How To Stop Your Food Addiction

pleasure Welcome to our next talk and we're going to try and keep this G-rated maybe welcome to the pleasure Dome even I'm I'm Dr graduating and I'm Dr Paul Salazar and I am Dr Amanda moroney Dr moroney thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expert and wisdom on sort of Lifestyle medicine mindfulness that kind of stuff and now we're going to talk about how pleasure kind of controls us harms us sure like um we kind of beat ourselves up right when we kind of fall into our bad habits um you know when you you know you end up oh I'm rolling into Wendy's again after a hard day of work like you kind of feel really guilty afterwards put Paul to chicken wing let's be chicken wings let's be honest I should say this yeah sorry I know about your chicken wings it's a it's a thing and look we're not sponsored here VW is not sponsored by Kale although he'd like to be that's right I'm not sponsored by the chicken wing although I would settle for a year's supply for free as payment but big broccoli is not knocked on my door that's right when we talk about lifestyle and things like this you got to remember we're just going by what the evidence has told us and not by any secondary gain so but but everybody falls short and falls into these little traps and then it's hard like you said not to beat yourself up nasty I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy or oh I'm never going to be able to do it yeah and it's that self-talk that's really we have to like kind of manage because it's easy for me you know I've come before and we've talked about like you know education is huge right but it's it's hard to put that education into practice like knowledge is power but action is like your superpower right so putting things into action is really important but it's hard to do that especially when you are wired it's like you're wired very differently you're wired for pleasure yeah and so oftentimes you know when I lead my groups I I kind of pull them and say well you know what are some reasons you eat for example let's talk about eating version right so why why are some reason and oftentimes they say well um it's social like we're we're around people we're celebrating fun you know vacations holidays um sometimes they say when I'm bored when I'm stressed yeah when I'm lonely when I'm angry yep you know those are heart hunger reason so we talk about three different types of um reasons we eat and that's taken from a course called craving change it's a great course that I took along the way to learn about this the behaviors of eating and they talk about physical hunger which is like I haven't eaten in 12 hours my stomach is rumbling it's empty I'm very functional unnecessary it's necessary keep it alive you need calories um two there's mouth hunger which is like nothing will satisfy my craving except for a chicken wing right so like you're specific about what that craving is that's your your mouth hunger and then there's the heart partner right so this is the emotional eating right we also talk about emotional eating so when these difficult emotions arise right we as humans don't like discomfort we are uncomfortable with being uncomfortable and so we try to do things to push them away and so when we do that um we lean towards things that make us feel better and we have this Center in our brain called the nucleus accumbens or we call it the pleasure Center and it goes back to our caveman days it's not a bad thing it kept us alive we were wired in arcade mandates for two things survival and reproduction and so our pleasure centers in those times were really triggered by only two things they're triggered by food that was higher in calories and sex right so that's why sex and and really tasty high calorie foods are pleasurable so when the pleasure Center is triggered this flood of neurochemicals released dopamine is one of them and it makes us feel better so don't beat yourself up when you're feeling stressed you this is an uncomfortable feeling it's a threat to you right just and your brain doesn't know the difference between you know bear chasing you and the boss yelling at you and so you feel like I don't like this feeling and I need to feel better so you reach for these um you know things that will will make you feel better so oftentimes they are higher calorie foods or Ultra processed foods and and the industry knows your biology they sure do and they play on it and that's what with salt and sugar primarily right sugar salt and fat they're the biggest triggers right these are the highest bang for your buck in terms chemically formulate these Ultra processed foods to get you hooked and make you want to keep coming back because it feels good does maple bacon fall under that Sugar yeah sure like all three rolls into one yeah but if you're being chased by a bear don't reach for the maple sugar bacon run and so um when I it stands to reason when I talk to patients about undoing this like what can you do what are some strategies I'll share some with you if you'd like me yeah okay so I want to be hanging so um you know one thing is to you know pause right that's where mindfulness plays a role yeah mindfulness plays a role because mindfulness is basically being present in the present right but this is key without judgment right of yourself or the situation yeah exactly we're wanting things to be different way to explain this so like when we get that bad feeling we have to kind of settle in and say okay I am feeling and label it I'm feeling stressed I'm feeling tired I'm feeling happy um whatever that feeling is and recognize and just pause so the first step is just pausing and recognizing you know in our world is so hard to do isn't it always in such a hurry and one of the bear will catch you sure and one of our viewers talked about exactly what you're saying they said I'll paraphrase a little bit to keep it clean is that he said when you're looking back with one foot and looking forward with the other you're actually urinating on the present and I thought wow it's a it's a bit crass but it's a really great way to say you're missing what's happening right now which is your whole life potentially that's one of my favorite Buick yeah thanks to the view it was amazing comments right you guys share that in my classes yeah yeah I thought it was really brilliant and and what you're kind of saying is so be aware that something's happening and just take a look at it be in the moment like you said not judging and saying okay now what can I do I guess exactly so so pausing is number one and then number two is um is I usually say like give yourself some a little bit of time before you jump into feeling better okay so for some people feeling uncomfortable is very uncomfortable it can it can root back to trauma so this is this is for a person who's not suffered you know from any major stress or trauma because that requires very different treatment but you know kind of labeling and and instead of trying to push it away or saying it's bad to feel uncomfortable get curious about it say hmm like how is this how's this feeling in my body right now you know is it feeling tightness what am I feeling and that just lets you land in your body okay this is from by the way I didn't make this up I'm not that smart this is from the work of Dr Judson Brewer who is a a psycho a psychiatrist in the United States he does a lot with um changing bad habits and he has some amazing resources out there maybe we can link them sure I'm not affiliated with him but I just love his work and it's really been life-changing for a lot of my patients just to to approach approach um habit change from a mindfulness perspective yeah but sometimes it's hard to be in that moment still so what I see to patients is set a timer for 10 minutes and then find something else that gives you pleasure that has nothing to do with food so usually you want to make a little list ahead of time and know okay I'm going to call my best friend I'm going to read a chapter from my book it's got to be something you can do on the spot and something that doesn't cost any money so it's easy to you know initiate and eat a bag of chips fall into that thing no that's that's like asking for a friend because Cravings usually do the same thing as anxiety attacks right they Peak and then they they fall down but we never give it enough time to fall back down we just do something about it right and and mindfulness is not about doing it's about being it's almost like that waiting to send the angry reply email right you know you can write it just put it in the same draft section take a deep breath and go back and say oh that was a little harsh a little too reactive okay and I would just hard to do tell people that I was just gonna say we do not always practice what we preach no I must say wow wow but that was it yes I'm Pat I'm passionate for sure and by Nature I'm a Justice Seeker so I am a little bit reactive that way so and by some mindfulness and intentionality become a lot better yeah but we do teach a lot about different aspects of life and we don't follow everything that we teach we try to we really try I follow everything yeah yeah we I I try my best and I've learned a lot from all her videos then we try but just throwing that out there don't think oh these kids are saying all this stuff we don't do it all we try our best we are all human right yeah so so it's a nature for wanting to take action and make those feelings go away but you know if you stay with them for a moment get used to sitting with them get used to feeling comfortable with discomfort you know you do that pleasurable activity you yeah you so you can do that kind of non-food pleasurable activity or non-social Media or non-gambling or whatever it is that that you do to make yourself feel better you pause you give yourself 10 minutes and when it comes to food for example when that 10 minute buzzer comes up you often you'll find that the the craving that intense craving has has subsided right and you can move on but if the if the craving's still there again we're not going to negative self-talk we're going to say okay so in this moment I'm feeling this you're still being mindful I'm going to then you can take say it's I don't know ice cream you don't take the whole carton out and then just kind of eat until you feel like oh disgusting you take it out you take a piece you take a portion and then you eat it mindfully so you're sitting enjoy it you're taking the time you've taken this much time already you want to then actually savor it because it's okay life is about pleasure too sure so you're going to take that first bite and it's going to do this for you oh yeah so yes right that dopamine gets released but if you pay attention your second bite will be like oh third bite will be like meh and fourth bite is like all right so what happens is we often just keep eating it because before it's even right but if you actually pay attention that first bite or two gives you that dopamine hit it gives you that pleasure Center charge it gives you what you need so you don't have to do it so all or nothing thinking has to go out of the window you just you know focus on little changes and you can have that little bit of a treat but maybe just have a few bites get what you need from it and move on without the guilt and the negative self it's like the person that has like one square of dark chocolate after dinner kind of thing which I just like it always seems so civilized to me but yeah really this is going to do something but but what do we call it a guilty pleasure right let's stop saying that it's pleasure and we are wired for pleasure pleasure is you know okay and and it it helped us survive the Bears all right so if you're feeling this way remember stop drop [Laughter] and then set a timer for like 10 minutes and then redirect redirect redirect distract a bit Yeah so pause redirect and then indulge mindfully yeah and conservatively yeah and don't be yourself up about it and I think I would say that's very nowadays too everyone is so hard on themselves yeah especially social media makes a lot of us that way I tell I tell patients like picture the person you love the most in front of you what would you tell them if they messed up you wouldn't be saying you're such an idiot what is wrong with you I can't believe you did it again you're a loser see I love you never say that you would be like hey it's okay I mess up two it's all good I love you I got you we need to talk to ourselves that way we need to treat ourselves with that same Grace that we would give the person we love the most but we just we don't do that that's that's such a great take-home message that's like a perfect thing to say love yourself love yourself I'm gonna change the end of every video that's you're in charge of your own health love yourself and if you love this video please like it and subscribe to our Channel and remember you are in charge of your own health and love yourself and thanks to Dr Mirage for joining us thank you very much thank you so much from you every time I love it we'll see you next time

Channel: Talking With Docs

Views: 56,957

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Id: sPPQC5TcH2g

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Thu May 18 2023