- Denial, self-deception. It is so much more common than you think. Case and point, "Secret Eaters." Over, and over, and over again, this British health TV show
proves to its contestants they are lying to themselves about how bad their
eating habits really are. In the very beginning of every episode, the host will inquire
about what's going on with their weight and the clueless contestants pretty much always say
roughly the same thing. - But sometimes, I think
I don't eat enough. - Because I don't eat that much. - So some days I don't
have enough food, yeah. - The people around me are
eating what I'm eating, yet they're a size zero. Most of the time I'm good. - The host, Anna, always plays
it off like it's a mystery. - It just doesn't sound like
you're eating that much. Little bit of a mystery going on here. - But she knows and we know
exactly where this is going. The in-house cameras and
their private detectives will inevitably catch
the contestants eating far more than they think they are. Even when these people are certain that they could not possibly
be eating very much. But how is this even possible? It seems a little bit crazy that people could be this out of touch with what they're eating. And these people aren't sleep eating. They're not under a hypnotic
spell and they're not stupid. And yeah, it is possible that this show is just entirely faked, but the truth is we are scary
good at lying to ourselves. So today we're discussing self-deception, behavior change, of course, and my personal story of secret
eating over the past year. Let's start with Natalie. Just like everyone on the show, Natalie thinks her diet is not that bad. - From one sense, I kind of think, "Oh, actually, I could
be quite healthy really, because I don't have fizzy drinks. I don't have salt, so." - Not a very high threshold for healthy, but, mm-yeah, okay. (giggles) - I wouldn't say I had sugar. I wouldn't say my diet's high in sugar. - Oh, really?
- Because I don't eat sweets or drink pop. - So here we have someone
who self-reportedly does not consume a lot of sugar. But then, of course, the show
has their PIs follow her. And not only does Natalie
regularly eat sugar, they catch her eating cake while walking her dog in the
park multiple times. (giggles) But Natalie's diet is
actually one of the worst I have ever seen on the show. She's basically binge eating. Obviously, binge eating
is a very specific thing, so we don't know if she
technically meets the criteria, but in one fast food
meal, she ordered this. - [Investigator] The
woman ordered something, not the last order, but the
one before, I want the same. - [Fastfood crew] Uh, all right. - It's a large Coke.
We've got a large fries. We've got a large chicken sandwich, two double cheeseburgers, onion rings, and these are the sauces to go with that. - A lot of the people on the show eat really massive portions of food, but this is a step above that. And obviously, I am biased,
but as an ex-binge eater, I can almost feel that
heart pumping dopamine rush that would cause someone
to order a meal this large. And this is a trend for her. On one Saturday, she ordered all of this. - [Investigator] Two
sausages wrapped in bacon and filled with cheese. - [Host] Two Wispa bars and a coffee. Cup of coffee and a slice of
chocolate and banana cake. Large portion of fries, beans,
fried mini breast fillets, a chicken burger with a hash brown, and lots of sachets of sauces. An evening of alcohol follows
adding another 1600 calories, fried chicken wrap and
chips covered in sauce, and a large bar of chocolate for dessert. - Assuming she eats this way
with any sort of regularity, how could she possibly not know where her weight issues are coming from? Pretty sure they also said
Natalie works for the police, so hopefully she's not a detective. A lot of the secret eaters on this show are eating what they think is healthy and sometimes it is technically healthy but it just happens to be low calorie. Or they're really
underestimating how little snacks can quickly add up to a big problem. But we might ask ourselves, how can someone routinely eat like this and then go on TV and say, "Hey, I don't understand
why I'm overweight." Or eat three chocolate bars
and a piece of cake in one day and then go on TV and say, "No, no. I don't eat that much sugar." It's just such extreme
behavior to be confused about how could this eating be secret? Well, the answer is self-deception. It is the most common theme on this show. Present in every single episode and it's an issue you'll
probably have to deal with if you try and change your behavior in any way shape or form, not just in relation to weight loss. It's self-deception, denial. It's a bias in the way that we think that gives us rose colored glasses when it comes to our own behavior. Natalie's mom, Sue, for example, thinks that she doesn't eat that much. - Sue, you said to me last
week that you didn't think that you were eating that much
to justify why your 17 stone. So let's just have a look. - Turns out Sue's been eating
healthy, balanced meals, she mostly cooks at home. But each several chocolate bars with her multiple cups of
coffee, each and every day. Now, sometimes on this show the people are just not
really paying attention to what they're eating
and maybe this is Sue. But her husband is with her 24/7 and does not approve of her food choices. - No you're not having chocolate. You don't need it. Get fruit. - He knows her diet is full of junk food and routinely points it out to her. I guess because he had a
heart attack years ago, lost a bunch of weight, and
really changed his behavior, and wants the same for his wife. So point being, Sue can't use the excuse of simply being unaware. She does know what she's eating. She has someone literally
following her around and swatting the chocolate
out of her hands. (pensive music) So Sue, is literally in
denial, or lying to herself about her chocolate consumption. There's literally
nothing else it could be. Self-deception involves the beliefs that are acquired/maintained in the face of strong counter-evidence. - I kid myself that that's the
only sugar I have in the day. Then you see. - Well, it's not. And you know it's bad. Otherwise, you wouldn't be whispering and trying to hide it from Joe. - You're on a TV show
about people who overeat. The host is currently showing
you evidence of you overeating and you're still not convinced
that you're overeating. That is quite a lot of evidence that contradicts your narrative. And therefore, proof that
Sue is lying to herself about her chocolate consumption. But why exactly do we lie
to ourselves like this? And it seems to be because on some level we don't really want to know the truth. Case and point, another
contestant on the show, Laura. - [Host] Laura has achieved
weight loss before, shifting around four stone in total. But in the last six months, that weight loss has
curiously ground to a hold. - I think we've tried
everything aren't we. - Laura is one of the people on the show who's really genuinely trying
to live a healthy lifestyle. And is frustrated by her lack of results. - A couple of people in our office are ordering like chips and
cheese, and garlic bread, and all the stuff that
I actually try to avoid. They're like tiny. - She works out with a trainer. She cooks all her own food. She brings a salad almost
every single day for lunch. It all sounds pretty good, right? - I go to the gym, and
I give it like 110%. I come out and I'm absolutely sweating. What else can I do? I just don't know. - So Laura, take me
through the sorts of things you might have. - You know, I'll grab a banana
or a yogurt for breakfast, and maybe lunch I'll have
like a soup or sandwich. - Laura has this belief in
this view of herself that says, "I'm a healthy person. I
live a healthy lifestyle." - I do think I pick really healthy things. I eat salads and soup at lunchtime. So I do think that my diet is pretty good. - And that belief is important to her. She's lost a ton of weight and she's done it through
changing her lifestyle to be healthier. At some point in the weight loss journey, I think we can all relate to Laura, where it feels like we're
doing everything right, but it's just for some reason not translating to results on the scale. (video warbles) - With my weight loss, I feel like I've just
hit this sort of plateau and it's not going anywhere
anymore, and I just don't... I just dunno why. - [Host] We think we might
have found something. - Oh God. - Of course, when the show looks deeper into Laura's behavior, she is found to be making
an effort most of the time. The camera catches her
routinely eating lattes and donuts for breakfast, and at least a few sugary
treats almost every single day. - Laura ordered and it was a
large hazelnut skinny latte, and a cinnamon swirl. - [Kiana] Laura's actually found
to have a huge sweet tooth. Eating a ton of sugary foods, cupcakes, pastries, chocolate bars. - You averaged out
around 700 calories a day just from your sweet foods. - Along with accidentally
adding way too much salad cream to her salads and sandwiches. I love all these distinctly
British foods, by the way. Every episode they're
eating jacket potato, salad cream, cuppa. (giggles) - [Host] Sue is a classic tea time treater reaching for a sweet snack with a cuppa. - I don't know that if you
made the show about Canadians that we'd have even one
thing that was like, distinctly Canadian that we were eating. (patriotic music) Anyway, back to Laura. - How many calories in one of them? - It's only little.
- It's only little. (laughs) - It's only little is a great example of ignoring counter evidence
that would demonstrate to you that you're lying to yourself about how committed you
think you are to your diet. It is motivational reasoning in action. Self-deception involves beliefs
that are acquired/maintained in the face of strong counter-reference and that are motivated
by desires or emotions. In Laura's case, as someone
who is trying really hard and has succeeded at weight loss, she has this important belief, "I'm a healthy person. I
live a healthy lifestyle." She's motivated to keep this belief safe because it's important to her self-image and her self-esteem, even if
that means lying to herself. An example of how this
works is confirmation bias, where we look around for
evidence that our belief, in this case, the belief that says, "I live a very healthy lifestyle. There is no reason that I
should be gaining weight," is true. And then either discount
such as undervaluing, via its only little, or simply ignore evidence to the contrary. - [Host] During surveillance, we caught you getting
through 3,000 calories a day. - I seriously didn't realize
how different my diet is, to how I say it is. Basically, tricked myself into thinking when I maybe putting that Twix in my mouth that I've just eaten a salad
when really I haven't... I've eaten the Twix. - That's literally exactly how it works. She's right on the money. - I think now seeing everything, I think I've been lying to myself. You know, telling my trainer
that I eat really well. - So denial.
- Yeah. - A lot of respect for Laura here. She definitely has one
of the most self-aware and positive reactions to
this information on the show. - Surely you must feel a
little bit defeated inside. - Oh God, definitely. - Yeah, she probably does, Gotta love that British
bluntness. (giggles) But yeah. Anyway,
awareness is the first step to successful behavior change. And with Laura's great attitude and existing desire to
change her behavior, this information helped
put her back on track. And by the update, she was
successfully losing weight. I feel like I need to interject with my own secret eater's
story here as well. So for the past year on and off, I've been trying and
failing to lose weight. Finally, now I am
successfully losing weight but how could this be? I'm not like a secret eater's contestant. I'm not accidentally eating
1000 calorie bowls of cereal because I thought cream was a
suitable alternative to milk. I'm not putting an entire
jar of mayo on my salad because first off, that's weird. And second off justice for Dawn. - I've caught the jar. - Yeah, but it was already
open in the fridge. - On top of that, I thought that this was gonna be the easiest weight loss
attempt of my entire life. Because my diet right
now is more nutritious than it's ever been before. For the first time in my life, I don't have a food addiction. My cravings are minimal. I don't like or eat fast
food at all anymore. And not in a secret eater's way. I genuinely do not eat
fast food. (giggles) I do like pizza, but I
couldn't even tell you the last time I ordered it. I don't go out to restaurants. I exercise more than ever,
and I enjoy it more than ever. And I'm great at changing my behavior. If I have to drop a habit or add a habit, I know exactly what to do and I do it. So I'm kind of just like,
what's the problem here? You know what I mean? And looking back at all my failed attempts over the last year, I'm still not 100% sure
exactly where I went wrong. But logically, I've talked
it down to essentially a combination of secret
eating and self-deception. Just like the people on this show. I think I sort of thought that because I'm so much better
at most of these things and I'm in such a better place
that I wouldn't have to be, as like methodical or something. And it really felt like I
was doing everything right. And when that's happening,
like with Laura, I'm sure, it does get tempting to think like, "Okay, well, you know, maybe I do have like a medical
condition." (blows raspberry) But in my case, I don't
need to go on British TV to have Anna proved to me that that belief is a delusion and a lie. I swear that thought
would occasionally pop up and I'm like, "Nuh-uh, you
know fucking better than that." That is some fat logic there, bro. You do not have a medical condition. You are eating too much. In my case, as we've discussed today, we're all biased toward
viewing our behavior in the most positive of lights. And really focusing on piece
of information that prove what we already believe or what we want to
believe about ourselves. We like to think we're doing the most, we're eating low calorie, we're
giving 110% on the workouts. But in reality, for me, after feeling like I was doing
literally everything right and couldn't possibly be doing anymore, I discovered after looking
back on my records of diet and exercise that I was not
tracking as consistently as it felt like I was. And I wasn't exercising
and eating low calorie as consistently as I thought I was. I had clear patterns of
strong change efforts followed by weeks if not
months of nothing tracked. Which kind of shows my level
of focus and commitment at different periods of time. I'm self-aware enough not
to spend the entire day eating Snickers bars
and forgetting about it. But the fact of the matter is, you do not have to be full out delusional to be subtly lying to yourself enough about your own behavior
to not be losing weight. The math for weight loss is pretty slight. When you're really obese, you can lose weight just by
adopting healthier habits, and dealing with the
major issues in your diet. But for me, I've now learned the hard way that it comes down to
consistency, effort, and honesty. There's a very small margin for error. If you're aiming for just a
500 or less calorie deficit. It is so easy to be relaxed with a few hundred calories here, or a few hundred calories there. Then combine that with
being relaxed on the weekend or relaxed with your tracking, and suddenly you've relaxed yourself out of any substantial weight loss. You can destroy an entire
week's worth of effort in one or two meals and you don't have to be
a binge eater to do that. So anyway, I hope that's helpful. This is such a big issue. That feeling of doing everything right, but it's just not translating to results was starting to really mess with me. One of the big things with
this weight loss attempt versus kind of my weight loss attempt from the past was my
commitment to losing weight in the healthiest weight possible. Which to me meant higher
calories, less obsessiveness, more kindness to myself
when I made mistakes. But I guess I was like
overdoing it. (giggles) And I'm still not perfectly sure what went wrong during
that period of time. But the fact of the matter is, aggressively tracking, planning, and not falling off
track works as intended and that is the cold hard truth. Hope you guys enjoy this video. And I'll see you in the next one. (bright gentle music)
