The Pleasure Trap: Psychology and How We Eat

hello PB NSG let's hear for Paul put your hands together and I love all these hard-working volunteers like he said especially Jeremy Stephanie and everybody else everyone that volunteers thank you I'm proud to be a volunteer um happy with what they brought into my life in the past year year and a half like Paul said my name is Jim Bala and I'm only half the man that I used to be today I'd like to tell you a story of how I lost a hundred and sixty-four palms in 13 months I started off I remember my earliest days with food is my mom and dad they really didn't have any processed food in the house it was always Dairy Dairy Dairy Dairy milk milk milk don't drink anything there was nothing no pop in the house nothing like that no iced tea or was always just milk I remember my sandwiches going to high school and junior high school being that big dad would sandwich with a inch of meat on and a bunch of cheese and mayonnaise and all the other kids were jealous they had one slice of Bologna I wish I was again their sandwich now but like I said I've been overweight my whole life and about 30 years old they started having some problems you know and high cholesterol high blood pressure and now I'm starting to lose my way it's my first time speaking to a crowd so now what was I gonna say right this is my story and it's easy to tell so I've been on every diet that there is out there are always trying to lose weight and then I'd always gain it back and getting sicker and sicker after 30 taking all kind of medications and I guess the problems all really hit their head and 2009 I'm a painting contractor and we're on the job and I was having a hard time climbing the ladder because I was so overweight and I was having to hire people to help me because I couldn't do my job the way they did it before so I had to hire two or three guys and I remember I was so tired after four or five hours of work I didn't know what I was gonna do I'll certainly get scared and nervous and then you know I fell down on the job I was coming down the steps and I tripped on the steps and I kind of sat backwards on a wire brush didn't really think anything of it the wire brush poked me a little bit on my butt cheek and that was it we went on for the rest of the day and I never thought about it that night when we got home I got a call from the hospital and my dear cousin was in the hospital he was 50 some years old and he was passing away unfortunately from an alcohol ism and so we ran to the hospital to see him they didn't think he's gonna make it through the night and Beaumont hospital had a lot of infections going on they had staph infection they had Mercer and everything else and they warned us about it and they asked us hey if you have a wound or anything like that you know let us know I didn't even think about me poking myself from my rear I mean it didn't even bleed I had one little dot of blood when I got home that's all I noticed so they dressed us up in our gowns we set our last prayers and wishes to my cousin and and came home the next day I got up got in the bathroom and I felt something sore on my behind I didn't even think about that's where you know I got injured yesterday and it felt like a pimples are growing there and I'm like wow that's a weird place for a pimple I didn't think anything of it and the next day I come home didn't bother me for the rest of the day next day I get up now the thing is sore and it's about half the size of a golf ball and it was kind of bothering me and I'm like wow this is getting worse I wonder what the heck's going on and it was on a Saturday and I was gonna go to the emergency room my doctor was close but I had a ten thousand dollar deductible to get into the hospital and I said you know what I'll wait until Monday and I'll go see my doctor first so Sunday I woke up now this thing is as big as a tennis ball I'm on the back there it's really sore what do I do wait another day until Monday now I wake up and it's the size of a softball so I get in in the morning head and neighbor drive me to the doctor and the doctors like get to the hospital right now you have a huge abscess why did you wait so long and told me to go directly to the hospital so I went directly to the hospital they didn't even go put me through triage they just ran me right into the back stuck me in an operating room and I'm sorry the story's hard to tell and they warned me and they said that we might have to amputate your leg and I don't really remember too much after that they took me into surgery they did a surgery and I remember about 23 days later I had 23 operations that abscess had can't work this way down and the infection that I caught in the hospital I guess got all the way down into my leg and up into my into my intestines so after 23 every day they would go in and they would debrief and they cut the leg open and see if I had any more infection going on then the next day I will come in and they would see that the infection was still growing they take a little more and then the third day they take a little more so I went through 23 these operations by the time they were done the skin from my leg from the front all the way to the back was all the way down to the bone half my butt cheek was gone in the back and I had started coming up into the stomach and the 23 third day when I got out the operating room in the morning they noticed I kept bleeding and they couldn't stop the bleeding and they couldn't stop it so they took me back in an operating room they looked around they couldn't tell where the bleeding was coming from what they had done on the 23rd day is they actually caught near my rectum and they nicked a hole right about an inch inside of my rectum after they got through operating on that 23rd day they had put some gauze up there so no blood or anything will get inside me well the goz was hiding where I was bleeding from so they kept giving me blood and the blood was going into my stomach and I'm puffing up on my stomach and I'm telling them oh my god it's hurt so bad I don't know what to do and if anybody knows when you have stomach problems they don't want to give you any painkillers so they took me off my painkillers I can't tell you how bad the pain was so I went in for a 25th operation there trying to find out where the blood is and this is again on the 23rd day they couldn't figure out where the bleeding was coming from I passed away on the on the operating table a day they brought me back and they still couldn't find the bleeding now a new doctor came in because it was 12 or 13 hours since they'd seen it and a new doctor took me in the operating room for the 26th time he found where the bleeding was but not before they opened up my intestines up here on top and they took six seven feet of my intestines out up here they didn't need to but everything was just so filled with blood they didn't know where the bleeding was coming from and they were trying to do whatever they could to save my life so after they cut that out I'm still bleeding still bleeding and I guess the new doctor finally seen where the bleeding was they end up patching me up I passed away three times on that operating table I'm grateful that I still have my leg I'm grateful that everything they did even though it was a mistake on going on but they were desperate they had to save my life not mad at anybody it happened I'm happy to be here I always kept upbeat I got out of the hospitals probably six months later and then I went through four months of rehab trying to learn how to walk again because I hadn't moved at all when I went into the hospital I finally got home ten or eleven months later and by this time I had a colostomy bag because of all the work they did on my intestines I still want to work I don't wish that on my worst enemy but they were able to reverse the cost me Bay after four or five months I'm happy about that so now everything is good so I listen to my doctor I took all the drugs that he wanted me to and this is five years later now back to 2017 I'm working like I said I can't do my job anymore I'm 320 a palms now I just everything is bad my leg since the circulation is bad I was turning black and blue on the bottom I was afraid I was gonna lose my leg life was bad I was depressed I hired a new guy and he came into work a thin guy in his 30s he's like I gotta change my diet I gotta think of a more nutritious thing to eat and when he said that a bell rang I said you know I've got some old cassette tapes in my house from dr. John McDougall I'll bring them in tomorrow and we could listen to him so the next day that was November to 22nd 2015 I brought the tapes in I started playing them and then it hit me dawned on me Jim here's your answer right there right in front of you I went out throw away lunch went to Kroger's got me some fruit and had fruit and started 100% that day never look back haven't cheated once having cheated once never wanted to thinking of ice cream meat after everything that I've learned from great doctors like dr. Doug Lyall the pleasure trap all his books all the free YouTube videos he gives out and John McDougall all the other plant-based guys that have been here I listened every single day after that day I got more educated more educated on what I was doing to my body I felt so proud to eat this way I started to feel good three days after I started the diet I had diarrhea 8 to 20 times a day for five years since I got out of the hospital I was afraid to move out of the house I was afraid to go anywhere it was embarrassing going to work having to use the bathroom constantly three days after starting a plant-based diet the diary or one away I've never had it since this is two years later the fourth day my leg would swelled up every day for five years I was taking water pills I had to hold it up above my heart with three pillows at night when I went to sleep to get the swelling down the fourth day the swelling went away never again if it ever swelled or bothered me again so here it is three and four days after I start the diet the two things that I suffer from the most are gone I have a normal life I continued on I'm the temp age I'm a diabetic they found out when I was in the hospital five years earlier and I was taking 130 units insulin the tenth day woke up I check my sugar it's down at about 60 and then I ate breakfast and went up to 90 and I didn't require any insulin after breakfast I'm like wow so I went off to work in about an hour later I took my meal with me and I checked it it's down at 85 how can this be so checked it laid around I had my lunch when I went to start eating lunch it was down around 80 I didn't need any insulin that day ten days later from a hundred and thirty units of insulin pumped into my belly to nothing unbelievable two days later I wake up I'm dizzy I'm tired I didn't feel right I checked my sugar so it was perfect like 89 I'm like I wonder what my blood pressures doing so I check my blood pressure was like 80 over 50 because I was still taking my meds oh my god is that well so I stopped taking the meds that day I didn't consult with my doctor it wasn't a smart thing to do but I figured it's that low I'll see what it goes to the next day and I checked it my blood pressure today is 112 over 68 and it was that way after two weeks I was on eight medications medication for my leg my cholesterol was 360 I took cholesterol medication for twenty years I went in for my three-month checkup after I started the diet the cholesterol was down to a hundred and thirty-four without meds so I'm off all my meds now off eight of the nine meds that I took I'm still on thyroid medication but that's been cut in half so this has been the easiest thing I've could have ever done it saved my life I feel fantastic I walk every day because of the energy that I have I mean I implore everyone of you if you haven't started before and you're thinking about doing it do it like I did go all the way in you'll see a change in ten days after ten days if you don't feel any better if you if you're not amazed by how great your health feels then go back to eating the way you been I figured hey I'm 50 years old I've been feasting every day having a birthday party and dessert and cakes and everything hey I can eat potatoes for two weeks all it took me was three days for my body to respond I'm not saying everybody else is gonna respond like that but it was really simple so that's my story thank you for listening I'm proud to be a member of PB NSG thank you [Music] do you know our culinary curator is Denise cling Paltrow and she's going to come up to introduce the star of our show dog Lyle culinary culinary hello everybody boy I definitely feel blessed in terms of my health after listening to Jim's story about what what a success with plant-based nutrition now I'd like to introduce to you a remarkable man dr. Lyle has been a clinical psychologist at True North health center for over 30 years he has published numerous articles in scientific literature he is co-author of the pleasure trap and is in private practice conducting psychotherapy at True North health center delightfully candid and warm dr. Douglas Lyle is one of psychology's most innovative and curious minds deeply dedicated to exploring the mysteries of human behavior from fresh uncharted waters his research in evolutionary psychology and its impact on health and happiness and the pursuit of pleasure is generating critical acclaim dr. Lyle is a graduate of the University of California at San Diego summa laude he received president's fellowship in was a DuPont scholar at the University of Virginia where he completed his PhD in clinical psychology he was then appointed lecturer in psychology at Stanford University and was on the staff at the National Center for post-traumatic stress disorder at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto California dr. Lyle worked as a forensic psychologist for the criminal justice system in Dallas Texas and as a consultant for the National Institute of Health and clinical trial on cognitive therapy for recurrent depression at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center dr. Lyle lectures nationally nationally to the health professionals on topics including evolutionary psychology cognitive therapy lifestyle modification relaxation and stress management and weight loss please give a warm PB NSG welcome to dr. Douglas liar like it not sure ah you don't need this hold on just one second does this advance slides this does oh that's fabulous here take this ah I see how it works well thank you very much it's a it absolutely is a pleasure to be here and to join you that was an incredible story that the gym told and and I have a very special friend I'm going to tell that story to when I get back to Santa Rosa dr. John McDougall will love that story and it's it's just a fantastic legacy the I'm Doug Lyall as you know and many of you know that you've heard that I'm a psychologist and you also know it wasn't my first choice I really didn't want to be a psychologist I wanted to be an artist and now I should have been but my father refused to give me the emotional support or more importantly the financial support that my talents so richly deserved but this is what we have to do in this life we have to just make you so I get stuck doing this psychology thing so what we're going to do tonight is we're going to try to get a handle on an interesting problem and the problem is that first of all healthy living is hard to do if it's just us in the food all that by itself that's what Alan Goldhamer and I call the pleasure trap it's the food is too rich it's too fancy we've got a bunch of geniuses out there that are taking the food apart put it back together in ways that are so stimulating they're hyper stimulating to the dopamine pathway and so that's what Alan and I call the blizzard drop but it wasn't far after understanding this and working with people that we could see that there's other major issues and one of the most important issues is that human beings are social and that this is a social process people are not Wolverines Wolverines have won Wolverine 50,000 acres and they don't have any friends okay so it's easy for them if they want to eat healthy but it's not easy for people because people by nature are a super social creature and we're very attached to other people and we're we're naturally read their cues and their their messages that they give us and these influenced us and so this is a problem when we're trying to do things a new way and in a way that's better and I have to say in some ways that it's difficult to not see it as superior and so that that brings a problem or conflict into this arena and it's one that we're going to need to figure out how to negotiate if we're going to have ourselves live on a healthy path without getting pushed and shoved around by the turbulent forces and arlynn social water so this is that story it's called getting along without going along and okay so what we're going to call this today is we're gonna call it winning arguments friendship scores and the Knights that say me so so we'll find out about that all right so this is human nature we're gonna go back ten thousand years and what we're gonna see there is something interesting what we're gonna see is that this is this is me ten thousand years ago and I figured out these really cool rocks that if you rub them together you can make fire it's really great and I'm bringing it to the village and look at how happy the villages they're all happy about this because I'm gonna save them so much this is a life-saving discovery now there is one woman there that has a 1960s hairdo but other than that than that that's a really good picture now here's what then happens as a result of bringing such fantastic information to the group what happens is is that they can't help themselves they all want to kiss your feet see so they all line up like this and you're saying listen you know it's really okay I you know I just wanted to do this to share it with the group and but they say no no we've got to kiss your feet so it turns out that your feet at the end of all this there's a bunch of smooches on your feet which is really cool when you bring something that important to the village now well so now here I am now with a book by John McDougall in my hand see it's got the mcdougal play yeah and there we are and look what's happening what's happening it's 2017 I'm bringing I'm bringing this book that's gonna save their lives and so do you and you bring it to them look what they do and look at your feet nothing on your feet like what's the deal there haha alright so what we're gonna do is we're gonna realize we've got two types of problems that we're gonna work on remember one kind of problem is going to be the people that don't understand the connection between diet and health so these people are going to argue with us about what the right direction is to go and this is going to be 99% of the people you're ever gonna run into so this is what I call type ones type type twos are going to be different those are gonna be people that don't know or excuse me that do know so type twos are going to be people that are gonna be close to you because by of course it's not by chance that they have read the same books that you have because you probably gave them the book or maybe they gave you the book and so sometime in the last few years these are these are your close friends and family and so that's a different set of problems that we have from within that group now so type A type ones do not know the connection this doesn't mean that they are not smart people they could be brilliant people so if this is your brother and he's the brother-in-law diste I don't know President Barbour medical school or sister-in-law okay so they may be brilliant but if they start cross-examining us and and contradicting us what do we know they don't know it doesn't matter how smart they are what matters is what it is that they know and people that are arguing with us about this actually just don't know the facts and this is going to be a problem when we bring try to bring any information to the village or even that we signal that we're doing something different this is easily gonna turn into problems type-2 does know so this is this is your sister and it's your sister's birthday and you know she's read the same book that you read to her three years ago so she knows and there is an arguments about the content it's just that she's not on this path yet and so that's a different issue so it's gonna turn out type ones you can tell they're a type one because they always ask the same question when they see in their lunch you know so here you are eating your lunch and they say what are you eating there you say my lunch she said well what is this like a are you like a vegetarian well plant base yeah so uh well what are they did I say that there's a bunch of us that are gonna have that on our tombstone like that's what's gonna be on there I know it's coming yeah where do you get your protein from now if you look at these people from just the right angle just right angle it says ignorant right on their forehead that's what it says so that's what they say you know what that's what that's what is going on all right the the type twos say things differently so the type twos aren't arguing with you about about what to eat what they're trying to do is a lot of times get you to eat what they're eating so this is you at your sister's birthday party and you know she she read Colin Campbell or she read Caldwell she read rip or she read John and so she's read the same thing you've read it so she knows but she's not doing it and she feels kind of embarrassed about it and she's just gonna kind of brave it out and she's gonna come right at you with the cheese blintzes and say well I made these just for you I know you like all right it's like come on come on just eat one says we're all even here like that's what's happening and so uh that's another problem you know that's another problem that we're gonna have to figure out how to deal with now this is what happens when we argue with people it's what happens when you argue with people about health so if you if you rarely win an argument about health then you have high friendship scores but as you start winning your friendship scores go down and what's incredible is when you always win the scientists tell us here that your friendship score actually goes below zero which we which was previously thought to be impossible haha alright so we got to be careful so we're gonna try to frame this in a way to help us understand the following and that's that this is actually about a fundamental currency that guides human nature which is what we're going to call a steam steam is is also if if we were talking to pure biologists we would use the term status because they would say well that dog is alpha status and that dog's beta status and they would think in terms of a hierarchy that goes from from high to low here human beings don't quite have something like that they have something similar but we would call it esteem and it's more it's more of a swirling cauldron of credits about who's doing more for the village and unlike animal dominance hierarchies are more about who's the biggest dog they're just gonna push the other dogs away from the food and then who gets second and who gets third and you'll see that in chickens and all kinds of animals have pecking orders of types humans don't actually have something quite like that it's similar but it actually is based on something strange which is what can you do for the village it's a very unusual way of going about things the extraordinary cooperative instincts that guide this process of what could I do for the village yeah are a key part of human beings great success rather than battling each other to just be top dog they're actually trying to figure out what is that they can do and so the so we're going to be learning about the sistene process as we go on because it's central to what's disturbing people when we start doing a better job than them in an important domain like health all right in order to understand a little bit more about esteem processes we have to go back in history everybody knows who this is of course well I can tell there's no history history majors in the audience because if there were you would know that this is a till of the hunt and the reason you would know is because this is his famous steed Trey who only had three legs all right all right so Attila and guys like him what they did was they would gather up their horses oh my button just fell off my coat how cool was that the need to go on a diet apparently haha the so what they would do is they would they gather themselves in a group and they'd sharpen their swords and they get on their horses and they cross the river and they go attack the guys in the green why would they do this why would they do this why are they gonna go do this to get to the other side if we were talking to historian if we're talking to historian what would some some histories some really smart guy with the beard and glasses that had studied human history what why would they say what till we'd do this power that that's talk exactly like historians talk resources land all true okay everybody's talking accurately except that we're going to put the eyes of biology on this we're gonna talk like a biologist and resources is correct but there's a specific resource that is ultimately the driving factor women yes there it is right there okay and so what we see here those things over there and the pink those things are the problem haha what's going on is they are they are holding those things up there are those eggs and those eggs are really expensive they are biologically just about everything that's needed to create a new life and they are huge compared to those other little things squiggly things are and those things for a human female only one comes down a month down the chute for about half of its lifespan so these are really valuable in fact in fact they're the most valuable thing on earth right now if you were to put a pound them in a jar one pound would cost more than the net worth of Michigan that is how valuable those are those squiggly other things they're manufactured at the rate of two to four hundred million a day and they're given away like cheap confetti at every bar yes that's how that works so from the standpoint of those things over there those things are in a real short supply and it's worth wiping out those guys to get it even though those guys are not gonna stand still for this they're gonna fight back and they're gonna get dangerous too so this is what's gonna happen these guys in the green aren't gonna stand still for a Atilla what they're gonna do is they're gonna organize themselves in a dominance hierarchy and they going to start with about two years old so any of you that if anybody here that's ever had maybe two sons they're gonna see that those couple of sons gonna be wrestling and wrestling and they're gonna be competing and they're gonna be doing all kinds of competitions all the way through and all the way through school as they grow up competing pushing and shoving insulting each other you know our team against your team a couple of black guys now and then hey this is just how it works and out there in the future someday at their high school one of those kids it's going to be the starting varsity quarterback that's the guy yeah there's other sports have a lot of talent in those other sports but there's nothing like that sport because that sport is we are taking their village that's what that's where it is basketball is nice it's like wow aren't we coordinated and we can jump that's nice football ah we are taking their territory or they're taking our territory and this is its all-out and we got one guy that's figuring out where we're throwing the spears and he better throw them really well and that's our quarterback and so this is how it is that this process works so it's going to turn out that these guys in order to do their very best for the village what they need to do is that they need to compete with each other to try to rise as high as they can in hierarchy and so if they're lazy and they say well I don't really care where I stay in the hierarchy maybe I could be number one hierarchy but I'll just take number seven slot ah they're not designed that way they're actually designed to push as hard as they can until they get stopped because if they all push until they get stopped then the village winds up seeing who can do what and then it puts people in the proper slot so that when trouble happens they have the very best offensive possibility for defending the most important things which are their lives and their families and that's how that works so it turns out that people are sensitive about these hierarchies they need to make they need to feel like the right and in fact inside the minds of these creatures they usually feel like they ought to be a little higher in the hierarchy and the guy that's below them that's pushing for their spot is uppity it needs to be pushed back so it's gonna turn out that as cooperative as people are which they are remarkably cooperative they also have a little sensitivity to this hierarchical process and so it's gonna turn out that they've got a chip in their head that is looking to see if anybody is trying to get more esteem than they deserve and this is what I'm going to call a an esteem sensor or an esteem meter so we're gonna look at this here and just notice what this guys wearing on his head huh he's one of the Knights that say neat so let me tell you about the Knights that they need so some of you know but some of you don't so let me tell you what the Knights that's a knee is so I have a friend of mine that's a film buff and he said we'll have you ever seen Monty Python the bomb I know so no you got to know ok so a couple years ago he finally makes me watch what is it the holy grail I think my name Python the Holy Grail and it's this kind of a silly movie and these guys are hoping around on phony little horses on a stick I mean it's just goofy alright that in it it's King Arthur looking for the Holy Grail and he has to go into these woods he goes into the woods and in the woods or a guy's on real horses and they are the Knights that say need and he needs to pass through there for us so he says what can I pass through for us and they say me me and he says what about this meet me all they say is neat they're just unbelievably annoying and I'm staring at the screen and I'm like oh my god that's what happens when I say well actually where I get my protein from is like from beans and rice yes it is I was like read it in a book I've like read it in seven books and my friends are doctors and I swear that there's all the amino acids necessary and John McDougall plug me Nick Nick Nick Nick they're the Knights that say knee alright and here they are no matter what you say that's what you're gonna get alright so we're gonna have to deal with the Knights that say knee and we'll come back to them in a little bit all right so how are we gonna deal with these people that they're gonna they're gonna argue with us they're gonna have problems with us and the reason is is that they're sensitive because when they see you doing something different they can feel the esteem process be that you are somehow doing something fancier there requires more intelligence and conscientiousness and knowledge and they feel you rising and hierarchy and they're going to be upset about this and they're designed to defend themselves and so they actually know what to do because they aren't defenseless about this process and so they will say oh no no no okay like no it's good knee now my sister did that she got sick yeah that's what it's gonna be so we're going to have to figure out a way around this or else it's good we're just gonna be getting brain damage dang in our head against people's foreheads it's like real unpleasant so there's a there's a set of techniques that I've developed over the years for this and this is the technique that we deal with for people who don't know and we know that they don't know because they cross-examine us and argue with us so when the cross-examining and arguing we know they don't know when they say where to get your protein from it's not really a question it's they're throwing down the gauntlet like oh come on man go ahead let's see if you can answer this question because I've got a little hammer in my back pocket and as soon as you answer that you've got an answer to it I'm gonna take it out and go yeah not a complete protein no that's not what they say dr. Schmo on TV says no okay that's what they're gonna say so they got a hammer in their back Parker they wanna they want to hit your knuckles that's what's happening you know they don't know this so largely unconscious but they feel threatened and they were gonna want to come after your esteem and put you back in your place and so there's going to be a technique that we're going to deal for these people the type ones and everybody knows who this is of course it's the Pope I actually thought it was clear but as a alright so there's the Pope up there and he's in that a big square it's like Easter Sunday there's like 250,000 people there whereas it's the Vatican what's worse I forget the place Rahm st. Peters that's what it is so yeah he's up there and suppose you know that's a pretty cool thing now suppose you're a young priest in the Vatican you're thinking wow that's amazing to give up there and give that mouth ah one day one day I might get there so you're hustling around you get up early and you stay up late you work really hard you volunteer for committees and they see how hard you're working and they say wow allons really that's a really dedicated scholar you know there's gonna be this special group coming in a couple months and we're gonna we're gonna add sign we're gonna sign this this 20 minute presentation on this great ethical question and so they they bring you over they say okay this is what it's going to be we want you to do this and you know give it presentation on this and you know what they want you're an A student in this and you're like yeah Cardinals so and so 50 years ago said such as such and Pope so and so wrote about this so yeah I know what I'm gonna do and I know what they think I should do and I know what I should do but I'm not not gonna do it that way what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just blow everybody away so what I'm gonna do is I got a friend of mine that's like a scholar at the University of Rome and I'm gonna go over there and we're gonna dig down in the library and we're gonna find an ancient text from a Buddhist philosopher writing 3,000 years ago named Sun Zhi and we're gonna find out in there the Sun Sea has this incredible way to say things that he says I'm better than Pope so-and-so I'm better than Cardinal so-and-so and not only that it rhymes I mean the guy is just amazing so you get this thing and you get in front of group and you say of course you know about what Cardinal so-and-so said in Pope so-and-so said but let me tell you about an extraordinary philosopher writing 3000 years ago who encapsulated this better than anybody how's this gonna go oh you're in trouble you're in trouble you're like hey I thought they should be kissing my feet oh that's what that's what should be I know it's not gonna be happen it's boos and hisses something to be throw in their shoes because you're doing this we're going above if you go above you're in trouble okay they get uncomfortable they get defensive it gets to be a problem and so this is how we're gonna do this we're going to actually deal with this cross-examination and anxiety from other people when they don't know the score on this by what we're gonna call we're gonna do this like a Buddhist in the Vatican we're gonna be so smooth and here's how we're gonna go now I recognize that we are in the house of a fanatic there are guys like this that say I don't care what happens I'm going to be in your face I'm gonna tell you the story I'm gonna save your life John McDougall is one of these guys call Rasta Steen is one of these guys joel fuhrman is definitely one of these guys there are Wolverines out there that are doing great job terrorizing the world with this message John doesn't care how uncomfortable anybody gets and Joel likes it when people get uncomfortable that's fine and so there's people that can do this and they're born to do it but quite frankly I'm not one of them so when I get into things if I have to start to get if you have starts to get contentious with me and somebody else about this I get irritated I get a little short I can get it feels unpleasant to me in other words I start out friendly like oh you really want to know well let me tell you and then I get the nights at Sandy and I'm like well now wait a second you asked me a question I'm going to tell you and then they get worse than that now we got a problem okay and then what happens is nobody leaves happy and I go home the next three nights and I'm thinking about well as coulda said this and I could have said that he said this and I missed I missed that one oh god I could have hit him right there that's like you do that for a few years and you realize wait a minute maybe there's a better way to live all right so this is this is what I do I call it the same strategy so use the word seems and the word seems indicates a tentative attitude it an incomplete not not a full confidence a notion that this is something new and interesting and worthwhile Dov looking into and I'm exploring it but I don't have all the answers and I'm not doing this and so when people ask what are you doing there well my lunch oh whoa looks like there's no bantam for what did you like a veggie well doing some plant-based things oh why is that well I sort of read this book or actually only read half of it nice try thought I'd try it out it seems to be working for me right now well if we say it seems to be working for me right now and we're saying it seems to be working but we're not sure for me I'm not saying it's true for Humanity right now doesn't mean that I think it's going to be working it definitely in the future it's a very tentative statement and it sends a text message to their unconscious that says I'm not trying to do this okay that's the big message of a statement like that is I'm not trying to do this the statement on your plate is saying that this is exactly what I'm trying to do you see it's a public statement of thought self-discipline conscientiousness intelligence and superiority that is in fact what that is you're waving a flag you see you're not you don't even have to be trying to you just are and so when the Khan come believe me they're not coming peacefully they're coming threatened and they're coming with their little hammer in their back pocket and they want to hear the V word and when they hear it they're gonna like no I'm gonna complete protein okay so we say I'm just trying this out seems to be working for me right now and incidentally I don't say I read the book I said I read the book I on the read half of it why because just that fast in their minds they're thinking well if there's something to this and I read the book then I'm always the guy that read the book after that guy read the book after he told me so I'm trotting along behind him into village for the rest of my life no way okay whereas if you only read half the book uh then if I get the book and I read the whole thing then I read the book before he read the book so just act quickly they're a little more open hey just a subtle little thing so uh that seems to be working for me right now see what happens and and that's where we start and then they push you okay well what about that protein thing and you're thinking okay just come on right in go ahead and ask me that protein question just go right ahead oh you think that's the big protein question okay because turns out they got that little thing that little protein hammer in their back pocket and you've got a sledgehammer behind you and your sledgehammer it's a nice sledgehammer but it's a sledgehammer and they say yeah what about picking and you say well I dropped her looked into the whole thing and he or she says seems to make some sense and looked at my protein it's fine yeah my doctor my doctor that's that guy that took chemistry and you didn't take chemistry hey yeah that's the guy that not only took chemistry but got A's in chemistry now that that freakazoid that guy that did all that stuff and went to all that school that A's and A's it's just one of these nut cases that guy that guy checked into so I'm really not worried about you're the wordsmith protein because my guy says my protein is fine see that's what we say my dogs just fine my doctor says you know he or she will just have to check my protein once a year you see we inform the fool they don't have any idea what they're doing they just have a little ace up their sleeve than anything with a V on its forehead they're gonna slam it overhead with the protein question so we are gonna say oh no guess what you didn't know something the protein issue the doctor says is fine checked it out it's fine and by the way it's one of those things you checked once a year it's not one of those things that you're gonna make me anxious about that if I haven't had killed a chicken or a fish recently and I haven't choked one down in the last three weeks I'm gonna be dying to some protein deficiency here on the streets of Detroit no that isn't how it works it's a once a year kind of thing that they check so I don't have any anxiety about it you fool so we could just put the protein thing to rest see nice and soft nice and gentle it's like oh but you also didn't hit him in the face with it we did it nice and smooth so it's gonna turn out but a lot of times by this point they're not really that hostile there's actually thinking huh this person's not trying to get above me in the hierarchy all unconsciously they're just feeling like hmm and they might say something like mmm let me think about that seems to be working for you doctors okay yeah I don't think I could do that and it comes out of their mouths like I don't think I could do that and what do we say we say well it's probably not right for anybody that's what you say so you don't say hey look this is how you ought to do things what you say is I'm just doing my muncher okay what do you got where he gets protein well I don't think I can do it that's okay screw hiding from me okay get more curious like what it's a deal yeah that's what I do my friend Alan Goldhammer he's about as friendly as joel Fuhrman he's about as friendly as John McDougall and Colin is the sweetheart oh my god call it an se are unbelievably sweet those three guys killers killers so Alan if anybody ever says well I don't think I could do that Alan I'll just look I'm up and down and say yeah I don't think you could not the friend base guy yeah we just say ready okay and and then they're like huh what's so good about this like why are you doing this like what's good about it say now we may have pique their curiosity and they're just sniffing around that we like or hiding a secret like in plain sight we're not bragging about the fire sticks and tell them to kiss our feet we're like kind of hiding this information almost in plain sight like so now they're kind of curious now a lot of people won't be in fact you give them those three little answers and they just trot along and they don't even care but some people have some intellectual curiosity and they might even have some health problems or health problems in their family that they're worried about and now they're a little curious now they're like yeah but what's what's good about that what what's in it what's the deal everybody knows who this is of course you're gonna find out I'm not as nice as I look huh that's Andrew while I really hope I don't meet him one day uh the Andrew Weil is a very smart guy by the way this is a harvard-educated medical doctor no slouch she's probably probably for many years and may still be close to the most worldwide known figure in alternative health so Andrews extremely knowledgeable about plants botany micro chemicals he's very like I said chopped top-notch brain but philosophically I feel like he's got you know a little off kilter and that is Andrew along with a lot of the natural foods movement and Prevention magazine and actually the driving force of the natural foods industry that made it successful is the concern for deficiency it's the notion that deficiency is what we need to be worried about and so far more money is spending the natural foods arena in health food and rina chasing deficiencies then chasing the real problem which is excess and so andrew is always selling the concept of deficiency and people he's a wonderful presenter and he's friendly and he's warm he's got the beard he's Santa Claus and basically he starts explaining about how you need to have more of this thing that comes off the northeast shore of Madagascar and this bottle of 39.95 whatever and the point is pretty soon everybody's nodding their heads because it makes sense to people because people naturally are worried about deficiency and a lot of the docs that I have a lot of respect for are also very concerned about deficiency but I'm not I'm a little bit concerned about deficiency and I'm really concerned about dietary excess ok dietary excess is really were the great imbalances in the modern meaning when joel fuhrman comes he's very knowledgeable about all the possible deficiencies he sees a lot of people that after they've been fixed by getting rid of the excesses they still have a deficiency problem so he's very knowledgeable about and you'll hear about those things it isn't that there isn't a point to that it's the point is that in general that issue is out of balance and people inherently are vastly more worried about deficiency than they are about excess because deficiency is a omnipresent problem of ancient man and excess is never a problem for ancient man our nature is worried about deficiency if you watch a young pair of parents with their infant children it's did she get did she get enough ghee did he eat did he get a lot to eat like everybody's worried about whether this kid got enough to eat that is a stone-age fear nobody worries about excess it's not in anybody's consciousness and yet excess is overwhelmingly the reason for almost every death that occurred in Detroit today that is the reason okay so this is what I call the Andrew Weil they ask us what's so good about what we're eating we don't tell them like a mcdougal would say well what you got to do is you got to get rid of all the meat fish fowl eggs dairy products it's like you do that and they just flip out what do you to starve us to death that's why they don't give him the microphone on TV is that nobody wants to hear that message they give the microphone to Andrew and Andrew starts talking about how you got to have more of this and more of that and everybody's like oh yes more this more that that sounds right and so that's how we talk I start talking I just channel my inner Andrew Weil okay why what's so good about this well there's a lot of vitamins and minerals in natural food and all the different fruits and vegetables all those different colors or like different antioxidants that are really good to help you so I'm just getting more of those more more getting more hey and you know what they'll say they'll say wow that sounds reasonable maybe I ought to get more it's like yeah maybe you should hey that's how I talk to people I don't talk to him about getting rid of things that it's that are killing him I talk about putting more things in there that are good for them and I stay out of the other problem because that other problem is a minefield of argument all right now so that's type one so type two is gonna be different cuz type two are gonna be people that we don't use the same strategy with because they already know the facts so this is your sister and it's her birthday party and you're going over there and it's gonna be a little stressful because you're trying to stay on a healthy track and she's she's not even though she knows the deal she's just not gonna do it and so there's gonna be a little discomfort in this process and once again we're gonna look at what that discomfort is and that's about a steam process so what's gonna happen is is that there's me and here's these five guys in the village in my little stone-age village and they think that that guy there thinks I'm about the third most viable and that guy thinks I'm about the third most viable so does he and that guy's really smart there and then a jerk up on the top there yeah we know about him so this is my esteem and I'm naturally sensitive to feedback when I do things well and I get esteem cues it means that I valuable and if I do things poorly I'll get cues of lowered esteem and so I'm sort of modifying my behavior and trying to do things that people find valuable and so that's how our esteem processes work now so we've got a chip inside of our head that is tracking the sistene because it's a very important part of human life just as the temperature is and the food is you also track esteem cues it's the currency of human nature and so when things are going well and I'm getting good feedback I'm doing something well I feel proud and when I do things poorly and I get bad feedback I feel embarrassed so those are the mechanisms that guide us with respect to social behavior this is that my chip is was also named by social psychologist mark Leary at Duke calls the Sochi ometer I actually call it a little different for reasons of a different contact but it's the same concept now so our problem is that if you're going to do a better job than your sister's gonna do at a birthday party then we're gonna have the esteem dynamic starting to tip like this and she can feel like we're gonna be looking down our nose at her and that's gonna be a problem that is gonna make things uncomfortable so she's gonna want to drag you down into the swamp with her that's gonna be actually an important motivation for her and that's not good it's an uncomfortable situation so what we want to do with all these things is we want to get along with people but we don't want to go along with their program and so we we want to maintain what we're doing but what we need to do is we need to fix this esteem dynamic by tilting it in descending her esteem signals across different channels to let her know that she has not lost esteem even though she's going to be eating those cheese blintzes and we know that's not the best thing for her but we're effectively going to be ignoring them but we have to do more than not say anything we actually have to signal esteem to her in ways that we can hear how valuable she is so that's what we're gonna do we're gonna say basically I'm not really paying that close of attention to this dietary thing and you are cool anyway is what we're gonna do now and the way we do this by the way we fix the esteem dynamic is we were gonna ask her questions which are gonna indicate that we're interested in her and that she's valuable and important things are going on with her as far as we're concerned it could be about anything how's Jimmy doing in school were you guys going for vacation next year what are you guys doing for Thanksgiving whatever we're asking questions and we're indicating where did you get that new sweater that looks nice etc we give compliments we ask questions and as we do those two things that is signaling esteem and letting them know that we don't have a tip in the dynamic that we're straightening it out now if they ask would you like one of these the first thing you can always say is not now maybe later just pend second time punt again do it twice you may not have to do it a third time if she's chasing you around with this stuff and she's pushing on it and says she made it just for you and you have to say no here's how we don't do it we don't say no no I don't need such things I live on a higher yogic plane we don't do it that way what we do is we meet an eyeball to eyeball and we say that looks delicious ie I'm not fancier than you that looks delicious that looks great you know I made myself a promise I was gonna stay real clean for the rest of the month so but no thanks that but they look great that way we're not signaling that we're on a higher plane and we never do anything naughty we're just signaling we're gonna pass right now but we're trying to do it as smooth as we can if we can't get out of it any other way so we take less shine on ourselves and in this way by asking questions giving compliments and ducking around these other issues we try to have the esteem dynamics between us and other people in a place that is that it's as comfortable as we can make it this all came together for me a few years ago when I went down to Thanksgiving dinner at my sister and my brother-in-law's house and so it turns out that my brother-in-law is my sister's older than I am and then my brother-in-law's older than she is by quite a bit so he's quite a bit senior to me and his name also also turns out he's a big guy so he was uh back in the 19th century he played college football she's a bit one of these really big big guys and we know what happens to big guys when they turned 60 65 years old so if you're a curvy girl at 20 you're gonna struggle with your weight more than anybody else because that's those genes and if you're a big strong guy when you're 20 you're gonna have a harder time with regulating your weight when you're 65 and so Big D you know it not all in the chest anymore sometimes it's down here alright and so he's Big D and his name of course starts with D just figures and so he's known as Big D and I'm known as little D this is just great and it turns out that he's a very successful obnoxious difficult attorney he's a real pain so going down there's just a joy of my existence so I Drive down from the Bay Area down to LA and they're there they are you know beautiful home and beautiful Thanksgiving dinner with messin for me to eat okay Oh beautiful there's some green alfalfa sprouts it's almost like green air I'm like oh I'm so glad I come 500 miles to eat green air for Thanksgiving and so there we sit and here's Big D and Big D's in trouble Big D knows the score he'd been up to TrueNorth years before you know had his health improved great deal went home but we know what happens in life and so there he is massive play big bottle of ouzo and he's telling his stories he's drinking this Greek liquor that smells like licorice so my so my alfalfa sprouts smell like licorice when I'm trying to eat my Thanksgiving dinner and I know we got a problem in the room because we've got master of the universe over there and then what do we got skinny weak pathetic pencil-necked psychologist vegetarian brother-in-law practically a florist yeah area like no health problems no health problems how's your blood pressure Big D no that's not what I'm saying I'm asking him a bunch of questions like well throwing this guy status peanut it's like he's a gorilla like tell us that story about the time in that big game where you hit the guy so hard they had to card him off the field I want to hear that again for the 26th time it's all like going okay you know about 20 minutes into this thing and he slams the zuzo down and says you guys don't know how hard this is why is he saying what I think he's saying like I don't know what he's saying hey he goes I run a law firm I'm like yeah I know you couldn't work for anybody else goes I have secretaries I come walking around the corner and they're playing solitaire on the computer because you know I got a budget because I got junior attorneys I feel like I have to spend half my time you're telling them what to do I pay them a lot of money but it man I like do have their work cuz when I come home I am stressed and this vegetable thing just you know it's just not doing it for me it's just it's just not enough like wow this guy just does a belly flop in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner I'm like uh-huh well I don't know we're all big dido you'll get to it when you get to it you got a lot on your plate he did have a lot on his plate so we get through this thing and then of course at the end of Thanksgiving dinner you have to go watch the Dallas Cowboys like that's what you do so yeah he's a football guy so you're in there and it's like okay dark okay when they get it into the paint with the paint where it says Cowboys that's called a touchdown it's like thank you so glad know what did I ever do before ah all right so you get through the Cowboys game you're like all right you thinking you just drove down here on Thanksgiving Day you fought the traffic surely you're gonna get it in a good night's sleep shouldn't be a problem right oh yeah type a household forget about it 6:00 a.m. the next morning the guys banging on the bedroom door Mike what goes Doug get up what yeah what what goes you tell Goldhammer it's Alan Goldhamer my my buddy at true north Joe Goldhammer I'm coming up there ok ok you tell him I don't want some noisy lousy room like yeah I had last time it's like what was nine years ago in a different facility but that's okay you know okay Big D I'll tell ya you tell him okay I felt and that went pretty well now that Thanksgiving went pretty well for a big D Thanksgiving that was like all right so I thought you know I'll be looking for them couple years goes by doesn't come life gets busy you guys know how it is so I'm thinking you know it was a good story though about how Thanksgiving dinner went so I thought at MacDougall's advanced city weekend that year I would tell that story and it turns out that John had a video taped there I thought well that's okay my brother-in-law never listens to me anyway he sure as heck not gonna listen to a video so we shoot the video and John says hey that's a really good video I think we need to make a DVD out of it I said sure so well I forgot about it got three more years goes by and I'm walking across the courtyard at TrueNorth one day and there's Big D I'm like Big D's here oh and I had this little hair on the back of my neck I couldn't quite place why it was but I wasn't very happy to see him I come across the courtyard say hi okay so it's true north it turns out that they have living rooms because it's a converted apartment building and so you can see into people's living rooms if you really determined to peek and so like I go by and I look through his curtains and I see my face on his TV set I'm like that's okay I've shot a lot of video what are the odds if that guy's gonna watch all of my videos not a chance I'm probably gonna get away with this but it's getting tougher so about a week later I'm coming across the courtyard again he comes up to me and he sticks out his hand and I'm like you know he goes Doug I watched all your videos and like so far my hands still okay and [Laughter] shakes and he says thank you you did a really good job how about that that guy remembered that incident and how I handled that incident and why now I handled the incident the way I did he remembered the whole thing and quite frankly that warm handshake on Thanksgiving are actually the years after Thanksgiving from Big D was the closest thing I will ever get to Big D kissing my feet that and the story of this is the following but other people just like us they want to be esteemed they want to be valued and when we start doing things fancier better and more knowledgeable than they're doing them they feel threatened even if they're a fancy guy like Big D Big D has no reason to be threatened by me but he still he still felt it and he felt some shame of how he was treating his body in his life and it was a problem and he knew what to do but it took him time in order to circle back around and rejoin this journey he just wasn't ready at the same time that that I might have been and other people are not going to be ready at the same time that we're ready to tell him so that's why I like keeping the message actually pretty soft I like to keep the examples quiet and I'd like to essentially take care of type ones by luring them in with curiosity and then warmly example it's telling them that there's a better way and there's good reasons for it but I leave the education two books that I've only read half of so that they can feel like that they're gonna join me as a peer and what's hyped is I make a special effort to make sure that they know that that I value them for who it is that they are and what is that they're doing on their own health journey is really not my concern I'm just you know if anything I'm just quietly a good example and but in no way judgmental and in this way what I'm trying to do is try to make a situation where we could all get along and we can join this process whenever we're ready in whatever way we can and in that way folks we keep everybody happy and that's how we get the life you deserve thank you very much it's been a pleasure thank you

Channel: Plant Based Nutrition Support Group

Views: 6,220

Rating: 4.9047618 out of 5

Keywords: plantbased, psychology, vegan

Id: wRI8ATpv140

Length: 76min 33sec (4593 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020