you need to experience those emotions and it almost seemed like earlier you were labeling them oh that's fear that's anxiety yes so there is a this is actually popularized by a a well-known Burmese meditation teacher named mahasi out back in the sometime in the 1900s and it's a practice that's that's commonly taught in certain Western you know vasana or or Insight Meditation circles where they literally talk about noting your experience so if there's a thinking you just note thinking if they're seeing you might note seeing or you might note green white you know um wood you know color type of thing if I'm just looking around you'd note what you're hearing you know their sounds and Body Sensations you know tightness tingling burning heat uh expanding Contracting you know those types of things so the noting is really helpful for inducing what's described both in physics and psychology as the observer effect I think I write a little bit about this in the in the Hunger habit as well where by observing we can't be simultaneously as identified with an emotion or a thought or a feel or a Body Sensations so if we note them or label them oh that's thinking that's different than I'm thinking this and we're so identified that we're caught up in that story yeah exactly it gives us the the distance the perspective it's distance isn't the perfect word because we're not distancing ourselves from them but at the same time we're getting perspective and we're getting some distance from being identified with Chris was not only having difficulty giving up the the wine every evening but he was also finding himself binge eating after dinner so just to get really practical here what would that look like for him on a nightly basis at the beginning in terms of cultivating awareness what is he what is he kind of trying to pay attention to yeah I would start by having Chris pay attention to the results of the night snacking so what how do you feel afterwards how do you how was his sleep um all the results and then so he could really carefully catalog those then I would have him pay attention as he was night snacking to to play with that pleasure Plateau you know what's the first bite like what's the second bite like because for a lot of people they just need a couple of bites of something sweet and then they're good and that that generally is not a problem right so I would have him pay attention to those find that pleasure poto start playing with that and then I would have him just explore what's it like not to eat after dinner and I I do this myself I couple of years ago I just started eating you know it's like not eating anything like I used to have snacks at night no big deal but I just stopped eating after dinner and I realized that um I slept much better especially if I ate an early dinner you know so like eat at like 4 or five and then you know not eat until you know breakfast the next morning and I would just get to sleep more easily and sleep was you know more continuous and and you know better sleep metrics and so I would have him pay attention to the the benefits that come with you know not night snacking especially um and on top of that so what I still notice after years of doing this is occasionally I'll have a craving to eat some food at night and and especially if I'm in bed and my my brain's like oh no if you don't have a snack you're not going to get to sleep and I've learned just like notice those Sensations and they go away pretty quickly you know it's that thought that fear thought there's a there's a craving and then within a minute or two it's gone and then I'm all good and so I would have Chris and anybody else that wanted play with this just notice like it's not that hard especially if we don't resist res our Cravings so that saying what we resist persists it's true break that down yeah because that almost seems uh contrary to the idea of just saying I'm I'm going to have dinner and not eat anymore after that like so if if if someone is experiencing Cravings after dinner yeah is the best line of action to resist that and not eat something or is it to at a little bit of something I would so I would start with like not putting any reals on it and just do what they normally do so they could catalog what that Baseline is then I would have them pay attention as they ate a little bit of something explore that pleasur Plateau see how much they need to satisfy that urge that itch and then if they wanted to I would have them explore using curiosity as a way to write out a craving and just if they're not hungry just not eat is that what urge surfing is yeah it's basically right ride out that craving yeah yeah so we have a you know the formal protocol that we use that we've used in our studies whether smoking or eating is that we have people it's called rain the acronym so R stands for recognize so recognize that you have a craving coming on a stands for allow or accept that that it is there so if we resist the craving it's going to get stronger the ey stands for investigating that's where we get really curious instead of going oh no here's this craving and fighting it or resisting it we go oh what does this craving feel like and the n stands for note so we note the sensations as they come and go it's like tightness tension burning Here's a thought here's this here's this and so we can as that that wave of a craving comes up we can get on that wave we can write it until it goes away okay that makes sense to me so we're not resisting the craving in that we are seeing it for what it is yes yes that craving is there yeah but it doesn't mean that we have to reach into the freezer and grab the container of ice cream that's you know if we're if we're quote unquote kind of depriving ourself of ice cream that's what I was thinking when I was when you were saying resistance yeah well deprivation you know it's funny that you say that depriving ourselves of ice cream what are we really depriving ourselves of you know if we're having a craving for ice cream and we're not hungry we're not actually depriving ourselves of anything calorically because our body's got its needs met so we can say we're we're depriving ourselves of indulging a craving and this is where we can actually get into this territory of meeting our needs instead of feeding our wants so we can say oh and I I get this a lot where you say well you know isn't that you know aren't aren't you not taking care of yourself if you're not you know you know feeding those those wants and it's really about that's not the the right question the question is asking ourselves what do I need so if we're lonely if we've got some strong emotion if we have something happening food is not going to fix an emotion it's just going to distract our distract us momentarily and feed the habit of eating when we have a strong emotion the true way of taking care of ourselves so I think of this as Med you know the self-care as compared to self-indulgence when we are truly asking the question of what I what do I need we are caring for ourselves when we meet that need as compared to scrp catching that itch of an urge when we want something yeah we really have to work with our psychology yes to get out of this yeah and it's not some crazy sit on the couch four days a week for 40 years type of work with our psychology it starts with just learning oh this is how our brains work oh I can be with emotions and thoughts instead of having to do something about them where that that being becomes the new doing it's not it's it's not I'm not saying it's easy but I'm saying it's not that complicated right it sounds very intuitive to be in touch with your feelings your emotions what's happened well I think you know I think there's this attention economy that learned that it can sell it can get us to buy stuff to distract ourselves by scratching those itches of an urge that says that's unpleasant make it go I'll make it go away for 1995 a month you know and so the more that attention economy revs up and gets us to buy things the more it is incentivized to keep us distracted and the more the farther away we distance ourselves from ourselves let's come back to Chris let's say that he comes back in to see you as a patient he says doc I've been employing some of these tools and it's been helping but here and there I'll I'll have a slip up MH and once I have a slip up I just go for it you know I end up eating the entire tub of ice cream yeah is this something that you come across a bit it's so common that there's a scientific term for it it's called The abstinence violation effect okay my patients call it the fits yeah if it you know I've I've I've had three or four Scoops I may as well go the whole top y y so whether you use the scientific or the common term it doesn't matter it's the same phenomenon and it is very very common so here I what I say is great you slipped up if someone is open to learning from that situation they're actually better off than if they're not open to it so you know often people think oh I took two steps backwards and what I what I ask people is do you learn more when you struggle than when you don't struggle and typically the answer is yes because that's you know in that struggle is the is the growth in the learning so if somebody can be open to learning in that slip up they can actually learn more about themselves and more about their brains and more about how to work with future slip UPS than if they sit there and berate themselves and beat themselves up and say they've failed [Music]

Channel: The Proof with Simon Hill

Views: 2,716

Keywords: simon hill, science, nutrition, evidence, facts, diet, how to, vegan, plant based, healthy living, wellness, podcast, conversation, the proof, the proof podcast, plant proof, health, the proof with simon hill, fitness

Id: ea3MYCsn3W4

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024